A beauty queen wife, a $2.5m escape plot and a LOT of experience of tunnelling: The secrets of Mexican drugs kingpin El Chapo… and why the violent Public Enemy No1 may never be found

• Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman fled from Altiplano prison on Saturday night
• It is second time in 14 years that he has escaped from a high-security jail 
• Guzman burrowed his way out through tunnel, for which he is best known
• Drug kingpin, who left school at eight, runs world's most complex network of traffickers

By Steph Cockroft for MailOnline

Published: 17:10 EST, 13 July 2015 | Updated: 07:54 EST, 16 July 2015

On the run: Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, pictured in a mugshot last year, fled from his prison cell 

As darkness fell over Mexico's most secure prison on Saturday night, the country's most powerful and enigmatic drug lord, Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, executed an ingenious escape plot which has prompted one of the biggest manhunts in history.

In a scheme more befitting a caper movie, the cunning criminal mastermind crept into a small opening in his private shower in Altiplano prison, before fleeing through a one-mile tunnel, which officials believe had been covertly and audaciously burrowed for months on end.

It is the second time in 14 years that the drug kingpin - the head of the most powerful and ruthless drug trafficking organisation in the world - has embarrassed authorities through his expert escape, despite being described as the most wanted criminal since Osama bin Laden.

But his almost legendary escapes are perhaps unsurprising when one looks at Guzman's lucrative and professionally-run life of crime, which has included brutal turf wars against other cartels, resulting in the death of tens of thousands of people.

Experts have now predicted that Guzman, who successfully crafted a Robin Hood image while rising to the top of the Sinaloa cartel, might never be found again.

Here, we look at how Guzman - who is married to a stunning former beauty queen - emerged at the helm of the most powerful drug squad in the world, before plotting two elaborate escapes and evading capture for decades.

The prison break 

Guzman's audacious escape, carried out just before 9pm on Saturday night, was discovered after the drugs baron failed to come out from the shower cubicle in his cell. When guards grew suspicious, they checked the washroom - and found a 10-metre deep hole containing a ladder.

But it was what was at the end of ladder which sent prison officials into a frenzy. Buried below was a vast, impressive tunnel, complete with a ventilation and light system which had all the hallmarks of a professional engineering job.

The tunnel - which experts believed was not made by Guzman himself - was reportedly dug with the help of a motorcycle which was mounted on a rail. It transported tools and earth in and out of the ground - something which might also have ferried Guzman to his freedom.

The sophisticated walkway then led to a grey brick building on a hill one mile away, surrounded by pastures in central Mexico State - from where he is believed to have collected clothes left for him by his conspirators.

Baffled: Authorities look into the entrance to a secret tunnel through which Guzman is believed to had fled

Heavily concealed: The alleged end of the tunnel through which Mexican drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman could have escaped from the Altiplano prison

Escape gear? This box of clothes was also pictured at the half-constructed property

Mexico's Attorney General tours site of Guzman escape

Neighbours told today how the building had been bought six months ago by a man calling himself 'El Pastor' - the Shepherd - who brought wood and construction items to and from the site, claiming he was building a new house. But neighbours never saw any material change on the building.  

Current building work taking place around the perimeter Altiplano prison is said to be connected to a water reservoir project, aiming to bring water from the west of the capital into Mexico City.

The company, Cutzamala Constructions, reportedly started the job around 14 months ago. But some of the pipes have still not been laid and workers admitted they did not know why the work was taking place in that area. 

After Guzman's escape was realised, police helicopters scrambled to track him down, as the local airport was dramatically closed. But the search - which is still ongoing - has not been successful.

Escape  

It is not the first time that Guzman has escaped from under the nose of prison officials. 

After being sentenced to 20 years in jail on drug-trafficking-related charges and murder, the fugitive made a legendary escape from the prison in Jalisco in 2001. Many accounts say he escaped in a laundry cart, although there are several versions of how he got away. What is clear is that he had help from prison guards, who were prosecuted and convicted following the incident.

Notorious: Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, pictured after his last arrest in 2014, escaped from a maximum security prison in Mexico. The drugs kingspin is head of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel

It later emerged that the $2.5m escape was orchestrated through bribes and intimidation which involved up to 78 accomplices.

Capture 

Guzman was first caught by authorities in Guatemala in 1993, before being extradited to Mexico when he was jailed for 20 years.

Despite his lengthy sentence, Guzman was said to have revelled in prison life, using bribes to bring in cocaine, Viagra - of which he is said to be a frequent user - prostitutes and gourmet food. Some claimed that he turned the prison into a 'five-star hotel'.

Then, after his escape, it was another 13 years before Guzman was recaptured again. He was finally held in February last year, after a dramatic manhunt in which he eluded authorities for days across his home state of Sinaloa.

After his first escape, it was another 13 years before Guzman was recaptured again (pictured) 

Before they reached him, security forces went on a several-day chase through Culiacan, the state's capital. They found houses where Guzman supposedly had been staying with steel-enforced doors and the same kind of lighted, ventilated tunnels that allowed him to escape from a bathroom to an outside drainage ditch.

But he was finally tracked down to a modest beachside high-rise in the Pacific Coast resort city of Mazatlan, where he had been hiding with his wife and twin daughters.  

Guzman has long been known for his ability to pay off local residents and authorities, who would tip him off to operations launched for his capture. 

Tunnels

A bright and ingenious criminal, Guzman is perhaps best known for his network of elaborate tunnels which his cartel built underneath the Mexico-U.S. border to transport cocaine, methamphetamines and marijuana. As well as being a sure way to evade border officials for so many years, the tunnels became products of expert engineering, complete with ventilation, lighting and even railcars.

Guzman's first tunnel came to fruition in the late 1980s, when he hired an architect to design an underground passageway from Mexico to the U.S.

Under the guise of a water faucet located outside the home of a member of the cartel in in Agua Prieta, the architect built a secret lever which activated a hydraulic system. That, in turn, opened a hidden trapdoor underneath a pool table inside the house, which led to a 200-feet passage.

Officers search huge construction pipes on the large building site next to the prison on Sunday. He is known for his network of elaborate tunnels which he uses to transport drugs over the U.S border

After that tunnel was created, Guzman's cartel acquired a reputation for the miraculous speed with which it could push the drugs across the border.

Although that tunnel was eventually discovered, gangs are still using Guzman's method to ferry drugs illegally into the U.S. More than one hundred tunnels have been discovered for that purpose since Guzman's first experiment 20 years ago.

Chilli peppers

As the head of a huge cartel constantly hunted by officials, Guzman had to reinvent his methods repeatedly. After his pivotal tunnel was discovered, he moved onto another speciality - chilli peppers.

Guzman dropped out of school at the age of eight and quickly rose to the top of the cartel 

Guzman opened up a cannera and began producing thousands of cans stamped 'Comadre Jalapenos'. He then stuffed the peppers with cocaine, before vacuum-sealing them and shipping them to Mexican-owned shops in California.

Other trafficking methods included sending drugs in the fridge units of tractors trailers as well as in trucks filled with fish.

They used container ships, fishing vessels and submarines, all of which were floated downriver in separate pieces before being assembled at the coastline.

The cartel would also use its own fleet of 747s which they could load with as much as 13 tonnes of cocaine. 

At one point, police erected an innovative, high-security fence along a stretch of the border in Arizona. But Guzman again found another way to evade the officials. While officers placed their confidence in the high-tech barrier, Guzman encouraged his traffickers to fling bales of cocaine over the fence - using a simple catapult.

School dropout

Guzman was born in April 1957 in the small, rural village of La Tuna, in the foothill of Sierra to a family of poor farmers. Although little is known about his upbringing, Guzman dropped out of school by the age of eight to work with his father, picking oranges. Together, they sometimes worked opium poppy fields.

Despite leaving school illiterate, Guzman showed that he was fiercely bright and, by the age of 15, he had started selling cocaine off his own back. His innate entrepreneurial streak meant he had soon earned enough to support his family.

In the 1980s, Guzman was recruited by Guadalajara cartel boss Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, the 'chief of chiefs' and a godfather of Mexico's modern drug cartels. Guzman's job was to contact drug traffickers in the Colombian cities of Medellin and Barranquilla, gaining a valuable network of contacts to smuggle cocaine into the United States, Europe and Asia. 

Entrepreneur

It wasn't long before Guzman was working his way up through the ranks of his Guadalajara drug cartel. He had soon earned his place at the top of the cartel, presenting himself as an omnipotent criminal mastermind who never missed a trick.

Raid: The drug lord was arrested last year during a raid Saturday at his condo, pictured, in Mazatlan, with his young wife

A frying pan with a cold pancake was still sitting on the stove. There was also a bowl of fruit and veg in the property

When he was put on trial years later, one of his former associates described how Guzman was driven - bordering on obsessive - and was also a ruthless micromanager. However, he would often personally negotiate his own shipments to the U.S.

Billionaire 

His ability to sneak tons of cocaine, heroin and marijuana into the U.S not only made him one of the country's most wanted men, but also made him one of the most wealthy drug lords in history.

In 2009, Guzman made the Forbes list of billionaires. He was only left out of the list in 2013 because he was believed to have spent much of his wealth on protection and because his exact wealth could not be traced.

But he still remained on the Forbes list of the world's most powerful people - and was even ranked above the French and Venezuelen presidents. 

Family life

Former beauty queen Emma Coronel, Guzman's wife and mother to his twin daughters

Guzman grew up with his family and had an acrimonious relationship with this father, who reportedly beat him and his siblings. He adores his mother, a staunch Catholic who is said to be the only person who has the ability to influence any of his decisions.

In August 2011, his stunning wife Emma Coronel - a former beauty queen - gave birth to a twins at a hospital on the outskirts of Los Angeles.

The couple married the day she turned 18 at a lavish wedding in the highlands of central Mexico in 2007, which was attended by police officials. 

A California-born U.S citizen with no charges against her, she is the niece of drug lord Nacho Coronel, who died in a shootout with the Mexican Army in 2010. Before she gave birth, agents wanted to stop her, but had no formal charges to file so had to let her go free.

Birth certificates listed Coronel - believed to be the third or fourth wife of the fugitive - as the mother of the girls, but the spaces for the father's name are blank. It means the children are also U.S citizens.  

In 2008, his lover Zulema Hernandez was discovered dead in the trunk of a car her body carved with the letter Z'.   

Public Enemy Number 1

Guzman was the first man to be named as 'Public Enemy Number 1', a moniker that had been given to US prohibition-era mafia boss Al Capone.

According to the Crime Commission in Chicago, Guzman 'easily surpassed the carnage and social destruction that was caused by Capone.  

After the death of Osama Bin Laden on May 2, 2011, Guzmán became the FBI and Interpol's most wanted person.  

Last escape:  Guzman was listed as 'public enemy number one' after he fled from a prison in 2001. This poster lists his height as 5ft 8in, although he is believed to be 5ft 6in, hence his nickname 'The Shorty'

White House wants escaped Mexican kingpin to face justice

Brutal 

Guzman's time at the top was marked by violence. His cartel became entangled in brutal turf wars against the likes of the paramilitary-like Zetas cartel, in violence which killed around 100,000 people.

At one time, during the most violent era, rivals' wives were beheaded before being sent to their homes in cardboard boxes. Young children were also hurled off bridges. If any drug shipment was late, Guzman would personally shoot the smuggler in the head.

A gunfight in 1993 at the airport of Guadalajara that killed the western city's archbishop, Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo, allegedly because he was mistaken for Guzman.

Guzman's own family has paid for his life of crime. One of his brothers was killed in a Mexican jail in December 2004 and a son was killed in a Culiacan shopping centre in May 2008. His associates blamed the assassins of his former friend and business partner Arturo Beltran Leyva.

Even after his 2014 capture, Guzman's empire continued to stretch throughout North America and reaches as far away as Europe and Australia.

Guzman's time at the top was marked by violence. His cartel became entangled in brutal turf wars which led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people. Pictured: Bodies of three people lie in the street in El Chapo's neighbourhood

Fatty and Shorty 

Standing at just 5ft 6in, Guzman quickly inherited the nickname El Chapo - which means shorty.

He paired up with a Mexican trafficker Miguel Angel Martinez. The 25-year-old, who was a pilot, negotiated with cartels on behalf of Guzman and guiding their cocaine flights from South America to secret runways in Mexico.

Martinez became Guzman's trusted right-hand man and would be offered tens of thousands in tips to set up a meeting with the drug lord. He also travelled around the world with him, took his phone calls and negotiated payments. Together, they earned the nicknames Fatty and Shorty.   

When a lawyer asked whether he had been Guzman's right-hand man, he replied that Guzman had five left hands and five right hands, adding: 'He's an octopus'.

After his capture last year, pictures were released which showed Guzman's features being mapped out for identification

Secretive 

Despite the power he wields, Guzman has also lived a secretive existence and shuns the typical lifestyle of more flashy drug barons who often boast about their lavish lifestyle across social media.

For years, his location was part of Mexican folklore, with rumours circulating of him being everywhere from Guatemala to almost every corner of Mexico.

But he would occasionally turn up at a local restaurant with his entourage where his gunmen would ask every other diner to hand over their phones. They would then tuck into plates of fine food, before returning the phones to the punters and paying for everyone's bill and leaving without fanfare. 

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