Articles

• Police Involvement Alleged
• Virtual Crime Results in Cash Payment
  
  MEXICO
  Tuesday, October 05, 1999 - 06:19 PM ET

(CBS) When they say "express" in Mexico, they're not talking about a fast train. They're referring to "express kidnapping," the random, quick abduction of someone who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Express kidnapping is the latest variation on a crime reaching epidemic proportions in Mexico. Since hardly anyone is ever punished, kidnapping has become a major criminal enterprise. The gangs that specialize in it are well organized. And, as 60 minutes II Correspondent Bob Simon reports, the police are struggling to catch up.

"There was a lot of glass flying, and a lot going on," says Ken Krusensterna, who was kidnapped in Mexico last year. "And there [were] some gun shots. "And then all of a sudden somebody tapped me on the chest and said, 'Look, OK, we're the good guys.'"

Krusensterna is only one of about 1,500 people kidnapped last year in Mexico; That's four kidnappings on average every single day.

His kidnapping began with a business trip to the Mexican border town of Reynosa for a meeting with a Mexican businesswoman. She set him up for the kidnappers, and they kept him in a "safe house" for 13 days, blindfolded, gagged and tied very tightly to a chair.

"I thought [my] hand was severed, because there was absolutely no feeling in it. And I figured they severed it. And I heard stories about them sending fingers and so forth. So I figured they sent that to my family," says Krusensterna.

What they did send to his family in Dallas was a demand for $350,000. But his family called the FBI, which convinced Mexican authorities to let it help in the case. While the negotiations dragged on, the kidnappers kept Krusensterna under control.

"Every day I tried to think how I could get out of there," he remembers. "But then the thing that came through my mind was, 'Will this chair go through the door?' I don't know."

"I was nude, and I thought...if I could get up, and get out onto the street, I figured somebody's going to pay attention. A guy running down the street with a chair on his back, nude....There's got to be something wrong there," he adds.

What was wrong, from the kidnappers' point of view, was that they were using Krusensterna's cellular phone, which the FBI traced directly to their hideout. That's when these kidnappers were caught.

But in Mexico, kidnapping is a crime that almost always pays.

For one, most Mexican kidnappings are simple and easy. The kidnappers simply snatch their victims right off the street in short-term abductions. For express kidnappers, the question is not whom they're going to grab, as much as where they're going to do it.

Traffic lights are a prime location, which is why drivers in Mexico City often run red lights at night. That's a lesson journalist Sergio Sarmeinto learned the hard way, as he drove to work one evening.

"I stopped at a red light. I just heard someone knocking on the window of the car, and I turned around, and there's this guy with a gun," Sarmeinto says.

"He's pointing at me, and he asked me to unlock the doors, so I did. And he got into the car, and someone else got into the back seat with another gun," he adds.

"And they got my ATM card, and then they put me in the trunk of the car, for roughly 18 hours... It was probably the most traumatic experience in my life. I really thought that they were going to kill me," Sarmiento recalls.