Police shooter left behind string of crimes
Witness told police that gang members had ‘wanted a soul’
Just 10 months after he was released from prison, a 25-yearold Houston man with gang ties and a laundry list of prior convictions has been identified as the man killed earlier this week after shooting two Houston police officers.
She was a sacrificial offering to the “Beast.”
Dumped on a southwest Houston street, the young woman known only as Genesis was killed in a satanic ritual by two members of the violent MS-13 Salvadoran gang after she disrespected their shrine to Satanism, prosecutors said Thursday in court.
“The Beast didn’t want a material offering. It wanted a soul,” a witness told police.
When the witness woke up the next day, the prosecutor said, “Genesis was gone.”
The chilling allegation is at the center of a still-unfolding case that includes murder and kidnapping, massive cocaine dealing and sex trafficking by two members of a street gang that prides itself on violence.
The two men — both of whom are living in the U.S. illegally, prosecutors said — have been charged with murder in the death of Genesis and with kidnapping the teenage witness, who was held and abused for weeks. Officials are asking for the public’s help in identifying the dead woman, who is believed to have been in her late teens or early 20s.
Miguel Alvarez-Flores, 22, also known as “Diabolico,” told police that he was the leader of a local set of the infamous Salvadoran gang MS-13, prosecutors said in court.
He is accused of directing another member, 18-year-old Diego Hernandez-Rivera, to kill Genesis, who was shot in the face and chest and whose body was found lying along the curb in the 9900 block of Sharpcrest Street on Feb. 16.
Police investigating the slaying were aided by the witness,
a 14-year-old girl who apparently escaped from the gang after being held against her will, traded between men and used for sex for weeks.
The teen ran away from school around Feb. 2 to an apartment on Glenmont, where gang members were packaging up large amounts of cocaine. She eventually was taken to an apartment on Gessner with about six MS-13 gang members who assaulted her again. She was forced to ingest drugs and alcohol to keep her intoxicated before escaping after about two weeks, prosecutors said.
While she was there, she told police, Alvarez-Flores tattooed the image of the Grim Reaper from her knee to her foot.
The teen knew Genesis and told police what happened.
Alvarez-Flores and Hernandez-Rivera were arrested this week, charged with murder and aggravated kidnapping. They appeared in court Thursday before state District Judge Maria Jackson and are being held in the Harris County Jail in lieu of $300,000 bail.
Jackson appointed lawyers for both men. One of the appointed lawyers, Emily DeToto said she was waiting to see the statements to police before calling them “confessions.”
Both men, formerly of El Salvador, are not in the country legally. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has placed an immigration hold on them, and they would be held by federal authorities if they make bail, according to Harris County prosecutor Lisa Collins.
The men appeared laughing and smiling at cameras in an overnight appearance at a magistrate court, where a night judge read them their rights.
The case is reminiscent of the 2014 murder of 15-year-old Corriann Cervantes, who was killed by two friends who told police they did it to sell their souls to the Devil.
Teenagers Victor Alas and Jose E. Reyes were both sentenced to life in prison without parole after being convicted of strangling, stabbing and sexually assaulting the teen. They had carved an upside-down cross in the girl’s abdomen after fatally bludgeoning her with the heavy porcelain lid of a toilet tank after the three did drugs and drank alcohol together in a vacant apartment.
The case, with its connections to the occult, drew comparisons to La Santa Muerte, a ghostly female character believed to be the spirit of death.
It is not unusual for gang members and other violent criminals to light candles and pray to La Santa Muerte, who is sometimes portrayed as a Grim Reaper in women’s black robes.