In order to identify the species in­volved, Braddon would have to test the lines developed from the suspect meat against those from the meat of every other freshwater and saltwater turtle in the world. Luckily the investigators had a pretty good idea of what kind of meat they were dealing with: 190,000 pounds seemed to implicate the most prolific turtle butcherer in the world, Antonio Suárez.

Peter Pritchard provided one of the samples of ridley meat used by Braddon. The thin blue lines from Pritchard's sam­ple matched exactly those fromthe meat in the suspect tins.

So it was ridley meat. The fact that only one man in the world would have that much olive ridley meat to sell doesn't cut much ice legally. There was still a blizzard of paper and a forest of middle­men between Antonio Suárez and all that illegal meat.

It was a very difficult case, but José Toro had a plan.