7th man could face death in machete slaying
A seventh man may face a rare federal death penalty prosecution in a gruesome machete slaying in Houston tied to the MS-13 street gang.
Carlos Elias Henriquez-Torres, 20, made an initial appearance Friday afternoon in a superseding indictment accusing him and six others of putting a hit on a disloyal cohort who became a police informant.
Such hits, often ordered by top gang leaders in Central America, have become a trademark tactic for the transnational gang Mara Salvatrucha, often known as MS-13. The 2018 slaying of Victor Castro-Martinez at Cullinan Park in southeast Houston is one of three homicide cases the Justice Department is pursuing in the Houston area where prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
At a video hearing Friday, U.S. Magistrate Andrew Edison appointed an attorney for Henriquez-Torres, the newest defendant in the case, and ordered him to remain in federal custody until his detention hearing Tuesday.
The Cullinan Park homicide case originated in state court and is now being prosecuted by the Justice Department.
Henriquez-Torres joins six previously indicted co-defendants, including Wilson Jose “Discreto/Disco” Ventura-Mejia, 24, Jimmy “Duchi” VillalobosGomez, 24, Angel Miguel “Darki” Aguilar-Ochoa, 35, Walter Antonio Chicas-Garcia, 24, and Marlon “Chinki” Miranda-Moran, 21. These five are Salvadoran nationals living in Houston. One,
Villalobos-Gomez, has legal permanent residency, and the rest are undocumented, officials said. All are in custody.
Another defendant, Franklin “Impulsivo” Trejo-Chavarria, 23, is detained in El Salvador.
The group is charged with conspiracy and murder in aid of an international gang enterprise in the June 6, 2018, killing of Castro-Martinez, 25. Former Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said after the homicide that Castro-Martinez had been an informant and was wearing recording equipment on his body at the time of his death.
Villalobos-Gomez was accused in the state case of contacting gang leaders in El Salvador to authorize the hit. He told police he was present during the killing, according to court documents.
Ventura-Mejia, Aguilar-Ochoa and Miranda-Moran were accused in the state case of hacking Castro-Martinez to death with machetes, striking him repeatedly on his head and neck.
Police said in taped phone calls that they heard Villalobos-Gomez say to Chicas-Garcia that they needed to locate places without surveillance cameras, “so they could do things and then walk away laughing as if nothing happened.” The men also talked about how they disposed of the murder victim’s torched car, according to court documents.
Villalobos-Gomez and Chicas-Garcia were separately charged with federal conspiracy and murder in aid of racketeering in the death of another gang member in a wooded area in Liberty County on July 3, 2018. That unnamed victim agreed to take a beating to get out of the gang, but his fellow gang members turned on him with a baseball bat and then a machete, according to police.