“Sol Prendido” for Borderland Beat
His habits and methods turned Tamaulipas and Coahuila into the scene of a bloody war.
Ten years after the arrest of Miguel Angel Treviño, Z40, one of the most brutal criminal leaders in Mexican history, new details about his business dealings and shady hobbies have been aired in US courts.
The DEA estimates that the Zetas leader personally murdered more than 500 people. His habits and methods turned Tamaulipas and Coahuila into the scene of a bloody war.
U.S. prosecutors investigating Los Zetas were able to learn that Z40 had several doctors on his payroll, dedicated to researching the most effective methods to kill without leaving traces.
They identified a type of Botox that caused a heart attack and was undetectable in an autopsy. With that information, Z40 experimented on the people he “abducted” on a daily basis.
The doctors also treated the wounded hitmen in the war with the Gulf Cartel, with its epicenter in Miguel Aleman, Tamaulipas.
“He loved killing people,” said José María Guízar Valencia, El Z43, one of his former trusted operators. He recalled that the victims took approximately 40 minutes to die: “He liked to see people suffer. And more than anything, towards the people who were close to him, to cause fear and psychosis so that we would not betray him.”
In an affidavit, Z43 recalled that Miguel Angel Treviño’s hitmen and people close to him feared being killed or tortured by their boss.
“He personally used his weapon, a knife or some object, sometimes baseball bats. Hanging, dragging, crushing them with trucks, all kinds,” noted El Z43: “He was an emotionless person. He had no emotions. He had no empathy. He killed people every day and experimented. He was a psychopath. He was sick.
But his experience went far beyond that. He saw how El Z40 took revenge against those who betrayed or tried to betray him.
An 18-year-old girl who was dating a Zeta hitman and at the same time dating a soldier. When Treviño Morales found out, he kidnapped her and her mother.
“They took her to Allende, Coahuila, where these people were from. They took her behind a hotel and took her nose. First, they killed her mother in front of her because she was giving information to the soldiers about the Zetas’ movements. They blew her nose off with an MP5. Then they hit her in the ears. They hit her in the face, on her cheeks. And the young woman begged to be killed because she was suffering. And she was screaming in pain.
“And the mother, who was supposed to be dead at that point, got up and fought with him and said, ‘you dog, leave my daughter.’ ‘ And we all freaked out because she was supposed to be dead.
And Miguel Angel Treviño said, ‘Did you see that,’ and he put the MP5, put it in automatic mode and shot it to see what would happen. And she fell. At this point, he continued playing with the young woman, shooting her in the legs. She was screaming for them to kill her.”
Z40 continued the torture until the young woman could no longer stand up. Then he executed her.
In another scene, Treviño Morales ordered his hitmen to dress up in Mexican Federal Preventive Police uniforms to go to a house to kill a woman with Botox. Shortly after, it was revealed that the woman was Z40’s mother-in-law.
The woman had told Miguel Angel’s children, her grandchildren, not to get into the same car as their father for fear that something would happen to them. It angered the Zeta leader, who tricked his wife into believing that Mexican police had killed her mother.
His “guisos” also became known among the inhabitants of Tamaulipas and Coahuila. Together with his hired killers, they burned people in 200 liter drums with a mixture of gasoline and diesel.
Today, El Z40 is being held in Mexico to avoid extradition to the United States.