Kidnapped man’s mother is on quest to attain justice

Mexican authorities are getting tougher on kidnappers.

MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

MEXICO CITY — Convinced that the police were unable or unwilling to help, Isabel Miranda Wallace had tailed a suspect in her son’s kidnapping. When the man — himself a state police officer — got out of his car and pointed a gun at Wallace’s face, she was sure her crusade and her life were over.

Looking back three years later at the close call, Wallace still grieves for an adult son who remains missing and presumed dead. But she says another tragedy is having to risk her life in a quest for justice that has even taken her to federal court in Chicago.

“Imagine how bad off Mexico is that a woman, as in my case, had to go out and look for the criminals. This shows how desperate citizens are for justice,” she said.

The angst over a kidnapping epidemic has grown here in recent weeks after 14-year-old Fernando Marti, the son of a prominent businessman, was abducted on his way to school and later found dead in the trunk of a car. The collective sense of helplessness appeared valid when two police officers were among those arrested.

The Marti case has galvanized Mexicans. With kidnappings in Mexico City on pace to top last year’s official total of 119, President Felipe Calderon and the nation’s governors approved a 75-point anti-crime plan in August that includes special prisons for kidnappers and greater control over cell phones, which are often used to demand ransom payments.

Away from the glare of the Marti murder, Wallace continues her solitary mission. The wife of a businessman, she leaves her swank Mexico City neighborhood, gets into an SUV with her armed bodyguards and occasional police escort and checks out tips about her son, Hugo. She has taken her case as high as the president’s office.

Her one-woman crusade is dramatic enough that screenwriters want to tell her tale. But there are hundreds of families suffering as she is.

Mexico City endured a kidnapping wave in the 1990s that appeared to have declined. Wealthy residents hired heavily armed security guards and made contact with private consultants who could negotiate ransom terms — just in case.

By 2007, however, the number of kidnappings nationwide increased about 35 percent over 2006, to 438, according to federal officials.

Hugo Wallace, then 36, became part of the toll when he went to the movies in June 2005 but never came home. His mother initially went to the police but, as with many families, she didn’t trust them.

Her suspicions were confirmed when the trail to her son’s kidnappers included Cesar Freyre, an officer from the state of Morelos and the man Wallace says pointed the gun at her. Freyre was arrested by police in 2006 and is being held in a Mexico City prison.

But Wallace has kept on the trail, meeting with federal prosecutors almost weekly and paying for billboards featuring other at-large suspects.

Her efforts paid off in December when she got an e-mail from a Kentucky woman who had seen a video Wallace posted on YouTube. The video showed Brenda Quevedo, another suspect in the crime who was on the run.

In an account corroborated by Mexican authorities, Wallace learned that Quevedo was working as a bartender in Louisville. Wallace said she got on the next plane, saw Quevedo herself and called the FBI.

Quevedo was arrested and transferred to an immigration detention facility in McHenry County outside Chicago, which handles deportation cases from throughout the Midwest region. She is currently facing extradition in Chicago federal court. Wallace already has been to Chicago and plans to return for the next hearing in September.

In some ways, Wallace’s successes have been unusual. Researchers estimate that less than 2 percent of kidnappers are successfully prosecuted.

“We resisted that Hugo would become just another statistic,” she said. “That gives me great comfort that we awakened what little will exists with the government.”

Law enforcement experts say that ineffectiveness creates a motivation to kidnap because the potential for big paydays are high (Marti’s family turned over about $500,000 through a private negotiator, according to Mexican news reports) and the chance of a long prison sentence is low.

These crimes don’t even include the so-called “express kidnappings,” in which victims are abducted for a few hours, long enough to empty their bank accounts at ATMs.

The problem is not just underfunded and ineffective police but also officers who collude in the crimes. In the Marti case, for example, the boy and his bodyguards were stopped at a fake checkpoint that apparently included real police officers.

The spike in kidnappings has created a political problem for Calderon, who has made security the centerpiece of his first 2 years in office, said political analyst Luis Rubio.

“We are seeing high-profile cases that will cause even stronger social demands,” Rubio said.

Since attending Marti’s funeral, Calderon has proposed life sentences for kidnappers and created special anti-kidnapping units in the Public Security Department. Mexico City officials have followed suit, with special hot lines the public can call to help in kidnapping investigations.

One newspaper columnist dismissed the new get-tough approach as “penal populism.”

Maria Elena Morera, director of the non-profit Mexico United Against Crime — whose husband lost four fingers during a kidnapping — said the certainty of punishment is more important than the severity.

Last week, her group proposed systemic changes to Mexican law enforcement, including a special prison for kidnappers and citizen oversight over anti-kidnapping agencies.

The group’s initiative got unexpected support when Alejandro Marti, Fernando’s father, had an emotional meeting with reporters to announce he was joining the cause.

Wearing a white ribbon on his lapel and fighting back tears, the owner of the Marti chain of sporting-goods stores announced the Fernando Marti Foundation to help rally public support against the string of unpunished kidnappings.

“Impunity is destroying us in Mexico,” Marti said. “We know that in the history of this country, there have been many Fernandos. But we are completely dedicated to honoring the name of our son by ensuring that this doesn’t happen to another parent.”

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Wallace has watched the Marti case with profound empathy while her own extended suffering is never far from mind.

She has kept her son’s bedroom just as he left it, a flat-screen TV hanging from the ceiling, a crucifix on his bed. The football fan’s office is also untouched, with an Oakland Raiders helmet sharing shelf space with a figurine of Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher.

Wallace soldiers on, despite increasing death threats. In June, her car was shot up while she conducted business in a bank, an assault she sees as related to her investigation.

Her last major task is finding her son’s body, and she offered a reward of about $100,000 last month for information.

Wallace hasn’t had time to peruse proposed movie scripts about her campaign but she wonders whether the filmmakers get it, especially one who pitched a film about her investigation into Hugo’s kidnapping as a “great police movie.”

“This isn’t a police movie,” Wallace said softly. “This is a love story.”

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(c) 2008, Chicago Tribune.

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ARCHIVE PHOTOS on MCT Direct (from MCT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): Fernando Marti