In his 20 years as a kidnap and ransom consultant, Felix Batista had never lost an abductee. Then he himself was kidnapped.

by Mary A. Fischer

Felix Batista, who works for the Houston-based security firm ASI Global, called me from his hotel in Tijuana, cheery but exhausted, as usual. Lately, kidnappings had surged in Mexico, and sometimes he no sooner completed one  negotiation and returned home to his family in Miami when another frantic call would come and he had to get back on a plane to resolve another.

We had met in person in L.A. the month before, and now he had good news. The top federal official whose trail I had been dogging for weeks had agreed to talk to me in TJ. Batista, 55, had just had dinner with the official in an out-of-the-way restaurant. “We never sit by the window,” said Batista, explaining common Mafia-type safety precautions that prime law-enforcement targets of the narco gangs routinely follow. “We never sit with our backs to the front door, and we make sure we have a clear escape out the back.”

Such was Batista’s life, at least the professional part. A former intelligence officer in the U.S. Army, the Cuban-American father of five, married for 31 years to his high school sweetheart, was considered one of the best in the K&R business. Batista had worked in all the kidnapping hot spots — Venezuela, Ecuador, and Colombia, where he once spent 19 months negotiating with FARC rebels for the release of an American engineer. He was proud of his track record and had never lost a victim. All of his 107 hostages had been
returned alive, and with an added bonus: All of their fingers, toes, and ears were intact. 

Hollywood has hostage negotiators all wrong, he told me. “Cowboys will get [a hostage] killed,’’ Batista said. “You need someone who is analytical and cerebral — part psychologist, hand-holder, theater director, and master bullshitter.’’

Three days after our phone call, on December 10, Batista himself became a victim when armed gunmen abducted him outside a restaurant in Saltillo, a prosperous city in northern Mexico. His case, the highest-profile kidnapping of a U.S. citizen in years, illustrates just how bold organized criminals have become in Mexico.

The irony is inescapable. In town to participate in a security seminar about kidnappings, Batista dined with local businessmen that evening. He received a series of cell phone calls and excused himself from the table. On his way out of the restaurant to get better reception, he handed his companions his laptop and a list of phone numbers in case he didn’t return. Moments later an SUV pulled up to the curb and forced Batista inside.

No ransom demand has been made, and no one has heard from him since. “Not a good sign,” says fellow K&R specialist Paul Magallanes. “It appears corrupt cops informed narcos about Felix’s visit to Mexico, and his fate depends on the level of danger he poses to them if they release him. The good news is that Felix knows about hostage survival and will use that knowledge to his benefit.”

Batista’s wife Lourdes said: “We are preparing for the worst but hoping for the best.”

(Read the main feature here.)
This article appears in the April 2009 issue of Men’s Journal.