‘Ear Cutter’ Kidnap Suspect Held in Mexico

MEXICO CITY —  Police on Tuesday arrested Mexico’s most famous fugitive, a former police officer accused of kidnapping people and slashing off their ears, who has become symbolic of a crime wave that has terrified the nation.

Daniel Arizmendi was captured before dawn as he met with accomplices in an upscale neighborhood outside Mexico City, authorities said. The arrest followed a nine-month manhunt that extended into at least six Mexican states and implicated former police and justice officials who allegedly helped Arizmendi’s gang.

Arizmendi had emerged as a personification of Mexico’s soaring crime rate and the impunity enjoyed by criminals. Tape-recorded telephone threats attributed to him and made to victims’ families were broadcast on national television in recent months, and his scowling face peered from newspapers.

While many kidnappers have sown panic in Mexico, Arizmendi was particularly cruel, authorities said. Police said he sent the ears of victims to their families to pressure for ransom--earning him the nickname “the Ear Cutter.”

“We think that with our efforts, we will obtain several thousand years of prison for these people [Arizmendi and his alleged accomplices]. This is a great effort to demolish impunity,” said Samuel Gonzalez, director of the organized-crime unit of the attorney general’s office, at a news conference.

The arrest appeared to mark a rare victory for Mexico’s justice system, plagued by corruption and inefficiency. At least five arrest warrants had been issued for Arizmendi, said Mexican Atty. Gen. Jorge Madrazo Cuellar, and authorities had offered a $625,000 reward for information leading to his capture. Officials said late Tuesday that Arizmendi would be charged within hours.

Gonzalez said 80 kidnapping cases have been reported by people trying to recover ransom money that allegedly went to Arizmendi’s gang. Previously, some officials had blamed the group for 200 abductions.

In an extraordinary interview with TV Azteca on Tuesday night, Arizmendi said he had kidnapped 21 people since 1995, killing two of them and mutilating others. He also said he had killed three of his own gang members when he thought they were about to betray him.

Asked if he had felt anything when he cut off the ears of his victims to send to their families, he replied, “I never felt anything, neither horror nor pain.” He said he only feared prison and would have preferred the death penalty, which does not exist in Mexico, to a probable life prison term. “To die would be nicer,” he said.

Authorities had been moving in on Arizmendi and his gang for months, arresting 29 alleged members, including his wife, two children and brother, before the alleged ringleader and nine others were detained Tuesday. Madrazo said four gang members provided information leading to the capture.

But it appeared that the turning point came after Arizmendi’s gang allegedly carried out its latest kidnapping two weeks ago, even as authorities were closing in. Jorge Reyes Santana, chief prosecutor in the state of Mexico, which borders Mexico City, said three people suspected in that abduction were caught in the state early Tuesday.

“They were awaiting a call from Daniel Arizmendi. He made the call, and they agreed to meet,” Reyes Santana told Mexico’s Radio Red, adding that police were listening in. Arizmendi arrived alone in a Volkswagen Beetle at the rendezvous in the town of Naucalpan, where he was detained without violence, Reyes Santana said.

Late Tuesday, authorities presented Arizmendi to reporters. Flanked by security guards and wearing faded bluejeans and a blue-checked shirt, he looked unfazed. He had grown a thick black beard while on the run.

Arizmendi, 39, made no comment. But earlier, as he was being led in handcuffs through the Mexico City airport, he told TV Azteca: “Yesterday was a day of bad luck for me. That’s all.”

Max Morales, a lawyer for two of Arizmendi’s alleged victims, beamed as he attended one of the three news conferences that overjoyed authorities held Tuesday to announce the arrest.

“This is a very important day for justice in Mexico,” he said.

Arizmendi had become a symbol of the spiraling number of kidnappings in Mexico in recent years, part of an unprecedented crime wave that began with a severe economic recession in 1995. Citizens outraged by the kidnappings had begun to demand the death penalty, which is outlawed in Mexico. Many had called radio stations demanding that the gang members’ ears be lopped off.

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Greg Brosnan in The Times’ Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.