THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, November 12, 1996 TAG: 9611120265
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B9 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: ROANOKE LENGTH: 88 lines
A drug trafficker who moved tons of cocaine from Colombia and killed a North Carolina man is serving diners in Roanoke County after serving 16 months in jail and one week in prison.
Javier Cruz said he paid his debt to society by working as an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration. But the family of the man whom the Colombian native killed disagrees.
Mark Garrett, a 25-year-old from Charlotte, was shot in the back of the head in 1987 and his body was dumped on a back road. Cruz said he accidentally shot the construction subcontractor during a fight involving a woman and then fled because he thought the police wouldn't believe him.
After Cruz was apprehended in 1991, Garrett's family took comfort in the belief that he was serving a sentence in federal prison.
In fact, Cruz served about 16 months in the Salem-Roanoke County Jail and a few days in a North Carolina prison for Garrett's murder. He now runs a Roanoke County nightclub owned by his Colombian wife, lives in a $288,000 home and drives a $57,000 Mercedes.
Cruz, 39, parlayed his ties to Colombia's Cali cocaine cartel into a career as an undercover informant that has lasted more than five years.
He's helped the DEA in one of the biggest undercover investigations in the country, law enforcement sources told the Roanoke Times. In exchange, agents helped him get a plea bargain on a first-degree murder charge and have put drug trafficking charges against him on hold for five years.
Cruz is free as long as the DEA's operation continues.
Garrett's family knew of the plea bargain - and opposed it - but were assured federal drug charges would keep Cruz in prison for years, longer than he might have gotten on a murder charge. They were unaware of Cruz's whereabouts until they were contacted recently by a reporter.
``I have as much contempt for the judicial system and the prosecutors as I do for Cruz,'' said Maurice Garrett, Mark Garrett's 34-year-old brother. ``They're the ones who let him get away with it.''
For several years after the killing, Glenda Garrett had to drive by her son's cemetery to get to work each morning.
She is enraged that Cruz is walking free.
``Tell me how a man who murders someone, is wanted on all these drug charges - how this could happen?'' Glenda Garrett asked.
After Cruz opened a used-car lot in Roanoke, the DEA began watching him as part of an investigation into money laundering involving a number of car dealerships in western Virginia.
It wasn't until several months into the investigation that they realized who they had: the transportation man for a major U.S. cocaine trafficker with ties to the Cali cartel, according to an affidavit.
Cruz had assumed a new identity and was trafficking massive quantities of cocaine, using Roanoke as a base.
After DEA agents discovered Cruz's identity in 1991, they arrested him on the outstanding murder warrant instead of on drug charges, apparently so his associates wouldn't know that police were aware of his drug trafficking, preserving his value as a potential informant.
An agent from the DEA flew to Charlotte to urge the prosecutor to drop the charge in Garrett's death, arguing that his help could lead to arrests of major international traffickers.
Prosecutor Steve Ward refused to drop Cruz's murder charge but agreed to a plea bargain on the reduced charge of involuntary manslaughter. Ward defends that decision, saying the evidence could support the self-defense theory.
The Garretts said they were told that after Cruz finished helping the DEA on its drug case, he would come back to be sentenced for involuntary manslaughter.
In August 1992 - 16 months after his arrest - Cruz was brought back to Charlotte. But neither Garrett's family nor the police were notified.
Court and prison records indicate that Cruz received a three-year sentence Aug. 21 and that he was taken to a North Carolina prison. But he was credited with almost 16 months for time already served, and he walked out of the prison Aug. 27, 1992.
Cruz said he helped put ``200 or 300 people in jail'' and gave the DEA the locations of several cocaine-manufacturing laboratories in Colombia that authorities then bombed.
Cruz's informant account could not be confirmed. The DEA will not comment on the case because it is pending.
Whether Cruz serves any prison time on the drug charges will be up to a federal judge, who will hear about Cruz's cooperation with the government once the investigation is over. Cruz said he hopes his activities as an informant, including making dangerous trips to Colombia to meet with drug suppliers, will persuade the judge to let him remain free.
``I did a lot of work,'' he said. ``They catch me (doing) this, I die.'' ILLUSTRATION: The DEA urged the prosecutor to drop the murder charge
against Javier Cruz, saying he was an informant. by CNB