"There was a guy who didn't want to give me his tennis shoes so I hit him." How? "A machete. In the lungs." His anatomical knowledge expanded when he return to Juárez and assaulted storekeepers with broken bottles.

Navarrete moved up the gang ranks and started kidnapping businessmen and their relatives for ransom. "Police officers would sell us information," he says casually. "We would phone the victim's family and beat them so they'd scream to show we weren't playing with them. I cut off thumbs and fingers."

Ransom payments ranged from £10,000 to £75,000. "I enjoyed my money. Cocaine, heroin, women, cars." He fathered seven children with three women. A rival gang killed one of the women to get at Navarrete, while the other two want nothing to do with him.

He killed about half of his 20 kidnap victims, supposedly because ransoms were not paid. Was it difficult getting to know someone, then taking them to a deserted spot and shooting them? "Not really," is the chilling answer. "I had no pity for them. The point was to get money. It was a job."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/sep/05/mexico-drug-war-surenos-cartel#comments