Thread by @alanfeuer

When we last heard from the Chapo trial, the kingpin's mistress, Lucero Sanchez Lopez, was narrating the story of escaping a dragnet of Mexican marines with a naked Chapo thru a tunnel under his safe house bathtub. She'll be back on the stand at 930 to finish the tale. Stay tuned

After her cross-examination, we may get another cooperating witness from within Chapo's organization. There are only a few more govt witnesses left. Among those we've heard about but haven't yet seen: Cesar Gastelum, who ran Chapo's ops in Honduras, and Damaso Lopez, a top aide.

The prosecution's case is winding down and may come to a rest by the end of the week. Then the big question will be: Does Chapo himself take the stand?
Could be an interesting week...

Ok, the day is off to a good start.
Chapo just entered the courtroom in a red velvet smoking jacket with a red handkerchief in the lapel pocket...

Thought it couldn't get better? It just did.
Chapo seems to have coordinated w/his wife Emma who is wearing a matching red velvet jacket. The mistress, Lucero, meanwhile, is on the stand in typical jail garb. This seems like a pre-planned sartorial act of solidarity/snubbing.

Anyhow, back to the naked bathtub tunnel escape.
Lucero said that after she Chapo emerged he was desperate & wanted to steal a car. But his secretary Condor phoned an ally who picked them up and brought them to another safehouse where, as Lucero put it, "El Senor got dressed."

The getaway guy then took Chapo and Lucero to Mazatlan where she stayed w/him a few days before he went to see his wife at the Hotel Miramar where he was ultimately arrested. Lucero found out about the arrest on TV.

How did Lucero even find herself in this mess?
She told the jury a bit her biography. It's not a pretty story.

Lucero came from the small town of Cosala, a mining and farming hamlet in the Sinaloa mountains. At 8, she was selling empanadas as a street vendor. At 10, she was picking corn, cukes and tomatoes in the fields. She worked in the morning and went to school in the afternoon.

At 14, through a government program, she became "an early childhood" teacher. But then, as Chapo's lawyer said, there was a "bump in the road."
She met a guy from a pot growing area outside Durango. They got married. She was 16.

When her husband became physically abusive, she left him.
It was only a few years later that she met Chapo. That didn't end well either.

After Chapo's arrest, he sent her a love letter with instructions on how to visit him in prison with a fake ID. He opened the letter, "My Queen, Who is Loved."
By that point, Lucero was already a state legislator from her home area in Sinaloa.

After she saw Chapo in prison, the photos of her visit leaked to the media. A year or so later, she was impeached from office.
Even worse, she started getting death threats from Chapo's enemies.
Even worse, in 6/2017, when trying to enter San Diego, she was arrested.

Small correction:
I have been told by a good source that the matching smoking jackets are either burgundy or claret, not mere red.
I apologize for the error.

As absurd as all this is, I don't mean to make light of it. Lucero's story is a kind of tragedy. Chapo met her at 21, groomed her to work him, didn't pay her and, at times, terrified her. She said he once told her that everyone who betrays him dies. The message was pretty clear.

She lost her job as a politician, was arrested and prosecuted in the US. And now, after she appears as a witness, weeping on the stand that she's still--still!--confused about their "relationship," he pulls this stunt with the smoking jackets.

The message there seemed pretty clear too.
He and Emma dressed in burgundy together like royalty.
Lucero alone in her blue prison smock.
Oof.

We've shifted gears. Damaso Lopez Nunez, one of Chapo's close top aides, in now on the stand. He's just getting started.
Damaso met Chapo in 1999 while he was acting as deputy director for security at the Puente Grande prison where Chapo was serving a term after his 1993 arrest.

Puente Grande is the prison from which Chapo escaped in 2001 in the bottom of a laundry cart. It's been rumored that Damaso helped Chapo escape, but he says he didn't He did however help Chapo get illegal phones and clothes, and helped get Chapo's wife, Griselda, in the prison.

After leaving the prison in 2000 after a corruption probe, Damaso went to work for Chapo first as a kind of real estate broker, procuring ranches and houses for the kingpin. Later as a govt relations guy.
That is:
"The govt would give us information when it came to operations."

We heard the familiar story of the 2001 escape. How a guard name Chito was the only one who helped Chapo. How Chapo had decided to escape almost spontaneously after he learned there was an extradition order out for him.

Damaso is essentially playing Chapo Trivial Pursuit w/the prosecutor. What's Chapo's brother's nickname? (El Pollo) How and when did Rodolfo Carrillo Fuentes die? (Shot w/his wife outside a movie theater in Culiacan in 2004.)
He's tying up all the loose ends of testimony so far.

One new thing:
In 9/13, Chapo got a request from his plaza boss in Baja Cali Sur to kill a cop who pestering the mayor of La Paz there. She was w/the PRI and looked like a possible future candidate for state governor. Chapo, in a BlackBerry text to Damaso, gave the kill order.

"Don't be seen," Chapo wrote. He also instructed the sicarios to use a pistol, not a rifle "so it doesn't look violent." He wanted it to seem as a vengeful "gangbanger" had murdered the cop.

It's a reminder of just how deeply US law enforcement penetrated the cartel's comms. A wiretap by Homeland Security Investigations run out of a regional office in Nogales, Ariz. captured over 1 million BlackBerry texts in 2013-14. They're just devastating evidence.

My favorite baller narco moment was Damaso saying how Chapo's pilot once tried to fly a helo out of a warehouse and crashed in a wind gust.
The warehouse was located on a former ostrich farm.
Chapo's pal Jorge Cifuentes later pushed the helo off a cliff for the insurance.

Damaso, who will appear again tomorrow, has the serious dope on Chapo. He knows where all the bodies are buried and talked about several today.

He laid out how Chapo's war w/the Beltran Leyva brothers started in 2008 after Alfredo Beltran Leyva was arrested and the family (Chapo's cousin) thought he ratted Alfredo out to the police. The opening shots were fired on 4/30/2008, leaving many dead.

Among the dead was a young gunman, Juacho, who worked for Chapo b4 changing sides. Juacho was snatched & interrogated by Chapo & his crew. The jury saw a sanitized video of the interrogation which was still chilling: Juacho, black-eyed and bound to a chair, answering questions.

Damaso also described how Chapo's pistoleros once went into battle w/the Beltran Leyvas in cars marked w/ X's so they wouldn't shoot their own crew. A gunfight erupted at a highway gas station. Again, many died.

Tomorrow, Damaso is likely to give new details on one of the big myths surrounding Chapo: his 2015 prison break thru a tunnel dug into the shower of his cell. At the bottom of the tunnel was a motorcycle, which, according to lore, he rode to safety. We'll find out if it's true...