One of the individuals convicted in the 1985 death of Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique ‘Kiki’ Camarena has been released from custody.

Ernesto “Don Neto” Fonseca Carrillo, a co-founder of the Guadalajara Cartel, was released last weekend after serving his 40-year sentence, according to a federal agent who spoke to the Associated Press. 

Fonseca, 94, had been under house arrest outside Mexico City since being transferred from prison in 2016 to serve the remainder of his sentence. Representatives for did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Digital on Thursday. 

Rafael Caro Quintero, another Guadalajara Cartel co-founder also convicted in Camarena’s murder, was among 29 cartel members extradited by Mexico to the United States in February. It remains unclear whether the U.S. intends to take Fonseca into custody. 

At the time of his death, the DEA agent had been using wiretaps to conduct significant drug busts within Mexico. 

In February 1985, as Camarena was leaving to meet his wife for lunch near the U.S. consulate in Guadalajara, he was apprehended by officers from the DFS, a now-defunct Mexican intelligence agency. 

“Back in the middle 1980s, the DFS, their main role was to protect the drug lords,” former DEA agent Hector Berrellez, who led the Camarena murder investigation, told in 2013. 

The DFS agents then transported Camarena, blindfolded and at gunpoint, to one of Caro Quintero’s nearby properties. 

For over 30 hours, Caro-Quintero and others interrogated Camarena, crushing his skull, jaw, nose, and cheekbones with a tire iron. They broke his ribs, drilled a hole in his head, and used a cattle prod to torture him. As Camarena was dying, Caro-Quintero instructed a cartel doctor to keep the U.S. agent alive. 

The 37-year-old’s body was discovered on a nearby ranch approximately one month later. 

In 2013, Caro Quintero was released after serving 28 years in prison, after a court overturned his 40-year sentence for the kidnapping and murder of Camarena. 

Caro Quintero was rearrested by Mexican forces in July 2022, allegedly after returning to drug trafficking. 

’ Greg Wehner, William La Jeunesse, Lee Ross and  

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