Drug trafficker and hitman José Rodolfo Villarreal Hernández is captured (PHOTOS)

• José Rodolfo Villarreal Hernández is wanted for murder in the US.
• The drug trafficker and hitman was arrested in Mexico.
• He killed lawyer Juan Jesús Guerrero Chapa.

José Rodolfo Villarreal Hernández, also known as ‘El Gato’, was arrested in Mexico to be extradited to the United States for a brutal homicide in Texas. The defendant, according to the authorities, was a high-ranking member of the Beltrán Leyva Brothers Cartel, for which he acted as a hitman.

According to the federal accusation against José Rodolfo Villarreal Hernández, consulted by MundoNOW, Villarreal Hernández was responsible for orchestrating and perpetrating the shooting death of lawyer Juan Jesús Guerrero Chapa in May 2013, while he was shopping in Dallas, Texas.

José Rodolfo Villarreal Hernández is arrested in Mexico

José Rodolfo Villarreal Hernández was arrested on Saturday, January 7, 2023, by elite soldiers from the Secretary of the Navy during an operation in the town of Atizapán de Zaragoza in the State of Mexico.

The capture of José Rodolfo Villarreal Hernández was carried out by the Mexican authorities based on the arrest warrant issued by the Justice Department of the United States following an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

The DEA and the FBI had been on his trail for 10 years

The DEA and FBI investigation specifies that lawyer Juan Jesús Guerrero Chapa had been the defending drug trafficker Osiel Cárdenas when he was at the top of the Gulf Cartel. The Gulf Cartel and the Beltrán Leyva Cartel had a bitter rivalry.

At 6:48 p.m. on May 22, 2013, lawyer Juan Jesús Guerrero Chapa and his wife drove his luxurious brown Land Rover to the Southlake Town Square shopping center in Southlake, Texas and parked in front of Victoria’s Secret.

Juan Jesús Guerrero Chapa went shopping at Victoria’s Secret only to die

José Rodolfo Villarreal Hernández had been following Juan Jesús Guerrero Chapa, who lived in that area of ​​North Texas in a million dollar house, leading a double life. In addition to being a lawyer for drug traffickers, he was an informant for the United States Department of Justice.

Juan Jesús Guerrero Chapa’s wife was in the Land Rover and as soon as the couple got out of the vehicle, a white Toyota Sequoia truck approached. A masked man got out with a .9-millimeter pistol and shot the lawyer 10 times. Chapa’s wife was not shot.

Federal investigators took up the case of the brutal homicide

Initially after the crime, local authorities in Southlake, an upper-middle-class suburb in the Dallas metropolitan area, began investigating the case. However, when the identity of Juan Jesús Guerrero Chapa was revealed, the local authorities had to step aside.

DEA and FBI agents in Texas took up the case and further requested the assistance of their federal colleagues from the Department of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). Based on that police collaboration, José Rodolfo Villarreal Hernández’s name came up.

Juan Jesús Guerrero Chapa lived in a luxurious mansion in Texas

Lawyer Juan Jesús Guerrero Chapa lived in Southlake, Texas, in a house he bought on July 15, 2011 under the alias Ma G. Alhelí Dias Teixeira. In the US public records there is no one with that name and she only appears as a buyer of the lawyer’s house.

After several years of investigations by the DEA, FBI and HSI, the name of José Rodolfo Villarreal Hernández, or ‘El Gato’, was placed on the list of the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives by the United States Department of Justice.

El Gato is awaiting extradition to the US

James Dwyer, special agent for the FBI in Dallas, issued a statement in which he said the arrest of drug trafficker and hitman José Rodolfo Villarreal Hernández was “one more step to bring justice to the family of the victim and to all Southlake residents traumatized by the brutal murder“.

The General Prosecutor of the Republic (FGR) of Mexico has not announced when José Rodolfo Villarreal Hernández will be transferred to the United States to face justice for the murder of the Gulf Cartel’s lawyer.