Jesús Héctor Luis Palma Salazar was born in Noria de Abajo,
Mocorito, Sinaloa, on April 29, 1960. He began as a car thief and eventually worked as a gunman for
Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo of the
Guadalajara Cartel. Palma rose up the ranks and, along with Abelardo "El Lobito" Retamoza Machado, eventually became a co-leader of the cartel. He was associated with
Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán. Following the loss of a large cocaine shipment, which was blamed on El Chapo and Palma, in 1988 El Lobito Retamoza was killed but Palma spared. Following El Lobito's death, Palma contacted and created an alliance with Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán of the
Sinaloa Cartel. Palma splintered from the group, which was handed down to Felix Gallardo's nephews in
Tijuana, who later formed the
Tijuana Cartel (also known as the Arellano Félix Organization). Palma, along with a Venezuelan trafficker named Rafael Enrique Clavel, the one-time boyfriend of Palma's sister Minerva Palma, began operating their own cartel.
First arrest and family's murder In 1978, Palma was arrested in
Arizona for drug trafficking and sentenced to eight years in a U.S. prison. Upon his release, he discovered that his wife, Guadalupe Leija Serrano, had run off with Clavel and taken her and Palma's two children. Clavel forced Guadalupe to withdraw US$7 million from a bank account and later decapitated her and shipped her head back to Palma. The two young children, Jesús (aged 5) and Nataly (aged 4), were taken to Venezuela and thrown off a bridge named 'Puente de la Concordia', located in the city of
San Cristóbal, Táchira, about 40 kms from the border with Colombia. Soon afterward, Clavel began working for the Tijuana Cartel. In retaliation, Palma executed Gallardo's lawyer and Clavel's three children. Clavel would later be arrested and soon be murdered in jail by an inmate on Palma's orders.
Second arrest Palma was arrested on June 23, 1995, after a 12-seat
Lear jet on which he was flying to attend a wedding party crash-landed. He was traveling from
Ciudad Obregón,
Sonora, to
Guadalajara, Jalisco, when the jet was diverted and unable to locate a new landing strip in time. Palma survived the crash-landing and was later arrested by Mexican military officers; he originally evaded capture by traveling in full uniform as a
Federal Judicial Police (PJF) officer complete with identification and an armed caravan of PJF personnel. After serving nineteen years in the
Atwater Federal Prison, Palma was extradited back to Mexico in June 2016, where he was charged with a double murder of police officers in
Nayarit in 1995. He is currently incarcerated at the
Altiplano Prison near
Mexico City. ==Kingpin Act sanction==