Mexican Mafia Hitman On Life Inside La Eme, Committing 25 Murders, Killing Rivals In San Quentin

- There is an open contract out on me and it's pretty much considered open season. One thing is guaranteed, you will kill for the organization. My first homicide I committed with a machete. How much were you being paid? - I had 50,000 to play with on any given day. Our responsibility was to take out anybody who resisted selling our dope. The ones that didn't comply, we killed them on the spot. We're eating a Dodger dog and we're talking about the expression on the victim's face when he died, was an addiction. - My guest today is Ramon Mendoza, better known as Mundo. Mundo is a former hitman for the Mexican Mafia who's committed dozens of murders both inside and outside of prison. Mundo has a life story taken straight from the movie "American Me." In fact, one of the main characters in that film called Mundo was named after him. That's how deep and influential he was within LAMA. Mundo is a vato from East LA who came of age in the late 1960s. He did his first prison bit for hacking a rival gang member to death with a machete when he was only 17 years old. He got shipped to San Quentin State Prison where he made his bones and became a fully validated member of LAMA, the Mexican Mafia. What you are about to hear are some of the rarest insights into the inner workings of America's most powerful prison gang. After getting out of prison, Mundo continued with his killing spree until one day he got hit by a wave of guilt, call it a religious experience. He then volunteered to work undercover with law enforcement to help take down key leaders of the Mexican Mafia. Absolutely remarkable, that'll be in part two which you can get early over at our Patreon. Today, Mundo is an accomplished author and has written many books about this time period when he was with LAMA. Just type in Ramon Mundo Mendoza into Amazon. No living person today can talk about the things Mundo can. They're either dead or doing life in a super max prison. This is a piece of treasure in the history of American street gangs and I am so excited to share it with you guys. It's Mundo from the Mexican Mafia right here on the connect with Johnny Mitchell. (upbeat music) I'll be honest, it's interviews like this that make me grateful that I even get to do this podcast. I'm telling you, this is so rare you guys. A dude like Mundo, a high ranking member of the Mexican Mafia. All those guys are already dead or doing life in solitary confinement. So the fact that we could get him in the studio, the last living voice to talk about LAMA, like how it really is, is fascinating. You're gonna love it. Do me a quick favor before we get started. Let's get this video out to as many people as possible. Smash that like button, drop a comment below and if you haven't subscribed to the channel yet, just hit that sub button and turn on the alerts. All right, thank you so much. Mundo, enjoy. Mundo, welcome to the show. - Thank you. - You are wearing a mask. Most of the people we interview on this show that have ski masks on are in Mexico where the danger is very real. Do you think even to this day, your life could be in danger if your identity was revealed on camera? - And I would say totally, I know many in the gang world downplay that, that I'm trying to make myself look more important or whatever, if you, as we interview on all, as we do this interview, you will know that there's no such thing within the Mexican Mafia as they never forget. So there is an open contract out on me and it's pretty much considered open season. So I do what I do that's work for me for 76 years. - Wow, yeah. - The true OG. - I guess. (laughs) Okay, tell us where you grew up. - Boyle Heights, born and raised in East LA just like the movie in Born and East LA. And in Boyle Heights, Boyle Heights is east of downtown Los Angeles. One of my books, that's a title of the book, The Boys From Boyle Heights. And in the Estrada Corps housing projects, that's the street gang that I became a member of later in life of V&E, Varunuevo Sprata. - And your parents are from Mexico? - No, my mom was actually born in the US in 1928. My grandparents were out here. My grandpa was working on the railroad in Arkansas City, Kansas, and they had property. They owned property in Chihuahua, Mexico. When grandma got homesick in 1942, grandpa packed up and took my 14-year-old mother, my mom was only 14 at the time, to Mexico. I don't wanna say back to Mexico 'cause she was born in Kansas. So they went back to Mexico and she was like, damn, what am I doing here? 'Cause she's an American, all her buddies are from the US, right? So she, at the age of 20, I believe it was, 2021, she came back to the US with a cousin of hers and they went to LA and they both began working as waitresses. She was pregnant of me. That's why I tell people, I was conceived in Mexico, but born in LA. So does that make me a Mexican? No, just kidding. Your father, my dad, she met my stepdad, my real father wanted no part of me. He was in Mexico, he was irresponsible, he just didn't want anything to do with a kid. So she met my dad, my stepdad, while she was waitressing, hard work and guy, blue collar guy, and he became, as far as I'm concerned, my dad, that was my stepdad. And you guys grew up in East LA, this is, you know, pre, way pre-crack, pre, you know, violent, violent crime. How was childhood? Right, it was good. I loved it. It was turbulent, you know, at home, I tell people, hey, all of this begins at home. You know, your direction in life, you know, is established at home. That's your foundation. Your dad is very important. Your mom, you can take her for granted. She's going to be there. My mom was there all the time, you know, but dad's extremely important. And he was my stepdad. I think I represented the other man in my mom's life, growing up, so he took it out on me, bounced me off the walls quite a bit. I still loved him in spite of that, because I just figured I did something wrong, you know, to merit that. I had a low self esteem. And so my rebellion against authority was directed at my dad. And I'm not blaming him at all for my decisions in life. I ultimately became seduced by the spree gang community. It was all around me. 90% of people that grow up in gang-infested areas do not become gang members. And that's a misnomer. But your chances of getting involved are higher, obviously, if you grow up in that area. And I think that's what happened to me. I had the contributing factors of the turbulence and the dysfunction at home with my dad. I was a brain in school, very, you know, in the smartest classes. But I couldn't overcome the rebellious spirit. And then what I kind of loathed in school, when I would see gang members, I would make fun of them, not to their face. But with the other brains, the other brainiacs, we would kind of make fun of the way they dress, the way they comported themselves, et cetera. And then lo and behold, I became a gang member, little by little. Part of that was the rebellion against my dad, ending up in jail. When I first arrived in juvenile hall, what did I see? Holderization, whites, blacks, and Mexicans would go to their own groups. So I figured, well, in order to survive, this is what I have to do. So what did a gang member look like? A Chicano Mexican-American gang member look like, and this is the 50s we're talking, late 50s. - Late 50s and through the mid 60s, tattoos, hair, slick back, khakis, friskos, penaltons, shirts, sur guys. In fact, there was a store. I have a picture somewhere of El's Army and Navy on Witter Boulevard, and they sold nothing but a peril. I think today there's a store somewhere in southeast LA called Green Spans. They supplied a lot of the attire for the movie set of "American Me" and they do that for other movie sets that depict trolls, gang members from that timeframe. So that was the typical attire. I even have a write-up from the LA Herald Examiner, a newspaper that's now extinct in the fashion page. They did a story on cholo fashion, you know. - Yeah, I mean, it was really fly. - Yeah. - Especially if you're well built, you got the suspenders and the socks rolled up. - Oh yeah. - I assume nobody really had guns. - Yeah, but they switched blades. - We did have access to guns, but they were not as prevalent obviously as today, where you got automatic weapons of bounding. But back then it was predominantly tire irons, bumper jacks. against a rival gang, and we had, you know, those kind of weapons, two by fours, anything that was not a firearm. We had plenty of those, we utilized them. We were very proficient with knives, switch blades, stuff like that, which, of course, you learn to perfect this craft, this criminal craft when you're behind bars. See, behind bars, you were going to learn how to take people out. Even in modern times, there were guys that were killed. We had access to guns all day long, you know, shot guns, you know, firearms, automatic weapons, and you'd hear about certain members killing their targets. I call it fulsome style, you know, it was taken them out with a prison knife on the street or a shank. Yeah. Like, as if they were in prison. Right. And that's how the structure of the gang operates. It's not the street to prison. It's prison to the street. The orders are given in prison to the street. Yeah. Today. And back then, as we go, you know, if we're talking chronologically, back then, it wasn't like that in the beginning, but you did have characteristics that I can tell you, any gang in any part of this country, probably even in any other country, share these similar characteristics, status, fear, and money. Okay. Status being the overriding people that joined gangs, they have a low self-esteem to begin with, apparently. Why would you join a gang, right? So that becomes your family, totally, because something happened, something didn't go right at home. So you took your love to the street. Now the fear that I'm talking about is not a trembling in your boots kind of fear. It's the fear of losing that status, okay? People once you get indoctrinated, and that is your family. When you hear them guys say youngsters that I'll die for my neighborhood, people laugh at that, and they go, ah, this punk doesn't know what he's talking about. But they mean it, because that's all they have. You know, that's their hood, that's who they are. So the fear of losing that status is the second characteristic. And then, of course, money, everybody wants money for drugs to survive, to pay the rent, to buy food, et cetera, et cetera. So that's the economic component of a gang in a criminal endeavor is financial. Absolutely. So the first time you went to juvenile, the first time you were incarcerated, what happened behind that? 63, that was crossing the border, crossing back into the United States without ID. It was not a big deal at that time, and I was in San Diego, juvenile hall for about a week. And so I decided to go to the countryside myself, we were visiting relatives in Tijuana. And so when mom finally found out that that's where I was at and why, you know, she got me out and everything. So that was minor. In '64, runaway, truancy, and I think I was burglary, it was one of the charges. So that is when I was introduced to Los Angeles, Juvee, juvenile hall. And that's when I noticed, well, in the day room, in orientation, I saw an inmate get raped. And a lot of people tell me that in the movie, American me, that that was the scene that was adopted from my book, because there were people, and I'm not going to lay them out, but there were people who read my book, my first book, my autobiography, The Gang of Gangs, Mexican Mafia, The Gang of Gangs from Multiboy to Hitman. And I described what I saw as in the orientation, a juvenile hall. It was an inmate raping, another inmate at knife point. And everybody in the in the day room was, they acted oblivious to that event. And so I interpreted that as well, maybe this guy's got it coming for some reason. People but he's lifting a hand to help the guy, why? And that's when I thought, well, maybe he's got that coming. And it wasn't to later that I discovered that the strong will prevail over the week. In other words, if you show weakness and fear, and if you're considered pretty, this was back then, then you're subject to getting raped. The back then, sex rapes of men on other men was acceptable. Today, you hear people talk about, oh, he's got a sex jacket and we're going to kill him if you go, you know, because it's taboo. It's not allowed anymore, which is a good thing in my estimation. But back then, it happened all the time. Meaning like you didn't have bad paperwork. You weren't considered a bad dude in prison if you had been convicted of raping another man. Or if you did it in the joint. Well, mostly in the joint, I never heard of anybody raping another man on the street. I heard him raping women. Today, that's also considered taboo is to rape a woman. When you hear the expression or the phrase, you know, he's got a sex jacket, all of that falls under that. So it's considered taboo today. So when you saw that, that's incredible. When you first told me that story, I immediately thought back to the movie American Me, Edward James Olmos' character, that's when he's a boy and then he first goes into juvenile, that's what happens to him. Is he gets raped and then he kills the guy who rapes him. When you saw that happen, did you mean in the movie? No, in real life. In real life, yeah. You saw that happen in real life. Did you think I got to get myself a piece of steel? I can't be a victim. The first thing you're going to laugh when I tell you this. I used to call my hair to the side. So the first thing I remember, I was, I'm a smart guy. Even then, I was a smart guy so I knew somehow I was going to survive all this. I was going to learn the ropes and my first reaction was, why is this guy not resisting? You know, I was a square from Delaware but I'd be fighting my f-off. I don't care shank or no shank, I'm going to be fighting, right? And this guy is just real passive and he drops his briefs. But the thing is, I'm thinking of possibly interceding, intervening on his behalf. But I look around and say, well, you know, before you take on more than you can chew here, take the temperature. Why are the other inmates who are aware of what's going on? Why are they not lifting a hand to help? There must be a reason. And that's why I backed off. But when I said you're going to laugh, I, from orientation, which was a dorm, we get assigned to a room. And so when I got to the room, I had my own room, I had a mirror and everything. And I started brushing my hair back, combing my hair back. And I said, my hair is going to be just like the other trolls, not to the side, you know. And I said, nobody's going to become, try to hit on me because we're going to fight, you know. And so that was my first reaction to that. But it was a traumatic, I think, looking back, it really opens your eyes and makes you think, what do I have to do to survive, you know, what if somebody comes at me that way? You know, what am I going to do? You've got to be ready in this and that. And so that's how I, little by little, started learning the ropes. I became aggressive, little by little. One of the things that one of the gang members told me there, he recognized me from school. And he said, hey, you're at Stevenson, I go, yeah, you're Bugsie, you're Bugsie from King Cobras. And so he kind of took mercy on me or whatever. He looked at it like he's a fellow Chicano, he's right here with us. So he started telling me the rules, the reglas. You don't take any crap from anybody. If anybody disrespects you, especially from another ethnic group, you respond with violence. You don't wait, you know. So I had an encounter with a black inmate who was playing the dozens. We were in a little area, we were in a trusty tank. And he started playing the dozens, sex-talking, and I didn't think twice, I figured, hey, I'm not going to let even words enter. And I got a mop bucket, I dumped the water, and I hit him upside the head with the mop bucket, knocked him out, and they locked me up, they locked him up. He probably would have whipped my ass, he was a big guy. Probably would have whipped my ass, if it had been one-on-one, and I said, no, no, no. I'm jail, there's no straight-up, fair fight thing. If he's a bigger guy, I'm going to get him with an equalizer. I got him with a mop bucket, and I earned some respect, you know, and that's what you're doing. You're earning respect, you're not tolerating. And how long was that first stretch in juvenile? 64, I think that one was about 10 months, I got out the day. the Watts riots. August of 1965, the Watts riots were going on and there are a lot of gang members in my blog. I had a cousin who worked for the Sheriff's Department and they were from East L.A. sheriffs. They would go to every agency had cops and deputies that would go to the riots and he was explaining how they would go for deep in a car and he was sharing war stories of how they're robust in heads, you know, from the people that were rioting. This episode is sponsored by GLD. This is my go-to for all of my jewelry needs. I've been getting into jewelry. I'm trying to get into tattoos. I'm trying to become like a hot guy in my 40s. I don't know how it's working. The GLD is helping me get there. Check out this piece right there. I'm about to put this on one of the chains that I got from GLD and just look like I'm a rapper from the Bronx. The quality on this is crazy. It's got a nice weight to it. The detailing is super clean and honestly you just pull together an entire outfit without even trying. What I like about their stuff is it's not something you only wear once in a while. This is every day, throw it on and go type jewelry. 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And what gang now are you part of? I haven't joined the gang yet. Okay, so you're just-- But I'm hanging around with the V&E guys, but I remember I just got off from doing time, my first little stretch. They violated me in December, and I ended up parlaying what should have been a 60 or 90-day parole violation into three years and two months in the youth authority. And you talk about screwing up. I joined the ethnic clique, which would be the equivalent to a prison gang, but it really wasn't. It's just the ethnic clique. Every ethnic group had their little clique of enforcers. So I became like one of the enforcers. They became the press, which is Spanish slang for president of L company. L company in Preston. Preston is well with the youth facility. I ended up, and I still hadn't joined a gang, because I'm in jail, and I'm living it up. And a lot of violence, a lot of attacks. I almost killed a guy with a barbell. He was a weightlifter, and I got him in the weight area, and he was set claiming. He was claiming to be from a neighborhood that he wasn't, and I got him with a dumbbell. I think it was a 15, 20-pound dumbbell, the ones you do the curls with, and knocked him out. His body was convulsing, and my fear after I did the deed is maybe I'd killed him, but he survived. And you hadn't yet killed anyone? And yet killed anyone. Okay. I didn't kill anyone until I turned 19. So when I get out of the YA, and I tell you, I did three years and two months, I was 19 years old going on 20. I hadn't turned 20 yet. And then while I was out, I was an out, but a couple months, and I ended up getting, I go to white fence. That's our rival, one of the rival neighborhoods that we battle against in Boyle Heights. And so I went to the neighborhood there looking for a friend of mine who happened to be from white fence. He was a family friend. Without thinking, you don't go into a rival turf and think you're going to necessarily escape unscathed. You're entering somebody else. Unless you're escorted in by one of your rivals, then that guy is telling the rest of him, he's with me. Even though we're rivals, he's a friend of mine. So hands off. That wasn't the case. I went on my own knowing that he was at a dance, at a teen center, and I went to seek him out. He wasn't there, and I was instead confronted by a bunch of white fence gang members. Most of my young teenagers like me, but a few of the older guys that were there supervising, and they gave the green light to the youngsters to conduct a pro harbour on me. That's when you rat pack somebody, we call it pro harbour. So they did a pro harbour on me. They busted out. I felt the two by fours, beer bottles were busting on my head, and I could taste the intermingle of blood and beer in my mouth, you know, from all though. And all I could do was cover up, because it was like a non-slot. And I'm thinking, what an effed up way to go. I'm thinking I'm letting down my neighborhood. I'm thinking of the status. I'm thinking of the loss of my personal identity, my gang identity, as I'm being beaten by these guys, right? Relentlessly. And then suddenly I heard the voice, I describe it as the voice of an angel. It was a female, a little older than most of us teenagers. And she's yelling at them and saying, "Leave him alone. He knows David. Leave him alone." And little by little, the assault abated. I could feel it abating. And then most of them were drunk. They all came up to me. You know, I'm sorry. And then one of the young guys, his name was Bobby Lokal. He came up to me to shake my hand. And I told him, "You know, that's okay, Holmes. I'm okay." I was stemming the flow of blood, you know, that was coming out of my head. And I just wanted to get out of there. And so I didn't shake his hand. And I just said, "That's okay." And that's cool. And I went walking out. I went to my vehicle, started it. My neighborhood is about five blocks from it's on the other side of the freeway. And the guys from my neighborhood were there parting in the circle. So when I drive up, they see me drive up, they greet me, and then they see me get out the car, and they see me bloody. And yeah, "Hey, what happened? Who did that?" And I told you know, "White fence." And I'm looking for the weapons that we had under the artificial turf. And I saw the machete. I go, "That's mine." So everybody's getting a weapon. And we all jump back in the car. We go back. And you know, we attacked the dudes from white fence who were still there. And my first homicide was I killed Bobby Lokal, teenager. So you had rocked him to sleep, as they say, prison. You said, "Hey, it's cool." Yeah, it's cool. Our feelings. You rocked him to sleep. Well, yeah, and you knew, but you knew you're like, "I cannot let this stand." In fact, when I'm driving to my neighborhood, I'm sitting up. I'm sitting up because I don't want to, you know, as I'm driving the car, I don't want to black and white LAPD car see me bleeding and then pull me over to see what's going on. So I remember sitting up so that if I or cop came by, they're not going to see the blood, because I wanted to get back to the neighborhood, raise the alarm, come back before the guys left, the scene of the jump in, right? So you got your machete and you run out on these guys. How many of you are there? There's about, oh, there's a carload of us. So there's one, two, three, speedy, little Robert, myself, Pete Medina. But I think five of us were there. Sammy, Sammy Rios, so five of us. And when we get there, there's a bunch of them. You know, there's, I don't know, half dozen, a dozen, at least a dozen. It's got to be at least a dozen. And some of the women are there and the music is still playing. And I was the first one in and I remember stabbing a guy, his name was fuzzy. They called him fuzzy from white fence. A machete is not intended for stabbing. It's intended for chopping. But I did not want to swing the machete because I had my homies coming in behind me. So I used the machete as a stabbing instrument and which really didn't do a good job. I did stab him, but not as bad as I could over should have. And I remember he was, he was blocking himself and yelling, you know, he was in pain. And then the guys rushed upstairs to go after the white fence guys. There were upstairs. So they're battling upstairs. And then when they rushed past me, I went from fuzzy. I left him on the ground and I went running upstairs. And then one of the wood, I don't remember saying this, but one of the eyewitnesses said they saw a tall white guy. That's me. because I'm light skinned. They saw a white, a tall white guy yelling, "Gyeviva, va-ru-n-uevul." Long live va-ru-n-uevul. And so I guess that's what I was yelling. And when I got out there, the first person I encountered, enemy, was Bobby Loco, the young teenage guy that was part of the crew that jumped me. And so I started swinging at him, got him down. And they said I nearly severed his head off. So the other white fence guys, when running down the stairs on the other side, the V&E guys were chasing them. So when I went to join in on the chase, I remember looking back. For some reason, I wanted to look back to see what I had done. And I looked back and I was transfixed at his body because it was twitching. It was going through its death throes. And it really was a traumatic experience for me. I had mixed feelings. The next thing I remember, the other guys got the end of getting away. We all ended up that night in Pico Rivera to suburb of LA. And in Pico Rivera, one of my homeboys lived in Pico Rivera. So they had a house party. And everybody was congratulating me. The boys, the homeboys and the homegirls. The girls were coming up hugging and kissing me. And the guys were hand shakes and backslaps. I wanted to be alone with my thoughts. I wanted to because I'd never killed anybody before. So no matter you're caught up in the gang and you think you're bad and all that. But you know what? Until you've killed somebody, you just don't know what it's like, right? So you knew he was gone. Yeah. You saw his body twitching. Yeah. Yeah. I figured he was. And then later I found that was all over the news that the guy had died. Was that your intention going into that kind of mob? My intention was at style fight or or are you thinking? You're not thinking. Yeah, it's rage. It's rage. You want to you want to hurt somebody. You want to vent. You want to you want to harm them. You want to do great bodily harm. I'm not necessarily thinking 187, you know, homicide. But and that's why I say I was kind of in shock. And the homeboys, I wanted to be alone with my thoughts to process what I had just done. And they wouldn't let me because they're congratulating me and giving me this approval. So they're letting me know it's okay. These are my brothers and sisters telling me it's okay. And so I felt like wow, this is pretty cool then. I held up the flag for the neighborhood. Then the homies call me to a back room to a bedroom. And on the bed is a machine gun. And this is when they come back to retaliate against us. We'll be ready. And I remember telling them in a voice that was not my voice. And I mean, I don't remember because I didn't process that way. I said, why wait? Let's hit them again. So we went back and now I got the machine gun. That's how I got the nickname machine gun mundo. Right. And we ended up driving near Fresno Park, which is belong to white fence. And it was dark. We went past the crime scene. The crime scene tape was up. There was nobody there anymore. And we're now parked at Fresno Park. We figured, well, let's see who who shows up. And then all of a sudden, we see some group of guys walking in the dark. They don't see us quite yet. But we see them first. And somebody says, I think that's them right there. So we're waiting, waiting. And when they see us, almost at the same time that we're ready to get out of the car, they see us and they scatter. And I jump out of the car and I open fire with the machine gun. I got somebody in the buttocks. It's what I found out later. But I couldn't control it. And so to me, I tattooed the side of a house, which is stupid. I mean, luckily nobody got here. And that's the, that was the last time I ever used the machine gun. I said, no, no, no, no, a shotgun, a gun you can control. Yes, a machine gun never again. But they call me machine gun mundo. And to me, that was almost like I said, like an insult, you know, it was, it was not an insult. It was more like a testimonial of something I couldn't perfect. You know, but the name stuck with me for a few years. It's so crazy because you're battling and harming other chicanos who live, not only in the same neighborhood as you, five blocks from you. It's pretty remarkable that they had a machine gun in 1968. Yeah. Where do you think, where could they source a machine gun? Like from, from soldiers coming back from war or like how did you get a machine gun back in the late 60s? That was a, it was a truck. It was a Thompson 45 caliber with the round drum. Yes. That's badass. But, but a lot of, to your point, there were weapons that were coming back from Vietnam. They weren't supposed to. They were trophies. You know, there, there were, because Tony Sandoval, my neighbor, I wanted to go to Vietnam. So bad. Right. And, and because everybody around me, my family and neighbors, friends were going to NAMM. And I remember when I did this homicide, I'm at, I'm in Tony's house because I'm on the run. I'm in Tony's house and we're smoking weed. It's similar to this venue here. You know, it's a little, with Tony, it was garage, converted into a room. And he had come back from Vietnam. And we're smoking weed. And he tells me, or he asked me, so what war are you fighting? So he's kind of needling me, right? About, because he already heard that I had done this thing against white fans. And I, and I remember telling him something like, take me to NAMM, brother. I can bleed red, white, and blue just like you. And so, you know, we were, we were joking when the LA homicide guys busted the doors down. And they got word that I was there. They arrested me. How long after the murder, did they arrest you? A couple weeks. Okay. Yeah. They developed their intel on the streets and everything. Then my mom came to visit me in the county jail, showed me the telegram that had just arrived, instructing me to go for my physical to go to Vietnam. You know, I still have the copy of it, right? And so, so if you hadn't been locked up, you would have, I would have got shipped out. Yeah. You got drafted. Yeah. Wow. And history would have been, you know, clearly changed. Or I could have been dead. I mean, who knows? You know, because they were coming back in body bags almost every day. Right. Back then. So, I mean, you just never know, but I know that's what I wanted to do. So, ironically, from becoming the best that I could be as the slogan goes for the military, I, I guess I made a determination to become the worst that I could be from that point on. So, that, I thought that was the point of no return for me. I'm sure you committed that, that murder. Yeah. Today's episode is sponsored by Superpower. I am so fascinated by what this company is doing. 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Make this the year you stop guessing about your health with Superpower. Not only did Superpower reduce their price to just $199, but for a limited time, our listeners get an additional $20 off with code connect, C-O-N-E-C-T, head to superpower.com and use code connect at checkout for $20 off of your membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask you how you heard about them. Make sure to give us some love and tell them that our podcast sent you. All right. So you charged with first degree murder? Well, initially it was just, yeah, that's what it was, 187 and then I ended up pleading guilty to an involuntary manslaughter. And in the audience, I saw one half of the courtroom was my mother and the guys for my neighborhood for my hood. The other half of the courtroom was Mrs. Lopez, which is my victim's mother and the guys from WhiteFence. So the Marshalls understanding the gang dynamics made sure that the gang members never got to each other. And so there was a guy, Bobby Cole, Bobby Cole was from WhiteFence. And during the proceedings, the pretrial proceedings, they from what I hear, the guys from WhiteFence were in one vehicle, not the mother. And the guys from for my neighborhood world. another vehicle on the same freeway heading towards a courtroom or from it. And the white fence guys attempted to run my guys off the freeway, they ended up crashing instead and Bobby Cole died in the car wreck. No shit. Yeah. And so that was, you know, that was an event. It took place that I found on while the proceedings were taking place. The mother, there was a part of me that wanted to reach out to her and tell her I was sorry and and hug her and ask for her forgiveness. But I could never do that. For many reasons, you're pride, you know, as a gang member, your homies are looking at you besides that mother probably had no time, no forgiveness, right? She was mourning her son. My mom was a victim because she's losing her son to the system. And I didn't give a shit. When I got sentenced on the plea bargain, I remember cussing out the judge right after he sends me and he said something like, you need help and a lot of it. And I told him, fuck you and your white mother. It's what I told him. His face turned red. The bay lives grabbed me and drug me out of the courtroom. My mom is crying. Mrs. Lopez is crying for two different reasons. Mrs. Lopez is crying because of the animal that I that I was. The animal that killed her son is still not showing remorse and instead is cussing out the judge. My mom is crying because that's her baby, right? I mean, you don't think about those kind of things. You know, when you're when you're young and dumb, just don't think about it. You just ruined like four lives. Yeah. Yeah. And it's no big deal. And that's the beginning. That's just that's chicken feed in the world of gangs and all that compared to what's going to come. That's right. That's right. That's my my resume that that becomes my opening job description, if you will, for what's going to. That's right. Okay. So how many years were you sentenced to? At that time, involuntary mass slaughter carried six months to 15 years. Oh, good times back then. Yeah. Six months. Six months minimum, which nobody was going to do it. The median time for something like that would have been about four, five, six years, depending on your conduct. Right. You know, because they had the, what they call the indeterminate sentencing law going on at the time. That would later get spoiled much later. So this is in 69. By January of 1970, I'm already being processed in the in Chino at the reception center. By March of 1970, I get sent to solid ed. When I get to solid ed, I get involved in a squabble. I become a member of the Latin American culture group. Culture groups are in all the prisons. Okay. And there's a lot of good and well-intentioned people that like these groups because they learn about their culture and all that. But but a lot of it is exploited by the gangs. And the group we belong to was no different, although we were not yet members of any prison gangs. We were we were still flying the Mexican flag thing and using the culture group as a way of, you know, doing our thing, our criminal criminal stuff. So we got involved in a confrontation. We attacked a, was a dozen of us attacked a dozen bikers as they were exiting the Chauhoi. It was a dispute over the ownership rights of a punk, the homosexual. They claimed him, we claimed ownership. And so we ended up getting getting down. So so just for people just who have no idea how wild that statement is and how much things have changed, you guys wanted rights to a gay guy to turn them out to fuck them. No, actually this, in this case, it was to rent him. To rent him out. Yeah. To other people to fuck him. Yes. Right. Yes. That's that was property. That's insane. A lot of that would happen. And in this case, you know, he's a prostitute. He's your sex. He's our property. You know, we claim him. He's ours. And we rent him out for, and if somebody wants to do him. That's fine. They can do him if they want. But yeah, that was it. They would look at inmates like that is the equivalent of the female. So as long as you were not catching, you know, right? As you were not on the receiving end. Yeah, yeah, throwing you were, you were okay. You got to be the picture, not the catcher. Right. That's right. So that's the way it worked. And everybody, I don't know how to write that down. Just in case I get locked up together. So that was back then. That changed since then. So, you know, all these guys that, you know, they had their, their, their older homeboys, their OGs from whatever water they come from, all of them had people that engaged in that. Okay. But, but, but they all try to hide that. It's like a family secret that you don't want to talk about. It's, it's taboo. You know, but it happened. They were, see, I made, I enjoyed making money selling drugs and a lot of, and we also drugged, but some guys, they had, they had kid, they call them kid. That's so-and-so's kid. So that's like saying, that's his wife or his girlfriend, so to speak. But that was that was a real racket in prison. So now, and does this homosexual, this girl, he under threat of violence is why he complies, I assume. Fifty-fifty. Half of them are just weaklings that submit and understand that if they don't comply, something's going to happen to them. And the other half become flagrant queens, so to speak. Right. They think, they think they're girls or they play in the role of a girl. You know what I mean? I feel like that happens less, much less into the day's day in age in prison. Of course. Is that because it's more taboo than it was back then, even though now we're supposed to be this like more, much more liberal and open society. But I feel like it is different. Yeah. Yeah. Prison's a different animal. As it has evolved, there's a lot of things that they improved on, morally speaking, that were acceptable before. And does not reflect the woke society that we live in. Right. Yeah. It's apples and oranges almost. When you became a member of the Mexican mafia, when you, you know, you were there in the early stages of its etymology, its growth, was that a practice that they put a stop to? No. No, that continued on. This happened after I left. Mexican mafia was conceived or it was, the Mexican mafia was formed in 1957 at DVI by youth authority awards. I rubbed elbows with all of them, but later on. Right. I did not become a member until 13 years later, 1917. Okay. So I knew all the OGs, but you asked me off camera about Joe Morgan. Joe Morgan was older in age than all the Mexican mafia members that formed the initial core group, but he didn't even get in until 68, 69 in Folsom. I didn't realize that. I didn't realize how far back I am. I actually went. So this goes back to the 57 and had it grown when you first got to a solid ad, you were doing your bid for murder. How strong were they as a presence in the California State System? They were, they were very strong. They were predominantly strong in San Quentin and Folsom prison. Okay. Then you had another group that was starting to come up. La Chicanos resented the fact that the Mexican mafia was pressuring their own. They would, they were an equal opportunity exploiter. And so many fellow Mexican inmates suffered at their wrath. So another gang came into existence. And this came into existence in 65, even before I entered as an adult. That was a Nuestra Familia. Right. The Northerners. And well, they weren't, it wasn't a northern and southern thing back then. Most of the Nuestra Familia members that came, when they came into existence, were from Los Angeles, San Diego, or Central California. Cities like Oxnard, Santa Barbara, and Bakersfield. There was nobody from northern California. In fact, there were many, there were more northern California gang members in the Mexican mafia than there were from the NF. In the first five years of the NF's existence. So as the way everything evolved, the Nuestra Familia prison gang could not embrace the LA gang members, the way the Mexican mafia did. So they sold the bill of goods to northern California inmates. You know, hey, we got to resist the boogeyman, blah, blah, blah, or else. And they could pitch it. They kind of fell prey to the to the Kool-Aid. They drank the Kool-Aid and then they became in. So that's where the polarization of North and South, that took place, I think, around 73. You know, after seventy-three when they separated the Nuestra Familia and the Mexican Mafia and remember nothing to do with North and South when you hear about the shoe war that's one of my books I write about it the shoe war had nothing to do with North and South people say well that's where the North and South began no it didn't that's when the the Nuestra Familia and disgruntled gang members got off on the remaining four members of the Mexican Mafia on the San Quid and Yard but it North and South was still not a thing right we still had a lot of associates from from Northern California we had I think I'm working on an episode we had eight members there were from Northern California of the 150 you know membership at the time eight of them were from Northern Cal so we didn't discriminate by region or anything like that they were not inferior to us they had quality guys just like any gang in Southern Cal but it was a phenomenal that occurred and I became part of that picture I see okay fascinating so but when you go in in 6970 the the split the rivalry between NF and lamb it hasn't happened yet that's happened oh that has happened yeah okay so they're beefing they're happy but it's not a North and South thing right understood okay it only becomes that later later yeah so going back to this first riot it's you're not part of lamb a yet you're running with this cultural group yeah basically is masking for you know your guys is right yeah yeah and solid that it's a badass prison especially back then yeah what happened in that riot you go you go to war against the bikers yeah now we went to war they they took all the knives because a prison guard had gotten it was killed officer sole had been killed in the unit in unit one to other side of a solid at north and the black gorilla family were in the process of retaliating against prison guards for three of their guys that were killed on the yard in a riot in in owing in the adjustment center so the national guard came in they had metal detectors and they took all the shanks so we had to improvise uh remember Leo from the from Ochentha's had a Jurgen's bottle uh he used the the jagged edge of the bottle as a weapon and I put soap I think three soap bars of soap in a sock yeah and use that as a club a soap sock right use that as a club so we all improvised nobody had shanks the the bikers didn't have shanks either and uh and we uh we met up it's kind of like the okay corral you know just uh for sure they're walking out of the mess hall we're walking down the street or the where the vehicles go and uh and I remember I'm the one that walked up to to their to their their the main guy like I was going to talk and I'm doing something with my hand over here to get him distracted and I pull out the soap sock let him have it and then it's on and now there were people you know how in the in the comments section you need to get people that that that talks uh smacked right I was there yeah I fucked mundo up yeah yeah mundo did this and so the people that are say mundo ran you know and I'm laughing because they're right I did run right but but not what they would not the way they term it I had said somewhere about how I ran well here's what happened so there's about a dozen of them a dozen of us and we're doing our thing boom boom the guy I'm hitting he's he's unconscious I've knocked him out and I'm still hitting him I was like in a zone I was not aware that the the the the guys from my side once they had finished attacking they took off running back to the units and we were surrounded I or I was surrounded by khaki because these are all prison guards right and I'm hitting this guy and I hear whistles blowing and I see the khaki around me I go shit I'm the only one left so I swung the sock kind of like haphazardly and you know a couple of the guards backed up and I let it go and I took off running to Whitney Hall right I walk into the hall and I still have the right of the 115 that's a disciplinary report and I go into shiner cell shiner uh from white fence uh and uh and I'm I'm in the process of changing he had given me another shirt or whatever and uh and these officers I guess one of the officers pointed and said he went into that cell so they came in and saw me in the process of changing clothes to change my identity whatever and they they gaffled me up and they locked me up so nobody died you know just uh just a beat down kind of thing and uh I went to disciplinary and then they kicked a bunch of us out they wanted us out of there because they were dealing with a dead officer right they were still dealing with that case they just wanted all of us out of there they didn't want anybody that's involved in violence so that's when uh when I got to sand quitting uh I mistakenly said at one time that I was the youngest guy in sand quitting at that time I was a second youngest wow because one of the guys uh that was with us in that beat down was leaky leaky was a future uh became an NF member and leaky was a youngest he was younger than me by I don't know have maybe six months or something like that so I was a second youngest uh I still hadn't turned 21 wow and sand quitting in 1971 yeah I mean it must have been incredible it was fun I and it was you got away with a lot of stuff yeah you know there there's no cameras there's uh uh uh you know the guards were surviving as well uh we could we got away with stuff uh people I don't know how true it was but we were told by some of the correctional officers that evidence had been intentionally misplaced and then we come to find out that district attorney would not prosecute because the evidence was misplaced what do you mean prosecute on what and uh on cases okay yeah there are different cases I got uh picked up for uh uh there were two homicides it took place and uh and as as I talk about a lot of things there's a lot of things I'm not going to talk about because obviously there's no statute of limitations understood uncertain crimes uh when uh when my when my prison time was up I got away with six homicides that I committed that I was never picked up for and that was in sand quitting that was in different in different various prisons of course that we you know you yeah you're not going to specify oh no yeah um can you talk about the first homicide you committed in prison that you have profored uh there is not there is none in prison that have been adjudicated I understand yeah okay so all i'm telling you is this and then you can figure it out however you want to sure you can read between the lines or whatever so I'm picked up as a suspect and in a in a in two homicides in solid ad uh I had blood on my pants of the victim purportedly allegedly according to the paperwork um I still have the rejection from uh was it Monterey County uh district attorney's office declining to prosecute because uh there was insufficient evidence to go forward wow cases are hard it is very difficult that's why I say we had fun everybody was having fun right because uh prosecutors had a hard time unless you had inmate eyewitnesses and staff eyewitnesses willing to come forward and testify to what they saw you had self defense right was always a defense that was used by inmates right and if both inmates are are are scratched up it's a plausible defense enough to raise reasonable doubt right so you had as a result a lot of prosecutors who refused to prosecute didn't want to pick it up you know so this episode is sponsored by better help better help is the world's number one online therapy platform that is where I have been going to see a therapist for years now better help is over 30,000 licensed therapists and has helped over six million people worldwide they match you with a therapist based on your needs and if it's not the right fit you can switch at any time when life feels overwhelming therapy can help sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com slash connect that's better h-e-l-p dot com slash connect one more time that's better help dot com slash c-o-n-n-e-c-t now were you a suspect was that the same the the same stretch and solid ad your first stretch yeah the same the same time there was another another time period okay I see yeah let's picked up there as a suspect then I picked up again in San Quiddon as a suspect in a there were two again two homicides and this was against the black gorilla family so that and then that one you had a goon squad officer who he's he's now deceased but I still won't mention his name because yes family but he he told us me and black Dan black Dan was the suspect in one of the bgf guys it was killed and I was the suspect and the other one and And when they came up, the Goon Squad came up to search or everybody's cell. And when they got to our cell, they had his handcuffed on the rail, on the in B section in the lockup unit. And he's telling us, this officer is telling us, next time you guys do something like this, let me know so I can get up on the gun rail. And in other words, inferring that he would wanted to shoot blacks, right? And I remember telling him, OK, yeah, no problem. But between black dad and I, I'm telling dad, shit, we would never do that, because that's-- we don't need a law enforcement guy, a prison guard, to take out one of our enemies, targets. If we're going to do it, we're going to do it because we want the glory. We don't need somebody else to do that, right? Plus you're telling on yourself. Yeah, kind of, we're collaborating with them. And then what if they end up killing one of our guys? So it's like, nah, nah, nah, nah. Just telling whatever makes them feel good, and that's it. Well, he comes one day, and he tells us a story. He says, you know, in the Goon Squad office, we have two lockers. One is an evidence locker, and one is a contraband locker. They're separate. The contraband locker is contraband that we find that we cannot assign to any inmate-- shanks, drugs, whatever. It's contraband. So we can tag those-- so we dump them in the bay once a month. The evidence locker, those are tagged, and they're assigned to certain inmates waiting for the district attorney of Marin County to accept them for prosecution. And so it becomes evidence against a particular inmate. He says, well, a funny thing happened the other day. And somebody-- and I don't know who-- mistakenly threw away the evidence locker, thinking it was the contraband locker, right? And then he winked. He winked, and walked away. Wow. And we're like, what do you think? In Spanish, we're talking to each other. What do you think? We'll find out. We get letters from Marin County that the prosecution had been declined because the evidence had been misplaced. Oh my god. So you talk about credence, right? Confirmation. Talk about corruption. But it happened. And it wasn't restricted to white guards. Black guards are doing the same thing, setting up targets for BGF and black inmate. I mean, you hear this thing about, oh, the white system is against the minorities or the blacks or whatever, it was equal opportunity. It happened to everybody. That's amazing. That's amazing. But you welcomed that. In other words, the way we looked at it was this way. If you put us against superior numbers, that's fine. We just have to make sure we get off first. We're not going to give them time to group and form a plan, or whatever, the best defense is a good offense. Sure. That's the way we looked at it. But if you set us up one against 10, and one of our guys ends up getting killed, then don't be surprised if we target staff. And so that never happened with us, but it did happen with the BGF. They went out to the yard. To have-- all they were doing was fist fighting in the Owing yard against the area in brotherhood. And in the middle of that fist fight, Owing yard fired, I think, four shots. Three of them killed three black inmates. The fourth bullet, according to the AB buzzard, was intended for a fourth black inmate who slipped and fell. And the bullet instead hit buzzard and knocked out one of his testicles. So I nicknamed them one nut buzzard. When I met up with him in B-section. But anyway, it was funny. Is that a solid ad? Or a sample in a solid ad? OK. I think it was January 1970, right around there. The demographics at that time in these-- you level four California prisons. Was it mostly black? Or how did the Latinos match up to the other races? It was about the same. Yeah, level four. Mostly-- see, the whites were really-- they came a long way. Majority of white inmates were not super aggressive. That's why when the Aryan Brotherhood and those tough guys from that prison gang, when they emerged, those guys rocked and rolled. But they were a small percentage of the white population to get down white guys. Now you have more white guys. They've harnessed somehow. And now you have more whites that are aggressive than back in my day. They were a small percentage or a vastly outnumbered by the blacks. And that's why they had their problem with the blacks. Our problem with blacks had nothing to do with numbers, because we had equal numbers. Aryan's had more to do with power and who was going to be the big dog on the yard. So that's why we always bumped heads with the blacks. I did not have a racist bone in my body. I hated the BGF as much as I hated the NF. NF was Mexican. So my race is against Mexican? No. It's a gang thing. See, when you get involved in gang, look at the LA gangs. The Mexicans kill in Mexicans. Sure. Blacks kill in blacks. It's 99%. Even though they're ideology, you hear the AB guys talking about Kyle Hitler, White Power, blah, blah, blah. That's a rallying cry. That's a way to harness the white energy. And they become racists because they start believing that kind of ideology. But in their heart of hearts, they're not racist. Even as bad guys, they're not racist against blacks. Blacks are not racist against Mexicans. And we were not racist against blacks. We're the most part. But it's something that unified us. Totally. It's like propaganda. Exactly. Okay. So how did you go? You're getting stripes. You're involved in homicides and what is your prison hustle? What kind of hustles? You said you were in the drugs. Yeah, we had plenty of that coming in from the outside drugs. What kind of drugs in the early 70s? It was heroin. That was our main money maker there. Okay. In fact, that's the only thing I mess with. Wow. I never got-- I wasn't a user. I think I injected maybe three or four times. Didn't like it. But I can tell you, we were sick puppies. What I mean by that is we enjoyed. San Quentin was like a big city. I got to-- Folsom, but it was always in lockup in 4A. So I wanted to go back and I did-- would go back to San Quentin where I could go to the yard eventually. And it was a big city. I mean, we had Prunel. We would make a white light name. We'd make Prunel's wine, prison wine. Where you get fruit and you let it cook. You had guys that did that. And then we'd get drunk. We'd love it. And so, but we were sick puppies because we really rather than aspire to get out and do something productive, even if it was criminal, we loved being in prison. It was fun. And there was something that just came to mind. I was thinking of San Quentin. Have you ever heard the expression Deadman Walking? Of course. OK, Deadman Walking, whenever they would escort an inmate from death row to, say, the visiting room, they would bring them down off of death row and they'd escort them across the upper yard and then over to the visiting area. And the officers would say, Deadman Walking. So telling the yard to clear. And the gun rails standing there supervising, making sure that all the inmates back off while they escort the guys to the thing, right? Well, they changed that afterwards because somebody must have complained. And they went from Deadman Walking to Condemman Walking. And then I don't know. Now they come up with something else. I don't know what to do. Yeah, yeah, something more politically correct. Yeah, they had to, they adjusted to the time. Think about how archaic and brutal that is. We have a Deadman Walking, but it's accurate. Not only is it accurate, but I think about all of us. We were all Deadman Walking. Yeah. Especially the prison gang guys, the Nuestra Familia, the Mexican mafia, Aryan brotherhood, the Black Guerrillo family. We did not think there's no future. There's no future. You're not thinking about living or dying. You're the test. You hear about street gang members? Yes, they're dangerous. Yes, they're out there pulling triggers. And I say, you know, the real test is when you get to prison. You get to prison. That's when you discover this guy really who we really is. On the streets, anybody can pull a trip. A little sister can pull a trip. You know, you get an automatic weapon and you're King Kong. You're sure you could be a little five footer. you know, and you're shooting up all these big monsters and stuff, you got that equalizer. You get in prison, it's a different game altogether. Sometimes you're outnumbered, sometimes you outnumber. One on one, knife fights, you know, I mean, it's on. - The second time you killed somebody, so the first time he dropped somebody in prison, right? So this is your second homicide. You know, you had one out on the street where you almost severed the guy's head with a machete. Now you're in prison and you're up on somebody. - There's several after that. - How did that feel like did it become easier? Like, what was the difference between killing somebody in prison versus that first life that you took? - It was like an auto body. It started becoming like an auto body. When I say we became sick, you become desensitized. You become, there was an incident where I'm on a victim and I'm looking through a window where there's a group of inmates congregated and I made direct eye contact with one of the guys, and I remember he was a pseudenial. He was a, we didn't call him pseudenials back then. I'm using today's terminology to describe back then. He was a Mexican Mafia associate, okay. And I made eye contact with him as it's like an auto body. It's almost like I'm looking at myself, take out my victim and looking at the people that are looking like a shock and awe from that location looking to where we're at. And I made a direct eye contact with this one guy and I got away, I got away on all of them. And when I ran into this guy in the unit, he made it a point to come up to me and tell me, I didn't see nothing, right? And I said, cool, keep it going, yeah. And so, and I trusted him. Later, he would hold shanks for us. He would hollow out a broom. Like the broom to sweep his room, he hollowed it out and put a steel rod inside and then taped it together and then painted it. So, you know, he would hold shanks for us. - What were these beefs, these hits? Why did they have to happen in your mind? - Well, a lot of them are different. A lot of the hits that take place behind bars, all of them have, well, there were gang-related beefs, well, involving guys that are members of gangs or associates of gangs. - In a group, like inner beef. - Yeah, okay. - There's also targets, people who haven't paid debts, whatever. And besides the ones that I was involved in personally, as I say, I got desensitized as it went on. I was a co-conspirator and I don't know how many more. Participating in creating distractions, helping get rid of the shank at the end, you know, so many, there's so many different ways when you're setting up targets to hit them. And so all of that became part and parcel of our job. That's our job, that's what we do. And now we take this to the streets, 1975, they introduced a bill called the Negelly Bill that converted, unless you had a life sentence, every sentence would be converted to a determined sentence. So my six to 15, when they factored and figured everything out, I think it was converted into a six-year term, which meant I was immediately eligible. I received what was called a Ruap, released upon approval of parole plans. So many of us received Ruap's. Bunch of us got paroled dozens of us. So the streets of California were flooded with prison gang guys and the murders were taking place in northern California. You had the NF doing their thing, BGF, you had Doc Holiday, Ray Ray, Browning, Mexican Mafia, we were all over the place. - This episode is sponsored by Hims. You guys have heard me talk at nauseam about the benefits of Hims. If you guys are struggling with the reptile dysfunction, okay, there's only so many excuses that you can give your lady. Eventually she's gonna think you're cheating on her, okay? And we don't want that, whether that's the case or not, that's between you and God. 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Hims.com/connect, you guys will not regret it. Prescription is required. See website for details and important safety information. Sildena Phil is the generic version of Iagra. Iagra is a registered trademark of Beatrice, specialty LLC. Hims is not affiliated with or endorsed by Beatrice. - Now, by 1975, when you got released off of your first bid, had you already joined the Mexican Mafia? - 1970 is when I joined. - Okay. - In San Quentin. - Okay, great. Tell us about that process, how you after you got in a bunch of tickets for fighting at Soledad, you got shot off to San Quentin. - Yeah. - How did you, how did you join? How did you get? Tell us about that process. - Yeah, process. I arrived in September of 1970. I had already met some of the Mexican Mafia guys. I met Topo Peters. I met Bevito Alvarez, Wettel Psycho Rodriguez. They were in the lockup unit. Bevito had killed a black guy in Soledad. So Topo and Wettel Psycho had been subpoenaed to testify as character witnesses in his case. That's a ploy we would use all the time to get inmates down to give them a bus ride. And so I met them in Owing in the lockup unit while I was waiting a adjudication to get transferred to San Quentin. And they kind of schooled me on the dynamics of what was going on. I didn't know there was a Mexican Mafia and Nuestra Familia conflict going on. I didn't know that the shoe wore had taken place. Somewhere I might have heard of it, but it didn't really affect most of the guys, regular guys. Today would be different because you got the North and South and all that stuff going on. So when I transferred to San Quentin, that was September. September of 1970 is when I arrived. There's a lot of guys there that had already been transferred from Soledad from that beep with the bikers. And I meet them. So I start hanging out, making myself available with guys from the Mexican Mafia that I had met. Actually, I take that back. I met them after they got out. There were a lot of LA guys there. And we got together to assist. We had a petition made up to get the Mexican Mafia guys released to the yard. There was a lot of people that did not want them walking the yard. Most of it was staff, Sergeant Hankins. He was the institutional gang investigator. Did not want a Mexican Mafia member on the yard because the yard was populated mostly by our family members as far as prison gang element. But there were more LA guys, but they were not involved in the politics of the prison gangs. So we, some of us, looked at this, like, wait a minute. Why would you guys not want Mexican Mafia if you're all Chicanos? It's the way-- remember, I came from the mentality of Chicanos stick together now. We're in jail. So why not understanding fully the dynamics, right? But I did get a little preview. So now we're throwing it at these guys from the NF. Why won't you sign the petition? They're Chicanos. You mean you want to keep them locked up? That's messed up. That's almost like you're not snitching on them, but you're, you know, you should welcome them. If you want to have a confrontation with them, sign the petition, let them out, and go to work, right? And so they still wouldn't sign it now. We don't want to get involved. Whatever one day, one member did come out. That was Big Mike, Big Mike, NF guys, and another gang Mafia. They asked Mike to meet with them. So they had a little powwow on the yard, and they agreed to a truce, or, you know, ceasefire, lack of hostilities, kind of thing. So now within a month and a half, two months after that, Mike recruits some of us, and I became one of the recruits. - Wow. - And so after that is when the madness, we're young, we're dumb, we want to prove ourselves. - And are you an associate? - No, I was an associate when I met him, and he was grooming me, when they. We groom you, I compare it to a courtship. You're dating a girl, you're putting your best foot forward. And then when it's time to propose to her, you kind of know after dating her enough that she's going to say yes, pretty much, right? Well, it's the same thing with this. They kind of piece me old information like who the enemies are, the Mexican Mafia, blah, blah, blah, and they start giving you insight scoop because they're embracing you. And in the meantime, they've circulated your name to the other prisons. Back then, that's how they did it. They'd send your name to the other prisons. So Mundo from V&E, probably half the guys didn't even know who I was. So the ones that did could vote yes, no, or deferred to the sponsor. Deferring to the sponsor is the same as a yes vote. One no vote nullifies membership. You cannot get in if one person says no. So all my votes came back yes or deferred to the sponsor. So on the day that I was recruited Big Mike and Matt Karee and we're on the yard, the upper yard, Big Mike motion for me as I'm walking on the yard, I go over to them and he tells me the word has been circulated. And I was kind of expecting it, you know, like a proposal, right? And then he said, the basic rules you can't, the Emmett comes first, there's no way out, the only way out of the organization is to die. You know, and then Matt Karee and said, it's not like joining a club or a biker gang. I remember him saying that, he says, well, when you're in, you're in. But he was impressing down on me. I said, sure, sure. I get it. So I was, okay, then as of this, this point forward, you're a brother, you're a Karnat. And then they hug me, shake my hand. And then they send me to different parts of the prison. See, you don't get a bunch of brothers in one prison yard and do it because then the intelligence officers, they'll just add you to their list. Right. Looks like they just made another one. Yeah. So the way they would do it is he say go to the gym and go to the equipment room and rock on Lou will be there, Louie Lopez. So I went to the equipment room and when he saw me coming, a big smile on his face, he already knew he had already participated in the, in the upboat. And so, you know, I walk up to him, he hugs me, you know, welcome aboard Karnat, this that. And so that's how I met the brother, the other brothers that had been in before me. Okay. Going forward, see, there is no one of the misnomers is that you have to kill to get in. Most of us already had that criminal resume. Most of us have already killed on a different level. And so, but it isn't a prerequisite, but I, but one thing is guaranteed. Once you become a member, you will have opportunities and you will kill for the organization. Otherwise, your time is limited. And you can't deny an order, no, no, no, no, even if it's under the gun tower or whatever, those are called suicide attacks, but that was part and parcel of what we did. But once you, once you are in, there is no turning back and it's, I felt like I had climbed the top of Mount Everest, you know, I made it to the big time. Man, I was so heady, so proud. It would be like, like maybe my son going to the Marines, you know what I'm saying? Or joining the Marines, you know, it's something, you know, the elite, you know, special forces, whatever the gang of gangs, I was, you know, top of the heap. Now was, it seems like the Mexican Mafia today is very, very elite. Like you, it's very difficult to actually be a member. There's so many subgroups that do their bidding, but most of them are locked behind the wall in the shoe in Pelican Bay or they're in the feds. Back then was it easier? Was it, was it less exclusive to become a member of Miami back in the day as opposed to now? It's probably a little more difficult today and I'll tell you why. Not that it was loose back then, but as time has gone by and now you have the harnessing and the dividing of the gangs and for tax purposes and for drug selling purposes. So for, for generating revenue, you have brothers kind of think of the five families in New York. Right. So they're, they're divvied up. The sections are divvied up into the different families. So you've got a similar kind of thing going on with these guys. And so now, why do you need to share that pie with too many extra people? Now people die, people turn and this, a lot of these things happen as time goes by. And so you do need to recruit new blood and they are doing that recruiting new blood. But the one, one of the differences between before and now is that we 99.9% of the time, we killed our own targets. We never used, I shouldn't say never, but because I said 99.9, right, we would, we never utilize pseudanials or gang members or anybody like that to do hits for us. We did our own hits, does that mean we were a meaner and tougher and better than this generation? No, all it means is these guys are probably smarter, criminally speaking, and we, we looked at it like if we use a street gang member to do a hit for us, we're going to have to kill him because he knows too much, right? And, and so, and we still, our minds are still kind of like in prison and we would kind of challenge each other. Come on. Remember this, boom, we just assumed this was our job to do. So I was tied to the first three homicides or hits that were committed by gang members on behalf of the Mexican Mafia. The first one was by accident, I used the female to locate two targets in Bakersfield. DC was a member of the Nuestro Familia and his brother Danny, I mean, Ronnie, what's his name was Danny, Danny Reyes, and his brother Ronnie were the two victims when it all said and done. And this is out on the street. And this is after you got out in 75, 75, OK, and so that was, that was my last, I participated in several other many, many homicides street related. And then this is the one I ended up getting arrested for. So I used Gloria Perez, Cyclona, female gang member from Bakersfield and she's a sister of a Mexican Mafia member and I, I called her in Bakersfield. This is before cell phones and I asked her to locate three targets that we coveted. One of them was Woodsy Reyes. So the other two, when I called back to check on her, she could not locate all three targets. She looked, she located Woodsy Reyes. And when I called to check in on her and she told us that that's who she had, we went up sailor and I, sailor was my crime partner, also my homeboy, same neighborhood. We went up and we, she, we used her to get the door open because one of the brothers had the hats for her and that was Ronnie. So he gets, she gets the door open, Ronnie lets her in, sailor goes in with her, throws down on him. I get out of the car. I was the last one because Woodsy knew me by on sight. So that's why I waited in case, so you wouldn't recognize my face. So when I get out and go into the house, we question Ronnie because Woodsy's not there. We question his brother and where's Woodsy, well, he went out on a date and he'll be back later today. And so one of the things you do when you hit a house for any reason, including a homicide, is you determine if there's any drugs, money, or weapons to take. So we question him. He said, no, no, no, we ended up, we're going to kill Woodsy so we've got to kill him. So we stabbed him to death and left him in bed and waited. Now this is uncharted waters for us because we, what we would do when we would kill people, we isolated our targets to avoid collateral damage. We weren't into killing families or stuff like that. That was like, wasn't a rule, but it was an unwritten rule, you know. You guys weren't doing dry by shooting and all that crazy show. No, that wasn't, you know, that's not how we rolled. So now the uncharted water part is when Woodsy arrives, when he comes home, what if he brings his mother and a bunch of family members with him, what are we going to do? Right. adults? their eyewitnesses. You can't kill him. You already got a body in the other room. You can't leave adult eyewitnesses. So we were just hoping that he wouldn't come home with an adult. Finally, after several hours, we hear a car drive up. Cyclona was pointing while we were, you know, searching the house. And she tells us there's a car coming. So there's a girl with him, a female, his date. And we saw that. So I told sailor, I had to think fast. I said, when, when they're in the house and the door closes behind them, you grab would see, take them somewhere. I'll take care of the girl. Okay. So I could hear him giggling. I could hear keys turning into the door. The door opens. The door closes. They lock it. Then we come out from our concealment. Sailor has a gun pointed at Woodsy. Snatches him. He protests, but he steers him away. My gun is pointed at the female and her eyes immediately went to the gun. I'm following her eyes. And I jump. I leap forward. I covered her eyes and lowered her head. She's whimpering. And I'm talking to her and telling her, nobody's going to hurt you. Do not look up. Do not look at me. And I steer her to another room. And again, she's trembling out of fear. I don't blame her. And the first thing I did was blindfold her. She couldn't see me for sure. Then I, I gagged her. There was some socks. I put a sock in her mouth. And then I, I gagged her, her mouth. Then I tied her to the chair. And I assured her nothing was going to happen to her. I said, we're here to visit your boyfriend. We're not here for you. So just calm down. Everything's going to be fine. You understand this? She says, yes. I mean, she nodded, you know, that she understood. And so go to the other room. And he's got handcuffs on Woodsie. He's seated. And I asked him, okay, where's the guns? They got no guns. The drugs, money, same thing, right? And he said, I ain't got no, where's my brother? I said, you're going to, you're going to be seen in pretty soon. Smart ass, right? His brother was already dead. Before we go any further, what was the purpose of this? Was this just a robbery or did this guy violate? Was he also a member of the Mexican Mafia? No, no, no. He was a, I told you, he was a member of the Nostra Familia. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. So this is just a rival. Well, not just there was a Mexican Mafia member in the rivalry between the Nostra Familia and the Mexican Mafia through from 1957. Again, NF didn't come into existence until 65. Until that time frame that's 1975, the only Mexican Mafia member that had been killed by the NF was Cheyenne Cadena in Palm Hall. In the movie, American me, you see the part where Edward James almost has killed. Okay. And he's tossed off the cheer. Well, in real life, the NF killed him. That was, in the movie, they had us killing him. I had no idea. Yeah. But in real life, it was the rival Nostra Familia that killed him. So he was the only guy that had been killed, a made member that had been killed by the opposing gang. So we took that to heart. And would see in prison had been making statements that Cheyenne was begging for his life when before he died, right? He was doing it to be a jerk, right? Only because that didn't happen. But he was doing it to be a jerk in this and that. So I vowed that when I got out, I was going to hunt and I was going to find I was going to hunt him down and take him out. Wow. So you've been thinking about this. Yeah. Yeah. For years, what years, what years is this taking place now at Woods East House? Cheyenne was killed in December, 72. His mouthing off to place around 73. And in October of 75 is when we're taking him out. Okay. So this is the same year you're released. Yeah. You wasted time. We wasted no time. And the last words he heard was Cheyenne sends his regards. So that was like a rallying cry, so to speak. Now, normally, we would not have hunted down NF members. They're doing their thing now. We're doing our thing, conducting our business. And this guy was a special case. That was just special. And so Gloria Cyclona, this is why I say I'm connecting myself to the three street gang members. Gloria, when I when I end up firing, there's one bullet left in the gun. I handed to sailor and sailor Gloria starts spitting on the on Woodsy and his voice is fading away. In fact, then when I did the 60 minutes interview, I described it as his voice was fading away kind of like the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz when she when she was melting. That's the way I remember. Where did you shoot him in the torso? And so he was dying still. You know, it wasn't like an immediate death. So he was dying. And he said, don't shoot me anymore. I'm dying. And then his voice begins to fade. And Gloria starts kicking and spitting him, right? And sailor tells Gloria, there's one bullet. Stop all that. There's one bullet left. Go ahead and do it the right way. So she fires one more bullet into his dying body. So technically, she's the first gang member to participate in a Mexican mafia-related execution. That was that murder there. My brother a year later, while I was in custody, was used by Joe Morgan in another hit. And then I used another guy later on in a third hit. Did you leave going back to Woodsy's house? Did you leave his girlfriend alive? Yes. Okay. Yeah, because in my in my estimation, she didn't look at us. I followed her eyes. Yeah. From the time they walked in, hoping for her sake, I didn't want to, you know, what glory is there in killing an innocent young female? She was 19 years old, I believe. Right. What glory is there in something like, of course, I know if I got to do it, I got to do it. I don't want to do it. You know, it's just the way the circumstances played out. And as it turns out, my estimation is that she didn't see anything. So I got teased and kind of ridiculed in a playful way by the fellas. They said I was a sucker for a skirt, you know, because I let her live. I said, no, no, no, no, that was calculated. I saw that she didn't see. And then of sure enough, when she testified on the stand, she couldn't identify anyone. Okay. So after that, this is in Bakersfield, you shoot back to your turf. And when you parole, are you now back in East LA, back in the old set? Okay. Now, how has life changed now that you're back on the street and you're a made guy in the Mexican Mafia? How's it different from the days of V&E? Oh, yeah. It's so much different because now we're big homies. They had a function about a week after we got out. I say week, a sailor got out right after I did. We went to the neighborhood to this annual function that they had. And they they were treating us like like celebrities. You know, we got the big homie red carpet treatment. This and that. And it was like, wow, where did that come from? Well, you know, they know we're we're we're in there, right? And we weren't used to that. But we were more concerned with we hooked up with Joe Morgan. And we wanted to get operations going on the streets. Right. Drug operations. So he had secured Joe had secured a connection. A chewy arachael from south of the border, who was the head of the arachael family. Today, of course, they call them cartels. Right. Back then they called them families. Right. And that's what what chewy was the head of that family based out of Tijuana. Okay. And this is this is for heroin. For heroin and cocaine, mostly heroin, although cocaine was available at our request, we didn't have the customer base at that time yet. Because it was so expensive. And it was the rich man's high. Yeah. As they called it. Yeah. So so yeah, that's we're we're working with chewy to supply brothers. And of course, in southern Cal and in northern Cal, because we had Viselia. We had Hayward. We had members in San Francisco. And and I formed a have you ever heard of murder and corporate? Yes. It's an old Italian squad of guys. There were killers. Well, I formed the equivalent of that. I just called it like the inner circle. It was sailor, myself, Alfie joined us. And our responsibility, which I defined it, was to take out anybody who resisted selling our dope. We went systematically to the local [BLANK_AUDIO] drug dealers in the Mexican neighborhood, 'cause that was our familiarity. We went to the Mexican neighborhoods and approached them in like a traveling salesman, you know, letting them know this is our product. You're gonna be selling it for us. And just about everybody complied. The ones that didn't comply, we could have broke their leg, we could have threatened them, we could have done that, we killed 'em on the spot. - Wow, we figured, hey, we replaced them right away. The word gets out, they know this is real. - Wow, so that's very much a cartel move, 'cause that's exactly what Mexican cartels do in Mexico today. - Right. - They have big drug markets in every city, but especially the major cities. There's a huge internal demand for narcotics. And yeah, they say here, nobody's selling meth in Matamoros. It's only Coke and you get killed if you don't. - Think about this, Johnny, the DNA of extreme criminals. I don't care if you're a cartel, mob, biker, prison gang, whatever you wanna call it. If you're involved in criminal activity and you have a gang, you're gonna have a very extreme element. People like us, not everybody specialized in hits. I was a specialist, I was good at that. And I was desensitized. I mean, we would, we loved the Dodgers, 'cause you could download my hat, right? This isn't, for me, it's not a gang thing. For me, that's a team I've supported since 1958 when they moved from Brooklyn. - Yeah. - And so there were two occasions that I can distinctly remember, where we were inside residences of two different targets that we were gonna kill. And I don't know, one of them were looking for drugs that we knew were in the house and the other one, I can't remember what we still hadn't found yet. And why we were carrying, you know, getting the job done. But I remember, Sailor reminding me that we had to be traffic to get to batting practice, right? - It's such an LA thing, such an LA move. - Yeah. - Soap and do it 'cause we gotta get on the five. - That would accelerate the process of taking out our targets to get on the five, to get to the friggin Dodger stadium, to watch batting practice. - Oh my God. - And then we're eating a Dodger dog and we're talking about the expression on the victim's face when he died. Did you see the way he react? Did you see this and that? And see, at the time, that's just normal conversation. It's like you and I are talking about the weather. But when you think back, when it's all done and you're not looking at life through that prism anymore, you're thinking, how could you casually talk that way about these guys? - No, it's psychotic. - It's, yeah, it's sick. It's like being possessed by a demon. - Right. - Did you feel like it was an addiction? - It was an addiction. And it was the process of desensitizing was already done. It was no longer remorse. There's no remorse. There's no, I mean, I slept like a baby. I said, you could eat a hot dog and talk about it. Make fun of it. What sick bastard does that? - And you didn't numb yourself with drugs. - Right, oh no, no. Now, Salar used, but he wasn't even high. He used, but the time he was, I didn't use drugs. But we were, you know, and think about this now. As I talk about this, I know that people that live in the gang world are probably looking at this story of mine through a different prism. But I can tell you that all of us, all of those guys in that criminal life, mobsters, cartel guys, prison gang guys, those are acts of cowards. That's what cowards do. The way we took those people out, it's pure cowardice. You know, that didn't make me a man. When I think back about it, it says, what do you think you did? What prize were you looking, you think you're gonna attain from doing those kind of things, right? It's no big deal to take somebody for a ride. You've got a few you taking somebody for a ride. But what does that tell you? Gangs don't play fair. - No. What's the thing is a fair fight or give me a fair shot or whatever? No, no, no. - Well, there are many governments. Like an organization like LMA is powerful enough to where they operate like a mini government within the prison system. And governments don't play fair. The cops don't, there is no losing when you're a cop. You use the force that's necessary to achieve your aim. - And you understand that. Once you understand what we're talking about that concept, then you know that, hey, that's not how gangs don't work to make somebody an opportunity to remain breathing. I hear these guys talk about how many people they've knocked out in this. I hear it all the time. I laugh when I hear it, and I go, you know, we never measured ourselves by how many people we could physically beat up. If you didn't kill that target, it was unworthy of conversation. But it's sick, it's a very sick thing to say. - But you were a good soldier, like a great soldier. - I was a leader, I was a leader that these guys, and there's some alive today. They, they obviously will not admit it. But I, I was there. I was there when I would lead them in certain things that I can't talk about. Stony, Stony Galaz. He's still in prison doing life. Willie Bobo just got re-arrested. Willie Govier, he was on the commission, the federal commission in the federal prison system for the Mexican Mafia. And there are several of those guys, not a whole lot anymore that are still alive that remember that I would lead. I didn't just talk to talk. I was in the front lines, and I was there, and I was organizing the stuff to do it, and get it done. Why talk, sailor, sailor's still alive. You know, he pulled out of that life. Here he remembers, whenever him and I get together, we invariably go back to talking about those days, kind of like guys that fought in the war together. - Totally. - The wives don't want to hear it, they close the door, but we'll sit down, and I think one of these days, I'm gonna do an interview with him, and just the two of us, I'll let him talk, you know. - Man, do it for our channel. - Yeah, figure something out, yeah. So, you're opening up this whole heroin market in California, just using brute force and murder if necessary, for, in conjunction with Joe Morgan, who's, you know, working with Tijuana, cartels or families, and you were successful at it. So now, this is a million dollar heroin operation. How, explain how the drug dealing works within LAMA on the streets and prison? Can you mention taxes earlier? I know that there's a tax that everybody that's associated or selling directly for LAMA has to pay. Can you explain that? - That came into play in the '90s. In the '90s, what happened is, they started with the no-drive-by-edict. They instructed and told the street gangs, there were not gonna be any more drive-by-s. If you're gonna get at each other, you're gonna do walk-ups. You're gonna walk up to your targets. And this was of all the heat that was being generated because of drive-by-s. African-American and Mexican gangs, there was a lot of that going on back in that time frame. So, to kinda, there were a couple of things there. It's diffusing the public opinion or the heat that was being generated because of this. And also, it was the Mexican mafia's way of harnessing the gangs under this umbrella of this common thing, of let's do it this way. We're not gonna do that anymore. Anybody who violates a no-drive-by-edict will be targeted by all the other gangs. So, they liked it. There were meetings, there were small meetings at different parts. It was a big meeting at Elision Park. In fact, that one is chronical pretty good. It was right across the street from the LAPD Academy. And so, they even staged a football game like, you know, in between the meeting and the academy. When the officers would drive by that park, they would see a football game and they'd think it's normal activity. And here you got dozens of gang members, you know, listening to a big homie, a Mexican mafia guy. And in Orange County, I've got a lot of that footage. In Orange County, the same thing, Santa did the same thing in Orange County. So, that's how that began by controlling the gangs to that degree, reestablishing their ties with now the different cartels. Main cartel at that time was the AFO in the '90s. - Are you in a Felix organization? I'm Tijuana. - Uh-huh. And there were a lot of dynamics. it played into that. Not only the relationship that was there, but it was further enhanced with the addition of David Barron. David Barron was a Mexican mafia member from Logan Heights San Diego speaking. He was a Mexican national, he was born in Tijuana, I believe. And when he paroled in the 90s, he ends up going to Tijuana, became a bodyguard for the Arianos. And then in fact, he saved some of them from Chapo Guzman in Puerto Vallarta at a club and killed a couple of Chapo's men and got them out there. They got them on a plane back to Tijuana. And they were so grateful. They asked him if he wanted to be the head of their enforcement squad, their execution squad. He's portrayed in Narcos, Mexico, Netflix, yes. And he's also in my book, The Unholy Alliance, where I do a chapter on him. I knew a couple of his secarials who were Mexican mafia guys, who I talked to and gave me a lot of the insight stuff that they performed. And David was pretty ruthless. But that was his, he, Him and Bat Marquez, Bat Marquez is another San Diego gang member from Del Sol, who recruited Popeye into the Mexican mafia. And then Popeye, of course, pulled him in when he was in Tijuana working for the AFO, pulled it, other brothers as well. Look, here's the effedron, which is the ingredient for a meth. Take as many barrels as you want, you know, it's on, it's on them, you know, this and that. And all the, all the fellas had to do is get cooks in the desert, you know, Palmdale, places like that. They had the cooks there. The, the heroine was just second nature. I mean, that's automatic, you know, whatever they can move, that's how that pipeline began with David pushing it, Popeye and, and the guys that were out. Now you got the guys in prison, as most of these guys started getting busted. Now they have their territories. So by way of having those territories on the streets, their shot calling ability is now possible from the inside. Now you got cell phones. Yeah. Think of the involvement as we're coming forward. Today, average person watching this podcast, a cell phone, they can't remember what it was like not to have a cell phone. I remember when, I, I cannot tell you how we killed so many people and did so many things without the use of a cell phone. We had beepers, you know, and that assisted us in that regard. But, but now you got cell phones. You got guys like Ronnie Ayala, who was on death row. How does he get a cell phone to make a conference call? So you got guys, Mexican mafia guys in the state of California, in a level four prison yard, communicating with somebody in Mexico, communicating with somebody in San Diego, or LA, and maybe somebody in a federal prison on a conference call. Yeah. Whenever they want to, that little phone kills more people than a prison shank. Yeah. Prison shank, it's hard to kill somebody in prison, especially they know that you're after them. I mean, it's not an easy task. You hear about people getting killed and all that all the time, it's not an easy task. But I'll tell you, that little cell phone is a hundred times more dangerous than the shank. Okay. So all of these, all of these towns and neighborhoods all throughout California are now de facto under control of big homies that are in prison. In one way or another. Okay. So, and they've got enough power to where they can actually dictate what people do on the streets. And the reason they have that power because they've already established their hierarchy. You have your Kamaradas. Okay. Sudeños are anybody. Okay. Sudeños literally means southerners. Assumption is Southern California. Not just Los Angeles. It's in the Empire, which is Riverside and San Bernardino County, Imperial County, San Diego County. You might as well throw Kern County, Ventura County, Santa Barbara County. That's technically Central Cal, but they're all considered that same one big mad thing. So all these Sudeños have the more active and aggressive and functioning guys in that group are called Kamaradas. They're referred to as Kamaradas. A Kamarada is Spanish slang for a friend. Yeah. He's my comrade. He's my Kamarada. He's my dog, my road dog or whatever. Just a slang word for that. Okay. But it also has another meaning in the Sudeño world and in the Mexican Mafia world. A Kamarada is the highest place Sudeño on the fast track to possibly being made. So those guys are your, some of them are enforcers, money earners, guys are the head of the crews. They're the ones that direct somebody got to, you know, they got to take out a soul and soul. He directs the crew, go take them out. Boom, boom, boom. They don't ask. They just do the job directing the money. Whoever it is is in charge of depositing the money, paying somebody, whatever the cartels at their work at cartels found out, wow, why do we have to worry about all the BS when Mexican Mafia can take care of it for us? I don't know how many indictments. I can pull them up. You can read the language of the indictments yourself. You know, and there's different cartels. It's not like the M.A. has a legist to one cartel. Where were they make money with? Where were they established? They meet them in prison. I got pictures with Ben Hameen in a federal prison surrounded by Mexican Mafia guys. Wow. What do you think they're talking about? What do you think they're doing? Yeah, talking about keys. All of it. All of it is networking, you know, kind of like what we do with YouTube, we network with people. They do the same thing and they exchange contracts, Aryan Brotherhood and Mexican Mafia. To this day, I hear this thing, well, their relationship is not the way it used to be and it's kind of like on shaky grounds. I say bullshit. If the Mexican Mafia needs to kill a target in the federal prison system and they cannot get to him and the AB can or their associates, AB will take care of it. Wow. Gladly. And the other way around is also true. They're allies. They're allies. Okay. So it's the Soranios. Now when you say Soranio, could that mean somebody from like a Ventura, if they're in Ventura, California and they're part of like a local street gang that's, you know, affiliated or takes orders from a Kamarada that's affiliated with the Mexican Mafia? Yeah. Are they called Soranios? Do they call themselves Soranios on the street or could they be, you know, I'm from Florencia or I'm from the Ventura gang but I am a Southern or I'm a Soranio or do they call themselves Soranios? On the streets. Do you know what I'm saying? I see what you're saying. On the streets, they don't have to call themselves Soranios, but they're functioning as Soranios because they're sympathetic and they're facilitating for Soranios or better put for the Mexican Mafia and I'll take it one step further. Out of state. Out of state. Right. Nevada, Ohio, Florida. I'm just thinking of places that I know Washington, Utah, you have Sudanios functioning over there on and some of them say they're Sudanios. Other ones, maybe they want to be under the radar and they don't want to say it which is smart but they're working under the Mexican Mafia umbrella. There's a big homie that's pushing that button. Right. And those are like the equivalent of like a plaza boss within the cartel in Mexico. Yes. Okay. And that big homie is the one who's connected directly to that camaradas directly connected to somebody within La M.A. Right. That's that shot calling or supervising and they're kicking up a percentage of what they make selling drugs to that person, that shot caller who's most likely in prison. Yeah. And what is that tax like 10 percent? It'll vary. It'll just depend on how much money is being generated. The ones that are not that productive, you know, maybe it's a higher percentage. Right. The ones that are generating more money, they want their facilitator. If you're if you're my highly placed camarada of generating a lot of money, I want you to be happy. So yeah, I don't need, but maybe 10 percent. Right. Okay. The 18th street, which is probably one of the most productive street gangs, they had I think four or five guys, they they they they they had a label. The media they called them the million dollar club. Because they're all millionaires and they had a compound of some of them guys had a compound. And Rocky, I think it was Rocky Del Gadillo, a consulman. He filed I think was a five million dollar civil lawsuit and won and got paid back then and against them. Where did they get the money? Right. Right. Proceeds right at 18th Street obviously famous street gang from 18th Street in LA go figure They are Surreños. That's an example of a very very strong Surreño click Because of the representation you ever heard in school remember in school Taxation without representation. Of course. Okay. That was fame a famous history in your history class You know, I think I remember that very well the American Revolution face off of that same thing with gangs If you have big homies From your gang. First of all remember status First thing I hear from many officers all over the place How can 50,000 60,000 Surreños Why don't they just rebel and do their own thing? Why on earth would they allow some guy some junkie sitting in a prison Says that took time would you don't understand These guys think of it is like different families You have dysfunctional uncles right that are in your family You love your uncle you look up to them you're proud of them because they were from your family And they were badass now. They're old and want this guy might be in a wheelchair now. You're representing him You're representing your family. You're taking care of the business You're not going to throw him under the bus. You're going to say look uncle uncle so and so or dad Just chill. Let me handle it. I'm going to take care of it for you He's going to take you up on that So that status that relationship Remains you know, it's just handed down. Yeah proliferate. Yeah, and so all these kids in other states I like to say uh the What do you call the the pseudenials that uh that The the ones from other states they don't know nothing about the LA scene They don't have to I say they probably watch too many episodes of gangland right But they're the danger that they represent is real Because a wannabe is a gonna be and they're proving themselves right so They want a body count So they're they're gonna prove themselves. They're they're gonna they're gonna function on their behalf And they're gonna fly the pseuden you'll fly Regardless they could be in Chicago. They could be in New York wherever I know they have their predominant gangs over there But you got this like a like a damn cancer. Yeah that spreads throughout the country. This is all documented. Yeah Fascinating. Thank you for that. Yeah getting back to 1975 you're leading this murder ink For a liamae just crazy. It's crazy psycho killing people taking turf Organizing really like getting that economic power that that keeps this machine moving right and spread in the fear that that was part of it Yeah, yeah, absolutely How many markets did you do you remember taking how many different towns and drug dealers do you remember pressing So they would accept your product at that during that period it was mostly East East LA and a little part of Nella just a little but it was mostly on the east side and You're talking at least a dozen at that time I I was more interested in Pulling the trigger mm-hmm because that's what I specialized in right. I was comfortable. I if I wanted a brand new car I go buy it. I even try to establish an credit one thing. I went You're gonna laugh at this I bought a brand new Chrysler Cordova Because I really had a car but I saw Ricardo Montalvan on TV in a commercial talking about Corinthian leather With that exaggerated accent of his right and I'm looking at the Cordova and he's he's touching the leather and I'm going Yeah, that's some that's some good shit right there. So I went to the dealership and decided I wanted a brand new root beer Chrysler Cordova with Corinthian leather right yeah, and I was eighty seven hundred brand new All right, he's have another box eighty seven hundred bucks. I mean today good times and uh, and uh, I gave him well, I was gonna pay him cash and he said We can finance it for you if you'd like I go ah How about I give you seven seven hundred and it's finance a thousand Okay, so we're doing the paperwork and then they come back and the guy tells me well have good news and bad news So give me the bad news first. You don't qualify for credit I said okay, but but I got good news that don't worry about it here. Here's the other thousand. Oh, no, no, no We'll finance it the dealership will finance it for you. I said, I don't need it. I just Who's just me wanting to get credit so I could say hey, you know, I got good credit So how much were you being paid? Really mean like how much money were you making On the street and how was how was that structured? Well, because you weren't the ones selling drugs specifically So so what where was your money coming from well for the few months that I was out there I would say we didn't have accountants. I didn't really keep track It wasn't like we were like I wasn't individually generating Millions or anything like that, but I had 50,000 to play with on any given day That's a lot of money. Yeah, so and that's from heroin sales or that's from you Okay, that was from heroin. Okay. Yeah, just you're doing the collections too. You're dropping off and collecting Others are doing that. Okay. Yeah, and and I was enjoying. I was going to Vegas I was and then in the in the middle of that I had a girlfriend. I had her Thinking that I had a job. So I remember having to pretend like I was going to work and I wasn't going to work I ended up at another place and and then I I had two homes that I had purchased one in Rosemede One in Pico Rivera Lo ended up losing them both and you know what what your family now after this long stretch I assume they don't know what's going on. No Are they just happy to have you home? Yes. What's your relationship now with your mother and your stepfather? Well, they're happy to have me home for sure Mom is asking, you know what I'm doing with my life and of course I have to come up with a story for them You know, I'm looking for a job and if my pro my pro officer comes tell him that I'm out job hunting but I had other Residences where I would keep drugs money Weapons never connected to the residents. Remember all this happened in a matter of months. Yeah, you know and then when I get arrested I was actually Going to Vegas. I think that it was October 9th 1975 and the day after October 9th We I think it would have been a weekend maybe a Friday. We were going to go to Vegas to get married So in here now I'm arrested and I got to call her And tell her I'm arrested with her brother for murder So I let the phone ring twice and hung up because I didn't want to be I didn't want to tell her So that I called her sister and toy and told her to break the news. Wow. Yeah So October of 1975 you're arrested for the murders with sailor with sailor for the murders of the Reyes brother the Reyes brothers and Bakersfield How do they get on to you guys? A neighbor Had seen something that she considered suspicious at the crime scene She took down the number the license plate number gave it to the responding officers later when they arrived and we were on our way back on the grapevine Back heading south As I'm driving I look at one of the landings And I see a black and white CHP Car and two officers are outside of their car like talking and one of them does a double-take As we're going by and and as I see that I see that briefly and then I'm out of their view And I tell everybody in the car if we have any contraband in the car Get rid of it now. I think they're going to be following us and this is on your way back to the murder from the murder Okay, which was the day after I think of the murder okay or that evening one of the other And ensure enough we did get a tail We the highway patrol was behind us. They remained about a quarter mile behind us on the grapevine so that told me that they Had already radioed ahead and there's probably units that were going to be waiting for us ahead somewhere So I'm already figuring that So I asked Sailor it says so what do we have in the car? He says we have the murder weapon I said I thought we got rid of it. I thought you got rid of it He says no, I still have it Oh shit, so I tell Gloria who's on the right Rights on the backseat. I think she's on the back. No, she's in the front on the passenger side And I tell her as soon as we get as soon as I tell you We get to a place when I'm because you know how the grapevine is real curvy. I says Throw the gun so that it goes over and down, you know, and What I wanted to do is in one of those instances where I'm not in view of the a CHP unit that could see that as soon as we're out of their view for a little bit, that's when I'm gonna tell her to throw it. So what she ends up doing, when I tell her to throw it, she flings it out the window and it hits a mile marker, right? What are the odds? - Fuck. - It hits a mile marker and it lands back in a truck. - You can't let a girl throw. The truck driver sees, he testified. He said, I saw the arm, an arm fling, an item out the window. All of a sudden, I felt my truck run over an item and think, okay, he felt his truck run over the gun that it landed back in on the highway. And okay, they ended up seizing that gun. They ended up arresting us at the end of Castec. You know, they choose drive, they choose road. When you come off the gray vine, they had a gauntlet of chippies and sheriff skies. And they ended up arresting us there. Later, I find out that the gun, a truck driver had called it in and they got the gun, but the ballistics, they couldn't run ballistics on them because I guess the truck had done something to the barrel so that they couldn't do it. So what are the odds of that? - Wow. - The first, what are the odds of the gun hitting the mile marker? And then two, what are the odds of a truck or anything running over the gun and successfully screwing up the barrel? - Right. - I mean, some-- - So you thought you had action. You thought you might have been able to beat the case. - Oh, yeah, yeah, no, that part, yeah, yeah. Now, the murder weapon would have really screwed us up. Now, it's just a 38. - Right. - You know, on that one, it's just a 38. He actually got rid of one of the murder weapons. But the second, I don't know why he didn't get rid of it, but that was in the vehicle. And so anyway, and the victim's weren't shot. The, what's his name? - No, Ronnie was stabbed. - Yeah, the other brother would see. - Would see. - Would see shot. - Was he shot with the 38? - Yeah. - Okay, well that's bad still because he's got a bullet, 38 bullet and they found a 38. So it could conceivably be a weapon if they could tie us to the scene and all that. It was still kind of like touching goal. There's probably enough probable cause, not probable cause, reasonable doubt. - Reasonable doubt, you know, but whatever the case is, we go back, we're remanded to custody from there. They take us to the Valencia substation. From there, the Baker's Hill officers come and take us to current county. And then, you know, we're facing death penalty. At that time, they overturned it in '76. It was a California ruling, the Supreme Court did away with the death penalty. So now anybody convicted of a capital offense after the 1976 ruling can receive the death penalty. But anybody, prior to that, including us, we're facing now life in prison. Neither one of those prospects phased me or satire. Our mindset at the time, my mindset, I can tell you for a fact, was if I die, I die honorably for my organization. If I get life in prison, it's a family reunion. There is, I mean, that's what it is. It's, I had fun before that. I'll have fun after that and think about this. In California, life in prison, that's the worst, first degree conviction, was seven years to the board. Wow, you know, that's crazy. There was no life without. Well, there was, but this was not life. This was not going to be a life without. This was really, it's going to be either just life or second degree or we plead guilty, like we ultimately did. Okay. Ultimately did, but we got the cases dismissed first and we did get out. I'm getting, we're getting there. Explain that. Yeah. Okay. So while I'm in the current county jail, they got me single cell status on one floor and they got sailor on a higher floor in single cell status. They wanted to separate it from each other, of course. Going through the pretrial motions and the whole thing, Cyclona was up on the third floor with the females part. And the prosecution did something that delayed the trial that prompted our attorneys to file a speedy trial denial motion, which was accepted. We're in a red neck hang 'em high county. Sure. Her and county. No judge is going to do that. Two city boys coming into their Christian family oriented county committing a tremendous murder. Yeah, to two of their citizens and they're going to, I think any judge worth his salt is going to say, no, no, no, no, they want this kind of relief to get it from the appellate court. But that's what happened. And I couldn't believe it. It was like, wow, this is crazy. What had happened now right around that time before that motion was filed, they would allow people from the outside to come in and visit from the churches. They come in and visit the inmates. And when they'd come to our section, there was eight of us back there, single cell guys. I would cover up, I'd put a towel over my eyes, I lay down pretend like I was asleep and I would avoid them. I never just respected them, I just didn't engage. I didn't want to hear about religion or any of that. And, but I could hear them. I could hear them singing and all that. Jesus signed my pardon and this and that. None of that was, it didn't bother me. It was kind of fun, let them have their fun. And one day I was kind of bored and I said, you know, I want to talk to one of these people and just the bullshit, shoot the breeze. So this old man, I could hear him when they got off the elevator, they come walking and then this old man, he's going to walk past me, figuring I'm asleep like usual and he's kind of backtracks. And he says, how you doing? And he starts talking to me real friendly. And before I know it, he wants to pray with me. I go, sure, or pray for me. He stuck his bony fingers to the bars, put his hands around mine, close his eyes and lowered his head, I close my eyes, I lowered my head and he started praying for me. Well, that was the beginning of a relationship where I look forward to his company once a week. Every Sunday, he would leave me a Bible or literature or whatever and he would pray for me. So I started thinking as I'm there alone of all my victims, how they died, how I killed them, shot them, strangled them, stabbed them, however they died. And I started thinking to their families, how they must have felt, how my family would feel if it was me. So the word remorse, which was not in my vocabulary, all of a sudden kicks in. I'm feeling bad for these victims. Man, that's bad. Like my eyes were open suddenly. Why couldn't I see this before? I didn't want to see it. I was blinded. I was there. And I'm still, I mean, that part is making me feel bad, but there's like another voice telling me that I'm showing weakness by even thinking about it, right? So that was the first obstacle that I was already feeling bad about it. The second obstacle and the most difficult for me was forgiveness. When they talked about a God that forgave everything and anything. And being a Catholic, I was an ultra boy. There was a different category of sins. Like to murder somebody, it was considered a mortal sin. So that's like the worst of the worst, you know? And I'm thinking, there's no way I can be forgiven, man. You know, the cops that would escort us to court, it looks could kill we'd be dead. 'Cause they look at us, you could tell it was hatred. I said, our victims' families, I'm sure they wouldn't be in a forgiving mood, you know, to forgive us for taking out their family member. And I don't even think I could forgive myself if I really sat down and thought about it. So I said, how could anybody? And then all of a sudden from trying to understand forgiveness, I'm thinking, I want this, I want this forgiveness. Whoever's doing it, whoever's doling it out, I want it. And so I asked them, how do you really get it? And they said, well, we can lead you to the Lord and blah, blah, blah. Can I do it on my own? Well, yeah, you know, just, you know, they told me, you know, confess, acknowledge, you know, this and that. And that's one night, that's what I ended up doing. I got on my knees and myself, nobody around me. And I unloaded everything that I remembered, that I had done, and I said, and I know that you know, more than I that what I can even remember and I remember I cried I was crying as I was unloading this and then I felt like something exited my body like a physical something leaving my body and I was drained so I wrote that off to just being physically spent from the emotion expended from crying you know I cannot tell you the last time I had cried right like that or at all so here I am thinking wow I didn't hear any voice or I mean how do I know I'm forgiven so they come to see me and I tell them all right I did what you said this and that but I didn't hear no voices I mean and remember the old man he told me something and I never forget he said you are not saved by feelings you're saved by faith so don't matter how you feel what you didn't hear or whatever so I never forgot that and I made a decision right there and then I said you know what this is from God so I got to do something and so when the cases were dismissed not connected to this at all right yeah another words to me I mean maybe they are connected and I don't know because the Christian people seem to believe that because when the newspaper who said speedy trial speedy trial denial frees to ray of suspects that was a headline and I saw it and then they saw it and came to visit on Sunday and they were praising God and saying hallelujah that the Lord had opened the gates and I'm looking at them sideways like come on God didn't do that you know what I mean just a coincidence yeah maybe he did I don't know all I know is that I made a decision at right there and then in my mind I don't know what I'm going to do but I'm going to do something and I decided to work undercover I don't know if you have enough time to cover that we are going to go into that in part 2 that is the perfect stopping point that did not end like I thought it was going to end right I thought you were going to tell me that you started working undercover to save yourself from prosecution or a life sentence no you're going to you're going to you'll get a wow you're going to really blow get blown away that how did this really happen yeah that is the most gangsterist shit I have ever heard of my life well the average person that sees my story and this that's what they believe that I did it to say by ass that I did because they want to believe that because a no good rat that's the only way that he send me the bowl yeah right that's the only you know whatever with no disrespect to send me or anything I'm just saying you know it's that's what a personal think he did it to save his ass right well no I didn't have nothing to say I was going to get released they were I was the cases had been dismissed I was going to get discharged from parole in a month and a half no cases pending highest standing with the fellas I couldn't walk away goat gone grazed of all time you know what I'm saying okay let's I want to plug because after all that is about to happen you through all this you've become a prolific author and so I want to plug your books and I'm excited I'm going to read some of these because these I assume you go into the minutia of these small little anecdotes from the your prison experience etc yeah you're also a successful you know lecture and you work with the you know law enforcement and stuff where can people find your your best work and then go out from there because you got a lot of books yeah Amazon everything right now is either through police and fire publishing which will redirect you to Amazon my autobiography is gay the Mexican Mafia the gang of gangs from ultra boy to hit man the next major significant book that I co-authored with Renee and Rico's is he's on another dropout a younger member is the Mexican Mafia cyclopedia that's also in oh wow that sounds crazy like the two main ones the next one after that for the prison guys is the prison menace as a third book the most recent book that I co-authored is the boys from boil Heights yes and it's a story of Tony Moreno who was Pac-Man in the movie colors oh no shit Sean Penn played his role he's he's the Pac-Man yeah and so Tony and I were both born and raised in boil Heights so it's a story a parallel story of the gang member and the gang cop wow so can people in prison order your books no people in prison are prohibited according to the rules of prison because the prison I think they look at it like glorification but the Black market the guys yeah those guys that have been get those get those books in yeah yeah and then you gave me a copy of a DVD which I don't even know how to I don't know how to play this I know I know I know uh Mundo from ultra boy to hit man you can watch it for free anybody can watch that for free right can they get it anywhere that's digital and not physical yes yeah they can they can go if you Google the movie Mundo the movie Mundo and free you'll probably find it on what are the Roku yeah and they've got two or three streaming channels where that you can watch that for free oh I can't wait I can't wait very excited so I give you the hard copy yeah no this is a collector's item this is going to stay in my office in the wrap they're wrapping okay yeah I can't thank you enough not even going to attempt to Mundo that was great and let's switch over to part two but you can get early over at patreon.com/theconnectshow we're here with I mean the one and only it's just a piece of history it's incredible thank you sir you got it thank you for having me my pleasure I bless you