IS CAMERON COUNTY DA ALSO OF INTEREST TO THE FEDS?

By Juan Montoya

Virtually anyone with any ties to disgraced former 404th Ditrict Court judge Abel Limas is under the federal magnifying glass.
Whether it's his former bailiffs, his gophers or his preferred ad litem attorneys, everyone is hearing footsteps.
No one – whether it's Cameron County District Clerk Aurora De la Garza to local attorneys or others identified as Persons (A,B,C,D, E, F, ad infinitum?) – is sleeping well nowadays.
Now we understand that even the county's top law-enforcement officer, District Attorney Armando Villalobos, is what the feds call in their parlance a person in which they have a "high degree of interest."
Why would the government be interested in Mando so much?
Could it be because of his lengthy association with Limas? In fact, Mando was awarded the position of Public Defender for the 404th Judicial District Court by then-judge Limas.
"No salia Mando de alli," recalls a courthouse source. "Limas chose him as his public defender over others who were more experienced."
While a district attorney, Villalobos saw many of the cases now being combed over by federal investigators assigned to the 404th by the office of District Clerk Aurora de la Garza.
One of the of most notorious involved the murder of 32-year-old Hermila Hernandez, whose body was found October of 2005 near a South Padre Island beach. Amit Livingston, a man she met on the Internet and with whom she had had a brief affair, was convicted of killing her after she "pushed his buttons" and "insulted his manhood" during one of their meetings.
After his conviction, court records show that Limas allowed Livinsgton to go free for 60 days after defense attorneys reached a deal with prosecutors, including District Attorney Armando Villalobos, at the killer's sentencing.
Limas granted defense attorney Greg Gladden’s request for the grace period before his client was to surrender and begin serving his sentence, without an objection on record from either Villalobos or First Assistant District Attorney Chuck Mattingly.

In later accounts, Villalobos said that the hearing had been held in chambers and that Limas had issued his ruling regardless of his objections.

Shortly after the plea agreement was made in Livingston’s murder case, Limas divided the $500,000 cash bond between Hernandez’s children and their lawyer, Eddie Lucio of Dallas.
Lucio, Villalobos’ former law partner, was dealt in because he filed a parallel civil wrongful death suit against Livingston, attaching the bond money as settlement for Hernandez’ death.
Others say that the treatment afforded District Clerk Aurora de la Garza's son Joey after he pleased guilty to embezzling more than $80,000 from a hospice in Olmito by both Limas and Villalobos is also of interest to federal authorities.

In that case, Sheriff Omar Lucio did not arrest de la Garza, and his case was assigned by his mother to Limas' court where he was arraigned, found guilty and sentenced to pay retribution and placed on deferred adjudication in the space of half an hour on a Friday.

Joey de la Garza did not spend one night in jail but was released after having been booked and fingerprinted at the Rucker-Carrizales County Detention Center not far from the hospice that he victimized.

And local observers still recall that after the truck bridge debacle at the Brownsville Navigation District where $21 million disappeared without a bridge being built, Villalobos garnered a $1 million payoff from Dannenbaum Engineering firm with the promise that it would go toward law enforcement. In return, Dannenbaum and its officers got a clean bill of health from the DA's office. It is unknown whether any of the money ever was made available to the Port of Brownsville.

"It only make sense that the actions of the top law enforcement officer in the county would come into question since he was in the middle of these cases," said he source. "Wouldn't you have questions, too?"