A border bandit from Sinaloa pleaded guilty Tuesday to murdering Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry during a mission to find drug traffickers and steal their marijuana.
With his guilty plea, Manuel Osorio-Arellanes became the first person held responsible for the agent's Dec. 14, 2010, killing. Four fugitives have also been charged with first-degree murder in the case.
In exchange for the plea, federal prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty. Instead, when he is sentenced by U.S. District Judge David Bury on Jan. 11, Osorio-Arellanes faces a sentence of up to life in prison.
In his plea agreement, Osorio-Arellanes told the story of his involvement in the banditry that ended with Terry's death. He admitted he was recruited by two men from his home area in the Sierra Madre of western Sinaloa state, and that they had stashed weapons in Arizona to use in robbing smugglers.
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Terry's case became notorious when it was revealed in early 2011 that the two weapons found at the scene of his murder had been sold by a Phoenix-area dealer to a man who was a suspect in an ATF investigation, Operation Fast and Furious.
"Agent Terry was killed in the line of duty courageously safeguarding our border," said Laura Duffy, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California, which is prosecuting this case. "Today's plea is an important step in seeking justice on behalf of Agent Terry."
Family members also pointed to the guilty plea as a key step but not the end of the pursuit of justice in his killing.
"My family knows much more now than we did in the weeks after Brian's death when our own government denied the claims of a few courageous ATF whistleblowers that guns were being walked," Terry's mother, Josephine, said in a written statement.
She asked that the Obama administration provide full, transparent information about the operation that apparently put weapons in the hands of Osorio-Arellanes and the rest of the border rip crew.
In the plea agreement, Osorio-Arellanes said he was recruited for the trip in VinaterÃa, Sinaloa, by co-defendants Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes and Jesús Favela-Astorga, who had previously worked as robbers along the border.
On Dec. 7, 2010, a crew of six traveled from VinaterÃa to Nogales, Sonora. Then they entered the United States illegally together, Osorio-Arellanes said in the plea agreement. On Dec. 12, the group was hiking in the remote areas outside Nogales, Ariz., to retrieve their hidden firearms when they came across Border Patrol agents.
The agents caught Osorio-Arellanes' brother, Rito, but the other five escaped, and eventually came back to retrieve their backpacks, then found the guns and food supplies hidden in the area. Rito is facing sentencing on lesser charges in the case.
Once the group "secured firearms and food supplies, they began looking for drug smugglers to rob," Manuel Osorio-Arellanes admitted in the plea agreement.
But before they found any victims, they came across the Border Patrol tactical unit of which Terry was a part, in a remote area west of Rio Rico. The agents were looking for rip-off crews like the one Osorio-Arellanes was a part of.
In the plea agreement, Osorio-Arellanes does not say whether he fired a shot, but the agreement says some of the bandits fired shots, killing Terry. Agents also fired shots and injured Osorio-Arellanes. The remaining four members of the crew escaped.
In July, the FBI announced a reward for the capture of the fugitives, and one was captured Sept. 6 in Puerto Peñasco. That man, Jesús Leonel Sánchez Meza, is in prison in central Mexico, awaiting a decision on an extradition request by the United States. The other fugitive defendant is Ivan Soto-Barraza.
Contact reporter Tim Steller at 807-8427 or tsteller@azstarnet.com
