MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) — Mexican Government officials are trying to determine if a man killed yesterday in an early morning shootout in western Mexico was a leader of the Knights Templar Cartel who had been reported dead in 2010.

The officials tell The Associated Press that forensic teams are trying to determine his identity, but they believe it is Nazario Moreno Gonzalez.

If true, it would be one of the more bizarre twists in Mexico’s assault on drug cartels, in which two of the most powerful capos have been captured in the last year without a shot fired.

Moreno, nicknamed “The Craziest One,” would have turned 44 on Saturday, according to a government birth date. He led the La Familia cartel when he supposedly perished in a two-day gunbattle with federal police in December 2010 in his home state of Michoacan.

No corpse was found, but the government of then-President Felipe Calderon officially declared him dead, saying it had proof.

Some residents of Michoacan, however, reported seeing Moreno as his former cartel, La Familia Michoacana, was morphing into the more vicious and powerful Knights Templar. The cartel under both names preached Moreno’s quasi-religious doctrine and moral code, even as it became a major trafficker of methamphetamine to the US and ruled much of Michoacan through stealing, killing and extortion.

After his alleged killing, Moreno reportedly helped to build himself up as folk hero, erecting shrines to himself and to the Knights Templar, which adopted the Maltese cross as a symbol.