The feds are examining the role Emma Coronel Aispuro (pictured), 29, may have played in her drug lord husband’s elaborate 2015 escape from a Mexican prison
The wife of convicted drug kingpin Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán is being investigated by federal authorities for the possible aid she gave in her husband’s daring 2015 escape from a Mexican prison.
Former beauty queen Emma ‘La Reinita’ Coronel Aispuro, 29, whose Spanish nickname means ‘Little Queen’, has been in the process of launching her new fashion line, inspired in part by the now-62-year-old diminutive crime boss, whose notorious Spanish nickname means ‘shorty’.
Coronel married Guzman in 2007 when she was just 18 and he was 50. Coronel was born in the US, but has dual citizenship in Mexico.
She hasn’t been arrested or charged with a crime, but the feds have had their eyes set on her ever since one of Chapo’s top lieutenants implicated her during his criminal trial earlier this year.
Former Mexican cartel member and Chapo crony Damaso Lopez Nunez, aka ‘El Licenciado’, testified during the trial that Guzman sent him letters instructing him to coordinate with Coronel, the mother of his twin daughters, before Lopez ended up meeting with her in March of 2014.
Coronel (center) is in the process of launching a new fashion line inspired and named after her notorious spouse
Emma Coronel Aispuro, (C right), wife of Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman leaves at the US Federal Courthouse in Brooklyn, New York on February 11, 2019
‘She’s being investigated for conspiracy in this country. She is being looked at for her part in El Chapo’s escape,’ an anonymous federal law enforcement official recently told the New York Post.
During Chapo’s trial in January, Lopez said Coronel told him her husband was thinking about breaking out of prison again and was wondering if Lopez would help him pull it off.
‘I said sure,’ Lopez told the courtroom in January.
When Guzman first met Lopez almost 20 years ago, Lopez was a corrupt security official at Puente Grande, a prison in Jalisco, Mexico from which Chapo launched his first successful escape plan back in 2001.
Former Mexican drug cartel member Damaso ‘El Licenciado’ Lopez Nunez first met Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman almost 20 years ago when Lopez was a corrupt security official at Puente Grande, the maximum security prison in Jalisco, Mexico from which Chapo launched his first successful escape plan back in 2001
A courtroom sketch of El Chapo crony Damaso Lopez Nunez who testified during the crime boss’s trial in January that Guzman sent him letters telling him to coordinate escape plans with Guzman’s wife, Emma Coronel, in 2015
(L-R) Defense attorney Mariel Colon, accused Mexican drug lord Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, defense attorney A. Eduardo Balarezo and Joaquin Guzman’s wife Emma Coronel Aispuro, sit in court in this courtroom sketch during Guzman’s trial in Brooklyn federal court in New York City, on January 30, 2019
The crime boss wanted Lopez to work with his wife and sons to help him break out once more, this time from the Altiplano Federal Prison in Juarez, regarded as Mexico’s most secure prison.
Lopez said he and Coronel met later with some of Chapo’s many sons. He said the Little Queen told her step kids their father wanted them to buy an armored truck and a GPS watch while purchasing land near the prison.
Chapo’s sons obliged his request, buying the land before digging a mile-long tunnel to his prison cell complete with lighting, air ventilation, even a motorcycle rigged to a rail line for him to ride to freedom.
Guzman used that tunnel to flee the facility in July of 2015, turning up the TV in his cell to drown out the loud hammering sound of his co-conspirators chiseling away at the stone beneath his bathroom floor.
When the digging was done, Chapo slid his shoes on and disappeared behind a dividing wall between his shower and the rest of his cell, a moment captured by the cell’s surveillance cameras.
When guards checked Guzman cell 20 minutes later, he was gone.
View of the hole (L) in the shower of the Almoloya prison where Joaquin Guzman Loera ‘El Chapo’ Guzman was and through which he escaped, on July 15, 2015 in Almoloya de Juarez, Mexico
A view of the tunnel through which Guzman escaped from Mexican Maximum Security Prison of ‘El Altiplano’ on July 15, 2015 in Mexico City
View of the tunnel Guzman used to escape, during an operation on the surroundings of Mexican Maximum Security Prison of ‘El Altiplano’ on July 15, 2015 in Mexico City
Lopez told the court Coronel’s brother helped Guzman ride an ATV to a warehouse Lopez had rented. From there, Chapo was transported to an airstrip ‘where a plane was waiting to take him to Sinaloa,’ according to the New York Post.
Marines in Mexico caught Chapo six months later after a January 2016 shootout that left five people dead, the New York Times reported.
After his arrest and return to Altiplano prison, Lopez said he and Coronel were contacted about busting Chapo out yet again.
‘My comadre [Coronel] told me my compadre [Guzman] sent his regards and that he was going to make a huge effort to escape again,’ Lopez told the court in January.
Mexican marines captured ‘El Chapo’ on January 8, 2016, in the Mexican state of Sinaloa
‘What you said is Emma was involved in planning it?’ defense attorney Eduardo Balarezo asked him.
‘No, what I said is she was bringing a message,’ Lopez replied.
A lawyer for Coronel declined to comment on the fed’s investigation on Friday.