Tonight, the hunt for one
of the most wanted men in the world
and how this seemingly untouchable drug lord
was finally caught.
Many say that El Chapo is responsible
for at least 50% of all the illegal drugs
that enter the United States from Mexico.
Forbes Magazine even estimated his value
into the billions of dollars.
For years, US and Mexican agents have been searching
for El Chapo, trying to bring him to justice.
El Chapo becomes public enemy number one,
someone that was always
seemingly outsmarting authorities.
He really focused on using tunnels
to always have an escape route.
El Chapo has pulled off the greatest Houdini Act yet
and no one knows where he's at.
Now, we follow the global hunt for El Chapo
and the operation that ended with his capture.
Everybody in the world is looking for this guy
and he's planning
on making a big budget movie about himself.
It seems like every time agents hone in on him,
he's magically gone again.
The question for law enforcement is,
where is the drug Lord hiding
and can they ever get there first?
April 8th, 1989, the leader of Mexico's
most powerful drug cartel is arrested
for the murder of a DEA agent.
Before going to prison,
his empire is divided between three drug lords,
but once Gallardo is incarcerated, they go to war.
One of them will stop at nothing to come out on top.
Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman, better known as El Chapo.
El Chapo is the illiterate son of a Mexican farmer who rose
to prominence to become one of the most famous
and perhaps the most ruthless drug trafficker
in the history of the world.
And he does this by unleashing a rash
of violence across the country of Mexico.
One example of this violence
is he knew that some
of his rival members in a cartel
were gonna be dancing one night at a dance club,
so he sends his henchmen
to go raid the dance floor,
bullets flying everywhere,
and the end result?
Most of the cartel members got off scot-free,
but six innocent people died that night.
This led to a train reaction
that ended up unfolding at the Guadalajara airport
in broad daylight just a few months later.
His rivals tracked him down
and they thought that they had opened fire
on his white sedan,
but what ended up happening though is they ended up
killing a beloved Mexican Cardinal.
The cardinal's murder
marks a turning point in the country's narcotics wars.
For the first time, everyday Mexicans see
how brutal the drug trade has become and they want justice.
The Mexican government at this point is also working
with the US Drug Enforcement Administration
who put on a bounty for any information
related to the location of El Chapo.
So he gets a fake passport
and then flees to Guatemala.
He lives pretty comfortably for a little while,
but then the political pressure starts to heat up
and sooner or later he's
cornered by the Guatemalan military
and he is taken into custody
and eventually charged with multiple counts of murder
and drug trafficking.
And he's extradited to Jalisco in Mexico
where he's sent to a maximum security prison.
The Mexican government was very proud of this moment,
as well as they should be.
The president goes on TV and says, we have got El Chapo
and he's not going to escape.
El Chapo spends eight years in that prison
and it's really not a bad time for him,
because during the day,
El Chapo micromanages his business using his phone,
and at night, it's party time.
So there is alcohol, there are prostitutes.
He even has a private chef and the wardens in prison
and other officials are paid off,
and so they take care of him there.
While El Chapo leads
a charmed prison life in Mexico,
the FBI is eager to have him face trial in the US
for his crimes.
In 2001, a new law makes that a possibility.
The Mexican Supreme Court rules
that El Chapo can be extradited to the United States,
so long as the death penalty is taken off the table.
But this is one of the worst fears for El Chapo.
The chances of him escaping from prison
in the United States are slim to none.
But his extradition
won't be happening anytime soon.
On the evening of January 19th, 2001,
a prison worker makes a shocking discovery.
A security guard goes to check on El Chapo
and there's a curtain draped over his cell.
And as he enters, the inmate is not there.
El Chapo is no longer in his cell.
So some said that El Chapo disappeared from prison hidden
in a laundry cart under a pile of dirty clothes.
And the way it happened was
that a corrupt prison guard pushed him
through various checkpoints
and outside of the prison,
where somebody else whisked him away.
El Chapo's escape was a humiliation
for the Mexican government.
They had just gone on television thumping their chest
that they had caught
the world's most wanted drug trafficker,
only for him to slip through their fingers.
Thousands of Mexican policemen
scour the countryside and cities,
but every time they think they're close,
the drug lord vanishes.
He's able to stay one step ahead of the authorities
and it's almost as though he's never going to get caught.
Months go by, then years,
and while the manhunt drags on,
El Chapo expands his operation.
He's creating new routes to traffic
from Mexico City,
through Sinaloa, Sonora.
He has all the west side of the country under control
and he's also expanding in his portfolio of drugs.
He already trafficked marijuana, cocaine, heroin,
and he starts also trafficking meth.
At that point, he has made it very clear he wants
to control the entire US-Mexican border.
In 2007, he declares war on the Juarez cartel.
What that means for the Mexican people is decapitations,
people hanging from bridges,
whole families disappearing in makeshift graves,
and some people just disappearing.
At the height of the violence in Juarez,
tens of thousands of Mexicans are being killed
and many people blame El Chapo
for being behind those murders.
Rumors have it
that he has entire police departments on his payroll
and also he has his own private army
with armored vehicles, the latest weaponry,
and helicopters,
so it's very hard to reach him.
The Mexican government is paralyzed.
The amount of money that El Chapo is now making,
through the control of the drug trade,
places him at the top of the pyramid.
He's now the premier drug trafficker in the world.
El Chapo's enterprises
are flooding the United States with drugs,
and the DEA and FBI desperately want him
in an American prison to pay
for the crimes he's committed against American citizens.
With the entire world now focused on El Chapo,
the problem falls on the shoulders of law enforcement,
the DEA, the Mexican government,
to figure out where El Chapo is hiding.
And they're really struggling with this until they discover
that El Chapo and his leadership
are using Blackberry mobile devices.
But the additional challenge they face is
that the cartel has actually installed
a sophisticated telephone system,
so that they can contact each other,
but hide virtually the ID number
on that phone from law enforcement.
The Blackberry at that time had a number
of security features
and you needed a three digit pin
in order to access that device.
DEA or the FBI did not have that information at that time.
In February, 2012,
it seems as though El Chapo was never gonna be caught,
but then the feds get a big break.
They take into custody Christian Rodriguez,
who's one of the top lieutenants for El Chapo.
And he's really the mastermind behind this encrypted system.
So in exchange for a reduced sentence,
he gives the pin numbers over
and they get the keys to this encryption system.
So now the DEA has the general location
of El Chapo and his lieutenants,
but the thing is they can't pinpoint it down
to a particular house.
There is a great deal of certainty
that these devices are operating in Cabo San Lucas.
This is a very populated area.
In fact, this is a place that probably has
two and a half to 3 million visitors every year,
usually rich Americans
or wealthy Mexicans that are coming to vacation.
It's also, at that moment in time,
one of the most secure places on the planet.
In 2012, the G20 summit is happening in Los Cabos
and this is a very high profile political moment.
There's Hillary Clinton in town,
there's a lot of media,
there's a lot of security for all the diplomats coming in,
and at that time, Chapo is also in town.
According to messages and GPS phone signals,
El Chapo and his entourage are staying somewhere
in an exclusive community just north of Cabo San Lucas.
The Mexican authorities put together
a 300 man operational team,
which also involves some DEA personnel,
to surround the resort area
to try and prevent El Chapo
from escaping once again.
February 21st, 2012,
it's go time for the Mexican authorities.
The problem is that they don't know exactly where he is.
They know of about a dozen beachfront mansions
and they raid every single one
and they come up empty handed.
And it isn't until the last one,
another beachfront mansion at the end of a cul-de-sac,
that they zero in on who they believe is El Chapo.
They barge through the door
and there they find El Chapo's pilot.
And the other people who were arrested in this house
actually tell them, oh yeah, El Chapo was here,
but when he heard noises, he left through the back door.
The Mexican authorities' repeated failure
to capture El Chapo is, for many, a national joke.
First, he allegedly rolls out
of a maximum security prison with the laundry.
Now, he simply walks out the back door
of his fancy seaside mansion.
The fact that they have had this big operation
and they let the guy go out through the back door,
it is not a good look for the Mexican government
and it's a very, very low moment in the morale
of Mexican authorities.
Now, the DEA are extremely upset.
They believe that there is a significant leak
within the Mexican police.
Just days after he slips out the back door,
his cell phone is back on in Cabo
and it's pinging again
and it's almost as though El Chapo is sort of
thumbing his nose at authorities that are on his tail.
For more than 15 years, Joaquin Guzman,
AKA El Chapo,
has dodged Mexican and US law enforcement at every turn.
No matter what agents try, the kingpin always seems
to be three steps ahead of them.
That is until 2012 when a young DEA agent named Andrew Hogan
arrives in Mexico City,
determined to outsmart El Chapo once and for all.
Hogan realizes that even with the narrow escape,
El Chapo is still using the same Blackberry system,
but he does see a difference.
It used to be
that the messages were going directly from a lieutenant,
or even somebody lower, to El Chapo.
There was something that was a little different
this time.
It appeared that many of the conversations seemed
to drop off midstream.
And as Hogan looked at these messages, he started
to wonder if they were using a strategy
that he had witnessed in other drug investigations.
Hogan, a data expert, recognizes this pattern.
It's a classic counterintelligence move
known as mirroring.
The way mirroring works,
if you want to talk to El Chapo, you have
to send a Blackberry message to a secondary individual.
That individual retrieves the message, types it on a laptop,
uses the Wi-Fi system to send it to another individual
who retrieves the message,
retypes it on his blackberry and sends it to El Chapo.
El Chapo will answer the same way.
So now you see there's a firewall between the individual
who sent the message and the individual
who received the message,
making it impossible to track El Chapo.
But Hogan isn't ready to give up.
He's hoping that if he can identify cartel members
who are still using the server,
he'll eventually find the man himself.
But first, he needs to decipher their messages.
What he discovers is that there are a few keywords
that really stand out.
One, is the keyword "a hooded one," which he determines
to be law enforcement officers, particularly DEA agents.
Another term used by the cartel is the water ones.
That indicates the Mexican navy.
And someone on the roll indicated somebody
who was taking bribes from the cartel
and providing information.
Hogan focuses in on the lieutenants.
And one day, there's a new phone that's involved
that's barking orders to these lieutenants.
Hogan is betting
that this can only be El Chapo,
and for some reason, the boss is back online.
And according to this new phone's GPS signal,
he's on the move.
As Hogan goes through all of this information,
he starts to really focus on the city of Culiacan.
He believes very strongly that El Chapo
and his top lieutenants are going there to conduct business.
More than a year passes as they watch
and wait preparing for what might be their next move.
Finally, in December, 2013, there's a break.
Several cartel phones light up with a word
that's used over and over, "Pichis."
Hogan and the others,
they don't know whether it's a cartel nickname
or whether it's something warning
that law enforcement's listening in,
until Hogan goes to a map.
Pichis is a nickname
for an abandoned duck hunting club called Pichiguila,
located in the foothills of the Sierra Madre mountains.
The intel on the ground lets Hogan know
that El Chapo actually bought this place
and he is fixing it up into a luxury fortress.
The land is flat
which from El Chapo's perspective is good
because he can see anybody coming in, nobody can hide.
It's a horrible place for a raid, for precisely that reason
but, Hogan is detirmined.
"We've got him there. Let's go after him"
Hogan thinks this is a good moment to attack,
but he's very wary
of the situation that happened in Kabul.
He doesn't want another humiliation,
but legally he's required
to inform the Mexican law enforcement about the intel.
So he contacts SEMAR,
which is an equivalent of American Marine forces
and they have a plan for an attack.
On the morning of January 19th, 2014,
Hogan gets a call from a fellow agent
that El Chapo has just arrived at the target location.
It's time to make their move.
They amass a major operation.
They have the Black Hawks.
They have hundreds of SEMAR and 50 DEA agents.
They cover the back area this time,
in an attempt to prevent El Chapo from escaping yet again.
Hogan's plan seems very comprehensive.
He has the military helping with any air operations,
with anything that's happening by water,
to cut off the Gulf of California.
And of course, the DEA handling anything
as far as the roads going in and out
of the facility are concerned.
They're ready to go,
until Hogan gets a message from another DEA agent
who has intercepted a message to El Chapo.
It said, "The ones from the water... hooded ones...
stay alert crossing the pond."
The message to El Chapo from his insiders is
to be careful when he tries to cross the pond,
or that Gulf of California
where those marines are waiting for him.
Obviously somebody's warning El Chapo
that the American intel is coming,
that the Marines are coming, that the SEMAR is coming.
They just don't know how it could have happened.
They later get a message saying,
"That 10K roll was worth it,"
meaning someone had just been paid off.
Hogan is distraught.
The only silver lining in all of this
is they still have access to El Chapo's phone.
So all Hogan needs to do is just sit back
and wait for it to ping again.
In 2014, the Mexican drug lord, El Chapo,
sits at the very top
of the FBI's most wanted list,
but every time law enforcement gets near him, he slips away.
Now, agents have tracked his phone
to the Mexican city of Culiacan.
This is the headquarters of El Chapo's cartel,
one of the most dangerous places on Earth.
This is a place that is 100% controlled by the cartels.
Even in Culiacan, first responders are not safe,
and it's a place where you find innocent people
as collateral damage
to the violence carried out by the cartels.
It's unclear if El Chapo knows that he's being tracked,
but he knows that he's going to be safe here.
This is his hometown, this is his headquarters,
this is his base of operations.
El Chapo knows that the town is under lockdown
and he retreats about a mile from the center of town,
where the DEA is still able to follow these pings.
DEA agent Andrew Hogan
and his team have a critical choice to make.
Do they move into dangerous cartel territory
and try to capture El Chapo
or wait until he heads to a safer, less fortified spot?
The DEA and the Mexican authorities are concerned
that El Chapo's way ahead of 'em.
They're still in his territory, so they're very reluctant.
Hogan pushes back hard because he knows,
based on reading Chapo's text,
that Chapo doesn't think he's under surveillance.
And he's got it down to about a one block radius
of where he thinks Chapo Guzman is.
So he believes that it's now or never.
On February 15th, 2014, it is a full all out operation
to go into Culiacan.
They use helicopters, armored tanks,
to go in to descend on El Chapo,
because they're expecting to be met
with the most fierce resistance.
Hogan can't pinpoint the exact house,
so they're swarming in around this neighborhood
and that's when it intercepts a message
from El Chapo to his cook,
"Lucia flatten the bathtub."
Hogan doesn't quite know what that means,
but it's significant.
Surprisingly, the Marines are able to sweep through the city
and encounter little physical resistance.
They're able to get through the town fairly quickly.
They do wound a couple of the cartel members,
but it's a large neighborhood with a lot of houses,
so they're not exactly sure where to go.
They uncover piles of guns, bricks of drugs,
but El Chapo is nowhere to be found.
Just as they're about to wrap up the operation,
they find somebody who's trying to get outta town.
And this is another one of the top lieutenants for El Chapo,
a man who goes by the name of El Nariz, or the nose.
The Nose has been part
of El Chapo's inner circle for years
and sits high on authority's most wanted list.
Almost immediately, for reasons he doesn't share,
he sells out his boss.
Law enforcement thinks
that Chapo will be where Nariz is,
so they do start questioning him
and pretty quickly Nariz says,
"Look, it's a system where we call all the safe houses
with numbers and El Chapo is in house number five.
The DEA and the Marines,
they know it could be a trap, but they descend on a building
and they come upon a steel door
reinforced against blast and heat, and it slows them down.
When the DEA and the Marines reach the door,
they're met with a spray of bullets
and one soldier is injured
and two cartel members are tackled and brought down.
They keep going through the building
and they get to a bathroom.
Like the rest of the house,
it's deserted, but as they enter the bathroom,
the soldiers discover exactly
how El Chapo managed to vanish again.
Agents find that the bathtub can be lifted
and that there's a tunnel
and that that tunnel system connects
to all the other safe houses.
It's at this point that Hogan sees the bathtub
and he understands the text that was sent,
"Lucia flatten the bathtub, was El Chapo telling his
personal chef to try to help him to escape.
The agents realize he could have only had
about a 15 minute headstart,
but no one in that town is going to utter a word.
They're afraid of him.
The one piece of good news is
that he's likely traveling
with one of his most trusted compatriots, El Condor.
Luckily, Hogan had already been tracking El Condor's
Blackberry device, but it goes dead for five days.
Then, on February 20th,
El Condor's phone buzzes to life.
He's sending a text
Condor's signal pops up in Mazatlan,
this coastal city a little over an hour
and a half drive from Culiacan.
There's a lot of tourists in that town,
but it's not a hotspot.
Hogan at this point is wondering, is this a trick?
Is this a deception?
Chapo Guzman has fooled people
before by switching out phones,
but over the next few days they intercept more text messages
from Chapo Guzman's men,
and it starts to make them think
that it really is them in Mazatlan.
In Mazatlan, law enforcement find
that the GPS signal from Condor is coming
from the mid Miramar Condominio.
This is a very low key hotel
and it's a very unassuming place.
On February 21st, 2014,
in a massive pre-dawn raid,
40 Mexican soldiers storm the Miramar.
They realized fairly quickly that nobody's there,
except in room 401.
When they finally batter down the door,
there on the other side of it is El Condor.
He is there with a rifle,
but he quickly realizes he's outnumbered
and he surrenders very quickly.
They see also somebody hiding in the master bedroom,
and when they look behind the door,
there is the world's most wanted drug trafficker.
Chapo basically tries to run for the bathroom,
but at that point it's just impossible.
People remember him saying,
"I cannot believe you caught me."
The next day, the story is front page news.
El Chapo is on his way to Altiplano prison.
Altiplano is the most maximum security prison
in all of Mexico and Mexican authorities are convinced
that once he's there, he will stay there forever.
But they seriously underestimated El Chapo.
In 2014,
when El Chapo is sent to Altiplano prison,
the most secure facility in all of Mexico,
most observers figure he's behind bars for good.
Not only is the facility a no-fly zone,
its walls are made of concrete three feet thick,
strong enough to resist a full-scale military assault.
And unlike the last time, he's now being watched
by video cameras 24/7.
El Chapo's long and bloody reign is over at last,
or so it seems
The United States government is trying to
extradite him to the USA and that terrifies El Chapo.
If El Chapo is extradited to the US,
he will lose all his power in the drug cartel,
and he can't have that.
Throughout this entire process,
his lawyers are working overtime trying
to block this extradition move.
For 15 months, he is in solitary confinement by himself
and he's under 24 hour surveillance.
This man that once lived this very lavish lifestyle
is reduced to a cell that's barely big enough to pace in.
He's allowed one hour outside every single day
and then he's put right back into his cell.
In this cell, unlike the one in Jalisco,
there are live cameras
that can capture almost every vantage point.
On July 11th, 2015, El Chapo is sitting on his bed.
It looks like just any other ordinary night,
and about 8:10 he gets it from his bed,
paces over to the shower area,
ducks down behind this wall and disappears
For the next 26 minutes,
he's not appearing on camera.
Finally, the correctional staff goes and checks
El Chapo's cell only to discover
that there's a hole in that shower area
and El Chapo is gone.
When authorities explore the passageway,
they're amazed.
It's a masterpiece of structural engineering.
They look at the shower stall
and they see a tunnel that's been dug underneath the stall.
There are thousands of fluorescent light bulbs
and thousands of feet of PVC piping
that are piping in compressed air into the tunnel,
which is mile long and about 30 feet deep.
It's a hole that is just barely big enough
for El Chapo to squeeze through.
And underneath that waiting for him
on the other side was a motorcycle on a track
that was designed by engineers that whisked him away.
The whole thing is run by an industrial generator
and the tunnel comes up under an abandoned property
about a mile from the prison.
And at this point, it's believed
that El Chapo was at least an hour ahead of officials.
Only later does law enforcement piece together
how El Chapo pulled it off.
After El Chapo was incarcerated,
a couple of gentlemen came and bought
this abandoned piece of property for a lot of money
and said they wanted to build a factory there.
Over the process of a year,
the construction company is putting this building together,
which no one is paying attention to,
even though it's just a mile away
from a maximum security prison
housing the world's most wanted man.
They bring in excavation equipment.
They move tons of earth and no one's the wiser.
Officials estimate that it took
about 350 truckloads of sand
and about $5 million,
plus whatever bribes had to be paid.
And it took about a year for them
to build this tunnel directly under his shower stall.
Law enforcement was blown away
that a tunnel be constructed 30 feet down with the accuracy
to come up in the one location
where a camera couldn't see El Chapo
inside of his jail cell.
It seems impossible until El Chapo's family
proudly reveals how they helped him escape.
El Chapo's wife came to visit him
and brought him a very special watch,
which had a GPS locator.
So the engineers were able to identify the exact location
where the toilet was and the wall.
And the tunnel came up precisely on that point.
El Chapo's escape is front page news.
And now, without that blackberry signal,
authorities don't have the slightest idea
where to find their fugitive next.
The National Security Agency gets involved
with the Mexican law enforcement
and they scour the countryside.
They look through ranches.
They look through government buildings.
They go into churches.
They go in everywhere.
But no one is giving up El Chapo.
El Chapo has pulled off the greatest Houdini Act yet
and escaped from a maximum security prison
and no one knows where he's at.
Now, there's a $5 million award for any information leading
to the location and arrest of El Chapo.
September, 2015, El Chapo has been back
on the loose for two months,
but with so many agents looking for him
and reading cartel phone messages,
it isn't long before he's tracked down again.
This time, the drug lord avoids busy towns
and retreats into the remote Sierra Madre mountains
surrounded by his heavily armed soldiers
and lots of places to hide.
A coalition of American DEA, NSA
and Mexican SEMAR Marines,
get GPS data on one
of Chapo's Guzman's lieutenant's cell phones
and they think they know where he is
and they set out to go get him.
Cosala is a small village
in the mountains of Sinaloa, 7,000 people,
and it's a region known for growing a lot of marijuana.
And at some point, law enforcement pinpoints
where he is in the mountains
and start closing in on his whereabouts.
The authorities think
that this will be a perfect place
to actually catch him,
because if they zoom in on the Jeeps
and the helicopters, and if they seal off the whole area,
El Chapo won't have anywhere to run.
But at the last minute, agents infiltrate texts
between El Chapo and his men that leave them dumbfounded.
El Chapo isn't in hiding at all.
He's hobnobbing with celebrities.
It turns out that just as the authorities are going
to raid the village,
El Chapo is meeting with two famous film stars,
one from the US, Sean Penn,
and another one from Mexico, Kate del Castillo,
who wrote in her social media
that she actually believes in Chapo Guzman
more than in the governments that are hiding the truth.
This really flattered El Chapo.
Kate del Castillo had played
an important female drag kingpin
in a popular TV show called "La Reina del Sur."
And one can assume that Chapo had watched this show
and he had this affinity for the actress.
So they get in touch
and he actually invites her to go meet him.
He's meant to keep a very low profile
so people cannot find him.
And the less people that know where he is,
the better his chances to not be caught again.
El Chapo is out in the wind at this point,
but he's getting a little arrogant.
Apparently, the drug lord wants
to make a film about his life and great escapes.
He entrusts Del Castillo to make it happen.
It's crazy.
Everybody in the world is looking for this guy
and he's planning on making a big budget
movie about himself.
El Chapo had already looked into
having a movie made of his story
and his life and his feats.
He had been working with a Colombian producer,
but the Colombian producer wanted to keep
35% of the profits
and El Chapo didn't like that.
So the Colombian producer and the script ended up vanishing.
El Chapo wants Kate del Castillo
to produce the movie
and she wants to bring Sean Penn on as a producer,
'cause it'll help give credibility to the project.
Sean Penn is also coming with the idea of writing an article
for Rolling Stone about Chapo.
Sean Penn and Del Castillo traveled
to meet El Chapo in this remote location in the hills.
They end up taking two separate small aircraft plane rides
and seven hours in an SUV along a bumpy road.
And he enters the scene like he's royalty,
wearing his silk shirt and his pressed pants.
And for the next seven hours,
he entertains the two of them,
pouring them drinks and talking about his life
and the movie that he wants made
and how this would all come about.
After seven hours, he abruptly ends it.
He says, I gotta go
because I can't stay in one spot for too long.
It's a smart move on El Chapo's part.
Mexican authorities have been tracking
Penn and Del Castillo from the moment they touched down
at Guadalajara Airport, and they're ready to pounce.
The Mexican government wants to arrest El Chapo,
but politicians on the outside are starting
to influence what's going on by saying,
we cannot risk having these well-known actors injured
in the course of this investigation.
So you need to back off
and let them get completely out of the way
and risk losing El Chapo.
The Mexican authorities on the other hand
say, no, we should go.
We should start the raid.
And there is a disagreement between the two governments.
And as this debate is raging on,
the violent storm came into the area
that essentially grounded any aircraft
and it made going on the ocean absolutely impossible.
And so because of Mother Nature,
this whole thing was put on hold.
A few days later, after the storm passes
and the actors go home, the coalition finally moves ahead.
By the time they actually reached a place
while Chapo was with his hundred men, there's nobody left.
The only thing they find is some medication,
broken phones, and two-way radios.
El Chapo, yet again, vanished.
December, 2015.
By intercepting a series of messages
between El Chapo and the actress Kate del Castillo,
agents have tracked the kingpin
to his hometown village of La Tuna,
high in the Sierra Madre mountains,
but instigating a bloodbath here is too great a risk.
So they wait until the drug lord takes a trip into town.
Mexican intelligence at the NSA have discovered
that he's building a beach house on the coast.
That would be an ideal place for a takedown.
The decision is made not to go into the mountains
because it's too dangerous
and too many opportunities for El Chapo to escape.
So they try and force him out to an area closer
to the beach house where they can affect a safer arrest.
They do things like helicopter raids over La Tuna
and they go to outposts where some of his gunmen are
and shoot that all up.
They get him to a point where he's thinking,
I gotta get outta here
because law enforcement is right at my heels.
All of these attempts seem to do the trick.
He leaves his house in La Tuna
and goes to his house on the beach.
When the authorities go to the house,
they don't see anything unusual,
but the house is a white building,
two stories, and it has a gated garage
and a large tree sort of blocking the front of it.
And then on January 7th, 2016,
they see El Chapo sneaking into the house
in the middle of the night.
So by 4:30 AM, they decide to raid the place.
They go in grenades, guns,
everything blasting full force.
Five members of El Chapo's cartel are killed.
Six more are wounded.
After they enter the residence,
the search is made of the beach house,
but El Chapo is gone yet again.
This time, El Chapo had two tunnels
to throw off agents following him.
One was under the refrigerator.
And that one was quickly revealed to be a dead end,
but there was another one in the closet
of the master bedroom behind a mirror,
that was the real tunnel that Chapo used to escape.
A hidden switch activates a trap door
that leads into the city's underground sewer system.
El Chapo and one of his lieutenants have
about a 20 minute lead on law enforcement,
but the sewer is about half full with rain
and putrid human sewage, and it's only getting worse.
So the tunnel is filling up
and they're having to move through it
as far as they can get.
They get to a manhole cover
and it's so heavy that it takes 'em several minutes
to be able to try to open it up.
And ultimately, they end up having to wedge one
of their shoes in to keep it open.
At 8:55 AM, surveillance footage
shows the two men emerging
from the sewer wet and covered in muck.
This time El Chapo and his top lieutenant
have no support.
They're all alone.
So they come outta the manhole cover
and they hijack the first vehicle that they can find,
but it breaks down almost immediately.
So they hijack a second vehicle.
And it's got a woman in it with her five-year-old grandson.
And she's terrified.
They steal that vehicle, kick them out,
and they start to make their escape.
The woman immediately reports it.
And law enforcement set up checkpoints
all over the city trying to find El Chapo.
Hours pass, and at 10:00 PM,
they finally pull over El Chapo
and it's at this point he tries to again use his influence
and buy his way out of this situation.
He offers cash, he offers property, he offers houses.
None of it works.
He then threatens to kill the officers,
but they stand their ground.
And so he says, you're all going to die.
El Chapo says, "My guys are coming to get me.
You better let me go."
So it's a race to see who gets there first,
El Chapo's henchman or the Mexican law enforcement.
This time the Marines, they get to El Chapo first
and that backup squad of assassins that was on the way,
they may be sensing that the Marines are already there
and they never arrive.
After his capture,
El Chapo is taken to a prison in Juarez,
near the US border.
In January, 2017,
he's extradited to the United States
and held in solitary confinement in a Manhattan jail.
Later, in 2019,
he's found guilty in a very highly publicized trial
of drug trafficking, money laundering,
ordering assassinations.
And he is given 30 years plus life as a sentence
and ordered to forfeit $12.6 billion.
El Chapo is by far one
of the biggest mythical figures in Mexican drug trafficking.
And it looks like his son may be forming an alliance
with some of his old rivals.
So it's gonna be really interesting to see
how this all plays out
and whether or not we can really still talk
about the Sinaloa Cartel
as a coherent entity without El Chapo.
Today, El Chapo is held
at ADX Florence in Colorado,
the most secure federal prison in the United States.
He is confined to a tiny cell 23 hours a day.
His empire has fractured
and dozens of cartel leaders have been
arrested in the years since.
But as of 2024, it's estimated
that at least 80,000 people have died in Mexico as a result
of the seemingly endless drug wars
that El Chapo helped start.
Joaquin El Chapo Guzman may finally be behind bars,
but the violent world he helped create lives on.
I'm Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching this "Case Closed" episode
of "History's Greatest Mysteries."