Back to prison for you, Pedro. No more pipelines for you.
Pete Hefflin was a leader of the Texas environmental movement. He fought against pipeline companies, decried corporate greed, and helped open the largest protest camp in West Texas aimed at blocking the Trans-Pecos pipeline.
But as Hefflin talked about protecting sensitive natural resources for the future, he was hiding his past. This week, at a pipeline protest in Presidio County, sheriff’s deputies arrested him, fingerprinted him and confirmed that they had in custody not Pete Hefflin, but Pedro Rabago Gutierrez, a man arrested and imprisoned multiple times in California for serious crimes – rape and drug dealing among them – before fleeing the state at least 10 years ago as a wanted man.
The arrest stunned protesters at the camp, where he was the head of security, and sent the environmental groups with which the man worked into damage control.
“He was part of our circle. He was part of our family,” said Frankie Orona, executive director of the Society of Native Nations, a San Antonio-based environment and American Indian advocacy group at which Gutierrez was a member of the board of directors. “But then again, we’ve always been about holding people accountable, and in this situation, he was definitely wrong. I am upset with him.”
The Sierra Club said it, too, was surprised by the news, but urged the protest to continue, noting that the Trans-Pecos pipeline was within two months of completion. “We don’t see it as something that will deter the movement,” said Vanessa Ramos, a spokeswoman for the environmental nonprofit. “This is much bigger than one person.”
Energy Transfer Partners, the Dallas company building Trans-Pecos, declined to comment.
Gutierrez, 56, has a long criminal history, according to the California Department of Corrections. In 1984, he was sentenced to nine years for forcible rape, seven years for forcible oral sex and three years for possession of a controlled substance with an intent to sell, the California Department of Corrections said. He served the sentences concurrently and got out of prison about six years later, released on parole.
Between 1990 and 1997, he was reimprisoned at least five times for parole violations, according to corrections records, and in 1998, was convicted of having sex with a minor under 18. He went back to jail, but gained parole again in April of 2002. The California Department of Corrections never heard from him again.
It’s unclear when Gutierrez resurfaced in Texas as Pete Hefflin, but four months ago, he galvanized the movement to block the Trans-Pecos pipeline.