Lucio R. Borderland Beat
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Juan Jesus Guerrero Chapa had been warned, one thing the Texas defense attorney knew for sure, he was a dead man walking. He was warned ‘to be on his guard.”
The warning became reality in May of 2013, when gunmen gunned down the attorney who represented supreme Golfo Cartel leader Osiel Cardenas. When murdered, Guerrero Chapa, was with his wife in the parking lot of Southlake Town Square.
A white Toyota SUV stopped behind Guerrero Chapa’s Range Rover, a door of the Toyota opened and a masked gunman exited. The gunman then walked to the passenger side of the Range Rover, where the attorney was sitting, and fired into the vehicle hitting Guerrero Chapa multiple times with a 9mm handgun.
The attorney’s wife was loading shopping bags into the Range Rover when her husband was shot, she was not physically harmed.
The hit-men have never been identified or charged in the murder case.
However, two men Jesus Gerardo Ledezma-Cepeda and his son Jesus Gerardo Ledezma-Campano Jr., are charged with interstate stalking and murder for hire conspiracy. The U.S. government charged the men, both Mexican Nationals, of having followed Guerrero Chapa for months before his death.
On April 3, 2016, Wes Ball and J. Warren St. John, the attorneys of the senior Ledezma Cepeda, filed a response to the “Government’s Motion to Suppress the Presence of Cocaine in the Body of the Deceased.”
Further included in the filing is the defense claim that the slain attorney was, at the time of his death, the de facto leader of CDG
From the filing:
“The deceased Juan Jesus Guerrero Chapa was the subject of an autopsy concerning the cause of his death. That autopsy disclosed the presence of the illegal controlled substance cocaine in his body at the time of his death. The evidence in this case will show that Chapa was the attorney for the head of a large international drug cartel known as the Gulf Cartel or CDG. The head of this drug cartel, Osiel Cardenas, prior to the instant offense, was arrested and extradited to the United States. Cardenas was convicted of offenses and sentenced to confinement for a period of 25 years in a Federal prison. Following Cardenas’ arrest, his attorney Chapa was the de facto head of CDG. As head of CDG, the deceased Chapa ran a large criminal enterprise whose activities included murders, narcotics trafficking, kidnapping, extortion, bribery, money laundering and torture.
Furthermore the defense is challenging the contention of the government that Guerrero Chapa was fearful of his life, because of threats, stating:
“The Government has advised the Court that it seeks to offer evidence that Chapa learned that there were those seeking to kill him. The evidence will show that Chapa had a large number of enemies which included R V 1 , and others from drug cartels including CDG and Los Zetas. These enemies were not in all cases aligned with one another. The government seeks to show through hearsay testimony that Chapa expressed that he was fearful of the threat against him. Contrary to this expressed fear is the fact that Chapa continued his association with criminal enterprises which included his use of cocaine.”
Ledezma Cepeda’s cousin, Jose Luis Cepeda-Cortes, a legal U.S. resident, also is charged in the case. There are three others named and charged in the sealed indictment.
The conspiracy to kill Guerrero Chapa began two years prior to his death.
The Fort Worth trial will commence on April 25th.
Read more about the case by linking here
Below is the filing: