Goin' South

I learned many things when I accompanied a trio of bounty hunters to Mexico to fetch a fugitive drug suspect. Foremost among them: never leave your map at home...

A A A Comments By Steve McVicker Thursday, May 2 1996

...continued from page 7

Postscript
Although they knew they were wasting their time, the bounty hunters actually went back to Mexico City that afternoon and managed to wrangle a 45-minute meeting with the Mexican jefe, who directed us to someone at the U.S. Embassy. That someone turned out to be on vacation.

The next morning, we finally did meet a guy who Tony had contacted. It wasn't the man he originally intended to find, but a friend of a friend. After hearing the sorry details of our four-day ordeal, that official expressed interest in helping us on this and future missions -- on one condition. To make sure we understood, he wrote it down on a piece of paper. "No FBI," it read.

And that pretty much was the end of our road. I caught a plane for home, the bounty hunters began the long drive back. Ynocente Cruz was still a free man.

But perhaps my faith should have been a little stronger.
Last Friday night, shortly after Continental flight 762 touched down at Intercontinental Airport, several armed men boarded the 737 and took away one of the passengers before the plane reached the Leland terminal. The man in their custody was Ynocente Cruz, who today is being held without bond at the Harris County Jail.

It seems that crazy trip did pay off in the end for Tracey, Edd Blackwood and the citizens of Harris County. About two weeks after we called it quits in Mexico City, Tracey got a call from one of the Mexican law enforcement contacts she'd made along our way, and soon thereafter, she and two of her employees were on their way back to Coatlan del Rio to help with the capture and transfer of her quarry.

"I was told that I couldn't do it this way," Tracey said after Cruz was back in jail. "Well, I did it anyway."

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