• Leader of Los Zetas Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, 1974

Lazcano joined the Mexican Army at the age of 17 and later ascended to the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE), the Mexican Army special forces. During his tenure in the Mexican Army, Lazcano reportedly received military training from the Israeli Defense Forces and the United States Army, but eventually deserted in 1998, after eight years of service. Upon his desertion, he was recruited by the drug lord Osiel Cárdenas Guillén and Arturo Guzmán Decena with around 30 other soldiers to work as the enforcers of the Gulf Cartel, forming the paramilitary group known as Los Zetas. His torture methods earned him the nickname "El Verdugo" ('The Executioner'), particularly for killing his victims by feeding them to lions and tigers he kept in a ranch.

Lazcano died in a shootout with the Mexican Navy on 7 October 2012. After his death, his body was taken from the funeral home by an armed gang.

Lazcano was born to a poor family on Christmas Day, December 1974, in Apan, Hidalgo, Mexico. He enlisted in the Mexican Army as an infantry soldier at age 17 and was later enrolled in the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE), an elite special forces team dedicated to combating Guerrillas (like the EZLN) and drug trafficking organizations. His first military mission took place during the presidency of Ernesto Zedillo, when he was sent along with other GAFE soldiers to put down the armed insurgency in Chiapas. After that, he was moved to northern Mexico as part of a security reinforcement program against the drug trafficking organizations. While serving in the Mexican Army, Lazcano reportedly received training from the Israeli Defense Forces and the United States Army. He acquired training in areas of counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism tactics; sniper techniques; jungle, mountain, desert, naval, and urban warfare; and learned how to use explosives, high calibre rifles and grenade launchers.

While traveling through Reynosa, Tamaulipas on 18 February 1998, Lazcano was detained by the Mexican authorities with 325 kilograms of marijuana in his Chevrolet Silverado. During that time, Lazcano was still working as a judicial police officer in Tamaulipas but was also working for the drug lord Osiel Cárdenas Guillén. The federal document does not explain why he was allowed to leave after the narcotics were confiscated, but soon after this incident Lazcano left the military and his duty as a police reinforcement to work full time for the Gulf Cartel.

He served in the Army for seven years and eventually deserted on 27 March 1998, when he was recruited by Osiel Cárdenas Guillén and Arturo Guzmán Decena to form part of Los Zetas, originally set up by former soldiers of the Mexican Army working on the behalf of the Gulf Cartel. After Cárdenas Guillén was arrested and extradited to the United States in 2007, Los Zetas broke relations with the Gulf Cartel in 2010 and rose to become the strongest criminal organization in Mexico, alongside the Sinaloa Cartel. Lazcano was placed as third in command (Z-3), and after the death of Guzmán Decena (Z-1) in 2002 and the capture of Rogelio González Pizaña (Z-2) in 2004, he became the commander.

Under the tutelage of Lazcano, Los Zetas recruited more gunmen into their ranks, many of them former soldiers of the Mexican military and ex-Kaibiles, the Special Forces squadron of the Guatemalan military, former police officers, and street thugs. Lazcano also created regional cells that specialized in other crimes besides drug trafficking. Due to his military background, Lazcano instilled a "military culture" in his squadron, designating new recruits with the titles of "lieutenant" and "commander," and training them in military tactics.

By 2008, Lazcano forged an alliance with the brothers of the Beltrán Leyva Cartel and with Vicente Carrillo Fuentes of the Juárez Cartel. Since early 2010, Los Zetas broke relations with their former employers, the Gulf Cartel, causing a violent turf war throughout the border states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo León in northeastern Mexico. The war between these two criminal organizations has left thousands dead.

Lazcano is suspected of killing hundreds of people, including the journalist Francisco Ortiz Franco, who was assassinated in 2004 in front of his two children as he was leaving a clinic. Lazcano played a particular role in Los Zetas; with his military training, he was able to combine "military precision with stone hearted criminality." When he was in power, Lazcano would go with his organization into several regions of Mexico, find out who was in charge of the local kidnapping, human trafficking, and extortion rings, and kill them to take over their business. The rest were then told to join or die.

At its peak, Lazcano's criminal empire consisted of about 10,000 gunmen stretching from the Rio Grande all the way into Central America.

Lazcano made a name for himself by decapitating his victims, putting them in acid baths, and for torturing and killing hundreds of people.

When punishing victims, Lazcano became known for using a torture method known as "La Paleta" ('The Popsicle'), in which victims were stripped naked and brutally beaten with a board. A reporter also recalls that Lazcano reportedly tied a man to a tree and beat him until he broke his legs, and then left him tied to the tree for two or three days until he died. According to the Mexican authorities, Lazcano owned a ranch with several lions and tigers, which he used to get rid of his victims. Lazcano also used effective intimidation kills to keep his subordinates in check. He reportedly dumped his victims (or their children) in large barrels of boiling oil. When he found out that some of his men were stealing from him, Lazcano would force one of them to watch while his henchmen grabbed a 2-by-4 and beat the other to death. When they were dead, the executioner would then cut out the victim's heart (Lazcano threw the organs away, but other drug lords have forced their guests to eat the organs of the victims). Lazcano also pioneered the decapitation techniques that Los Zetas now employ, and protected witnesses have said that Lazcano would let captured rivals starve to death because he liked to watch the process or that he would let them be eaten by wild animals.

In a flurry of articles on late August 2012, a U.S. law enforcement official told the press that Miguel Treviño Morales, the former second-in-command of Los Zetas, had reportedly taken the leadership of the cartel and displaced Lazcano, the long time leader. Due to his violent and confrontational personality, Treviño Morales began the process of taking over the assets of Los Zetas and removing Lazcano in early 2010.

At the beginning, Lazcano was happy to have a man like Treviño Morales in his ranks, but he reportedly underestimated him and gave him too much power. The active role of Treviño Morales got him the loyalty and respect of many in Los Zetas, and eventually many stopped paying loyalty to Lazcano. Personality wise, Treviño Morales and Lazcano are opposing figures; Treviño Morales tended to prefer violence, while Lazcano was a lot steadier, and preferred to keep his organization as a stable group. Lazcano reportedly wanted Los Zetas to be less of a problem for the next political administration of Enrique Peña Nieto; in contrast, "Treviño Morales was someone who wanted to fight the fight." Los Zetas are inherently an unstable organized crime group with a long history of brutal violence, with the possibility of constant internal crisis if the organization exists without its central command.

It was later confirmed, however, that Treviño Morales and Lazcano had actually kept their alliance, and that the rumors of the infighting started when several men of Treviño Morales' faction did not want him as leader.

Lazcano was wanted by American and Mexican authorities for multiple murders and drug trafficking charges. American officials offered a bounty of $5 million (USD), and Mexican officials offered a bounty of 30 million pesos (equivalent to $2 million USD).

Lazcano had several aliases, including but not limited to: Z-3, Laz, El Lazca, El Bronce ('The Bronze'), El Muñeco ('The Doll'), El Pitirijas ('The Dude'), El Licenciado ('The Lawyer'), and El Verdugo ('The Executioner').

He was ranked by law enforcement officials at the top of the list of Mexico's most wanted drug lords, often credited as being the second most wanted, just behind Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán. Nonetheless, both of them come from very different backgrounds and present different challenges to the Mexican government. Guzmán is the modern version of the "old school" drug boss, although the extreme violence from Los Zetas has forced his organization to sometimes contradict its politics. Los Zetas, on the other hand, are the "cartel of our time," who opt for brutal violence.

On 20 July 2009, the United States Department of the Treasury sanctioned Lazcano under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (sometimes referred to simply as the "Kingpin Act"), for his involvement in drug trafficking along with three other international criminals. The act prohibited U.S. citizens and companies from doing any kind of business activity with him, and virtually froze all his assets in the U.S.

On 21 April 2012 the Mexican Armed Forces raided a party in the city of Monclova, Coahuila, with the objective of capturing Lazcano. The musical group Banda Jerez was playing during the party and reportedly dedicated a song to El Lazca, who fled the scene and avoided his capture.

There had been multiple unconfirmed reports that Lazcano may have been killed in the years leading up to his actual death, but all of the allegations were disproved by the Mexican and U.S. authorities. Two reports by U.S. newspapers The Monitor and The Brownsville Herald indicated that Lazcano had been killed in a gun battle with a Mexican Army on the streets of Matamoros, Tamaulipas on 17 June 2011. The articles stated that Los Zetas had held a meeting in Matamoros with the Gulf Cartel, which explained why Lazcano was there in the first place.

The U.S. Department of State later confirmed that "the physical characteristics of the dead men allow the conclusion to be drawn that Heriberto Lazcano, leader of the Zetas criminal organization, was not among them."

On 7 October 2012, the Mexican Navy responded to a civilian complaint reporting the presence of armed gunmen in Progreso, Coahuila. Upon the navy's arrival, Lazcano and one gunman — who were inside a white van — opened fire against the marines, triggering a shootout that left Lazcano, his gunman, and one marine dead. The vehicle was found to contain a grenade launcher, 12 grenades, possibly a rocket propelled grenade launcher and two rifles, according to the Navy. The Navy managed to confirm his death through fingerprint verification and photographs of his corpse before handing the body to the local authorities. However, before the Navy could make an official announcement of his death, several heavily armed and masked gunmen, presumably under orders of Miguel Treviño Morales, stormed the funeral home where his body lay with that of the other man involved in the shooting. Homero Ramos, Coahuila's state prosecutor, said: "A masked, armed group overpowered the personnel, took the bodies, and forced the owner of the funeral home to drive the getaway vehicle."

At the time of his death, Lazcano was 1.80 m (5 ft 11 in) tall and not 1.60 m (5 ft 3 in), as previously estimated by the authorities.

The Mexican Navy did not identify Lazcano until his body was snatched from the funeral home in Sabinas, Coahuila, a testament to the drug lord's low profile behavior. At first, the Navy thought the two gunmen killed in the shootout were low level criminals, which explains why they were taken to a funeral parlor. Once the bodies were taken, the police matched the fingerprints and photos with those of Lazcano. He was able to be identified because when Lazcano was in the military, his fingerprints were on file; he also spent some time in jail early in his career, and his prints may have been taken there. It is not surprising, however, that Lazcano was not identified immediately, given that there were very few pictures of him. The fact that he had also spent some time in Guatemala and overseas, and that the Navy was responding to a civilian tip regarding armed men at a baseball game, made his presence unexpected. His entourage was also uncharacteristic for a major drug trafficker, although it is quite common for cartel leaders to travel in small groups to avoid attracting unnecessary attention. Unlike other drug traffickers, Lazcano was elusive and avoided opulence and power to keep a low profile. He was one of the most secretive drug lords in Mexico, mainly because he had been trained in military intelligence.

Lazcano was the most powerful cartel leader to be killed since the start of Mexico's drug war in 2006.

Lazcano's death differs from those of other cartel leaders in Mexico – including the Gulf Cartel kingpin Antonio Cárdenas Guillén, La Familia Michoacana leader Nazario Moreno González and the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel leader Arturo Beltrán Leyva – as they died in gun battles that lasted hours. Moreover, it was not the first time Mexican cartel members have recovered the bodies of their associates. The body of Arturo Guzmán Decena, the founder of Los Zetas, was snatched after a shootout with the Mexican Army in 2002. In 2010, the Mexican police killed the drug lord Nazario Moreno González of La Familia Michoacana in a gun battle; before they could take the body, his gunmen carried it off. Taking the bodies of their fallen comrades is a part of Los Zetas' military culture, in which gunmen are taught to not leave their comrades behind.

This death came just hours after the Navy arrested a high ranking Zeta member in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Salvador Alfonso Martínez Escobedo. The suspect, known by his code name, "La Ardilla" ('The Squirrel'), was linked to two massacres in northeastern Mexico: the mass murder of 72 migrants in 2010 and the mass graves with more than 200 people in 2011; he is also believed to be responsible for two massive jail breaks, and for the assassination of David Hartley, a U.S. citizen, in Falcon Lake near the U.S - Mexico border on 30 September 2010.Martínez Escobedo knew Lazcano personally and made him the godfather of his 2010 wedding; he helped the authorities identify the corpse of Lazcano, although it is unclear if he did it through the photographs or in person.