DALLAS, Texas — Among the 29 cartel bosses extradited from Mexico to the United States on Thursday was 43-year-old Jose Rodolfo Villarreal Hernandez, also known as “El Gato,” according to Acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Chad Meacham. Villarreal Hernandez, a Mexican national and high-ranking member of the Beltran-Leyva Organization (BLO) Drug Cartel, faces charges of interstate stalking and conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire in the 2013 killing of a Southlake, Texas lawyer.
Villarreal Hernandez was added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List in October 2020 and was apprehended by Mexican law enforcement in Atizapán de Zaragoza, Mexico, in January 2023. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced his successful extradition, pledging to prosecute all extradited cartel bosses “to the fullest extent of the law in honor of the brave law enforcement agents who have dedicated their careers — and in some cases, given their lives — to protect innocent people from the scourge of violent cartels.”
According to evidence presented at the trial of his coconspirators, Villarreal Hernandez allegedly orchestrated and funded a multi-year effort to locate and assassinate his victim, an attorney with connections to a rival cartel. Testimony indicated that Villarreal Hernandez believed the attorney was involved in the death of his father and sought revenge. The victim was shot while seated in the passenger seat of his vehicle outside an upscale shopping center in Southlake on May 22, 2013, with his wife standing nearby…