Word: sapo
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...morning last week, 250 of the country's toughest thugs and cutthroats gawked like sentimental sidewalk watchers at the ceremony in their prison courtyard. Pretty Maria de Jesus Torres Martinez, 28, had come there to be married to a frog-faced murderer named Jose Ortiz Munoz, called El Sapo (The Bullfrog) by his fellow inmates. Demure in a green frock and red shoes, Maria de Jesus mooned over El Sapo, natty in a clean striped uniform, as he listened with rapt attention to the district judge...
First Fight. Love had mellowed El Sapo, a man who could stand some mellowing. By his own count, he had killed more than 100 men in his 45 years. As a boy of nine in a northern village where his army-officer father was stationed, he began his life work by stabbing a schoolmate with the sharp point of a compass. Released from prison at 15, he joined the army, and was working in a road gang when an officer kicked him for not saluting. El Sapo killed the man with a dagger and was sentenced to be shot...
Twice during his career, El Sapo was able to kill to his heart's content, quite legally. He was an army private during General Saturnino Cedillo's rebellion of 1938. "I killed Cedillistas on sight," he remembers with satisfaction. Later, when Sinarquistas (local Fascists) rioted in León, he had the pleasure of working the rioters over with a machine gun. "Blood ran that day!" he recalls proudly...
Through the years, El Sapo's friends had predicted that some day he would go too far. In Mexico City, in 1946, he and Congressman José Torrero got into a pistol duel, with the usual result-El Sapo killed his adversary. An unsympathetic judge gave El Sapo 18 years in the Black Palace of Lecumberri, as the district pen is called. After a period of inactivity, he killed an annoying cell mate two years ago, did a stretch in solitary confinement...