A self-proclaimed Mexican drug cartel member who kidnapped a Lander woman and reportedly tortured her with power tools, shot her in both legs and trapped her in a dog kennel, was sentenced last week to life in prison.
Adolfo Vargas Lepe, 61, is appealing that sentence before a higher court, according to a Tuesday filing in the U.S. District Court for Montana.
Lepe was originally charged with kidnapping in 2023, on evidence he kidnapped his ex-girlfriend from her mother’s home in Lander, confined her for six hellish weeks, and pistol-whipped, shot, beat, stabbed and choked her.
He was indicted with four more counts in 2024, including a charge of kidnapping a child from Mexico and other states in 2018, one drug-delivery charge, one firearm charge and another charge saying he also kidnapped the Lander woman on an earlier occasion in 2018.
After Montana’s Carbon County Sheriff’s deputies arrested Lepe, they learned that he rented a storage unit in Boyd, Montana. They obtained a warrant to search it and found a pound of cocaine and almost two pounds of meth, court documents say.
They also found 12.5 pounds of meth, one Mexican peso and receipts, in a backpack Lepe flung from a vehicle during an attempt to flee law enforcement ahead of his arrest, court documents say.
Without Hesitation
The U.S. government told the court that Lepe “touted his cartel connections, trafficked drugs from Mexico to Montana, raped and kidnapped young girls, shot (the Lander woman) in both legs, and put her in a dog kennel, all while memorializing the imprisonment with a photograph.”
“The United States, without hesitation, recommends life imprisonment,” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorneys Zeno Baucus and Ryan Weldon in a Sept. 18 sentencing memorandum. “Victims and society deserve to know Lepe will never harm them again. If this case does not warrant life, then no case does.”
The memorandum gives more detail about evidence underpinning the other kidnapping crimes of which the jury convicted Lepe.
He kidnapped two minor victims, locked them in a compound in Mexico where they were held captive with minimal food and little water — raped them both — and told them if they “said anything” he would “have his cartel friends kill them and their family,” wrote the prosecutors.
Another woman testified that Lepe tied her up while she was naked and showed her to her children while calling her their “whore mother,” says the government’s memorandum.
The document says Lepe physically and sexually abused a 12-year-old who lived with Lepe in California in 1993.
Sure He Said He Was In The Cartel But…
Lepe’s defense attorneys Dylan McFarland and Timothy Bechtold in a Sept. 18 presentence memorandum disputed the government’s certainty that Lepe was in the Mexican drug cartel.
Lepe’s own claim that he was “in the Cartel” wasn’t enough to prove he was in a meth importation organization, the filing argues.
Lepe has crossed the U.S. border 23 times since 2020, court documents say.
The government had cited “unknown and unidentified sources” saying that Lepe had them send money via MoneyGram to contacts in Mexico, and that Lepe himself claimed he was “in the Cartel,” notes the defense attorneys’ memorandum.
But inferring from these facts that Lepe is a transnational drug dealer “wholly ignores Mr. Lepe’s familial relationships in immediate proximity to both sides of the Mexican border,” Lepe’s attorneys argued.
The memorandum discusses Lepe’s family members who live near the border and their various living and caretaker situations.
“Regardless of whether or not Mr. Lepe (claimed he was in the cartel) he has never been connected to anyone in the Cartel,” the memorandum says. “He has not even been connected to anyone in the drug trafficking world.”
The government hadn’t produced anyone who said they bought drugs or sold drugs from Lepe, and, his attorneys wrote, it was their understanding that “every individual of Latino heritage involved in the drug trade” has either claimed links to the cartel or had them assumed.
Lepe’s defense attorneys urged the court against sentencing the man to life.
The case guidelines called for that sentence. But a sentence of sometimeless than “life” would be effective and “(provide) Mr. Lepe a sentence sufficient but not greater than necessary,” the memorandum argues.
Confessing To Drugs, Convicted Of Kidnapping
Lepe pleaded guilty to one count of possessing drugs with the intent to distribute them.
But he challenged the three kidnapping charges and one threatening charge at trial in early June.
The jury convicted him on those four counts but acquitted him of two of the seven charges he’d faced. Those were one count of possessing a gun to advance a drug crime and a fourth kidnapping charge.
The federal offense of kidnapping is punishable by life in prison.
