A hit man at 13

After a long wait in the visiting room of the maximum security wing of the ‘Gib Lewis Unit’, Rosalio Reta finally arrived for our interview. He was only five feet tall, but even so projected an air of menace. The demonic face tattoos helped. That face was the last thing many people saw before they died, I thought. When he started talking, his voice was soft and mellifluous.

Until his arrest in 2006 Reta was a sicario, a hit man responsible for at least 30 murders in the USA and Mexico. He started at the age of 13, when he executed a man as an audition to join the Zetas. His fluent Spanish and American citizenship meant he could operate on either side of the border without attracting attention. Reta boasted to police that he enjoyed killing: ‘I volunteered. “Me, me, me, me, I’ll kill them!”’ Killing made him feel ‘like Superman’.