Mexican teen gets life in killings
In taped conversation, hit man bragged about toast with blood
By JASON BUCH LAREDO MORNING TIMES
March 5, 2009, 6:27PM


A judge said she was sure that Gabriel Cardona would kill again if he were ever released.

A federal judge sentenced a Gulf Cartel hit man to life in prison on Thursday for the murders of two American teenagers who were abducted from a Nuevo Laredo nightclub, tortured, killed and then incinerated.

Gabriel Cardona, a 22-year-old who has pleaded guilty to seven murders committed in Laredo and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, expressed no remorse during his sentencing before U.S. District Court Judge Michela Alvarez in Laredo federal court.

The American-born high school dropout is already serving an 80-year sentence for five state murder charges. He pleaded guilty in August to a federal charge of conspiracy to kidnap and kill in a foreign country, admitting to the 2006 murders of 14-year-old Inez Abundo Villarreal and 19-year-old Jorge Alfonso Aviles in Nuevo Laredo.

In a telephone conversation with another hit man intercepted by federal agents, Cardona bragged about how he slashed the two teenagers with a broken bottle, gathered their blood in a cup and made a toast to the Santisima Muerte, or death saint, in the spring of 2006.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jose Angel Moreno said during Thursday’s sentencing hearing that Cardona led a squad of hit men working for a faction of the Gulf Cartel known as the Zetas. He was the point-man for a crew of teenage sicarios, or hit men, operating in the U.S. in 2005 and 2006 coordinating kills on both sides of the border on the orders of Gulf Cartel leaders in Nuevo Laredo, authorities said.

Maria Villarreal, Inez Villarreal’s mother, spoke during the hearing, pleading with Alvarez to ask Cardona where she could find her son’s remains, which court records say were burned with liquid fuel in a barrel, a method known as a guiso, or stew.

“I know the pain your mother is going through, but the stronger sorrow is mine because she knows where you are,â€