As "just about the only journalist in New York who covered the city's multibillion-dollar drug trade with any degree of detail or intimacy" (see "Dead Right," CJR, March/April 1993), investigative reporter Manuel de Dios Unanue knew his life was in danger. But he probably did not expect a death order from as far away as Colombia.

It appears, however, that de Dios -- whose anti-drug reporting became famous in his days as a reporter for and finally editor-in-chief of the Spanish-language daily El Diario/La Prensa -- was the victim of just such an order when he was shot to death on March 11, 1992. This May, a federal grand jury indicted three people in connection with de Dios' murder, in the process revealing a conspiracy that started in Colombia and culminated 3,000 miles away in a restaurant in Queens.

Authorities alleged that a powerful drug lord in the Colombian Cali cartel, Jose Santa Cruz Londono, ordered the killing in response to de Dios's efforts to uncover the cartel's influence in Queens. New York Newsday reported that the impetus for Londono's contract was a photograph de Dios had printed with one of his stories on cocaine trafficking. Londono has not been indicted. But twenty-four-year-old Colombian John Mena was charged with arranging the murder; also indicted were the alleged gunman and the alleged getaway driver.

Authorities revealed that two of the indicted suspects were also implicated in the 1991 murder of two Baltimore businessmen. One of the men had conducted business with the Cali cartel, and the cartel reportedly believed he had skimmed money off the top of a multimillion-dollar deal.

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