Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix (24 October 1949 – 18 October 2013) was a leader of the Tijuana Cartel during the 1990s and 2000s. He was murdered at his birthday party by a Sinaloa Cartel gunman dressed as a clown in Los Cabos, Baja California in 2013.
Biography[]
Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix was born in Culiacan, Sinaloa, Mexico in 1949, the oldest of the Arellano Felix children. He was the brother of Enedina, Benjamin, Carlos Alberto, Eduardo, Ramon, Luis Fernando, and Francisco Javier, and he came from a large family of drug traffickers. He stayed in Culiacan even after his family's move to Guadalajara, Jalisco, founding the Frankie Oh nightclub, which also contained a large zoo. He was imprisoned in the United States in 1985 on drug-related charges, befriending David Barron Corona in prison. They were released in 1986, and they were greeted with a large nightclub party in Tijuana. There, Francisco Rafael tried crack cocaine for the first time after it was given to him by Ramon. The party was crashed by Joaquin Guzman Loera and several other Sinaloa plaza smugglers, leading to a brawl between the Tijuana plaza and Sinaloa plaza associates.
Boss of Tijuana[]
Ramon, Francisco Rafael, and Benjamin at Benjamin's daughter's birthday party, 1987
After the Guadalajara Cartel was partitioned in 1989, the Tijuana plaza became the independent Tijuana Cartel, and the Arellano Felix siblings dominated the cartel. Tijuana and Sinaloa engaged in open warfare during the 1990s, and Barron saved the Arellano Felix brothers' lives in the November 1992 Christine nightclub shootout. The Tijuana Cartel retaliated with the 1993 Guadalajara International Airport shootout, where they failed to kill Guzman, but succeeded in killing Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo. On 4 December 1993, Francisco Rafael was arrested for Posadas' murder and for his other crimes, and he was extradited to the United States in 2003. In 2007, he was sentenced to six years in prison, but he was released on 4 March 2008 after just a year and five months behind bars, as his sentence was commuted to time served. He was then deported to Mexico via Ciudad Juarez, and he settled in Los Cabos, Baja California with his wife, posing as the music producer "Mauro Vazquez".
Assassination[]
At his birthday party on 18 October 2013, he hosted 100 attendees including businessmen, politicians, celebrities, sports figures, and various bands. The party was crashed by a man in a clown costume who pulled out a pistol and shot Francisco Rafael several times in the head at point-blank range; the clown then fired four more shots to scare off Francisco Rafael's sons, who were chasing him. There were various theories surrounding his death, but the most popular one blamed the Sinaloa Cartel, with Jose Rodrigo Arechiga Gamboa and Ismael Zambada Garcia being named by the Office of the General Prosecutor as the attack's masterminds.