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You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Good Evening. This is the story of two American teens recruited as killers for a Mexican cartel, and they're pursued by a Mexican American detective. At first glance, Gabriel Cardona is the poster boy American teenager, great athlete, bright, handsome, and charismatic, But the streets of his border town of Laredo, Texas are poor and dangerous, and it isn't long before Gabriel abandons his promising future for the allure of the Zettas,
a drug cartel with roots in the Mexican military. His younger friend Bart, as well as others from Gabriel's childhood, join him in working for the Zettas, boosting cars and smuggling drugs, eventually catching the eye of the cartel's leadership. Meanwhile, Mexican born detective Robert Garcia has worked hard all his life and is now struggling to raise his family in
America as violence spills over the border. Detective Garcia's pursuit of the Boys and their cartel leaders puts him face to faith face with the urgent consequences of a war he sees as unwinnable. In Wolf Boys, Dan Slater shares their story, taking us from the Sierra Madre mountain tops to the dark alleys of the Rado, Texas on a harrowing journey into the heart of the Mexican drug trade, and Gabriel's evolution from good major teenager into a feared assassin.
Wolf Boys depicts more than just Gabriel bart and the officers who took them down. It shows the way in which the border itself is changing, disappearing, imposing new, terrifying, and yet largely unseen threats to American security. Ultimately, though Wolf Boys is the intimate story of the Lobos themselves, boys turn into ponds for cartels. Their stories show how poverty, ideas about identity and government ignorance have warped the definition
of the American dream. The book that we're featuring this evening is wolf Boys, two American teenagers and Mexico's most Dangerous Drug cart tell with my special guest, journalist and author Slater. There was a mix up with the timing of this interview this evening, so hopefully we'll wait for Dan Slater to connect. I spoke to him just about forty five minutes ago. Here we have Dan Slater. Good evening, Dan, welcome to the program. Thank you very much for greeting this interview.
Good evening, Dan, it's good to be on your show. Thanks for having me.
Thank you very much. Incredible story. What brought you to this book and this project, this investigation that you undertook. What brought you to this wolf Boys? What is your background that brought you to this? Why did you want to write this story?
Well? I think there are a couple threads, a couple paths that led me to the project. One was, as you suggests, you know, just background I had been. I'd gone to law school, I'd worked very briefly as a lawyer before going into journalism, and I'd landed at the Wall Street Journal, where I covered sort of the legal
affairs beat. And then I was laid off in two thousand and nine, and I hadn't spent too long in journalism, but I was already kind of tired of sort of traditional journalism and newspaper work, and I wanted to start working on books. And I wanted to work on the kinds of books that I had admired as a reader and as a kid, and those were largely narrative nonfiction. Those were the kinds of books I really liked, like Friday Night Lights behind the Beautiful Forevers, and I wanted
to do something like that. I didn't know if I ever would or when i'd have the opportunity. But then around that same time that I got laid off, I saw this story in the New York Times was about these two boys are actually kind of a group of boys from Laredo, Texas, which is right on the border. And these boys, when they, you know, were teenagers, one
was as young as thirteen when he started. They'd become assassins for this big Mexican drug cartel, and they had worked for the cartel, doing hits on both sides of the border, both in Mexico and in Laredo. And it was one of those stories that you read and you don't forget it, and it stuck with me for a long time. And a few years after I saw this story, I saw that their boss, the man who ran the cartel that they worked for, had been apprehended in Mexico.
And so when I saw that story, I thought back to these boys I'd read about, and I wondered if the arrest of their boss, of the arrest of, you know, the cartel head, would would have any effect favorably on their willingness to open up to me. So I reached out to them in prison there now in the Texas State prison system, and we opened up relationships. I opened up relationships with them. We started to communicate back and forth.
I visited them, we exchanged a lot of letters, and I started going to Laredo, Texas, And that's how Wolf Boys kind of got started. It was me kind of throwing out my hands with journalism, wanting to do something that was more narrative, more novelistic, and then sort of the good fortune of having this opportunity come along, and feeling like it was an important story to tell.
Certainly now Laredo, Texas is central in this story. So tell us about Laredo, Texas for those people outside of Texas and somewhere else in America, especially for our international audience, tell us about Laredo, Texas and its importance to this story.
Laredo is a fascinating city. It's in South Texas. It's right on the border between Texas and Mexico, and if you look at a map, Texas is sort of at the eastern end of the two thousand mile border between the States and Mexico, so it kind of aligns with the Gulf of Mexico. And Laredo is a city that's sort of central on the Texas Mexico border, and it
happens to be where I thirty five begins. I thirty five is a major freeway that begins in Laredo and shoots up into the US and goes all the way up to Duluth, Minnesota, all the way up to Canada almost And so that fact of its geography is turned Laredo into a commercial center. Especially after NAFTA took a effect in the early and mid nineties, Laredo really became in some ways a boom town for the companies that
had invested in it. It was a thruway. It was where all the Mexican goods shipped up into the US arrived through. But there was this weird kind of paradox that developed with Laredo. Even while all the companies that had invest in the town, these fortune five hundred companies were getting rich off of NAFTA and all the commerce that went through Laredo itself, and the people of Laredo remained, for the most part, very poor. And Laredo is still even today, it's one of the poorest cities in the US.
So that was one of the questions I had when I started looking at the story of these Laredo boys who had gone to work for Mexican drug cartel, is where did they come from? I mean, what kinds of ghettos and neighborhoods in Laredo had produced them? And when I started looking into that, I found out that these neighborhoods were producing a lot of kids, a lot of young boys who had the same sort of aspiration. They didn't think about going to college, they didn't think about
that sort of future. What they had on their mind was wanting to go to work for the Zetas, which is the drug cartel that's right across the border.
Now you talk about this is a two stories that you parallel talk about in the book that you cover, Robert Garcia the detective and Gabriel Cardona primarily. So let's talk about Robert Garcia. Went you opened the book with Robert Garcia is twenty nine years old in the autumn of nineteen ninety seven. And this is Robert Garcia Senior. Immigrated from Pedris Nagras, Negraz, Mexico, probably mangle that name
to Eagle Pass, Texas. So tell us a little bit about Robert Garcia and before we talk about Robert Garcia Junior and his life.
Robert Garcia Senior and Robert Garcia Junior play a major role in this book, mainly Robert Garcia Junior, who's the son. He's the son of the immigrants and he was a He is a fastening character and he's really the counterpoint to Gabriel and the wolf Boys, to these boys who became operative who even though they were American born and raised in America, they became the Mexican cartel crooks. And then this guy, Robert Garcia, who immigrated across to Eagle Past,
Texas with his family when he was nine. He was, in a sense from even less than the wolf Boys were from in Laredo. I mean, he was the son of these migrant farmers who came across and they worked in the fields and in the cantalope fields picking fruits and vegetables. In the summertime, they would go up north to states like Montana, Oregon and such to work the
fields there, the sugar beat season, et cetera. That was the kind of world that he was raised in, and he eventually decided to forego the college thing he had gotten, you know, a scholarship. He decided not to go to college, and Robert instead enlisted in the army, where he met his wife. And then when he came back to the States in the early nineties, he and his wife settled in Laredo and he decided to become a cop. So he went to the police Academy in Laredo and he
became a street cop. And in the nineties, being a patrol cop in Laredo basically meant making a lot of small drug arrests. Obviously, a lot of drugs moved through that city because of the bridges there, and when you're a street cup in the radar. You make us a lot of kind of small arrests, and he really got into that as a younger cop. He felt like making those drug arrests meant meant something because you weren't just
taking somebody with drugs off the street. You were taking somebody who might commit other crimes in order to get the drugs, et cetera. So he really believed in the drug war and he did his job very well. He was awarded Officer of the Year in his late twenties, and he was loaned out to the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration for a six year stint, and that was the first time that Robert got a real global view, or at least a you know, a national view on the
drug war. He started doing more sort of nationwide investigations, doing undercover work where he'd go to New York, where he'd go up to Detroit, where to go to San Diego. And he started seen that of all the drugs that came through Laredo, all the law enforcement there and there's a lot of law enforcement really don't get any of it.
They can make a lot of small bus on the streets, they can bust the occasional truck full of marijuana or cocaine that comes across, But of the overall drug traffic that comes through that city, maybe in a good year, law enforcement is getting maybe one percent, maybe two percent. And so I think that was sort of a disillusioning
moment for Robert when he found that out. And so when he went back to Laredo PD after having served his time in Dea, he decided to leave these drug investigations behind and he became a homicide detective because he felt like the drug traffic itself, it was sort of feudle to put a lot of resources and try to stop that, but the violence, he felt like maybe law enforcement could have an impact on that, so he became
a homice side detective. This was in the early UH to mid two thousands, around two thousand and three, four five and that, And that was right around the time that the cartel wars in Mexico became very, very bad and they started to spill over into into the States and specifically into Laredo and Texas. And and that was around the time when the Zetas, the Mexican drug cartel that was right across the border, they began to recruit these American boys, uh to do their bidding for them
on the you know, the US side. And so Robert was faced with a situation where there were a lot of unsolved homicides happening all around the city of Laredo. And he started to look into some of these uh murders and and found you know, common threads, and that's it was. It was those investigations around two thousand and five, a spate of murders that had happened that had led him to Gabriel and uh, these other boys in Laredo that that he worked with.
Now, let's talk about missus Gabriella Cardona. She's got four sons, aged four, six, ten, and eleven. And her second child is Gabrielle and he's a good students. He starts reading early. His older brother is Louise. And then you write in their six square block neighborhood, Las Techa, they called it. This was two hundred and fifty years old. So tell us a little bit about you talk about the chaos at night and the helicopters and the cars squealing. What
did Gabriella and his three brothers grow up in. What was the environment in Laredo, What kind of neighborhood did they grow up in.
So, the neighborhood that Gabrielle and his brothers and his friends grew up in, as you say, it's called Las Teca, and it is the oldest neighborhood in Laredo. It's actually the neighborhood that Laredo originated with. It was the first neighborhood there around the seventeen fifties, before Laredo was even established as a city, Less Techa existed, and it's this
little neighborhood that is very quaint. It's almost kind of quiet, even though it's right on the border there, right on the grassy knoll overlooking the Rio Grande, and you can literally throw a stone to the beginning to buy thirty
five because the bridges are right next door. And so less Teka for pretty much its entire two hundred and fifty year existence has really been a smuggling I don't think village is the right word, because it's as you say, it's about six by six blocks, it's not even that big.
But it's been a smuggling neighborhood. And so that was the environment that gabriel and his brothers and his friends were born into a neighborhood where most of I don't know if I can say most many, perhaps most of the men who live there and the boys who live there, become involved in some aspect of the drug trade. They and they do that from a fairly young age. And it's not just the drug trade, it's other black market
kinds of economies that that that exists there. It's immigrants smuggling, it's smuggling vehicles and guns south from the US into Mexico and supplying the Mexican drug cartels with the things, with the things they need. So he was really born into this environment and he and he had a hand in most of these black market trades by the age of about sixteen. He'd already dropped out of high school
by then. And so less Teco was really a big kind of a character, I think in Wolf Boys, and it's it's similar to a lot of other neighborhoods in the city of Laredo, and it's similar to other neighborhoods and other border cities like El Paso, neighborhoods that are
largely Mexican American, if not entirely Mexican American. And you know, basically the kids confronting situations where there doesn't appear to be a lot of opportunity, and so the juvenile crime rate is very, very high, and a lot of kids in these neighborhoods become involved in the street gang life from pretty young age, and then it becomes almost like a corporate ladder where you're trying to kind of work
your way up the hierarchy in the underworld. And so for someone like Gabriel to become an employee of the Zetas, the big organization across the border in Mexico, at the age of seventeen or eighteen, and be reporting directly to the big bosses, that was a very big deal in his world, and he became very respected, and I think it was very intoxicating for him, as it would be for a lot of young men to of have that responsibility, have that respect, and be making as much money as
he was and be able to kind of give money too friends and family who you know, who had nothing.
Now you talk about his development as a criminal as well, because he ends up working eventually showing his metal and being recognized and ends up working for a person named Mime Flores, And so tell us about this as you do describing the book, this faithful event where Gabriel meets up with Miguel Trevino and his take on what has been happening so far. He's enlightened, to say the least. So tell us about this incident where he meets somebody he really respects up that corporate ladder. Yes.
So, one of the questions, one of the many questions that I had that kind of launched me into the Wolf Boys project was the question of how does a you know, how does an American boy from a city like Laredo, how do you how do you join a Mexican drug cartel? I mean, what is what's the introduction
like which the recruitment process is it? Is it? Is it that you're in school one day and everything was okay, and you're on the football team, and then you have a bad week and the next thing you know, you're talking to someone across the border who runs a drug cartel? Or is it more of a gradual slide? And of course, you know, you'd think it was more of a it'd be more of a gradual slide. And with him, it certainly was. Gabriel and all of a lot of his
friends they left school at a very early age. They were working in the underworld at very early age, and with him he had been stealing vehicles. He was very good at stealing vehicles in the States and bringing them across to Mexico and selling them there in the underworld. And the reason he was good at it is because he took a lot of sedatives and tranquilizers that sort of blunted his inhibitions. So he was very good instealing cars. And one night he and his friend had stolen a
I think it was a jeep Cherokee. It could have been like any other you know dozen, you know, dozens of evenings, and they took this jeep across and his friend had a contact at the police station in Mexico who he thought would buy it. Always the question when they stole a car was who on the other side
were they going to sell to. They had several different contacts, and so his friend said, oh, I know a cop at the Mexican police station in Waivo Laredo, the city across the border in Mexico, And so they went there and they were told that the cop wasn't in that evening or wasn't working, So they turned the car around and they decided to go back into Texas. And what
happened on the way back is they were apprehended. They were stopped, and they were pulled over, and what followed was an evening that really I think transformed Gabriel's future. The people who apprehended them before they get back to Texas were people who worked for the Zetas. They had heard that these boys had tried to sell a car to a certain Mexican cop, and that cop was known to work for the opposition. So they took Gabriel and his friend back to a barn on a ranch, and
that was the night that they met Miguel Travino. Miguel was at that point a mid level boss for the Zetas, an extremely brutal man, has a reputation for extreme violence, and they met him at a barn. Miguel didn't trust them,
he thought they worked the other side. And actually, right when Miguel was about to throw a grenade into the barn and just killed them, Gabriel shouted out the name of this guy, Mime Flores, who was another contact that he had in Mexico, another you know, man that he would sell guns, that he stole to vehicles that he stole to, and so Meme turned out to be a acquaintance and associated with Miguel's and that really changed Miguel's opinion, and so he didn't kill them. Instead, you know, he
called up memmey Flores. Meme came over to the site they were at, and that was the night that Gabriel was kind of taken into the cartel and in a matter of weeks he found himself at a training camp in southern Mexico.
Tell us about this incredible, almost unbelievable training camp. You talk about the seventy recruits that are initially there and how it whittles down to twenty, and what these twenty of the seventy are asked to do and what are recognized as having the ability to do. So, tell us a little bit more about this training camp, who's training these people and what are they learning.
Well, the training camp is staffed by a lot of different people. They hire mercenaries from all over the world that were rumored to be an Israeli mercenary there at one point. They try to bring in people who have military experience. The Zetas are an organization that originated with Mexican military. That's their background, and one of the reasons that they were effective for a long time is because they brought that kind of military, take no prisoners ethos
into the cartel wars. So at the training camps, the purpose of a lot of these exercises that these boys and young men go through in the six weeks or the three months of the camp is basically sort of a filtering process of the people who run the camp. I'm trying to figure out who has it in their blood to kill and who doesn't. So really the camp is about teaching people how to kill and how to
kill efficiently. I won't say too much more because I don't want to I don't want to narrate the entire book, but but you can imagine I think, you know, some of the things that would happen in that in that environment, and it's it was definitely the hardest part of the book for me to write. It was the hardest part of the book for me to to learn about and
to research. But I felt like a book that tried to nail the experience of what it was like for young boy to go to work for drug cartel really needed, you know, needed to have that material in it.
Absolutely. You talk about hands on training, they actually have contras there and you can tell us what their definition of contirass is and conscious are seen as the enemy. They have actual live contras there for their exercises. Again, you could just without maybe the description of it. But it is hands on experience, isn't it.
It is.
It's live.
It's live fire, I guess is probably the most accurate way to put it. It's you know, it's it's uh, it was it's highly disturbing stuff, but yeah, it is, it is live. They want to.
See that.
They want to see do you do you have it in you, you know, to take a human life? And and the camp is the camp is where they they find that out.
So, needless to say, Gabrielle passes the mustard that his friend Wentz's. That is a character in this book as well. He is also working for the company at a different, different occupation. But gabriel has been recognized through this Memme Flores and through and through also Miguel Trevino as having
what it takes having the balls. Now, a couple of things are going on, and you talk about that somewhat peaceful existence in this drug smuggling in the cartels is changing, and you introduce people like al Chapo, which people are familiar with. But also when you talk about you talk about things changing in this drug war as well, tell us what the Zea the Zettas are doing in terms of to counter what other people are doing in other drug cartels.
Well, a lot of what the cartel wants are about. Maybe this is obviously some people is trying to kill off your enemies. And so the reason for someone like Miguel Trevino, who ran the Zetas or who eventually would become the head of the zetas part of what he wanted to do in this sort of two thousand and five two thousand and six Ero, when these boys were recruited and they worked, was to have them do the cartels bidding the States, which really meant going after the
cartel's enemies in the States. So the goal for him was to kill people who threatened his business or who threatened his power. You know, sometimes it was a rival smuggler, but sometimes it was somebody who who he felt had inappropriately slept with one of his ex you know, girlfriends
or something in order to save face. He feel feels like he needed to kill that person, and so, sadly and tragically, a lot of or at least some of the jobs that Gabriel and the other wolf Boys were sent on where jobs where they were were sent to kill someone for that sort of a transgression, just some stupid, you know, manly jealousy thing.
Now you talk about though the wolf Boys have a credo, they have a motto and that's the wolf Boys never say no. We also have at the same time as all of this is going on, the fight for Anuvo Dorito, you talk about the plaza. Can you explain the talk of the plaza. I don't think everyone would be as familiar with what they mean by that. Gabriel is being recruited with others, and Gabriel is asked by Trevino at some point to get other American boys to join him
to work at the plat. So tell us about this assignment.
Well, the plaza. The plaza just describes sort of the the economic structure of a town or a hub through the cartel's eyes. From the perspective of a drug cartel, every town, every kind of waypoint that drugs and other illegal commerce travels through as a plaza, and the person who makes the money is the person who controls the plaza.
So each town, each city has its own plaza. It's a site to different people in the cartel, and there's a pretty intricate, sort of hierarchical structure within each plaza. There are different roles to be filled, and so these boys and young men who go to the cartel screening camp, they get assigned a job in the plaza. And sometimes you're an assassin and sometimes your lookout, or you're someone interfaces with local police and takes care of corruption, or
you're an accountant. There are a lot of accountants within within the organization. So that's that's what APPLAUSA is.
Now. We also talk about back to Robert Garcia returning to Laredo Police Department after the six stressful years with the DEA. And you talk about that he had as his youngest son had just started high school and and Eric was a senior, and also that Laredo was much different in those fear in those few years that he had worked for the DEA, and murders and drug crimes were way up, and so so tell us about his work. Roberts work as a homicide detective and also what law
enforcement at that time knew about Miguel. Miguel Trevino.
Well, you know, when when Miguel first started kind of working, he wasn't known really by LaRita law enforcement. He gained a profile and eventually Robert learns that he's going after Miguel. Miguel is the person who's running all of this, so in a way becomes a face off between them.
What is the when you talk about Gabriel rising in in uh in status with this with the company, does he have being a kid that grew up in America? Part of this book, this incredible book, is how somebody from America under any conditions could end up being an assassin. So does he have any reservations? Is there any incidents along the way? What is this ascension up the ladder of this company? What does it come with? Is there again you spoke to him later, but at that time,
does he have any reservations? What are his feelings other than he's proud to be employed and in his world, this is a big, big step for him. Tell us a little bit about some of the things that he's experiencing are at that time being in an assassin?
Well, he's experienced his sense of purpose that he's associated with an organization where he feels he might have a future for a kid who comes from very little opportunity that stands for a lot. And he's also making a lot of money and he's giving that money, like I said, to his family and his friends, his mother and the girlfriend. And you know, he's also he's also doing a lot of murders in Mexico, where the cops over there actually
helping him. So I think there was some delusion there because he would come back over here to the States, and at seventeen eighteen, you don't think always so rationally, he thought that he would be able to work with the same impunity here that he did in Mexico. And because of Robert Garcia and because of the American law enforcement, he found out that that was not the case.
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Apron dot com slash murder. Blue Apron a better way to cook. When we last spoke, Dan, we were talking about the convergence the past that seem to be on separate tracks, as you mentioned in the book. But now both of these people, these characters are heading right towards each other. So talk about Robert Garcia and Miguel Trevino and how it comes to be that Robert Garcia is on the trail of Gabriel Cardona.
Ah, Well, Gabriel is doing murders and Robert starts to investigate these murders and he comes up face to face with these wolf boys and he's trying to figure out who they're working for.
Now, how does how does he get to the point where he gets in intelligence and into on who is involved with this and the other wolf wolf boys tell us that progression of events.
Well, there's an investigation Dan and he you know, he learns, you know, one thing after another, and eventually he he reaches these kids. But this is the whole story, This is the plot of the book. You know, there's an investigation, there's a there's a homicide investigation that takes place, and he investigates these murders that are being ordered by this drug cartel and eventually finds out who's at the top.
Now you take us to the what we didn't talk about was the very opening of the book and the introduction, and you talk about one day they're at a rental house on orange blossom loop. They're eating fast food, shop at Walmart, talking on their wire tap phones and this is not too far from this border. He's got a closet full of Hugo Boss and Ralph Lauren Versace and Kenneth Cole. He's driving a Jetta, a Mercedes SUV and
he's got a customized bend. Coming around him were his friend's Richard, his lieutenant, his uncle, Rawl, his mother's brother, Christina his girlfriend and Gabriel's nineteen years old at that time. Tell us what happens in terms of this arrest and what happens as a result moving forward.
Well, they eventually lareda law enforcement eventually lures the boys to a safe house to monitor them and to try to get enough evidence against them to invite not just these boys, but men hire up in the cartel.
And what does Robert Garcia find out in terms of with this investigation with the Cardona Gabriel Cardona, what does he find out? I mean, he's born in Mexico. He used to think that the war was winnable. He knows that it's not, and he knows why it is not. What does he find maybe it would be surprising to him working in drugs now working in homicide. What does he see, what does he experience with this person from the US that has turned into an assassin.
Well, what he learns is is how a boy becomes an assassin and and what and why the kids thought that they could commit murders in the States with with impunity. He realizes the extent of violence, the extent of corruption in Mexico, and he also realizes the futility of the drug war just because drugs are are not stoppable, but because here a boyle like Gabriel becomes one of the
signature cases of Robert's career. And I think it was disheartening for him, you know, eventually to realize that that the investigation of these boys would be such a landmark. I think that was all letdown.
Now tell us again, when do you reached out to Gabriel and when you contacted him and visit him? When did this begin? And tell us just about that correspondence and his response.
Well, Gabriel and I communicated for about three years through letters, and you and I were sending letters back and forth for a long time. We sent a lot of letters, and that's how I learned about his life.
What was the How long did it take him? You talk about in the book that he was parting, was a big part of the company itself, and was encouraged and certainly Gabriel indulged as well. You talk about doing roofees, and he was always being He liked its effect, it's calming effect. Was there a time when all the energy and all the activity, and once sitting in a prison cell, some of the same things that he thought were rational
and reasonable he now thought were not. And you tell us a little bit about the differences he thought in things once everything had stopped and he was behind bars.
Well, I think it's taken a while to grow up. I think he is growing in prison. He's been there since he was nineteen and a half and he'll probably be there for the rest of his life. He's serving two life sentences. And I think he sees now with about a decade hindsight, that you know, the crimes were atrocious,
that there was really no point to it all. But I think he's torn between that revelation and and the fact that he staked everything, he staked his identity on this role that he carved out of being kind of the young powerful guy the violent guy, the guy who
other people were were afraid of. And I think now he sees that he mistake, you know, he sort of mistook a fear for respect, and I think he sees strangely that in some way he was secure kid, and it was really inspirity on some level that that drove him to become what he became. And you know, I think I think his thinking will will evolve over the over the many more years that he's in prisen. But that's that's where he stands now, He's about thirty years old.
What's the level of remorse? How far can he go from where he came to be remorseless? How how much remorse, if any, is there in the way he speaks to you about the crimes he was involved in.
I think again, I think he does have days when he feels remorse, and I think he does have days when he accepts the person he became and sort of embraces the stoicism of the kind of stone cold murderer. And so I do think he goes back and forth. I don't think that it's one thing. I don't think it's one feeling or one perspective. I think that he really is torn between between what what he knows to be true, which is that what he the way he lived his life was atrocious. Atrocious is a word he
actually used with me. And then this other idea that I came from where I came from, and my environment exerted certain influences on me, and and I became what I became. So I do I do think that he goes back and forth between between those feelings.
What was feelings regarding his family, if any at.
All, Well, I think he got a lot of purpose out of supporting his family. I think that'd being able to give money to something like his mother, to give her more money in a week than she might make in six months, was a huge deal, and I do think that drove him a lot. And I think it was hard for I've spent a lot of time with his family too. I think it was hard for his family to confront that that idea that he did what
he did probably for them. But then again, you know, most people in his family are in some aspect of the underworld businesses, and they all do that for each other. They all break the law for each other in the name of culture, their environment, supporting one another and people in their family, and people in that neighborhood go in and out of the prison system like a revolving door.
So's it's a whole different world. But that's what's the purpose of writing Wolf Boys was to was to was to investigate that.
What is his experience been in prison as a gang member? What has that been like?
Well, he's an administrative segregation, so he it's basically solitary con finement. He's kept away from general population. He is associated with a prison gang called Hermano's Pistolarios, and he gets along. I think he again, I think he's torn
between dissociating from them. There's a program in the prison system that gives prisoners certain special privileges if they if they dissociate from their gang, and I think he's he's thought of doing that before, but he also knows that being associated with them gives them certain protections, guarantees or hopefully guarantees. And so at the moment he's living alone, he's living alone in a cell and he doesn't have a lot of contact with other inmates.
What what did this case, this investigation do for Robert Garcia, What was its effect on him and his life? Well, it was a.
Very dramatic case. It was probably the most dramatic case he'd ever worked on. What are the more interesting cases he'd ever worked on, But it was also one of dozens, if not hundreds of drug investigations and cartel investigations that he's been over the years. Robert Is Robert's now nearly fifty. He's back on patrol. He's now a patrol sergeant who runs sort of a quadrant or exception of Laredo. And
you know, the case brought him some attention. He goes up north and he teaches classes to law enforcement about cartel violence on the border. It's given him someone of a profile. He's appeared in media. His life story has been told in my book. But as far as transforming his life, I don't know. I mean, maybe Donald Trump will will appoint him, the borders are and then all of this will come to fruition. At the moment, he's, you know, still still just a cop.
He started off with thinking the war on drugs was a great thing. What was a was a noble thing, and then he thought it was an unwinnable thing. Maybe he doesn't have all the answers, but does he have any thoughts about the drug war and what could be done differently.
Well, I think Robert knows that it's about addressing demand on this side, which is something that's kind of widely known and understood. And I think he also knows that it's about putting in place policies not just drug policies or prison reform, but policies that help families stay together and they provide more more opportunity to people. Ultimately, all this stuff begins with families, families falling apart, not being able to support each other, it begins with absent fathers.
That's really the common thread. So Laredo is one of the great marginalized cities in America. It's one of many many marginalized cities. A lot of people in Laredo who voted for Donald Trump because they're sick of the career politicians. They're frankly sick of NAFTA, they're sick of jobs going to Mexico, even a lot of even though a lot of citizens there came from Mexico, it is a city that's ninety eight percent Hispanic American. So it's a city
of contradictions, and Robert is certainly a product of that. City. But I think one thing that he has learned over the course of his now been almost thirty years in Laredo police that it's about it's about policies that help families stay together.
You talked about throughout this book, and this is for those who will kick you up on this and read this book, is that you talk about the history and what Mexico has done in terms of drug trafficking, to talk about the opium, talk about the cocaine, you talk about the marijuana, and you talk about the changing of
guard between cartels, the Gulf Cartel, the SnO Orleans. So tell us not that we know, we know that things haven't changed, they haven't gotten better, but what is the state of who controls Laredo and drug trafficking in Mexico?
Now, Well, Dan, it's always just, you know, shifting. I don't know, I don't know if it's even worthwhile to talk about who controls a certain part. I mean, it's a constantly shifting landscape of drug organizations. Golf Cartel, the Zetas.
This.
Sine Loans, and probably half a dozen to a dozen other drug organizations. All organizations are constantly cropping up and trying to challenge larger organizations, so the landscape is constantly shifting there.
You talk about how also that this is a discussion on how the border is changing, and you talk about how we just Donald Trump is the new president, and of course immigration, cross border traffic, illegals become illegal, immigration become big issues, obviously very big issues. Is there any talk of any concrete changes that might address this whatsoever?
No?
No, simply not. What did this entire I know, this any true crime book, but especially a book with the kind of details that we avoided talking about with the training camp itself and you having to go and do that kind of research and find out that kind of information. What was it the effect of doing this, this book and the investigation that you had to what it kind of effect did it have on you?
It just opened my eyes big time. I mean it was it was horrifying at times. It was also thrilling as a reporter. It was kind of what you dream of to have a city like Laredo, an environment that you can go to that is basically gone, totally uncovered. There had never been a serious nonfiction book written about the city or set in the city, and it was it was it's an environment and a culture that really
has its own rules. So going there back and forth that city for three years while I was working with wolf Boys, as you know a journalist, was just an absolutely periled experience. It was also it was kind of everything. I mean, it was very scary at times. Gabriel and I didn't always long. It could be very stressful, you know. Meanwhile, I'm not there developing relationships with other young men who lived similar lives to him, who are in prison for
murder and all sorts of things. You know, young young men who have proven themselves capable of doing pretty much anything. And I've seen it all, and so it was unnerving for me. I mean, here, I am sort of a I'm basically, you know, I'm a white guy. I come from a lot of I'm a white Jewish guy from the Midwest. I come from a fair amount of opportunity. Both my parents are doctors. I got to go to college,
I got to go to law school. I've had a lot of opportunity in life, and I've lived largely up and up in the North, and so it was it was, to say the least, it was. It was an eye opener to go to this city that is still in my own country, but is so different than anything, uh, not only that I've ever seen, but anything I've ever imagined. And to see that there are these American kids who you know, unlike me, are are are on the downside of advantage, but even then some and they're they're becoming
paid assassins for a big, multi global drug organization. That was that was shocking for me. It never, it never was not shocking. It was shocking every day to think about that. So I could I could go on and on and on about the culture shock, but yeah, I mean, I've I've lived in other parts of the world. I've lived in England, I've lived in Spain, I've had the good fortune to travel to a lot of places. Laredo feels as foreign as any place I've ever been.
And again, just to answer my own question, could you see how it could be possible for this person, I mean, despite the circumstances, to be able to do this. Could you wrap your head around this and say, yes, I can't understand how he could go from American teenager into a paid assassin or no.
Yeah, After learning about Laredo and after spending time with the principle of Gabriel's high school, the principles of other high schools, the dean of the local university, spending a lot of time and a lot of cops, going on ride alongs, spending time with families, spending time with the women who would date these young men who found this whole world alluring. Yeah. Absolutely, I could see, I could be I could see how how seductive lifestyle would be.
Yeah, well that's surprising. Well, I want to thank you very much for coming on and talking about wolf Boys, two American teenagers in Mexico's most dangerous drug cartel. For those people that might want to follow us up or see other work, or do you have a Facebook page or website, tell us how people might be able to contact you or look at other work.
Is at by Dan Slater is the Twitter handle, and I'm also on Facebook, and you can get in touch with me on email. It's Danielbslater at gmail dot com. Again, it's d A n I E L B s l A t E r at gmail dot com. And so i'd encourage readers to reach out to me. I love to hear from readers. Tirol people thought of the book.
Wolf Boys has been out for about five months, and uh just found out last week that one of the Laredo High school since actually mentioned in the book, United South, has decided to put wolf Boys into its curriculum, so hopefully other high It's a book that's been taken very seriously by Laredo, which is like the greatest thing for me because when I was working on the I was often told by people that no one in Laredo read there was not even a bookstore there, and that no
one will read the book. That has proven not to be the case. So it's also going to be a movie. Sonys optioned the film rights to wolf Boys, and Antoine Fuqua is attached to direct. He directed a movie called Training Day back in two thousand and one. He's done a lot of other movies since. So that's where things stand. But thanks a lot for talking to me, Dan, I appreciate it.
Well. Congratulations on the movie, and congratulations on wolf Boys. It's a fascinating book. We just touched on a little bit of the incredible action that you have in the book that you've captured from all the incredible work that you've done to get this information and have access to Gabriel and all the players in this book, so I want to thank you very much for that and UH hoped again to talk to you again soon. Thank you very much for this awesome Dan, thanks a lot, Thank you, good night,