Guilty verdict pleases widow of victim
Drug trafficker ordered death of a man he thought killed his brother
By DANE SCHILLER
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
March 15, 2011, 10:05PM


A Houston drug trafficker who inherited the family business from a brother slain by rivals in Mexico was convicted late Tuesday of trying to avenge his death by ordering a hit that killed an innocent man.

The capital-murder conviction, which came with an automatic life sentence, appears to crush any chance former city parks supervisor Jaime Arturo Zamora will ever walk out of prison.

Zamora showed no emotion as the verdict was announced in State District Judge Susan Brown's court.

Zamora, 40 is already serving 27 years without the possibility of parole on a drug conviction. Federal agents said he was dealing cocaine while free on bond awaiting trial for the May 2006 death of Pasadena maintenance man Jose Perez.

Innocent man killed
Prosecutors Colleen Barnett and Shreya Gulamali asked jurors to draw a line against the violence that has ravaged Mexico, but so far been greatly limited in Houston.

"Do you want us to turn into Mexico?" Barnett asked jurors.

Perez was gunned down in front of his wife and young children in the parking lot of Chilos, a Mexican style seafood restaurant on the Gulf Freeway.

"Now I know my Lord has made justice," Perez's widow, Norma Gonzalez, said when told of the verdict by phone.

Zamora's guilty verdict comes after the gunman, getaway car driver and money man who hired them on Zamora's orders have all convicted of capital murder.

Zamora kept a low profile as a drug trafficker. He lived in a modest East End house across the street from his parents.

He was never shown to have been extravagant, although the trafficking organization is said to have brought up to $1.5 million a month worth of cocaine into Houston.

The case focused not so much on Perez as what had been an ongoing, cross-border feud between two Houston-based drug-trafficking clans with strong ties to Mexico.

Resembled a killer
What started as a dispute over cocaine roiled into a fight that has claimed lives, sent men to prison and family members scurrying for cover.

Perez was killed in a botched attempt to kill Santiago "Chago" Salinas, who looked like him and was even in the restaurant that evening.

The Zamora clan held Salinas responsible for killing Zamora's younger brother, "Danny Boy" Zamora, who was murdered in Mexico.

Salinas was killed six months after the Chilos attack when he was tricked by three strippers into going to a motel.

He was shot in the doorway of his room. No one has been charged.

Zamora's lawyer Paul Looney said he plans to appeal the verdict. He had told jurors they should not take the word of a string of convicts who testified against Zamora for leniency.

dane.schiller@chron.com

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