One mistake trapped a desperate dad in CJNG's web....Then he vanished

Chivis Martinez Borderland Beat TYGus  Source

L

OS ANGELES — Oscar Macias gripped his cellphone and quickly hammered out a text message to his childhood friend Tommy Cantu.

Hey I think something s going down with me im on valley in el Serrano in two if I dont text u back something happend

It was 7:38 p.m. on July 20, 2014. A Sunday.

Twenty miles away in Whittier, California, Tommy’s phone buzzed as he sat down to dinner with his wife and two children. He glanced at the message on his screen, then scanned it again to make sure he read it right. 

He called Oscar. No one answered.

At 7:40 p.m., another message came from Oscar:

Text u every 2 hours

Tommy replied, asking if Oscar was "with the cops or on the news or street?"

Dont text me they keep taking my phone

Im at a shop

Tommy tried to keep his growing fear hidden from his family. Should I call Oscar again? Who’s he with? Should I drive out to east LA? Maybe I can find him? He kept his phone close, waiting for the next message.

Shortly after 10 p.m., it arrived.

It’s still cool text u in 2:hours dont text back

Another came at 12:34 a.m. 

If u cant find me or dont here from me with in 24 hours ……. dont text back I will contact u

That morning at work, one thought gnawed at Tommy.

He and Oscar had been nearly inseparable for almost 30 years. The last message didn’t sound like Oscar. He didn’t write like that, and he wouldn’t use an ellipsis.

Nearly 18 hours passed. Finally, at 6:05 p.m., Tommy’s phone buzzed.

Hey i had my friend pick me up already im going to chill with her … everything is cool thanks

Tommy was convinced. It wasn’t Oscar texting him. He messaged Oscar's phone and asked him to call from another number.

 Let me finish eating then I will call

The call never came. 

There were no more messages.

Tommy knew Oscar had been desperate in recent weeks, cut off from his youngest daughter by a ballooning child support debt and vulnerable to the kind of risky proposition that promised a big payday and a quick end to his troubles.

All Oscar had to do was something he’d never done before: Deliver 4 pounds of meth 1,100 miles up Interstate 5 to Tacoma, Washington.

But there was so much Tommy didn’t know. 

He didn’t know the man who supplied the meth had ties to one of the world’s most powerful drug cartels: Mexico’s Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación, better known as CJNG.

CJNG cartel: Family searches for son who vanished after losing drugs

One father became involved with a Mexican cartel to reunite with his daughter. His family is still searching for answers years after he vanished.

Through brutality and terror, CJNG built a billion-dollar empire with drug routes through every continent except Antarctica.

A nine-month Courier Journal investigation into CJNG’s U.S. operation has found its operatives have quietly set up shop in large cities and small towns in at least 35 states and one U.S. territory.

Tommy didn’t know the danger Oscar was in when, a month earlier, he lost the meth shipment. He didn’t know the cartel’s violence, having already claimed countless victims in Mexico, could unexpectedly spill over the border to the United States.

But one question dominated all the others.

Where was Oscar?

Family photographs covered the dining room table on a September day at Carmen and Roque Macias’ four-bedroom home, nestled against the dry, rolling Whittier Hills in eastern Los Angeles County.

The photos spilled out of overstuffed albums, telling the story of a childhood that was anything but troubled.

There was one of Oscar in blue onesie pajamas, with his younger sisters, Sonia and Sandra. Oscar in a black tuxedo with red bow tie and matching red cummerbund, at a cousin’s quinceañera, and riding a dirt bike on one of the many Macias’ extended-family vacations.

Oscar’s smile is wide, revealing the prominent gap between his two front teeth that couldn’t be closed despite years of braces.

“He’d say that the girls loved it,” remembered Sonia, 40. “He thought he was the cutest thing. And he had these big ears and he’d say, ‘All the girls like my ears.’”

 Carmen and Roque Macias met when they were 11 at the church halfway between their homes in east Los Angeles. By 18, they married, and one year later had Oscar, their first of five children.

The family settled first in Rosemead, then Pico Rivera and, eventually, Whittier. 

Oscar was a tall and goofy kid, his family said, animated and protective of his siblings. 

He could be extremely gullible, though, and often needed his father to warn him when he seemed too trusting of strangers.

“Oscar, you have to be very careful,” Roque would tell him. “People will come and tell you things, and you’re going to believe them, and you end up getting in trouble.”

As early as age 5, Oscar went with his father to work on Saturdays. Roque was in eighth grade when he started sweeping floors at the garment-cutting business where Oscar's grandfather worked.

By his teens, Roque worked his way up to manager before leaving to start his own business: Beto’s Cutting. From its big factory in the tiny industrial city of Vernon, just south of downtown LA, the company cut fabric patterns for customers such as Sears, White House Black Market and Lucky Brand jeans.

It made the Macias children among the best dressed in the neighborhood.

Like his father, Oscar started working in the business at 16, gradually taking on more responsibility. 

By his late 20s, Oscar’s future looked bright. He was the father of two young girls and now in charge of the family business.

The business, however, was in trouble. Overseas competition and cheaper labor forced Beto’s Cutting to downsize to a tiny rented space in a friend’s building.

A few years later, Beto’s Cutting closed. 

Oscar needed a job.

Oscar was at his lowest when he met Lucas Manglona.

Laid off from the warehouse job his friend Tommy got him, Oscar sold tacos from a stand outside parties and worked the graveyard shift at a convenience store.

But he never earned enough to keep up with child support payments for his two daughters. And though his paychecks were garnished, that debt only grew.

More devastating, he was cut off from all contact with his youngest daughter — no more weekend visits, no more coaching her traveling softball team.

When they met in late May 2014 at a park near Oscar’s grandparents’ house in Rosemead, Lucas told Oscar he and several friends had been in trouble at a bar in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, while they all were on vacation.

They got tossed in jail, lost all their money and could only get as far as Rosemead before being stranded.

Oscar offered to help. He took them to his grandfather’s house and let them sleep in a car his uncle kept there. 

Two days later, only Lucas remained. And the story he told Oscar when they met was a lie.

Lucas Manglona was really a U.S. Army veteran whose wife left him right as he returned home from combat.

He was a meth addict, authorities said, a small-time drug dealer and a courier for a man with ties to CJNG.

When he met Oscar that day in May 2014, Lucas was in a tight spot. His crew missed their scheduled pickup — 5 pounds of meth from a Los Angeles stash house.

Lucas knew the consequences of returning to Tacoma empty-handed.

In Oscar, he saw a possible solution to his problems.

Federal authorities say Lucas was dating a sex worker. The couple convinced her “john” to drive them to LA to make the delivery, stopping first to pick up Lucas’ cousin in Oregon.

But as they tried to salvage the deal, the “john” grew impatient and demanded to return home.

Instead, they duct-taped him to the passenger seat and left him there.

That next afternoon, as guilt started to creep in, Lucas’ girlfriend cut him loose. The "john" bolted from the car, screaming for help as he sprinted past swerving traffic.

Aware of the public scene they just caused, his captors ran in the opposite direction. They eventually stopped right in the path of an unsuspecting mark — Oscar. 

Oscar’s past kindness to strangers meant his family was not entirely surprised when he invited Lucas to crash with him in the converted garage behind his parents’ house. They tolerated Lucas’ presence at Sunday dinners and birthday parties at relatives’ homes.

But something about Lucas made them uncomfortable.

“Supposedly he was broke, but he used to carry two phones on him,” Oscar’s father said. “He used to go to the corner to talk on the phone.”

About two weeks into his stay, Lucas offered Oscar a job. He claimed it was at his brother’s roofing company in Tacoma. 

Oscar stopped by Tommy’s house to borrow a pair of work boots.

The offer was contingent on one other task, which Oscar kept from friends and family. 

He and Lucas would first have to transport 4 pounds of meth to Tacoma. 

Until then, Oscar, 37, had kept himself largely out of trouble with police. He smoked pot but steered clear of the harder stuff.

And he certainly wasn’t a drug dealer, his family said.

But Oscar was desperate to be reunited with his younger daughter, now 18. And to do that, he’d have to quickly erase his child support debt.

It’s unclear if Oscar knew the man orchestrating the drug deal: Jesus Enrique Palomera.

Described in federal court documents as a CJNG "plaza boss," Palomera once bragged to an undercover agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives about how he exacted revenge on a man who robbed him of drugs.

Palomera told the agent he needed only two hours to have that man executed, his corpse wrapped in plastic and dumped in a Tacoma-area river.

In 2012, Palomera had escaped an ATF raid. Safe in the cartel-controlled Mexican state of Jalisco, he rebuilt his network, moving untold kilos of meth up the West Coast to Tacoma and as far as Alaska.

He used threats to control a crew of street-level gang members and strung-out couriers, like Lucas, federal authorities said.

And now, he controlled Oscar, too.

Oscar raised his shaking hands above his head and slowly stepped from behind the driver’s seat to face the California Highway Patrol officers who surrounded the car on Interstate 5.

It was just after 11 a.m. on June 7, 2014. Oscar, his girlfriend and Lucas were about 10 minutes from the Oregon border when the officers pulled them over.

In the back seat, hidden under a child-safety seat and wrapped in plastic, were 4 pounds of meth, worth at least $7,000.

Their 2003 Honda Pilot was reported stolen to Whittier police three days earlier by Oscar’s mother.

She had been cooking for her grandkids when Oscar and Lucas came to ask for her car to go to

Walmart. She said she’d take them in a bit.

Instead, Oscar grabbed the keys off the counter and left. He didn’t come back that night or the next day, didn’t answer any phone calls or messages saying she’d report the car stolen if he didn’t return it.

So, on June 4, she walked into the Whittier police station and did just that.

Oscar was held in a Northern California jail for three days before he was released. Authorities chose not to charge him.

His family was stunned when Oscar called for bus money home.

Back at his parents’ house in Whittier, Oscar tried to explain what he had done, that he knew there were drugs in the car, but he needed the money to get his life together.

He looked older than his 37 years, family remembered. His face was thin and pale, his eyes tired. That big smile he once flashed with regularity, the one that earned him the nickname “Joker,” was gone.

“I know he was in a bad position,” his friend Tommy said. “He kept drowning. I’m not saying he did the right thing. But what else is a man to do when you’re trying to provide for your kids?” 

Oscar was only at his parents' house for a week before he told them he was leaving. He found a job as a live-in caretaker for a man named Daniel Vasquez, who used a wheelchair. Neither his family nor his friends knew who Danny was or how Oscar met him.

Roque helped Oscar pack his things — a bed, some clothes and a bicycle — into his truck. They stopped to pick up a washing machine for the house.

On the car ride there, Roque glanced over at his son. As a child, Oscar used to bite his lower lip when he was nervous or scared.

He was doing it then.

“I knew there was something wrong,” Roque said. 

At Danny’s house in east LA, Roque helped unpack the truck and set up the washing machine. 

“I wish I would have stayed there and talked more,” Roque said. 

He returned a few days later to take his son to lunch. 

Oscar was gone.

click on images to enlarge

Roque tried to visit Oscar twice more in the weeks that followed.

Both times, Oscar wasn’t home.

Two separate relatives told Roque and Carmen they saw Oscar. He was desperate to sell some drugs he had with him and to leave town.

“He never came to me,” Roque said of his son. “I could have just given him the money and got him out of the problem.”

When Oscar didn’t show up for his grandmother’s funeral in early August, Roque sent a nephew to Danny’s house. There, the nephew was told Oscar had been staying with two women in a nearby apartment.

At the apartment, the nephew met two women covered in what looked to be fresh bruises. They said they didn’t know anything about anyone named Oscar.

Days passed. The search intensified.

Family members tore apart their houses looking for clues. At Roque and Carmen’s home, Sandra found an unopened letter from Lucas’ girlfriend, addressed to Lucas.

People with guns came to their house demanding money, she wrote. Her life was at risk, and he left her hanging. What was she supposed to say if they came back?

“Don’t do this to me or my family,” she warned. “The longer this is going, people will start disappearing!”

The letter was dated three days after Oscar and Lucas were pulled over in California.

No one, it seemed, had seen or spoken to Oscar after his July 20 text exchange with Tommy. 

Finally, on Aug. 16, 2014, with the family’s worry veering toward panic, Oscar's sister Sandra went to police to report him missing. A Los Angeles Police Department homicide detective was assigned to the case.

Oscar's parents had priests come to the house to pray for his safe return. The family shared a missing person’s flyer and set up a GoFundMe page to aid in the search. They drove down to their vacation home in Baja, hoping he’d be there.

Sandra scoured Facebook for photos of her brother or any new friend requests he might have added. 

They answered every phone call from every unknown number and chased down every possible sighting.

“There were things that would bring us a little bit of hope,” his sister Sonia said. “Then you’re right back at the beginning. You have to start all over again.”

Right before Christmas 2014 came a new and promising lead.

The mother of Oscar’s youngest daughter started getting child support payments from garnished paychecks coming from some factory in Sioux City, Iowa.

If Oscar had been in trouble and needed to disappear, the family thought, surely there was no better place than a small town nearly 1,600 miles away. 

Roque and Carmen quickly wrote down the factory’s address and set out for Iowa. 

They drove day and night, never stopping, certain at the end they’d find Oscar. 

They finally arrived around 3 a.m., outside of what looked to be a poultry factory. A security guard stationed near a massive parking lot didn’t want to let them in. Eventually, he called a manager to speak with Roque and Carmen.

The manager listened politely but said he couldn’t tell them anything about an employee without a police or court order. 

Having little luck at the police station, they returned to the factory. This time, they found someone more sympathetic to their story. 

There was someone named Oscar Macias employed at the factory, they were told. 

Roque and Carmen were shown a picture of this Oscar, only it wasn’t their son.

They called LAPD. Identity theft happens all the time, Roque remembered the detective telling him.

Oscar’s parents said very little to each other during the 23-hour drive back to Whittier, too exhausted and defeated for conversation. 

Two weeks later, the LAPD detective called them. Investigators never found the person using Oscar’s name and Social Security number.

The search for Oscar continued.

To Oscar’s family, his disappearance had been a matter for local law enforcement. That changed in early 2015, when federal authorities in Tacoma called to schedule a meeting at Carmen and Roque’s house.

About a dozen relatives packed into the living room for the meeting. No one recognized the men in the photographs they were asked to examine.

However, one face stood out among the others. He looked young and handsome, clean-shaven, jacket collar popped, staring expressionless at the camera.

His name was Jesus Enrique Palomera, authorities told them, and he was the man whose drugs Oscar had been caught with.

Palomera belonged to the powerful drug cartel CJNG. Oscar’s roommate, Danny; Lucas; others unknown to the family — they all worked for Palomera.

Oscar most likely had been murdered, an agent told them, and it was Palomera who ordered it.

The family sat in quiet disbelief. Maybe Oscar wasn’t dead, they thought. Maybe he was alive and in protective custody; him being dead must be the cover story authorities tell families in these situations.

In that moment, the family was confronted with a frightening reality. Palomera was walking the streets of Mexico. If Lucas really had worked for him, as the agent said, then Palomera could easily know the names of Oscar’s relatives and where they live.

Would Palomera and the cartel come after them next?

"Because, the cartel," Roque said, "they get even with kids, families."

Overnight, Roque installed security cameras around the house. He bought a gun, stored it in a box with a quick-release button, and kept the box next to his bed. 

Months passed while Oscar’s family lived in fear

Those worries were eased, slightly, in June 2015, when the family got word from federal authorities: Palomera had been captured outside his tiny hometown of Tomatlán, Mexico, near the Pacific Ocean.

Members of the policia federal leaped from a moving pickup truck and grabbed Palomera with such forceful efficiency that his family thought he was being kidnapped by a rival cartel.

U.S. authorities began to close in on Palomera days before Oscar’s disappearance. Undercover agents contacted him through Facebook about buying a few ounces of meth.

In response, Palomera sent a picture of a 50-gallon drum full of crystal meth, “very good, no cut no s---.”

After receiving an $800 wire transfer, Palomera told Lucas to meet agents in south Tacoma. Once authorities arrested Lucas, they got a warrant to look through his phone, connecting him to others in Palomera’s crew, to Palomera, to the threats Palomera made against Oscar. 

“That’s how we found out about Oscar, LAPD investigating it as a homicide,” veteran ATF agent Ben Hunt said. “And we realized we have more than a dope conspiracy. We have a potential murder victim.”

Both Lucas and Danny pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine. In February 2016, Lucas was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. Three months later, a federal judge gave Danny a 70-month federal sentence.

At least six other people connected to Palomera would all receive federal prison sentences.

Palomera was extradited to the U.S. in July 2016 to face a 17-count indictment. In November 2017, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute methamphetamines and being an alien in possession of a firearm, the latter from the 2011 investigation of Palomera’s alleged gun trafficking in Tacoma. 

"This is the rare drug cartel case where a cartel supervisor has been extradited from Mexico and will answer for his crimes in a United States court," prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo. "Jesus Enrique Palomera was a cartel manager straight out of central casting: Resourceful, persistent and ruthless.”

Oscar’s family drove to Tacoma for the April 2019 sentencing hearing, half-expecting to see Oscar on the witness stand. Instead, they heard Palomera apologize for their loss and deny any involvement in Oscar’s death.

Palomera claimed the cartel forced him to sell drugs. But, as prosecutors and federal agents noted in court filings, “in the cartel world, managerial responsibility is a choice, not something that is forced upon people.”

In a letter to Judge Robert Bryan, Palomera said he wanted to “put behind” him the “bad choices” he made and start an exotic fruit export business once he was released from prison. 

Palomera was sentenced to 20 years and is serving his time in federal lockup in Anthony, Texas, 20 miles north of El Paso. 

He’s scheduled to be released in November 2032.

In an August phone interview from prison, Palomera objected to being named in this story and disputed the way prosecutors portrayed him in federal court filings.

"The thing is, I know I'm not that person," he said. "My family knows I'm not that person. … I don't really care what the prosecutor says."

After the sentencing hearing, prosecutors escorted Oscar’s family to a private room in the U.S. District Courthouse. Hunt and Ryan Kowalchuk, the federal agents who pursued Palomera for the last eight years, were there.

“We told them we did everything we could,” Hunt said, “and hoped they got some closure.”

In the living room at Roque and Carmen’s house, next to the fireplace and opposite the piano, is the altar she set up the day Oscar was reported missing.

Carmen decorated it with pictures of her first-born child, a figurine of Michelangelo’s famed Pietà sculpture — Mary holding Jesus’ body across her lap after his crucifixion — a Coke bottle with Oscar’s name printed on the label, a little statue of Disney’s dwarf Dopey with big ears like Oscar’s.

There’s a fake candle at the center that she keeps lit, even when they’re not home. It was a real one, but she worried an earthquake would knock it over and set the house on fire. 

This one serves its purpose just as well: To light Oscar’s way home.

It’s been more than 1,900 days and counting since Oscar’s family and friends last heard from him, each day not knowing exactly what happened when he disappeared, of trying to carry on without someone whose presence outsized his 6-foot, 3-inch frame. 

“We’re all dealing with it in our different ways and in our different stages,” Sandra said.

The family has not had Oscar legally pronounced dead. There’s been no funeral service, no grave to visit.

They’ve only just recently started talking about a memorial service, maybe around Oscar’s birthday in February. It would be simple, his sister Sonia said, a Mass at home, in the backyard.

“To celebrate his life and not just let everything go by year after year,” she said.

The idea is a contentious one for Carmen, who does not believe her son is dead. He could be in hiding, she said, or in Mexico, forced to work for the cartel until his debt is repaid.

And so, she still focuses her gaze on every person she sees walking down the street or riding a bicycle, hoping it’s Oscar. She still wakes up at 3 in the morning and walks past the altar to the window facing the backyard and checks to see if he’s out there. 

“I’m still hoping for him to come home,” she said.

The following is the working theory from federal authorities on Oscar’s fate. It's based on information from court records, including interviews with six witnesses who independently told authorities that Palomera had Oscar killed, as well as information ATF agent Ben Hunt learned during his investigation. No one has been charged with Oscar’s disappearance and death, and Palomera has denied responsibility.

Stripped naked to check for wires and staring at the barrel of a shotgun, Lucas Manglona stood in an auto body shop outside Tacoma and faced questions about what he told law enforcement after he was arrested for ferrying drugs through Northern California. 

Four pounds of meth had been confiscated and everyone in the car — Lucas, Oscar and Oscar’s girlfriend — had been released. To Palomera and his hired Tacoma gang, that could mean only one thing.

Someone snitched.

Lucas persuaded them he was not a rat. He had been solid under torture once before, and he had the scars to prove it.

Once, he was kidnapped by his uncle and another man. They tied him up and used a blowtorch to try to learn the location of a stash house Palomera used. It left him with burn marks on his back and shoulder.

But he didn’t talk.

That put the spotlight directly on Oscar and his girlfriend. 

Communicating via WhatsApp, an encrypted messaging app, Palomera messaged Oscar’s roommate, Danny Vazquez, on June 25, 2014. 

Palomera was convinced that Oscar or his girlfriend stole his meth.

He wanted to find Oscar’s girlfriend and “send people to pick her up” and take her to Mexico, he told Danny. Because, he said, he wasn’t going to lose money.

“She is hiding,” Danny replied.

Undeterred, Palomera asked where Oscar was.

“He has to answer for what he’s done,” he wrote. “We goin(g) to send some people over to his mom place.”

He messaged Danny the next day, June 26: “I got the people ready to shoot them.”

One day later, June 27, angry that Oscar hadn’t paid him for the lost shipment of meth, Palomera messaged Danny with another threat.

He said he had “the power” to send people to Oscar’s mom’s house to “make her pay.” But he was willing to wait an hour for Danny to talk to Oscar.

He swore on his kids’ blood that either Oscar or his mother would suffer if his orders weren’t followed. 

Thirty minutes later, Oscar showed up at Danny’s house. Danny urged Palomera to give Oscar a chance to pay him back, noting that Oscar had “good connections” and couldn’t repay Palomera if he was dead.

Palomera dispatched his men from Tacoma to meet Danny and Oscar at their house in LA. They questioned Oscar at gunpoint.

Again, Danny persuaded Palomera to spare Oscar, saying he would put Oscar to work selling a pound of drugs.

“I’ll make him do whatever it takes to make it right.”

Sometime later, no one knows exactly when, five of Palomera’s associates either saw or received a texted photo, they later told authorities.

It was of Oscar, tied to a chair. He looked badly beaten and close to death. His fingers and toes were cut off. He had a chest wound from what appeared to be a shotgun blast. 

One of the recipients told the others to delete the photograph, authorities said. In search warrants of 66 phones, the photo was never found.

Authorities suspect Mexican hitmen killed Oscar, dismembered him and deposited the pieces in dumpsters around LA. 

His remains, one of Palomera’s associates told investigators, will never be found                                               

nvestigative reporter Jonathan Bullington and photographer Alton Strupp traveled to eastern Los Angeles County to learn about a man suspected of having been brutally murdered on the orders of a CJNG “plaza boss.” Bullington interviewed the man’s family and federal agents, and reviewed hundreds of pages of federal court filings. Bullington has worked for the Courier Journal for four months, Strupp for seven years. 

Staff reporter Beth Warren contributed to this story.