Original subtitles

Put your hands where I can see them. My desire was to arrest as many bad guys as

I could.

I knew I was going to have an impact on penetrating the drug cartels.

Working undercover can be a matter of life and death.

I saw a lot of corruption.

The lines were blurry about what was good and what was evil.

In prison, snitches get stitches, but cops get killed.

In the 1990s, I was an agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

As far back as I could remember, I wanted to be an undercover cop.

I felt that I was actually going to be a crime fighter and make a difference in

my hometown.

I was born and raised in El Paso, Texas, which is a stone's throw away from

Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

Throughout the 1990s, Ciudad Juarez became one of the most violent cities in

world.

The cartels moved in, and that was a major corridor for the transshipment of

drugs from Mexico into the United States.

Any drugs that were coming through the El Paso area were coming from the Juarez

cartel. It was headed by Amado Carrillo Fuentes, a ruthless, multibillion

-dollar drug dealer.

He was responsible for countless murders.

Nobody could get close to him. He was an untouchable.

I took it to heart that El Paso was getting poisoned by these cartels.

So from day one as a DA agent, I knew the ultimate price was to get Amado. He

was my holy grail.

I finally got a lead that fell into my lap.

90 kilos of cocaine were found in the trunk of a vehicle at a Border Patrol

checkpoint.

The markings of the cocaine packages were the Scorpion.

This was a label for Tamado and the Juarez cartel.

If this guy was connected to the Juarez cartel, I knew this was the break I

needed.

Come with me.

I said, my name is Sal.

I said, what's your name? He said, I'm Rudy.

I told him, I said, listen, you're in a lot of trouble.

The only way you're going to get out of this is by telling me what you know

about this organization.

He tells me, I can't cooperate with you. They're going to kill me.

And I said, they're going to kill you anyways if I let you go, because right

here, you lost a lot of their drugs.

He said, if I give you information about the cartel, can you go on and protect

me?

So I said, listen, you want my help? You need to go in and give me information

that's going to be worthwhile.

He knew that he was in a no -win situation.

He said, the cartel is sending somebody from Juarez to make sure that everything

runs smooth on this load.

They call him El Guapo.

He's one of the shot callers for the cartel.

criminal organization, the only way to do it is to actually do undercover work.

So I am thinking, wow, this is going to be a great opportunity to get somebody

higher in the cartel by role -playing as an undercover agent.

I asked him, I said, how can I be a part of this?

He goes, we need a driver.

Now I was going to be a driver for the cartel.

Let's move out.

But I had no idea what I had just signed up for.

The next day, I drive to a warehouse in the outskirts of El Paso as an

undercover agent with 90 kilos of cocaine that were seized the day before.

El Guapo was going to inspect it.

I had backup.

numerous DEA agents all over the place.

At the same time, I was very nervous and unsure of what was going to happen.

We're waiting on a WAPO to show up.

I can see that Rudy is definitely nervous.

The door opens, and here comes El Guapo.

I could just feel the energy with this guy, and it was not a good thing.

He's a cartel manager in a position of power.

I was intimidated.

At the same time, I had to go and do what I was supposed to do.

I'll be driving.

He just looked at me, and he goes, How do you know Rudy?

And I said, well, me and Rudy go back a ways.

He had no idea Rudy had betrayed him.

He's staring me up and down.

He notices a gun under my belt.

He says, it's a pretty good -sized gun you got there.

I said, yeah, and he goes, let me see it.

And he starts looking at it, inspecting it.

I was getting nervous.

But all of a sudden, he puts the gun to my head, and he asked me, So tell me

again how you know Rudy.

I thought to myself, Holy, he's going to blow my brains out.

So I just said, Hey, listen.

Stop busting my balls.

He cracked a smile and lowered the gun and handed it back to me.

Inside, I was fierce. I wanted to get that gun and shove it up his... Unload

coke.

But I had to keep my cool and continue with what we were going to do.

We unload the cocaine, and the whole time, WAPO was just standing there

us.

My heart was racing.

And I'm thinking, okay, I hit the mother load here.

This was enough to arrest him.

Eventually, he ended up saying, go on and get out of here.

This thing will be moving tomorrow.

This is the opportunity that I wanted.

I just pull out my gun.

Put your hands up where I can see them.

He was furious.

He wanted to kick my ass right there, but I knew I had the upper hand this

I walk into the interrogation room.

And I said, we got you with your hand in the cooking jar, man.

You need to start talking to me, because you're looking at life in prison.

And Guapo said nothing. He just stared at me.

I said, listen, you know the person I want.

I want Yamato, the leader of the Juarez cartel.

But you only have two options.

You go to prison or you're going to talk to me right now.

And he goes, I can't tell you anything, man.

He's going to kill all my family.

I said, I know everybody's afraid of him, but you need to talk to me, man.

I'll take care of you.

We'll make sure that you and your family are safe.

Okay?

Eventually, Guapo tells me that there's some top guys of Amado that are meeting

at a nightclub in Juarez tomorrow.

So I'm thinking, wow, this is an opportunity to identify some of these

the Juarez cartel in Mexico.

Then I was going to get a lot closer to Amado.

The city of Juarez was right across the Rio Grande River from El Paso.

Juarez was the Wild West.

I could feel how unsafe it was on that side. I'd be going by myself. I did

my gun.

That was my only sense of security.

When I arrived at the parking lot there in Juarez, I see these men standing by

the front door of the club carrying AK -47s.

I was on my own in Amado's backyard.

So I had to find a spot as quickly as possible that would be the best position

for me to take photos of them.

I'm thinking, wow, I'm getting some photos of them.

Some big players here.

Some of Amado's top guys.

This was just a dream come true.

But then a vehicle pulls in behind me and it blocked me in.

I look back and I see this guy with a gun.

He's looking at me and says, I'm thinking, he must have seen me taking

I'm burned.

I need to get out of this situation, but by then, the other men are walking

towards me with their guns drawn, and I'm trapped.

I'm about to get into a shootout, and I'm outnumbered. I'm outgunned.

There's no way out.

It just seemed like time stood still.

But then, by some divine intervention, the guy behind me, this

vehicle started rolling back.

I sped out of there as quickly as possible.

They start following me, shooting at me.

I'm driving as fast as I can.

And I look in the mirror, and these guys are still on my tail.

In fact, they're gating on me.

My heart was racing.

My blood was flowing. The adrenaline surge was going.

And I'm thinking, man, if I don't get out of here now, I'm going to get

These cartel killers are right on my tail.

I'm a few minutes away from the border.

My objective is just to get into U .S. soil.

So as I gun it towards the U .S. Border Patrol checkpoint,

I already have my badge sticking it out and say, hey, listen, I'm a

DA agent. I need to come through now.

As I make it through the U .S. inspection station, I look back and I

cartel members turning their vehicle around and heading back into Mexico.

I put the vehicle in park. I just took a deep breath.

I was here in U .S. soil safe, but I just could not understand how I got out

that situation.

I drove home and I walked into the house and there was my wife.

You want dinner?

I had to separate my home life from my work.

And I nearly got killed earlier, and I just pretended like nothing happened.

That was indicative of most of my marriage.

I mean, I lied to my wife a lot. I didn't want her to know the truth.

I just felt bad for her.

But I was determined not to give up.

I had an obsession to do my mission of pursuing a model.

After that, my situation became worse.

One morning, I looked at the newspaper, and I looked at a photo of a man that

was dead.

As I looked closer at the photo, I realized that was Rudy. He was one of my

informants.

The Amado's cartel had him killed.

Catching Amado was my professional objective, but now it got personal.

And I was going to do everything I could to get that son of a bitch.

If I wanted Amado, I had to go into Mexico and go after him.

The DEA made arrangements for me to start working with a special team of

federales flown in from Mexico City.

These federales were the Mexican equivalent of the DEA.

The plan was to work with these guys on a daily basis to recruit informants,

infiltrating Amado and his cartel.

We began to conduct some operations, and I got to see how the war on drugs,

Mexican style, was conducted.

They would grab people and interrogate them.

There was a man that they brought in.

They put a plastic bag over his head and this went on for, it seemed like an

eternity.

I just hated to see a man being interrogated like that.

Looking back, my moral values were changing. It was hard to balance what

good and what was evil.

I knew that working in Mexico, I was going to have to get somebody who was

really close to Amado.

Find somebody who's deep within the organization.

I got to the point where I was getting desperate.

I heard about this one guy who was blackballed by the DEA.

He was a Mexican state police comandante nicknamed El Diablo.

He was working for the cartel and also the cops.

When somebody's blackballed by the DEA, that means they are considered

deceptive, untruthful.

But I had to take a chance.

I knew I had to use somebody like that because it got to the point where there

was nobody else to help me get close to Amado.

I decided I needed to get to the dirtiest of dirty if I'm going to go on

to infiltrate Amado's organization.

When I first met El Diablo, I could see this guy was a hardened criminal, but

yet he was, you know, hiding behind a badge.

And I said, listen, I need you to give me information on Amado.

I know you have the opportunity to do that.

There's money in there for you, but...

You need to go on and give me information that's going to be

And he says, I can go on and get you crime scene photos. I can get you

background information on some of the hits that Ahmad was doing on people

the border.

I felt confident that I could work with this guy.

Okay.

You do that.

Looking back...

I made a big mistake.

If I knew what El Diablo was going to do to me, I would have never got close to

this guy.

Several days later, he ended up bringing back crime scene photos, addresses,

phone numbers, license plate numbers.

The information that it was providing me was great.

I don't know how he did it. I didn't ask.

All I know is it was worth the money.

I was just really excited to have an opportunity like this. I actually had

somebody who could give me some specific details about Amado's upper echelon.

I really felt that I had Amado on my side.

Within several weeks of working with El Diablo, He tells me that Amado is going

to attend a wedding in the elite part of Juarez tomorrow.

What?

Where? This was the golden ticket that I was looking for. Man, the Holy Grail is

going to be at one location really close to where I can grab him.

On the day of the wedding, we set up with a special team close to the church.

I'm sitting in the car wondering if Amado was going to show up.

Then a truck pulled up right in front of me.

Sure enough, it was Amado.

My heart is racing. My mind is going 100 miles an hour thinking, man, I'm going

to get this son of a gun.

But then all of a sudden, it was chaos.

Women and children were screaming.

I see an AK -47 in my face.

And I look around and see the other DEA agents, and they also have AK -47s on

their faces.

And I'm thinking, oh, my God, we've got a massive setup here.

We're going to have a massacre of DEA agents.

Salte! So I'm sitting there with an AK -47 in my face, and there's a guy there

saying, salte, which means get out. Salte!

I was thinking about options of reaching for my gun.

But El Diablo, he goes, Don't do anything stupid, man.

Just chill.

So I raised my hands and let him know I'm not going to do anything foolish.

It seemed like an eternity, but all of a sudden, all those guys that were

pointing weapons drove off.

Amado was gone.

It was obvious that Amado had been tipped off.

They knew that I was getting close to them.

I should have known that there were going to be consequences.

A couple of days later, me and my wife were watching the news.

I'm thinking, wow, what a poor guy.

And I see that it was my cousin Bruno.

I was shocked.

I couldn't believe it.

He was killed by a boy who was from Mexico who apparently just went up there

with a 9mm pistol, shot him twice in the chest.

I felt sorrow, grief, confusion.

Then I started getting nervous. I realized that the cartel members knew

was.

This was a cartel hit.

I'm getting close to Amado. He's trying to send me a message.

My desire was to go and make sure the guy who killed my cousin paid for what

did to my family.

Well, sitting in front of me was El Diablo.

He goes, don't worry about it.

I took care of it.

And he goes, I have somebody in Juarez.

He'll take care of that kid for you.

It was a very confusing moment.

After so many conversations with El Diablo, I didn't think, why are you

this? In my mind, I was thinking that, you know what, go ahead and kill that

of a bitch.

But I couldn't do it.

I was a cop. I was supposed to be doing good.

So I just said, yeah, whatever.

Don't worry about it.

And I just blew him off.

At this point, I started going after Amado.

based on revenge.

I got angry. I started thinking, okay, if Amado is coming after me, I'm going

go after him.

At that point, I was entering a world of deception, death,

murder.

My sense of morality was put aside because I had to catch Amado.

But the amount of violence started taking its toll.

To get those thoughts out of my mind, I would just kind of go drink alone.

I mean, I'd had a beer in one hand and a glass of scotch in the other. I ended

up going on a spiral downhill from that point.

I had a lot of informants

that were killed.

A mother was off the radar, but...

He was sending us a message. It was an eye for an eye.

I felt like I was responsible for them.

But what happened next was even more devastating.

And not long after, I'd been drinking all day and had a lot of beers and half

bottle of scotch.

I just got home.

Then I get a phone call from El Diablo. He goes, hey, man, I'm nearby.

Can I talk to you?

And I'm like, I'm a little buzzed, man, but all right.

So he shows up. He said, what brings you out at this time?

And he hands me an envelope.

And it was a little post -it.

inside and it said, bad things happen to bad people. And I see in the article,

Amado's dead.

Apparently he had a heart attack and he's gone.

I couldn't believe it. It was just hard to fathom.

I didn't want to accept the fact that Amado was not ever going to spend a day

behind prison bars.

This wasn't the way he was supposed to go. I mean, I was the one who was

supposed to put him in jail.

I felt that everything I had done was wasted.

Then Diablo asked me, do you still want me to kill the kid, the guy who had

killed my cousin?

And even though I was drunk that night, it's not an excuse for what I said.

I said, kill the son of a bitch, I don't care.

When I think about my mentality and my emotions at that time, I was a lost

but that was no excuse.

When I met El Diablo that night, I literally sold my soul to the devil.

Shortly thereafter, I was with some FBI agents at this watering hole.

Yeah, Mexico's finest.

Now that Amado's dead, we're talking strategy, what do we do next?

All of a sudden, in walks El Diablo.

And I'm thinking, what the hell is he doing here?

He pulls the photo out of his pocket.

And I look at it, it's a kid lying in a pool of blood.

He says, this is the guy you wanted dead.

And I was like, whoa, he said it loud enough to where the FBI agents even

it.

I needed to get him away from...

these other agents, and I don't want him to say anything else. So I said, follow

me outside.

I was thinking to myself, I can't believe he actually did it. I mean,

this is real.

He goes, I did what you told me to do.

He said, you need to go on and give me the money so I can pay the people in

Juarez. I said, man, I don't want to talk about this now. I said, you're

Here, take this photo, man.

And I tried to give it back to him, but he didn't want to take it.

So I put it back in my pocket.

The guys were looking at me.

I was panicking and wondering what was going to happen to me.

My mind was swirling and wondering, man, did I was actually responsible for the

death of somebody?

The next morning, the FBI wanted me to attend the meeting.

I see two FBI agents standing there, and one of them says, Agent Martinez?

I say, yeah, what's up? And he goes,

you're under arrest for murder for hire.

At that point, my life as I knew it was over.

Nothing was ever going to be the same again.

You have the right to remain silent.

Anything you say may be used against you. He starts reading my Miranda

and I felt like I was just punched in the stomach.

They sat me down and started asking me questions.

One of the FBI agents tells me, he goes, Sal, we have you on tape.

We have you talking to El Diablo about having this guy killed in Juarez.

And I'm thinking, El Diablo, that son of a bitch just set me up.

I said, listen, it's not what it looks like.

I could explain everything.

He is a liar and he's working for Armando.

But they weren't listening.

They tell me that they have searched my vehicle outside.

And then I remember in my coat pocket in my car is a photo that El Diablo had

given me the night before.

You want to explain this?

They show me the photo that they brought from my vehicle.

When I look at this photo, I realize that's not the guy that killed my cousin

Bruno.

I look a lot closer and that... It's a little bit better lighting in there. And

I'm realizing that this is a staged photo. This is not real blood. This is a

up by El Diablo.

I couldn't believe it. El Diablo has been playing me the whole time.

So I show them the photo. I say, look, this is fake. This is all staged by El

Diablo. I didn't kill anybody.

But he said, it doesn't matter, Sal.

You ordered a hit.

You wanted somebody dead.

You're charged with murder for hire.

The FBI agents accepted there was no murder, but that was irrelevant in my

position.

He said, Sal, if you fight this, you're looking at 20 years in prison.

But if you plead guilty now, you're only looking at seven.

I was furious.

I didn't want to put the white flag up.

It was a no -win situation.

They threw the book at me.

Even though El Diablo did a lot.

To set this up, I was at fault and I knew it.

And then I get thrown into a small jail cell.

Seeing my wife while I was behind bars was just the most horrible feeling.

When I told her what I was accused of, she couldn't believe it.

And I said, yeah,

I made a mistake.

And it just broke my heart.

In the end, I was guilty of wanting somebody dead, and I

realized that I'm going to pay for it for the rest of my life.

In prison, snitches get stitches, but cops get killed.

So I was sent to a prison in Kentucky, which is literally about 1 ,200 miles

away from my home, where nobody knew me as Sal.

I was classified as a violent offender because murder for hire is a crime of

violence.

I walk into the prison, and there are two guards waiting for me.

But they said, We're going to treat you just like everybody else.

They give me my towel and a bar of soap, and I'm thinking, wait a second, I was

a DEA agent. I can't be going to do something like this.

I was scared.

I didn't even know what was going to happen after that.

To be a cop, In a U .S. prison, it was probably the most dangerous situation I

could be put in.

I'm just praying that nobody recognized who I was.

I couldn't think like a cop, and I had to start thinking like a con.

They walked me into this large bay, and they shut the door behind me.

I'm not making any eye contact with anybody.

I'm not acknowledging anybody.

I'm thinking, this has got to be a nightmare. I'm looking for somebody to

me up.

I knew I was going to have to play the biggest undercover role of my life.

As I lay my head down on the first night in prison, the anger and the regret was

just incomprehensible.

I hated myself.

My life got pulled out from under me, and I was shocked that after being a cop

for so long, now I was being looked at as a criminal.

I just could not see myself living like that for the next seven years.

But I had to come to terms and realize that was going to be my new home.

Within the first few weeks in prison, I saw a lot of things that were sickening.

I saw a lot of guys get beat up.

I knew if the other inmates found out that I was a cop, It would be a lot

than what these other guys were suffering.

I knew it was only a matter of time that somebody was going to find out who I

was.

For the first year, I was just avoiding everybody I could.

I didn't let anybody get to know me personally.

But on one Saturday morning,

I noticed they were all looking at me really funny. It was a different feeling

of tension in the air.

They were kind of talking about me, and I'm wondering, what is going on? I mean,

I got really nervous.

I said, oh, man, that's it.

Something happened here.

And sure enough, within minutes, my name was announced over the public address

system. I was told to go to the lieutenant's office.

My heart dropped. I said, damn.

So I walk into the lieutenant's office.

Check it out.

He tosses his magazine in front of me.

On the cover of the magazine was busting a DEA agent.

There's an eight -page story on Sal Martinez, the DEA agent who got arrested

the FBI.

I see these huge photos of me and my family and the story behind my arrest.

I said, oh, man, that's it. All these inmates, they read my story.

My cover's blown.

As I'm flipping through the pages, I'm thinking to myself, I'm dead.

Realizing that my identity was known to all the inmates, there was no way for me

to survive this. in general population.

So they tell me that we're going to have to put you in solitary confinement for

your safety.

All it was was a bunk and a sink and a toilet. That's all I had.

The only human contact I have is you are bringing me a tray of food.

And other than that, Your mind is just spinning. There's just no other

stimulation. There's no other human interaction.

There was no way for me to know how long this was going to last.

I knew that I was going to be there for the next several years.

As the days slowly ticked by, all I

did was walk four steps, walk four steps back.

I felt like a caged animal.

The worst thought that any human being can have is when you're in the hole.

Everything negative that I had done came back and surfaced at that point.

I had so much regret, sorrow, that I was really thinking about killing myself.

I couldn't go any lower. I mean, that was the lowest point of my life.

The thought of actually committing suicide was growing, and I realized that

had to try to find a way out of there, but there was nobody there to talk to.

There was nobody to listen to me.

So I had to find a higher source.

I realized that it had come to this point where I was being punished for my

sins.

I prayed to God and I asked Him, please forgive me for doing this and this and

this.

I had to go on and prove to myself and to this higher being that I was going to

be the old Sal.

The humble Sal that

was there when I first entered law enforcement.

After two months of being in solitary confinement, I met with my wife in

It was a very, very emotional time.

At the same time, it was a day of reckoning.

And I said, I'm sorry about everything I've done.

The obsession that I had to go after Amado ruined my life.

And I said, I'm so sorry I put you in this position.

And I told her I was going to be straight, no more lies.

I was going to focus on improving myself.

She really just said, I'll be reported.

So after that day, I said, send me anywhere. I just don't want to be here.

They put me back in general population.

I was not going to run away. I was not going to go back into the hole.

I came to terms that I had to be the real Sal, whatever happened.

I had no choice but to get my head down and serve my sentence.

The way I measure time in prison was not by days or hours.

I used it in season.

So it was four blocks each year. That's the only way I could see an end to this

nightmare.

In 2006, after serving six years, I finally got out.

That was one of the best days of my life.

Even through all the stuff that I put my wife through, she still stuck by me,

and there was very few people that would be able to have somebody stick by them

the way she stuck by me.

There was an immense sense of relief and a great sense of hope.

I asked my wife when I came out, what do you want to do? And she goes, we need

to have a child. We never had the time to have a baby, so we did that.

When someone has a child, it just seems like everything else is irrelevant in

life. And I have a miracle child now. He's 13 years old, and he's my pride and

joy.

One of my biggest regrets was the obsession that I had to go after this

And Amado, my desire to get him and the ways I did it landed me in prison.

So after 15 years of putting people in jail, now I'm getting them out.

So the first thing I tell him is, listen, anger should not be something

controls your life. And I used anger as a reason to seek revenge.

I had to let all that subside because I couldn't let it poison the rest of my

life.