Why Did a Drug Gang Kill 43 Students? Text Messages Hold Clues.

It is probably Mexico’s most infamous chilly case — 43 faculty college students shot at by the police, compelled into patrol automobiles, handed over to a drug cartel and by no means seen once more.

The thriller has haunted the nation for almost a decade. How may a comparatively unknown gang pull off one of many worst atrocities in Mexico’s current historical past, with the assistance of the police and the army watching the mass abduction unfold in actual time?

An enormous trove of about 23,000 unpublished textual content messages, witness testimony and investigative information obtained by The New York Times level to a solution: Just about each arm of presidency in that a part of southern Mexico had been secretly working for the felony group for months, placing the equipment of the state within the cartel’s arms and flattening any impediment that received in its approach.

The police commanders whose officers snatched most of the college students that night time in 2014 had been taking direct orders from the drug traffickers, the textual content messages present. One of the commanders gave weapons to cartel members, whereas one other hunted down their rivals on command.

The army, which carefully monitored the kidnapping however by no means got here to the scholars’ assist, had been showered with cartel bribes, too. In the textual content messages, which had been caught on wiretaps, traffickers and their collaborators griped in regards to the troopers’ infinite greed, calling them “whores” who that they had “in the bag.”

One lieutenant even armed gunmen linked to the cartel and, a witness mentioned, helped the police attempt to cowl up their position within the crime after the scholars had been kidnapped and killed.

It has lengthy been identified that cops and an assortment of presidency officers both helped the cartel abduct the scholars, or watched the crime occur and did nothing to cease it.

But the textual content messages have been a breakthrough for investigators — providing the clearest image but of a potential motive for the collusion between the authorities and the killers.

Fewer than two dozen of the exchanges have ever been made public. What the hundreds of others reveal is staggering: Far past shopping for particular person favors, the cartel, generally known as Guerreros Unidos, had successfully turned public officers into full-blown workers.

The authorities’s subservience is what made the mass killing of 43 faculty college students potential, investigators say. And the loyalty ran deep.

One of the emergency responders who rushed to the scene of the mass abduction that night time had an unofficial second job — gathering intelligence for the cartel. For months, the wiretaps seize him sending minute-by-minute updates on regulation enforcement’s each transfer to a Guerreros Unidos chief he known as “boss.”

A coroner additionally did the cartel’s bidding, sending photographs of corpses and proof at crime scenes, the messages present.

After killing a number of the college students, the traffickers incinerated the our bodies in a crematory owned by the coroner’s household, investigators say. In unpublished testimony, one cartel member informed the authorities that the ovens had been routinely used “to make people disappear without a trace.”

The textual content messages may assist reply one other open query within the case: Why did Guerreros Unidos execute a gaggle of 43 college students who had been coaching to be academics and had nothing to do with organized crime?

In the months and weeks earlier than the kidnapping, the wiretaps present, the cartel had grown more and more paranoid, beset by lethal infighting and scrambling to defend its territory as rivals pushed in.

So, when dozens of younger males swept into the town of Iguala on passenger buses — not in contrast to those the cartel used to smuggle medication into the United States — the traffickers mistook their convoy for an intrusion by enemies and gave the order to assault, prosecutors now say.

Nine years after the scholars vanished, nobody has been convicted of the crime, turning the case into an emblem of a damaged system that can’t clear up even probably the most brazen acts of brutality. The earlier authorities was accused of orchestrating a sweeping cover-up to cover the involvement of federal forces within the abduction, particularly the omnipotent army.

Now the investigation is at a vital juncture. Under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the authorities have ordered the arrest of 20 Mexican troopers in reference to the kidnappings, together with greater than a dozen in June. The unpublished wiretaps have been essential to constructing the case.

The cartel’s conversations had been intercepted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in 2014 whereas investigating the cartel for trafficking medication into suburban Chicago. Mexico sought the textual content messages for years, however American officers handed over the 23,000 solely final 12 months, partially due to a lingering mistrust of the Mexican authorities, an investigator mentioned. The D.E.A. declined to remark.

The messages obtained by The Times don’t cowl the night time of the disappearance, and key particulars of what occurred to the scholars are nonetheless unknown.

What’s clear is that the horror began on Sept. 26, 2014, when dozens of scholars from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College traveled to Iguala, within the state of Guerrero. They commandeered a number of buses to go to a march in Mexico City, a practice the authorities had tolerated up to now.

This time, they by no means made it previous the town limits.

Minutes after the scholars left the bus station, the police chased them down, opened hearth and hauled them away. Multiple cartel members have testified that the victims had been turned over to the felony group, which killed them and disposed of their our bodies.

The military obtained fixed updates in regards to the crime because it occurred. Soldiers had been on the streets and a neighborhood battalion even had an informant embedded with the scholars, investigations have proven.

Army intelligence officers had been additionally listening. They had been spying on a cartel boss and a police commander as they mentioned the place to take a number of the college students that night time, army paperwork present.

And days after the assault, the military knew the placement of two suspects speaking about releasing college students who, investigators say, might have nonetheless been alive.

How the army knew that is now clearer — it was utilizing a robust spy device manufactured in Israel, generally known as Pegasus, to surveil the gang’s members, an investigator informed The Times.

But the army didn’t share the intelligence with officers looking for the scholars, and there’s no proof that the armed forces tried to rescue them, based on investigators who’ve spent years trying into the case.

“They had all this information, but they hid it,” Cristina Bautista Salvador, the mom of one of many lacking college students, mentioned of the army. “Instead of looking for our children or telling us the truth, they protected themselves.”

Mexico’s secretary of protection didn’t reply to a request for remark. Mexico’s president has argued that the accusations towards a handful of troopers usually are not an indication of broader corruption throughout the ranks.

“You cannot stain an entire institution because of the actions of one official,” Mr. López Obrador mentioned in July.

Investigators attempting to uncover the complete extent of the army’s involvement have been stymied for years.

The authorities’s prime human rights official was spied on whereas investigating the armed forces’ position within the mass disappearance. A prosecutor who led the case towards the troopers fled the nation in concern late final 12 months.

Then in July, a separate group of worldwide investigators mentioned they had been giving up on their very own yearslong probe into the crime, citing “obstruction of justice” by Mexico’s army.

But investigators say that no quantity of obstruction can disguise the collusion laid naked within the wiretaps.

The proof “is very robust, strong, unquestionable,” mentioned Omar Gómez Trejo, the Mexican prosecutor who went up towards the army after which fled to the United States after the backlash made him concern for his security. “It corroborates how the cartel operates and the connections it had to the authorities, including the army.”

‘All they want to do is take and take’

Reading the cartel’s textual content messages for the primary time final 12 months, in a convention room within the Drug Enforcement Administration’s headquarters in Chicago, Mr. Gómez Trejo realized he had been handed a gold mine.

It had taken years for Mexican officers to get their arms on a number of the wiretaps, unleashing criticism in Mexico that American officers had withheld essential data. Now the D.E.A. had lastly given him and his workforce entry to a broad set of intercepts masking months of cartel communications.

“We kept looking at each other” in amazement, Mr. Gómez Trejo mentioned of the wiretaps. “You marvel at the fact that you’re seeing a revelation.”

By that point, the Biden administration had listed Guerreros Unidos among the many felony organizations “that pose the greatest drug threat to the United States,” and far had been written in regards to the cartel’s efforts to deprave elected officers.

But right here had been the traffickers and officers admitting to it themselves, in personal conversations once they thought nobody else was listening.

“Do you want me to get your whore of a city councilor in line,” one cartel member requested a neighborhood mayor on his payroll, “or should we put him down?”

The mayor responded one second later: “I’ll bring him to you. He’s a good worker.”

The state of Guerrero, the place the cartel operated, is likely one of the poorest states in Mexico, however its mountainous terrain is fertile floor for opium poppy crops full of the uncooked materials for heroin. So, whereas the gang unfold terror, it was additionally a uncommon supply of additional money.

The drug lords typically spoke of shopping for off officers in cryptic language, utilizing nicknames for collaborators and codes for every little thing from cocaine and kickbacks to massive caliber rifles.

So Mr. Gómez Trejo’s workforce pored over each phrase of every change, utilizing reams of investigative information to develop a kind of Rosetta stone to decipher the cartel’s penetration of the state.

The traffickers talked about bringing “crabs” or “crab soup” to the army — a reference to cash, a cartel member informed investigators, as a result of once you maintain up your arms like crab pincers, it appears to be like such as you’re clutching an imaginary stack of money.

At instances, the traffickers reveled of their affect over such a robust establishment.

“What, you don’t think blondie has the soldiers in the bag?” one cartel member wrote, referring to a fellow gang member, investigators say.

In different moments, they appeared resentful of the troopers’ calls for. “They asked my brother to do the lieutenant a favor,” griped a trafficker.

“All they want to do is take and take,” responded a police commander who helped handle the cartel’s relationship with troopers.

The problem appeared to repay. Cartel members talked about counting on the armed forces to assist maintain their rivals out of their territory, and utilizing their connections to the army to get out of hassle with uncooperative authorities.

In one message, the police commander says he went with a army officer and a cartel boss to arm gunmen in a close-by city.

When requested whether or not he knew in regards to the army officer getting a “little gift” from the cartel, the police commander replied: “He’s happy.”

‘We are 1,000 percent with you’

The college students had no approach of realizing simply how deeply the cartel had burrowed into each nook of life in its stronghold in Guerrero, investigators say.

“Entering Iguala was like going into the mouth of the wolf,” mentioned Carlos Beristain, one of many worldwide specialists who investigated the case.

One cartel member was a butcher. A neighborhood blacksmith constructed hidden compartments for stashing heroin and cocaine inside buses destined for the United States. A gaggle of significantly violent brothers within the gang manned a carwash.

The emergency responder mentioned he was launched to the group as a result of an acquaintance from highschool was courting a cartel member, based on his sworn assertion.

He mentioned that when he tried to cease working for the group, he was kidnapped on the orders of a cartel murderer, tied up and overwhelmed till he relented.

“From that day on, I acted as an involuntary informant,” he mentioned, serving as a degree particular person for the gang’s community of street-level lookouts.

The wiretaps present the extent of his obligations. He despatched cartel leaders barrages of messages monitoring regulation enforcement’s each transfer, together with once they merely stopped “to buy agua frescas.”

The wiretaps additionally reveal one other collaborator: a metropolis coroner. In the textual content messages, he says his colleague’s brother was successful man. The coroner used the connection to warn the cartel when assassins had been focusing on its members.

He mentioned receiving automobiles from the group and declared his loyalty to its Chicago chief — who has since pleaded responsible to drug prices within the United States — calling him “my boss.”

“I’ll never turn my back on you,” he informed the chief. “You guys are like my family.”

Less cooperative officers received dying threats.

“Can the mayor exchange dollars for us?” the Chicago boss requested a fellow cartel member in Guerrero.

“Yeah cousin, you know if he doesn’t want to I’ll threaten the asshole,” got here the response.

Guerreros Unidos paid some cops month-to-month, witnesses mentioned, a type of retainer that allowed the cartel to name on the authorities each time it wished.

“You tell yourself, ‘I know I’m committing a crime,’” a police officer mentioned, based on a beforehand unpublished transcript of his interrogation by regulation enforcement. But it was unimaginable to withstand common $50 funds, he mentioned.

“You say, ‘I’m not going to take it, so I don’t get myself into trouble,’ but then you say, ‘No, wait,’” he mentioned.

When cartel members wanted to cross by way of a checkpoint, transfer weapons or ambush their rivals, they turned to the police.

“Don’t worry, cousin,” a police commander informed a cartel member in a single message, “you know that we are 1,000 percent with you here.”

Just a few months earlier than the scholars’ abduction, the cartel despatched up a flare that confirmed simply how anxious it was about potential rivals setting foot on its territory.

On a Sunday afternoon, traffickers warned that members of an enemy group had stopped by the native marketplace for lunch. Within minutes, the cartel found out what automobile they had been driving, what they appeared like and which meals vendor they had been close to.

“Locate a red Nissan truck, double cab, there will be two men and a woman,” a trafficker texted a police commander in Iguala.

“The units have been alerted, and there’s one unit at the toll both,” the commander texted again.

“When the group decided that something needed to happen, it happened,” mentioned Mr. Beristain. “The group had control over the different authorities and could tell them what they had to do.”

‘He doesn’t need to be quantity 44’

On Friday night time, Sept. 26, the cartel noticed one thing out of the extraordinary and despatched out a warning, based on Mexican prosecutors.

Members of an enemy group had been barreling by way of Iguala, interspersed with college students on stolen buses, a cartel boss informed the group’s leaders.

Only it wasn’t true. There had been no rival traffickers aboard, investigators say, and apart from the sticks and rocks they carried to grab the buses, the scholars had been unarmed.

But the cartel had been on edge for months.

One of its prime bosses had just lately drowned, one other had been arrested and the brothers who had been left in cost had misplaced belief throughout the ranks, the wiretaps present. The traffickers fretted a few member who had defected to a rival cartel and a homicide that gave the impression to be an inside job.

“My cousin was killed and it was our own people,” the Chicago chief informed an affiliate.

“We cannot trust anyone, absolutely anyone,” the spouse of the drowned cartel chief mentioned in one other change.

The group’s enemies appeared to be aware of its vulnerability. In the weeks earlier than the scholars disappeared, native media reported that the cartel’s rivals had “regrouped” — and had been coming for Guerreros Unidos.

The wiretaps lit up with the traffickers fuming about gun battles round Iguala.

“This is going to get uglier,” the Chicago chief mentioned in late August.

A month later, when Guerreros Unidos received the message about its supposed rivals plowing by way of on buses, its community of collaborators flew into motion.

The two police commanders who had exchanged common textual content messages with the cartel led the primary assaults on the scholars that night time.

As the scholars tried to go away Iguala aboard a number of buses, cops underneath the commanders’ management blocked the streets and shot at them, placing some, together with one who stays in a coma. The college students had been then loaded into patrol automobiles, vanishing quickly after.

Several miles away, extra cops stopped one other bus of scholars, used tear gasoline to get them off, then snatched them away.

They, too, had been among the many 43 who disappeared.

The emergency responder on the cartel’s payroll mentioned he received two telephone calls that night time. One of the police commanders requested him “who he should hand over the ‘packages’” to, referring to the hostages. A cartel murderer additionally known as, asking who was bringing him “the packages,” based on his sworn assertion.

Exactly what occurred subsequent stays a thriller.

According to 1 cartel member whose testimony has change into key to the case, a number of the college students had been taken to a home, killed and dismembered. Machete hacks left gashes within the ground, the witness mentioned, and the scholars’ stays had been later burned within the crematory owned by the coroner’s household.

The army knew the place not less than a few of college students had been being taken, as a result of it was spying on a dialog between a police commander and a cartel boss as they talked about the place to deposit the hostages, based on paperwork made public by the Mexican authorities.

Other army intelligence paperwork, which haven’t been revealed, present that the army knew the placement of a cartel member concerned within the kidnapping days after the assault.

Many of Guerreros Unidos’s leaders in Iguala had been arrested after the assault. But nobody has been convicted within the disappearance. Charges towards dozens of suspects have been dismissed as a result of a choose decided that torture was used to acquire confessions.

The group managed to remain alive, thanks partially to a number of the drug lords’ wives and one in every of their moms, who took over a lot of the day-to-day enterprise, based on a separate set of tons of of unpublished exchanges caught on wiretaps.

Years after the mass disappearance, the Mexican authorities continued spying on a number of folks within the group, listening to their telephone conversations in 2017.

The ties between the cartel and the authorities had been nonetheless robust.

One of the traffickers concerned within the kidnapping talked about how he had simply “gotten drunk with the soldiers” at a neighborhood restaurant, the wiretaps present. A cash supervisor for the cartel mentioned he had made buddies with a federal police commander. A metropolis councilman talked about shifting medication to the United States.

One night time, the spouse of a jailed boss misplaced monitor of a cargo of medicine on its technique to the United States. Thinking the smuggler might need made off with the stash, she requested an affiliate to offer him a warning.

“Doesn’t the driver know what happened to the 43,” she mentioned, referring to the kidnapped college students. “I’m sure he doesn’t want to be number 44.”

Alan Feuer contributed reporting from New York, and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega from Mexico City.