Lawyer makes plea to save his own life
By Todd Bensman - Express-News
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"In his own words:
Three weeks of torture"
English (6:49)
Spanish (10:20)
- March 14, 2003: After a fierce gun battle, Mexican troops in Matamoros capture Gulf Cartel boss Osiel Cardenas Guillen.
- Jan. 29, 2004: Celia Cardenas, the wife of Osiel Cardenas, hires Gutierrez to reverse the government's seizure of the couple's home.
- Feb. 6, 2004: Cardenas asks Gutierrez to join a team of lawyers who will try to block the U.S. extradition attempt. He begins twice-monthly visits to visit the incarcerated Cardenas in Toluca, Mexico.
- October 2004: Cardenas' sister-in-law and father hire Gutierrez to thwart government asset forfeiture proceedings. Gutierrez wins all three cases.
- January 2007: Cardenas loses extradition battle, transferred to American custody in Houston.Cardenas summons Gutierrez for one last meeting and interrogates him about perceived legal mistakes.
- February 2007: Several Zetas visit Gutierrez in his Matamoros office. On a radio phone, acting Gulf Cartel chief Jorge Eduardo Costilla warns an investigation into legal mistakes was underway and Gutierrez will be killed if faulted.
- April 2007: Former legal team members ask Gutierrez to join the team for continuing legal work. He declines.
- Aug. 17, 2007: Zetas kidnap Gutierrez.
- Sept. 7, 2007: Gutierrez is released with a demand that he do legal work for the cartel or face death.
- Sept. 8, 2007:Gutierrez flees alone to a second home in Brownsville.
- Sept. 10, 2007: His wife, Josephina, and two children, fleeing only with some clothing, join him in Brownsville after Zetas show up at the Matamoros house and threaten her.
- November 2007: They flee the Brownsville house.
- May 2008: With visa and money running out, family returns to Brownsville to consider going back to Matamoros. Neighbors and friends report the Matamoros house under constant surveillance and that "jefe and his army" were actively hunting the family on both sides of the border. Storm shutters and a sophisticated security camera system are installed on the Brownsville house.
- Aug. 21, 2008: Gutierrez and his family file for political asylum.
- February 2009 — After reports from neighbors about strangers in vehicles watching the Brownsville house, Gutierrez's father is contacted by a cartel representative and told the lawyer must return to Matamoros. Family leaves for good and puts the house up for sale.
He caught a whiff of fuel and heard a man crying. The armed men at his sides, who so often had beaten him unconscious, were laughing with sadistic glee.
“This is how we prepare a soup,” one of them quipped.
His blindfold torn away, Gutierrez saw he was in a small courtyard. Another bound prisoner of the Gulf cartel stood in a metal barrel, blubbering prayers. Someone was spraying him with a flammable liquid. Someone else flicked a lighter.
Gutierrez's own scream of horror could not escape the rag stuffed in his mouth. He thrust his head to one side to avert the sight of the screaming mass of flesh and stench. The guard grabbed a fistful of Gutierrez's hair and yanked his head back up. He was next, they kept saying.
Later, back in his cell awaiting his fate, some of the same tormentors started up a friendly banter.
The killers wondered why Gutierrez — an urbane, well-to-do attorney — had come to be a prisoner in this house of torture and murder.
“They said I was not the type of person they normally have there,” he recalled. “They were asking me why I was there. That I must have done something very bad.”
Gutierrez said nothing but knew it had to do with his role as family lawyer for Osiel Cardenas-Guillen, boss of the Gulf cartel.
One day, as abruptly as they grabbed him from his law office, his tormentors let Gutierrez go with a demand that he do legal work for the cartel.
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