Efraín Teodoro Torres
| Efraín Teodoro Torres | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Died | 3 March 2007 Veracruz, Veracruz, Mexico |
| Resting place |
Poza Rica, Veracruz, Mexico (Before body was snatched) |
| Other names |
Z-14 El Efra El Chispa |
| Organization |
Mexican Army (1991–1998) Los Zetas (1998–2007) |
Efraín Teodoro Torres (died 3 March 2007) was a Mexican suspected drug lord and one of the founders of Los Zetas, a criminal organization formed by former soldiers of the Mexican Armed Forces. He joined the Mexican Army in mid-1991 but deserted after seven years of service. In 1998, Torres was recruited by the drug lord Osiel Cárdenas Guillén to join the ranks of the Gulf Cartel, a drug trafficking organization. The new group formed by ex-commandos came to be known as Los Zetas.
Torres was killed in the city of Veracruz, following a dispute surrounding a horse race competition on 3 March 2007. After his body was buried, his own gunmen broke into the cemetery that same night and stole his body. Following his death, Miguel Treviño Morales became the leader of Los Zetas statewide.
Torres joined the infantry division of the Mexican Army on 1 August 1991. Three years later, he was promoted to the corporal unit. Nonetheless, he deserted from the Mexican Army on 13 September 1998 and joined the ranks of the Gulf Cartel, a Mexican drug trafficking organization. The Gulf Cartel, under the tutelage of the then-leader Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, first recruited a Mexican special forces soldier, Arturo Guzmán Decena, in the late 1990s. With his help, Cárdenas Guillén managed to recruit several other soldiers from the military to work full-time for the Gulf Cartel, forming a paramilitary group known as Los Zetas. Torres was given the radio code and alias Z-14 for being one of the fourteen original military deserters who founded Los Zetas.
Torres formally initiated his criminal career by commanding an armed assault at a prison in Apatzingán on 5 January 2004, where more than 25 inmates were liberated. When the former soldiers and drug traffickers Omar Lorméndez Pitalúa ("Z-10") and Mateo Díaz López ("Comandante Mateo") were arrested by the Mexican authorities in 2006, Torres took the lead of Los Zetas in the Mexican state of Michoacán alongside Gustavo González Castro ("El Erótico"). As a leader of Los Zetas, Torres was responsible for overseeing drug shipments in the state of Veracruz and across the Gulf of Mexico. In the northern state of Tamaulipas, Torres commanded the distribution sites in the cities of Ciudad Camargo and Miguel Alemán with Jesús Enrique Rejón Aguilar and another Zeta member. Torres was considered one of Mexico's most-wanted criminals by the Attorney General of Mexico (PGR) prior to his death.
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