Police identify burned body of Spring teen
Officials say 16-year-old was stabbed, set on fire by MS-13 gang members
After more than a year of investigation, authorities on Sunday identified charred and scattered human flesh and bone found in the woods in Huntsville as the remains of a 16-year-old teen from Spring.
Authorities say the badly decomposed body, which had evidence of multiple stab wounds, was allegedly set on fire by gang members from the Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13.
It’s the latest development in what has been a deadly string of homicides in the Houston region connected to an ultraviolent street gang established in Los Angeles and infamous for kidnapping, brutal murders and even dismemberments with machetes.
Authorities identified the body as Noe Anael Espinal, whose charred remains were found scattered along a power line easement in Huntsville, about 50 miles north of Spring.
At least six men were arrested in connection with the homicide in January before police knew the identity of their alleged victim, according to court records.
Now the six await their murder trials
in Walker County, although authorities have not released a motive for Espinal’s slaying.
The Huntsville investigation began on Sept. 19, 2016, when police received a report that two residents had stumbled upon the skeletal remains along a power line easement.
The Huntsville Police Department, with assistance from Houston police, the Texas Rangers and the FBI, tracked down the suspects, two of whom fled to Virginia.
“It is only because of the close cooperation between our agency, the Texas Rangers, (the FBI and HPD) that we have made the progress we’ve made in this investigation in such a short amount of time,” said Hunstville Police Chief Kevin Lunsford.
On Sunday, with assistance from the University of North Texas Center of Human Identification, authorities confirmed that the skeletal remains belonged to Espinal.
Those charged with Espinal’s first-degree murder are Giovanny Mauricio Villatoro, 19; Gerson Cabrera, 19; Bryan Cabrera, 21; Eduardo Mondragon, 24; Abner Portillo, 18; and Jose Zamora, 21, according to court records. All are being held in the Walker County Jail awaiting trial.
All of the suspects are Houston residents except for Zamora, who resides in Huntsville.
‘Increasing presence’
The trials in the Espinal slaying are likely to coincide with the cases of at least three other MS-13 members charged with murder in 2017.
Those cases include the February slaying of Genesis Cornejo-Alvarado, a 14-year-old Jersey Village girl, who police say was killed by Miguel AlvarezFlores, 23, also known as “Diabolico,” and Diego Hernandez-Rivera, 19, according to court records.
Other charges pending against a known MS-13 gang member are those brought against Alexander “Terror” Herrera-Hernandez, 20, who police say participated in the murder of a 16-yearold boy in Missouri City in 2016 and a 26-year-old Harris County man this year.
A fourth man, Carlos Alberto Gonzalez-Barahona, 26, accused of shooting and killing his estranged girlfriend at their apartment located in northwest Houston in June 2017, is still on the run.
He was last seen in Brazoria County, where he allegedly kidnapped the driver of a truck at gunpoint, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety..
“While the increase in the presence of the MS-13 grows, it appears that Texas is continually used as a transitional zone, as gang members are traveling onward to the U.S. East coast,” according to a 2017 DPS report.
Houston has about 350 registered gangs and 19,850 members, according to its database. And in 2016, there were 302 murders in Houston, of which 57 were gangrelated — resulting in about one gang-related murder every five days.
State reaction
Of the region’s numerous gangs, MS-13 has become the most notable and emerged as a top-tier threat in 2015. Law enforcement agencies in Houston, for instance, report the highest number of identified MS-13 members in the state, followed by Dallas.
The gang began to gain notoriety here in 2013 after Cristian Alexander Zamora, 24, of Huntsville, and Ricardo Leonel Campos Lara, 20, of Houston, were charged for the gang-ordered killing of a 16-year-old Klein Forest High School student and fellow gang member in the Sam Houston National Forest.
They were each sentenced to 35 years in federal prison.
Then in 2014, Jose Granados-Guevara was charged with murder after killing 14-year-old Jose Meraz with a machete. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to 99 years in prison.
The gruesome murders came to the attention of state leaders in Austin in April 2017.
Gov. Greg Abbott reassigned Texas special agents to Houston, allocated $500,000 in crime-fighting efforts and established a tactical center in the region to curb violent gang activity in the city and elsewhere. Abbott concentrated in particular on targeting criminal activities by MS-13 members.
The new center is located in the DPS Houston headquarters in northwest Houston. The FBI also announced it would reassign at least 10 additional agents to Houston.
The Huntsville murder case likely will be set for trial early next year after the holidays, according to the Huntsville district attorney’s office.
In a relatively quiet city of about 41,000, the district attorney’s office believes the murder cases will be given priority over all over nonmurder cases.