Kidnapping cases often pose challenging for authorities, investigators say

PALMVIEW — Within hours of masked gunmen abducting Roberto Bautista in October, his family told investigators that they already knew who the suspects were.

His relatives insisted that neighbors sent kidnappers after the 19-year-old as part of a long-running dispute over his noisy late-night parties, Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño said. But they could not provide names or a description of the people they said were responsible.

It was only after days of investigation that deputies uncovered Bautista’s past involvement with drug trafficking, human smuggling and a pseudo-cop home invasion ring and concluded that those were more than likely the reasons he was targeted.

Bautista remains missing two months later and authorities lost valuable time chasing down what they now believe to be a story his family fabricated to cover up his criminal activity.

“It was a really unbelievable story,” Treviño said. “They threw us off the case from the very beginning.”

But Bautista’s abduction is not unusual when compared to other reported kidnapping cases in the Rio Grande Valley. As a rule, investigators rarely get cooperation from victims and struggle to learn even the most basic information from family members, according to crime reports.

Most have their roots in drug trafficking or other illegal acts, the sheriff said. Other times victims’ families hesitate to even report the crime to police for fear that they could be incriminated by any investigation.

“When a legitimate person gets kidnapped, their family wants us to be there,” he said. “They want them to be rescued and recovered as soon as possible. It’s quite the opposite with most cases, when there’s an illegitimate relationship between the victim and the kidnapper.”

FBI agents were not even aware that McAllen businessman Raul Alvarado had been kidnapped from a downtown coffee shop Nov. 23 until Mexican authorities called the bureau to report he had been rescued, local spokesman Jorge Cisneros said.

Alvarado later told investigators that he had planned to meet a business colleague from Mexico when he was shoved into an SUV at gunpoint and held for a week in Reynosa. Authorities found him only after his family paid a ransom composed of $30,000 and two vehicles.

Alvarado has no known ties to organized crime.

Cross-border kidnappings like his, though, have long been a favored tactic of Mexican drug cartels further west along the Texas border. But aside from a few prominent cases last year, they remain relatively rare in the Valley, Cisneros said.

“Increased law enforcement presence in the United States and Mexico has pushed people to more forcefully pursue their drug debts,” he said. “But I don’t want (innocent) people to think they have to be fearful walking the streets.”

In March, state and federal authorities broke up a nine-man kidnapping ring linked directly to the Gulf Cartel’s top man in Reynosa that they believe responsible for at least five Hidalgo County abductions between August and October 2008.

But the sheriff described that group as unusual. Most aren’t directly linked to cartels, he said. The victims and their captors are more likely to be local drug traffickers who may be several steps removed from bosses across the Rio Grande.

It’s also hard to determine whether the increase in cases during the fall of last year was an anomaly or a sustained trend. While 13 kidnappings have been reported to the sheriff’s office so far in 2008, statistics for prior years hover around the same level. And there is no way to measure the cases that go unreported.

Of those 13 cases, only one involved a victim with no ties to organized crime, he said. That man was safely recovered.

“The fact still remains,” he said, “that if you’re not in any way connected to an illegitimate enterprise, you’re still pretty safe.”

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Jeremy Roebuck covers courts and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4437.