Chilling details of Puerto Rican kingpin’s killing machine

SANTO DOMINGO.- In his more than three hours testimony as a prosecution witness and lead investigator in the case of Puerto Rican kingpin Jose Figueroa Agosto’s network of hired killers, Police chief Jose Polanco described chilling details of the criminal organization’s MO.

In the National District First Collegiate Court, Polanco revealed that one of the alleged killers was deported from the United States for drug trafficking and belonged to the Latin Kings, another was convicted to 12 years and should be serving time in prison for the deaths of four people, two police agents among them, and a third served as a lookout for the movement of the bodies of the contract murder victims.

He said once they executed a person, they headed towards the north region of Cibao, where they stayed in at least eight residences.

Polanco said Jose Miguel Rodriguez Almonte (Job) murdered a young woman in 1999 in a crime of passion and when he left prison killed a man who had a relationship with her and during a chase by police, killed two agents, after his being released on parole in 2009.

Polanco revealed that Victoria Gabriel Arias Castillo (Alex el Pelotero), stabbed 12 times and murdered in the jail at La in March 2010, by three inmates hired by two people who visited the penitentiary, including the murder-for-hire convict Jose Aníbal Hidalgo Garcia (Molmo).

He said the investigation’s first hired killings suspect was Gian Enrique Rojas Matos, who activated a cell phone to deliver to Omar Antigua Polanco, on Figueroa’s orders.

When he was going to receive delivery of the phone on January 31, 2009, was executed by being shot 13 times on the Duarte highway. He said Antigua was wanted for the death of "Alex el Pelotero," who had allegedly mentioned Antigua in a seized shipment of more than 200 kilos of cocaine.

The official said "Alex el Pelotero" was arrested in that seizure, with more than US$200,000, and an arsenal including a Glock pistol, whose bullets matched those found next to the body of the alleged pimp known and Vianca la Gorda (Vianca de Fat Woman.”

He said the deportee Winston Antonio Rodriguez Tavares (W) had been charged in the United States for drug trafficking and was a member of the Latin Kings. He said Rojas had the BackBerry which sent the photos he took of Figueroa’s targets, when the drug baron was on the loose in Puerto Rico.