The Real Story Of La Eme From A NOTORIOUS Mexican Mafia Boss

"Stay the fuck out of this. This is a Mexican mafia business. When he's dead, we'll surrender." You gotta be willing to kill and die and go to death row for this. The cops turn the keys. The Mexican mafia turns the mines. They call it the Gladiator School 'cause you go there to learn how to kill. Murder is a very simple motivator. It's urban, street, terrorism. I don't care what ethnicity are. You speak violence. LA County Jail is probably one of the most violent places you could ever do time out. You could survive there, you could survive anywhere. Very few Mexican mafia members go through on this case. Rene, boxer and ricas is the most infamous living member of the Mexican mafia. The ultra-powerful Latino prison gang, known as LA-MA. Rene began his career with the mafia while serving time at San Quentin in the early 1980s and went on to become a member of LA-MA's governing body inside the notorious Shoe Wing at Pelican Bay State Prison. Rene is one of a handful of MA leaders responsible for expanding the Mexican mafia beyond prison and into the streets by uniting all of the Latino gang members in Southern California and imposing attacks on their neighborhood drug sales. To this day, the Mexican mafia collects tens of millions of dollars a year through this extortion system, which they enforce with unimaginable violence. And that was Rene's legacy. He was at the forefront of this movement. In the early 2000s, while serving a life sentence for murder, Rene dropped out of the gang and went on to testify in dozens of mafia trials over the next two decades. To this day, he is still a marked man and we therefore had to blur his face in order to protect his identity. Rene's got a best-selling autobiography which I highly recommend you check out and a successful YouTube page where he dissects what the Mexican mafia is up to today in real time. Ladies and gentlemen, to call this a pleasure would be an understatement. Here to expose the secrets of the most fascinating criminal organization in modern times, it's Rene Boxer and Riekez right here on the connect with Johnny Mitchell. - Oh, on the internet, I'm gonna see your face blurred and for the haters that think I'm just talking to like AI. I mean, look, I can't even believe after reading your book and knowing your story that I'm talking to you right now. You're so soft-spoken and well-mannered. Were you always like this? - Not always, I was an asshole at one point in my life. I guess I just refined as I got older, I get softer and found peace. I think it's really about finding peace. - Yeah, yeah. But I mean, you weren't asshole for a lot of years. - A long time, yeah. - My wife says I still am. (laughing) - I mean, to be fair, I don't know you. So maybe you weren't asshole. You have your moments, but it didn't need to be like this 'cause you're from like a suburban middle class family, which is not like a lot of card allies that came from the gutter that come from the ghetto. What was childhood like? - Childhood, I mean, it was idyllic from the exterior, right? Lived in thousand hogs in Cerritos, California, little bedroom communities. And my dad was an entrepreneur. He had a furniture factory and a liquor store and developmental real estate. So he came, he was born in Clarkdale, Arizona. Then he went to Mexico, was raised there and came to the United States with that American dream. My mom was from Cadets, like a Texas Mexico. And she came with the American dream. Both had previously been married, so they had separate families. But they married and achieved that dream. So I came from a solid family, right? But it was fraught. That was fraught with dysfunction by family. One of the things I never admitted in the book because of sheaing most sexual abuse in childhood. And I think that was the catalyst that drove me down the path towards this anti-social behavior. - From your father? - No, from my brother. - Your older brother? - My older brother. - Okay. - That could explain quite a bit. Do you think the excesses, 'cause you're born in 1962, you start to use drugs and really kind of just be a rebel and a fuck up in the mid '70s. Do you think it was the excesses of the late '60s, early '70s and being in California and, you know, just this kind of like liberalism and hippie culture. Do you think that bled over into your life? - Oh, definitely. This was post '60s free love. Turn on, tune in, and all that stuff, right? That nihilistic, anti-god culture, it still existed in Sweden's California. In fact, it was there that I developed that propensity for getting high, you know? Drugs were everywhere, sex was everywhere, farting was everywhere. And it was like, not a care in the world. You know, sometimes I'm driving where I live and I'll be thinking back to a point where I remember a summer where I felt this breeze and I felt this freedom and not a care in the world other than when's the next keg or party? When's the next ditch and party? Who's the next girl I'm gonna be with? And that's all it was. I mean, in that era, I think it contributed greatly to my, I guess, my wayward path. - Right, but I get, you know, keg parties and hook it up with girls, I did all that. But then the step to pulling dry by shootings, like it wasn't that big of a leap, right? Like you went from, from doing drugs at 14 to, by 16 year, you know, being a prospect in a local Latino street gang. - I actually began in about 12. My brother had joined a neighboring gang called Artija, our Arta, ARTA. And I saw those guys and we dressed nice. They had their journal apparel, all creased down. And they had this, what we call baggy. It's like magnetism, right? Chicks love them, dudes fear them. And it's like, oh man, I want that. And I used to hang out in the garage. My garage at our house in St. Louis was the party spot. Homeboys, homegirls, stoners, cheerleaders, whoever. They knew they can go score and party. And I used to hang out in the garage and watch all this. So I was allured towards that. But I didn't get in the gang until I was about 12 years old. One instance where my brother was at his girlfriend's house down the street. This is a senior part of Artija, California. And what we call the 190s. I was walking with two of my brothers, homeboys, and they dragged me behind the gas station. And they said, "We're going to jump you in the hood." And I was scared. I was just talking, so I said, "Oh, uh-uh, uh-uh." No. And they beat the crap out of me. Boom, boom, boom, boom. And I remember I was crying. And one of them picked me up, Bobby Grill picked me up, brushed me off, and says, "Homeboys, don't cry. You're homeboy now." And I was in homeboy. Oh, no. And that was the same brother who sexually abused you? Also jumped you into the gang? No, he wasn't part of the jump. Okay. Yeah, it does seem like, because even today, M.A. exists, right? Seems like there's a lot of, you know, wannabe M.A.'s, want to be young Latinos that are trying to get into gangs. And it doesn't seem driven by economics that much. Like, if you want to make money, you try to get hooked up with a cartel. You don't join a gang that's, you're almost guaranteed to go to prison for, and have to stab somebody that's in your guaranteed to get caught, and probably do the rest of your life in prison. Like, there's still people willing to go through that, to make that part of their life, right? Like, there was just an M.A. There's just a big Mexican mafia bust here in LA back in April. So, do you think people are drawn to that, because of the Pague, because it's an identity? Like, or is it money? Like, what drives people wanting to join a gang, like the Mexican mafia today? I think there are multiple factors that contribute towards individuals adopting the ideology of the organization, right? Because they hail from the streets, from an neighborhood. And we were talking off camera a little while ago, and we talked about going to the M.B.A. and you wanted to go to the M.B.A. That's the M.B.A. for gang members. That's the bigs. Like, that's arriving, right? In your street gang, you get that reputation, you game pegger, you game juice, you put in work for the hood, you're with girls, you're sling a little dope, you make money. But then when you go to prison, you have to abandon that gang ideology and adopt the ideology of the organization, which means you're part of what is a notice like outside of the cause, right? You can no longer have street conflicts that you're part of a bigger organization, right? And you're a foot soldier. There's a hierarchical system. And for most guys, they surrender their autonomy and adopt that ideology to the point where they're willing to go to death row. A lot of it has to do with a doctoration, kind of like a brainwashing ticket. And it's very effective. Maybe the Mexican mafia has been in existence for about 70 years, maybe more. And it's cultivated this relationship with street gangs over decades and decades of time. And there's a lot of mystique behind the organization. It'll always exist and it can't be destroyed because there'll always be a prison subculture. And people will always be doing life in prison. So there'll always be a pool of individuals to recruit from. Yeah, but not just anybody can get in. It's like probably one of the elitist prison gangs that there are. Do you think it's as big now as it was back in the 80s and 90s in your heyday? What is the standing now? Like what do you hear? - Well, it's grown exponentially. Like in my time, it was maybe 70, 80 members. Now there's about 125, 130 members. Let's say 140, just to be liberal. Just in case we don't know about five or 10 that are up there. But it's grown exponentially. It's now a transnational criminal organization. It's not prison centric. It's gone through this, this horizontal integration, right? Where the organization stops focusing on prisons and starts concentrating on the community, right? And that occurred in approximately 1992 when the Mexican mob just stopped driving by us and lost on this California. I don't know if you remember that. - Yeah, this is crazy. So, and to think this existed just 40 years ago in California, LA, so there was an epidemic of dry by shootings and some people getting hit, right? And from all of these independent little shithead gangs around LA and tell us how the MA stepped forward and essentially made a pact with either it was the LAPD or the Sheriff's Department. You guys basically used your power to put a squash to that. Yeah, the first concept came out, right? It was myself, Little Mo Ruiz and Jocco Buddy, I were talking, and Little Mo Ruiz, we used to jokingly call him the brainstem because he wasn't too intelligent, right? So me and Jocco with Jocco says, well, he all he has is a brainstem, right? He doesn't have a fully formed brain, right? And he was like my ace cum boom. He was my right hand man. Little Mo was so loyal, good friend of mine. And I don't say, I don't speak about this in a derogatory sense, right? It's just how we joked about him. But he popped out one day and said, let's stop the drive bias. After we had seen on the news, multiple instances where babies were getting shot and collateral damage really destroyed by us. And the worst perpetrator of this was 18th Street with the predominant gang in Los Angeles. They were committing these acts and we were taking it back by it. Oh, ladies getting shot, civilians getting shot, little kids getting shot. So I took the idea and I pitched it to the then acting commissioner, Chico Castro. And what was I sure I, Black Denver, all these brothers that were on the streets about 10 Mexican mafia members of parole. I was in the county jail fighting two murders. And my first idea was I gave it to a senior and a senior deputy sheriff in the Los Angeles County jail who worked in high power. And I told him, I said, hey, what could we do about this? And he says, we can provide a venue and an auditorium or provide security. So I called the brothers up and I got it managed for it. What are you doing talking to the cops about this? Don't talk to the cops. We're not going to use them. We're going to do it. And we developed it. We started pushing it. Mexican mafia started having meetings with thousands of gang members which show up at this. We'll be called Junta's, J-U-N-T-A. It's a meeting, it's a banish. There were a couple of rules. I bring guns, no cameras, none of that stuff, right? And it flourished. That's where the program was initiated. So if you look at that, a prison gang, a bunch of knuckle dragging mouth-breathing thugs. The zero education that have this status, this mythical status that are finally in prison out of prison and they're interacting with gang members. For the gang members, it's like, my God, that's my rip. That's a real Mexican mafia member speaking to me. So it provided like a status mobility system for gangs, right? So the concept was, hey, you're going to become part of this. You're going to work with us. You're going to rep your hood. You're going to collect taxes from all illicit activities. And you're going to give us a portion and contribute. So it was a perfect system. It was like the perfect storm because LA was fraught. I think there were like 1900 homicides that year and Los Angeles alone and it began. And now it's like perfected. There's this perfected technique, which is still called the program, where people pay tribute to the organization every month. OK, and that really worked to curb drive-by shootings. And it's the people getting killed, too. It didn't a sense. People received that perfect, but perfect. There was a lot of variations to that, a lot of violations of the rule. And then the Mexican mafia used that to make money again. Of course. It's all at the end of the day. It was all self-serving, all self-serving. Because it was cloaked in this morality, right? We're not four women and kids getting shot, right? But behind that, I see the underbelly of it was like, hey, we can make some dough doing this. Right. And that's really what it became. So even though there was a stopping of the drive-by's, more atorium, gangs are still doing it. So the Mexican mafia would then greenlight that gang to all the neighboring gangs. A, that gang violated the rule around the green line list. So all the neighboring gangs, they would go shooting at them. People were eliminated. And the Mexican mafia-- then a rap would come forward from those gangs. So how do we stop this? How do we get off of this? Pay us $20,000. Pay us $5,000. Or give us two pounds and 10 guns or whatever. And really, it started off minuscule. It started off with a pittance-- $500 here, $200 there. But cumulatively, it's a lot of money. And today, it's a lot of money. It's powerhouse. To tell us about the program. The program is this. The program is double-ended, right? The first one is a taxation of gang territories, right? And we don't use that phrase because it's so abrasive. Like, we're going to tax you. Nobody likes to be taxed. Nobody likes taxes. It's not just the tax pay in America's gang members don't like it either. So it's like a tribute. You're going to take care of these brothers if you could show some love, show some love. And they use that euphemism, right? De Spiso. They call it in Mexico. It's like a piso. It's a quota. Yeah. It's here. It's like a regalo, like a gift, right? We call it a regalo, or a-- And he's fed yeah. But they give X amount every month to the local representative for the gang, which is a member of that gang. And then he pays up to the secretary or the crew chief. And that individual then pays the Mexican mafia member. OK, so is the crew chief a part of the Mexican mafia? Or are they all just associates until it gets to the boss who's probably sitting in prison in the shoe? I think one of the biggest misconceptions there are about the Mexican mafia is that the Mexican mafia is just in prison. The gangs that you deal with are the infrastructure of the Mexican mafia. So all those people, they're not Mexican mafia members. They've got to be a made guy to say you're a cardinal. A cardinal is a made guy. But without this infrastructure, without the gangs to perpetuate edicts and the desires of the organization, the organization doesn't exist. So the real power is not that cardinal is the made guys. It's the street gangs. They're the program. Right, right. That's what is effectively the serenios is a collection of all of these Southern California street gangs that pay an arreglado to the made guys who are part-- or the Mexican mafia. And that's that elite group. That's what you call yourselves the NBA of gangs. OK, so are there actual made guys, M.A. official cardinales on the street today? Yeah, there are members in Los Angeles, California, in Mexico. There are a variety of different places. But if there's only 150 total, how many could there be on the street? About five. About five. So these guys are like real bosses, like millionaires. No, I wouldn't say that. There's an elite group of cardinales in the organization that make real money. But millionaires-- you look at the organization cumulatively, the finances generated. You've got guys taking down $50,000 at a pop. And $25,000 at a pop. They have ties with cartels. You have one Mexican mafia member in Mexico, Bala from Pomona, Loser. He's running Mexico. And he runs with the cartels. And another thing, people think that the Mexican mafia is just these members, these few members, right? And it's something I pointed out earlier in the interview where everybody that peroles from prison and that has illegal status that doesn't have citizenship in the United States is deported back to the country of origin. And typically, that's Mexico. So everybody perrolling for the Department of Corrections and the federal BOP aren't deported for Mexico. And who picks them up as soon as they get off the bus? Mexican mafia. So they have crews of individuals working for different cartels and different Blasas. And in turn, they send product to California, Arizona, different states in the United States. So you have very powerful Mexican mafia members. In Mexico, you have very powerful Mexican mafia members in California as well. And what you guys have done, the way that this small group of elite gang leaders is able to get all of these disparate street gangs to pay a quota every month from there. their drug sales, their robberies, extortion, prostitution, whatever they're doing. Ultimately is the brand that you've built, right? Not the brand like the A/B, but like you're mystique. You're, you're, yeah, I call it a brand. Like you're the Pepsi Cola of gangs, but that ultimately that's from how violent you guys were. - It's based on that and you hit on something at key point, right? Contemporary marketing. - Marketing, marketing, right? What is, what is the number one thing in a brand recognition? - That's right. - What is the brand recognition for the Mexican Mafia, the Black Hand? - And what you had on your chest? - The one I had on my chest. The iconic one that everybody Googles and everybody uses in their YouTube. Every news media's used it. - We'll probably use it on the subject side. - So it's brand recognition. And what is the next step is, is adaptability to the market. When the Mexican Mafia was in the shoot adapted to create a communication methods, it utilized an infrastructure. It created a mess of ad hoc representatives in general prison population yards to represent the made members who were slammed down in complete isolation. And then once they got released from the shoot, it was the use of smart technology. Conference calls, spoofing apps, iPhones. So the Mexican Mafia is evolving, right? It's evolving and it's becoming a true kernel syndicate. It is a true kernel syndicate, but there are some drawbacks to the organization as well. Which are drug use, infighting, all taking, no centralized leadership. You have a group of guys, that are gang members, right? And they go to prison for, they first they get kicked out of their houses, right? Let's say they get kicked out of the house, they get kicked out of schools, provide light in their rules, then they get kicked out of the community for breaking their rules. And then they go to prison and they get into this prison setting and they go to the shoe for violating their rules. Then all of a sudden, they get sponsored into the organization, they make their phones and they're inducted into the mob and they're given these rules. But they're gonna follow. How is it possible for a person to spend a rule breaker their entire life to follow this rule? So there's all kinds of distortion of the rules. - Yeah, it was always like that. It's always been and always will be. Imposition of sanction for a rule violation is really dependent on your social political status when the organization. So if you got Palavra, you can break any rule you want. But if you don't have juice, then you're gonna get whacked. - Today's episode is brought to you by Hello Fresh. 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Yeah, there's a egalitarian. It's a egalitarian in the organization, right? Not anymore. There's a commission now. It's called a mess, all right? A ruling group of individuals who push policy and de-conflict a bunch of stuff. But no one man has complete authority over another Mexican mafia member. One kind of man can't tell another kind of man, hey, you're going to do this or you're going to suffer for it. That doesn't happen. But too many eagles involved in the organization for that. But in the County Jail, while I was there, fighting my two homicides, there was a political campaign against Daniel Guateg-Rajada, who despised member of the organization, because he was such a horrible politics, and we call politics and it's like campaigning to get somebody eliminated. He had done this multiple, multiple times to multiple made members, and he had him eliminated. Well, during this process, he got stabbed by a guy who they've had in Ricardo, Indio, ended up stabbing Indio at a later date. But Guateg felt that somehow Mom Buenostro was behind his stabbing, and he knew he was political opposition. So he was housed with Joe Morgan. Joe Morgan, who everybody calls peg leg. We never called him that. He was housed with him in 2009 or 2004. It was an extreme isolation unit in the County Jail. And he started whispering in Josier. A month's talking bad about you. A month's politics and on you, the guy we're going to eventually stab in the attorney room. They're visiting room. So he gets to Josier. And for some reason, Joe loved this guy. This guy could do no wrong. He just blinded loyalty to Guateg-Rajada. So he gives him the green light. Mom's got to go. And I don't find out about it until about a month later, when they're actually going to go try to hit Mom in the visiting room. There's an it failed attempt. Benjamin Dupel-Peter's takes out a handcuffed key and a shank to the visiting room because you're handcuffed during the visits. I got to stop you right there. So you guys are shackled, and you're able to get out of your shackles with a handcuffed key. How do you get the handcuffed key? How does that work? I had a handcuffed key. I had a hexal blades. I had a 22. A 22 gun? Yeah, zip gun. In the County Jail. Yeah, we tried to kill somebody with it. OK, and a handcuffed key is you could just procure that from the street. And if you fiddle enough with the cops, you'll be able to get them off. Is that a legit handcuffed key? You just haven't smuggled into the County Jail. We'd have people turn themselves in, come to the visiting room with alcohol on their breath and process to a minute. Hello, officer. How are you doing? Just so they smell it, right? Oh, you're under arrest. And they take them right to booking front. Little do they know. They're packed. Their rectums are filled with contraband. Right. And we have somebody waiting in there, who they are, when they're coming in, when they get arrested, are somebody going to turn themselves in for a traffic violation or whatever. And we had trustees that worked down there, and we tell them. So you see that guy get that and bring it to us. So we got stilettos. I had six rounds to a long range room, part 22. The fire mechanism and the barrel, which we tried to eliminate the Mexican Mafia member with, but during this process for eliminating Monk, killing Monk, they try, they try Peter's tries. He tries to take off the handcuff key, but his little short arm won't reach the keyhole, right? And he's a real key. That's a good knife. And he doesn't do it. So then he comes to me and says, hey, can we make this happen? And yeah, I can make it happen. I'm going to have my attorney, when he comes to seize me, pull out these guys as material witnesses. I'm going to be in that attorney room. And my buddy, Benjamin Topo Peters, who's now deceased, is going to be the participant with me, right? And they're going to be chained up to the thing. I'm going to be chained up, but we have handcuffed keys. He doesn't. And we do it. We do it. We go in there and we really put a hurting tear. OK, in order to get close to a guy, a target, because again, you guys got to remember, you guys are in isolation. Like you're already known validated gang members. You're not on the main line most of the time. So the way that you're able to get targets physically next to you is by having your lawyer subpoena them as a witness for your case. And therefore, they have to let that person into like a visiting room or an attorney room. Is that how you're able to do it? Yeah, once we get them to the county jail through subpoena, the power subpoena, right? That's fascinating. We pull guys down from prison. Yeah. And we have-- and guys like to come down to make money, because the county jail is a money-maker factory, right? Yeah, we're about to talk about that. And so we pull them down there. And if they've got to go, they've got to go. That's one of the reasons we use it. OK, I've got to go bring them down here. welcome when he's here. And okay, so you get well, we're all still into the attorney room with you. Your attorney's there. Present is a guard in the room. Yeah, there's a couple of you guys don't even, you guys don't think like, oh, I could get in trouble for this. No, it's death row attitude, right? Right. That's one of the things you have to have. That's one of the things that was taught to me is you got to be willing to kill and die and go to death row for this. And that's okay, let's do it. In fact, that was my desire to go to death row. I was fighting the death penalty when I was fighting my murders because it was called a special circumstances case. And so I didn't care. I already thought I was going to death row. Like, yeah, why not? And the one thing, because I had such low self esteem, that was that facade, right? This the false provotto. And I would display it whenever I could, however I could. And that was a way to display it, right? So yeah, they bring this guy in and we already had it coordinated. He's going to uncover first and stab the guy. So I'm in the booth. And I remember sitting at the stand of these booths, they're private attorney booths. They're all plexiglass and they have these roles with benches in them. That's where the other people said, sign papers and they're in the front row. The booths, they're just benches and they're just this simple partition in front of them. You can reach over and touch your attorney, whatever. I'm in the private booth and next to me is a guy named Mike Burman, he's an Israeli guy's. His uncle worked for a low-all Bergman for 60 minutes. That was his uncle and his other uncle worked for the embassy. It was a big shot in the embassy right for Israel. And I remember Mike being there, a good friend of ours. And he sees me, I slip off my shoe and he's watching me because the partition is only blinded off from the side of the rest is all plexiglass and you can look right through. And he says, close to me as you are. And he's watching me and his attorney is just chatting along, not realizing what's happening. And I slip off my shoe and I pull out a big ol' shank and he looks at his eyes, got like 50 cent pieces. So it's okay and he sees me take off my handcuff and my leg iron. And he's like, oh my god, something's going to happen. You could see it in his face, this trepidation, this sheer terror, right? That's how it's cool. And I'm just looking at him and I hear, hey, hey, and I know it started. So I jump up. I didn't even put up my shoe and I'm slipping around a corner because it's all tile and nolem tile. And I finally get to the role and Ma'an already has Stolple on the ground. Ma'an's already dominating Stolple. Ma'an was a martial artist guy and somehow Tholple had only stabbed him once, stabbed him in the head in the knife, right? So I come up behind Ma'an and I started just pounding all the way to the hill. Overhand swings with a knife that's about that big, about two inches wide. And it's just hitting him. I feel a, ooh, I could hear it, the grunting, ooh, ooh, where are you hitting them? Chest, side, stomach, back, buttocks everywhere. And I'm just going to town. And he turns around and does some crazy kung fu kick and just lays one in my face like boom. And I saw stars. So I know I got to, I got to incapacitate this guy immediately, right? Even though he's chained up, he's fighting. He has Stolple on the ground. He's on top of him kneeling on him and kind of kicking back with his foot. So I just go on top of him, I take him down and I have his whole side opened up, his whole side's opened up and I just start opening it up on him, just rooting into him, just boom, boom. And then the attorney room floods with cops for 15, for 15 minutes disturbance, right? And, and you hear it being, being the alarm going off for 15 attorney room. And they start piling in like 50 cops and there was a female officer. McDuffy, her name was blonde, beautiful blue eyes, gorgeous, like gorgeous. Yeah. And she was cool with us, right? And she comes in and she starts hitting me in the head. Her and a guy named Zimmerman, Zimmerman's kicking me is kicking me and and those are the two in it, right? McDuffy and Zimmerman, Zimmerman's kicking me and she has this little leather book. You ever see when you get pulled over and a couple of other books right to ticket, she has that. And she's hitting me in the head with the corner of it and it's hurting me. So I stand up and I tell me, hey, leave us alone. It's none of your business. I don't say it that calmly. Obviously I'm dropping the F file, I'm like, stay the fuck out of this. This is a Mexican mafia business when he's dead, we'll surrender. And then you said that a couple of times, like recurring times, like when, when you would get ready to hit a guy on like the transport bus, you would tell the cops, look, we're not here to fuck with you, just let us kill this guy and then we'll surrender. It's not a big deal. Not a big deal. It's just business. It's just business, right? And we're telling that like, this is not, this is not a volume. But there being heroic effect, uh, McDuffy and I think that's her name, McDuffy and Zimmerman, uh, freaking heroes. They saved that guy. So you think you want to kill them? Oh, I know you would have. I thought he was dead already. That's the only reason I stopped. Cause Doppo was incapacitated on the ground. All I heard Doppo was this weird noise he was making. Cause every time I would come down on a man, it was the full weight. And mom was on top of him. So I guess all the weight was going on Doppo, right, Benjamin, right? And he was making this noise like, like a duck. If it wasn't, if it, if it wasn't so serious, I would have laughed. And so we, we keep doing this. And then, uh, Zimmerman kicks me a good one and I get up and I brownish the knife towards him. I said, don't fucking get involved. Or we'll be done here and McDuffy screaming, you're killing him. Stop, stop. Uh, later I'll get down and then I just go right back to it. At about this time, I haven't, I'm trying to just do blood. I got blood in my mouth. I get to smell the blood that wet, coppery wet penny smells pennies. Yeah, you get, it's just got a rank odor. It's distinct, right? So we're, we're saturated. The floor is all smeared up with blood and he's down already. He's not fighting anymore. And, and he, he could hear him yelling, get him off of me. Please, get him off of me. And, and then I give him a couple more boom, boom, boom. And he just goes to the kind of limp. And that's okay. He's done. So I stand up at that, well, Doppo says, okay, he's dead, like something of that nature. I'm paraphrasing, right? He's dead. And, that's okay. I stand up. I look at them and I throw the knife and they vamp on me. Boom. They converge on me and they throw me to the ground and Zimmerman puts me in cuffs. And then when I'm cuffed, I'm laying prone on my stomach. He socks me in the eye. He socks me in the eye and says, you're, you're fucking coward. And I just got him raised. I remember like, how fucking dare you put your hands on me, motherfucker. And I told him, I said, I'm going to kill you. I said, you just fucked up while the fucker. And I pumped like the adrenaline's going. We just whack this guy and this cop has the audacity to sock me the eye and call me a coward. So they got to take us to the hospital, right? They take this guy. They airlift them out and they take them to the, give them surgery, all that stuff, right? But they got to take us to medical because we're covered in blood. During the process, I stabbed any Peters in the hand. The guy who was my co-defendant in this case, Doppo. Right, Doppo. I stabbed him in the hand and they take us to the hospital and they're checking us out. The strip saw and I see him right there. I said, you're, you're fucking through. I said, you just fucked up. I said, you don't realize it, yes, but you're going to realize it real quick. And you could see now he's thinking like, oh, shit. I just socked up a main mob guy who was handcuffed and a captain comes out. A captain comes out and it's talking to Doppo and the captain comes to me say, when they calm down, it's over. That's it. He's dead. You guys did your thing. It's over. A police don't target my officers. He fucking socked me in the eye. Excuse my language. Please, please more, please more, please, more. Please, sir, I might have another. So I tell him, no, this dude socked me in the eye and called me a coward. I says, I'm going to have him killed. I tell the captain this and see the captain. He's like, shook up. He shook up. The cops don't get threats. We don't target cops. We don't target cops ever. But he put his hands on me, right? And I'm doing mafia business. And I told him, said, none to do with you, bro. Let me kill this guy and I'll surrender. And he insisted upon being a hero, which I'm thankful for. The mob survived, right? He saved Mons like literally. And so the captain goes back over there and he's howling with the lieutenant and the sergeant and and Doppo. So all of a sudden they bring Doppo to me. Doppo's all stitched up. We're in the firmer and and I'm still I'm still sweating. Drippin' sweat and we're still covered in blood. And Doppo says, hey, be cool. Calm down. It's over. He's dead. He's dead. It's over. And I'm telling about the cop. He's not giving a pass. Give a pass. It's no biggie. You know, it's no biggie. So I looked at the captain and and I'll be grudgingly. Yeah, tell him not to worry about it. And then they charge. and they isolated us, we ended up in court the next day, and they ran us that quick. We're at court the next day, and there's some footage somewhere that shows us going into court for that attempt to murder. Mon survived. - That's right. - Mon survived. - So you guys, the way that you treated authority when you were in prison was almost like you were equals. It was like we are mobsters, this is what we do. We're not gonna fuck with you guys, and it was that, you know, most people go in and they're completely, even tough guys are completely subservient to this, you know, the authority of the state, right? The guards and the judges and the laws. You guys had no regard for that, and that's probably what gave you the most power, was a complete disregard for your own lives. 'Cause yeah, I'll kill this guy in front of the cops and I'll go to death row. I mean, it's the end of your life, but it's like, well, that's all right, that's what I do. - That's where really war was. See, you gotta understand that the cops run the prison. They control the prison. We control the prisoners. They don't control the prisoners. And that's the one thing that they understood. Every prison in the state of California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, the B.O.P. understands that the organization controls the prisoners. They turn the keys. The Mexican Mafia turns to the mines. And that's the power of the organization. Because if simply as saying, "Kill that guy," Soudanios and Southside, if we'll go kill that guy at the request of the Mexican Mafia member, they would do the same thing to cops if it was required by the Mexican Mafia. - But you guys try not to do that. - After business, of course. In fact, the Ashford Brown Accord with the Mexican Mafia during brotherhood, Black Oral family, and the North of the Farmedia, is part of a bigger agreement to reduce staff assaults and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, huge settlement where all the Mexican Mafia and all prison gang members were released to the general prison population yards. - So you negotiated that. You meaning the top guys at Alameza and the other heads of the biggest gangs negotiated that deal with the California prison authorities? - No, but we're in the first piece talks. The first piece talks occurred in 2000 after the biggest riot in the history of California at Pelican Bay, at Pelican Bay State Prison. - Everybody's seen that footage. - Well, the guy gets his brains blown out all the way out. Myself, Jacobalia, and Danny Pena, all Mexican Mafia members, went and sat before the warden of Pelican Bay State Prison, warden Robert Aiers. Who I recently had a conversation with, Brian Perry, the Director of Corrections, a Assistant Director of Corrections, who I recently had dinner with, and Senator Tom Hayden's Chief of Staff, and I remember the thing was George Palanco's Chief of Staff. We had negotiations with these people. That we can bring a piece of court throughout the state of California. - Just release our leaders from the shoe. Let us go-- - Exactly. - Let us go program with the general population. - Exactly. But during this process, we told them, "We can't do this unless you allow us to speak "to every prisoner in Pelican Bay State Prison." And they went for it. They let us walk around the entire prison. You see groups of three BGF members, groups of three AB members, groups of three Mexican Mafia members, going to each pod in the shoe. The only time in history it's been done. - And use sons of bitches, of course, use that time to not negotiate peace, to give murder orders, to sell drugs. - Yes, we were passing dope. In fact, in that process, the same guy, Daniel Griheda, the pariah in the organization, had to go. We had a couple of targets. We finally narrowed down where the infighting was come from, from two individuals. From Daniel Griheda, Guatte, from La Rana, and Angel Valencia, Stomp from Sangra. These two Mexican Mafia members were creating so much dissension within the organization. They created the division within the organization. So we, myself and Danny Pena, discussed killing one of those individuals on the table in front of the senator, the warden, and the director corrections. So we're gonna have this, you have to pull this guy out today during this negotiation. He's a key component, but our whole objective was to kill him. It was Jockelpadiya who got scared. You could see the terror in his eyes. Oh my God, no, we'll never get out of the hole. And it's, bro, this is the business we gotta do. We're never gonna chance to eliminate this guy. We're in shoe forever. Let's kill him now. We have a chance to kill him right now. Let's do it. He's a cancer and Jockel, like he bitched out of it. Just straight bitched out of it. Danny Pena was a gamer. Danny Pena, Danny Boy from Hazard, he was a gamer. Like he said that, let's do it. We'll get around the top of the table, we'll whack this guy. But yeah, we were using that time to pass messages, putting people on the head list, decomplicting a bunch of stuff. - Talk about the system called, where you choose to represent yourself. What is the thing that you guys used? Say you were in LA County jail, right? You were fighting death penalty cases, bodies in the early 90s. What was the system you used? Like if you wanted to have a guy killed, and he was in Corcoran State prison, how would you get that guy down to LA County jail? Explain that whole system that you guys, the legal loophole that you guys manipulated to obviously run your rackets, but also get close to a target to stab him and kill him. - So they have a process called subpoena deuces, take them. And you could speed anybody or any record down the court as part of your defense. And we would utilize that. You could represent yourself in appropriate persona, which means you could represent yourself, right? 'Cause everybody has the right to any legal representation. They get afforded. They can afford it, it'll be appointed to you. And if you don't want that, you represent yourself. But there's an old saying, only a fool has himself or a client. And I had myself or a client. I represented myself in the stabbing case that I caught in the courthouse. I've kind of stabbing in the courthouse as well. - Can you tell us about that? - Yeah, it was Henry Carlos. Henry Carlos had previously stabbed Daniel Grajada. And it did rapidly so. I gotta put that caveat out there right now. What Henry Carlos did in stabbing Daniel Grajada was absolutely correct. Guate Grajada had threatened him, sent him a kite and told him that the sky was gonna fall on him because he wasn't doing what Guate was asking. Like Guate had to believe that he was running the county jail. Because of his association with Joe Morgan, he believed that Joe Morgan gave him the permission to be the boss of bosses in the county jail. And the Mexican mafia doesn't have that. And Joe Morgan didn't have that authority. No Mexican mafia member does. So Guate was functioning under the belief that he was the boss and was threatening brothers and in your Carlos took action, stabbed him in the shower. In the only mistake, Henry Carlos's only mistake was that he didn't kill him when he had the chance. He had Guate Grajada on the ground, naked in the shower, stabbed him repeatedly but let him up. - That's technically a violation, right? - No, I mean-- - 'Cause isn't that show cowardice? - Henry was no coward, okay. Henry was no coward. So why did you have to feel like you had to stab him? - Because the brothers asked me too. Black Dan Burrell and the brothers there at the time told me, yeah, let's get this done. He's gotta go. Guate had started a campaign against him saying that Henry Carlos was stalking him in the law library. That was gonna stab him again. Another political ploy, right? So I take on the mission and ask me to take Aryan Brotherhood, John Stinson on the hit. But somehow I knew, in my immature political mind, I knew that if I did that, I wouldn't survive it politically. Because here I'm bringing an outsider, which may have been beautiful, okay, but I wasn't gonna take that risk 'cause Guate was already having a bad taste in everybody's mouth. So I excluded John from the hit. I subpoenaed Henry that day and I went that day to court and we're on the 13th floor at the Criminal Courts Building in Los Angeles, California. And as soon as they brought him in the tank, I already had a knife. I had like a six inch knife, metal shank. They walk him into the tank and I start stabbing him. I stab him like 30 times. And it wasn't until they pulled out a gun, what I'm saying, get the gun, pull out the gun. That's what I stopped around in the toilet and I threw it away. Much to his credit. I had Henry Carlos pinned on the benches and I was stabbing him. And much to his credit. As soon as I went and flushed the knife, he stood up and looked at me and says, "You ain't done shit to walk out of there." I gave that man credit. He was gangster. Henry Carlos is a gangster. You gotta give it to him 'cause he was stood the storm. A lot of Mexican mafia members were to check then when PC incorporated after that. He didn't. He weathered it. - Today's episode is also sponsored by Shopify. Shopify is the platform we use here at the Connect when we have a merch launch or other products that we're trying to get out to our people. If you've been sitting on a business idea, Shopify makes it easy to finally make it happen. Everything you need to start selling is already there from day one, so you can stop overthinking and start building. Literally, A to Z, Shopify can handle everything for you. One of the biggest hurdles for any business is just getting started. But after that, it's getting paid. And Shopify has that covered. Shopify checkout helps more customers complete their purchases and when they come back, their information is already saved. Dada! Data is the new oil. Data is the digital gold. They save your customer's data with one tap and you're done. That's the kind of experience that can turn browsers into buyers. And once the basics are handled, you get more time to focus on what actually grows the business, your product, your content, your customers, and your brand. Shopify gives you the tools to scale up without getting stuck in the technical setup. You guys have heard of Shopify, though. The world's largest e-commerce platform with Shopify nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial today at Shopify.com/Mitchell. That's Shopify.com/Mitchell for a fully free trial. Shopify.com/Mitchell. Explain to people why it's so difficult to kill somebody with a six inch knife because you used to have to a lot more people than you actually killed. Sure. Sure. I mean, when we say whack, it just means to try to kill them, right? Right. Wacking and taking them out, right? Yeah. I'd stab quite a few people during my career as a Mexican mafia member, but it's so difficult because the weapons are inferior. Right. You don't have Boeing knives. You don't have a Gensu. And you don't have put your knives. You have these roughly-huned metal pieces that are sharpened on the floor. And you have a fraction of time to effectuate this hit, right? You're doing the hit and they're on you. So that's in the county jail. In the state, they have lethal coverage. They have a Ruger 223 that they, and they shoot you with it, right? They shots are fired for effect. Don't blow your brains up. They've done it multiple times. Yeah. So it's not through lack of effort or desire that these people survive. Maybe the Lord's with them, if you're religious or it just isn't their time, a lot of people survive. This hits a lot. Don't. In the last two years, they've been 108 murders in the state of California. It's the pharma corrections inmate homicides. Yeah. So people do die. And that's in the modern day. That's in the modern day. Like 108 murders in two years in a small population. Yeah. That's huge. That's huge. Okay. So going back to how you first made your bones and became, you know, a full car now, when was the first time you actually killed somebody, was that on the streets or in prison? On the streets. Okay. All right. So I want to back up a little bit and talk about how you actually became a full, fully made member. How did you first catch a body, go to prison and then start getting groomed by the M.A.? So I went to a carnageale, went to robberies and, and I just started learning about what a Sudanese work, because I wanted to stab some rabble gang members in the carnageale. Those guys had shot at my house and I saw one of them and I told somebody, I want to whack that dude. You know, give me a knife and they told me, now you can't do that, dude. So what do you mean, I can't do it. He shot at my house. It's Miami. And they told me, now you can't, you know, you're a, you're a Sudanese now. You're a part of what, you're a part of the house, all right? I said, what is that? So these guys downstairs, those guys are the bosses. And that's when I first introduction to the Mexican Monty, right? And this is in LA County, jail. Okay. LA County, jail. And, and even then they were talking about and hushed undertones and whispers. It wasn't like this overt thing like today, like they're on social media, you know, Mexican Monty is on social media. Go figure, right? And, but back then it was like really a secretive thing. The organization really was a secret criminal organization, but they still control everything behind the scenes. And that was my first introduction towards it. Then I went to Saul Dead State Prison after processing the Chino and I met Black Dan Brawl. He was an ad-seg. I was an ad-seg as well. And he sent me a note and some camel cigarettes and a greeting card and wrote me a note. And I was like, wow, Mexican Monty remember, really wrote me a note. I, I'd only heard about these guys myth. They were like mythical, you know, figures to us. And I finally get to San Quinn and I actually meet the mobsters, right? And I have no aspirations to be in a mobster. I don't see myself as that at all. I had never done a hit before at all. So I go to San Quinn and they start having me get knives for them and they're on the main line in San Quinn. There is, there in North, like what was called Max B of this is like prior to that shoe, which is called Max A. They had different terminology for it back at the time. There's like two levels of being in the hole. And Max B is like kind of freedom. They could have contact visits, they got dope, they lived in a block. There was a house with general population, just separate tiers. And I happen to be a general population inmate working in North lock. And I would see them on a regular basis. So that was the first time I met Benjamin Peters, the guy would eventually stab Montblanc and the guy I would eventually do a murder for. But I meet him there and I noticed that my status on the yard is sky rockets because I'm taking the dry cleaning down to the dry cleaners. I'm getting all the food from the kitchen for them, I'm getting them cartons of cigarettes. Like everybody's doing these things for them and they're giving it to me to take to them. And I become a camarada organization. They make me like a little brother. I'm not a made guy, but Benjamin Peters, you should talk to me one day. So yeah, you're a little brother. You're my little brother. And he called me that the first time and I felt like this great sense of pride that a Mexican mafia member is calling me a little brother. So I leave him there after doing a bunch of favors for them and I get to DBI, do a vocational institution they call it the Gladiator School. And that's where the Mexican mafia started. That's where it started. Back in 1950s. I went to 657, depending on whose version you believe. But that's where it originated, right there at DBI, they called the Gladiator School because you'd go there to learn how to kill. So first down the yard, I walk up to the yard and a guy named Roy Boy, Reeves walks up to me and says, "Hey, boxer, I said, what's up?" And he says, "The Cardinalist wants you to do a Fabord." That means a favor, right? And to us, that means you're going to whack somebody. And then at this period in time, Mexican mafia members were on the general population with us. There were two Mexican mafia members there and I said, "Yeah, sure." So he gives me a knife, big old chrome rod. You ever see a paint roller? Yeah. How the chrome? This is all straightened out, all sharpened out to a nice big point. And it's got a T-shirt handle on the end and I tuck it in my shirt and he says, "That guy right there on the Hamburg Court." He says, "Angel from Santa Monica." He says, "Wack him." He says, "This guy's going with you." And the other guy just happens to be Francisco Martinez, puppet from 18th Street. All these people I'm interacting with, we would all become Mexican mafia members later on. Puppet is going to be a huge figure in the organization, got reeked a few times. Roy Boy, Reeves became a kind of like a zodiac killer for the mafia over Mexico and everybody else that we punctured with there. We were just, Kamadalah's at this time, we're doing favors for the organization. So they asked me this and I said, "Okay, let's go." So he says, "Here's puppet, Puppet's going to grab him, you stab him." So we walked straight over there. We didn't hesitate, didn't wait. So let's go do it, man. Because I hated to have the knife and have to wait and I just wanted to walk straight towards him and get it done. That's how I've done all my hits. Because it's a nervous period of waiting and the anticipation, the anxiety. In fact I wouldn't smoke cigarettes because my hands shook so much when I went to go do hits. It wasn't until after that's what I had my cigarette. So me and Puppet walked to this guy and it's first or second handball court and Puppet just bare hugs him and I just started nailing him. Over and over. And the stomach. Or so everywhere his arms aren't and then the handle slides up to the hill to the knife. It was loose. So I got him maybe 10, 15 times. The guy walks, oom falls down. They come pick him up. I mean it's over. I throw the knife, I take off. Got away with the hit. That was the first time I had done a hit for the organization and even then I didn't have aspirations. Like, "Oh man, I'm on a fast tracker. I didn't even have that thought. I was just wrapping a hood." Like my neighborhood is our t-shirt and we had our older homeboy named Wendel-Scheisch-Reiach who was a Mexican mafia member and what we do on that year reflects on him. So I was just wrapping a hood. That's all I was doing. And then from there you went to San Quentin. It was Folsom. It was Folsom. Right. It was Folsom like back in the 80s. It was the big house. Yeah. This is back when prison was prison. You could do it ahead. You could wax somebody. You can get away with it. And they wouldn't tell on you. Now they have this thing called 1030s, right? Confidential memorandums. People write notes or they tell the cops and they consider reliable confidential sources. That didn't occur back then. It was like, "This was just when the joy was the joy." I'm certain they had informants but it wasn't as prolific as it is today because they're everywhere now. And I get to Folsom State Prison and it's the time of war between the blacks and the Mexican mafia. So I get there. The first day I get there, some guy stabbing the cheek on North Daniel. Just got released from the hole and we're going to Chauhall and he gets a fork out of the Chauhall. They would give us real cutlery, right? And he stabs me with it and we fight and they fight. two rounds from the Ruber to 23, the mini-14, and they take us, they take me to the infirmary and they take this guy to the hole. And it was nothing but a skin one, a flesh one, but a blood profusely. So they take me there and they take me to the hole because I'm the victim of the salt. And it's then that I realized I thought I did something wrong. I said, "Man, they whack me, the first thing I get in a pulse on, what the hell did I do?" And it wasn't until I went back to the hole that I saw the guy in the holding cage holding a red headband, calling me, he was calling me a scrap. Right? And I realized, "Oh, he's a buster, he's a North Daniel." That's why he stabbed me because there's a rival between the NF and the Mexican Mafia. So he got me. He did what he was supposed to do. Kudos to him, right? He got off before anybody found out he was NF or North and he stabbed me. So I go back there, I go to the shoot for 10 days, they kicked me out to the mainline. And who do I end up in the cell with? My homeboy, Sammy Viaba. Sammy Viaba is a shot caller for the block and he's running the whole building for the Mexican Mafia. He wasn't a made guy yet. He would be coming made guy later. And he would get eliminated later. But I'm in the cell with him and we're talking. It's great. It's great. You know, I know the guy, he grew up with my brother. He's called our homeboy and he says, "Hey, we're going to get officers we can. We're going to get off on the blacks." And he pulls out this massive, massive knife and he says, "I'm going to get you one." I said, "Okay, let's go." Later that night, maybe two nights later when we're housed together, they come and take him to the home for whatever. They got some confidential information and he leaves me with a knife. And I get a kite from downstairs, "Hey, you're ready to go. They're doing control feeding at the time, right?" That means they let out one tear of the entire tear mixed racist at the time. So we're doing controlled showers after feeding. I said, "They're going to do control showers tonight. You got the knife, kill your neighbor." I said, "Okay." And I said, "This guy's going with you. This guy named weasel from Venice." And they said, "Hey, I'm a knife." So I'm waiting and I hear, you can hear the lock. When the bar, the throw the bar that locks the door from opening, it prevents the door from opening. Old school prison theory. You ever see them when they put a key in thing and they pull that bar? That's what they do. "Oh, no!" I hear it. But then they individually come by and key the doors. They let out about five guys at a pop. And I'm hearing this, I'm hearing the traffic, I'm hearing the movement and my heart's pumping. And I remember I rolled my knife up. I'm going to pair of showers using boxes. So I rolled my knife up in my towel. And I have this little bison of Mexican national, little chubby guy. He's looking at me and he's scared of death. I told him not to put on coupons, nothing about that. Don't worry, nothing's going to happen. And I told him, "Stay here." "Story believe that." I just don't stay here. I told him I'm going to do something right now. And he's like, "Okay, you got to the back of the cell." He was like cowering back there. He was scared of death and I get it, right? So the cop comes, opens my door and it's his shower. He steps aside and I just open the towel up, step out the cell. And the guy, my target is standing right there next to me. And I hit him, boom, right in the back of the neck, woo, all the way in. And then feel it. Oh, it went all the way in. Yeah, it sunk. It went down though. It went down towards his chest cavity, right? It was an overhand hit. And then there was another black dude right there with a broom. And he was a porter over to call a tear chin or like a janitor, right? That was his job. He's looking, I mean, I hit him too, but it just graced him because it started to stampede. The whole tear, you ever hear a stampede? It sounded like the year of feet running down the tear, right? So I'm chasing after people trying to stab him because it's not just anything black. I'm stabbing, right? And they start firing boom, boom. And like a feel to percussion from the round with biming like, it's a live round live rounds, live rounds to 23. And this is inside inside the block. Yeah. This is not outside on the yard. This is in the building in the building. And then and then. So I figured I got him. I run maybe 10 or 10, 20 more feet trying to chase this guy, but they're already shooting rounds at us. So I tossed the knife over the tear. I'm on the third tier. These are five tears out of five floors. And I tossed the knife and he heard it. And then I squat down in front of a cell. And there's an AB guy named John right there. And he's right behind me. So say brother, you got down. You got down. You did that. He's, I'm going to send you something in the shoot. Which means he gets sent me a packet of drugs, right? And just look at him and say, right on bro, shook his hand to the thing. And the guy who's supposed to go in me comes whipping by, right? And he squats down next to me. He throws his knife fling, fling, fling, fling. And I said, you get him. He said, yeah, yeah, I got him. I got him like 10 times. I was okay. Good. He's dead. He's dead then. We got him. And we kind of peer over. You can see him put him in the stokes gurney, right? He's laying down on the stokes gurney, the primary guy. The other guy was just scratched. And they take us down to the first floor. It's called the first year. And they start putting their hands on everybody's chest, you know, feel a heart rate. See if it's elevated. And they snatch us off his get over here. And when I have the blood on us, nothing like that. They take us to the hall. And I get the incident packet, get the incident packet. So the rules violation report and it shows a diagram of the wounds, right? It's only my wounds. There's no other wounds. The guy didn't do anything. He stayed hiding back there with the knife. And I was discovered then that this dude punked. He peed on himself. So they ended up whacking that guy. They did whacking him. He survived the head. They slashed his throat with a razor. The guy weasel from Venice. But it was dead like this dude didn't do anything, right? Right. He just let me out there in the breeze, you know? That's what I mean though. So if you refuse to go, if you're a camarada and the carnala say you got to go hit this guy and you refuse, that's an act of cowardice that could get you hit. Yeah. Look, if you're a camarada, you've already surrendered your autonomy to the organization and you adopted the ideology and you've already voiced your willingness to do hits. So once you get that far, you consider the camarada, right? And it's not a self of fixed title. A camarada is somebody that's viewed by the organization as a comrade of the organization, right? Like this is a trustworthy guy. We know who he is. We know his past. We know everything about him. You're an associate. You're an associate of the organization. Okay, but the black guy survives. Yeah. Did you, did you actually successfully ever kill somebody in prison? No. Wow. Never once. I did a lot of stabbing in prison. Nobody ever died. So there have been other stuff that we participated in where people have died that, you know, to fall through tacit agreement to a mutual conspiracy in the organization where people ended up dead. Right. I just wasn't the guy that stabbed him. They pulled the trigger. Yeah, it's just, so you got to look at it like this, right? You got 10, 15 years of the mob, whatever it is, there are so many conspiracies to take place. It's like every day is crying. Yeah, every day is correct. That's what you do. I'm going to make money this way. I'm going to start that guy and go click my money there. Let's go shoot some dope. Hey, that guy's got to go. That's all it is. That's all it is every day, every day. Do you think if you had been convicted for killing somebody in prison, even though you ended up cooperating later? Do you think you still would be doing a life sentence? Do you think they ever want to let you out? I think that, yeah, at the same circumstance, I think a man or a Henry want to die or any of those other people would have died. I might not have been left up, let out a prison. That may be in a significant factor that even after incarceration, I'd continue to murder people. Yeah. But the pro process is really difficult. A lot of people think that you just do your job. You go to the board. You get granted. It's not that way. It's not that way. And cooperation doesn't get you out. Well, we're going to get to that because people are obviously watching this or like how the fuck are you free? You know, so your first stretch, this is the time that you go, you're at DVI, then you go to Fulson, then you go to San Quentin. Did you get made during that, that first incarceration stretch? Yes. After that hit of the black guy in the tear where everybody took off of the stampede, I get made. I go to the shoe and I meet Wenzheye Shriak, like Dan Burrell, who I'm really close with. Joe Morgan's there, Nico Velasquez, they're all the Titans, they're all the big mobsters. The names you heard about for all these years, they're there. And I go to the yard with these guys. I'm going to shoot two. And Wenzheye says, yeah, you're material. And I said, what's that? It's, yeah, we've got our eye on you. And then they start pulling me to their cells, right? I go to Black Dan Burrell, he's my barber. He cuts everybody's hair. And in this point in time, they would allow you to get one guy out of one cell and put them in another cell so you get a haircut. It was that loose back then. So Black Dan wouldn't give me haircuts and just educate me. Like, look, they're going to put you up. They're I think about first, but don't change. who you are, we're making you for who you are today. So I knew that, like, wow, they're sponsoring me into the mob. He said, we can't do it 'cause we're sponsoring negative right now. So black down, I wanna share a sponsoring negative Vialva. And I said, well, we're gonna have sloppy Coronelmore. Who's a beast of a man? Big filthy stinky man. There's a maker now, Coronelmore from Clanton 14. He was a Native America, he's a Mohawk Indian. - Wow. - And I said, so he's gonna sponsor you. So he sponsors me, and the boat passes, and one day I'm in the cell, and Chalito Gerjeda, it's a no Gerjeda calls me, and we had these little hand held mirrors. They had prevented them at the time. About three by three, those square plexiglass things. He says, hey, stick your mirror out. So I do, I stick my mirror out, and he sticks his mirror out. He says, do you see this? He points to his hand. He says, yeah, he says, that's you now. Which meant black ant, and I knew right then, I was like, whoa. That night, I got maybe a dozen kites from Kamadala's congratulating me. We had wine, we drank wine pruno. Would they call pruno? Nobody calls it pruno. We call wine, beasto, we call it beasto, yeah. Well, he prunes and guards, and civilians call it pruno. But that's what we had that night. We drank wine, we partied, and that was a main guy. - So it's not as official, the ceremony is like the Italian Mafia. But it does have to be voted on unanimously by who is it, the top ranking guys or everybody? - Everybody has to vote, yes. - So 80 people, 100 people have to vote, yes? - No, only the people, their respective institution. That's always before. - I see, okay. - Now it's, now it's, everybody has to vote. All state and feds, everybody has to participate in the vote. And it has to be unanimous, right? So that's like hundreds of people have to vote for you. - Yeah, that's why so, so, a lot of people don't get in, right? Maybe once every few years a couple of guys will get in. And the rate of attrition is much greater, right? - That's what you're meaning, people defecting. - Defecting, or getting whacked out, like, I mean, I don't know if you follow the news, or you watch CDC website. A lot of Mexican Mafia members have been killed lightly. - What's going on with that? There's, look, they had to violate the rules, they didn't violate the rules. They killed Popeye, they killed Tonito, they killed, did I add? They killed Popeye, Tonito. They just killed Moscow from San Fernando Valley. And the guys weren't rats, cowards, or informants. Those are the big rules, right? Big rules. They weren't, any of those things, really it's greed. - It's just infighting. - Infighting and politicking. - We call it politics. - Politicking. - Yeah. - That's all it is. It's all it is. I mean, certainly some members are more liked than others. Like Popeye was always involved in controversy, Daniel Roman, who was a good friend of mine, always involved in controversy over territory, and depending on his daughter who was secretary for his neighborhood, who ran part of South Los Angeles and ruled it with an iron fist, offended a lot of brothers, but he continued that in prison as well, they started fighting over prison yards, and he was objured, hard headed. And I think that was part of the reason why he clipped it. But I think the majority of the motivation is territory, because it's not just the program like I told you, which is, the Mexican copy sells you drugs, and you distribute those drugs, plus you pay attacks. - You pay a portion of the proceeds. - So they sell you the dope, they get paid. And then for the privilege of selling the dope, we're going to pay them an additional fee. So they're the well and the pump, kind of like Exxon, Big Exxon, Big Oral, Big Petroller. So they get paid all the way through it. It's not just that. And it's not just the yards, which they're making huge money on. They're having drone drops, and they have routes with corrupt CEOs and corrupt prison workers. A lot of stuff is not coming to the visit. It's impossible to get that to the visit. So it has to come in some way, they have routes coming in, corrupt people within the CDC that are working with them. There's a lot of money there. There's a lot of money in the program. But they also have what's this called, "Gasitas", "Gasitas" are illegal gambling houses and the territories that this gang members control. Virtually no overhead with a human trafficking, prostitution, weapons, drugs, gambling, and the money is astronomical. Like, if you think they were doing good before, these guys are balling out of control now. Because they're making more money now, even with all those snitches and the technology and the feds and shit. I think that the Mexican Mafia sees snitches, technology, and all that part of doing business. Daddy Boy, being yeah, what's caught, I'm why I'm saying it's not that we're careless when we talk. So we have to talk in order to conduct business. So it's a consequence of doing business. I'm paraphrasing what he's saying, but this is essentially what he said. Like, hey, we know you're listening, or mobsters and we got into business, and that's really the way it is. So these guys are serving multiple life sentences, they know they're never going to get up. It's kind of an unbeatable attitude. It is. I mean, what are you going to do to get a serving life? Say you're going to give a life sentence. You're going to put them in the hole for six months, he's still going to do business. In fact, the shoe has been abolished, thanks to Gavin Newsom. There's no more shoe. You can only go for a finite period of time like before, you were given an indeterminate shooter. This is what you were serving at the Silicon Bay. Yeah. Yeah. So now you can only go for a year, six months, you can kill somebody and get out in nine months. Then come right back out, have conjugal visits, have you drawn a fly and drop by yourself on top of the line. Okay. Talk about, that is the most mind boggling thing is the way that that bosses, Mafioso are in the shoe and still communicating. Talk about when you were in the shoe in Pelican Bay, how you would conduct business a thousand miles south on the streets of Los Angeles and collect money from all these different drug dealing crews. I would have people come visit me and I would use what is known as informal gang code, right? Informal gang code is really just a matter of communication, which two individuals are predisposed to understand underlying content, right? So if I talk to you about a Johnny, remember that baseball game yesterday, yeah, and Jimmy was pitching a freaking terrible dude. He needs to be taken off the mound, yeah, I forget to agree. He's horrible for the team. To the late person, it sounds like we're talking about a baseball game, which Jimmy was pitching horribly. To me and you, you know, we're talking about clipping Jimmy, because we didn't attend a baseball game yesterday, and Jimmy is actually Joseph or Joker or whoever, right? But you utilize this form of communication. In fact, I was never caught on wire or recording utilizing this kind of communication because my channel, that's what I do. I run nothing but intercepted communications. And today's mobster, it's over. There's very little interpretation needed. But back in that day, we utilized our visitors to send out our messages that and plain old letters. Right. We were right letters, hundreds of them. So you would have people come all the way up to Crescent City, California, the very northern northwest tip of California, who, can you not, not describing who they are, but with these females, with these family members, with these, am I in the ballpark or who was it? You are, you hit the nail directly on the head. Okay. Female family members, wives, girlfriends, even talking through glass, you're talking to a phone. Yeah, talking to the phone. Yes. And so obviously they're listening to you. They know the status you have. No. No. At that time, no. They had no idea what was happening under their, under the roof. Oh, okay. They had zero concept of what was going on. There's a few gang investigators that had some idea what the mafia was, but didn't know about street operations or anything until I dropped out. Oh, wow. Once I defected, then they knew this. Oh, my God. This is a, this is a, they started putting up pinhole cameras, wired the visiting room. That's when all the intel started pouring in. So you're fault. My fault. Yeah. My fault. Plus how you would do that, how you, you have couriers come up to San Quentin, visit you. And then they would go back down to LA and relay to your basically general manager, explain you and explain how, how you were able to, you know, have this huge enterprise from the shoe in Pelican Bay. So I mean, there are guys that are Mexican mafia members that had nothing and they couldn't have anything because they didn't have the foresight. They had narrow perspective and all they cared about was getting money on the books for commissary shooting dope. But they had progressive thinkers that had highly reticulated crews that are really organized, right? I had a really good crew. I had one individual on the street who ran everything and everything else was his responsibility. Who was he? Huck. Huck. Huck. He ran everything for me. He was like my brother, my mother had hooked up with his father. They weren't married, but that was his son. My father's boyfriend, I mean, my mother's boyfriend had a son and Huck was that person. Oh, he's like literally half brother. Half brother. Yes, that was brother. Got it. And I trusted him. I knew him as a kid. In fact, when I had paroled in 1988, I met him and he was gone home, youngster, you know, he was killer. And that's what I liked about him. He was gone home. So when I started in Pelican Bay, when we started that program, I knew I could establish my crew because all the brothers on the streets, or my friends, I had no adversaries off there. That was my support system. So I started my crew and I told him, "Do it. Collect, deal, do everything." We're blanketed, right? And I would do that through my visitor. My visitor will come up on a Saturday, get my messages, go out to the hotel, call them, relay the messages and get their responses and come back Sunday and tell me, Dan, I give you more messages, they go back at the next week or two weeks later, they come back, are really antiquated system, but it was very effective. Okay, and how did collect, how was he able to use your name to reveal all this power over just that franchise, the concept of franchise? Look at, because all of these contemporary business practices are implemented into this objective, right? There's franchising license in your name. Maybe who wants to deal dope and my territories can use my name and fall beneath the umbrage of my bonafidis, right? Number two, there's proper cherry, everybody that collects for me gets part of it. And then there's that status mobility system. They go from gang member to South Side, or to Sudan, or to Kamarata, to Karnat. They have that aspiration, literally none of them will ever make it to Karnat. But it's there. The hope and the dream is there, and for a lot of them, they drive towards that, because they're marginalized. It's a marginalized population. Yeah. Guys who've been kicked out of their homes, use drugs, have black education, it's marginalized, right? It's a gang subculture. And finally, they're participating in something bigger than that, like outside the cause, right? And they have now have status within their social political arena. Now they're part of Boxer's crew. And that means more than any gang membership. You were on a Mexican Mafia members' crew, nobody can touch you, right? So how much were you, how many people was Huck collecting from? I don't even know. I mean, Huck had two legitimate businesses, made with our money that were, I had 10%, like 10%. And one of the popular nightclubs, two baby doves up here, off of some place in Los Islands, which is called, I don't even know the city, but it was off of one of the freeways in Los Angeles. Is it a Mexican neighborhood? Yeah, it's a Mexican neighborhood. Yeah. But it was South LA, South East Side or something like that. No, I think it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's by the Sheriff's Academy. I don't know. You got town? No. I don't know. I didn't know. I owned it. Right. So there's, there were multiple occasions. So you had legitimate businesses that I want to present to Joe, but the cash money, which really miniscule for me, I think 50 to 80 a year at the beginning, 1992, 93, 94, that I would receive in payments just to the prison. $80,000 sitting in the shoe, that's, you might as well have a gazillion dollars. There's nothing to spend your money on. I was invested in Treasury bonds, bank accounts, CDs, I was doing all this from the prison. They'd allow me, which is, it was crazy. They would allow me to invest money in a banking account and then purchase bonds. And then they'd allow me to write, they were called state warrants. I'd fill out a form and every time my, my, I mean, account got upwards to $10,000, I'd delete it, right? I'd release the money and the state treasurer would issue the recipient of legitimate check. So I was sending out at $9,500 a pop, boom, boom, boom. And that was for me, I was, I was like, this is, this is a good business. For me, a prisoner 20, 30 years ago making 80,000, 50,000 a year, that was, that was pretty good, but that was the inception of it. Now it's, they went on to seize funds from, I think, 10 or 15 individual. One Mexican mafia member had $90,000 in the account, another one had $30,000 in the account. And they couldn't explain where they got it from. They eventually, in one instance, made the CDC, we churned the money to Danny Roman, it was a $30,000 deposit that they had seized, right? Uh-huh. But there was real money flowing in and out of public and based a prison. And at the time, law enforcement and, and the prison authorities didn't even understand what's happening. It's like my debriefing couple was Angel Valencia's debriefing and, and Chino Del Galeo's debriefing because we all defected within the same week. I dropped out and I made videos for them and I told them, come on over, hmm, you're going to get hit and they actually came over. So we all threw the debrief together and collectively that information just rocked the CDC. So you were operating like this for almost 15 years and they really had no idea. None. None. Wow. That's incredible. That's incredible. And in Pelican Bay, you had a ton of drugs. I had no heroin whenever you wanted. I had one of those three types on heroin. I had more dope than I ever had in my life in Pelican Bay State Prison. We had these things called annual packages where your family could collect like cereal in candy bars and soap and, and put it in a box and mail it to you. Well, Huck would load up my packages with drugs and we would get like balls of heroin. And, but we would do this. We would make about the size of a little job breaker in colored balloons and throw them in trick cereal handfuls of them, right? Well, each one's a gram. So you throw 30, 40 in there. That's 40 grams of heroin in a box cereal. You pour it out on the floor. You can't even see them because it was that much that would opt to go illusion. They just blended right in and there were a variety of other ways like legal mail and stuff like that. We get dope in. So you can get 40 grams of heroin into Pelican Bay? No problem. In fact, one guy, Ricky Cruz, who's down at the seas, he died from COVID, he got in a pound and a half a month inside the country time, Kool-Aid. He mixed it in with the Kool-Aid and he had a pound and a half a month and one pop and like, what are you going to do with a pound and a half a month in the shoe? Yeah. Tweak balls all night. Yeah. And that's what they were doing. Yeah. And you were a pretty bad heroin addict. Oh, I was a pig. I was a pig. I was a pig. I was like, well, I'm blind. Yeah. Or I couldn't move anymore until I was gone. Yeah. And those rigs you describe them, they're not like, it's not a clean way to shoot heroin. Like your entire arm starts squirting blood and- Yeah, those ridiculous. We take these, they give you these pen fillers, they give you a pen filler at the supply day, right? And it's what you write letters with. It's just a flimsy little pen filler, but the tip is brass. So we knock out the ball of the writing instrument and pull the tip out and then sharpen it to a point. And we would jab that pen filler into our arms, into our veins. I have a massive scar on my arm because of that. But that's the way people shot dope in the shoe. Why did in the '80s, the height of the crack boom, why do you think that Chicanos, you know, in California? Why was heroin like the drug of choice? I think the euphoric feeling, it's like the warmth, right? It's a high up highs that, that obiate high is like no other. And I think it's like self-medicating, right, from people who have internal pain, psychological pain, childhood trauma, whatever it is, abandonment, physical abuse, what addiction in the family. They're suffering. Yeah. And without therapy, I think people go to that and they gravitate towards self-medicating. For me, that's, you know, escapism, you know, just, I was escaping it. And while I was high, I wasn't a person. I was just high. I didn't care about anything. Yeah. Heroin seems better for numbing your way out of prison than like smoking crack, smoking bath or something. Yeah. Now you're like, I have a ton of energy and nowhere to go. And paranoia sits in. I'm in a box. Yeah. And you're paranoid. Did you have, you know, there's a, there's a couple of famous, well, well-known kamaradas, excuse me, carnalas that really did operate on both sides of the border, like we're, became real drug kingpins. You weren't a real drug kingpin, but you did, obviously, taxed a lot of drug dealers. How deep into the drug game did your operation get? Like, did you have connections with Tijuana or? Yes. Directly? Yes. Can you tell us about that? Yeah. That was a guy named Batman Markets. He was a friend of mine is, he was partners with Popeye Balron, the same Popeye Balron. There was in Mexico working with the Adiriano Felix organization. Real quick. If you watch Narcos, Mexico, in the season, when the big season about the Ariana Felix when they go to war, they feature that guy. Popeye Balron. David Balron. Yeah. He was the guy. He's from Logan Heights. Logan Heights, San Diego, he was the guy that basically got contracted with the Adiriano Felix to go to war. And he became really, really deep into that organization, like chewed out with murder Mexican cops for them, saved, saved their lives. The brother's lives from when Chopra tried to whack him in Puerto Vallarta. So if anybody wants to research that, that's who you're talking about. Yeah. That's his real bottle. The Christine's nightclub incident. Right. When he picked up an AK and he killed a couple of guys from the chopper, it was Monkertill. That's the same people I'm talking about. So, Popeye, I never met him. I never knew him. He was a made guy. He got killed on. and some friendly fire, when they were attempting to eliminate Blanc or the Netherlands, a journalist out there in Mexico. But bats arrived, and bats took over that relationship. Now, a lot of people claimed to have cartel ties and the ties with Mexico and the Mexican MAPI, they didn't exist before Patton, Patton, Pompey. It just didn't exist to that level. This is the real formation of the relationship with the Mexican MAP in the cartels, the real relationship. Now, independent carton, not only has maybe had a connect out there, but that type of relationship, but they're taking gang members from Southern California and taking them to Mexico to do hits for the cartels and the cartel strusting hundreds of pounds in their lap and paying them astronomical amounts of money, did things this before those guys. I don't care who says it, that's the reality of it. And you were tied in with those guys with bat and his crew. So bat actually, I was in a bus with him in 1995. They subpoenaed like 15 Mexican MAPI members down to a RICO trial, the first US RICO case against the Mexican MAPI, the United States of America versus Alexandria at L. So they closed down for witnesses. None of us testify. But we're having meetings on the bus, right? And that sits next to me and says, "Hey, man, I wanna bring your people down to Mexico." Maybe we can do some business, you know? You can do hits over there, if you need somebody here, or we can do it, plus we got a lot of product. For me, I will check it out. And sure enough, I sent people down there in Mexico. They go down there, pick some up in the normal vehicle, take them to a location, which is a secure location that have counter surveillance, all kinds of stuff. And I opted out, how could I be in control of hundreds of pounds of product when I'm in Pelican Bay State Prison? And this is cartels. The cartels that kill you can't. You dog, whatever, for their money. And I could not be responsible for that. - What was it, meth? - meth and weed. - Okay. - So he wants to just trust all this, to be distributed by my crew. And I couldn't take that risk. I didn't have the ability to do it. 'Cause I just knew I had Huck, and I didn't know what he could handle. Come to find out he could have handled it. But yeah, that's just a risk I didn't wanna take. 'Cause it exposes your family. - Okay, so you didn't really end up being a drug trafficker? - No, I was more a manager. - Okay, I see you. - More managers. - You basically just oversaw crews that were selling dope. - Yep, that was my thing. - And why not sell to them the way they do now? Why not be both ends of the water and the well? - The concept developed later. - Right. - The organization is evolving. You're seeing the evolution of a prison gang into a real criminal syndicate. So like I said, I was in the ground floor. You know, I was in the ground floor when this happened. - Yeah, 'cause it really started off just as a prison gang, right? The 50, 60, 70s really just was a prison gang. The late '80s, as you're really becoming, you know, an infamous guy in the organization, that's when they have this symbiosis with the street and taxing drug dealers. And then the next step is, oh no, we're fully interconnected with Mexican cartels. - Mm-hmm. - Yeah, yeah. You're seeing that now. You're seeing that interconnection with cartels, but understand this. The cartels see Mexican mafia, Mexico as blasticos. That's plastic, false, artificial, the colon, and loneness, bald heads, portals, the colon, portals, it's all derogatory. Because the cartels can't understand why a guy would want to go to prison and serve life. They don't understand it. They don't respect it. And they don't respect drug use. So although the Mexican mafia worked with them, has a symbiotic relationship with them in Mexico, the cartels run it there. In fact, multiple Mexican mafia members have been eliminated, brutally killed by cartels in Mexico. And what does a Mexican mafia do? He had to go, yeah. They accept it because they can't battle with that type of power. It's a $22 billion year industry. - Right. - How can the Mexican mafia wage war against an institution that controls a country? - Yeah. - It can. - But at the same time, they need you guys because they need their product distributed in the United States. That, on some level, okay. Like gang territories, what are gang territories they sell drugs and who buys drugs, the population of those gang territories. It's smart business for the cartels. It's a win-win for them because it's a pittance to the cartels. It's okay. Here's 100 pounds of math. And here's a couple hundred K. When they're making billions. So for the cartels, they benefit through market exclusivity and protection in the prisons. I have pictures with cartel leaders from various countries with Mexican mafia members and they de-examplorance. Like there's a real relationship that exists there. And they're exploiting it to the best of their ability. - How so? - They have these individuals give money. They bring them dope. They gain influence within the organization. I mean, I had a cartel guy buy me next to me in my same unit. It would be that. Let me deal with all for you. Let me serve you. Let me be of service to you. - Because you can kill those guys. - Oh, like they're just Mexicans and an American prison at that point. So they're kind of like grateful to do that. - And have the influence of the organization behind them. - Right. But on the streets, they kill Mexican mafia members. It's a crazy relationship. - Now, how are you so articulate? Were you, were you always educating yourself? Well, you were down? - I was. I don't die deck. I'll tell myself, right? - Yeah, yeah. - That's just, I took college courses and the more I learned, the more I realized I didn't know. I wanted to learn more. - Yeah. - That's what they're molecular for you to say to yourself. That's what the theory of relativity is. - Right. - You know, you hear these things and you're like, what are they talking about? And the more I learned about it, the more I wanted to know. - Yeah. - That just drove my hunger for education. - Do you think your articulate, your verbal IQ and how articulate you are, your intelligence? Was that one of the reasons that you got plucked to be a made guy? Like did they look at the way the Italian mafia traditionally, they're like, okay, he's violent, but he's a good earner. Or he's whatever, right? Like you generally have to have a basket of qualities to actually become, you know, an NBA player. Like, dude, why do you think, what did you bring to the table that made yourself different from all these kamaradas that will never be made guys? Nothing. - Unfortunately in the Mexican mafia, the status mobility system is violence. You get recognized for your willingness to commit murders. - You said in the book, you described it as terrorism. - Terrorism. - It's urban, street terrorism. That's really what it is. - But unlike terrorism, which we think of as like Middle Eastern, you know, setting bombs off with killing civilians, that's driven by like a political message or a political ideology usually. It all comes back to earning. You use terrorism and violence to get people to do what you want to do so you can make money. - Murder is a very simple motivator. Everybody understands murder. And I don't care what ethnicity are, you speak violence. When somebody commits an act of violence, you know exactly what that is. And that translates to all social economic groups. Particularly our target demographic, which is the Hispanic-Gang subculture. They know, but I don't do this. I'm gonna get a hole in my hat. Or I wanna get stabbed 50 or 60 times. So I'm gonna do this. It's just the way it is. You know, the Mexican office perfected the mistake of the organization and the prison law that exists before the new vote and contemporary organization. That people had their hearts cut out or people were stabbed and thrown off of tears. The Mexican mafia has taken that and expounded on it. Still commits the same level of violence. The grigis overkill the one that stabbed somebody. Still does that. Still kills people on the streets. But to a lesser note, because they've already capitalized on that. They've taken that and they've extracted from it the honey, which is the payday. - So you guys don't have to be out there killing like it's the 1980s anymore 'cause you've done that. You've established your so embedded industry culture that you can basically just call shots and kill when you need to kill. Yes, that's how the organization works. And my day was the violence was the ultimate last resort. You didn't want to kill Camara and very few of them were killed. And you didn't want to whack a sueño and it took something monumental to kill a cardinette because that was the ultimate last resort. Violence was the last resort. - And to kill a cardinale, to kill a fellow MA brother, you had to get it approved by everybody, I believe, right? Or everybody in your prison yard? - Sometimes. - Those rules are great. - Yeah. - You got old saying in a mob, dead men have no support. Once you whack them, boom, boom. It's done, there might be some hairs raised and people might question, but he's gone. Are you gonna risk your life and your career for a dead brother? No, you're not gonna do that. You're not gonna do that. So oftentimes these hits are done in groups of five or six guys and make an agreement too. to kill somebody and exclude other members from the vote. And if another member votes no on the killing, they'll hold another vote, excluding that guy, take the vote, it's unanimous, boom, and they do it. So really, elimination is a tool, it's power grab. So everything you see is a display of and reclamation of power for members doing a hit, voting yes on that. It's because they're going to share in a province or whatever their motivation is, right? See, like me, I didn't know that. I was completely ignorant of political survival within an organization that was kind of holistic. I fully see why I'm and did just what I was told, a little that I know I was making all the errors politically and alienating so many people who were monolithic in their reputations and the history of their organization. - You really believed in it? - I believed in it. I was going to go to death row for it. I was going to kill for it. I got three life sentences for it. And I was willing to die for it until I wasn't. - Why did you want to go to death row? - I wanted my name to be known. I wanted my name to be known. Boxer from the Mexican Mafia. You're going to remember me. - Okay. And that almost happened. Tell us about the murders that got you sent to, you know, Ellie County jail for two, three years, that got you sent to Pelican Bay, got you the life sentences. We haven't even got to that yet. What would you do to go to prison? - The first murder, I ordered a woman killed. Her name was Cynthia Galbondon. Cynthia Figaro Galbondon, part of the figure role family. But she was married to the brother of a Mexican Mafia member and she was stealing dope for us and she was stealing. She was stealing and pinching the dope. In retrospect, it was minuscule. Unlike the family members of the victim that say it was only over $10. It wasn't over $10. It was the principal. The principal that we embraced during a lot of work for us and she stole from me repeatedly. That was the principal that was violated. And people have been stealing from us, from my crew. I was running area and Hawaiian gardens on Camulos in Oregon. I had a dope house there. I think they call them trap houses now. But I had a dope house there and I ran all that dope. Plus I was running around, pressuring all the drug dealers for dope. I was robbing them and extorting them. Because the Mexican Mafia was dormant at this time. - This was after your own parole in the late '80s after you got out of your first stretch, right? - Yes. - Yeah, and you're a fucking gangster. Like you got robbery crews that are just kicking in dudes' doors, home invasions, tying them up, torturing them, taking their dope and then saying, you got to work for me now. - Yep, or don't work at all. 'Cause I went out there and I went out with the premise it. You're a soy cardanans. You're a soy de la Mafia, right? I'm a brother and I'm from the mob. You're gonna pay me and guys are like, that's a prison thing, isn't it? What's the enemy? You're like, well, I'm gonna show you what it's about. And Mundo had a concept that they said called the spreading the Amigaspal or the Wacking People on the '70s and '80s. But we were doing the same thing and we picked up on him what he was doing and we started doing it. But at that time, I got a lot of political flag for it. Look at Renee, he'd lost his mind out there, he's kicking in doors, he went like a mile wild map. No, those are principal. I was pushing the principal. Are you gonna respect the organization? It is not just in prison. This is a street thing now. So we did that. So we get this girl to come and deal dope for us. She starts clipping us and I tell Moe, I says, take her, go dump her. Little Moe Ruiz. Jockelpoidean gives him the gun. It's a 357 python and it takes her to an area in oil heights and shoots her once in the head and once in the back. A couple days later, I think it was New Year's Eve. That was on the day before Christmas Eve Cynthia Galvidon. And then on the day before Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, David Galvidon. No, David Gayegos. His name is Loco or Pelón from Maravia. He's been on the hit list. I have received a message from Mexican Mafia member. Benny Peters, the guy stabbed the guy in the attorney room a year earlier while I was out on parole that said, hey, this guy's gotta go. He's a coward. And we had a meeting there. We had three Mexican Mafia members. He calls for the county jail. I accept the hit and another member who is there present with me supposed to go with me on the hit. So every time I approach this guy, but hey, let's go do this. Oh, I got, I got, I got baseball practice. Or I got this. I got 1000 different reasons why I couldn't do it. His kids, this is kids that. So I go do a parole violation. I get back out and I'm running this job at a house on Oregon and Camilo. So it's actually on Camilo's and Oregon. Yeah, Camilo's on Oregon. In white pants, gang, touring and ball heights. I'm in this house. And we have guns everywhere. We're selling dope. I have three crew members with me. And who shows up to the door? David Gayegos. The guy I agreed to kill six months earlier. And he's attempting to strong arm my drug dealers for dope. So one of the guys that man's the door kind of saying, "There's a guy out here saying he's a Mexican Mafia member wants dope." That's the stomach I'm inside. And when I see him, I'm like, oh shoot. You're not going home, buddy. [LAUGHS] And I chuckle in jazz because I'm living in the moment. But I want to say immediately, I don't take this lightly. I understand it taking a human life. It's like, a huge burden to carry. It impacted the family so terribly. But I'm in the moment telling the story. So I just want to translate that to your viewer, that's not who I am today. That's who I was then. And what you're seeing is who I was then right now. So in my mind, I'm saying, you're not going home, buddy. And I tell my friend, he'll go fix him up a shot because he's asking for dope. And I tell him, hey, you want to get high? Is that what it is? Yeah, yeah, I told him, this is my dope house and welcome. And we start talking politics, just like normal. I sit down next to him. And I tell Jack up by the end, go cook him up a lethal dose. And contrary to popular belief, a hot shot is not the baddie reaction of poisons or signs. That's not a hot shot. Hot shot is an intentional overdose. It's plausible denailability in it. Here's a heroin addict. It's an overdoses. He's found in an alley. Oh well. That's what we were initially planning with this guy. So Jack goes into the bathroom. He cooks up like 10 bintles of heroin and a bunch of coke. And we hit him with it. Boom. And the guy just goes out. So we put him in the bedroom. And I guess he's in respiratory arrest. I could hear it. That death rattle. And I say, you know what, let's make sure. I said, go cook him up some more. So we go cook up another 10 balloons of heroin. And I got him. I got his arm and I'm trying to inject him. And what does he do? He wakes up. And he looks at me. Is he trying to kill me? I said, no, but I'm going to try to give him some coke to bring him out of it. Yo, dude. And I hit him again and it goes right back out. Then we know he's gone, right? He had a little death rattle. We carry him out in a side outfit, like a Mexican blanket. We carry him out to the car in a side outfit. We had a black car called a night rider. We took it from a drug dealer. We extorted him for it. So we put him in the back seat and we take him to a place and by the other, uh, it's the other part projects off of the Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles, uh, called Spendstreet. It's like a perfect, idyllic place to commit a murder. It's like what you see out of a mob scene, dark, no lights, alley, and we don't want to the ground. I shoot him five times in the head just to be sure. So what if this guy wakes up again? I said, let's just take him here. I want to do this and make sure it's done because I can't bail at this. He can't. I mean, that's, you know, you try to whack a guy and you miss and he's out there and it's your political career. So I wanted to make sure it was done. So I shot him five times to the head with a 357 and his body was discovered the next morning. And while later, you know, the cops put the case together. Wolfie Wolf, you get arrested, um, and now you're facing the death penalty for two murders in LA County, jail. What year did you go in on 1990, January, 10th, 1990, and you were in there for how long in the county jail? Yeah, about two and a half years. OK. And this is where it gets wild. I had a lot of people might know this. I had no idea that especially back then, LA County, jail operated like a mini penitentiary. LA County, jail is probably one of the most violent places you could, you could ever do timeout. If you could survive there, you could survive anywhere. I just carried around a knife in a key everywhere I went. In fact, I had a 22 homemade zip gun in there. I had the stuff smuggled in. It was wild there. You could have anything you wanted. And the violence was so off the hook because it's, it's a political hotbed. Everybody comes there. All politics go there. It's like a hub for the Mexican Mapping. There's a lot of money to be made there. As well. Right. Like, it's so crazy because I've been to County jail and not here, but in Oregon. And I've seen how controlled and locked down and, and isolating. It is like to think that you guys could, to get in all of that stuff, like it was a real prison, like it was a yard is fucking fast. Fascinating. Like you guys have there was like real drug dealing like drug kingpinning going on in there There was I used to sell drugs for Aryan brotherhood member John Stinson and quattro grihanna But I wasn't a drug dealer. How was a drug user? That was like I didn't want to get high Yeah, you know, I never really thought about making money off a dope. I had gobs of dope, but I shoot it all right So like I own the drug dealers and and the product is free to me So that's like I was never prosperous drug dealer. Everybody's it. Renee was a big I was not you were controlling drug dealers in LA county jails You know in matter of fact when they brought whales in We would have started about one firm or say these bands. I got another one for you know pounds of dope Well, so whales like big kingpins would come in whales. Yeah without any protection Yeah, you're like they called gamblers. They drop a hundred grand at a pop a million at a pop they call whales We call them whales when they come they're they're large scale In fact two Mexican monthly members had this thing called operation world to beast It's like well to beast they go on this massive migration thing and and and I tell what why'd you call it operation world to beast So you know the world to be sick on this massive migrations right and there's always the dumb one the big one that's slow And he's going to the river the crocodiles get him But we wait for that big one that dumb one and we get him and they would actually take these kingpins hostage In the cell and Tom get on the phone sign over your boat Sign over the machetes sign over your house and they were successful at it. That was bubble but audio Castellanos and Ruben Tupi Hernandez. Yeah, so I did the same thing over there in the county jail. I'd see one. That's it. Hey bro commence Come here and I tell him Come on sign it over But I soft-handed them. Yeah, I never threatened them You're like, hey man, I paid 80 grams of that crack. Come on, man. I'll let you need a car Come on They would do it of course because big-time drug dealers are tough guys. They're not you could have got me I would have been a whale. You would have got me. I'd be like whatever you want. There you go, bro That's how they operated and he's more a car cell guys. These are just big drug dealers, right? Neighborhood drug dealers that made it big gang members are gang fringe band fringe gang members that made it big Lived in an neighborhood. So they got this level of people with residents if you live in a gang territory and not a gang member You're a resident or you're a gang member or you're a Sudan, you're a South-Sighted, right? So these guys are mainly residents a lot of them by size, but you get them and you sting them and and they take it willingly And it was just it was kind of lucrative for me. I was like, oh wow that worked So you got to just sign over his Mercedes. Yeah On the spot on the spot on a spot and deliver it took it Signed it over. Yeah The other fascinating thing about your stretch in LA County Was yeah, the way that you were calling Witnesses down meetings the way you would hold meetings by calling in brothers from prisons all over the state and there was a Align in America me it says the state's sole layman pays for the game Yeah, and that is it and truth right there would do just a piece of these guys. Yeah, this is back in the 90s Where uh cell phones didn't really exist and if they did there was those big brick phones Now everybody has cell phones every Mexican Mafia member on every prison goes to cell phone except for the feds They're not as prolific in the feds which is the federal bureau prisons But in the state of California every Mexican Mafia member has a cell phone and a backup cell phone right that's how prolific they are But back then it was like stone age. This was stone age We get out once every couple of days to use the phone And we get visits and we conduct our business that way that our business that way on the phones and they didn't have the ITMS system implement it then ITMS is inmate telephone monitoring system Which automatically records everybody use a pin number from your booking number. Yeah And your calls are recorded. So you were running your business like without a hitch in County without a hitch Everything was going fine. We're introducing drugs and contraband And it was really just a big party. Were you ordering hits or were you doing hits or besides that the stabbing in the The attorneys room Yeah, I remember that we ordered a couple of hits in there. There was uh quite a few Richard Chamberlain Was eliminated by pseudenos for John Stinson. He was eliminated during the county jail We found out later on because quate de gréda asked me a make make sure that's get done it gets done And then years later we find out that the ab is coming to him To get people eliminated for them But he's using us and the pseudenos Thinking that it's his business right one of the strikes against him There were there were quite a few eliminations of the county jail one guy got stabbed up about a hundred times and stuck under his bonk there was the interview I stabbed in in DVR I first hit angel from Santa Monica He ends up in the gang module 41 or 4700 Years later unbeknownst to me He ends up in a cell with gang members and they torture him and murder him same guys for that reason he got because I hit him years before No way and I don't even know this till recently one of my viewers informed me Uh, hey, this is this guy and and I don't think you know these facts And I really truly did wow that's how many murders are occurring and hits are occurring whether the organization At any given location. It's that kind of violence that it just becomes mundane And like oh well another one bites the dust. Yeah, I think it's while the the recent indictment In April here in LA of all these mexican mafia guys But there was only like two murders on the indictment everything else was for racketeering drug trafficking kidnapping Like two murders if you will read an indictment from the early 90s There's like 15 murders on one indictment, you know Like there was so much killing murder doesn't make money Murder brings heat So you really don't want to kill you have to kill people it's just the nature of the beast Because that's the ultimate Ultimate sanction it's the ultimate sanction and and reverberates. Yeah, like you take a rocket you throw the middle of a calm placid lake What's gonna happen? Ripples. Mm-hmm. So when you wax somebody that ripples out into the gang world Are you given credit for being this kind of pioneer of Of moving the organization from just a prison gang to an integrated criminal organization dealing with Street taxation and and You know extorting drug traffickers and things like that No, I'm nobody's ever given me credit, but I it's okay. I don't want credit. I know what I did I mean, I don't need the pat on the back. I know what I did But you really were like one of the first guys to do that. I was I was with Chico Castro Puyuigiri But I'm gonna tell you this it's those guys that really pushed it, right? The guys in the streets Puyuigiri Uh, much of the associates Gismovartigia He was like a just a Kamalala, but he was pushing pushing a hard line out there for Karna Cui Mareana Martinez who died in in Springfield, Illinois recently Uh, but these guys were like progressive thinkers, right? I was the enforcement aspect came out of our head And then we kind of refined it later But it was it took a village to do this. I couldn't take soul responsibility for doing it because That would be like Kind of megalomaniacal. Yeah, right? Like oh, I did this. You know, I'm the king. Oh, I didn't I didn't I never profess to be a genius or a top dog and they're even done myself as a leader of the organization. I was just a button You know, I just went and did what they told me to do and uh, who's that? They are they the continuous other Karnataka. Hey, this is gonna be done And then we bow down to like why right? Why? Well, he did this. He did that. How do you vote? All right cool. Let's do it Like I was that dummy. You kind of go long to get a lot. I was yeah, I was just a dummy. You know, I told my my my uh, past wife uh I told her this uh We're talking about something and she's just how can you be so fucking stupid to kill people who want to kill you And I was just at the focal moment. I said what the fuck am I doing? You know, what am I doing because these guys don't even like me. They put me on the hit list like three times And I had never done anything wrong. That's the whole thing like I had done things and 90% of the organization had never done. I I killed for it I willingly accepted life census for the organization and to have dudes a questionable intellect And and flawed moral turpitude Question me as I could have done certainly I was though uh A pristine individual. I was kind of not as aren't that But I know what I did for the organization There's guys that are members now that have never picked up a knife for the organization Have never blown anybody's brains out Never done any of those things and they're like Then the hierarchy don't mess our members and they're you know, they're like the leaders of the art I can't believe it like that guys never done anything So I went to that period where I was questioning like what am I doing? What am I doing? It just didn't seem like it was equitable to me And ultimately that's what you were saying. It it's a cannibalistic organization So even if you have all the juice and our calling shots for years eventually you'll end up on the hit list Oh certainly Very few Mexican mafia members go through and see on this case. On this case, I'd never get into a political wrangle, never get politics done, they never end up on the hit list, but just pump me on it. I don't know how they do it. Do you think maybe they're cooperating? No. There are some members that have cooperated. Well, of course, but do you think there are any members that are cooperating for years the way the Whitey Boulder of the Irish mob was cooperating with the feds for like decades? I know there are. Wow. That are still in the organization. I'm the mob wild. Honestly, we can't speak of that, but no, it happens. Okay, so what tell us how that case that double murder got adjudicated? So they got to this stage called live stage, live stage, live stage and in Los Angeles County Spirit Court. It's when they determine whether the death penalty is going to be sought and it's really based on a couple of factors. Victim relatability, sympathetic victim. Really, it's it's based on a lot of political stuff. So it's determined that they're not going to seek out that they dropped the death penalty off the table. Okay, but you were foul guilty. No, I wasn't talking guilty yet. Okay. The individual who went with us on one of those murders, I did the murders with one gun, the other gun we got rid of, but this gun, after I get done killing the Mexican mafia member in the alley, I give it to him. I say, suppose of it, don't take it to the pier and throw it off the pier. He says, okay, he saves it. He buries it and his girlfriend's back yard. And later, he gets arrested for robbery. And he tells the cops immediately, hey, all the stuff that's happening here. It's the Mexican mafia. And it's box of rickets that's doing it. And I have everything. He flips right there to get out. They release him that day. He meets with Alan Carter, head of the organized crime at the terrorism division in Los Angeles County. And they cut him a deal and he walks. He flips on us. We go through this process. And we're a year, two years in the county jail, I've already picked up two stabbings, a weapons charge, narcotics distribution in the county jail, picked up a bunch of different. I didn't care. I just didn't care anymore. It was as if I was trying to commit suicide by cop. Like, okay, you're going to wash me up. That's really do it. I'm going to show you. And so we're in this process and they approach us with deals. Anthony Obeless, the guy who took the gun and saved it for his own get out of jail free card, ends up in a cell with somebody somewhere and tells them, yeah, blamed all this on these mob guys. But I'm the one that did it impuens his own credibility. And that's that's disclosed to us later. So they start coming at us with deals. And they came out as what he fucked up. He fucked up. He fucked up. They don't have a rock solid case. No, no, no. So they come at us with a deal where they're going to cut my co-defendant, Gilbert Reese, a man slider deal, no lifetops. And they're going to give me two life sentences for 15 a life and a life without for the possibility of 20 years, plus a five year sentence for narcotics distribution. And I think about it and I think about it. And we go back and forth. And at least one of us is going to survive. Most going to get out. And I tell you what, take the deal. Yeah. So let's do it. And then back in that time, if you got 15 to life, were you, did you actually, if you behaved, not that you were going to behave, but if you did change your life around, could you actually get out? Were they letting people out that had the L? No. Okay. Like I was washed up. You washed up. They say 15 to life. If they said six months to life, you're not getting on the prison. Okay. It just didn't change that sense that I believe there. They're, they're, they're blood and guys. I think they're even letting L. Wop guys. So many people. It's a great exodus right now. How do you think I got out of prison? The loss changed. I'm sitting right here. Yeah. No cuts. No change. No nothing. Right. I'm a free man. Okay. Because the loss changed. But back then, so you're thinking, okay, life is life. I'm going to get life, but Mo will get out. Yeah. That's what we thought. So we take the plea bargain. Can I remember right after I took the plea bargain. I went to sleep in the court holding tank. Waiting for the chain. We called the bus the chain. Waiting for the chain back to the county. And I took a nap. I used a little roll toilet paper for my pillow. And I remember waking up in every fiber of my being in my brain screaming, no, no. What did you do? This is it forever. And just like fuck, I'm done. I would have nightmares after that. I remember I'd wake up and not know where I was at. I'd wake up completely dumbfounded. And look around. I said, where am I? Did I see the jail bars? That's all you do in a life sentence. You never get enough. And I'd be okay. That's what I was. Yeah. Yeah. You did have moments of clarity, but most of the time you're right. It's like you, you just wanted to kill yourself. I think that's later after I got transferred to Pelican Bay, I would shoot this, this huge amounts of dope. And I would end up on the floor. I remember one time I woke up on the floor and I had a hypodermic needle sticking on my arm and I copped with knock on the bar. It says Renee. You all right? And I woke up and I said, yep, he says, do not die. I might watch. I need to go. I remember that distinctly. Yeah. I remember distinctly. And it's like, they didn't care. They didn't not care. They just didn't want to do paperwork. No. So yeah. And I think it was really a subconscious way of committing suicide. I just, I didn't know it at the time. I don't try to end myself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, that seems what the whole, it seems like what everybody who commits murder in front of a guard or, you know, like these things, you know, you're never going to get out of the prison. They're going to keep putting you in smaller and smaller boxes. You're like rushing towards that is it is a way of slow suicide. It is. It is. I think the average individual doesn't realize that. I think it takes a certain point of maturity and development. Because really, really, when you go to prison, you're the arrested development. You see a lot of guys still speaking like what I never thought and acting like kids and joking around like kids because they're going to state them arrested development. That's what their level intellect was when they went in. Right. And they never progressed beyond that. But thankfully, I went to therapy and I did years of therapy before you even got considered for parole. Did therapy and I continued to do therapy. I go once a month, I have complex PTSD. Yeah. But I had to address that. I social personality disorder with narcissistic tendencies, right? But I wasn't diagnosed as a narcissist just as PD, right? It's like, well, how do I fix this? If I'm ever want to get out, I got to be able to address this, right? I kind of know what's wrong with me. So I started studying outside genocide, taking all kinds of rehabilitative courses. And then the more I learned, the more I wanted to know, right? Like, Oh, man, that's why I do that. Or that's what that's what that's called, you know, that's what free floating anxiety is. That's why I was having panic attacks and I didn't even know what they were. This overwhelming anxiety and sense of doom. And I didn't even know what they were. And I just put my facade up because boxer from the Mexican might was a facade, right? That was a facade. That wasn't Renee. Today I'm Renee. And that was just the image that I projected, like the alter ego. Right. So when I stripped that away, you start learning and you start developing, it's like, I don't want to kill people anymore. And I want to come in and act of violence. I don't want to harm anybody. I've been hurt, right? I saw it written somewhere. I said, one day, you're going to, you know, Carmen's going to get you or something like that. And you're going to know what it is. And I took all those victims, awareness courses and reconciliation. And I thought I knew, you know, like what, what reconciliation was? I wrote the letters. I sent it to the DA and the judge because you couldn't communicate directly with the family. It's like, I'm so sorry for what I've done. I'm not going to ask you forgiveness because that's asking too much. I can only honor your loved one by continuing to do the right thing for the rest of my life. And I thought, okay, I'm cool with this victim stuff, right? Until my son got killed. And then it hit me. You know, it hit me like, it doesn't ever go away. And how many times have I done that to people? So I think that most important thing in my life is about just giving back to the community. And then I do these interviews and my channel and everything that I do as a way to sway people. It's not a glorification. It truly isn't. It might sound like there were no throws at discussing murder, but it's really about telling people like, bro, there's no life in this. I mean, if you choose to do this, say knock yourself off, bro, be the best gangster you can be if that's who you are. But I'm here to tell you, it ain't all that. And there's peace on the other side of this. You don't have to do what I did. You don't have to testify in all these cases. You don't have to do all those things. But if you just choose not to commit violence anymore, become a better person each day, like whatever it is, just to be a better person, right? I think that's important. And it's unfortunate that a lot of people can't get beyond that limited scope of thinking that I got to live other rules are going to be a homeboy. That's not life, that's doing life. - That's right. Okay, so it's 2003, when you decided to drop out, you remember the day where you were and tell us what led you, it had been leading to this for a while, but basically your life was in danger, and you were sick of it. So tell us how you went from leaving the MA to cooperating to then getting out. - So getting out of prison. - March 22nd, 2002, right? - Okay. - I get called out for medical. And it's normal thing, you go in your boxers and you're tennis shoes and you're a t-shirt and they put you in waste chains. They walk you out there, but this is a little different that day. There's a bunch of cards out there, they're very, very secretive, and they're all standing in the door to each block, cell block, and what as soon as I step out of the unit, there's like four of them waiting right there and they get around me. And they say, "The secret squirrels want to see you." Secret squirrels are being agents and I thought it was IGI, I thought it was institutional stuff, which what it was at first. But I said, "Yeah, sure, no problem." But all this time I'm going to the huge battle of my buddy, Darryl Bocker. Darryl Bocker, I was like my best friend and we're trying to kill each other. I finally lost all support in the organization. And I know it's just a matter of time. I had already contemplated locking up. I even wrote a note one day in a cell. They had these things called request for interview forms. I wrote, "Hey, man, I want to lock up." And then I got, I came shamed and I ripped it up and said, "No, I'm not doing that. Fuck that. I'm going to weather this storm." And then we tried a couple times to stab each other. So this is what they hit me with this, right? I just got a visit and they pulled me up for medical and I'm in medical. We do the weight, temperature, all that good shit, blood pressure, and then they walked me in there. And that's a little guy named Renewateria, a little cowboy, he's about five, five. He's got a bull-o-tie and got a big old child dipping his mouth in. René, I know him from the Ami. Yes, and all. Hi, he's from the Ami, right? And he starts talking to me, say, "Yeah, I think you're in trouble." And I said, "No, you're tripping wrong. I'm not even from the mile. What are you talking about?" You're not supposed to acknowledge the existence of the organization of the authorities. He's just not. It's a real violation. It was unsmokered rules, right? But he gives me a dip and a cup of coffee and he says, "Well, let me show you," right? So he pulls out this thing and I was pocket. He gets it out. It's a little recorder. It's a recorder. A little tiny one. They say, "I'm going to let you listen to something." And I listen to it, it's my voice. It's my last visit where I'm saying, "I'm so fucking tired of this. What would you do if I wasn't this anymore?" And he turns it off right there. That's all he played. He says, "Let me change your life." And I was like, "Whoa, that moment. Got a lump in my throat like." 'Cause I knew I was going to do it. I knew I was going to do it. At some not a man, I'm not going to do it. But I was shaking that belly. You ever get really scared of your stomach shakes? You get that trembling? I was doing that. And he opens up the freaking cell door, shakes my hand. It says, "Let me change your life." You could save lives. And I said, "Well, what is this in tail?" He already had Sacramento United States Attorney's office, the director's office, on the phone waiting for me. So he said, "Come out here." So we go out there, we get on the phone, talking to a special agent, Devon Hawks from the SSU, Brian Perry, the director of the SSU, and somebody else was on the line. And we start talking. I don't believe it. I don't believe that you're going to do this. How do we know you're not giving us? And so we're talking about. And he says, "Hey, man, is anybody going to get hurt?" You know, we don't want anybody to get hurt. We know somebody's on the list, who's on the list. But tell them this guy, and this guy, Angel Valencia, and she know the other guy, the other guy, they're going to get whacked, right? And then I snap, I'm telling. I say, "Hey, hey, I don't want to talk to you guys. I don't want to talk." And they calm me down. I guess they got like a psychological formality. They use the ease you down when you get jumpy, right? Because they start talking to me and soothing me. And then finally, I tell them, I need immunity. I need immunity. I need attorney. I need this. I need data. I'm watching every movie that I'm thinking. I want to fit the amendment. I want to vote in the fifth. I'm doing all that, right? Like ridiculous Hollywood shit. This is calm down. This is right now we've already moved your stuff. Unbeknownst to me, they already went to myself and moved my stuff out. At that moment, everybody knew I had PCed up. They didn't even have to hear from me. They knew boxer checked in. Boxer checked in. So they said, "We're going to move you over here to this location. It's safe. It's completely filled with debriefers. It's a PC unit." So we go to that process and it will be down there. The next day I'm like, "No, I want to go back. I don't want to do this." They come and see me. I said, "Oh, man, fuck this. I ain't all right. I ain't doing this, all right? I'm not doing this." And they do this little process again, a little counseling thing, right? Everybody goes through this, chill, bro. You know, you're having buyers or more. It's done. You can't go back. And slowly but surely they start pulling me out every day, every day. Until finally, FBI United States Attorney, the Directive Corrections, they all fly up there. And we have a proper. That's where they go to the real debriefing, right? And they're taking notes. FBI just taking notes. And like you see in movies, they bring us to take the Terry dinner and we have dinner. I have dinner with these guys. It's kind of weird, you know? What are you offering? What are you telling? Telling everything you know about. Everything you know about. Because the proper is the test of veracity of your sincerity and the credibility of what you're saying, right? Like the veracity is everything because if you don't do that, then a defense attorney is going to get ahead of it and find out that you're withheld. That you withheld because you thought you're going to criminate yourself, but they have this process called queen for a day, right? So you have immunity for anything you say that day. So you dump it. You vomit it out. Everything. You put it on the table because you got immunity for that. So you can talk about cold cases. If you can call cases, everything. Everything. Because I tell you what, when you get in, how do you get in the gang? Who did you know? What murders do you know about? What establishes you do? What murders you agree to? All that goes into your debrief. So you hear people saying, like, oh, no, I debrief, but I only told them myself or I only did this or I only did that. I only had to tell about this one shooting. That's not true. A real debrief is a real debrief. And that's what it tells. It tells cracking your chest open and saying, this is what I've done. So we went to that process. This is what we're going to get a play and we're going to come get you. And they flew me out at FBI flew me out to Long Beach from Pelican Bay. I stayed in a local facility for about 13 months with multiple debriefs. They don't flown back 9/11. All that stuff was, you know, all the resources are going to your domestic terrorism. And there was no Mexican mafia indictment. So I got you dropped off on a PCR Lancaster, started using dope, sling and dope. And then a couple years into that, I relapsed, you know, I've been sober for a few years. >> And what was the offer, like, you're checking in, you're dropping out of the gang, but they didn't make an offer to, like, get you out early, right? >> There's no way they could have did that. At the time, California Piddle Code 1170D1 stipulated that you couldn't alter your sentence after 120 days on 30 something years into this damn thing. >> You're just talking, you're just selling everything because you don't want to be part of the gang anymore. >> Yeah. >> You're not offering to, like, get out to gain something very slowly, except for just staying safe and going to a PCR. >> Yeah, that's all I wanted with a PCR. I didn't even testify at that point. >> Right. >> Didn't even, it wasn't even on the table, okay, right? Because I thought of that, like, is there a way you're going to do my sentence? It's nothing we can do. There's no federal statute, and the feds, they have federal rules of criminal procedure, rule 35, FRCP, rule 35. At any time the government can make an application for sentence reduction and get a granite, right? So you see, you guys are the thousand years of the feds getting out. That's how it's done, right? But they couldn't take the existing state sentence and convert it to a federal sentence. Just don't wait to do it. There was no legal mechanism available for that. I exercised, I hired attorneys. I had an attorney's point, I had an attorney for 10 years that we tried every way to do this. There was no way to do it. So there was no deal, I couldn't cooperate my way out of prison. So that didn't exist. After I went back to Lancaster, a guy by the name of Jeff Bosket, DEA, TFO, he's a task force officer, came up after they killed Jerry Ortiz, a Los Angeles sheriff's and Hawaiian guards a shot him, a gang member killed a deputy sheriff and it's the same one for this case. And he blew a DEA black cock up there and picked me up, Lancaster State Prison, flew me down to that same place that I originally debriefed at and kept me down. It started a process over 10 years where different agencies, Homeland Security Investigations, DEA, ATF, FBI, bunch of local and state prosecutors for various counties would ask me We want you to testify. We want to testify and and and these are cases that they're making. Yeah, are they Rico cases mostly? Some of the recalls. Some of the recalls. Some of the states. Some are 186.22 step back. They gang enhancements. Most of them are those, right? But I did. For these people that you know, some of them I did know, but the majority of the people 99.9 percent of them never heard of them. I was just coming in as a stark witness. Our communications analyst because I would get all the wiretaps collected from all these places of the ITMS system and they're given to me and they say, "René, find it." So what are you getting out of this? I'm just in a cell. What I ask, this is what I ask, because I have a vision, right? I have a vision. I know they can't get me out of prison, but they can document my cooperation. I said, look, I'd like a letter from you. Document in my cooperation. I'm not asking you to endorse my parole. Other than the document, the case that I worked on. And I did that and I got over 100 letters from every agency you could think of. I'd be for the State Department. You asked the State Department. I met with a CIA agent. I'm dead serious. Wow. I'm dead serious. Wow. What do they want to know? His thing was economics, economics. In fact, they wanted me to write a curriculum for the business, I could school economics for USC. Marshall School of Business, I think, is called like one of the prestigious economics schools at USC. And I would have done it, but they wanted me to do a pro bono at them. Get the fuck out of here. You want me to write a free manuscript for free? Get the fuck out of here, right? It's writing hard for me, right? Yeah. I write, but I don't really like it. I'd rather speak, right? But I would have done it. I met with every agency there is. Every agency, even met with people from other countries. And each instance, I'd ask them document my cooperation. That's all I want. So for the first few years that I was being housed, and I was housed out of the CDC custody for like 10 years. Like I'm living in substations. And I'm living good. All right. What does that mean? Substations. So police station. That's where I live. Really? So moving me from locations to locations, whatever agency I'm with, they have a location that they contract with or they have an agreement with where they can put me. Some were better than others. But it was like anything I had ever experienced. I had big screen TV with computer games. And so it's like an apartment. Yeah. But I'm locked up. Yeah. I'm locked up. They have the same thing in downtown Los Angeles for Whitsack, the official federal witness security program. Underground in these tunnels. They have a little apartments down there where people go down there and stay. So I'm living like that. And they, the California border prison hearings, which is a pro board and the CDC start contacting my handlers. Hey, this guy's got a pro hearing coming up. That's I'm not I pass. It's not my pass, right? And I want to go. And so finally, after like three times I did this in attorney context, my handler, Jeff Boskins says, I need to see him. So he comes up and says, why are you using the guys? I don't think they're ever going to let me go. So I show them everything, all the documents and everything, all the stuff that I've done. And I still hadn't done like really in depth therapy or rehabilitation. And he just looks at and says, bro, you're a candidate. Don't you want to go home? He says not and they just started the great exodus in the CDC. They had created the elder law that all that stuff was coming into play, right? We're like a few thousand people had already paroled. Right. They were people were getting out. That was the very beginning of them in 2014, 2015. And I said, okay, I'm going to go then. So I get my packet together, do my pro plans. I go and they deny me. And I say three years. It was a lackcaster. And I remember driving out of linecaster after the denial. And I saw these rainbows double rainbow because of the rainy day. And I read the Bible right. I used to read the Bible graciously. And I remember that Noah, after the big flood, remember he built the ark and the flood of the earth and and got me to covenant. So I'm going to send a rainbow to you as a covenant, right? And I just thought about that. That's a covenant. And I went after 18 months. I went back to the board and oh, they grant it. They grant my parole, right? And front of governor Jerry Brown. It's it because here's the process. You go to the parole hearing. The parole hearing recommends your parole. Finds you suitable. They then do an investigation. And then it goes to the governor's office to this unofficial reversal panel to find out if you were politically viable to release. And then the governor will be made a recommendation and dorset or don't endorse it. He can take four actions. He can take no action, which is one. He could modify the finding. He could approve the finding or he could reverse the finding. So I go through this process multiple times with Jerry Brown. And the governor does that for every inmate, every lifer that's a murder. Oh, okay. There's a murder. There's only four states in the United States that do this. And California is one of them. I see. But I thought I was a shooing because two months earlier, governor Jerry Brown said the attorney general, come out, Kamala Harris is office. Got a letter signed by Kamala Harris too. Wow. And Kamala Harris sends a representative down to see me. And they asked me to be an expert for governor Jerry Brown. Because the state in mates in Asker versus Brown, the big lawsuit that got him our released. The state was being sued. So I write a 22 page expert witness report for her governor Brown. And everything seems cool on 28 days to parole. And by all for all intents and purposes, it seems like it's going. But then Los Angeles Police Department chief Charlie Beck asked me to do a training seminar for these swanky, swanky guys that called boosters go to the young president's organization like all multi-millionaires. So it's kind of like a business nightclub thing they take me to. And I do a presentation contemporary business practices in Mexico. And I do it. It goes down well. I'm given away books, signing books. And one of the cops who's pissed off because it didn't receive over time that day calls channel 4 news. And as soon as we exit the building cameras everywhere, helicopters are following us. And it just blows my whole cover. Jerry Brown reverses my parole on the day after they call me into the office. I'm at a line catcher's day prison. This is a the governor's office just called looks like they're going to regret your parole tomorrow. And I'm like on cloud nine. Later that night they call me the office and governor just took your parole. It's because of the how it looks exposure. The optics. Yeah, the optics. Like they're letting this repudiated mobster murder or out. So they made me what is known as a pick case, a public interest case. Because the media would just slaughter me every time I went up for parole plus I had a book and plus I'm a high profile mobster. So that's a huge mountain to overcome. So I went to that process five times. But during an interim each time they granted me the governor would write and call the reversal letter. Like you lack insight, you failed to adequately articulate why you participated so much violence or you lack adequate parole plans. So each time I he wrote this, I would study that as a road map of the future hearing or dress those issues. And all the while I'm going to therapy. And as I went, I started to realize that you know what? He's right. I can't explain it. And so I started learning. And in therapy and rehabilitation, there's growth, right? There's growth. And let's get this clear. I firmly believe in rehabilitation. Like I believe that any mobster has the ability to change. Like I'm the poster child for never being allowed out of prison. Like that's the guy who should have stayed in prison or bananas. Because he's cut through a killer, right? He's a turd. He's taking a good air. I was that guy. But if I could do it, anybody could do it. So I don't try to keep them in prison. That's not my job. It's not my moral responsibility. They keep themselves in prison by continuing to participate in what they're doing, right? But they have the opportunity because I had those tools available to me and I took advantage. I went to those seminars as boring as they were. And some of them might even get anything out of them. But I jumped to the hoops and I checked all the boxes. So ultimately I had what it's called a clinical risk assessment. It's a psyche belt, right? And they found me a low risk for recidivism. It's like the most glowing report that I could ever have, right? And I go to the board the fifth time and the governor denies me again five times in a row. And the hardest part was breaking my wife each time. Hey, we're going to get it, but expect the reversal. And then we're going to go through the appellate process. And I peeled twice and lost each time. A guy named Brian Williams, a spirit court judge on a Los Angeles So it just recently passed a colon cancer. What did I mean each time? Conservative guy. And pro law enforcement. But the sixth time, I go, and I get granted. And he-- no, the fifth time, he reverses it again. And I challenge it in the courts. I go to the prison law office, and Laura Shepard, attorney of San Diego, and I establish a little legal team. And they write a red habeas corpus. Excellent red. And Judge Ryan Williams sees it again. And they call me out for an interview. Or the case, they want me to testify on. Because all this time, all these years, I'm going in and out of the prison system, going to testify on cases, right? And so I'm in the office for the gang investigators on a regular thing, or I'm going to go out to court. I'm just going to be calling you and talking to you and then going to play your court. Just so happens that day, my attorney calls the prison. And says they need to speak to Renan Rekus. And I'm with the gang investigators. He says, he gets to be on the phone. He says, hey, Renan. That's it, what's up? And he says, congratulations. You're on the writ. And it just fucking hit me. Like I couldn't speak, you know, just so emotional. And he says, hey, they're going to appeal it. They've already appealed that they asked for a stay. Courts ordered them to release me immediately. But they asked for a stay of execution on that order. So we might have maybe two, three years to go on the process of appealing, right? But I know we won. We won. Just so happens, I have another parole hearing coming up. Because after they deny you, they immediately schedule with any team months. And there's a lot of debate internally to say, don't go. You have the grant already. You're Ritz being granted. Why risk it? I go. I go against my wife's wishes. Don't fucking go. What if you do something wrong? What if you say something wrong? Because each parole hearing is different. Different commissioners, different personalities. And I get the student, Robert Barton. Fucking prick, parole commissioner. Just tears me up. It puts me under investigation, tears me up on a-- And you can't defend yourself. Like you can on a witness stand. If you're talking to parole commissioner, you have to show humility, obedience, and all kinds of stuff you got to do, right? But I finally understand why he did it. He tears me up, puts me under investigation. And they postpone the hearing for six months. And all the while, I'm thinking, why the fuck did I come this hearing? Why didn't I listen to my wife? Why didn't I listen to my journey? And I passed the investigation. And he grunts my parole. And it's during this process that we're waiting for the appeal. I later found out that the Attorney General's office talked to one of my case agents. They were just out of function, social function for law enforcement. It's just, hey, can you give me your opinion on something? And the Attorney General asked this of my handler. He didn't know of my handler. It's like I had a case this guy, Renee and Regus, man, and we're kind of wobbling on it, whether we're going to proceed with it or not. What do you know about them? And my handler tells them everything about me. And soon thereafter, the governor decides to send me in bunk. That means after that program, the board's recommended me. The governor gets the decision. It says, you guys make a decision. And that's the finality of it. The in-bond curing, which is about 27 parole commissioners, voted unanimously to release me. And I got released 30 days thereafter. Monumental battle. Yeah. Yeah, they did not want to let you out. No. Had to beat them. Do you think that you would have got released without your cooperation? Yeah. I think that everything that I did, I definitely think it helped. There's no doubt about that. I don't think there's an inmate in the history of the United States, this went to a parole board with the kind of law enforcement support that I had. I even had cops testifying in my parole hearings. Might be out. So I don't think there's another inmate they could provide that kind of support, right? Do I think it helped? Certainly it helped. Certainly it helped. Maybe even if maybe if you hadn't cooperated, you might have still got out of just what it's taken longer. That, but it also came to hinder me. Both companies cited that my cooperation made me a target of the Mexican mafia, and thereby threatening the public in the event that they shoot me in a public place. Another one was that I'm gaming the system. And how do I know my cooperation is sincere? Well, I'm thinking after about 300 cases and 65 fucking trials, Wendy determined the 65 judges and 65 juries, they found me credible. And all of a sudden, you get a bright idea that I'm not credible. Now, on governor's office, utilize me as an expert witness. And you found me credible enough to represent you and all of a sudden it comes to this political decision and I'm not credible. That's what really burned me up about the governor's office. That's what burned me up about that political process. I think that that should be removed from any governor, having the power and the ultimate power to reverse its decision for political purposes. I agree. Did you have to testify against any formerly close carnalas? No, you know, there's only been a couple of carnalas that I was close to. Daryl Baca, Little Shy, Black Dan, Sammy Villama. That's really it. John Cooper, I used my friend. What was my friend? Did anybody else-- has anybody gotten out? Anybody that used to run with any mobsters released? Yeah. There's a Roy Boerriva C. Peroll. In fact, I saw him in Lancaster. He was a drop-out, I'm a drop-out, I'm a Lancaster. And he's there. And it's close level four yard, all the PC gangs are there. They don't bother us. They had a problem with those guys. They didn't like me, but that was OK. Nobody likes me. So it doesn't really bother me, right? I don't function based on people's perception of where I am. So Roy Boerri was there. And I heard he got Peroll a couple years after that, which gave me great hope, right? Then they perolled Mike Thompson, the AB guy commissioner. He's coming in tomorrow. Really? Yeah, that's awesome. So Mike Thompson gets Perolled. And I really boosted my hopes. And then a couple other bombs. There's like Alberto Leto Perolls. Why'd you guys start Perolling, right? They start Perolling, and it still took that. They didn't have the profile that I did, the media, social media profile. I didn't have any of those things. I had a big, a digital footprint. I think that's a really a thing I'm on doing. I wrote a, I collaborated in a book with Chris Blackhand. And I was bigger than life. And I think that bit me on the ass. I think that's what the governor's were. Right. OK, we're going to deny you. Right, he's doing this to a grandstand. Yeah, yeah, make it all about himself. Yeah. So we have your face blurred out. What is your level of risk? How realistic do you think you are? Obviously you're on the hit list for life. In today's day and age, do you still think you could, they could reach out and touch you if they wanted to? See that back, back right there. It's got a defense tool in there. That's how real it is. It's real. Wow. Not fake. Yeah, there's got to be some old homeboys sitting in the shoe somewhere that are wanting to get their hands on you. Right? Look, I think the whole subculture has changed. I think that the complete understanding of the consequences of doing something like that is immediate. To whack me, that's going to be a world knows. They're going to put it on every news channel everywhere. It's not going to be a small thing. And it's not going to be this thing where you're going to get away with it. No. Look, I've accepted that. I've accepted that like, okay, that's part of what I signed up for. I'm not afraid because I can do as much damage as they can do. And I'm not going to be one of those guys. We're just going to walk up, put a gun on my head and shoot me. I'm shooting back. I'm shooting back. So if they want that smoke, okay, you know, I don't want it. I hope that I'd never see another game member of the rest of my life. They live in peace and I live in peace. But if they come, one of us is not leaving. One of us is not leaving. That's for sure. Wow. And you have no more government protection. You have no, it's not like a wet-sex situation. I have some layers of protection. Okay. I can't discuss those. But there are layers of protection. Thank you. Stay. Is that for life or just a certain set time? Can you have only been home now for four years for an extensive period? Okay. You were released, you got out in 2022. Yeah, July 30th. Wow. Coming up up up four years, which is like nothing. It's everything, bro. Of course it is. Every day you were inside for 32 years. The terrible part is it didn't seem like there was like nothing. And now every day is an adventure. Like I was where I live at. We have a pool in the backyard, a chqueuxing. And I got my big old Connie Corson. I got a Connie Corson. Beast. What is a Connie Corson? Yeah. I don't know, people call them cane corsals. - A grill? - It's a dog, it's a beast, or is it either a barbecue or a dog or one of those two? We have all that stuff in the bag there. And I'm back there, I'm docking down IPAs. And my wife's feet are dangling in the pool. And I'm smoking a nice cigar. And I got a good little buzz going on. And I looked around, it's like an oasis bag. They got a little palm trees and banana trees and all that stuff. And I just took it in for the moment, like, a fuck of free. Every freaking day, I never wanna lose that feeling. - Yeah, amen, don't. - I don't know. - Don't, well, Renee, it's been a true honor. It just makes everything, all the stress of this podcast is worth it for interviews like this. So we'll promote your book and also your YouTube channel, which you're fucking on YouTube killing it. So yeah, promote that first. - Yeah, my name's Renee Ricas. And I do have a podcast called Rename Ricas Uncensored. Please like, subscribe, join. - But tell us what you do a lot. It's interesting what you do. So just, you know, my YouTube channel is all about revelation of mafia communications. I do mafia profiles. I talk about my personal experiences and debriefing. And I put it all out there, there's no words on told, right? But one of the things we really do is we unpack interceptive communications, title threes, videotapes, body cams, the whole nine yards, real cases, real murders, real legal cases, and all these players I know, maybe the cooperating these cases have been consulted on them. And I give my interpretation to the layman is still what's happening. - That's fascinating. So you can actually see that these people exist. You know, the objective isn't like monetizing, but monetizing is important. I'm not even going to lie about that. I got to pay bills too. - Yeah. - You know, I got to pay bills. We all got to pay for gas. We all got to pay for taxes. We got to do all those things, right? So making money is important. But the real intent of my channel is to get the message out. Like the black can, I was like, if we could display one person and stop them from participating or leave the lifestyle, then my job is done. So by one of these videos, one of the active guys in prison sees it and says, I'm out. Even if I'm gonna stay in prison forever, I'm gonna live in peace, I don't have to kill anybody. That's a huge accomplishment. - Yeah. - And that's really the objective of the channel. - So check that channel out. It'll be collabed with my channel on this episode. And then the black hand, it's a great book. It's a great, I mean, it's wild to this shadow organization, the secret society exists and in California. And you know, really is probably the strongest mafia, homegrown mafia we have left in the United States. - Really, it's the predominant crime syndicate in California. And it's quickly growing. I think the unrealized potential of the organization hasn't even been seen yet. And if you look at it in terms of organizations, the mob is really in its nasancy. Like you have Yakuza been around 1000 years and thieves of the law, they've been around about 700 years. You have many mafia and all these other guys, right? Been around for centuries. The Mexican mafia has been around about 70 years. And look at the advances it's made being based in prison. Think about when they get out and make it a society-centric organization where members are solely for the streets. I think it's unrealized potential. Real threat. - Yeah. And Rick, guys, thank you so much, Cardinal. Appreciate it, man. - It's been a pleasure, brother. - All right, you guys. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)