Top Zetas drug cartel leader Heriberto Lazcano was killed in a firefight with marines in the northern border state of Coahuila, about 80 miles (125 kilometers) west of the Texas border, near Laredo on Sunday. On Monday his body was stolen from a funeral home by a group of armed men.
Lazcano, also known as “El Verdugo” or the “Executioner,” was outside a baseball game in the town of Progreso. The state prosecutor, Coahuila Attorney General Homero Ramos, said a group of armed men raided the funeral home where the bodies were kept, and stole both corpses.
“El Verdugo,” was an army special forces deserter “whose brutal paramilitary tactics helped define the devastating six-year war among Mexico’s drug gangs and authorities” according to Mexican navy officials.
The Huffington Post reported that “Lazcano’s death is one of the most significant victories in Mexico’s militarized battle with organized crime two months before the man who sharply expanded it, President Felipe Calderon, leaves office.”
Lazcano had been with the Gulf Cartel before joining the Zetas.
Lazcano is suspected in hundreds of killings. He was the prime suspect in the slaying of Francisco Ortiz Franco. Ortiz Franco was an editor of a newspaper in Tijuana that often reported on drug trafficking.
The navy said it received complaints about armed men in the area and sent out a patrol to check out the reports, according to a report in the Examiner. Gunmen tossed grenades at the patrol from a moving vehicle, wounding one of the marines. In the gunmen’s’ vehicle, authorities found a grenade launcher, 12 grenades, what appeared to be rocket propelled grenade launcher and two rifles.
The Zetas are under the control of Miguel Angel Trevino Morales. Morales displaced Lazcano as the leader of the cartel in 2010.
Morales and Lazcano had their difference including the fact that Morales tended to prefer violence, while Lazcano preferred to “be less of a problem.”