Gulf cartel head expected to testify in Fort Worth

One of the defendants scheduled to go on trial next week in the killing of a Southlake cartel lawyer in 2013 plans to call the former leader of the Gulf cartel to the stand, according to a court document filed Tuesday.

Osiel Cardenas Guillen, currently imprisoned in the United States, was named on a witness list submitted by Jesus Gerardo Ledezma-Campano.

Cardenas reached a plea agreement with U.S. authorities in 2010 and is serving a 25-year sentence.

A Dallas Morning News investigation published last week detailed how Cardenas' deal with the government — which reportedly included $50 million in forfeited assets — led to a violent split between the Gulf cartel and Los Zetas. The Zetas are the cartel’s fighting wing, which Cardenas created.

The violence, the Morning News report showed, reached all the way to Southlake with the 2013 shooting death of Juan Jesus Guerrero Chapa.

Ledezma-Cepeda, his son, Jesus Gerardo Ledezma-Campano and Jose Luis Cepeda-Cortes are accused of stalking and conspiring to kill Guerrero, the acting head of the Gulf cartel.

Guerrero, Cardenas' personal lawyer, was gunned down May 22, 2013, at Southlake Town Square after he and his wife had returned to their Range Rover after shopping.

Cardenas, according to Ledezma-Cepeda’s witness list, will be called to testify about “Cartel activities/relationships, activities and role of [Guerrero].”

Ledezma-Cepeda also named Guerrero's wife, sister and sister-in-law as witnesses.

Witness lists for Ledezma-Campano and Cepeda-Cortes had not been posted late Tuesday.

Earlier Tuesday, NBC 5 reported that Ledezma-Campano entered a guilty plea in a secret hearing last month and agreed to testify against his father and Cepeda-Cortes during the trial.

A U.S. attorney's spokeswoman said "our office is not confirming or denying" that report.

All three men have been jailed since their arrests near the Mexico border in September 2014.

Plot may have formed in 2011

In May 2013, Guerrero, who lived in a gated neighborhood in Southlake, was shot multiple times with a 9mm handgun near the fountain of the upscale outdoor shopping center in the affluent suburb northeast of Fort Worth.

The plot to kill Guerrero formed as early as 2011, according to case documents.

Before Guerrero’s death, Ledezma-Cepeda, Ledezma-Campano and Cepeda-Cortes rented a Grapevine apartment, set up a surveillance camera in Guerrero’s neighborhood and placed a GPS monitor on his car, according to a federal criminal complaint.

The men traveled from Mexico to Southlake between March 1, 2011, and May 22, 2013, with the intent of killing Guerrero, according to the case documents.

Cepeda-Cortes used email, photographs and other surveillance tools to locate Guerrero, the criminal complaint says.

The suspects also bought and rented numerous vehicles so they could change cars frequently and avoid detection, the paperwork says. They placed tracking devices on their own vehicles as well as multiple vehicles owned by Guerrero and his relatives, including the Range Rover in which he was killed.

At some point before the killing, Guerrero “received calls from others to warn him that he was in danger, because he had been found by people who wanted to kill him.”

Prosecutors in March linked Ledezma-Cepeda, Ledezma-Campano and Cepeda-Cortes to nine other people who had been killed or gone missing over the years, according to case documents.

This story was originally published April 20, 2016 at 6:55 AM with the headline "Gulf cartel head expected to testify in Fort Worth."