Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Over 20 murders claimed
White supremacist’s boast prompted undercover sting, FBI says
He’s a white supremacist who bragged that he killed more than 20 people and “left a trail of dead hookers” from Phoenix to South Florida, the FBI says.
Now agents are trying to figure out whether he was telling the truth.
Adrian Apodaca, 44, is already the main suspect in a slaying in Albuquerque, N.M., and is being held in an alleged murder-for-hire sting in Broward County.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Dave Lee Brannon ruled Tuesday that Apodaca’s history and the evidence gathered during the six-month undercover investigation “portray a highly dangerous individual who will likely flee if
released from custody.”
The judge ordered that Apodaca remain jailed while the case is pending.
Prosecutor Lawrence LaVecchio said Apodaca, a self-professed founding member of the Vinlander Social Club, a violent national white supremacist organization, initially came under investigation in May after agents received a tip that he was hiding out in Davie.
Apodaca was living in a trailer parked behind the clubhouse of the Dirty White Boys in the 4300 block of Davie Road, prosecutors said. The Dirty White Boys is a motorcycle group that acts as an “auxiliary,” or support, to the notorious Outlaws motorcycle gang, and members sometimes provide security and other support to the Outlaws, investigators said.
The FBI wanted to determine whether Apodaca was involved in criminal activity in South Florida — to “mitigate any potential threat.” Apodaca has prior convictions for resisting law enforcement, criminal confinement, pointing a firearm, disorderly conduct, rioting and street gang activity, records show.
Undercover agents in South Florida recruited Apodaca to commit a fake murder-for-hire during the sting and he readily agreed, planned every specific detail and drove seven hours north to Georgia to commit it, prosecutors said.
During the investigation, law enforcement received information from unidentified sources that Apodaca claimed “he had potentially left a trail of dead hookers from Phoenix to South Florida,” FBI Agent Christopher Penn testified recently in federal court in West Palm Beach.
Apodaca also told at least one person, whom agents did not identify, that he had “been involved in 20-plus murders,” Penn testified.
Federal prosecutors, the FBI and the Albuquerque city police wouldn’t provide details about the killing there, and no other information was publicly available.
Apodaca’s lawyer said Apodaca has a long history of severe mental illness and hospitalizations, stretching to when he was 13, and that federal authorities knew he was previously found mentally incompetent in a federal case in 2011. He was eventually sentenced to time served after being restored to mental competency, the lawyer said.
Apodaca, a self-employed tattoo artist, has been receiving Social Security disability payments since 1992, the lawyer said.
“There’s nothing I can see that justifies creating a sting operation,” Assistant Federal Public Defender Neison Marks said in court.
Marks told the judge that agents had created the fake murder plot and turned it into a federal crime by literally driving Apodaca across state lines so that it would qualify as a federal case.
“The FBI created this elaborate operation, created an elaborate sting,” Marks said. “There’s no evidence he’d be involved in this if they hadn’t [put him under surveillance] and had just left him alone.”
Prosecutor LaVecchio said there was no entrapment and agents “merely gave him the opportunity to commit crimes.”
“The evidence shows the defendant jumped in with both feet,” LaVecchio said.
Agents said Apodaca was secretly recorded, on audio and video, discussing his criminal history and the planned crimes at length. They said they have reviewed at least 20 hours of recordings of Apodaca, made during their investigation, and said he was “lucid” and “very intelligent and well-spoken” and very capable when he was planning how to commit the crime.
In September, Apodaca was introduced to undercover FBI agents in Broward County who were posing as “affluent violent members of a criminal organization with white supremacy extremist beliefs” and he said he wanted to join them, agents said.
Apodaca later told undercover agents he was “keeping a very low profile” and was “looking to do a whole identity change thing,” LaVecchio said in court.
As the investigation and undercover sting escalated, Apodaca was asked if he wanted to carry out a murder-for-hire contract killing, the prosecutor said. Apodaca had previously bragged that he and his friends posed as police officers and ripped off a drug house in Arizona, making a million dollars or more, agents said.
Apodaca enthusiastically agreed to kill a man the undercover agents told him owed money to their white supremacy group, investigators said.
Apodaca agreed to commit the fake contract killing in exchange for $5,000 and fake identity papers — including a Florida driver license, a Social Security number and a credit card under a name he chose.
“That would mean freedom,” Apodaca told an undercover agent, according to LaVecchio.
Apodaca also said he was “on the no-fly list” and talked about using his potential earnings from the contract killing to buy a bus, which he said he would convert into a motor home, authorities said.
After committing a number of lesser offenses as part of the undercover law enforcement sting, an undercover agent and Apodaca took a seven-hour drive 400 miles north to the Valdosta area of Georgia, where Apodaca had agreed to kill the man who supposedly owed money to his new allies, agents said.
Apodaca had given the agents a list of what he needed, including a weapon, silencer, ammunition, a bulletproof vest and other equipment he said he needed to commit the contract killing. They agreed to supply what he wanted but they secretly disabled the gun and only gave it to him in Valdosta just before he thought he was going to commit the murder, according to court records.
LaVecchio said Apodaca brought along some supplies of his own including a “54-inch wire” with loops on each end, “which could be used as a garrote.”
Apodaca also brought his own gas mask, two knives, black gloves, binoculars and a flashlight, agents said.
Apodaca was arrested Oct. 28 in the Valdosta hotel room after accepting the secretly disabled gun, agents said.
He has pleaded not guilty to federal drug, robbery and weapons charges, as well as a charge linked to the fake contract murder. If convicted, Apodaca could face 15½ to 21½ years in federal prison, with a mandatory extra 30 years for possessing a firearm during a violent or drug-trafficking offense, prosecutors said.