TEXAS TEEN CARTEL HITMEN

Enticed to kill by big cash payments, gifts of fancy cars and nice houses

From Borderland Beat:

THE BLACK KISS: ZETAS GROOMED TEXAS TEENS AS SICARIOS AT AGE 13

CBC and SOMA (Translated from Spanish)
July 5, 2012

Gabriel Cardona and Rosalio ‘Bart’ (as in Bart Simpson) Reta are American citizens of the border town of Laredo, Texas. They were raised in poverty and with the many problems inherent to poverty. When developing to the teenage years, they had dropped out of school and had become friends with bad influences. Seduced by the promises of easy money, faster cars and an abundance of girls, the two childhood friends soon joined the despicable cartel of Los Zetas.

This group of mercenaries and narcos trained them to kill, and the two young boys started to work as hit men. They were paid ahead of time; they lived in safe houses in upper class neighborhoods of Laredo Texas, where those hard working successful citizens were clueless that the new family in the neighborhood were teen sicarios. The teens worked a five day work week, on call, ready for the order for them to kill on both sides of the border. They were paid up to $10,000 dollars and 2 kilos of cocaine for each job, and bonuses like a 70 thousand dollar Mercedes for a well executed job.

“You know, it’s the money, the cars, the houses, the girls,” Rosalio Reta said, after a pause, “And you know that it will not last forever, that it will end.” He said.

In April of 2006, Cardona was arrested in Texas during an operation coordinated by Roberto Garcia, a detective from Laredo. The 19 year old teenager confessed to have participated in seven murders and involved Reta, among others. Reta fled to Mexico.

Cardona also confessed to have kidnapped two American teenagers, members of a rival cartel. Erupting in laugher, his mocking description of their pleas was heard by the detective as he monitored the conversation. Despite their plea, he tortured them and stabbed them until killing them with a broken bottle. In the hacked phone conversation between Cardona and Reta, Cardona describes how he collected the blood of the dying bodies in a glass and toast to the Santa Muerte (Holy Death), the female deity of death. He placed the bodies in a barrel with 55 gallons of diesel, to preparing to cook them and set them on fire.

A month later, Reta was arrested in Mexico for being involved in a vain assassination attempt in a bar in Monterrey. Alleged to have killed four and injured twenty five when he opened fire and threw a grenade inside the popular bar. Even then, he didn’t kill his victim and the Zetas wanted him dead . Reta contacted Roberto Garcia from jail and asked to be extradited to the United States. There, in a recorded interview he confessed to have committed 30 murders.

Gabriel Cardona currently is serving a sentence of 80 years for five homicides, in which afterwards- if he is still alive- will serve a sentence of life for the kidnappings. While awaiting his trial, Cardona, asked a convicted companion to tattooed open eyes in his eyelids. In 2008 Reta was sentenced to 70 years for two murders in Laredo. He also asked a prisoner to tattooed flames and horns on the face.