La Mara Salvatrucha, the brutal street gang the State Department designated as a terrorist organization, was born in L.A. and exported worldwide
One victim was found nearly decapitated in the Los Angeles Forest. Another was lured two a deadly baseball bat beating by two pretty girls. The third victim was shot in the back of the head in the Malibu Hills. A fourth was executed in a case of mistaken identity. Then there was the man killed for being a meth addict. The sixth victim was a homeless man whose killers mistakenly thought had a rival gang’s tattoo.
The savage killings were committed in North Hollywood, the Malibu Hills, and the Angeles National Forest, after “gang members abducted, tortured, and murdered the victims in a ritualistic manner to elevate their membership status,” Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said.
The murderers, a federal jury decided this week, were members of La Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, a street gang born in Los Angeles that has since morphed into a terrifying transnational crime organization so deadly that the State Department has given it a terrorist outfit designation. The MS-13 members were part of a clique known as the Directos Locos. The men found guilty of murder and racketeering were identified as Walter Chavez Larin, 26, of Panorama City; Roberto Alejandro Corado Ortiz, 30, of Baldwin Park; and Edwin Martinez, 28, of Cypress Park. In addition, Erick Rosales Arias was found guilty of one count of violent crimes in aid of racketeering murder, while another Bryan Rosales Arias was convicted of one count of violent crimes in aid of racketeering murder.
Akil Davis, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, said the verdict rendered after a nine-week trial provided a “measure of justice” for the gang members’ victims. “The defendants in this case carried out barbaric attacks on their victims to simply enhance their ranking within the gang,” Davis said, adding that the case removed “murderers and terrorists from Los Angeles communities.”