Tribute at Naval Air Station : Agent’s Body in ‘Sad Voyage Home’

NORTH ISLAND —  In what U.S. Ambassador to Mexico John Gavin described as “a very sad voyage home,” the body of slain Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique S. Camarena was flown here Friday from Guadalajara for an autopsy and memorial services.

Under an overcast sky, Camarena’s body arrived by C-141 Air Force transport at the North Island Naval Air Station. His widow, Genoveva, and 11-year-old son, Enrique, were led by a Navy chaplain into the plane to spend a few moments near the casket.

Then, as a Marine Corps band played a somber salute, an honor guard slowly carried the flag-draped casket to a gray hearse. Camarena’s body was taken to Navy Hospital in San Diego for additional forensic tests.

Believed to the victim of major narcotics traffickers, Camarena was described by Gavin as a casualty in the war on drugs. In a memorial tribute on the North Island tarmac, John C. Lawn, acting chief administrator of the DEA, told assembled drug officers that Camarena “is not the only special agent who has returned home, or will return home, on his shield.”

“We mustn’t forget that Mexican law enforcement officials also have died in this campaign,” Gavin said at a news conference after the tribute. “Not more than two days ago, they lost several. In the last month, they’ve lost a few. This is an ongoing war.”

(Four Mexican state policemen were killed Wednesday when suspected marijuana traffickers opened fire on them near the farming town of San Fernando in northern Mexico. A civilian was also killed.)

Camarena and his Mexican friend, pilot Alfredo Zavala Avelar, had been missing since Feb. 7, when they were kidnaped within hours of each other in Guadalajara. No ransom was sought for their return. Their badly decomposed bodies were discovered earlier this week in plastic bags on a ranch near Guadalajara.

In autopsies performed during the last two days, both men were found to have been severely beaten before they died. But according to Alan Rogers, spokesman for the U.S. Consulate General in Guadalajara, discrepancies exist between Mexican and American conclusions from initial autopsy reports.

Mexican authorities say that Camarena was shot in the head and that Zavala Avelar was buried alive. American officials said that Camarena died of “blunt force and a penetrating injury to the head,” but they could not say for certain that he had been shot. He had major fractures on the left and right side of the skull, a broken jaw and broken ribs, the Americans said.

Mexican authorities said Camarena had been dead for 25 or 26 days, but Americans said they could not confirm that.

Tests also showed that soil samples from the bags did not match those at the ranch, indicating that the two men may have been killed elsewhere, buried and then exhumed.

Ed Heath, the DEA chief in Mexico, said Thursday that “the DEA will not rest” until the killers of Camarena and Zavala Avelar “are eliminated.”

Lawn was asked Friday what he believed Heath meant by the term “eliminated.” Lawn replied that Heath, as a law enforcement officer, was referring to the completion of the investigation and successful prosecution of the killers in a court of law.

Scores of DEA and other law enforcement officials who greeted Camarena’s body wore strips of black tape across their badges. Gavin described their fallen comrade, a former Marine, as “a good father, a good husband, a good Marine, a good officer of the DEA and a good American.”

Times staff writer Marjorie Miller in Guadalajara contributed to this story.