Captured with $2million in cash, drugs baron who stewed enemies in boiling oil and beheaded hundreds Trademark murder method was 'the stew' - burning men alive in barrels Crimes include murder of 72 migrants in 2010 and massacre of 192 in 2011 Zetas known for brutal crimes in Mexico, including mass slaughters His arrest is hailed a boon for President Enrique Pena Nieto By David Gardner A drugs kingpin known for "stewing" his enemies alive in burning oil barrels has been arrested in Mexico. Even in a cocaine war stained by appalling acts of violence, Miguel Angel Trevino Morales stood out for his savagery. As head of the Zetas cartel, he regularly ordered beheadings, hangings and massacres of rivals and anyone in the way of his drug shipments to the US. The gang's trademark was to use ice picks to pin warning signs on the chests of the bodies of their victims. The arrest of Morales at dawn on Monday without a shot being fired was a coup for Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto. In his first seven months in power he has been accused of failing to take on the cartels which have claimed as many as 100,000 lives since 2006. Morales, 40, was seized on a dirt road outside Nuevo Laredo, a Zetas stronghold in the north of the country near the US border. He was in a pick-up laden with eight guns and $2million in cash. Ruthless: Morales, left, as a younger man, is believed to have masterminded the massacre in 2010 after which the killers piled the bodies on top of each other and left them to rot, right Fear-mongering: Los Zetas gunmen shot dead five people in Apodaca in 2010. Four of the bodies had a message pinned to their chest with an ice pick as a warning to collaborators of a rival drug cartel. One of the messages read, 'This is going to happen to every civilian and policemen that collaborates with the Gulf Cartel'. it was signed Z, referring to Los Zetas cartel Arrested with him were his bodyguard - and his accountant. Even before rising to leader of the feared Zetas cartel in October last year, Miguel Angel Trevino Morales (pictured), has had a reputation as one of the most ruthless, bloodthirsty and unpredictable drugs lords in the history of gangland Mexico. He is believed to be responsible, both personally and by proxy, for the deaths of hundreds of immigrant slaves and rival criminals - many of whom died in unimaginable pain. Reports from within the organization claim that Morales enjoyed driving around the city in a car and pointing at people randomly and saying, 'kill him... kill her.' He is reportedly responsible of coordinating several violent attacks throughout Mexico, including the murder of 72 migrants in 2010 and the massacre of 193 people a year later in San Fernando, Tamaulipas. His trademark method of murder became known as the 'guiso', meaning 'stew' in English, where victims are stuffed into an oil barrel, doused with gasoline, and set on fire to burn alive. He developed the method to challenge other cartel hitmen who competed to come up with ever-more terrifying and creative ways of killing. They included Teodoro Garcia Simental famed for having the corpses of tortured rivals dissolved in baths of acid. Another method of fear-mongering, favoured by Morales as well as other cartels, was decapitating rivals and hanging their bodies from bridges or monuments, often with warning signs hung around their necks or stabbed into their chests with ice picks. Among the crimes he was wanted for is the murder of more than 260 migrants who were dumped in mass graves after being kidnapped in two separate incidents in 2010 and 2011. One technique favoured by Morales was the "guiso," or stew, in which enemies would be placed in 55-gallon oil drums and burned alive. Others who crossed the commander would be beaten to death with wooden planks. According to the indictments, Morales co-ordinated the shipment of hundreds of pounds of cocaine and marijuana each week from Mexico to the US, much of which had passed through Guatemala. "It's worth emphasising the cruelty with which he committed these acts," said Mexican government spokesman Eduardo Sanchez. The removal of Morales is however likely to ignite a bloody wave of violence as his cohorts fight to succeed him. It strengthens the hand of Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman, whose Sinaloa cartel competes with the Zetas for control of the cocaine trade. Morales is suspected of laundering millions of pounds through US businesses, including a thoroughbred horseracing operation allegedly run by a brother. He began his career as a teenager with the Los Tejas gang, which controlled most crime in his home town across the border from Laredo, Texas. He graduated from washing cars and running errands to running drugs across the border, and was recruited into the Matamoros-based Gulf cartel, which had absorbed Los Tejas. Morales - nicknamed Z-40 - then joined the Zetas, an offshoot gang run by defectors from the Mexican special forces. He quickly won a reputation for brutality. "If you get called to a meeting with him, you're not going to come out of that meeting," said a US law enforcement official in Mexico City. Morales reportedly enjoyed pointing randomly at people from his car and ordering his men to kill them. He rose to the top of the Zetas last year after the previous leader died in a shootout with Mexican marines in the northern state of Coahuila. On his orders, 72 Central and South American migrants were slaughtered by the Zetas in the northern town of San Fernando in 2010, authorities said. Slaughter: The bodies of decapitated men with their hands tied behind their back are scattered through a field in Caserio La Bomba, Guatemala in 2007, after the massacre of 27 farmers by the Zetas Shoot-out: Gang members lie dead in the grounds of the Los Arcos Hotel, Mexico, where at least six gunmen were shot dead after a gun fight between Mexican military and armed men from the Los Zetas The following year, 193 bodies were found buried in San Fernando, most belonging to migrants kidnapped off buses and killed by the Zetas for various reasons, including their refusal to work as drug mules. Morales and his henchmen were flown yesterday to Mexico City, where they are expected to be tried in a closed system that usually takes years to prosecute cases. Mr Nieto came into office promising to drive down levels of murder, extortion and kidnapping but has struggled to make a dent in crime figures. There were fears that he would ease back on predecessor Felipe Calderon's US-backed strategy targeting the drug cartels. Indiscriminate: Los Zetas were behind the 2008 Morelia grenade attacks that saw eight were killed and over 100 injured Gruesome drug war: In September 2011 two trucks were abandoned after one of them spilled 35 bodies of men and women belonging to the Los Zetas gang killed by a rival cartel. Morales and his henchmen set out to exact bitter revenge for the slaughter Cache: Weapons belonging to the Zetas cartel are displayed after they were seized in 2011. Huge haul: Armed police guard 1.5 tons of cocaine that was seized as it was shipped from Columbia into Los Zetas's vast smuggling network that spans much of South America and the US Through a campaign of merciless violence and wholesale terror, The Zetas have grown to become the most feared of all the drug gangs in Mexico. Founded by former soldiers of an elite army unit in 1999, they have carved out their own smuggling empire, expanded massively across Mexico and diversified into kidnapping, extortion and theft of crude oil. They are also responsible for some of Mexico's bloodiest massacres, biggest jail breaks and fiercest attacks on authorities and earned their notoriety for brutality by becoming the first to publicly display their beheaded rivals, most infamously two police officers in April 2006 in the resort city of Acapulco. The severed heads were found on spikes outside a government building with a message signed 'Z' that said: 'So that you learn to respect.' Other atrocities believe to have been carried out by the Zetas - many of which committed under the orders of Trevino Morales himself - include: The 2008 Morelia grenade attacks that saw eight were killed and over 100 injured The 2010 San Fernando massacre where 72 migrants were found dead The 2010 slaughter of 13 people when gunmen stormed a teenager's birthday party in the city of Ciudad Juárez The 2011 San Fernando massacre, where 193 people were slaughtered The massacre of 27 farmers in Guatemala in 2007 The 2011 Monterrey casino attack that saw 52 people murdered (pictured) A prison brawl that saw 31 Gulf cartel inmates killed at The Altamira jail The 2012 Apodaca prison riot, where a further 44 Gulf cartel inmates were killed and 37 Zetas escaped from prison The Durango massacres that led to the death of 249 people in 2011 One technique favored by Trevino Morales was the 'guiso,' or stew, in which enemies would be stuffed in 55-gallon drums and burned alive. 20m costa crook held