Freed Death Row Inmate’s Fairy Tale Ends in Tragedy

MEXICO CITY — He was a death row inmate who became a soap opera star. An illegal Mexican immigrant who came home to cheering crowds. A folk hero to millions of Mexicans who feel that they don’t get a break in the United States.

Ricardo Aldape had lived a fairy tale in recent months, ever since his murder conviction was overturned after he had spent 14 years on Texas’ death row. He played himself on Mexican television; he was deluged with book and movie deals.

But the fairy tale ended Thursday night, when the 35-year-old crashed his speeding Volkswagen into a tractor-trailer in northern Mexico. It was a tragic finish to a tragic life that had turned him into a symbol as potent as Rodney G. King, whose beating by Los Angeles police was captured on videotape.

“Aldape symbolizes the situation of Mexicans who go there [to the United States] thinking they’re going to be equals in the system and become rich . . . but instead confront difficult conditions,” said Julia Flores, a Mexico City sociologist. “He is seen as a small person who won a great victory against a powerful country.”

Aldape had been this summer’s biggest TV sensation here, starring in a hit series about migrants struggling with U.S. authorities. Buck-toothed and tattooed, Aldape was an unlikely leading man. He mumbled; he showed the emotional range of a toaster.

But Mexicans responded with fascination. Aldape’s heavily promoted appearances on “Al Norte del Corazon” (“North of the Heart”) sent ratings jumping.

Clad in jailhouse denim, the 35-year-old former inmate acted out his own story, from the edgy violence he encountered in U.S. prisons to his triumphant return to the northern city of Monterrey in April after his conviction was overturned.

“It was very clear that people were moved by the case,” said co-producer Ruben Galindo, a UCLA film school alumnus, explaining why Aldape was offered a starring role. “They wanted to know more details.”

For Aldape, the TV role marked a Cinderella-like transformation. For 14 years, his world had been a 6-by-9-foot cell on death row. Suddenly, he relaxed at the $200-a-night Hotel Royal. He kept company with models instead of murderers.

But he insisted that he wasn’t doing the soap opera for the money. In a rare news conference a few months ago, Aldape explained that he wanted “to give a message to Mexican youth.”

“They should see me as an example and think twice before going to the United States,” he said. “There, they’re only going to suffer.”

Aldape’s tale began like that of thousands of other Mexican migrants. Frustrated at not being able to support his parents and three siblings on his meager salary at a cardboard-box factory, he slipped across the border in May 1982. On a warm night two months later, a Houston police officer approached Aldape’s car for a possible traffic violation. Aldape said his passenger, Roberto Carrasco, opened fire, killing the officer. Carrasco was slain later that night in a shootout with police.

But Aldape was arrested and sentenced to death by lethal injection. Twice, the terrified inmate faced execution dates; in May 1992, the order was stayed just hours before he was to die.

Aldape consistently maintained his innocence, and over the years much of Mexico came to agree. Political leaders, Roman Catholic Church officials and others urged clemency. Books and ballads were written about his case.

“There is a Mexican cultural trait here, the sense of solidarity and ties of loyalty and friendship with someone who finds himself at a disadvantage,” said Flores, the sociologist.

And to Mexicans, no one is at more of a disadvantage than the migrants who sneak into the United States each year. If some in the U.S. see them as a burden, the immigrants are portrayed here as brave folk simply trying to make a living in jobs Americans won’t do.

In 1994, Aldape’s attorneys succeeded in having his conviction overturned. A U.S. district judge said Houston police, seeking revenge for the death of their colleague, were “merchants of chaos” who had intimidated witnesses in the case.

After a long appeals process, Aldape finally walked out of jail in April.

TV producer Galindo immediately saw his chance. His new soap opera was already scheduled to deal with the U.S. death penalty, a source of outrage in Mexico, which doesn’t have capital punishment. Thirty-five Mexicans are on death row in the United States, and many Mexicans fear that they won’t get a fair break.

“You see that with a lot of money and lots of lawyers, you can destroy any evidence and go free, like O.J.” Simpson, Galindo said. “Then you see that someone poor, from the Third World, . . . can be sentenced to death.”

Soon, Aldape was on the set, advising the show’s writers about how to make the prison scenes more realistic. The director, sensing that his novice actor was no Barrymore, simply described the plot and instructed Aldape to ad-lib.

The TV role was just one sign of Aldape’s new hero status. Upon his return to Mexico in April, he was greeted by cheering crowds and invited to dine with the local governor. Recently, a ballad celebrating his victory over U.S. prosecutors was released; he was scheduled to appear next year in a TV miniseries and a movie based on his life, Galindo said.

Of course, not everyone welcomed Aldape’s ascension to myth. Texas prosecutors were dumbfounded as they watched their former prisoner become a pop icon.

“I think it’s amazing anyone would consider him a folk hero. Regardless of whether he fired the gun, he was involved in the offense,” Roe Wilson, an assistant district attorney in Harris County, said shortly before Aldape’s death.

Some Mexicans, too, complained that Aldape--who was packing a pistol the night of the murder--was hardly a role model. “To pay homage to [Aldape] on his return to Monterrey as if he was Julius Caesar . . . is to perversely cheapen our much-vaunted traditional values,” columnist Felipe Diaz Garza wrote after Aldape returned.

Aldape’s death seemed to correspond to a life lived on the edge. On Thursday, he was speeding and apparently slammed on the brakes when he saw the truck in front of him, leaving a 100-foot skid mark, police said. An envelope of herbs found on his body appeared to be marijuana, they said.

Still, to the hundreds of mourners who paid homage at Aldape’s casket Friday, weeping and singing, he was a heroic figure.

To understand Aldape’s folk hero status, there may be no better guide than “North of the Heart,” the melodrama in which he starred. The soap opera revolves around an aspiring Tex-Mex singer and her farm-worker lover. Migrating illegally to the United States, they encounter U.S. authorities who are racist, corrupt and violent. In the series, a U.S. Border Patrol agent rapes the woman; the agent then frames her boyfriend for a murder. While the show’s producers acknowledge that the villain is a caricature, they insist that their tale is based on real--though separate--violations against immigrants.

The show, scheduled to end next month, has touched a chord with Mexicans who are inundated with news about U.S. anti-immigration laws or abuse against migrants.

It has been one of the biggest summer hits for TV Azteca.

Producer Galindo said Aldape’s appearance was intended to give the soap opera an “intersection with reality.”

For Aldape, however, reality proved far stranger than any soap opera.

Helena Sundman of The Times’ Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.