AS THE TRIAL MOVED INTO ITS THIRD AND FINAL WEEK, LAWSON AND PENNINGTON still hadn’t been summoned to the witness stand. It had been a long two weeks of sitting in the courtroom, which could be tense and monotonous at the same time. The prosecution hoped that with the sheer amount of testimony and evidence they were presenting before the twelve jurors, they would be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that José, Colorado, and the others on trial were guilty. It would be up to Lawson and Pennington to recap all of the government’s evidence in the last days. But it was not their turn yet. Gardner and Fernald had two more crucial witnesses.
As family members and other spectators filed into the courthouse to go through the security screening early Monday morning, they couldn’t help but notice that security around the courthouse had been intensified. A line of Department of Homeland Security SUVs with flashing red lights blocked the road behind the courthouse while a special witness in an armored SUV was transported to the back of the building.
Guards with grim faces, holding assault rifles, paced around the perimeter of the courthouse. As Judge Sparks called the courtroom to order, reporters sitting in the gallery took turns trying to guess who the mystery witness might be. Whoever he was, he was considered extremely dangerous, judging by the demeanor of the guards.
Alma Perez, sitting next to the reporters, knew they would soon have their headline for the day. She had been tasked with interviewing and translating for the witness, who was being guarded under a layer of security that was usually reserved only for terrorists and other enemies of the state. What she remembered most about him were his eyes—black and lifeless like a shark’s. They were the eyes of a killer.
Gardner stood up from the table to call forth the witness. “Your Honor, the government calls Jesús Rejón Aguilar.”
A murmur of recognition rippled through the gallery. Rejón was better known as Mamito, or Z-7, and a member of the Zetas at his level—one of the founding military leaders—had never testified publicly in a U.S. courtroom. Kingpins of his stature almost always pleaded guilty rather than testify, or testified under seal in a closed courtroom. Transporting Mamito to Texas from a jail cell in Washington, D.C., had not been easy. Nor had it been easy for Gardner to convince the DEA to loan their key witness to him for their trial.
But Mamito had been as close to Miguel and Omar as anyone within the cartel. Securing his testimony as a witness had been a coup for Gardner and Fernald. It would be the first time a founding member of the Zetas spoke publicly about how the secretive and brutal organization was run. It was almost as good as having Miguel Treviño himself on the stand.
An armed bailiff escorted Mamito, in a loose white T-shirt and gray prison sweats, to the witness stand, where he sat down with an air of resignation. His hair had been shaved in prison. His dull and lifeless eyes scanned the courtroom as if he expected his enemies to be waiting for him there in ambush. He had been arrested two years earlier in Mexico City and then extradited to the United States, where he faced ten-to-life for drug trafficking. He’d also been implicated in the death of HSI federal agent Jaime Zapata, since he’d been comandante of the region where Zapata had been murdered. After his capture, Mamito had made it no secret that he blamed Miguel Treviño for his predicament.
Now he was going to testify against Miguel’s brother. Mamito explained that he had been a corporal in Mexico’s Special Forces working in counternarcotics when he joined the Zetas in 1999 to serve as a bodyguard and executioner for El Mata Amigos, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, leader of the Gulf Cartel.
“Did you also provide bribes to the Mexican military?” asked Gardner.
Mamito nodded. “I did.”
“And what would the Mexican military do in exchange for those bribes?”
“Helped us fight the opposing group to our cartel.”
Gardner played some of the phone calls the DEA had recorded in 2009 from the wiretap on Ramiro Villarreal’s cell phone. Lawson wished he had known about these wiretaps at the beginning of their investigation. Luckily, his friend Bill Johnston had been able to get the recordings from his fellow DEA agents in Houston. When Gardner, Lawson, and Perez had flown to D.C. to meet with Mamito he had identified the voices in the wiretaps and given them the context of each phone call. In many of the calls he had been sitting right next to Omar and Miguel as they chatted with Ramiro about the horses, fixing races, and doping. So there were additional details he could add. Lawson noticed that the jurors appeared fascinated as they listened to the recorded conversations with the knowledge that one of the men was already dead and the other, Omar Treviño, was in Mexico helping his brother run the brutal cartel.
“Why did Forty want to kill Ramiro Villarreal?”
“Because he knew a lot about the horse business and Forty had a lot invested . . . and Ramiro knew it all . . . If he was arrested he could testify. He knew all the names of the horses . . . He could bring down his whole business.”
“What did Forty tell you about why he wanted to put Tempting Dash into his clean brother’s name?”
“He wanted to put it in his brother’s name because the horse was going to run in Dash for Cash, and if he won . . . his value would increase and they would be able to get the money, and the money would stay within the family.”
At the prosecution table, Lawson was seated almost directly in front of the witness, but he tried to avoid looking at him. He remembered when he and Perez had debriefed the drug lord and Lawson had met his cold stare. He had wanted to show Mamito that he wasn’t intimidated as Perez translated for them. Mamito had told them he was a devoted practitioner of Santería, which called forth spirits who demanded a blood sacrifice. “I can hurt you without even touching you,” he’d said, a slight smile on his face, and Lawson had looked away. He’d glimpsed real evil in those eyes, and Mamito was considered a gentleman compared to Miguel. Both he and Perez had found their meeting with the drug lord deeply disturbing.
After Gardner was finished, it was the defense’s turn to cross-examine the former cartel leader. Christie Williams would be the first at trying to portray Mamito as an unreliable witness to the jury. Mamito, only in his mid-thirties, was contemplating a lifetime in prison, and he hoped like the other former cartel members to have his long prison sentence reduced in exchange for his testimony. When he was done serving time in the States, he faced additional jail time in Mexico on organized crime charges.
Williams started by attacking his military service and defection. “So you’re sixteen years old and you join the military and you’re trained as a sniper, and you’re supposed to be protecting the citizens of your country, right?”
Gardner stood up quickly from his seat at the prosecution table. “Your Honor, I’m going to object to this as argumentative.”
“Well, let’s just proceed,” said Judge Sparks, nodding at Williams to go ahead.
“Were you trained to protect the citizens of Mexico as a member of the Mexican military?”
“That’s right.” Mamito nodded.
“And after that, you became corrupt . . . You turned your back on the citizens of Mexico and you became a hit man, right?”
“That’s right,” he said, showing no emotion.
“So now you get arrested in Mexico after you’ve killed people, correct?”
“I am arrested for organized crime.”
“But you’ve also killed people?”
“Correct.”
“And kidnapped people . . . and tortured people.”
“Correct,” Mamito said again, his eyes flat and dull. Any spark of humanity within him had been buried a long time ago like the bodies he’d left in his wake.
Next, it was DeGeurin’s turn to cross-examine the witness on behalf of his client, Francisco Colorado. DeGeurin stepped to the center of the courtroom to address the former sicario from the lectern. “. . . Is it true that you, yourself . . . made about $50 million in your Zeta business?”
Mamito nodded. “That’s correct.”
“And of that $50 million that you made, where is it today?”
“It’s part of the war . . . Some of it was taken from the businesses I had. Some of it from the cocaine . . . and some of it I kept.”
“. . . After all is said and done, how much did you keep?”
“. . . Maybe two million, three million.”
“And where is that two or three million now?”
“Put away in a safe.”
“And did you tell the government about where you put that money away?”
“Yes.” He nodded.
“Do you mind telling me where it is?”
“I don’t have a reason to tell you where that money is,” Mamito said matter-of-factly.
“Let’s stay with the questions,” Sparks said dryly.
After several more minutes of verbal sparring, DeGeurin passed the witness to Chevo Huitron’s lawyer, Richard Esper, who wanted to make it clear that Mamito had never met Chevo or seen him in the company of Miguel or Omar Treviño as the prosecution had alleged. Mamito testified that he had only heard from the Treviños that Chevo was a good horse trainer but had never seen him in their company.
“They never told you that they suspected him of being involved in illegal activity, did they?”
“That’s right.” Mamito nodded.
It was a nice stroke for Esper, and he couldn’t suppress a hint of a smile as he went back to the defense table to take his seat next to his client. After the entire morning and much of the afternoon, the former Zetas leader was excused and led back to the holding cell for detainees within the depths of the courthouse.
AS DOUG GARDNER PREPARED to call their next witness, Lawson shifted in his seat and could feel himself growing nervous. He had rehearsed Tyler Graham for hours, so he would be prepared for anything the defense lobbed his way. By now they knew that Graham had been key in the FBI’s investigation and that much of their case was riding on him. Lawson knew they would throw every trick they had at him and try to get him riled so he’d say something that made him look less credible in the eyes of the jurors. Lawson told himself there was no point in being nervous. They’d never get a rise out of the unflappable Tyler Graham.
Lawson hadn’t seen Doc Graham since they’d shaken hands in the hallway the first day of trial. Finn had wisely decided not to bring the elder Graham back to the courthouse to testify. The jurors and the rest of the courtroom were now going to find out why. They were going to learn that his twenty-eight-year-old grandson had been cooperating with the FBI for more than two years, and had been crucial in taking down José Treviño and Tremor Enterprises. Graham, wearing a tan suit and freshly shaven, sat down at the witness stand and raised his right hand to be sworn in by the clerk. Lawson could see that he didn’t look nervous at all.
“. . . Where’s Tempting Dash today?” Gardner asked.
“He’s in Elgin right now at the Southwest Stallion Station.”
“And is there any particular reason he’s still at Southwest Stallion Station?”
“Yes, sir. We’re still currently breeding him—it’s breeding season right now. This is our third year of standing for a full breeding season.”
“. . . And are you operating that horse on a contract with the United States government?”
“Yes, sir.” Graham nodded. He was answering the questions in a calm and measured way, as Lawson had advised.
“. . . And how did you come to be aware of Tempting Dash as a horse for the purpose of your breeding operation?” Gardner asked.
“. . . He came across to run up here in the fall futurities at Lone Star Park. And I knew Eusevio Huitron, who trained him, and he had told me, you know, about him coming across and that, you know, it looked like a prospect. I mean, we talked about the horses that came across the border often.”
Graham explained to Gardner how he’d met José Treviño at the racetrack outside of Dallas, then eventually persuaded him to send the champion Tempting Dash to be bred at his farm in Elgin. After that, José had asked him to bid on some horses at Heritage Place and his $875,000 bid for Dashin Follies had drawn more than just the attention of the auctiongoers and the media.
“At some point were you contacted by Special Agent Scott Lawson over here?” Gardner pointed toward Lawson, sitting at the prosecution table next to Pennington.
Lawson shifted in his chair and tried not to acknowledge that the whole courtroom was now staring at him.
“Yes, sir,” said Graham, nodding.
“And what was your understanding of your agreement with Special Agent Lawson and the government?”
“My agreement was that we just—they were informed on the, you know, operations of the horse business that we had to do with Mr. Treviño and Carlos and the group.” Eventually, Graham said, he’d also agreed to allow the FBI to listen in and record all of his phone calls too.
After Gardner led Graham through the long story of his involvement with José, Nayen, and the others, he felt content that he’d laid out the full extent of Graham’s involvement in the case to the jury. He handed Graham over to the defense for cross-examination. They were going to do their best to make the government’s key informant look as guilty as the defendants. Christie Williams was first up to the lectern.
“Now, when a mare would come to be bred to Tempting Dash, that caused you to make a lot of money, correct? . . . You got to charge for the horse care, for boarding, for breeding. For all the veterinary services that you already had someone on salary to do that, right?”
“Yes,” Graham said.
Williams made several more jabs at how much Graham gained profit-wise from working with José and his associates. But now the defense was starting to run out of time with Graham. Questioning the former Zetas leader, Mamito, had taken most of the morning and afternoon. It was 6 p.m. and they were just getting started. Judge Sparks adjourned the courtroom for the day and asked that Graham be ready first thing in the morning.
WHEN GRAHAM SAT DOWN at the witness stand the next morning, the gallery was filled to its maximum capacity. Perez noticed that one of the Treviño sisters had her notebook and pen out again and was watching Graham intently. This time, another attorney from the crowded defense table, Guy Womack, who was representing Fernando Garcia, would subject Graham to a battery of questions about his role in the FBI’s investigation.
“. . . Okay. So you try to recruit the very best stallions because it will bring the most money and prestige to your stud farm?”
“It’s more about business than prestige with us, but yes.” Graham nodded.
“All right. Okay. You said the FBI registered you as a form of informant; is that right?”
“They never used the word ‘informant.’”
“What did they call it?”
“Cooperating citizen. I don’t know that they ever really gave me a title.”
“Okay. But you fill out forms for them every ninety days or less?”
“Yes, sir.” Graham nodded.
“And basically the form you’re signing says that you promised to work for the FBI at their direction and not to do anything that would be illegal unless they tell you to do it?”
“I don’t believe I was working for the FBI. They weren’t paying me,” Graham said evenly. Womack was trying to unnerve him, but Graham wasn’t going to let the attorney throw him off his carefully marked course.
“Okay. Well, how did you become one of their sources? Did you go to them and apply for a job as a source?”
“No, sir. I did not.”
“. . . They came to you, they said they thought you might have done something illegal?”
“I don’t remember them indicating that. No, sir.”
“You were afraid that you might be in trouble, correct?”
“I don’t see any reason I would have been in trouble,” Graham said calmly.
“. . . How did it become that you were a registered informant?”
“Once again, I don’t ever remember them saying registered informant.”
“Okay. Whatever you call yourself, do you have like a junior G-man badge or something you can wear that says FBI?” Womack was getting flustered now, because he wasn’t getting anywhere with Graham.
Gardner stood up to protest. “Your Honor. Relevance,” he said, with a note of exasperation in his voice. Womack was just badgering Graham now out of frustration.
“I’ll sustain the objection,” Judge Sparks said.
Womack hammered away at Graham for several more minutes before passing him to another defense attorney. They went at him like prizefighters in the ring, jabbing and weaving and trying to throw him off his feet for more than an hour. But throughout it all, Graham remained calm. His composure under stress never failed to impress Lawson. Mercifully, Graham was finally released before the lunchtime break and escorted out by the security detail the FBI had assigned to keep watch over him. Like del Rayo, Graham was quickly whisked out of the courthouse before the reporters or anyone else could intercept him.