El Chapos love for actress gave him away

Details of flirtatious phone messaging chats between Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and actress Kate del Castillo have gripped Mexico, and an official said his “obsession” with her led him to lower his guard and be caught.

Guzman, 57, was arrested in the northern city of Los Mochis on Friday (January 8), six months after a dramatic second jailbreak through a tunnel in his cell. He is now back in the same prison.

Mexican authorities said they intercepted a series of instant message conversations in which del Castillo, 43, brokered a secret meeting between Guzman, herself and Hollywood star Sean Penn in October, helping them trace the kingpin.

A senior government official, who declined to be identified, said one reason Guzman left his redoubt in the Sierra Madre mountains of Sinaloa for Los Mochis was because he was desperate to set up another meeting with the Los Angeles-based actress.

Del Castillo took to Twitter on Wednesday (January 13) to thank her supporters and wrote: “Not surprisingly many have chosen to make up items they think will make good stories and that aren’t truthful.”

She pledged to give her story in due course.

The warmth between the drug lord and the actress has surprised even Mexicans inured to the often stranger-than-fiction events of the drug war.

Guzman’s ties with del Castillo began publicly in 2012 when the actress, who has fronted campaigns for L’Oreal and Ford, wrote an open letter calling on the capo to “traffic in goodness” and saying she believed more in him than the government.

The conversation carried on after the meeting with Penn at a time when authorities were in hot pursuit of Guzman, who narrowly escaped a raid authorities say was made possible by leads gathered from his contacts with del Castillo.

Copies of TV episodes of “La Reina de Sur,” del Castillo’s most famous role, portraying a fictional trafficker, were found in the safehouse Guzman was hiding in prior to his capture.