http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_5099165

Murder suspect extradited to U.S. from Mexico
By Darren Meritz / El Paso Times
El Paso Times
Jan 27, 2007

A suspected California gang member wanted for the past seven years for his alleged role in a murder-for-hire plot has been extradited from Mexico and was turned over to El Paso police Thursday.
Rafael Guillen, 31, is accused of participating in a scheme to kill Mercedes Caballero, who was found stabbed to death and bound with duct tape on the floor of her Lower Valley home in January 2000.

Police said Caballero's 2-year-old daughter, at the home at the time of the slaying, was found unharmed in another room when officers arrived.

"I can't tell you for sure that she (daughter) saw the crime, but she might have seen the body," El Paso County District Attorney Jaime Esparza said. "We found the body in the entry room, in a living room area, but the child was in a separate room."

According to a 2002 indictment, Ana Pineda-Montti agreed with Primavera Baltazar -- who has since been sentenced to life in prison for the crime -- to employ Guillen to commit the slaying. Pineda-Montti believed her lover was having an affair with Caballero, Esparza said.

U.S. drug investigators have linked Pineda-Montti, a native of El Salvador, to the Carrillo Fuentes drug cartel. El Paso police spokesman Javier Sambrano said Pineda-Montti previously was apprehended by Mexican authorities in connection with the slaying but was released because officials could not extradite her to the United States.

Esparza said the district attorney's office is working to capture and try Pineda-Montti.

"We are pursuing this," he said. "We're still pursuing the third defendant."

The El Paso Times reported in the summer of 2005 that Mexican authorities had placed Pineda-Montti in Guadalupe Distrito Bravos, a town across the border from Fabens, in the company of a man then reported missing.

Guillen was featured on the Web site of the television show "America's Most Wanted." The Web site said Guillen, alias "Pony," and his alleged accomplice Baltazar were members of a Los Angeles street gang known as Varrio Maravilla.

According to the Web site, Guillen posed as a flower deliveryman and allegedly killed Caballero with accomplices and was promised $10,000 through an agreement with Baltazar and Pineda-Montti for the alleged hit.

Guillen was arrested in December 2002 by Mexican authorities. Officials of the El Paso County district attorney's office said they were able to arrange for extradition on the condition that prosecutors would not seek the death penalty in the defendant's case.

"We gladly did that to get him back," Esparza said.