Did Chapo Escape
Two times, the first escape was in 2001 while he was in Puente Grande a maximum security prison in Guadalajara in the state of Jalisco, that escape was the famous laundry cart escape. The second time was in 2015 from Almoloya another maximum secur. Infamous drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who daringly escaped prison on July 11, utilized a tunnel leading from the only “supermax” maximum-security pri. El Chapo escaped from the same prison in 2001, through a laundry cart that maintenance worker Javier Camberos rolled through several doors and eventually out the front door. Guzman is currently serving a life sentence at the United States Penitentiary Maximum Facility, ADX Florence. The DOJ alleges that more than just acting as a messenger, Ms Aispuro actively helped plan El Chapo’s spectacular escape from the Altiplano prison in Mexico in 2015 through an underground tunnel.
Drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman has been recaptured seven months after he escaped from prison, Mexican authorities announced Friday.
But this isn’t the first time El Chapo, leader of the Sinaloa cartel, has been on the lam. The drug kingpin has a long history of capture, escape and recapture.
Here are some major dates in Guzman’s timeline (with some information from the Associated Press):
- June 10, 1993: Mexico announces Guzman’s first capture in Guatemala. But even after Guzman was imprisoned, “He continued to manage his affairs from prison with scarcely a hitch,” writes Robert Saviano in his book ZeroZeroZero. “The maximum security prison Puente Grande, where he was transferred in 1995, became his new base of operations,”
El Chapo Escapes 2017
- Jan. 19, 2001: With the help of bribed guards, Guzman escapes from his top-security prison. Saviano describes the escape: “One of them—Francisco Camberos Rivera, known as El Chito, or the Silent One—opened the door to El Chapo’s cell and helped him climb into a cart of dirty laundry. They headed down unguarded hallways and through wide-open electronic doors to the inner parking lot, where only one guard was on duty. El Chapo jumped out of the cart and leaped into the trunk of a Chevrolet Monte Carlo.”
- Feb. 22, 2014: El Chapo is captured in Mazatlan after hiding in tunnels for days. The success was touted as a huge win for authorities, who by then had deemed Guzman the “most powerful drug trafficker in the world.”
- July 11, 2015: Guzman escapes through a tunnel from Mexico’s top-security prison. You can see the path he took to escape here.
- Jan. 8, 2016: He is once again re-captured in Los Mochis, Sinaloa after a shootout with Mexican marines. Five people were killed and one marine was wounded in the fight.