‘WHACK’Y WORLD
GRUESOME TORTURES, GIRL FIGHTS: WHAT WE LEARNED
The multibillion-dollar drugsmuggling ring was just the beginning.
The trial of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman featured torrid love triangles, a bizarre cast of characters and more sketchy plastic surgery than an episode of “E! True Hollywood Story” — and that was just in the courtroom.
Here are some of the craziest stories to emerge from the threemonth saga in Brooklyn, both on and off the witness stand.
Bizarre love triangle
Guzman’s trial was full of soapopera-worthy drama, but things went full telenovela on Jan. 17 when one of his mistresses took the stand — and broke into tears while his wife laughed at her from the second row.
Chapo’s 29-year-old sidepiece, disgraced Mexican politician Lucero Guadalupe Sanchez Lopez, was so overcome with emotion when forced to testify against her former lover that she had to leave the courtroom — much to the delight of his spouse, Emma Coronel Aispuro.
When they returned from a weekend break in the trial, Guzman and Coronel both wore matching red velvet jackets in a bizarre show of solidarity.
The beauty queen
Coronel was barred from speaking to her husband through-throughout the trialial but was a near-constantant presence in court — and the dy-dynamic betweenween them made for its own sideshow.
The voluptuous uptuous 29-year-old former beauty queen,en, who was just 188 when she marriedd the king-kingpin, exchangedged waveswaves and smiless with her 61-year-r-old hubby from her re- served seat in the gallery.
Prior to opening statements, ts, the lonely drug lord asked the he judge to allow him to share a single hug with his wife, but the request was denied.
Tunnel visionary
Guzman gave new meaning to the term “criminal underworld” with a secret tunnel beneath one of his hideouts in Culiacan — accessed via stairs hidden under the bathtub, SancheSanchez said. She got a firsthand look at the James Bond-esesque setup when authorities raided raide one of his properties pr in 2014 — and the kingpin fled fle naked through throug the tunnel.
About Abo face
The wworst plastic surgery ono display in the courcourtroom wasn’t from Guzman’s harem of younger lovers — it came via the face of a 55-year-old Colombian cocaine smuggler known as “Lollipop.”
Jurors looked on in barely contained horror as turncoat coke kingpin Juan Carlos Ramirez Abadia (inset) testified in November, transfixed by his bizarre, lizardlike appearance.
Ramirez explained that his stretched white skin and startling cheekbones were the result of cosmetic surgeries he had undergone to disguise his face while on the run from authorities.
Undie attack
Jurors got an eyeful of Chapo’s unmentionables when they were shown footage of a 2012 bust at one of his mansions in Los Cabos — and the video focused in on a drawer of the kingpin’s tightywhities.
Guzman narrowly escaped arrest by jumping out a window — but left behind a trove of damning ledgers, which were used against aga him at tthe trial.
Theater of the absurd
The diminutive narcissist wanted nothing more than to direct a biopic about himself, one witness testified in January.
El Chapo didn’t sell himself short in his attempts to option his life story — once trying to wow a producer by claiming he’d been tied to a helicopter and flown upside down by the Mexican Army following an arrest, his former secretary Alex Cifuentes told the jurors.
Narcos: Brooklyn
Guzman did at least get a brush with Hollywood during his trial when the actor who plays him on the hit Netflix series “Narcos: Mexico” dropped by.
Alejandro Edda twice sat in the courtroom, where he studied his muse with binoculars from the gallery — and the two men exchanged grins.
A US marshal had to tamp down on the excitement, warning those seated in the same row as Edda, “This isn’t Comedy Central. No laughing.”
He bought a zoo!
Guzman was living so large in the 1990s that he built his own private zoo, one witness revealed.
The cat-loving cartel leader’s menagerie at his Guadalajara ranch included lions, panthers, tigers and deer, and he traveled around the facility in “a little train,” according to former pal Miguel Angel Martinez.
Diamond dog
Guzman brought together his love of violence and opulence with an arsenal of blinged-out weapons, numerous witnesses testified throughout the trial.
The capo’s cache included a diamond-studded .38-caliber pistol engraved with his initials and two others bedazzled with matching black-and-white panthers.
He also toted around a goldplated AK-47 rifle, witnesses said.
Chapo didn’t buy the guns for himself; they were gifts for the drug lord who has everything, according to his former bodyguard, Isaias Valdez Rios.
In cold blood
Valdez also shared gruesome tales of how Guzman tortured, then murdered at least three members of rival cartels — including one he had buried alive.
Chapo received a captive from the Arellano-Felix cartel in 2006 who was already so burned from torture that “the T-shirt he was wearing was stuck to his skin and he had lighter marks all over his body,” Valdez said.
Guzman left the man blindfolded outdoors for three days, interrogated him — then tossed him in a hen house for several more days until workers began complaining about the smell. He then shot the captive in front of a fresh grave and ordered his men to bury the guy as he was still gasp- ing for air, the witness claimed.
Playing the hits
El Chapo came up with some creative ways to off his enemies.
One cartel lieutenant-turnedcooperator testified that his old boss tried to have him killed in prison by sending a band to play a threatening song on repeat outside his cell — before a hit man lobbed grenades inside.
Miguel Angel Martinez said he jumped behind a bathroom fixture and somehow survived the blasts unscathed.
Who wears short shorts
Witness Pedro Flores, who worked stateside as a distributor for El Chapo, also admitted Guzman mocked his masculinity after he showed up to their first meeting wearing jean shorts.
But Flores got the last laugh when he gave El Chapo a pair of his own jean shorts stuffed into a Viagra box — and later ratted on him to the feds.