Mexico marines: Zetas cartel leader killed

• Man known as the "executioner" killed in firefight with marines
• Lazcano blamed for some of Mexico's most notorious massacres of rival gang members
• The United States had offered a $5 million reward for Lazcano's arrest

MEXICO CITY -- Mexican marines verified Tuesday that they killed the leader of the Los Zetas' drug cartel, ending the career of a former member of an elite unit of the army who created one of the biggest drug syndicates in Mexico.

Heriberto Lazcano, known as "El Verdugo" or the executioner, was killed in a firefight with marines in the northern border state of Coahuila, the Mexican navy said.

Lazcano was blamed for some of Mexico's most notorious massacres of rival gang members and suspected in the 2004 slaying of Francisco Ortiz Franco, an editor of a weekly newspaper in Tijuana that reported on drug trafficking.

He is perhaps the most significant organized crime figure to fall since President Felipe Calderón took office six years ago and began a war on cartels.

The navy confirmed the identity by analyzing the thumbprints of a man it said Monday "strongly" resembled Lazcano. Early Monday, the body was taken from a local funeral home by armed men who forced the funeral director to bring it to another location, Coahuila state Attorney General Homero Ramos said.

Politicians expressed disbelief the body would be snatched.

"We're speaking about an intervention, in this case of the navy, which confirms a take-down, then suddenly loses the body," said left-wing lawmaker Armando Ríos Piter, who compared the scenario to a "telenovela."

The navy has been mistaken in the past. Earlier in the summer it presented a suspect it said was the son of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán -- leader of the Sinaloa Cartel and Mexico's most-wanted criminal. The suspect ended up being an unrelated car salesman.

Lazcano and another man were killed outside a baseball game in the town of Progreso in an area where Los Zetas has been fighting turf wars with rival cartels. The Coahuila state attorney general's office confirmed reports in the newspaper Reforma that gunmen stole Lazcano's body from a funeral home in Sabines, 85 miles south of the U.S. border at Eagle Pass, Texas, after the killing.

The killing comes less than-two months before Calderón leaves office and allows him to claim the take-down of a major cartel leader whose criminal group had come to dominate the organized crime scene across eastern Mexico and freelance in activities ranging from extortion to kidnap to peddling its own "Zeta" brand whiskey.

Calderón praised the navy for taking out the head of "one of the most dangerous (criminal groups) in the world."

Analysts questioned whether Los Zetas, which served as the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel until the two organizations split and went to war, made more money in non-drug criminal activities than carrying cocaine to the United States.

"This is a significant blow to Los Zetas," said journalist Malcolm Beith, author of several books on Mexican security matters. "El Lazca was known to be an operational guy, very structured and very disciplined and beholden to the idea of Los Zetas as an organization, rather than just a ragtag bunch of thugs running riot through the country."

The United States had offered a $5 million reward and Mexico an additional $2.3 million for information leading to Lazcano's arrest.

In 2009, the Justice Department charged Lazcano, three other leaders of the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas, and 15 lieutenants with trafficking cocaine and marijuana. Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer called the cartel's drug trafficking and cash smuggling operations "stunning and sophisticated."

Court papers alleged that Lazcano was part of a three-man governing council that ran the Gulf/Los Zetas organization, known collectively as "the company," and operated along the Mexico border with the USA .

Progreso is about 80 miles west of the Texas border, near Laredo. Gunmen tossed grenades at a marine patrol from a moving vehicle and the marines killed two of the gunmen, the navy's statement said.

In the gunmen's' vehicle, authorities found a grenade launcher, 12 grenades, what appeared to be rocket propelled grenade launcher and two rifles, the navy said.

Under Lazcano's leadership, the Zetas recruited more hit men, many of them former Mexican soldiers, transforming what had been a small group of assassins into a ruthless gang of enforcers for the Gulf cartel. Lazcano himself was a member of the Mexican special forces before deserting.

The Zetas split from their former bosses in 2010 and have since been fighting a vicious battle for control of the drug business in northeastern Mexico, the traditional home base of the Gulf cartel. The result has been a surge of drug-related killings.

The Zetas earned their notoriety for brutality by becoming the first to publicly display their beheaded rivals, most infamously two police officers in April 2006 in the resort city of Acapulco. The severed heads were found on spikes outside a government building with a message signed "Z'' that said: "So that you learn to respect."

The Zetas will likely continue operations despite the loss of their leader. Zetas deputy Capo Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, known as "Z 40," has a reputation for being even more brutal than Lazcano, according to Mexico federal police.

"Los Zetas are like a civil service. They have a line of replacements for cadres killed and captured," said George Grayson, Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary. "The problem is that the new plaza bosses are younger, less experienced in the use of weapons, more likely to use drugs and seek to earn their stripes through savagery."

Contributing: The Associated Press, Donna Leinwand in Washington