One night nearly 15 years ago, two men broke into the Downey home of Hermilio Franco, an actor and nightclub owner. <\/p>\n
The scene could have been ripped from one of the low-budget, shoot-em-up Mexican films Franco starred in \u2014 or the ballads chronicling the drug trade that were sung at his club. <\/p>\n
The intruders shook Franco and his wife awake. Franco pulled a chrome-plated .45 from under the mattress. Screams and gunshots filled the bedroom.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Hermilio Franco was killed Nov. 3, 2010. <\/p>\n
(Los Angeles County Superior Court)<\/p>\n
When the shooting stopped, Franco was dead. One of the intruders lay moaning a few feet away, paralyzed by a bullet that struck his spine. The second would-be robber slipped out a back door.<\/p>\n
The paralyzed assailant was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison in 2014. His companion went unidentified until last week, when Los Angeles County prosecutors charged that Manuel Quintero, a reputed Mexican Mafia member nicknamed \u201cSnuffy,\u201d was the intruder who got away.<\/p>\n
Quintero, already in custody on charges of conspiring to murder a rapper who allegedly ran afoul of the Mexican Mafia, pleaded not guilty to charges that he killed Franco while trying to rob him and burglarize his house.<\/p>\n
Quintero\u2019s lawyer, Randy Collins, said his client was innocent of the charges and noted that another man has already been convicted of murdering Franco. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere was no credible evidence linking Manuel Quintero to these charges more than 15 years ago, and the same is true today,\u201d Collins said in a written statement.<\/p>\n
If the charges are to be believed, the killing of Franco would represent a stunning betrayal. Quintero had previously dated Franco\u2019s daughter, according to a police report \u2014 and she was inside the house when her father was shot dead. <\/p>\n
Born in the western Mexican state of Sinaloa, Franco immigrated to California at 13 and later found work washing dishes, in construction and as a security guard, The Times reported in 2011.<\/p>\n
After managing small bars in the Florence district, he bought a nightclub in Lynwood that he named El Farallon, Spanish for \u201cthe cliff by the sea.\u201d<\/p>\n
The club, along with a concert and rodeo venue Franco later acquired in El Monte, was \u201can all family business,\u201d his wife testified in 2012.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would work wherever I was needed,\u201d she said. \u201cIf I had to wash dishes, I would. If I had to sell sodas or water or fruit, I would do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
El Farallon became known as a venue for narcorridos, ballads about the triumphs and betrayals of the drug trade. An early performer was Chalino Sanchez, a legendary Sinaloan singer who was gunned down in 1992. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Police found stacks of cash in Hermilio Franco\u2019s safe after he was killed.<\/p>\n
(Los Angeles County Superior Court)<\/p>\n
Franco also starred in straight-to-DVD films. In \u201cEl Baleado,\u201d \u201cChuy Y Mauricio 3: El Chrysler 300,\u201d \u201cEl Corrido del Katch\u201d and \u201cUna Tumba Para Dos Hermanos,\u201d he played the part of ranchers and drug traffickers avenging the deaths of loved ones.<\/p>\n
Franco\u2019s wife said the movies were more of a \u201chobby\u201d than a career. \u201cMexican films don\u2019t pay much,\u201d she testified at his killer\u2019s trial.<\/p>\n
Franco made enough money to raise his three children in an affluent part of Downey. A Mercedes sedan and Cadillac Escalade were parked in the driveway, and his safe was stuffed with bundles of $100 bills held together with rubber bands, according to a video filmed by police after his death.<\/p>\n
Franco was dogged by rumors he was in the drug business. His widow testified it wasn\u2019t true. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was asked if he was involved in anything like that, but I say no,\u201d she said. \u201cHe was a hard-working man.\u201d<\/p>\n
Around 2:45 a.m. on Nov. 3, 2010, Franco and his wife were shaken awake in their bed by two intruders saying \u201cfoul words,\u201d she testified.<\/p>\n
One of the men shot Franco, who drew his .45 and fired back, his wife testified. She grabbed a shotgun from a closet and ran out, she said, jumping over the body of a man on the floor. <\/p>\n
The man was yelling expletives and calling out for \u201cthe other guy,\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n
Franco\u2019s daughter, Adriana, testified she woke up to the sounds of shots and her father yelling. She ran toward her parents\u2019 room and saw a man slip out a back door. She testified she didn\u2019t recognize the intruder.<\/p>\n
Adriana was once in a relationship with Quintero, who grew up in the neighboring city of Paramount, according to a police report reviewed by The Times.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Manuel Quintero is charged with sanctioning a hit on a rapper from his hometown of Paramount and killing Hermilio Franco. He has pleaded not guilty in both cases.<\/p>\n
(California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation)<\/p>\n
In 1999, detectives were tailing Quintero, whom they suspected of operating a methamphetamine lab. When they pulled him over in a blue BMW X5, Adriana Franco was in the passenger seat, the report said. She told the detectives she was Quintero\u2019s girlfriend of six years, according to the report. <\/p>\n
Adriana Franco declined to comment when reached last week by The Times.<\/p>\n
Quintero served 10 years in prison for manufacturing methamphetamine. After his release, he was implicated in a kidnapping that played out days before Hermilio Franco\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
Facing another drug case, Quintero was trying to get a stake together before he jumped bail and fled to Mexico, a witness testified before a San Diego County grand jury. <\/p>\n
According to a transcript of the woman\u2019s grand jury testimony, Quintero and his associate Larry Trujillo wanted her to obtain $10,000 from a fraudulently accessed bank account. When she failed, she testified, Trujillo tortured her in a San Diego hotel room for several days and cut off her ear, saying he was \u201ctaking it to Snuffy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The woman escaped less than 24 hours before the intruders jimmied a back door at Franco\u2019s home in Downey.<\/p>\n
The assailant paralyzed by the bullet from Franco\u2019s .45 was Trujillo.<\/p>\n
He rode in an ambulance with a sheriff\u2019s deputy, who testified that Trujillo asked in a soft voice if he was going to die.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Larry Trujillo, photographed after his arrest in 2010, was paralyzed during an attempt to rob Hermilio Franco.<\/p>\n
(Los Angeles County Superior Court)<\/p>\n
Trujillo said he \u201cwanted to make things right.\u201d The plan was to rob Franco, he admitted. According to the deputy, Trujillo said he\u2019d broken into the home with someone called \u201cSpooky,\u201d whose true name he didn\u2019t know. <\/p>\n
Trujillo, paralyzed from the neck down, attended his trial in a gurney. Midway through it, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 2014 to 25 years to life.<\/p>\n
He was granted medical parole two years later and released to a healthcare facility, court records show. Prison authorities revoked his parole after he gave a healthcare worker \u201cchocolate candy laced with marijuana\u201d and tried to \u201cenforce prison politics\u201d at the facility, a judge wrote in an order.<\/p>\n
In 2023, another judge found Trujillo was \u201cpermanently incapacitated\u201d and granted him compassionate release.<\/p>\n
In 2012, two years after Franco\u2019s death, Quintero was arrested in Tijuana and charged with kidnapping the woman in San Diego. He pleaded no contest to false imprisonment and served less than two years in prison. <\/p>\n
Released in 2014, Quintero stayed out of jail until last month, when a task force of Los Angeles County sheriff\u2019s deputies and FBI agents arrested him on charges that he put a hit on a Los Angeles rapper who was later slashed and beaten in jail. <\/p>\n
Last week, Quintero\u2019s lawyer asked a judge to release him on bail. In a motion, Collins called the conspiracy case a flimsy one, resting on hearsay and innuendo cobbled together by investigators who heard what they wanted to hear on recorded jail calls. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Hermilio Franco\u2019s killers entered through a back door.<\/p>\n
(Los Angeles County Superior Court)<\/p>\n
Collins described Quintero, now 49, as a devoted father of two who enjoys playing basketball and video games with his eighth-grader son. According to his lawyer, Quintero is a legitimate businessman who owns a trucking company, manages a restaurant in La Habra and pays his taxes. Collins filed returns that showed Quintero and his wife jointly reported earning $300,000 to $600,000 annually since 2018.<\/p>\n
According to Collins, Quintero also started a charity that gives school supplies to \u201cunderprivileged inner-city kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Quintero has personally spoken to groups of at-risk youth, sharing his time, experience and encouragement which has led to helping many of them find hope and direction,\u201d the lawyer wrote. <\/p>\n
A judge denied Collins\u2019 motion, and Quintero remains detained without bail. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One night nearly 15 years ago, two men broke into the Downey home of Hermilio Franco, an actor…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":107271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[68715,1582,276,29418,4446,68711,68714,6616,2961,26822,12846,224,5337,2089,68712,5332,68713,66302,18913,1628],"class_list":{"0":"post-107270","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-adriana","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-charge","12":"tag-death","13":"tag-hermilio-franco","14":"tag-intruder","15":"tag-judge","16":"tag-la","17":"tag-last-week","18":"tag-lawyer","19":"tag-los-angeles","20":"tag-losangeles","21":"tag-man","22":"tag-manuel-quintero","23":"tag-prison","24":"tag-randy-collins","25":"tag-trujillo","26":"tag-wife","27":"tag-year"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114947312071459264","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}