Original subtitles

Tonight, the hunt for one

of the most wanted men in the world

and how this seemingly untouchable drug lord

was finally caught.

Many say that El Chapo is responsible

for at least 50% of all the illegal drugs

that enter the United States from Mexico.

Forbes Magazine even estimated his value

into the billions of dollars.

For years, US and Mexican agents have been searching

for El Chapo, trying to bring him to justice.

El Chapo becomes public enemy number one,

someone that was always

seemingly outsmarting authorities.

He really focused on using tunnels

to always have an escape route.

El Chapo has pulled off the greatest Houdini Act yet

and no one knows where he's at.

Now, we follow the global hunt for El Chapo

and the operation that ended with his capture.

Everybody in the world is looking for this guy

and he's planning

on making a big budget movie about himself.

It seems like every time agents hone in on him,

he's magically gone again.

The question for law enforcement is,

where is the drug Lord hiding

and can they ever get there first?

April 8th, 1989, the leader of Mexico's

most powerful drug cartel is arrested

for the murder of a DEA agent.

Before going to prison,

his empire is divided between three drug lords,

but once Gallardo is incarcerated, they go to war.

One of them will stop at nothing to come out on top.

Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman, better known as El Chapo.

El Chapo is the illiterate son of a Mexican farmer who rose

to prominence to become one of the most famous

and perhaps the most ruthless drug trafficker

in the history of the world.

And he does this by unleashing a rash

of violence across the country of Mexico.

One example of this violence

is he knew that some

of his rival members in a cartel

were gonna be dancing one night at a dance club,

so he sends his henchmen

to go raid the dance floor,

bullets flying everywhere,

and the end result?

Most of the cartel members got off scot-free,

but six innocent people died that night.

This led to a train reaction

that ended up unfolding at the Guadalajara airport

in broad daylight just a few months later.

His rivals tracked him down

and they thought that they had opened fire

on his white sedan,

but what ended up happening though is they ended up

killing a beloved Mexican Cardinal.

The cardinal's murder

marks a turning point in the country's narcotics wars.

For the first time, everyday Mexicans see

how brutal the drug trade has become and they want justice.

The Mexican government at this point is also working

with the US Drug Enforcement Administration

who put on a bounty for any information

related to the location of El Chapo.

So he gets a fake passport

and then flees to Guatemala.

He lives pretty comfortably for a little while,

but then the political pressure starts to heat up

and sooner or later he's

cornered by the Guatemalan military

and he is taken into custody

and eventually charged with multiple counts of murder

and drug trafficking.

And he's extradited to Jalisco in Mexico

where he's sent to a maximum security prison.

The Mexican government was very proud of this moment,

as well as they should be.

The president goes on TV and says, we have got El Chapo

and he's not going to escape.

El Chapo spends eight years in that prison

and it's really not a bad time for him,

because during the day,

El Chapo micromanages his business using his phone,

and at night, it's party time.

So there is alcohol, there are prostitutes.

He even has a private chef and the wardens in prison

and other officials are paid off,

and so they take care of him there.

While El Chapo leads

a charmed prison life in Mexico,

the FBI is eager to have him face trial in the US

for his crimes.

In 2001, a new law makes that a possibility.

The Mexican Supreme Court rules

that El Chapo can be extradited to the United States,

so long as the death penalty is taken off the table.

But this is one of the worst fears for El Chapo.

The chances of him escaping from prison

in the United States are slim to none.

But his extradition

won't be happening anytime soon.

On the evening of January 19th, 2001,

a prison worker makes a shocking discovery.

A security guard goes to check on El Chapo

and there's a curtain draped over his cell.

And as he enters, the inmate is not there.

El Chapo is no longer in his cell.

So some said that El Chapo disappeared from prison hidden

in a laundry cart under a pile of dirty clothes.

And the way it happened was

that a corrupt prison guard pushed him

through various checkpoints

and outside of the prison,

where somebody else whisked him away.

El Chapo's escape was a humiliation

for the Mexican government.

They had just gone on television thumping their chest

that they had caught

the world's most wanted drug trafficker,

only for him to slip through their fingers.

Thousands of Mexican policemen

scour the countryside and cities,

but every time they think they're close,

the drug lord vanishes.

He's able to stay one step ahead of the authorities

and it's almost as though he's never going to get caught.

Months go by, then years,

and while the manhunt drags on,

El Chapo expands his operation.

He's creating new routes to traffic

from Mexico City,

through Sinaloa, Sonora.

He has all the west side of the country under control

and he's also expanding in his portfolio of drugs.

He already trafficked marijuana, cocaine, heroin,

and he starts also trafficking meth.

At that point, he has made it very clear he wants

to control the entire US-Mexican border.

In 2007, he declares war on the Juarez cartel.

What that means for the Mexican people is decapitations,

people hanging from bridges,

whole families disappearing in makeshift graves,

and some people just disappearing.

At the height of the violence in Juarez,

tens of thousands of Mexicans are being killed

and many people blame El Chapo

for being behind those murders.

Rumors have it

that he has entire police departments on his payroll

and also he has his own private army

with armored vehicles, the latest weaponry,

and helicopters,

so it's very hard to reach him.

The Mexican government is paralyzed.

The amount of money that El Chapo is now making,

through the control of the drug trade,

places him at the top of the pyramid.

He's now the premier drug trafficker in the world.

El Chapo's enterprises

are flooding the United States with drugs,

and the DEA and FBI desperately want him

in an American prison to pay

for the crimes he's committed against American citizens.

With the entire world now focused on El Chapo,

the problem falls on the shoulders of law enforcement,

the DEA, the Mexican government,

to figure out where El Chapo is hiding.

And they're really struggling with this until they discover

that El Chapo and his leadership

are using Blackberry mobile devices.

But the additional challenge they face is

that the cartel has actually installed

a sophisticated telephone system,

so that they can contact each other,

but hide virtually the ID number

on that phone from law enforcement.

The Blackberry at that time had a number

of security features

and you needed a three digit pin

in order to access that device.

DEA or the FBI did not have that information at that time.

In February, 2012,

it seems as though El Chapo was never gonna be caught,

but then the feds get a big break.

They take into custody Christian Rodriguez,

who's one of the top lieutenants for El Chapo.

And he's really the mastermind behind this encrypted system.

So in exchange for a reduced sentence,

he gives the pin numbers over

and they get the keys to this encryption system.

So now the DEA has the general location

of El Chapo and his lieutenants,

but the thing is they can't pinpoint it down

to a particular house.

There is a great deal of certainty

that these devices are operating in Cabo San Lucas.

This is a very populated area.

In fact, this is a place that probably has

two and a half to 3 million visitors every year,

usually rich Americans

or wealthy Mexicans that are coming to vacation.

It's also, at that moment in time,

one of the most secure places on the planet.

In 2012, the G20 summit is happening in Los Cabos

and this is a very high profile political moment.

There's Hillary Clinton in town,

there's a lot of media,

there's a lot of security for all the diplomats coming in,

and at that time, Chapo is also in town.

According to messages and GPS phone signals,

El Chapo and his entourage are staying somewhere

in an exclusive community just north of Cabo San Lucas.

The Mexican authorities put together

a 300 man operational team,

which also involves some DEA personnel,

to surround the resort area

to try and prevent El Chapo

from escaping once again.

February 21st, 2012,

it's go time for the Mexican authorities.

The problem is that they don't know exactly where he is.

They know of about a dozen beachfront mansions

and they raid every single one

and they come up empty handed.

And it isn't until the last one,

another beachfront mansion at the end of a cul-de-sac,

that they zero in on who they believe is El Chapo.

They barge through the door

and there they find El Chapo's pilot.

And the other people who were arrested in this house

actually tell them, oh yeah, El Chapo was here,

but when he heard noises, he left through the back door.

The Mexican authorities' repeated failure

to capture El Chapo is, for many, a national joke.

First, he allegedly rolls out

of a maximum security prison with the laundry.

Now, he simply walks out the back door

of his fancy seaside mansion.

The fact that they have had this big operation

and they let the guy go out through the back door,

it is not a good look for the Mexican government

and it's a very, very low moment in the morale

of Mexican authorities.

Now, the DEA are extremely upset.

They believe that there is a significant leak

within the Mexican police.

Just days after he slips out the back door,

his cell phone is back on in Cabo

and it's pinging again

and it's almost as though El Chapo is sort of

thumbing his nose at authorities that are on his tail.

For more than 15 years, Joaquin Guzman,

AKA El Chapo,

has dodged Mexican and US law enforcement at every turn.

No matter what agents try, the kingpin always seems

to be three steps ahead of them.

That is until 2012 when a young DEA agent named Andrew Hogan

arrives in Mexico City,

determined to outsmart El Chapo once and for all.

Hogan realizes that even with the narrow escape,

El Chapo is still using the same Blackberry system,

but he does see a difference.

It used to be

that the messages were going directly from a lieutenant,

or even somebody lower, to El Chapo.

There was something that was a little different

this time.

It appeared that many of the conversations seemed

to drop off midstream.

And as Hogan looked at these messages, he started

to wonder if they were using a strategy

that he had witnessed in other drug investigations.

Hogan, a data expert, recognizes this pattern.

It's a classic counterintelligence move

known as mirroring.

The way mirroring works,

if you want to talk to El Chapo, you have

to send a Blackberry message to a secondary individual.

That individual retrieves the message, types it on a laptop,

uses the Wi-Fi system to send it to another individual

who retrieves the message,

retypes it on his blackberry and sends it to El Chapo.

El Chapo will answer the same way.

So now you see there's a firewall between the individual

who sent the message and the individual

who received the message,

making it impossible to track El Chapo.

But Hogan isn't ready to give up.

He's hoping that if he can identify cartel members

who are still using the server,

he'll eventually find the man himself.

But first, he needs to decipher their messages.

What he discovers is that there are a few keywords

that really stand out.

One, is the keyword "a hooded one," which he determines

to be law enforcement officers, particularly DEA agents.

Another term used by the cartel is the water ones.

That indicates the Mexican navy.

And someone on the roll indicated somebody

who was taking bribes from the cartel

and providing information.

Hogan focuses in on the lieutenants.

And one day, there's a new phone that's involved

that's barking orders to these lieutenants.

Hogan is betting

that this can only be El Chapo,

and for some reason, the boss is back online.

And according to this new phone's GPS signal,

he's on the move.

As Hogan goes through all of this information,

he starts to really focus on the city of Culiacan.

He believes very strongly that El Chapo

and his top lieutenants are going there to conduct business.

More than a year passes as they watch

and wait preparing for what might be their next move.

Finally, in December, 2013, there's a break.

Several cartel phones light up with a word

that's used over and over, "Pichis."

Hogan and the others,

they don't know whether it's a cartel nickname

or whether it's something warning

that law enforcement's listening in,

until Hogan goes to a map.

Pichis is a nickname

for an abandoned duck hunting club called Pichiguila,

located in the foothills of the Sierra Madre mountains.

The intel on the ground lets Hogan know

that El Chapo actually bought this place

and he is fixing it up into a luxury fortress.

The land is flat

which from El Chapo's perspective is good

because he can see anybody coming in, nobody can hide.

It's a horrible place for a raid, for precisely that reason

but, Hogan is detirmined.

"We've got him there. Let's go after him"

Hogan thinks this is a good moment to attack,

but he's very wary

of the situation that happened in Kabul.

He doesn't want another humiliation,

but legally he's required

to inform the Mexican law enforcement about the intel.

So he contacts SEMAR,

which is an equivalent of American Marine forces

and they have a plan for an attack.

On the morning of January 19th, 2014,

Hogan gets a call from a fellow agent

that El Chapo has just arrived at the target location.

It's time to make their move.

They amass a major operation.

They have the Black Hawks.

They have hundreds of SEMAR and 50 DEA agents.

They cover the back area this time,

in an attempt to prevent El Chapo from escaping yet again.

Hogan's plan seems very comprehensive.

He has the military helping with any air operations,

with anything that's happening by water,

to cut off the Gulf of California.

And of course, the DEA handling anything

as far as the roads going in and out

of the facility are concerned.

They're ready to go,

until Hogan gets a message from another DEA agent

who has intercepted a message to El Chapo.

It said, "The ones from the water... hooded ones...

stay alert crossing the pond."

The message to El Chapo from his insiders is

to be careful when he tries to cross the pond,

or that Gulf of California

where those marines are waiting for him.

Obviously somebody's warning El Chapo

that the American intel is coming,

that the Marines are coming, that the SEMAR is coming.

They just don't know how it could have happened.

They later get a message saying,

"That 10K roll was worth it,"

meaning someone had just been paid off.

Hogan is distraught.

The only silver lining in all of this

is they still have access to El Chapo's phone.

So all Hogan needs to do is just sit back

and wait for it to ping again.

In 2014, the Mexican drug lord, El Chapo,

sits at the very top

of the FBI's most wanted list,

but every time law enforcement gets near him, he slips away.

Now, agents have tracked his phone

to the Mexican city of Culiacan.

This is the headquarters of El Chapo's cartel,

one of the most dangerous places on Earth.

This is a place that is 100% controlled by the cartels.

Even in Culiacan, first responders are not safe,

and it's a place where you find innocent people

as collateral damage

to the violence carried out by the cartels.

It's unclear if El Chapo knows that he's being tracked,

but he knows that he's going to be safe here.

This is his hometown, this is his headquarters,

this is his base of operations.

El Chapo knows that the town is under lockdown

and he retreats about a mile from the center of town,

where the DEA is still able to follow these pings.

DEA agent Andrew Hogan

and his team have a critical choice to make.

Do they move into dangerous cartel territory

and try to capture El Chapo

or wait until he heads to a safer, less fortified spot?

The DEA and the Mexican authorities are concerned

that El Chapo's way ahead of 'em.

They're still in his territory, so they're very reluctant.

Hogan pushes back hard because he knows,

based on reading Chapo's text,

that Chapo doesn't think he's under surveillance.

And he's got it down to about a one block radius

of where he thinks Chapo Guzman is.

So he believes that it's now or never.

On February 15th, 2014, it is a full all out operation

to go into Culiacan.

They use helicopters, armored tanks,

to go in to descend on El Chapo,

because they're expecting to be met

with the most fierce resistance.

Hogan can't pinpoint the exact house,

so they're swarming in around this neighborhood

and that's when it intercepts a message

from El Chapo to his cook,

"Lucia flatten the bathtub."

Hogan doesn't quite know what that means,

but it's significant.

Surprisingly, the Marines are able to sweep through the city

and encounter little physical resistance.

They're able to get through the town fairly quickly.

They do wound a couple of the cartel members,

but it's a large neighborhood with a lot of houses,

so they're not exactly sure where to go.

They uncover piles of guns, bricks of drugs,

but El Chapo is nowhere to be found.

Just as they're about to wrap up the operation,

they find somebody who's trying to get outta town.

And this is another one of the top lieutenants for El Chapo,

a man who goes by the name of El Nariz, or the nose.

The Nose has been part

of El Chapo's inner circle for years

and sits high on authority's most wanted list.

Almost immediately, for reasons he doesn't share,

he sells out his boss.

Law enforcement thinks

that Chapo will be where Nariz is,

so they do start questioning him

and pretty quickly Nariz says,

"Look, it's a system where we call all the safe houses

with numbers and El Chapo is in house number five.

The DEA and the Marines,

they know it could be a trap, but they descend on a building

and they come upon a steel door

reinforced against blast and heat, and it slows them down.

When the DEA and the Marines reach the door,

they're met with a spray of bullets

and one soldier is injured

and two cartel members are tackled and brought down.

They keep going through the building

and they get to a bathroom.

Like the rest of the house,

it's deserted, but as they enter the bathroom,

the soldiers discover exactly

how El Chapo managed to vanish again.

Agents find that the bathtub can be lifted

and that there's a tunnel

and that that tunnel system connects

to all the other safe houses.

It's at this point that Hogan sees the bathtub

and he understands the text that was sent,

"Lucia flatten the bathtub, was El Chapo telling his

personal chef to try to help him to escape.

The agents realize he could have only had

about a 15 minute headstart,

but no one in that town is going to utter a word.

They're afraid of him.

The one piece of good news is

that he's likely traveling

with one of his most trusted compatriots, El Condor.

Luckily, Hogan had already been tracking El Condor's

Blackberry device, but it goes dead for five days.

Then, on February 20th,

El Condor's phone buzzes to life.

He's sending a text

Condor's signal pops up in Mazatlan,

this coastal city a little over an hour

and a half drive from Culiacan.

There's a lot of tourists in that town,

but it's not a hotspot.

Hogan at this point is wondering, is this a trick?

Is this a deception?

Chapo Guzman has fooled people

before by switching out phones,

but over the next few days they intercept more text messages

from Chapo Guzman's men,

and it starts to make them think

that it really is them in Mazatlan.

In Mazatlan, law enforcement find

that the GPS signal from Condor is coming

from the mid Miramar Condominio.

This is a very low key hotel

and it's a very unassuming place.

On February 21st, 2014,

in a massive pre-dawn raid,

40 Mexican soldiers storm the Miramar.

They realized fairly quickly that nobody's there,

except in room 401.

When they finally batter down the door,

there on the other side of it is El Condor.

He is there with a rifle,

but he quickly realizes he's outnumbered

and he surrenders very quickly.

They see also somebody hiding in the master bedroom,

and when they look behind the door,

there is the world's most wanted drug trafficker.

Chapo basically tries to run for the bathroom,

but at that point it's just impossible.

People remember him saying,

"I cannot believe you caught me."

The next day, the story is front page news.

El Chapo is on his way to Altiplano prison.

Altiplano is the most maximum security prison

in all of Mexico and Mexican authorities are convinced

that once he's there, he will stay there forever.

But they seriously underestimated El Chapo.

In 2014,

when El Chapo is sent to Altiplano prison,

the most secure facility in all of Mexico,

most observers figure he's behind bars for good.

Not only is the facility a no-fly zone,

its walls are made of concrete three feet thick,

strong enough to resist a full-scale military assault.

And unlike the last time, he's now being watched

by video cameras 24/7.

El Chapo's long and bloody reign is over at last,

or so it seems

The United States government is trying to

extradite him to the USA and that terrifies El Chapo.

If El Chapo is extradited to the US,

he will lose all his power in the drug cartel,

and he can't have that.

Throughout this entire process,

his lawyers are working overtime trying

to block this extradition move.

For 15 months, he is in solitary confinement by himself

and he's under 24 hour surveillance.

This man that once lived this very lavish lifestyle

is reduced to a cell that's barely big enough to pace in.

He's allowed one hour outside every single day

and then he's put right back into his cell.

In this cell, unlike the one in Jalisco,

there are live cameras

that can capture almost every vantage point.

On July 11th, 2015, El Chapo is sitting on his bed.

It looks like just any other ordinary night,

and about 8:10 he gets it from his bed,

paces over to the shower area,

ducks down behind this wall and disappears

For the next 26 minutes,

he's not appearing on camera.

Finally, the correctional staff goes and checks

El Chapo's cell only to discover

that there's a hole in that shower area

and El Chapo is gone.

When authorities explore the passageway,

they're amazed.

It's a masterpiece of structural engineering.

They look at the shower stall

and they see a tunnel that's been dug underneath the stall.

There are thousands of fluorescent light bulbs

and thousands of feet of PVC piping

that are piping in compressed air into the tunnel,

which is mile long and about 30 feet deep.

It's a hole that is just barely big enough

for El Chapo to squeeze through.

And underneath that waiting for him

on the other side was a motorcycle on a track

that was designed by engineers that whisked him away.

The whole thing is run by an industrial generator

and the tunnel comes up under an abandoned property

about a mile from the prison.

And at this point, it's believed

that El Chapo was at least an hour ahead of officials.

Only later does law enforcement piece together

how El Chapo pulled it off.

After El Chapo was incarcerated,

a couple of gentlemen came and bought

this abandoned piece of property for a lot of money

and said they wanted to build a factory there.

Over the process of a year,

the construction company is putting this building together,

which no one is paying attention to,

even though it's just a mile away

from a maximum security prison

housing the world's most wanted man.

They bring in excavation equipment.

They move tons of earth and no one's the wiser.

Officials estimate that it took

about 350 truckloads of sand

and about $5 million,

plus whatever bribes had to be paid.

And it took about a year for them

to build this tunnel directly under his shower stall.

Law enforcement was blown away

that a tunnel be constructed 30 feet down with the accuracy

to come up in the one location

where a camera couldn't see El Chapo

inside of his jail cell.

It seems impossible until El Chapo's family

proudly reveals how they helped him escape.

El Chapo's wife came to visit him

and brought him a very special watch,

which had a GPS locator.

So the engineers were able to identify the exact location

where the toilet was and the wall.

And the tunnel came up precisely on that point.

El Chapo's escape is front page news.

And now, without that blackberry signal,

authorities don't have the slightest idea

where to find their fugitive next.

The National Security Agency gets involved

with the Mexican law enforcement

and they scour the countryside.

They look through ranches.

They look through government buildings.

They go into churches.

They go in everywhere.

But no one is giving up El Chapo.

El Chapo has pulled off the greatest Houdini Act yet

and escaped from a maximum security prison

and no one knows where he's at.

Now, there's a $5 million award for any information leading

to the location and arrest of El Chapo.

September, 2015, El Chapo has been back

on the loose for two months,

but with so many agents looking for him

and reading cartel phone messages,

it isn't long before he's tracked down again.

This time, the drug lord avoids busy towns

and retreats into the remote Sierra Madre mountains

surrounded by his heavily armed soldiers

and lots of places to hide.

A coalition of American DEA, NSA

and Mexican SEMAR Marines,

get GPS data on one

of Chapo's Guzman's lieutenant's cell phones

and they think they know where he is

and they set out to go get him.

Cosala is a small village

in the mountains of Sinaloa, 7,000 people,

and it's a region known for growing a lot of marijuana.

And at some point, law enforcement pinpoints

where he is in the mountains

and start closing in on his whereabouts.

The authorities think

that this will be a perfect place

to actually catch him,

because if they zoom in on the Jeeps

and the helicopters, and if they seal off the whole area,

El Chapo won't have anywhere to run.

But at the last minute, agents infiltrate texts

between El Chapo and his men that leave them dumbfounded.

El Chapo isn't in hiding at all.

He's hobnobbing with celebrities.

It turns out that just as the authorities are going

to raid the village,

El Chapo is meeting with two famous film stars,

one from the US, Sean Penn,

and another one from Mexico, Kate del Castillo,

who wrote in her social media

that she actually believes in Chapo Guzman

more than in the governments that are hiding the truth.

This really flattered El Chapo.

Kate del Castillo had played

an important female drag kingpin

in a popular TV show called "La Reina del Sur."

And one can assume that Chapo had watched this show

and he had this affinity for the actress.

So they get in touch

and he actually invites her to go meet him.

He's meant to keep a very low profile

so people cannot find him.

And the less people that know where he is,

the better his chances to not be caught again.

El Chapo is out in the wind at this point,

but he's getting a little arrogant.

Apparently, the drug lord wants

to make a film about his life and great escapes.

He entrusts Del Castillo to make it happen.

It's crazy.

Everybody in the world is looking for this guy

and he's planning on making a big budget

movie about himself.

El Chapo had already looked into

having a movie made of his story

and his life and his feats.

He had been working with a Colombian producer,

but the Colombian producer wanted to keep

35% of the profits

and El Chapo didn't like that.

So the Colombian producer and the script ended up vanishing.

El Chapo wants Kate del Castillo

to produce the movie

and she wants to bring Sean Penn on as a producer,

'cause it'll help give credibility to the project.

Sean Penn is also coming with the idea of writing an article

for Rolling Stone about Chapo.

Sean Penn and Del Castillo traveled

to meet El Chapo in this remote location in the hills.

They end up taking two separate small aircraft plane rides

and seven hours in an SUV along a bumpy road.

And he enters the scene like he's royalty,

wearing his silk shirt and his pressed pants.

And for the next seven hours,

he entertains the two of them,

pouring them drinks and talking about his life

and the movie that he wants made

and how this would all come about.

After seven hours, he abruptly ends it.

He says, I gotta go

because I can't stay in one spot for too long.

It's a smart move on El Chapo's part.

Mexican authorities have been tracking

Penn and Del Castillo from the moment they touched down

at Guadalajara Airport, and they're ready to pounce.

The Mexican government wants to arrest El Chapo,

but politicians on the outside are starting

to influence what's going on by saying,

we cannot risk having these well-known actors injured

in the course of this investigation.

So you need to back off

and let them get completely out of the way

and risk losing El Chapo.

The Mexican authorities on the other hand

say, no, we should go.

We should start the raid.

And there is a disagreement between the two governments.

And as this debate is raging on,

the violent storm came into the area

that essentially grounded any aircraft

and it made going on the ocean absolutely impossible.

And so because of Mother Nature,

this whole thing was put on hold.

A few days later, after the storm passes

and the actors go home, the coalition finally moves ahead.

By the time they actually reached a place

while Chapo was with his hundred men, there's nobody left.

The only thing they find is some medication,

broken phones, and two-way radios.

El Chapo, yet again, vanished.

December, 2015.

By intercepting a series of messages

between El Chapo and the actress Kate del Castillo,

agents have tracked the kingpin

to his hometown village of La Tuna,

high in the Sierra Madre mountains,

but instigating a bloodbath here is too great a risk.

So they wait until the drug lord takes a trip into town.

Mexican intelligence at the NSA have discovered

that he's building a beach house on the coast.

That would be an ideal place for a takedown.

The decision is made not to go into the mountains

because it's too dangerous

and too many opportunities for El Chapo to escape.

So they try and force him out to an area closer

to the beach house where they can affect a safer arrest.

They do things like helicopter raids over La Tuna

and they go to outposts where some of his gunmen are

and shoot that all up.

They get him to a point where he's thinking,

I gotta get outta here

because law enforcement is right at my heels.

All of these attempts seem to do the trick.

He leaves his house in La Tuna

and goes to his house on the beach.

When the authorities go to the house,

they don't see anything unusual,

but the house is a white building,

two stories, and it has a gated garage

and a large tree sort of blocking the front of it.

And then on January 7th, 2016,

they see El Chapo sneaking into the house

in the middle of the night.

So by 4:30 AM, they decide to raid the place.

They go in grenades, guns,

everything blasting full force.

Five members of El Chapo's cartel are killed.

Six more are wounded.

After they enter the residence,

the search is made of the beach house,

but El Chapo is gone yet again.

This time, El Chapo had two tunnels

to throw off agents following him.

One was under the refrigerator.

And that one was quickly revealed to be a dead end,

but there was another one in the closet

of the master bedroom behind a mirror,

that was the real tunnel that Chapo used to escape.

A hidden switch activates a trap door

that leads into the city's underground sewer system.

El Chapo and one of his lieutenants have

about a 20 minute lead on law enforcement,

but the sewer is about half full with rain

and putrid human sewage, and it's only getting worse.

So the tunnel is filling up

and they're having to move through it

as far as they can get.

They get to a manhole cover

and it's so heavy that it takes 'em several minutes

to be able to try to open it up.

And ultimately, they end up having to wedge one

of their shoes in to keep it open.

At 8:55 AM, surveillance footage

shows the two men emerging

from the sewer wet and covered in muck.

This time El Chapo and his top lieutenant

have no support.

They're all alone.

So they come outta the manhole cover

and they hijack the first vehicle that they can find,

but it breaks down almost immediately.

So they hijack a second vehicle.

And it's got a woman in it with her five-year-old grandson.

And she's terrified.

They steal that vehicle, kick them out,

and they start to make their escape.

The woman immediately reports it.

And law enforcement set up checkpoints

all over the city trying to find El Chapo.

Hours pass, and at 10:00 PM,

they finally pull over El Chapo

and it's at this point he tries to again use his influence

and buy his way out of this situation.

He offers cash, he offers property, he offers houses.

None of it works.

He then threatens to kill the officers,

but they stand their ground.

And so he says, you're all going to die.

El Chapo says, "My guys are coming to get me.

You better let me go."

So it's a race to see who gets there first,

El Chapo's henchman or the Mexican law enforcement.

This time the Marines, they get to El Chapo first

and that backup squad of assassins that was on the way,

they may be sensing that the Marines are already there

and they never arrive.

After his capture,

El Chapo is taken to a prison in Juarez,

near the US border.

In January, 2017,

he's extradited to the United States

and held in solitary confinement in a Manhattan jail.

Later, in 2019,

he's found guilty in a very highly publicized trial

of drug trafficking, money laundering,

ordering assassinations.

And he is given 30 years plus life as a sentence

and ordered to forfeit $12.6 billion.

El Chapo is by far one

of the biggest mythical figures in Mexican drug trafficking.

And it looks like his son may be forming an alliance

with some of his old rivals.

So it's gonna be really interesting to see

how this all plays out

and whether or not we can really still talk

about the Sinaloa Cartel

as a coherent entity without El Chapo.

Today, El Chapo is held

at ADX Florence in Colorado,

the most secure federal prison in the United States.

He is confined to a tiny cell 23 hours a day.

His empire has fractured

and dozens of cartel leaders have been

arrested in the years since.

But as of 2024, it's estimated

that at least 80,000 people have died in Mexico as a result

of the seemingly endless drug wars

that El Chapo helped start.

Joaquin El Chapo Guzman may finally be behind bars,

but the violent world he helped create lives on.

I'm Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching this "Case Closed" episode

of "History's Greatest Mysteries."