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An Oct. 1, 1978, article by Ramon Villalobos reports that in 1933 El Paso was the site of the first international prisoner exchange between Mexico and the United States.
The story was best described by Villalobos as a “movie-like drama.”
The cast of characters
It involved a Mexican national serving a life sentence in the Texas penitentiary for an El Paso robbery and murder, and an American who was awaiting execution in the Chihuahua state penitentiary for the slaying of a Juárez bar waiter in 1930.
One of the prisoners in the episode was Jose Carrasco, member of a five-man gang who in 1924 staged a daring but unsuccessful railroad payroll robbery in El Paso in which the father of the American in the Mexican prison was shot to death.
The American prisoner was W.J. “Jeff” Meers, an El Paso freight agent who shot and killed Vicente Visconti, the bar waiter in the Owl Bar, after Meers was led to believe the victim was Manuel Villareal, leader of the gang that killed his father.
Behind the swap was then sheriff of El Paso County Chris P. Fox, the late State District Judge Ballard Coldwell, Winston Pettis, an American living in Chihuahua City, who with other El Pasoans spent months in the negotiations. Fox became an executive of the State National Bank.
The then-Texas Gov. Ross Sterling had commuted Carrasco’s death sentence to life in prison.
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Exchange of prisoners
The exchange of the prisoners occurred at 3:30 a.m. April 20, 1933, in the middle of the Santa Fe Street Bridge. Meers was turned over to Fox. Both men shook hands before the small crowd of officials who witnessed the exchange.
Carrasco walked across the bridge a free man. Meers was taken to the Sheriff’s Office, where his young wife, Elizabeth Kenton Meers, was waiting.
Fox recalled that after Meers signed some papers, the young couple walked out holding hands. Meers, 27, had been in prison for three years.
“That was the last time I saw Meers. To date I haven’t heard whether he’s alive or not,” the chief negotiator said. The couple, he said, went to California, where he later learned they were divorced.
Death before a firing squad
Fox did not remember, but other people involved in the case claimed that at one time during the exchange talks, hope for Meer’s release faded when an Ardmore, Okla., deputy sheriff shot and killed Emilio Cortez Rubio, a relative of former Mexican President Ortiz Rubio. On June 28, 1931, the day the Oklahoma jury found the deputy sheriff William Guess not guilty, a Chihuahua City judge sentenced Meers to death before a firing squad, in what many friends of the Meers family felt was an act of retaliation.
Meers’ attorney appealed immediately, resulting in a higher Mexican court reversing Meers’ death sentence to life.
Movie-like drama
This movie-like drama had its beginning on the morning of March 18, 1924, when young Meers’ father, W.H. Meers, and several federal reserve bank guards were gunned down by bandits attempting to seize the $18,000 payroll of the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railroad outside the company’s office on Octavia Street. The bandits had darted out from a nearby restaurant.
Meers’ father fell in the exchange of shots. Anastacio Lopez, a bystander, was killed in the cross-fire. George Reed, another guard, was seriously wounded but recovered, and W.L. Laird escaped unhurt.
As fast as they had attacked, the bandits, failing to get the money, ran to a waiting automobile and sped away amid a hail of bullets from the wounded Reed and Laird.
“From what I know of the attempted robbery, Carrasco was hanging on the rear of the car and was wounded in the legs, one of which later was amputated,” Fox said.
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Getaway car located
All available policemen were pressed into the search for the bandits. About 2 p.m., the blood splattered, bullet-riddled automobile used by the bandits in their getaway was found at the corner of St. Vrain Street and Second (now Paisano Drive). In a nearby house, police captured Carrasco, Agapito Rueda, who also had been shot in the legs, and Adrian Lopez. The two others, identified as Manuel Villarreal and Alejo Minjarez, escaped to Mexico.
All five were indicted by a grand jury, with the three captured men going on trial. Carrasco and Rueda were found guilty and were sentenced to death. Lopez, a tubercular, died in prison while awaiting trial.
Texas prison officials later disclosed that Rueda had been the first Mexican national to die in the electric chair in Huntsville.
Villareal, whom Meers had sought as the slayer of his father, was killed later by a Chihuahua City policeman while Meers was in prison. Nothing was later heard from Minjarez.
Mistaken identity
It was brooding over his father’s death that was believed to have caused Meers to kill Visconti, believing he was Villareal, the gang’s leader and the slayer of his father.
Meers, who was 17 at the time of his father’s death, was never himself again, his mother told friends.
Six years later, still brooding over his father’s death, Meers heard Villareal was in Juárez working as a customs inspector.
On June 18, 1930, accompanied by a friend, Meers went to Juárez. While they were in the Owl Bar, some joker reportedly stepped up to Meers and pointed to a waiter, whispering “that’s Villareal.” Newspaper accounts of the slaying said Meers called the waiter to his table. As he approached, Meers pulled a .38 caliber revolver from his coat and fired six shots at Visconti. Five shots entered the heart, one entered the left arm.
Meers refused to disclose who had given him the false tip.
Later, Meers told reporters Villareal and the man he had shot were identical in appearance.
A few days after the Owl Bar shooting, Meers was removed from the Juárez jail and taken to the state prison for safekeeping.
Behind Meers’ fight for freedom is a story of what friends termed an unwavering loyalty on the part of his wife and his mother, Mrs. A. Gregory, who on the night of the Visconti killing told reporters her son had been prompted by “a spirit of revenge.”
As for Meers, Chris Fox says, “nobody knows.”
Trish Long may be reached at tlong@elpasotimes.com or 91-546-6179.
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