A federal jury Monday convicted five members of MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, for their role in a string of murders, including a man whose body was found in the Angeles National Forest north of Santa Clarita more than five years ago.
In addition to organized criminal activity, the gang members were convicted of six murders “to advance their standing in the gang,” according to a statement from the Department of Justice about the gang formed by Salvadoran immigrants in 1980s Los Angeles.
The murders were “killings in which the victims varyingly were strangled, shot, stabbed with knives or a machete, beaten with a baseball bat, then, in some cases, had their bodies thrown off a cliff or down a hill in the Angeles National Forest,” according to the DOJ statement.
At the conclusion of a nine-week trial, the jury found Walter Chavez Larin, 26, of Panorama City; Roberto Alejandro Corado Ortiz, 30, of Baldwin Park; and
Edwin Martinez, 28, of Cypress Park; guilty of one count of conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO.
Chavez and Corado also were found guilty of two counts of violent crimes in aid of racketeering murder, or VICAR murder. Martinez was found guilty of three counts of VICAR murder. Bryan Alexander Rosales Arias, 28, of South Los Angeles, was found guilty of one count of VICAR murder. Erick Eduardo Rosales Arias, 27, also of South Los Angeles and Bryan Rosales’ brother, was found guilty of one count of VICAR murder.
“Cases such as this one serve as a reminder that MS-13 has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization,” Akil Davis, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, said in the release. “The defendants in this case carried out barbaric attacks on their victims to simply enhance their ranking within the gang. I’m proud of the hard work that went into this trial by agents and prosecutors, which resulted in a guilty verdict and a measure of justice for the victims, and which will effectively remove murderers and terrorists from Los Angeles communities.”
The deaths were described as “grisly” by DOJ officials, acts aimed at furthering the gang’s violent rules and regulations.
Larin, known by several aliases but listed in the complaint as “Chavez,” is a known “shot caller” and leader of MS-13’s Fulton clique.
“On Jan. 13, 2019, defendant Chavez ordered (Oscar Fuentes’) murder because (Fuentes) abandoned MS-13 and was addicted to methamphetamine,” the indictment read. Later that same day, Chavez handed one of his co-conspirators a .38-caliber revolver and ordered the shooting.
After exchanging coded messages on Facebook messenger, defendants Chavez, Yefri Alexander “Silent” Revelo, Edwin “Desorden” Martinez and Carlos Daniel “Chellito” Orellana Gonzalez took Fuentes from Whitsett Park out to a remote part of Santa Clarita, according to the indictment.
The indictment unsealed in 2021 reported the skeletal remains were found in the Tick Fire burn area and connected to a series of murders attributed to international street gang MS-13.
Fuentes’ skeleton was found Oct. 26, 2019, by a public works employee who had come across it while surveying the area scarred by the Tick Fire, which broke out a few days earlier.
Investigators said at the time that the bodily remains were in an “odd place for … somebody to just walk up there and die.”
United States District Judge Otis D. Wright II scheduled sentencing hearings in July 2026, at which time each of the defendants will face a mandatory sentence of life in federal prison.
