Mexico: We Killed Druglord ... Again

Nazario Moreno reportedly died in gunfight 3 years ago
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 9, 2014 4:06 PM CDT
Mexico: We Killed Top Druglod ... Again
In this Dec. 12, 2010 file photo, a man holds a sign that reads in Spanish "Nazario will always live in our hearts," referring to La Familia drug cartel leader Nazario Moreno Gonzalez.   (AP Photo/Primera Plana, File)

Mexican officials say they killed a Mexican drug kingpin three years after the government supposedly killed him the first time, Reuters reports. Nazario Moreno was leader of the drug cartel La Familia when officials said he died in a two-day gunfight with government agents—but as his cartel morphed into the more powerful Knights Templar, rumors circulated that Moreno was alive. "We can't confirm or deny it officially as long as we have no concrete evidence, and I can tell you that we have nothing," said Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam, the AP reports.

Yet signs were there: The vicious Knights Templar continued the moral code and semi-religious doctrine of La Familia, and residents of the western state of Michoacan claimed to see Moreno around. Now officials say that Moreno, nicknamed "The Crazy One," has died in a firefight with the government at age 44, though forensic evidence is yet to confirm his identity. If true, Moreno's killing wraps up a strange year in which two Mexican drug kingpins—Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and Zetas chief Miguel Angel Trevino—were taken without a shot fired. (More Mexican drug war stories.)

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