MEXICO CITY – The death of the founder and leader of Mexico's brutal Zetas cartel in a firefight with marines near the Texas border was perhaps the biggest coup of President Felipe Calderon's war on drugs.

But triumph turned to embarrassment when authorities lost the body.

Authorities still haven't found the remains of Heriberto Lazcano, which were snatched from a funeral home and whisked away by gunmen in a hijacked hearse hours after the Zetas strongman died in a hail of gunfire in the town of Progreso in Coahuila state.