Thread: Cartel hiring teens in Texas as hitmen

April 15, 2007, 12:37AM
VIOLENCE ALONG THE BORDER
Cartel hiring teens in Texas as hitmen

One youth was able to keep killing after bonding out twice on murder charges in Webb County


By SUSAN CARROLL
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle


Authorities say Rosalio Reta Jr., 17, is a member of the ``Zetillas,'' young enforcers for the Gulf Cartel.


LAREDO — If the teenage hitman had stayed locked up in his concrete cell after the first murder, maybe Moises Garcia would still sing goofy Spanish songs to his son.

Maybe Noe Lopez, a 27-year-old father of four, wouldn't be buried under a sapling in the city cemetery.

Maybe.

If a judge hadn't reduced Gabriel Cardona's bail after the second murder charge, perhaps Mariano Resendez would be close to finishing his junior year of high school.

If the justice of the peace hadn't decreased Cardona's bail on another murder charge and a charge of engaging in organized crime from a total of $3 million to $200,000, maybe Jesus Maria Resendez would still take his nephew Mariano fishing.

Maybe.

But the judge, the justice of the peace and to a degree the Webb County District Attorney's Office didn't keep Cardona, a Martin High School dropout, locked up in Webb County Jail.

Instead, court records show, Cardona, who already was in jail on murder and kidnapping charges, made bail twice, allowing him to get out and go on two killing sprees on the orders of a leader of the Gulf drug-smuggling cartel in Nuevo Laredo.

In all, Cardona, who is now 20, was charged with killing five people in the span of 10 months, including Garcia, Lopez and the Resendezes. So far, he's pleaded guilty to two murder charges and faces three more.

A Houston Chronicle review of court, police and jail-booking records shows a former state district court judge, Manuel "Meme" Flores, reduced Cardona's bail despite warnings from the prosecutors that he was a "continuing threat" and a flight risk. The former judge, now in private practice, said he has "no independent recollection" of the Cardona case.

Speaking generally about setting bail, he said: "There is that presumption of innocence for a defendant, and you try and set bail in a way that's not oppressive, in a way that gives the defendant the opportunity to get out and prepare for trial with his lawyer."

The Chronicle investigation also revealed a pattern of bail reductions by a Webb County justice of the peace, Hector Liendo, on behalf of Cardona and an alleged accomplice, a young man named Jesse Gonzalez III, who is charged with three murders — two allegedly committed while he was out on bail. Gonzalez, who spent 11 days in jail on a murder charge before bonding out, remains a fugitive.

Liendo did not return repeated phone calls.

In cases involving multiple homicides and murders for hire, a Texas district attorney can file a capital murder charge or a motion to deny bail and legally hold a defendant without bail at least temporarily, according to Texas law.

Why such charges or motions were not filed in the Cardona case remains unclear. Webb County District Attorney Joe Rubio did not respond to repeated requests for comment.


Moises Garcia's death
The Garcia family was trapped inside the pearly white Lexus. The killer with the 9 mm moved around toward the driver's side, hustling toward his target.

Witnesses would later describe the gunman as a short, stocky guy. Young.

Through the window, the killer shot Moises Garcia in the face five times. Garcia died instantly in the parking lot of a Torta Mex fast-food restaurant. His pregnant wife, his older brother and his son, Moises Jr., sat in the car, screaming.

It was a bitterly cold December afternoon in 2005, less than two weeks after Cardona had been released from jail on bond the first time.

Garcia was a well-known gang member, nicknamed "Moy" and "El 23." For years, he carried his gun everywhere, his family members said, but recently he'd softened a bit.

His wife, Diana Lorea, was nine months pregnant. Their son was 3. He loved that kid, said Lori Garcia, Moises Sr.'s mother. He would sing his son songs by the band Duelo, sappy songs, such as El Amor No Acaba (The Love Doesn't End).

The couple knew they were having a girl. Moises went out and bought tiny pink outfits, Lori Garcia said. They'd already decided on a name, Chanel. In one of the family's pictures, he is on his knees, hugging his wife's swollen belly.

Moises Sr.'s mother fights bouts of anger at the happiest times. She stewed in the church pews during her granddaughter's baptism, watching the blessing of a baby born two weeks after Moises was buried. She admits her son was a gangster, but how could they let the killers out? How could they? she asked.

"I get so angry sometimes. My son had a lot to live for," she said. "He wasn't supposed to die."


American recruits
Cardona has been charged with Garcia's murder, but police don't accuse him of pulling the trigger. They say he was the "hookup," the connection between a high-level drug trafficker in Mexico and a rotating cast of teenagers and young men who act as assassins on the U.S. side of the border.

Law enforcement officials have dubbed Cardona's crew "Zetillas," slang for "Baby Zetas," young enforcers for the Gulf Cartel. They are named after the infamous Zetas, defectors from the Mexican military who sided with smugglers in the drug war.

The profile of the Zetillas in Laredo has startled U.S. law enforcement authorities. They're American kids, born on the north side of the Rio Grande. They range in age from 17 to 24.

At least one, Rosalio Reta Jr., a 17-year-old Houston native, was trained at a Gulf Cartel camp in Mexico, law enforcement sources said. At an age when other kids learn how to tie sailor's knots at Boy Scout camps, he learned how to toss explosives.

Law enforcement sources said Cardona and his accomplices present some of the clearest evidence yet that Mexican drug gangs are recruiting and training U.S.-born hitmen to kill on the north side of the Rio Grande, representing a brutal escalation of drug-related border violence.

Detectives recently obtained an arrest warrant for a Gulf Cartel lieutenant named Miguel Treviño Morales, who is accused of ordering all the murders Cardona is charged with, police said.

Generally, the hitmen received $5,000 to $50,000 for murder, depending on their role and the target, records show.

"The reason they're recruiting youngsters like this is because they're easily manipulated," said Webb County Sheriff Rick Flores (no relation to the judge). ''They swing a carrot ... of money, cars, drugs and women, so it's a very catchy deal."


Early ties to cartel
Cardona grew up on Lincoln Street, in a house with peeling, emerald-green paint just blocks from the U.S.-Mexico border. When he was 15 or 16, he was expelled from school. His mother, Gabriela Maldonado, said she thinks it was because he brought rolling papers to class, but she can't remember exactly. He stopped coming home.

He bounced in and out of juvenile court and started moving guns for the Gulf Cartel, said a U.S. law enforcement source who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigations. He fell in with fugitives accused of murder, kidnapping and drug trafficking, according to court records. He was quickly promoted to be a hitman.

He was arrested the day of his first murder, on June 8, 2005. After shooting a warehouse worker, Cardona and a childhood friend jumped into a Volkswagen Jetta and led police on a high-speed chase along Interstate 35 and into the city's historical downtown.

They were arrested and charged with kidnapping and murder, along with a handful of alleged accomplices. Judge Flores set Cardona's bail at $250,000.

That sounds like a lot of money for a teenager who, at least on paper, had no job. But in Texas, defendants typically have to post only about 10 percent of the bail amount when they use a jail bond company. Prosecutors said Cardona was making good money on the murders and other side jobs. A Laredo bondsman put up the money.

Police and prosecutors said they struggled at first to piece together what was happening. Why were a bunch of local kids carrying AK-47s? Why was Gonzalez driving a new Chevy Avalanche? How could Reta afford a Mercedes that wasn't stolen? Why were a bunch of high school dropouts emerging as the primary suspects in drug-related homicides?

"These kids are hitmen," prosecutor Joe Guillen remembers thinking last spring.

"In hindsight, it's easy to see it for what it was, but at the time it was happening, these guys were just young guys who were mixed up, got into the heat of the moment or something like that," he said.

The teenagers made some amateurish mistakes, Guillen said. They killed the wrong guy in January 2006.

Cardona has pleaded guilty to the murder of Noe Lopez, who was shot in the head with a .40 caliber handgun early one Sunday morning.

The actual target for the hit was Noe Lopez's half-brother, Michael Lopez. At the time, Michael Lopez was dating a strikingly pretty brunette who was the ex-girlfriend of Treviño, the Gulf Cartel boss, Guillen said.

The two brothers were only a few years apart in age and looked very much alike.

Reta and Gonzalez also have been charged with the murder.


Bail reductions

Cardona's luck ran out shortly after 4:30 a.m. Feb. 5, 2006. Inspectors at the international bridge found a warrant for his arrest in a computer database and turned him over to police. He ended up back in Webb County Jail.

Twelve days after his arrest at the border, Cardona appeared before Flores. Guillen, the prosecutor, presented a motion to increase his bail for the original charges, the 2005 murder and kidnapping of Bruno Orozco, a former Nuevo Laredo police officer. He was shot seven times near a warehouse in an industrial section of the city.

Cardona was by now also charged with another murder, the killing of Noe Lopez.

Flores agreed to raise Cardona's bail to $2 million total. Less than a month later, however, Flores called for a bail-reduction hearing. Police weren't in court, records show. A different prosecutor attended in Guillen's place and signed a "joint motion" to reduce his bail.

Cardona didn't say a word. His attorney, David Almaraz, did the talking.

The hearing was brief.

"The District Attorney and I have reached an agreement, Judge," he said, according to a transcript obtained by the Chronicle. "We've agreed to a $200,000 (bail) ... to each one (charge)."

"Do we need anything in writing for that judge?" Almaraz asked.

"No. I'll just sign the order," Flores replied.

Flores reduced the bail from $2 million to $400,000 on the Orozco murder and kidnapping. In the meantime, Liendo, the justice of the peace, had reduced his bail for engaging in organized crime from $2 million to $50,000, and from $1 million to $150,000 in the Lopez murder.

The prosecutor, Guillen, said he "wasn't 100 percent sure why" the DA's office agreed to a bail reduction for Orozco's murder, noting that another prosecutor had signed the paperwork in his absence.

Within 72 hours of the hearing, on March 17, 2006, Cardona was back on the street.


The Resendez killings

Sixteen days later, Jesus Maria Resendez and his 15-year-old nephew, Mariano, were driving along Zapata Highway in a white Ford pickup. It was about 9 p.m.

The killers followed behind them in another pickup.

At a traffic light at the intersection of Zapata and Sierra Vista, Cardona allegedly popped up from the back bed of the suspects' truck and started shooting, according to a criminal complaint.

Police found the Resendezes' pickup crushed against a light pole. Resendez, who law enforcement sources said was a mid-level trafficker for the Sinaloa Cartel, was slumped over toward his nephew. He had a bullet hole in his head. Mariano was shot in the throat and the chest.

In the back seat, they had a plate of fajitas and fishing rods.

Cardona was arrested April 12, 2006, after one of his accomplices talked about his involvement in the Resendez killings. He was charged with two counts of murder, bringing the total number of murder charges to five. He also is charged with multiple other offenses, ranging from aggravated assault to organized crime.

In February, Cardona accepted a plea agreement for two murders, of Orozco and Lopez.

He was sentenced, by a new judge, to 50 years in jail. That would make him eligible for parole in 25 years, at age 44.

Guillen said he plans to take him to trial on the other murder charges. Cardona is set to go to trial Monday in the deaths of Mariano and Jesus Resendez.

"Our goal," Guillen said, "is to make sure he's incarcerated for the rest of his life."

Cardona's mother said she hasn't seen him in about a year. She can't picture her son as a hitman. She hates seeing his mugshots.

Her fondest memories of him are frozen in the third and fourth grades. She said that, back then, he used to wear Velcro Superman sneakers and go to bed by 8 p.m.

"One [murder], maybe," she said. "But all of those murders? All of those charges. No."

She's stopped visiting him in jail. "I don't like seeing him through the window," she said.

Flores, the sheriff, said it's only a matter of time before the inmates figure out that some of the teens' victims had prison gang affiliations. Some with the Mexican Mafia. Some with the Texas Syndicate.

"Everything gets around, especially in jails," Flores said. "Word gets around, who they've been working for and who they've done wrong. The trial comes up, they get sentenced and, once they go to the big house, it's a whole different ballgame. And that's what they're starting to realize now.

"Their chances of survival are slim, maybe none."

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/met ... 16022.html

There is, in this country no more room for could be,
maybe, and what ifs.

These are the reasons nothing is ever getting accomplished.
HIND SIGHT IS TWENTY TWENTY, BUT COLD BLOODEDNESS NEEDS NO GLASSES.

Our judicial system is quickly becoming overwhelmed and is going to hell in a handbag! Due to issues I won't go into here on ALIPAC, my expectations of law and order in this country is currently in the cellar. Court dockets are bursting at the seams and prisons are full. The resources allocated for law and order just aren't enough to keep up with the growing criminal element in our country. Furthermore, it doesn't help matters when the criminals in our society seem to have more rights than the victim.

The dots aren't hard to connect here. Just look to our open border and illegal immigrant problem for the answers on why law and order is headed in the wrong direction in this country.

Can you just imagine what our Constitution would be if current leaders were allowed to re-write it?

Originally Posted by had_enuf

Can you just imagine what our Constitution would be if current leaders were allowed to re-write it?

That would equate into no Constitution.

illegal killers come in the form of children working for the cartels.

Move this article to the new Americans Killed by Illegals section.