Speaker 1: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 1: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 1: written about them Geese, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK Every
Speaker 1: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 1: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 1: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 2: Good Evening.
Speaker 3: Babyfaced teen Giovanni Mercedo is desperate to find belonging in
Speaker 3: one of ELA's most predatory gangs, the Colombia Little Psychos,
Speaker 3: so desperate that he agrees to kill an undocumented Mexican
Speaker 3: street vendor. The vendor, Francisco Clemente, had been refusing to
Speaker 3: give into the gang's shakedown demands, but Giovanni botches the hit,
Speaker 3: accidentally killing a newborn instead. The overlords who rule the
Speaker 3: Little Psychos from a supermax prison one thousand miles away
Speaker 3: must be placated, and Giovanni is lured across the border,
Speaker 3: where in turn the gang botches his killing, and so incredibly,
Speaker 3: Giovanni rises from the dead, determined to both seek redemption
Speaker 3: for his unforgivable crime and take down the gang who
Speaker 3: drove him to do it. With the rent collectors Jesse
Speaker 3: Katz has built a teeth clenching and breathless narrative that
Speaker 3: explicates the difficult and proud lives of undocumented black market
Speaker 3: workers who are being extorted by the gangs and fined
Speaker 3: by the City of LA in other words, exploited by
Speaker 3: two sets of rent collectors. The book that we're featuring
Speaker 3: this evening is The Rent Collectors, Exploitation, Murder and Redemption
Speaker 3: in Immigrant LA with my special guest, journalist and author
Speaker 3: Jesse Katz. Welcome to the program, Man, Thank you very
Speaker 3: much for this interview, Jesse Katz.
Speaker 2: I'm excited to talk about The Rent Collectors with you. Dan.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, and congratulations on this extraordinary book,
Speaker 3: The Rent Collectors. Tell us just briefly the origins of
Speaker 3: this book project, How you came to be and wanted
Speaker 3: to be the author of The Rent Collectors.
Speaker 2: Well, there's probably two answers to that. One begins maybe
Speaker 2: forty years ago, when I first came to LA as
Speaker 2: a young reporter working for the La Times and Leader
Speaker 2: LA magazine and finding that I was really drawn to
Speaker 2: stories about overlooked, misperceived, stigmatized parts of Los Angeles and
Speaker 2: finding stories that allowed me to explore those communities and
Speaker 2: illuminate their experiences and their struggles, and try to find
Speaker 2: language that humanized people facing great adversity. In the early nineties,
Speaker 2: I was the gang reporter for the La Times, which
Speaker 2: was a particularly crazy time to be a gang reporter,
Speaker 2: but I practiced kind of those same principles then. And
Speaker 2: to fast forward in twenty and eleven, I moved into
Speaker 2: the MacArthur Park community, which is where this book is centered,
Speaker 2: pretty much in the heart of Los Angeles. And although
Speaker 2: the crime that's at the center of this book had
Speaker 2: already occurred a couple of years earlier, the aftermath was
Speaker 2: still playing out in the courts, and the conditions that
Speaker 2: led to the crime. This whole ecosystem of gangs and
Speaker 2: drugs and street vendors and police and politics was right
Speaker 2: outside my window, and so it was almost impossible to ignore.
Speaker 2: And I just became very curious, obsessed even with the
Speaker 2: story of MacArthur Park as a community and how this
Speaker 2: horrendous crime grew out of those conditions.
Speaker 3: You write initially about the Columbia Little Psychos twenty twelve
Speaker 3: Rico trial that had alerted you to the story of
Speaker 3: Giovanni Mesito, if that's the pronunciation. But you did not
Speaker 3: make contact. You said you dithered over making contact with Giovanni,
Speaker 3: but a colleague urged you.
Speaker 2: To do so.
Speaker 3: Just tell us about this Rico trial before we get
Speaker 3: into this extraordinary story Giovanni Mesito's personal story as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the gang at the heart of this tale
Speaker 2: is an unusually well organized, highly sophisticated, hierarchical predatory gang.
Speaker 2: It's a click of the Eighteenth Street Gang, which has
Speaker 2: tens of thousands of members in southern California and many beyond.
Speaker 2: And even though I tend to think of most gangs
Speaker 2: as participating in disorganized crime, kind of random opportunistic things,
Speaker 2: the Columbia little psychos where they were just they extracted
Speaker 2: everything they could from the community, and so they're they're
Speaker 2: great kind of innovation. I mean, it's an old it's
Speaker 2: an old technique, but it was applied in somewhat new ways.
Speaker 2: Was to extort everybody in this dense immigrant, largely undocumented
Speaker 2: community in charge them, you know, quote unquote rent for
Speaker 2: the right to be out on the streets or the sidewalks.
Speaker 2: And so they would the gang wouldn't actually sell drugs itself.
Speaker 2: They would recruit drug dealers to be out on the corner,
Speaker 2: and they would charge those people rent to be out there.
Speaker 2: Every day. It could be one hundred, one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty dollars a day for the right to sell drugs
Speaker 2: on that street corner. There were, you know, anyone else
Speaker 2: involved in that sort of underground or illicit or gray economy,
Speaker 2: whether it was you know, people selling fake id's or
Speaker 2: people involved in you know, gypsy cabs or bootleg telephones,
Speaker 2: or gamblers or sex workers or whatever it may have been.
Speaker 2: Everyone was paying this fee to be out and about,
Speaker 2: and at a certain point that extended to street vendors,
Speaker 2: the mom and pop entrepreneurs who were out on our
Speaker 2: sidewalks selling you know, tostadas or papoosas, or they're buying
Speaker 2: you know, batteries or diapers in bulk from a discount
Speaker 2: store and selling the piecemeal, and those people were also
Speaker 2: being charged rent. And this this was a kind of
Speaker 2: a nefarious conspiracy that went on for years and years,
Speaker 2: and they had been targeted once by the FBI in
Speaker 2: the early two thousands, and that led to a lot
Speaker 2: of arrests and takedown of a lot of you know,
Speaker 2: bad characters. But this gang is super resilient, and those
Speaker 2: openings in the hierarchy were quickly refilled, and the FBI
Speaker 2: went after them again. And so the particular crime that
Speaker 2: we'll talk about here in a second actually occurred against
Speaker 2: the backdrop of a two and a half year FBI
Speaker 2: investigation into the Columbia Little Psychos that was designed to
Speaker 2: dismantle the gang. That was what twelve thirteen years ago.
Speaker 2: I can assure you that the Columbia Psychos are still around,
Speaker 2: still charging rent, still doing what they've always done.
Speaker 3: Tell us about Giovanni Mescito and his mother, Rena, and
Speaker 3: what happened to his original father and his stepfather, Juan.
Speaker 3: Just tell us about their life and their journey to
Speaker 3: Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like a lot of kids drawn to gangs, you know,
Speaker 2: Giovanni lived in a very tumultuous household. In a lot
Speaker 2: of ways, the gang represented a more stable social institution,
Speaker 2: a more purposeful social institution than he had under his
Speaker 2: own roof. I do think that there's a much larger
Speaker 2: context for understanding Giovanni and his crime. I think you
Speaker 2: have to look at us foreign policy. I think you
Speaker 2: have to look at a broken immigrant system. You have
Speaker 2: to look at schools, you have to look at municipal
Speaker 2: codes and all these other things that combine with I
Speaker 2: think an inherited trauma from his parents' lives that Giovanni
Speaker 2: grew up with. His mom was from El Salvador. She
Speaker 2: escaped the Civil War when she was eight or nine
Speaker 2: years old. She was smuggled into the US in the
Speaker 2: trunk of a car. And I just think of that moment,
Speaker 2: you know, being a little girl. Separate the politics of it, Separate,
Speaker 2: you know, whatever your views might be on immigration, And
Speaker 2: think about a little girl who is fleeing a war
Speaker 2: torn country and has to get into the back of
Speaker 2: a stranger's car to enter her new life. That gives
Speaker 2: me anxiety just talking about it. His dad was his
Speaker 2: biological father was from Mexico, and he contracted AIDS very
Speaker 2: early on in the epidelm and died when Giovanni was
Speaker 2: a year and a half old. His stepfather, who came
Speaker 2: into his life very early, really tried to be a
Speaker 2: father figure, but he was a bad drinker, and there
Speaker 2: was domestic violence in the home. There were mental health issues,
Speaker 2: There was extreme poverty, There was all the stuff that
Speaker 2: you know, anyone who's ever worked with gangs, whether you're
Speaker 2: in the criminal justice system or the school system or
Speaker 2: a counselor, you understand that these are the kids that
Speaker 2: are absolutely at risk for being drawn to the streets.
Speaker 2: And I think Giovanni, you know, at a young age,
Speaker 2: you know, by age fifteen or so, just felt that
Speaker 2: his home was chaos. He was angry about things that
Speaker 2: he didn't really understand why he was angry about. And
Speaker 2: in this gang, he saw identity, he saw a purpose,
Speaker 2: he saw belonging, and ultimately, I mean this is going
Speaker 2: to sound you know, a little trite, maybe, but he
Speaker 2: saw love. He wanted to be loved, and he definitely
Speaker 2: wanted to be loved by these older, savvier, more powerful
Speaker 2: men who were running the gang in the absence of
Speaker 2: a strong male figure under his own roof.
Speaker 3: In school, he had a counselor that noted that he
Speaker 3: was in trouble and noted his background at home, and
Speaker 3: also his mother recognized that there was a threat of
Speaker 3: him joining a gang. So what did people try to
Speaker 3: do to intervene in the direction that it seemed that
Speaker 3: Giovanni was heading him too?
Speaker 2: You know, I think lots of people saw the warning signs.
Speaker 2: You're right, there was a school counselor who visited and
Speaker 2: the home and talked to his mom and sort of
Speaker 2: saw her desperation. There was a gang officer from the
Speaker 2: LAPD who who tried to intervene and would sometimes pick
Speaker 2: Giovanni up from the street and rather than arresting him,
Speaker 2: would just take him home and deliver him back to
Speaker 2: his mom. There there was a point at which his
Speaker 2: mom you know, realized that Giovanni was in a gang
Speaker 2: and was you know, being exposed to the drug trade.
Speaker 2: That she contacted the LAPD. She wanted them as I mean,
Speaker 2: what a difficult moment for a mom to essentially turn
Speaker 2: in her son, although she didn't really think she was
Speaker 2: turning him in. She she more than anything wanted the
Speaker 2: LAPD to kind of scare him straight and kind of
Speaker 2: break this cycle or slow this descent that she was witnessing.
Speaker 2: But you know, the LAPD came to their house and
Speaker 2: rousted Giovanni out of his bed and found some crack
Speaker 2: cocaine and next thing you know, he's being hauled off
Speaker 2: to juvenile hall and you know, that's his introduction to
Speaker 2: the criminal justice system. I'm sort of triggered by his
Speaker 2: own mom out of deep concern for him, but also
Speaker 2: not really understanding the implications of what it's going to
Speaker 2: mean for her son to be part of that system,
Speaker 2: and also the extreme danger of the gang perhaps discovering
Speaker 2: that she is interfering with, you know, their business, or
Speaker 2: at least compromising the ability of one of their new
Speaker 2: young soldiers to assist in that business. So there's some
Speaker 2: really heartbreaking moments, and I would try to put myself
Speaker 2: in Mom's shoes, recognizing danger but feeling just utterly powerless
Speaker 2: to do anything about it.
Speaker 3: You say, at this point, he's not a gang member,
Speaker 3: but he's trying out the uniform. He shaves his head,
Speaker 3: and he gets noticed in the neighborhood by the Eighteenth
Speaker 3: Straight or the Columbia Little Psycho's gang. So what happens
Speaker 3: in terms of this seduction and his transformation into believing
Speaker 3: that he belongs to the gang and rejects the lessons
Speaker 3: and the warnings from his mother.
Speaker 2: Well, up to that point, Giovanni had been kind of
Speaker 2: like a skater rocker kid. He had like big spiked
Speaker 2: up hair and wore the skinny jeans and he was
Speaker 2: just skating around the community, listening to you know, metallica
Speaker 2: and red hot chili peppers and sounds quite frankly, a
Speaker 2: lot like my son when he was that age. Sure,
Speaker 2: and not that I didn't worry about him, but it
Speaker 2: didn't seem like the worst thing in the world. And
Speaker 2: there's just this moment where he realizes that this identity
Speaker 2: isn't isn't working so well for him. And in particular,
Speaker 2: you know, a teenage boy interested in girls, and he
Speaker 2: was kind of kind of a grimy, grimy skateboarder kid,
Speaker 2: and he wanted a new look, a fresher, harder look,
Speaker 2: and that's when he shaves his head and suddenly has
Speaker 2: the creased genes and the white T shirt and he
Speaker 2: kind of puts on the uniform of the gang and
Speaker 2: he immediately gets recognized, like girls are stopping looking at him,
Speaker 2: seeing him in this new light. And I know that
Speaker 2: sounds like kind of kind of silly, like is that
Speaker 2: really the great motivating force? Is that what turned this
Speaker 2: kid into a gang member? And I would say probably
Speaker 2: probably had a lot to do with it. I mean,
Speaker 2: was that was a very potent draw. And the gang
Speaker 2: was wary about Giovanni. They didn't really see him as
Speaker 2: this sort of hard tough kid. And there's one gang member,
Speaker 2: you know who I quote in the book who who
Speaker 2: warned Giovanni to stay out of this, that this wasn't
Speaker 2: for him, that this wasn't a game, that this was
Speaker 2: like a really heavy racket and he wasn't cut out
Speaker 2: for it. And he just kept insisting, he kept showing up.
Speaker 2: He wanted to be recognized, he wanted to be accepted,
Speaker 2: and you know, he called it respect. He wanted to
Speaker 2: earn that respect from the gang. And eventually, you know,
Speaker 2: he gets you know, he's there, the gang's there. They're
Speaker 2: gonna take advantage of his availability and find ways to
Speaker 2: exploit that.
Speaker 3: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 3: these messages. Now you talk about that he is trying
Speaker 3: out the uniform.
Speaker 1: He is.
Speaker 3: Attempting to impress the people in the neighborhood that are
Speaker 3: involved in the Columbia Little Psychos tell us about the
Speaker 3: tentacles of the gang itself. And you talked about rent collection.
Speaker 3: That's the title of this book, The Rent Collectors, about
Speaker 3: that the Little Psychos. Obviously, the cocaine is their main
Speaker 3: source of income, and like you say, there are people
Speaker 3: selling cocaine on their behalf tell us about this vendor
Speaker 3: market and some of the people and characters that end
Speaker 3: up being important to this story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought. You know, even within the gang world,
Speaker 2: there was a feeling that, you know, if you're out
Speaker 2: there selling drugs like this is just the price you
Speaker 2: pay to be part of that illicit economy. If you're
Speaker 2: selling a fake ID, you can't really complain if the
Speaker 2: gang is extorting you, they want to cut of that
Speaker 2: action' That's just how it goes. But the vendors were
Speaker 2: a more complicated equation because a lot of vendors were
Speaker 2: people from the community, and a lot of gang members
Speaker 2: had grown up with those vendors, and those vendors had
Speaker 2: looked out for them, and you know, if they were
Speaker 2: a poor, hungry kid, maybe gave them, you know, a
Speaker 2: tortilla or a mango or something, and so they were
Speaker 2: not quite viewed as part of a nefarious economy. But
Speaker 2: some things changed in the early two thousands, and there
Speaker 2: was a big boom in bootleg CDs, and so there
Speaker 2: were some vendors who were getting access to Hollywood screeners
Speaker 2: and they were burning those and suddenly the biggest Hollywood
Speaker 2: hits were available for a five dollars CD and often
Speaker 2: available before the movie was even in theaters, and you
Speaker 2: could you could walk down the streets of the MacArthur
Speaker 2: Park area and other communities and just see these CDs
Speaker 2: lined up on the sidewalk, usually atop a blanket or
Speaker 2: a towel. And then there were there were other people
Speaker 2: who were using the community to sell stolen merchandise, and
Speaker 2: there was a boom and stolen tools for construction workers,
Speaker 2: power tools, and so I think the gang one gang
Speaker 2: member in particular, saw this as these were not the
Speaker 2: quote unquote you know, good mom and pop vendors. These
Speaker 2: were vendors that were taking advantage of the MacArthur Park
Speaker 2: demographic and the marketplace there, and he thought that they
Speaker 2: should pay their fair share too. So there was this
Speaker 2: decision made that they were going to expand taxation to
Speaker 2: those vendors as well, but only those vendors, not the
Speaker 2: beloved vendors. But you know, this gang is a maximalist gang.
Speaker 2: They extract from everyone, and pretty soon it was it
Speaker 2: was hard to draw lines between which vendors you're going
Speaker 2: to tax, which ones you're not going to tax. And
Speaker 2: suddenly it was just a it was a tax on everyone.
Speaker 2: And when you combine all these taxes, from the drugs,
Speaker 2: to the IDs, to the gamblers, to the you know,
Speaker 2: the Tostata lady, the gang was bringing in close to
Speaker 2: a eighty thousand dollars a month just in tax revenue
Speaker 2: from a neighborhood that's about two miles by two miles,
Speaker 2: maybe less, maybe it's one mile by one miles. It's
Speaker 2: a hostage stamp of a neighborhood and it was just
Speaker 2: generating literally a couple million dollars a year just in
Speaker 2: tax revenue. And so this became, like, you know, a
Speaker 2: very lucrative thing for the gang. And I should add
Speaker 2: the Columbia little psychos are they're nefarious, they're imposing this
Speaker 2: taxation system, but they're also subject to one. They answer
Speaker 2: to a higher authority, which is a prison gang, the
Speaker 2: Mexican Mafia. And there is a Mexican Mafia member who
Speaker 2: was and still is incarcerated at Supermax Prison in Florence, Colorado,
Speaker 2: known as Puppet, and Puppet was orchestrating all this stuff
Speaker 2: out on the streets of MacArthur Park. This was his domain.
Speaker 2: And so the money that the gang was collecting from
Speaker 2: those streets, a certain percentage of that was making its
Speaker 2: way up to this higher, more powerful gang. And so
Speaker 2: even if the Columbia Little Psychos wanted to stop, or
Speaker 2: if law enforcement was interfering with what they were doing,
Speaker 2: the Mexican mafia was not going to be content with
Speaker 2: that disruption to their revenue stream. So the money still
Speaker 2: has to keep flowing. And you know, nobody's going to
Speaker 2: sympathize with the Columbia Little Psychos for being in this bind.
Speaker 2: This is the world that they chose for themselves. But
Speaker 2: it's not as simple as just just the gang out
Speaker 2: on the street. There's a highly organized element inside our
Speaker 2: prisons and they control those prisons. And if you think
Speaker 2: that you or maybe your homie or loved one is
Speaker 2: likely to end up in prison, they're going to have
Speaker 2: to answer to that prison gang.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about her dues that she has to pay
Speaker 3: as a vendor. She's accepted from those fees and why
Speaker 3: her name is Shorty and her family members work on
Speaker 3: the streets in MacArthur Park. But she has been with
Speaker 3: her parents and grown up with the vending business since
Speaker 3: she was in kindergarten. You right, So tell us about
Speaker 3: this particular person that has a special status in MacArthur
Speaker 3: Park and the vending community.
Speaker 2: At the time of the crime that we're going to
Speaker 2: get to here in just the second. This young girl, Shorty,
Speaker 2: she was fourteen years old, and she was a friend
Speaker 2: to everybody, and she triangulated these various interests that were
Speaker 2: out there on the street. Her parents were from a
Speaker 2: really remote, distant part of Guatemala up in the mountains
Speaker 2: that had suffered through terrible kind of ethnic cleansing from
Speaker 2: the Guatemalan military, and they had fled to come to
Speaker 2: the US and were making their living as vendors in
Speaker 2: the MacArthur Park community. And so she, yes, Shorty, grew
Speaker 2: up in that world. She was out on the streets
Speaker 2: every day. She would go there after school and be
Speaker 2: there all day on weekends, and the police would stop
Speaker 2: by and chat with her and try to milk her
Speaker 2: for intelligence on what the gang was up to. And
Speaker 2: she was always nice to them and would chat with
Speaker 2: the cops and maybe throw them a tidbit without necessarily
Speaker 2: understanding how it was going to be used. And the
Speaker 2: gang would also be chummy with her and sort of
Speaker 2: flirtatious with her and also protective, and you know, they
Speaker 2: would ask her for intelligence about what the cops were
Speaker 2: up to. And because of that role, when the gang,
Speaker 2: on the occasions that they did try to collect money
Speaker 2: from her or her family, she would make it very
Speaker 2: clear that yes, they were exempt. They had a waiver
Speaker 2: here because of their role hurdle supplying this intel and
Speaker 2: also being a warning system for the vendors. So she
Speaker 2: was almost like a lookout when the police would come
Speaker 2: through to roust vendors. And I should add that in
Speaker 2: this time, street vending was illegal in the city of
Speaker 2: Los Angeles. It's not any longer. For decades, really, it
Speaker 2: was illegal. There was no there was no permit you
Speaker 2: could get, there was no license to vend. To sell
Speaker 2: anything on the sidewalks of LA was just against the law.
Speaker 2: It was a misdemeanor. And so when you mentioned the
Speaker 2: title the rent collectors, the gang is a rent collector
Speaker 2: entity for sure. But in some ways the city was too.
Speaker 2: Vendors would be rougsted and sometimes harassed, and their merchandise
Speaker 2: would be seized, and a lot of times they would
Speaker 2: be ticketed or even arrested. And suddenly the city is
Speaker 2: now collecting revenue from people who are involved in that
Speaker 2: survival economy and so Shorty would be their lookout, and
Speaker 2: she was working these various interests and found herself ultimately
Speaker 2: as a witness to this terrible crime.
Speaker 3: You talk about an officer that's a central character in
Speaker 3: this and Edgar Hernandez, and he also not only knew Shorty,
Speaker 3: but also knew Giovanni and had seen him over the
Speaker 3: years and had stopped him many times, so he knew
Speaker 3: who he was and had been warning him as well
Speaker 3: that there was time.
Speaker 2: To get out of this life.
Speaker 3: And so there is a situation where a person named Tricky,
Speaker 3: a member of the Little Psychos, doesn't really trust Giovanni
Speaker 3: and thinks maybe he's a snitch and has a rumor
Speaker 3: that he's a snitch. Meanwhile, Giovanni thinks that the only
Speaker 3: reason that he might have been accused of being a
Speaker 3: snitch is because of his conversations with this police officer.
Speaker 3: So what does happen with a member named Face and
Speaker 3: the remedy of the situation for Giovanni who desperately wants
Speaker 3: to be involved with the Columbia Little Psychos.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Tricky was what they call the shot caller.
Speaker 2: He had a tattoo shop. He was actually a pretty
Speaker 2: talented tattoo artist and was running a more or less
Speaker 2: legitimate business, although he was selling a crack from behind
Speaker 2: the counter as well. And that was right there in
Speaker 2: the middle of the MacArthur Park community, and that's where
Speaker 2: Giovanni went in and got his first gang tattoo. Tricky
Speaker 2: tattooed to one and eight on Giovanni's forearms and kind of,
Speaker 2: you know, signaled his formal, you know, induction into the gang.
Speaker 2: And I don't know if Tricky genuinely believed that Giovanni
Speaker 2: was a snitch or just became like a kind of
Speaker 2: a convenient way of trolling him, and you know, using
Speaker 2: that kind of as leverage to manipulate Giovanni, who already seemed,
Speaker 2: you know, gullible and susceptible to you know, doing whatever
Speaker 2: these older older guys wanted them to do and wanted
Speaker 2: him to do. And Tricky got kind of like a
Speaker 2: right hand man or a prince in waiting named Face.
Speaker 2: And Face is running the taxation scheme out on the
Speaker 2: streets of MacArthur Park, making sure that the vendors are
Speaker 2: all all paying their rent. And there was this one
Speaker 2: vendor man from Mexico City named Francisco, who is just
Speaker 2: a very proud and I think courageous man who and
Speaker 2: righteous who decided he was not going to pay his
Speaker 2: rent to the gang anymore. And he stood up to
Speaker 2: the Columbia little psychos, stood there on a street corner
Speaker 2: in the summer of two thousand and seven and basically
Speaker 2: told them to go to hell. You know, he's he
Speaker 2: does not owe them anything. These streets belong to everyone. Now.
Speaker 2: I think if Francisco could do it all over again,
Speaker 2: he probably wouldn't have chosen that moment to make his stand.
Speaker 2: But when you think about what that must have been
Speaker 2: like and how much guts it took, because he was,
Speaker 2: you know, he was making a stand not just for himself,
Speaker 2: but for all the other vendors out there who were,
Speaker 2: you know, being mistreated by this gang. And he's like,
Speaker 2: screw you guys. And of course the gang says you
Speaker 2: have to leave. If you don't pay, you got to go.
Speaker 2: And Francisco didn't leave. He just dug in his heels
Speaker 2: and you know, this was this was not a battle
Speaker 2: that he was going to win. He you know, he
Speaker 2: only owed the gang I don't know forty or fifty
Speaker 2: dollars at that moment, but it was just a matter
Speaker 2: of principle, and the gang couldn't let it slide. Right
Speaker 2: if you let if you let Francisco off the hook
Speaker 2: and he doesn't have to pay his rent, then you're
Speaker 2: going to lose control of this whole taxation scheme. So
Speaker 2: the gang decides tricky and then face that they're going
Speaker 2: to have to teach Francisco a lesson. But of course
Speaker 2: this is still like a low rent dispute, right if
Speaker 2: you are tricky in face, they're they're thirty or above,
Speaker 2: they're you know, this is this is old for the
Speaker 2: for the street gang world. They're not going to want
Speaker 2: to dirty their hands on something like that. So they
Speaker 2: need somebody who is gone, somebody who is expendable, and
Speaker 2: somebody who's going to do whatever they say. And that's
Speaker 2: where Giovanni comes in. He had just turned eighteen, and
Speaker 2: they summoned him out to the street corner and they
Speaker 2: put a gun in his hands and they told him,
Speaker 2: you have a mission. And honestly, you know, I don't
Speaker 2: think anyone believes that Giovanni woke up that morning with
Speaker 2: the intention to kill somebody. I don't think he had
Speaker 2: just didn't have that. He didn't even know who Francisco was.
Speaker 2: He wasn't part of this taxation scheme, so there was
Speaker 2: there was no beef, there was no fury, there was
Speaker 2: this was just a job. And you know, unfortunately Giovanni
Speaker 2: at that time in his life wasn't able to see
Speaker 2: Francisco's humanity. He just at that moment he was an
Speaker 2: impediment in the way of Giovanni's effort to rehabilitate himself
Speaker 2: and rise of the gang's estimation.
Speaker 3: You write that when he is summoned, he doesn't know
Speaker 3: what he is intended to do. He maybe had some inkling,
Speaker 3: but he has handed a gun and they said, he said,
Speaker 3: what the hell is this for? And they said to
Speaker 3: shoot this vendor and he said, hell no, and they said,
Speaker 3: you know, you got to do this, And so he
Speaker 3: decided right then and there he had no choice and
Speaker 3: he was going to get it done one way or another,
Speaker 3: over and done with. Francisco has a wife that works
Speaker 3: with him, Jessica Guzman, and also a friend that they've
Speaker 3: taken he's taken under his wing as well, named Daniella,
Speaker 3: and she had been recently pregnant. So tell us a
Speaker 3: little situation that they are in in terms of their
Speaker 3: work on the sidewalk that day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, this is really the bargain basement
Speaker 2: level of the informal economy. Francisco is selling cheapy electronics,
Speaker 2: little earbuds or iPhone cases that he's buying in bulk
Speaker 2: and selling for a couple bucks each. He's an auto
Speaker 2: mechanic and he's got a body shop that he wants
Speaker 2: to grow into a larger business. But he's undocumented and
Speaker 2: he doesn't really have access to credit, and so he's
Speaker 2: trying to make some extra money to grow a business,
Speaker 2: which is one of the reasons why he's so frustrated
Speaker 2: with this rent collection. He's now got a girlfriend slash
Speaker 2: wife in his life who he's just discovered is pregnant
Speaker 2: and so they have a baby coming. And then there's
Speaker 2: Jessica had a friend, a roommate named Daniella, as you mentioned,
Speaker 2: and she had just had a baby and was all
Speaker 2: on her own and was just an incredibly vulnerable person.
Speaker 2: You know, her baby, whose name was Luis an Hill.
Speaker 2: She was out there on the streets on a Saturday
Speaker 2: night when this baby was twenty three days old. And
Speaker 2: I don't know about you, I'm a father. I would
Speaker 2: never imagine having my child newborn out on those streets
Speaker 2: under those circumstances. But Daniella did not have healthcare. Daniella
Speaker 2: did not have childcare. Daniella didn't have any sort of
Speaker 2: safety net. And she's got this, you know, newborn infant
Speaker 2: that she needs, she needs to buy diapers for, she
Speaker 2: needs to sustain this new life. And so she is
Speaker 2: out there next to Francisco and Jessica, and Giovanni marches
Speaker 2: up to Francisco again. He doesn't know Francisco. He has
Speaker 2: to go, he has to be accompanied by another he's
Speaker 2: not actually a gang member. He is technically a rent
Speaker 2: collector who collects for the gang. To point out to
Speaker 2: Giovannie that that's Francisco, that's your target. And you know,
Speaker 2: Giovanni doesn't want to shoot the wrong person. He doesn't
Speaker 2: really want to shoot Francisco, but at least, you know,
Speaker 2: let's get this right. And so he walks up to Francisco.
Speaker 2: He's got a twenty two caliber gun, which is pretty tiny,
Speaker 2: tiny weapon for somebody who's about to do this execution mission.
Speaker 2: And he shoots Francisco four times and hits him in
Speaker 2: the chest and in the jaw and a couple other spots.
Speaker 2: Francisco fortunately lives, he survives, He's around to this day.
Speaker 2: I've sat with Francisco in his living room on multiple occasions.
Speaker 2: This is the worst thing that's ever happened to Francisco.
Speaker 2: But he's he's he's alive, and he's functional, and it's great.
Speaker 2: The atrocity here, I mean, and then really, one of
Speaker 2: the reasons why there is a book growing out of
Speaker 2: all these threads is that one of the bullets hits,
Speaker 2: strikes kills danielle A's baby, who's swaddled in a stroller
Speaker 2: next to Francisco. Giovanni never saw the baby, didn't discover
Speaker 2: that this had happened until a couple days later, and
Speaker 2: I think didn't even quite grasp the gravity of it.
Speaker 2: But in the gang world, where where all sorts of
Speaker 2: violence in Mayhem is is tolerated or even condoned, killing
Speaker 2: an infant is a bridge too far. That's like a
Speaker 2: war crime. You've crossed the line and the consequences are enormous.
Speaker 3: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 3: these messages. Now, you say that what happens is that
Speaker 3: Giovanni runs to the crash house, from the gang where
Speaker 3: the gang is set up. Next day, Tricky is there,
Speaker 3: and you fucked up, You screwed up. And Giovanni doesn't
Speaker 3: want to believe that this baby has been killed by him.
Speaker 3: He knows he didn't intend to kill a baby, would
Speaker 3: never shoot a baby or a child. But and so
Speaker 3: Tricky says, don't worry about it. We'll blame it on
Speaker 3: a rival gang, the Rockwood Gang, I believe, and I'll
Speaker 3: try to fix it. So he's supposed to lay low.
Speaker 3: And while Tricky vows to fix the situation, meanwhile, what
Speaker 3: do police do, what do police know?
Speaker 2: And how do they proceed? Well, I should add here
Speaker 2: that what Giovanni doesn't understand, what he doesn't see, is
Speaker 2: that the killing of an infant has the potential to
Speaker 2: rise up to the level of that prison gang, the
Speaker 2: Mexican mafia, and they're going to be so outraged by
Speaker 2: what the Columbia Little Psychos have done that they will
Speaker 2: impose what's called a green light on that neighborhood. Just
Speaker 2: basically open season. Go, shoot, stab, whatever you want to do.
Speaker 2: Any member of the Columbia Little Psychos, whether they're on
Speaker 2: the street and a jail and a prison, you got
Speaker 2: the green light, go go take it out on them,
Speaker 2: because they have messed up in the worst possible way.
Speaker 2: And the only way that the Columbia little psychos can
Speaker 2: remove that green light or reemp that green light is
Speaker 2: to get rid of Giovanni, and they refer to that
Speaker 2: as cleaning up their yard or taking out the trash.
Speaker 2: And Giovanni does not just doesn't get that. He doesn't
Speaker 2: see that, he doesn't know who who who are the
Speaker 2: Mexican mafia godfather's running all of this. He just thinks
Speaker 2: that he's dirtied his hands and yeah, maybe he screwed up. Well,
Speaker 2: and when he finds out he screwed up, he's aghast,
Speaker 2: he's heartbroken, he's you know, sobbing and hyperventilating. But he
Speaker 2: still thinks that the gang will look out for him
Speaker 2: because he did their bidding. He did what they wanted
Speaker 2: him to do, you know, he showed that he had
Speaker 2: the stones to walk up to somebody and open fire.
Speaker 2: And what the gang does is they tell him they're
Speaker 2: going to take him down to Mexico. They're going to
Speaker 2: take him to Tijuana, and they're going to hide him
Speaker 2: out until the heat dies down and it's safe to return.
Speaker 3: And you say that they always thought he was naive,
Speaker 3: so they still believe that. And he goes down there willingly.
Speaker 3: And there are other people accompanying him on this trip,
Speaker 3: including a woman named Midget and another person named Ranger.
Speaker 3: So they go to Mexico. Tell us what happens in
Speaker 3: Mexico and in terms of when he gets some recognition
Speaker 3: that something.
Speaker 2: Is amiss, Yeah, it's a really bizarre sequence of events
Speaker 2: in Mexico. They get there, you know, and they sort
Speaker 2: of party for twenty four hours. They take Giovanni out
Speaker 2: to the clubs, the bars, They go to a strip
Speaker 2: joint where there's a prostitute that Giovanni's interested in, and
Speaker 2: you know, it's just they're almost like throwing him a
Speaker 2: bachelor party that he'll never have. I'm not quite sure
Speaker 2: why they were doing it that way. Was it to
Speaker 2: assuage their guilt about what they were going to do
Speaker 2: to him? Did they want him just to be kind of, if,
Speaker 2: I don't know, relaxed and off guard that this was
Speaker 2: going to turn out badly. But after a night of partying,
Speaker 2: they get back in the car and they drive on
Speaker 2: this windy mountain road called La Ruem Rosa that separates.
Speaker 2: It's about halfway between tj and Mexico, calling kind of
Speaker 2: right along the US border, and it's and it's a
Speaker 2: super dramatic cinematic spot. It's all these prehistoric rock formations
Speaker 2: and twisty roads. It really looks like another planet. It's
Speaker 2: a rather extraordinary environment. And this is where in the
Speaker 2: middle of the night, they pull over to the side
Speaker 2: of the road and Giovanni's own homies, members of his
Speaker 2: own gang, throw a rope around his neck and strangle
Speaker 2: him and they're yanking and yank, and they're telling him,
Speaker 2: you know, motherfucker and face you know who put him
Speaker 2: up to this shooting? Is one of those guys yanking
Speaker 2: and he in this kind of I don't know, is
Speaker 2: it a tender moment, says, you know, you were a
Speaker 2: good homie, you were a good homie that you fucked up,
Speaker 2: And it's almost like he feels bad about strangling him,
Speaker 2: which of course he doesn't, but they they yank so
Speaker 2: hard they've practically pulled Giovanni out of the front seat
Speaker 2: of the car and to the back seat and they
Speaker 2: and they feel his body go limp and they drag
Speaker 2: him out of the car and they're up on this
Speaker 2: this cliff, you know, looking down into this huge gorge
Speaker 2: and they you know, one of them's got Giovanni by
Speaker 2: the hands and the other by the feet and they
Speaker 2: just do a heave ho over the edge and dump
Speaker 2: him down there. And this this crew of eighteenth Streeters.
Speaker 2: They drive back to la and they they report to
Speaker 2: the big homies that they've they've taken out the trash,
Speaker 2: Giovanni's gone. Business can go back to normal, and they
Speaker 2: just wash their hands of this whole thing, and lo
Speaker 2: and behold, Giovanni wakes up on the side of that cliff.
Speaker 2: And to me, this is just this is like the
Speaker 2: part of the book that reads more like fiction than nonfiction.
Speaker 2: You know, there's this this beyond belief quality. His his
Speaker 2: neck is core up, he's he's bleeding, he's he's vomited
Speaker 2: on himself, but internally he's basically intact. They didn't really
Speaker 2: do any now, all the damage is superficial, and you know,
Speaker 2: Giovanni wakes up and he's trying to figure out like
Speaker 2: what happened to him, Like last thing he knew he
Speaker 2: was partying with his homies, and here he is, you know,
Speaker 2: clinging to the side of a cliff, and he and
Speaker 2: he crawls out, he crawls up the cliff and to
Speaker 2: hoists himself onto the side of the road. And he's,
Speaker 2: you know, standing there in his socks. They've stolen his shoes,
Speaker 2: and and he's and and I'm just like obsessed with
Speaker 2: that moment. Like this kid who has like risen from
Speaker 2: the dead and now has to decide what he's going
Speaker 2: to do. He's got no idea on him, he's got
Speaker 2: no money, he's got no cell phone, he's he's a hand.
Speaker 2: You know, he's done, like he's done the worst thing imaginable,
Speaker 2: and he's going to have to figure out how to
Speaker 2: live with that. On the other hand, literally nobody knows
Speaker 2: where he is, and anyone who does know where he
Speaker 2: is thinks he's dead. So he's kind of home free
Speaker 2: in a way. He's gone off the grid in some respects.
Speaker 3: But his mother is the person he would like to
Speaker 3: speak with. He can only remember one phone number, remarkably,
Speaker 3: and that's his girlfriend, Mehra, and so he gives her
Speaker 3: a call and wants the message to get to his
Speaker 3: mother to come and rescue him, and of course she
Speaker 3: goes out gets lost, but finally does pick him up
Speaker 3: in the desert, doesn't she.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, I think this says a
Speaker 2: lot about who Giovanni was, in his level of naivete
Speaker 2: and the pressure that these older people applied on him
Speaker 2: to do their dirty work. I think somebody with more
Speaker 2: resources or more cunning might have restarted their life. You know,
Speaker 2: they would have they'd go down Baja and become a
Speaker 2: fisherman on the Sea of Cortes or something. Giovanni, what
Speaker 2: did he do? He called his mom, you know, a
Speaker 2: truck driver brought him down into Mexicoli. He goes into
Speaker 2: a convenience store, a nice cashier lady gives him coins
Speaker 2: for a payphone, and yeah, it takes his mom a
Speaker 2: while to come down there. She comes down with Giovanni's girlfriend, Mara,
Speaker 2: and now what do you do? What do you where
Speaker 2: do you go? I mean, he probably should have talked
Speaker 2: to a lawyer and weighed his options and proceeded in
Speaker 2: a way that would serve his interests and also serve justice.
Speaker 2: But they were scared. They had to think on the fly,
Speaker 2: and he ends up getting on a greyhound bus with
Speaker 2: his girlfriend and they end up in Utah and girlfriend
Speaker 2: has a friend there. The friend's stepdad works in a
Speaker 2: slaughterhouse and a meat processing facility. And interestingly, this facility
Speaker 2: had just been raided by immigration a few months earlier,
Speaker 2: and they had a huge workforce problem, like they needed
Speaker 2: warm bodies, and so, you know, I'm not sure that
Speaker 2: this is exactly what the what the immigration enforcers would
Speaker 2: be looking for. But there's Giovanni covered in Eighteenth Street
Speaker 2: gang tattoos and his neck all torn up. But Giovanni
Speaker 2: is a US citizen and he can prove it, and
Speaker 2: he gets hired by this meat processing company and finds
Speaker 2: himself carving up how carcasses in a slaughterhouse for the
Speaker 2: next month and a half. Yeah, it's very, very interesting.
Speaker 3: And then you introduce another major character, Detective David Holmes. There's,
Speaker 3: of course, the person we meet mentioned Shorty. She eventually
Speaker 3: talks to police. Eventually there's an anonymous call, there was
Speaker 3: an interview with police, but eventually she comes clean. But
Speaker 3: prosecutors and detectives know that they need more information in
Speaker 3: terms of just what she witnessed and her story, so
Speaker 3: they need somebody from the inside, and David Holmes decides
Speaker 3: to go see Maira and talk to her. Tell us
Speaker 3: about David Holmes and what he intends to do speaking
Speaker 3: to Myra.
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, we should credit this this gang officer,
Speaker 2: Edgar Hernandez, who knew about Myra and knew she was
Speaker 2: Giovannie's girlfriend. And he decides he's going to go to
Speaker 2: her house and just pay her a visit. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: he shows up and Myra's sister is there and she,
Speaker 2: I think, without quite realizing the circumstances, says, you know,
Speaker 2: they tried to kill Giovanni. And up to that point,
Speaker 2: everyone just assumes Giovanni's dead. Right, Like, the police know
Speaker 2: how the green light works, They know that the kid
Speaker 2: who does this terrible crime is likely to be killed,
Speaker 2: so they almost have no expectation of ever finding Giovanni alive.
Speaker 2: When the girlfriend's sister says they tried to kill him, suddenly,
Speaker 2: you know, light bulbs are going off and the LAPD
Speaker 2: realizes that Giovanni he's not dead, and they're able to
Speaker 2: make contact and get word to or the sister gets
Speaker 2: word to Giovanni in Utah, or through her sister to Giovanni,
Speaker 2: and next thing you know, Giovanni is calling this homicide
Speaker 2: detective David Holmes, and Holmes is right out of Central Casting.
Speaker 2: He's in this elite homicide unit. He broad shoulders, conservative background, blonde, sandy, blond,
Speaker 2: cru cut, he's he's got the suit and tie, and
Speaker 2: he just hops on a plane straight to Utah to
Speaker 2: you know, take his man into custody. And Giovanni, I
Speaker 2: think a lot of things were going on in his head.
Speaker 2: He was grappling with the guilt of what he'd done.
Speaker 2: He also saw that the investigation into who did the shooting,
Speaker 2: who ordered the shooting, was starting to touch people that
Speaker 2: he cared about. The police had raided his mom's house
Speaker 2: and looking for him, and his mom kind of misdirected
Speaker 2: the police, saying she didn't know where he was, when
Speaker 2: of course she did know where he was. And I
Speaker 2: think he felt that nobody should take the fall for this.
Speaker 2: He needs to man up, you know, live with the
Speaker 2: consequences of what he did. And so he tells Detective
Speaker 2: Homes that that he'll he'll turn himself in. Just don't
Speaker 2: come barging into this house with guns blazing. He'll come
Speaker 2: out and and he does, and there's this this kind
Speaker 2: of extraordinary moment where he walks out of the house
Speaker 2: and down the driveway and there's Detective Homes and you know,
Speaker 2: he tells Giovanni to put his hands up, and he's
Speaker 2: got to, you know, frisk him and turns him around
Speaker 2: to check his waistband. And Giovanni just sort of on
Speaker 2: his own pivots and wraps his arms around Detective Homes,
Speaker 2: who you know, his instincts are like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: here it's on. You know, I'm gonna have to take
Speaker 2: this kid down. And what Giovanni's doing is he's hugging him.
Speaker 2: He buries his face and Detectives Homes chest here's here's
Speaker 2: here's this guy who's who's reeling in his prey and
Speaker 2: and and it's going to bring Giovanni to justice. And
Speaker 2: Giovanni just he needs a hug from this, from this strong,
Speaker 2: authoritative male figure who's come to get him.
Speaker 3: That chooses has an opportunity to stop to hear the messages. Yes,
Speaker 3: you you write that it's extraordinary and remarkable that he
Speaker 3: keeps asking will will I be able to go home?
Speaker 3: Or how much time do you think I'll be able
Speaker 3: to do? And Holmes is as elicited a confession from
Speaker 3: this person and really doesn't know how to answer this,
Speaker 3: because it doesn't look like he's going to go home
Speaker 3: anytime soon. I mean, his stepfather advised him to come clean,
Speaker 3: but they didn't think of the ramifications of not having
Speaker 3: a lawyer to advise them before he spoke the police.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know Holmes, Holmes is a master interrogator. He's
Speaker 2: he plays the fatherly figure, and you know this is
Speaker 2: there some manipulation going on. Well, you know, he's trying
Speaker 2: to extract a confession while he can. On the other hand,
Speaker 2: he's also giving Giovanni a way out a terrible predicament.
Speaker 2: And you know, he tells Giovanni they're they're after the
Speaker 2: bigger fish, they're after face, they're after tricky like these
Speaker 2: are the heavyweight dudes from the gang that they're trying
Speaker 2: to take down. And and Giovanni sees that and that's
Speaker 2: all true. But in helping Holmes make the case against
Speaker 2: those older gang members, Giovanni is, you know, hanging himself, right.
Speaker 2: He's confessing, he's he confesses that he's the trigger man
Speaker 2: and and that spot without quite realizing that maybe he's
Speaker 2: just doomed himself. And and it's it's a really heartbreaking scene.
Speaker 2: I was able to get several hours of tape of
Speaker 2: that interrogation, and I and I recreate the dialogue. There's
Speaker 2: a whole chapter that is just the dialogue of that interrogation,
Speaker 2: and you just see him kind of you know, they've
Speaker 2: given given him just enough rope, and Holmes keeps telling him, Look,
Speaker 2: you know, good things will happen to people who tell
Speaker 2: the truth. And you know it's self serving because now
Speaker 2: he's got a case against Giovanni and these other people.
Speaker 2: And at the same time, if Giovanni had fought this case,
Speaker 2: if he hadn't cooperated, you know, he'd be doing life
Speaker 2: without the possibility of parole. So it did create an
Speaker 2: opportunity for Giovanni to cooperate and by himself a second chance.
Speaker 3: You also write this very interesting development as well, from
Speaker 3: somebody that got involved with the gang after being a
Speaker 3: prestigious criminal defense lawyer. So this person named coach you right,
Speaker 3: maybe we briefly talk about how he becomes involved with
Speaker 3: the Eighteenth Street Gang itself and the Columbia Little Psychos.
Speaker 2: Very interesting, I Saul Goodman on Breaking Bad. He is
Speaker 2: a criminal defense attorney. He could probably be a whole book.
Speaker 2: Unto himself. This was a guy who grew up tough,
Speaker 2: grew up in the gang world, and really cleaned up
Speaker 2: and turned his life around, ends up going to UCLA
Speaker 2: Law school, graduating with honors and just being like a
Speaker 2: real authentic redemption story, and gets a job with the
Speaker 2: Federal Public Defender's Office in Los Angeles at the exact
Speaker 2: time that the FBI has pursued a reco case against
Speaker 2: the Mexican Mafia, and the public Defenders recognized that a
Speaker 2: coach his name's Isaac Gehan is from that world or
Speaker 2: was from that world, and that he would be a
Speaker 2: good person to help them connect to their clients and
Speaker 2: put on a better defense. And as coach is you know,
Speaker 2: getting to know members of the Mexican Mafia, it's almost
Speaker 2: as if the prison gang understood him better than he
Speaker 2: understood himself. And look you when you when you, let's
Speaker 2: give credit where credit is due. The Mexican Mafia does,
Speaker 2: you know, terrible things. They're a nefarious organization. And yet, man,
Speaker 2: some of those people are really smart. They're master manipulators,
Speaker 2: they're expert their they're psychologists there they they they know
Speaker 2: what buttons to push, they know what rewards will motivate people,
Speaker 2: and they converted Coach from a defense attorney into ultimately
Speaker 2: their money launderer and eyes and ears on the street,
Speaker 2: and he became the conduit for that, the godfather at
Speaker 2: Supermac's prison in Florence, Colorado and the streets of Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: and he gets caught up in the FBI investigation and
Speaker 2: taken down and loses his law license.
Speaker 3: Well, we haven't mentioned, or maybe the audience doesn't realize,
Speaker 3: is that this was an ongoing FBI and LAPD investigation,
Speaker 3: and so there was surveillance and wiretops. So while this
Speaker 3: investigation is going on, there is all kinds of evidence
Speaker 3: being gathered in secret from these players that are involved
Speaker 3: in the Columbia Little Psychos.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a very complex tapestry. So the LAPD is
Speaker 2: trying to solve the shooting out on the street of
Speaker 2: MacArthur Park. They're trying to figure out who killed, who
Speaker 2: shot Francisco, who killed baby Louis on him. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 2: FBI has been busy trying to unravel the entire gang
Speaker 2: and build a different kind of case, a federal case
Speaker 2: that's more about the conspiracy and the financial aspect of
Speaker 2: it and less about the crime. On the street. And
Speaker 2: it's one reason why there's a whole host of characters
Speaker 2: in this book. And I have a legend at the
Speaker 2: beginning of the book almost like this is like one
Speaker 2: of those Russian novels where you need to keep track
Speaker 2: of who's who in what their role is in the
Speaker 2: gang hierarchy.
Speaker 3: So you say that many of these gang members, twenty
Speaker 3: of them of the twenty seven or so, take some
Speaker 3: sort of plea agreement, and there's only a few that don't.
Speaker 3: And so we have the case of the trial that
Speaker 3: basically of the people that tried to kill Giovanni, and
Speaker 3: Giovanni obviously being a witness at that trial. So tell
Speaker 3: us what happens at that trial, and then tell us
Speaker 3: about this what all this cooperation and his attitude and
Speaker 3: even people in law enforcement trying to recommend that he
Speaker 3: gets something less than maybe what he might get. Tell
Speaker 3: us about those efforts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, Giovanni agrees to cooperate. He does this,
Speaker 2: you know, without an attorney advising him. Once I eventually
Speaker 2: got to know Giovanni, I wanted to, you know, grab
Speaker 2: him by the collar and say, dude, don't you watch
Speaker 2: don't you watch TV? Don't you watch the movies, don't
Speaker 2: you know you're supposed to act, ask for an attorney.
Speaker 2: And he was just so naive that he he felt
Speaker 2: that if the government appointed him an attorney, that that
Speaker 2: attorney would then tell the DA or tell the prosecutor
Speaker 2: everything that Giovanni did. So he didn't really understand that
Speaker 2: there would be somebody who would be ethically bound to
Speaker 2: defend him and him alone, and that you know, that
Speaker 2: cost him, That cost him many, many, many years. So
Speaker 2: the upshot is that Giovanni testifies in three trials. So
Speaker 2: he testifies in the trial about the shooting that he
Speaker 2: participated in, He testifies in that federal Rico trial against
Speaker 2: the whole organization of the gang. Testifies in one more
Speaker 2: trial when one of the people involved was captured in
Speaker 2: Mexico after four and a half years and brought back
Speaker 2: and extradited, and you know, a great risk to himself,
Speaker 2: right this gang already wanted to kill him, and now
Speaker 2: he is going into a public courtroom and testifying further
Speaker 2: against that gang. And you know, I just think of
Speaker 2: the you know, it also takes a lot of courage
Speaker 2: on Giovanni's part. You know, Giovanni did something terrible. But
Speaker 2: there's you know, there's then there's different ways of dealing
Speaker 2: with that. You could just keep your mouth shut and
Speaker 2: be one of the bad guys forever, or you could
Speaker 2: say I've done something terrible and I'm going to do
Speaker 2: everything in my power to right this wrong. You know,
Speaker 2: I think it was really scary for Giovanni to take
Speaker 2: the witness stand, and he gave, you know, extraordinary assistance
Speaker 2: to the government. As a result of his cooperation, he
Speaker 2: was given a prison sentence of fifty one years, and
Speaker 2: that I don't know. I'm sure there's people listening who
Speaker 2: think that he should get one hundred and fifty one years.
Speaker 2: But I'll tell you that the homicide detective who took
Speaker 2: him into custody thought that Giovanni was so cooperative and
Speaker 2: so helpful to the investigation that he should get twenty
Speaker 2: five or thirty years. But of course that person doesn't
Speaker 2: get a vote. The DA was holding all the cards
Speaker 2: and that was the best deal. By then, Giovanni did
Speaker 2: have a lawyer, and that was the best deal they
Speaker 2: could get. Fifty one years. And you know, when you're
Speaker 2: eighteen years old, fifty one years is sounds like a
Speaker 2: life sentence. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And what's interesting too is that there was all kinds
Speaker 3: of plea agreements from people that were in much higher
Speaker 3: positions because he was in such a low position within
Speaker 3: this gang, but really high ranking gang members got much
Speaker 3: less in terms of their plea agreement sentences.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, it really exposes the first of all
Speaker 2: the different agendas between a state prosecution and a federal prosecution.
Speaker 2: In this case, the state prosecution is all about solving
Speaker 2: the crime, and the people that participated in that crime
Speaker 2: largely got sentences of life without parole. In the federal case,
Speaker 2: where it was more about exposing the mechanics of the
Speaker 2: organization and finding ways to dismantle the enterprise, they need
Speaker 2: more cooperation from those participants. You need cooperating witnesses to
Speaker 2: kind of pull back the curtain and expose the the
Speaker 2: mechanics of the gang. And a lot of those people
Speaker 2: cooperated and got extraordinary I think sweetheart deals. The shot
Speaker 2: caller of the gang, you know, the guy who ran
Speaker 2: everything out on the streets of MacArthur Park, he ended
Speaker 2: up cooperating with the federal government and got a twenty
Speaker 2: four year sentence. And so the idea that the guy
Speaker 2: who wanted Francisco dead got less than half the sentence
Speaker 2: that Giovanni did. Just seemed like a kind of an
Speaker 2: extraordinary asymmetry and just a reminder that you know, when
Speaker 2: you get into the criminal justice system, expedience is often
Speaker 2: the rule, and it often beats out justice itself.
Speaker 3: What was the legal fate of the killers of Daniello's baby?
Speaker 2: So you know, Giovanni, the killer fifty one years face,
Speaker 2: who was out on the street that night, got a
Speaker 2: life sentence. The person who brought the gun a life sentence.
Speaker 2: The person who showed Giovanni to the vendor walked him
Speaker 2: up there, got a life sentence. Person who disposed of
Speaker 2: the gun got a life sentence. Only one person was
Speaker 2: able to negotiate their way out of that and was
Speaker 2: a kid who took the weapon from Giovanni after the
Speaker 2: crime and then passed it over to the person who
Speaker 2: disposed of it. There were six people out there that night,
Speaker 2: which seems like a lot. Definitely a wider range of
Speaker 2: sentences in the federal case.
Speaker 3: Very interesting that you tried to write Giovanni in and
Speaker 3: eighteen and a response came in late two and eighteen,
Speaker 3: and you were you say that he was surprised to
Speaker 3: hear anybody wanted to hear him out, to hear his story.
Speaker 3: And you say you were moved by by his willingness
Speaker 3: to open up his life, and it came with no
Speaker 3: conditions or expectations. He just wanted to show people, or
Speaker 3: to impart people, what was in his heart. So thus
Speaker 3: this book project.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no way this book would exist without Giovanni's
Speaker 2: openness and bravery. I didn't know him, I didn't have
Speaker 2: any introduction to him. I had only read about his
Speaker 2: testimony in the newspaper, and I thought, I thought he
Speaker 2: was the key to everything. Here was this person who
Speaker 2: commits a crime, a terrible crime, and then who survives
Speaker 2: a terrible crime, and he could talk about both of them.
Speaker 2: You don't usually get that in one person who's able
Speaker 2: to give a blow by blow account. So just from
Speaker 2: the I suppose, from the storytelling the true crime aspects
Speaker 2: of the book, I thought his involvement was essential. But
Speaker 2: on the deeper level, I just wanted to know, you know,
Speaker 2: who he was, and how this environment of MacArthur Park,
Speaker 2: which has been in the news. We should add, you know,
Speaker 2: the very prominently Ice Enforcement Immigration Enforcement agents showed up
Speaker 2: in the park a couple of weeks ago with armored
Speaker 2: vehicles and on horseback and really tried to send a
Speaker 2: message of fear and intimidation to this community. You know,
Speaker 2: I wanted to know how that environment led Giovanni astray
Speaker 2: and who he was today or in the year that
Speaker 2: I wrote to him, which was seven years ago, and
Speaker 2: who did he want to become. And I started the
Speaker 2: letter by saying, you know, I don't know you, and
Speaker 2: you don't know me, and if you want me to
Speaker 2: leave you alone, I will, but I'm going to go
Speaker 2: out on a limb and say you're not the same
Speaker 2: person today who pulled the trigger back in two thousand
Speaker 2: and seven. And if you want to talk about who
Speaker 2: you are now, who you are trying to become, I
Speaker 2: have an open mind. And that started a relationship that
Speaker 2: has spanned letter writing, phone calls, in person visits, and
Speaker 2: it continues to this day. Giovanni has become just a
Speaker 2: really important person in my life. You know. I approached
Speaker 2: him probably a little more hands off in the beginning
Speaker 2: because he's a character in the book. He's a subject,
Speaker 2: and I need to establish some boundaries now that the
Speaker 2: book is done, and you know, he's still incarcerated, and
Speaker 2: he's still, you know, looking for ways to improve himself.
Speaker 2: I get to be more of a of an ally
Speaker 2: and a cheerleader and a source of support. And when
Speaker 2: when Giovanni calls me up to tell me that he
Speaker 2: got a one hundred percent on a test he took,
Speaker 2: whether it was for his ged or a college class,
Speaker 2: or he got a commendation from his supervisor in the
Speaker 2: job that he does inside the facility, and he wants
Speaker 2: to share that with me, it just really it really
Speaker 2: moves me. And I get to tell him I am
Speaker 2: so proud of you. And when I say those words
Speaker 2: to him, I sort of catch myself because you know,
Speaker 2: I've said those words to my son ten thousand times.
Speaker 2: My son's just a couple of years younger than Giovanni,
Speaker 2: and you know, I've said it so many times that
Speaker 2: he's allowed to take that for granted, right, And then
Speaker 2: I think how many times did Giovanni hear that? What
Speaker 2: were those moments when Giovanni needed a parent, a dad
Speaker 2: to say, I'm proud of you. I believe in you.
Speaker 2: I know you can be something more than what we're
Speaker 2: seeing outside our door here. And to me, that's like
Speaker 2: the real, real tragedy of this that all the ways
Speaker 2: that adults failed Giovanni in his life, all the ways
Speaker 2: that our system failed Giovanni. You know, he he didn't
Speaker 2: ask for anything when he joined me in this project.
Speaker 2: He just really funny. People will ask him, oh, did
Speaker 2: you did you get paid for this book? Well, of
Speaker 2: course not. But he what he tells people is it's
Speaker 2: a blessing. It's a blessing to be able to tell
Speaker 2: his story. And I'm just incredibly grateful to him for that.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and so are we. Thank you so much for
Speaker 3: coming on and talking about your extraordinary The Rent Collectors Exploitation,
Speaker 3: Murder and Redemption in Immigrant La. So for people that
Speaker 3: we might want to find out more about this book,
Speaker 3: do any you have a website, do any social media?
Speaker 2: The book is summarized on my website, The Rent Collectors
Speaker 2: dot com and I'm on and Facebook and Instagram under
Speaker 2: by Jesse Katz.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Jesse Katz, The Rent Collectors, Exploitation,
Speaker 3: Murder and Redemption in Immigrant La. Thank you so much
Speaker 3: for this interview, and you have a great evening, and
Speaker 3: good night.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Dan, It's been a great pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Good night