EDITED Zeta hit man details killings on both sides of border mySA.com | January 24, 2012 | Jason Buch / FR Posted by SwinneySwitch
LAREDO, TEXAS — A hit man for the Zetas Mexican drug cartel calmly related to jurors in a drug conspiracy trial---to his role as a hired killer.
In US District Court. Rosalio Reta pointed to Gerardo Castillo Chavez, 25, and identified him as a fellow Zeta. Reta, 22, told jurors that he had been in a team of hit men headed by Gabriel Cardona, an admitted Zeta, who has pleaded guilty to five murders that occurred in Texas 2005-06.
Reta said he was the triggerman in the murder of Moises Garcia, a Mexican Mafia prison gang member, in Dec 2005.
Reta, a U.S. citizen, received national media attention after the teenager was deported from Mexico in 2006 at age 17. He's known for his distinctive facial tattoos and boasts that he became a killer when he was 13 years old.
Prosecutors say Castillo Chavez was also a sicario, or hit man, in a crew that worked with Cardona's group, gunning down two people at a busy Laredo, Texas intersection in April 2006.
He faces up to life in prison if convicted on firearms and racketeering charges and wide-ranging drug conspiracy charges; prosecutors presented evidence of a decade's worth of Zeta operations in Texas.
Reta said that he fled to Mexico after two murders in Texas, for which he's now serving 70 years in prison, and worked with Castillo Chavez.” In May 2006, Reta testified, a team of killers was dispatched to El Punto Vivo, a nightclub in a suburb of Monterrey, Mexico.
“Hitmen Chema and Chavezs went into the bar,” Reta said. “They shot, they threw some grenades and they killed four people.”
Afterward, the hit squad went to a convenience store for snacks and drinks. Prosecutors played security video showing Reta and three others making purchases.
Jurors also heard Laredo police detective Robert Garcia testify that he linked the sicarios using phone records.
The big break came when an insider---a DEA informant---was tasked by the Zetas with renting a safe house for Cardona's crew. Garcia said he worked with the feds to thwart the Zetas' attempted hits and to gather evidence.
Defense attorneys questioned Reta as to why someone who had shown great care to hideout after killings in the U.S. would so brazenly hang out at a convenience store, even microwave popcorn, after committing a high-profile killing in Mexico.
“In Mexico, the cartels run everything,” Reta replied. “So it doesn't matter if you get caught on video. We are the law over there.
Rosalio Reta.