It should have seemed obvious when two men were murdered in room 1215 of Miami’s DuPont Plaza Hotel that the member of the Colombian drug cartel staying in room 1214 might have warranted a second glance.
Under investigation by the Drug Enforcement Agency for helping to launder $40 million of cocaine cash through Swiss banks, Jaime Vallejo Mejia was, however, one of many “red flags” that never got run up the Miami Police Department’s flagpole.
Despite numerous cartel clues in the October 1986 murders of father and son Derrick and Duane Moo Young, detectives almost immediately turned their spotlight elsewhere, focusing it instead on Kris Maharaj, a millionaire British businessman whose protestations of innocence have bounced fruitlessly around the judicial system for nearly three decades since.