AP Gets Unprecedented Access to Man Who Kidnaps, Tortures and Kills for Drug Cartel

theblaze.com The killer says he “disappeared” a man for the first time at age 20. Nine years later, he says, he has eliminated 30 people – maybe three in error. He sometimes feels sorry about the work he does but has no regrets, he says, because he is providing a kind of public service, defending his community from outsiders. Things would be much worse if rivals took over.  “A lot of times your neighborhood, your town, your city is being invaded by people who you think are going to hurt your family, your society,” he says. “Well, then you have to act, because the government isn’t going to come help you.” He operates along the Costa Grande of Guerrero, the southwestern state that is home to glitzy Acapulco as well as to rich farmland used to cultivate heroin poppies and marijuana. Large swaths of the state are controlled or contested by violent drug cartels that traffic in opium paste for the U.S. market, and more than 1,000 people have been reported missing in Guerrero since 2007- far fewer than the actual number believed to have disappeared in the state. The plight of the missing and their families burst into public awareness last year when 43 rural college students were detained by police and disappeared from the Guerrero city of Iguala, setting off national protests. Then, suddenly, hundreds more families from the area came forward to report their kidnap victims, known now as “the other disappeared.” They told stories of children and spouses abducted from home at gunpoint, or who left the house one day and simply vanished. This is a story from the other side, the tale of a man who kidnaps, tortures and kills for a drug cartel. His story is the mirror image of those recounted by survivors and victims’ families, and seems to confirm their worst fears: Many, if not most, of the disappeared likely are never coming home. “Have you disappeared people?” he is asked. “Yes,” he replies. In Mexico and other places where kidnapping is common, the word “disappeared” is an active verb and also an adjective to describe the missing. Disappearing someone means kidnapping, torturing, killing and disposing of the body in a place where no one will ever find it. To date, none of the killer’s victims have been found, he says.