Prison was Samuel Villalba’s area.
On the inside, he was Negro from Artesia, a Mexican Mafia member whose expression was the rules to the hundreds of Latino crew members who fall under the syndicate’s effect.
Inside jail, he was an ex-con with a failing heart and a darker past. His muscular body, which had previously been tattooed with the Mexican Mafia’s dark side, had gotten thin. A yurt on the side of a motorway served as the house.
Villalba was imprisoned for 16 years for assaulting a other member of the Mexican Mafia, and he was eventually exonerated. The statement was dying. The two men who carried weapons in gloved fingers through the tent where Villalba lived on January 10, 2021 carried it out.
The Long Beach Police Department detained one of the alleged snipers last month, but the situation remained unanswered. Andrew Reyna, 48, has pleaded not guilty to murder costs. His lawyer declined to comment.
More than three decades ago, Villalba, 64, was detained in Folsom for drug hands, according to jail records that The Times reviewed. His life and death were shaped by his association with a group whose scope is as broad as its remembrance.
Villalba returned to south L.A. after being released in the late 1980s. County, where he took part in a drive by the Mexican Mafia to take the state’s street gangs under their command. Crowds of crew members became aware that they were now required to pay “taxes” at meetings held in playgrounds and community centres, according to an investigation conducted by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and FBI. Refusing to oppose may result in the “green light,” which may mean being shot on the streets and stabbed in jail.
Villalba even established herself far from the group. After getting out of jail, he went to see an old colleague from outside. Villalba’s family was introduced to him by the friend.
Pearl Villalba recalled seeing her future husband move up to their house in a pickup truck, wearing “raggedy” clothing.
” He did n’t interest me at all”, she told The Times.
Villalba, 17 years her junior, asked her out on a deadline. She declined. Every day he saw her, he asked. She finally gave in.
They went to Ports O’Call, Redondo Beach and Long Beach. He asked if she would marry him and took her to Las Vegas. She said no. The next time they went to Vegas, she said well.
Pearl liked that he treated her children from prior unions with kindness. She knew he was involved in prison groups —” He had a great ol’ ‘ M’ on him”, she said, gesturing to her torso— but she did n’t question.
” He’d say,’ Do n’t worry about it, honey,'” she recalled. ” That was their company. Nothing was ever mentioned”.
According to a secretly recorded 1995 conference that The Times reviewed, Villalba and other young users of his group got into a nasty argument in Artesia.
The innovators were the children of Luis” Huero Buff” Reyes, one of the Mexican Mafia’s members. ” All the laws that we live by now, he’s the one that started them”, another Latino Mafia part, Raymond Shryock, said at the meeting. ” But his household believes that they’re beyond reproach”.
In a campground area, Shryock, Villalba, and about a dozen other members of the Mexican Mafia had gathered to discuss business. They did n’t know the FBI and Sheriff’s Department had bugged the room with hidden cameras and tape recorders.
According to Shryock, Flores ‘ children “wanted to eliminate Negro because they thought Negro disrespected them.”
” I know that home”, Shryock continued. ” I grew up with them, and I know how they think. But I sat the , jefa , over. I sat down the children. I said,’ Appearance, person. You’re going to honor Sammy.’ I said,’ You’re going to accomplish what you’re told. You’re not going to move on his feet.’ And I said,’ If you do, I’ll be the first one to come over here and do everything to you.'”
Next Shryock turned to Villalba. He had been accused of conspiring to destroy a rival Mexican Mafia part without the group’s support. If correct, Shryock warned Villalba,” that’s an involuntary death word”.
Shryock claimed he believed Villalba, but he refuted it. In the first criminal case brought against the Mexican Mafia, both gentlemen were afterwards charged.
Villalba fled to Arizona, splitting time between Tucson and short trips to see his home in Southern California, his family said.
” The authorities were watching us at all days”, she said. Again, she said, the FBI sent a “rat” to their house to inquire about her father.
Officials tracked Villalba down at a motel in Buena Park after five times on the run.
Federal prosecutors charged that he had voted in favor of killing three Mexican Mafia people who’d fallen out of favor: Conrad” Big D” Garcia, a born-again Christian. Charles” Charlie Brown” Manriquez, an informal consultant to the 1992 picture” American Me”, which enraged the Mexican Mafia with its portrayal of a founding member being sodomized. And Donald” Small Man” Ortiz, targeted for the vague offence of “disrespecting” the Latino Mafia.
Garcia passed away in 2012 from biological factors. In the 1992 cover job Ramona Gardens, Manriquez was killed. Before a shooter dressed as a policeman killed him in Chino in 2021, Ortiz survived many problems while incarcerated.
In 1996, Villalba admitted to criminal. While he served a 16-year name, gangs in east L. A. County continued to support him, documents show.
In 2006, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents overheard two of the group’s goals complaining that Villalba’s woman was asking for money and had tapped their phones. An agent stated in an oath that if the group members agreed to send her$ 400, that she would have anticipated that amount every day.
However, according to law enforcement records that The Times reviewed, Villalba was declared to be dead after assaulting a fellow member of the Mexican Mafia without the group’s authorization.
In a recorded phone call, a resident of the Victorville federal penitentiary said that his errors” could n’t be fixed.” ” He’d been skating on thin ice for a long time anyway”.
A prisoner-sucker-punched Villalba while he was exercising in Victorville, according to a film that The Times reviewed. Villalba was beaten, kicked, and throttled by two other prisoners with ligatures, which were only stopped by soldiers spraying them with substance.
Villalba resigned from jail in 2012. He had sent his wife hand-drawn tickets for every Valentine’s Day, anniversary and birthday. Along with his words and pencil illustrations of Mexican rebels and Ancient warriors, she kept the letter in an album.
But after getting out, she said, Villalba took up with a new person. ” I waited for him all those times”, she said. No, for him to deceive me in that manner.
However, the two remained polite, Pearl said. He visited her from time to time, bringing caffeine or plants. He occasionally slept on her mattress. According to Pearl, he spent his days riding his bicycle and hanging out at a liquor store in the area. He was allegedly residing in a camp on the San Gabriel Riverbed.
Villalba had moved his camp to north Long Beach near the 91 Freeway by 2021. He was suffering from hepatitis and open sores on his shoulders, according to a sheriff’s statement. He had tried using a fake report and audio tape to apply to them.
The evening of Jan. 10, two people approached the camp on foot, lawyers alleged in a problem. One was Reyna, who had spoken to an unknown prisoner by telephone and promised to “take treatment of Town Southeast” — a guide to Villalba’s town in east L. A. County, prosecutors wrote in the problem.
Reyna, a part of the Eastside Paramount gang known as” Boxer,” was a full-timer under the Mexican Mafia, but not a full-timer, according to a law enforcement official who was not permitted to speak in public.
The second suspect was n’t identified in the complaint. According to the file, the two men wore latex gloves to protect their DNA and fingerprints.
The two made their way into the tent by climbing through a chain-link border hole. According to the problem, they asked for Villalba, found him and shot him to suicide in his tent.
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