He grew up one of nine siblings on ramshackle Lincoln St, just blocks away from the Mexican border in Laredo, Texas. A close friend, Gabriel Cardona, now 26, lived nearby.
Both Reta and Cardona were born to a families with relatives on both sides of the U.S.-Texas border. It was the ease with which the boys could cross back and forth across the border that made them valuable to the Mexican Zetas drug cartel.
Regret: Reta expresses his anguish over his killing career that began at 13 years old
Baby-faced killers: Cardona was barely in his
20s and Reta was still a teenager when they were sent to jail for the
rest of their lives
River to hell: The international bridge over the Rio Grande that links Laredo, Texas to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico
Crossing: The border post at Laredo, Texas is one of the most important drug routes in the U.S. for Mexican drug cartels
Reta's first kill was at 13 years old. By 19, he was locked in a Texas prison in solitary confinement, facing 70 years jail for murder. His friend Cardona is serving a sentence of 80 years.
The question remains: How did two American teenagers become killers-for-hire for a Mexican drug cartel?
Reta has spoken about his past at various times over the seven years since his arrest.
His feelings about his bloody work have changed over the years, from chilling braggadocio as a 19-year-old in police interviews, to softly spoken, wet-eyed pleas for understanding in his latest interviews.
Whatever Reta's true feelings about his past are, the facts have remained consistent.
Remorseless: Cardona appears unrepentant for his
nightmarish crimes. 'I'm really a good person," he told CNN recently.
'It just happened,' he said, showing off the tattoos he had inked on his
eyelids in prison
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Teen killers: When this photo of Reta (center) and Cardona (right) was taken, they were well into their bloody careers
As a 13-year-old, Reta was at school. He was a good student, but he was more interested in what was happening across the river from his town, in the cantinas and barrios of Nuevo Laredo.
Born to a hairstylist mother and father who worked construction, Reta told Fox News he had a good childhood and grew up playing soccer and baseball, and loved skateboarding earning him the nickname 'Bart', as in Simpson.
But the kind of mischief Reta would get up to in his young life couldn't be more different from the cartoon kid's boyish pranks.
River to hell: The international bridge over the Rio Grande that links Laredo, Texas to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico
For Reta, the Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo, with its nightlife, its danger and its glamor, intrigued the restless teen, and one fateful night, his curiosity was to be sated.
In an interview with CNN, Reta describes a night when friends took him across the river to Nuevo Laredo. They brought him to a ranch where, according to Reta, 'They were torturing people and getting information from them. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. People getting tortured, killed, decapitated. It was kind of hard to believe.'
An argument broke out: A man wanted to know what Reta, a stranger, was doing there. He stood over the 13-year-old and handed him a gun. In that moment, even though it was another man he was instructed to kill, Reta's life was over.
'I shot him,' Reta said. 'I had to.'
Reta was trained in a secret camp where he learned how to be a sicario, a hitman.
'It was like regular military training, like what they do here in the United States,' he told CNN.
Top dog: Miguel Ángel Treviño was at the head of
the most vicious, violent and depraved of Mexico's drug cartels until
his arrest last month
Last month, Zetas leader Miguel Ángel Treviño, widely believed to be responsible for escalating the depraved and sadistic wave of narco-terror occurring along the borderlands, was arrested.
It was this man who had stood over Reta that night, and it has at his behest that Reta carried out more than 30 bloody murders.
Cardona estimates he killed between 20 and 30 people. Police say that one of the crimes for which Cardona is serving time is the kidnap and murder of two American teenagers, during which he slashed them with a bottle, collected their blood in a glass and toasted the La Santa Muerte, the personification of death.
According to a New York Times article from 2009, most of the American youths were recruited in a Nuevo Laredo disco called Eclipse, situated in the main square just across one of two bridges that connect the two Laredos.
Teenagers go there to drink and dance, but cartel members lurk there, keeping an eye out for possible recruits.
Detective Roberto Garcia of the Laredo Police Department told the New York Times, 'The cartels - they just seduce you. They wave that power, that cash, the cars, the easy money. And these kids all have that romantic notion they are going to live forever.'
Solitary: Before he was even at the legal drinking age, Reta was locked up forever in solitary confinement
Marked man: Reta, like Cardona, received prison
tattoos after his arrest, the only outward indication of what occurred
in his past
Teenage dream: Cardona and Reta were living like regular teenagers before being drawn into a world of murder, drugs and cash
Reta and Cardona were paid a $500 retainer each week. They lived in a large house in a nice part of Laredo and drove expensive cars. For each killing, they were paid between $10,000 and $50,000 and pounds of cocaine.
Forever: This photo taken the year before their arrests reads 'parejas por siempre' - partners forever
Reta dropped out of school in sixth grade, Cardona left in the ninth.
Their short but bloody careers came crashing down swiftly, one after the other.
In 2009 Cardona was arrested and pleaded guilty to killing seven men and to conspiracy to kidnap and kill in a foreign country. He was sentenced to more than 80 years in prison.
Not long after, Reta botched an assassination attempt in Mexico, missing the victim and killing innocent people. He knew he'd pay for the mistake with his life.
The teenager turned himself in to Mexican police, then called Detective Garcia to ask to be extradited to the U.S., fearing reprisal for his error, or from rival gang member.
He is only in his 20s, but he's facing a lifetime of monotony in solitary confinement. For him, there is no future.
Once he bragged to police, 'If I cannot hit you in the forehead from a distance, I will kneel down in front of you and put my forehead against the muzzle of your gun. I will look you in the eyes while you kill me.'
Now, he tells only of sorrow.
'I've come to regret everything I've done. I couldn't take it anymore. It was real hard for me. I wasn't living my life,' he told CNN.
'It gets to a point where I can't even stand myself. It's eating me inside little by little, and there's nothing I can do or say to justify my actions.'
dailymail.co.uk
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