Alleged drug dealer and pedophile Samuel Velasco Gurrola, faces upto 99 years after he was found guilty of hatching a plot which led to the death of his wife, her sister and his father-in-law in Mexico 

Three siblings from El Paso, Texas charged in connection with a 2008 murder-for-hire plot  that went down in Mexico, face up to life in prison if they are convicted of the count of causing foreign travel for the purpose of committing the murders of a lawyer-businessman and his two daughters in Juárez, Mexico.
The defendants Emmanuel “Richie” Velasco Gurrola, Samuel Velasco Gurrola and Dalia Valencia, aka Dalia Velasco, had been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiracy to kill in a foreign country and conspiracy to cause travel in foreign commerce in the commission of murder for hire.
The instigator of the chain of events, Samuel Velasco Gurrola, 41, of El Paso, faces a mandatory life sentence. He was convicted last week of conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country and conspiracy to cause foreign travel for murder for hire.

Velasco’s sister Monica Velasco, a Texas school teacher linked to drug gang has been declared a fugitive by the feds

 Two of his siblings, Emmanuel Velasco Gurrola  and Dalia Valencia, have pled guilty to conspiracy-related counts and face up to life terms. A third sibling remains at large and is being sought by the authorities. 42-year-old Monica Velasco, quit her long-time elementary school teacher post at Manor Elementary in September 2015. Her resignation followed the charges brought against her two sisters and brother in that 2008 murder in Juarez, Mexico of her brother’s wife, his father-inlaw and the wife’s sister. She has been a fugitive since.
The prosecution case states that when Samuel Velasco Gurrola was charged in 2005 with aggravated sexual assault of a child and indecency with a child, his then entranged wife and 40-year-old Ruth Sagredo Escobedo, was determined to bring him to book. That was when he hatched the plot to stop her from testifying against him.
Ruth Sagredo, a nurse practitioner at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, was killed Nov. 22, 2008, during her sister’s funeral in Juárez. Roberto Martinez, a colleague and physician’s assistant who accompanied her to the funeral, also died in the ambush.
According to the late woman’s first husband, Ruth who around that time, was in the process of getting a divorce from Samuel Velasco was also determined to testify in the case against Velasco.

Velasco’s sister, Texas elementary school teacher Monica Velasco, is being sought in connection to the assassination scheme and her role as the business brains of the family drug business

Testifying in the case against Samuel Velasco, Eduardo Avalos Sr, Sagredo’s ex and the father of their children, told the court ‘She was very adamant about getting this person [Velasco] prosecuted and have him pay for what he did’.
The court also heard that Ruth was living in fear of her life. Her brother Carlos Sagredo, testified that his sister was scared because she was being followed, she was getting threatening phone calls, and dead birds were left at her house.
The El Paso Times reports that Carlos Sagredo told the court, Velasco had concocted a plot to kill his father-in-law in an effort to lure his wife to cross back into Mexico for the funeral, thus presenting his hired hitmen the opportunity to assasinate her.
As the plot unfolded the first intended victim was Ruth Sagredo’s 69-year-old father was killed in October 2008. A group of masked men broke into the Juarez, Mexico, home of Francisco Maria Sagredo Villareal, stole money from his safe and killed him.

Carlos Sagredo told the court his sister did cross the border to attend their father’s funeral, as Velasco had planned, but the assassins were unable to fulfill the contract killing due to heavy police presence at the cemetery on the day, coincidentally attending funerals for two of their murdered colleagues.

The murder plots hatched in El Paso, Texas took the lives of 4 people in Juarez, Mexico

After the disappointment, Samuel Velasco still determined to silence his wife, hatched a new plan to have his sister-in-law killed in order to draw his wife back to Mexico.
On November 20 that same year, Cinthia Sagredo Escobedo, 40, became the second collateral casualty of the scheme as she was shot dead by masked gunmen outside her late father’s hotel in Juarez.
Two days later, Ruth back in Juarez for yet another family tragedy was killed by a masked man who let loose machine gun fire on the limousine she was riding in the funeral cortege. Sagredo’s friend Roberto Martinez, who was sitting in the back of the limo next to her, was also killed.
‘I saw Roberto’s head just gone,’ Carlos Sagredo recounted for the jury. ‘I saw my sister … with a bullet in her eye. She expired in front of me.’
Ruth Sagredo who had married Velasco in 2005, became a witness to the molestation case in 2006, and filed for divorce shortly after the molestation allegedly occurred, according to court records. Following the assassination of Ruth Sagredo, the sexual assault case against her husband effectively ‘went away’. The divorce proceeding was dismissed and the molestation case was dropped a year later, in 2009.
On Monday, jurors took just three hours of delibrations to convict Samuel Velasco, sentencing is scheduled for January 2017.
His brother, Emmanuel Velasco Gurrola, 30, who pled guilty to three counts of conspiracy to injure property of foreign government is scheduled to be sentenced in December. Older sister Dalia Valencia , 44, has also entered a guilty plea in connection to the murder-for-hire plan.
The US Marshals Service is still searching for Velasco’s other sister, Monica Velasco, 42, who at one time had worked as a teacher at Thomas Manor Elementary School in Lower Valley.
The investigators say Monica Velasco acted primarily as the banker for the ‘Family Business’.  She is accused of handling and storing money for the family business that feds referred to as the “Velasco Criminal Enterprise.”
The operation consisted of stealing drug loads from suppliers and turning those drugs for a profit. She would receive and then disburse the money to those working the job. She also allegedly, handled the purchase and registration or rental of vehicles used in the crimes which would go largely unreported.
The federal indictment brought against the family shows that they have been operating in North and South Carolina, Las Vegas, New Mexico, and across the Rio Grande in Juarez.
The four siblings joined by nine other suspects are all facing federal charges in the drug-trafficking case. In February their  63 year-old mother, Josefina Gurrola, was arrested for concealing a fugitive from arrest, by using disposable, or “burner” cell phones to communicate with her daughter, who remains at large.