Federal trial of MS-13 gang members begins in Northern Virginia

One of the primary rules of the street gang MS-13 is not to talk to police. But a federal racketeering case brought against members of one of the most violent gangs in Northern Virginia is laying bare the extent of cooperation between its members and law enforcement.

When police received a tip about an MS-13 gang slaying set to take place in Woodbridge, Virginia, in October 2013, authorities knew they had good intelligence. A gang member was informing on the group and had agreed to wear a wire as he and others drove to Gar-Field High School, where they expected to attack their target with machetes and a sawed-off shotgun. Instead, the gang was met by law enforcement, who took them into custody.

But intel doesn’t always come in time to prevent gang violence in Northern Virginia. In two other instances, investigators were left putting informants to work to locate murder victims’ well-hidden graves.

Prosecutors described the scenarios Wednesday in opening trial arguments in a case that initially had charged 13 members of MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, with crimes including three murders and the attempted murder at Gar-Field.

The notably large case has shrunk from 13 defendants to seven since federal prosecutors first brought indictments against the men in 2014. Attorneys said the other six men have entered into plea deals with the government, kept under seal until the trial, that will require them to testify against their fellow gang members.

But the remaining seven defendants appear poised to downplay their involvement in the three homicides and an attempted murder, instead calling into question the deals the government has made with those who pleaded guilty.

In opening statements, the defense attorney for one of the seven described a cooperating witness as a “pathological serial killer.” Attorney Manuel Leiva, who is representing Jose Lopez Torres, said one of the former defendants, Jose Del Cid, has admitted to participating in some of the crimes and is known to have committed at least four murders in El Salvador and two others in the United States.

Mr. Leiva said the men who pleaded guilty (and now are likely in witness protection) had “so much blood on their hands” that they had plenty of reason to cooperate with the government’s investigation — and even to lie about others’ involvement.

The complicated trial is being held in the largest courtroom available at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, where extra security has been put in place.

Thousands of members

The defendants facing trial are Mr. Torres, Omar DeJesus Castillo, Douglas Duran Cerritos, Alvin Gaitan Benitez, Christian Lemus Cerna, Manuel Ernesto Paiz Guevara and Jesus Alejandro Chavez.

The seven men and their attorneys took up three rows of seating inside the packed courtroom as opening statements began Wednesday. Several of the defendants wore white or blue button-up shirts, and one wore a simple short-sleeved white polo shirt.

The trial comes as local law enforcement officers increasingly have become concerned about the level of violence in the region attributable to MS-13. Last year, police in Northern Virginia and Maryland linked eight homicides to the gang. Many of the individuals who have been charged with the crimes are teenagers.

Gang expert Sgt. Claudio Saa of the Herndon Police Department testified Wednesday that the age of MS-13 recruits in the region has gotten younger in recent years. Children as young as 10 years old are being recruited for the gang, he said.

MS-13 membership in the Northern Virginia is estimated between 2,000 and 3,000 people, Sgt. Saa said, adding that instilling fear in the community through violence is one of the gang’s overarching goals.

In the federal case, two of the three men killed, and the victim who was the target of the failed assassination, were associates of the local MS-13 clique, Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia Martinez said in her opening statement. The motivation for their killings had to do with either perceived slights to the gang or suspicion about betrayal — the foremost concern being that a victim had snitched on other members to the police.

The Oct. 7, 2013, killing of MS-13 member Nelson Omar Quintanilla Trujillo was carried out after members suspected he had notified police about the attempted hit days earlier at Gar-Field High School, Ms. Martinez said. Trujillo had not been the informant — rather, that was another gang member who went by the nickname “Drowsy.”

Trujillo was brutally killed after being lured to Holmes Run Stream Valley Park in Fairfax County, Ms. Martinez said. There gang members initially told Trujillo they were going to beat him up for violating gang rules, but as the beating commenced, the gang pulled out knives and began stabbing him and slicing at his face. His body was buried in a shallow grave there.

Bodies in the park

The March 29, 2014, killing of Gerson Adoni Martinez Aguilar, was carried out at the same park — which became a focus for FBI investigators in May 2014, according to media reports at the time.

Aguilar was a low-level gang associate who had not yet been initiated into the group, Ms. Martinez said. But he had angered gang members who accused him of failing to turn over $600 in illicit drug sales he had made for the gang. They also suspected he had been sleeping with the girlfriend of another member.

The gang used the same tactic to lure Aguilar to Holmes Run park as they had used with Trujillo. After they began what was supposed to be only a punitive beating, they pulled out knives and machetes.

“They stabbed him again and again in the back and the neck and then they cut off his head,” Ms. Martinez said.

Investigators were able to locate their bodies through another gang informant known as “Junior.”

Ms. Martinez said Junior had been an FBI informant “for years,” and even previously had testified against gang members. Despite that, he became a confidante of the local MS-13 clique. Members of the crew called him to brag about the killings they carried out. Eventually, while wearing a wire and video surveillance equipment, Junior persuaded a gang member to show him where the bodies of Aguilar and Trujillo were buried in the park, Ms. Martinez said.

The third killing for which the defendants are charged happened in June 2014, while a group of MS-13 members were out looking to pick a fight with a rival gang. Julio Urrutia was standing on a sidewalk near his apartment complex in Alexandria when he was shot in the neck after an altercation with a group. He later died at a hospital.

The man accused of pulling the trigger, Jesus Alejandro Chavez, had been out of jail for just a week at the time of the killing.

The trial is expected to last several weeks.

Meanwhile, authorities in El Salvador declared a state of emergency Tuesday at seven prisons and transferred 299 high-ranking gang members at the start of “extraordinary measures” that the government has promised to take against gangs, The Associated Press reported.

A package of additional measures was to be presented to the legislature Wednesday.

Mauricio Ramirez Landaverde, the minister of justice and public security, said that the targeted gang leaders were transferred to a prison about 15 miles west of the capital of San Salvador, the AP reported.