U.S. Judge Orders Mexican Drug Cartel to Pay $4.6 Billion to Mormon Families After Desert Killings

The Mexican drug cartel accused of carrying out the killings of nine women and children from an offshoot Mormon community has been ordered by a U.S. judge to pay $1.5 billion, bringing the total settlement over the desert massacre to $4.6 billion.

As the Bismarck Tribune reported, North Dakota federal magistrate judge Clare Hochalter issued the huge settlement against the Juarez cartel, who allegedly killed the members of the Mormon community approximately 90 miles south of the U.S. border on Nov. 4, 2019. The $1.5 billion ruling that came this week will be automatically tripled on account of the federal Anti-Terrorism Act, and the trial is especially unique in that it’s the first that sees an entire drug cartel as the defendant.

The families killed in the desert shootings are decedents of a polygamist sect of fundamentalist Mormons who came from the U.S. to Mexico approximately a century ago. The cartel ambushed their three-vehicle caravan and called three women, 8-month-old twins, a 2-year-old, and three other children between 10 and 12. Ultimately, seven children survived the attacks, although five of them were shot and forced to trek through the desert to find help. The families accused the criminal organization of targeting them for their public criticism of the drug trade, and filed civil lawsuits against the cartel in 2020.

Many of the victims in the massacre died by burning. “If you start when the first bullet was shot until the last person in that car took their last breath, that must have been close to an hour, maybe, 45 minutes of just total terror,” said trauma suregeon and burn expert Dr. Sebastian Schubl. “Watching their siblings, their family members burn to death, it’s – it must be the most frightening thing that anyone has ever experienced.” 

The surviving children are among thhe beneficiaries of the lawsuit. “The horror that my children experienced and my entire family has been through as the result of the Nov. 4, 2019, killing of [wife] Dawna Langford and my two children by the Juarez cartel will never, ever be made right,” said David Langford, who is one of the individuals who filed the lawsuit. “We went into a United States courtroom in North Dakota seeking some acknowledgement of and measure of justice for the trauma inflicted on our family and we received it.”