LOS ANGELES — A federal jury convicted four members of Mara Salvatrucha, the violent street gang and designated terrorist organization known as MS-13, of brutally murdering three victims in the Angeles National Forest, including one whose heart was carved from his chest and whose dismembered body was thrown down a canyon.
The guilty verdicts on racketeering conspiracy and violent crimes in aid of racketeering — murder — came after a 17-day trial in the Central District of California. The gang “implemented rules that require its members to use murder and extreme violence to rise within its ranks,” according to evidence presented at trial. All four defendants remain in federal custody and face one or more mandatory sentences of life in federal prison.
The killings spanned from March 2017 to June 2017 and were carried out on behalf of MS-13’s Los Angeles operation, which functions through subsets known as cliques, including the Fulton clique in the San Fernando Valley and the Francis clique around MacArthur Park. The gang derives income from drug trafficking, extorting legal and illegal businesses, and committing robberies.
In March 2017, one victim was accused of painting a rival gang’s graffiti. Velasquez authorized the murder. Guzman, Garcia, and others abducted the victim, strangled him, and drove him to the Angeles National Forest, where they attacked him with machetes, dismembered his body, carved out his heart, and threw his remains into a canyon. In April 2017, Guzman and co-conspirators killed a second victim who had fled El Salvador without MS-13’s permission while the gang investigated him for cooperating with law enforcement. A conspirator used the Facebook account of a teenage girl to catfish the victim, who was lured to the forest and killed. In June 2017, Castillo, Garcia, and co-conspirators murdered a third victim, an MS-13 associate accused of overstating his position in the gang. He was taken to the Angeles National Forest, where he was stabbed and hacked to death.
Federal prosecutors have now secured more than 30 convictions in the broader case. In November 2025, five other MS-13 members were convicted of committing six murders to advance their standing in the gang; their sentencing hearings are scheduled in the coming months.
The FBI, the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office investigated the case. Special Assistant United States Attorney Eric W. Siddall of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, along with Assistant United States Attorneys Jason C. Pang of the Transnational Organized Crime Section and William Larsen and Suria M. Bahadue of the Criminal Appeals Section, prosecuted the case.
U.S. District Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. scheduled sentencing hearings for all four defendants for Oct. 20.