Christine Pelisek |
Luisa Prudhomme proudly shows off photo after photo of her son: As a newborn
baby boy swathed in a white bonnet and blanket. As a 2-year-old bathing in the
bathroom sink. As a 5-year-old dressed in Michael Jackson attire. And a teenager
checking out his first car, a used red Escort. And wearing cap and gown, grinning
ear to ear at his high school graduation. She abruptly stops on this June day.
“Anthony graduated high school nine years ago today.”
Prudhomme, who is white, passes over the last photo of her African-American son
as a 21-year-old man, sporting a mustache and goatee, hanging out with a friend
and flashing the peace sign. “He was full of peace and love,” she said, sitting
at Anthony’s favorite Highland Park restaurant. “He thought he had the best of
both worlds being black and white. I feel like I let him out to the wolves, and
the wolves ate him up.”
On a cool November night in 2000, just a five-minute walk from Tacos el Michoacano,
members of the Avenues gang awakened Anthony in the basement room he rented for
$200 a month on a quiet, tree-lined street overlooking the hills of Highland Park
and executed him because of the color of his skin.
“The detective told me that if my son was Latino he would be alive today,” said
the mother, who wears a silver chain with a photo of her son in a heart-shaped
pendant. “I had no idea how dangerous it was for blacks to live in Highland Park.
His father lives in South Central. I was more worried about that.”
Police blame three killings of African-American men on the Avenues gang in Highland
Park, which has led to a federal hate-crimes indictment and once again landed
the northeast L.A. gang in the national spotlight. A decade ago, it was the killing
of 3-year-old Stephanie Kuhen by a clique of the Avenues that put the gang in
the cross hairs of law enforcement. The little girl’s murder by gang members who
fired on her family’s car as her stepfather, lost, tried to turn around on a dead-end
street, intensified efforts by police to eradicate the 800-member gang from neighborhoods
just north of downtown L.A., where the forces of gentrification are flooding the
area with new families seeking a safe, urban life.
Today, the continuing carnage on the streets of Highland Park and neighboring
Glassell Park, Cypress Park and parts of Eagle Rock are cruel testimony to the
mixed results of that campaign. Federal indictments, a gang injunction and one
of the more ambitious series of gang trials in Los Angeles history, which began
in 2003 and has so far produced three convictions for seven killings, hit the
Avenues hard, but violence has continued by the gang and its rivals. Police blame
the Avenues alone for more than half of the 200-plus homicides in the northeast
L.A. neighborhoods since the early 1990s.
What makes Highland Park’s gang wars particularly disturbing is the way victims
are struck down in broad daylight on busy streets, sometimes involving people
without gang ties. Since January, nine gang-related killings have hit the neighborhood,
including 19-year-old Cynthia Portillo, a pregnant woman. Police give this account:
Portillo was shot to death on a February afternoon as she walked down the street
with an 18-year-old alleged member of the Drifters gang. Members of a gang called
Highland Park had just terrified three people standing at a bus stop, asking them,
“Where you from?” before letting fly a hail of bullets. Then they came upon Portillo
and her friend and asked them about their gang affiliation before firing off a
round, striking Portillo in the head. Driving away, they fired at a teenager on
a bicycle who fired back bursting their right rear tire. Police caught up with
the gangsters moments later as they were parked on a side street.
The crackdowns on the Avenues’ leaders, which have come in three waves over the
past decade, have produced a fresh crop of gang members, and also made room for
other gangs trying to set up shop in one of L.A.’s oldest neighborhoods.
“Avenues gang activity has decreased and other gangs have increased,” said LAPD
Northeast gang supervisor Detective Robert Lopez. “Other gangs are taking advantage
of enforcement efforts and uncertainty in the Avenues. They are still leery because
the Avenues are still formidable.”
Nearly a dozen Avenues gang members have been killed over the last couple of years because of internal strife, and they are still battling to fill the leadership vacuum created when their leaders went to prison.
The Avenues take their name from the numbered corridors that slice through Figueroa
Street, Highland Park’s bustling yet economically poor main drag, home to Mexican
grocery stores, check-cashing businesses, nail salons, swap meets, car washes,
fast-food joints and a smattering of Mexican restaurants, galleries and nightclubs
with a citywide draw. Steps from the 5-mile-long boulevard lie unpredictable hot
spots, where violence breaks out amid 1920s historic Craftsman homes and bungalows,
newly built luxury apartments just a stone’s throw from ramshackle homes with
overgrown lawns and congested pockets of Section 8 low-rent apartments.
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It has been nearly 10 years since Avenues boss and Mexican Mafia member Alex “Pee
Wee” Aguirre was sentenced to a life term. He turned over partial control of the
gang to his brother, Richard “Little Pee Wee” Aguirre, who was only 14 when he
assumed the role of shot-caller in 1995. His reign lasted until 2001, when he
was charged in a string of murders. It wasn't until this May that Little Pee Wee
was convicted, a delay caused by the “difficult” task of getting gang members
to cooperate with police. During the trial, two ex-Avenues members told shocking
tales of robberies, assaults and murders. They gave details of life as tax collectors
for the Mexican Mafia’s drug business and the penalties doled out to those who
defied its will.
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FBI agent Jerry Fradella tells of the meetings a clique of Avenues held
off and on with some 50 members at the Montecito Heights Recreation Center to
talk about the blacks in the neighborhood and how they had to get rid of them.
“They thought there were too many around,” said Fradella. “It is like a blanket
policy for them.” John Berdin, who recently retired as LAPD’s Northeast homicide
supervisor, said the Avenues have a well-documented history of attacking blacks
dating to the early ’90s, when three black family members were shot and injured
by gang members after they moved into an apartment on 58th and Benner streets
in Highland Park.
“There are a lot of motivating factors,” he said. “There is a lot of hatred between
Hispanics and blacks within the prison system. What happens on the inside translates
to the outside. When there is an incident inside the penal system, it spreads
to hate crimes on the street.” All that matters is the color of your skin.
Anthony Prudhomme was an easy target for the Avenues. He was naive, trustworthy
and a friend to all. The 6-foot-3, 155-pound free spirit was born at Glendale
Adventist Medical Center on November 27, 1978. “It was a beautiful day,” said
his mom, who was 19 at the time. “I was watching the sun set when he was born.”
Life soon turned rocky. His parents split up shortly after he was born. Broke
and unable to pay for her baby’s diapers, Luisa joined the U.S. Navy for medical
benefits. Her ex-husband cared for Anthony for two months so she could go to boot
camp. She and her son were reunited in Virginia Beach, which was Luisa’s first
assignment. She did tours of duty in Hawaii, San Diego and Japan, and eventually
became a petty officer third class. She left the military in 1988, and she and
her son briefly lived in Germany with Anthony’s grandmother before returning to
Pasadena to start over. Luisa remarried in 1991, and Anthony welcomed a brother
into the world four years later.
Anthony graduated in 1996 from Blair High School in Pasadena, where he was voted
“Class Flirt” and “Most Cheerful.” He got along well with jocks and nerds, and
liked to help the underdog.
He took a job at Pier One Imports in La Cañada “because it smelled the best” of
all the places he applied, and he began taking classes at the L.A. Recording Workshop,
aspiring to be a music producer. Music became his hobby. He played the keyboards.
Musical talent ran in his family. He learned how to play from his uncle, who was
a drummer in a local band. Anthony loved Wu-Tang Clan, Slum Village and Black
Eyed Peas.
Anthony was also a hemp advocate and designed a bumper sticker with the slogan, “Say No to Drugs, Say Yes to Hemp.”
He fought with his stepfather over his marijuana use and moved out of his parents’
home in the San Fernando Valley, renting the basement suite in Highland Park from
his high school math tutor, who lived in the main part of the rustic house, overlooking
York Street and the neighboring hills.
“I was worried about him financially,” said Luisa. “I begged him not to move. He said, ‘No, Mom. It is time’. I don’t know why I didn’t want him to move. I had never seen him happier. He was so content. It was the first time he was on his own. We went to IKEA and I bought him a couch, one that pulls out. I never dreamed he would be killed on that bed two months later.”
When he wasn’t at work, school or with his girlfriend, Anthony had recently begun
to hang out with a group of roofers working at the house next door. He even befriended
one who would stop by for a quick toke.
The Wednesday before his murder, Anthony called up his mother, whom he hoped would
convince his stepfather to give his friend, Lenny, a job at his trucking company.
“I told him he should worry about himself,” she said. “I was worried about him,
and he was worried about his friend.”
Mother and son talked again on November 2, the day before he died. “He wanted to know if I would make German food. If I knew it was his last day on earth…”
Later that evening, Anthony received a call from a friend who wanted to stop by
to see him. Anthony turned down the offer and said he had to get to work by 6
a.m. to unload a truck. He never made it. Around 2 a.m., two men broke into Anthony’s
apartment and shot him twice in the back of the head. They used a pillow to muffle
the sound, but the gunshots awakened his landlord sleeping upstairs, who called
police. The gunmen escaped in a van as patrol cars pulled up.
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Nearly a year later, an informant told police that a fellow gang member from the
Avenues said he and another gangster had done the “murder on the hill.” On December
5, 2001, Porfirio “Dreamer” Avila, an acquaintance of one of the roofers working
on the house next door, was arrested and charged with the murder of Anthony. He
belonged to the 43rd Aves, a splinter group of the Avenues. His accomplice was
never charged. Police believe Anthony was killed because he was black, but ruled
his death a robbery gone bad because they didn’t have enough evidence to charge
Avila with a hate crime.
Avila was convicted of murdering Anthony and another African-American man — Christopher
Bowser, 28, who was killed one month later. Bowser was shot once in the back of
the head while waiting at a bus stop on Figueroa Street on his way to visit friends.
Avila and another gunman jumped out of a car, ran up to him and fired. The father
of four died instantly. The police speculated that Bowser was killed for filing
a police report alleging that an Avenues gang member had robbed him of a gold
chain. Bowser had been regularly chased down the street, threatened and on at
least one occasion beaten by members of the 43rd Aves, who ruled the turf where
Bowser lived with his mother on Avenue 44 since 1989. “I was moving away from
the gangbanging on Hoover,” said Bowser’s mother Angel Brown. “They were always
calling him racial names. He said he would end up being a statistic, the way they
were chasing him. He didn’t do nothing to them.”
Bowser had filed at least three police reports against the gang, she said. Don
Petrie, an African-American friend of Bowser’s since elementary school, lived
across the street from him and his mother in Highland Park. He said that both
he and Bowser regularly escaped beatings and had bottles thrown at them by the
43rd Aves. Petrie said that gang members would drive up and down their block looking
for them.
“When we were kids it was fine, but when we got older it was a problem,” he said.
“They started chasing and calling us niggers. They told us to get out of the neighborhood.”
Petrie and his mother moved out of the area in 1996, after three years of relentless
attacks.
“They ran us out of Highland Park,” he said. “I was fearful for my life. I knew
other guys from other gangs, and they never gave me any problems. They used to
tell us that Avenues don’t like blacks. They would tell us to be careful.”
FBI agent Fradella said Avenues members often talked about how much they disliked
Bowser. “They knew Bowser, and he really irritated them and would walk around
with his boom box,” he said. “He was a good runner and they would chase him.”
At the time of Prudhomme’s and Bowser’s deaths, allegations of another hate crime
were already on the radar of federal authorities with the killing of Kenneth Curry
Wilson. He was gunned down on April 18, 1999, while parking his Cadillac on Avenue
52, a street claimed by the 43rd Aves. The 38-year-old African-American had been
visiting a friend when gang members drove by in a stolen van and saw him. Three
of them allegedly jumped out of the vehicle, and shot him several times.
In 2004, federal authorities, armed with new information, indicted four Avenues
on federal-weapons and civil-rights charges in connection with Wilson’s and Bowser's
killings and are considering the death penalty. Alejandro “Bird” Martinez, who
allegedly called the hit on Bowser from jail, is one of the Avenues named. The
indictment includes several other attacks against blacks, such as the beating
of a man who was seen walking with a Latino woman, a murder plot against a man
who had just moved into the neighborhood, an assault on a group of men playing
basketball in Montecito Park, racial slurs directed at a girl in a supermarket,
drawing chalk outlines of human bodies in the driveway of a black resident's home
and the beating of a black man who stopped to use a pay phone on the street. The
trial, which covers incidents that occurred between 1997 and 2001, is set to begin
in January. Detective Lopez says at least six racially motivated incidents have
occurred since 2001, involving various cliques of the Avenues.
Luisa said that federal authorities are also looking into whether they can bring
hate-crime charges against the second accomplice in Anthony’s death. The FBI’s
Fradella confirmed that the agency is looking into it.
“You never dream you are going to bury your child,” Luisa said. “You look back
and wonder what you could have done, and you blame everyone except the murderer.
He was too young. He didn’t have a chance to be famous. He was a star to me.”
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Photo
The Avenues hasn’t always been a violent gang. Little is known about the
Flores brothers, who started it as a club in the 1940s. Members sported gang tattoos
that included a skull with a fedora and a bullet hole in the skull, or the letters
LA, AVES, A and Avenidos. They dressed well, and many wore Frisco pants. In the
early days, it was more of a neighborhood group of guys who hung out together.
They settled fights with their fists. Back then, the gangs’ rival was the Clover
Street gang. As time went on, the Avenues got bigger and more violent and changed
for the worst in 1969.
“We went to Vietnam, and the guys started to learn how to shoot,” said LAPD Northeast
Senior Lead Officer Joe Galindo, who grew up with the Avenues in Highland Park.
Soon disgruntled members formed a new gang in neighboring Cypress Park. Drive-by
shootings became commonplace. The death toll rose. The introduction of drugs into
the mix by the Mexican Mafia, or La Eme, in the 1980s accelerated the homicide
rate.
The Avenues have cliques, each of which claims a gang territory based on where
gang members live. The three main cliques are 43rd Aves, Avenues 57 and Cypress
Avenues, all centered on the streets for which they are named.
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By the early 1990s, the Avenues drew the attention of federal authorities concerned
about the Mexican Mafia’s bid to extend the group’s influence outside of California’s
prisons as well as the deadly infighting for control that ensued after the death
of Mexican Mafia cofounder Joe Morgan, a one-time resident of Eagle Rock who died
of cancer in prison. Although the Mexican Mafia has only a few hundred members,
it has power over most of the 80,000 members of Southern California’s Latino street
gangs, including the 800-plus Avenues. Street gangs abide by the rules of the
Mafia, and in turn the Mafia provides protection for gang members when they are
incarcerated. The Mafia controls the distribution of narcotics and earns revenue
by taxing drug dealers in areas controlled by gangs. Failure to pay taxes is death,
and there is a rule against cooperating with law enforcement. Allegiance to the
Mafia is first, above family, religion and community.
The first major law-enforcement crackdown came in the early 1990s, when authorities
sought to break the stranglehold of the prison Mafia on the Latino street gang.
An 18-month federal investigation produced more than 300 secret videotapes and
audio recordings. In the end, Alex “Pee Wee” Aguirre, who has an Avenues clique
called the Pee Wee Gangsters named after him, was indicted along with 12 others.
The six-month trial marked the first time that federal authorities in Los Angeles
used the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute against
a gang. Most defendants were found guilty in May 1997 of murdering seven people,
including three advisers on Edward James Olmos’ 1992 Mexican Mafia movie American
Me. Aguirre, 32 at the time, was sentenced to life in federal prison in Marion,
Illinois.
The death of 3-year-old Stephanie Kuhen in 1995 catapulted the gang into national
headlines. Kuhen and five other family members were returning from a birthday
party on September 17 when they made a wrong turn down a dead-end alley dubbed
“Avenue of the Assassins” on Isabel Street in Cypress Park. Gang members surrounded
their car and began to shoot inside. Kuhen was killed instantly, and her stepfather
and younger brother were injured. A few days later, President Clinton denounced
the gang and pledged federal money to curb gang violence.
Months later, the Community Law Enforcement and Recovery (CLEAR) program was born,
freeing up $1 million in federal funding to hire a team of 14 more police officers,
a few prosecutors and probation officers to concentrate on gang violence.
By 1997, gang crime in northeast L.A. went down 30 percent. That same year, Anthony
Gabriel Rodriguez, Manuel Rosales Jr. and Hugo Gomez were given sentences of 54
years and eight months to life for the murder of Kuhen and the attempted murders
of her stepfather and brother.
By 2003, gang crime was on the rise, prompting City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo
to obtain an injunction against the Avenues that barred members from congregating
within a nearly 10-square-mile radius.
“I grew up in a neighborhood where many of my acquaintances were in gangs or victims
of gangs,” said Delgadillo, who was raised in Highland Park. “There were kids
that I grew up with who were smarter than me, better musicians than me, and they
are not around today. We all lose for it.”
More recently, northeast L.A.’s Community Policing Advisory Board, which is made
up of community members, started the Neighbor-to-Neighbor Mobilization project,
which targets high-crime areas. On a monthly basis, volunteers walk door-to-door
and pass out questionnaires and pamphlets with emergency numbers.
The higher cost of living has also played a part in the clean-up efforts. Housing
prices have tripled in the area over the last five years. In the Highland Park
flats, a two-bedroom bungalow sells for $385,000 to $425,000. In the hills, the
same goes for $575,000. Rental apartment costs have also skyrocketed. A one-bedroom
in Highland Park costs about $900 a month, a $400 increase from five years ago.
As a result, low-income families are moving out to cheaper areas like Lancaster
and Palmdale, which have seen an increase in gang-related activity over the years.
“People are moving away because they can’t afford to live in the area anymore,” said Officer Galindo. “They are going to move into other areas and cause problems over there.”
When the elder Aguirre went off to prison in early 1995, control of the
Avenues fell to his 14-year-old brother, “Little Pee Wee” Aguirre. It was not
easy for many of the hardcore gangsters to take orders from the 5-foot-4 shot-caller.
Testimony from the spring trial showed how the elder Aguirre, through a network
inside and outside of prison, continued to direct the powerful drug-distribution
network.
The Avenues’ boss received a life sentence for the murder of Mexican Mafia member
Manuel “Rocky” Luna, an unpaid adviser on Olmos’ movie. The movie had angered
Mexican Mafia members because of its depiction of the excesses of a gangster’s
life. Luna’s body was found slumped over the wheel of a car in the parking lot
of the Ramona Gardens housing project in 1993. Aguirre also was convicted of the
attempted murder of six Cypress Park gang members, all of whom he had shaken down
for tax money, and for conspiring to kill gang member Donald “Little Man” Ortiz.
It was not long before Little Pee Wee got himself into trouble doing his and his
brother’s bidding.
Joseph Torres, a 27-year-old reputed member of the Avenues, became the first known
casualty of Little Pee Wee. He was found shot to death on Isabel Drive on July
22, 1995. According to court testimony, Torres was killed because he was collecting
taxes in an area once run by Alex Aguirre but was giving the proceeds to another
Mafia member, who was trying to expand his turf. He was executed for his disobedience.
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On August 14, 1995, a reputed drug dealer named Alan Downey, 31, was found dead,
lying across the front seat of his car on Eagle Rock Boulevard. His girlfriend
Judy Gutierrez later told the police Downey worked for Alex Aguirre but refused
to pay taxes to him for the drugs he was selling out of a bar in Highland Park.
“Somebody gave me the message that I would have to start paying taxes. Fuck that.
I don’t pay rent to anybody,” he allegedly told Gutierrez.
According to court testimony, Downey had complained about the quality of the cocaine
he was getting from the Aguirres, and had decided to get the drugs from another
source.
Raul Rodriguez, a 27-year-old Alpine gang member, was killed on April 11, 1996,
on the orders of Little Pee Wee. His crime against the Avenues: snitching on a
gangbanger named Richard “Stalker” Ramirez, whom he told police had killed someone
at a New Year’s Eve party the year before.
At the time of his death, Rodriguez worked at a factory with his father making
wood frames and lived at home with his parents in Highland Park. “He was a very
funny guy. He was the one who made us laugh at the house,” said Rodriguez' sister,
Rachel Sierra, whose parents have custody of Rodriguez’ now 16-year-old daughter.
“I am not saying that he was an angel. I feel he didn’t deserve to be killed.
My father suffers every day. My mother can’t even talk about it.”
It proved hard for the younger Aguirre to rule with the iron fist of his brother.
“That indictment [against the elder Aguirre] in 1995 broke the head off the serpent,”
said Berdin. “Other people have surfaced and a power struggle has ensued between
different members of the Avenues street gang. Because Alex Aguirre was in federal
custody he couldn’t maintain control. He had a group of people who were loyal
to him, but as other people considered the man’s plight that he was doing life
in another state, it left the door open for others to exert control.”
The powerful Alex Aguirre could do nothing to protect his brother from the testimony
of two ex-Avenues’ members, who knew enough about these three crimes to threaten
Little Pee Wee’s hold on the gang.”
For Benjamin “Sleepy” Garcia, becoming an Avenues gang member was a given.
Hailing from the mostly Latino neighborhood of Glassell Park, Garcia was raised
by a single mother and grew up with his five brothers on Division Street, an area
so dangerous in the 1970s that gang members nicknamed it Little Vietnam because
a lot of people were getting shot. Like his older brothers, he became enamored
of the gang life early on. At the age of 11, Garcia was “jumped in” — a form of
initiation — into the Avenues by his 14-year-old brother who shot him in the leg.
“He beat me up pretty good and shot me with a BB gun, so I would know what it
was like to be shot,” said the tall, heavy-set 37-year-old former gang member–turned-plumber
at the May trial.
Garcia began gangbanging every chance he got when his older brother was shot and
injured by rival gang members. He started carrying a gun, which he bought off
a neighborhood drug dealer, at the age of 12. His daily activities included drive-by
shootings at rival gang members, beatings, carjackings and kidnappings. His gun
of choice was a 9 mm.
Cypress Park gang members shot him in the early 1980s after he was asked his gang
affiliation. “I took it as a gang challenge. That is the kind of mind I had.”
He was shot again in 1986, this time by Highland Park gang members.
“If you are from a gang you got to say, ‘Where you from?,’” he said. “You have
to deal with it. It doesn’t matter what they have coming at you. You had to act
that way. There is no way around it. You would die saying Avenues. If you didn’t
say Avenues, you would be in worse trouble. Even if you were going to lose.”
By 1989, Garcia had married and moved to San Diego, in an attempt to get away
from the gang life. His stint as a law-abiding citizen lasted less than a year.
“I would get calls from my brother telling me who was getting killed. I felt like
I owed them something so I went back in 1990.”
Garcia was ambitious and aspired to move up in the ranks of the Mexican Mafia
and eventually become a soldier and then a full-fledged member. It was a matter
of earning his stripes. He came a step closer to his dream when he met Alex “Pee
Wee” Aguirre in 1993. Aguirre, who had once dated Garcia’s sister, recruited the
then-25-year-old gangster to help him take over the distribution of drugs from
the Mexican Nationals, who were dealing drugs on Drew Street in Avenues territory.
“I wanted to be just like him,” he said. “He was a mobster. A Mexican Mafia member.
The Paisas [Mexican Nationals] were stabbing and robbing Avenues. They had the
area sewed up. If you wanted drugs you had to go through them. Alex wanted to
take it over.”
Garcia’s newfound relationship with Alex Aguirre was wrought with dangerous consequences.
In 1994, the two gangsters had a falling out after Garcia borrowed Aguirre’s father’s
vehicle and didn’t return it until the next day. As punishment, Aguirre took his
gun and ordered Garcia to pay more taxes. Garcia refused, drawing the first of
two “green lights” — marking him for death or assault for defying Aguirre’s will.
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Garcia said he later patched things up with the older Aguirre, who introduced
him in 1995 to Alan Downey. At the time, Downey was allegedly running drugs for
Alex Aguirre in Burbank. Aguirre wanted Garcia to work closely with Downey and
learn how to collect taxes. Eventually Garcia was given the territories of Burbank,
Sunland and Vineland where he collected taxes from local drug dealers. He was
well on his way until the elder Aguirre’s arrest in May 1995.
Garcia soon had a run-in with Little Pee Wee, who seemed to him to be too young
— and too small — to be in charge.
“’What is it going to take for you to believe I call the shots here?’ he said
to me. I said he was not a Mafia member,” said Garcia. “I wanted to take him to
his house and ask his mother. I would never hit the little kid because of his
brother. I never tried to hurt him. I wanted to know if he was making things up.
It was hard for me to believe I would take orders from a kid. It didn’t make sense
to me.”
Downey was also having trouble with Little Pee Wee. Behind his back, he accused
Little Pee Wee of selling him drugs at exorbitant rates and taxing him on top
of it. He complained that Little Pee Wee smoked the profits and kept the money
for himself. Garcia passed on the complaint to Little Pee Wee in front of a gang
member’s house on Division Street. It was a big mistake. Garcia said Little Pee
Wee pulled a gun on him, and the two gangsters struggled for it. Another gang
member entered the fray and stabbed Garcia in the chin. The upshot: Little Pee
Wee called Downey a liar and ordered Garcia to deal with him.
“I said the guy is worth more alive to me,” he said. “Alan owed me a lot of money.
I didn’t say I wouldn’t, but just that he had to pay me my money first.”
Later, in a meeting at Downey’s house, Garcia got into another fight with Little
Pee Wee about the handling of Mafia business. “He was running amok, taking people’s
guns and robbing them. What he was doing was wrong. The mob is serious. If you
didn’t do what he wanted, he would talk to his brother and his brother would ‘put
you in the hat’ [place you on the “green light” list]. He wasn’t throwing his
weight around. He was throwing his brother’s weight around.”
Garcia said he ended up getting beaten up for his troubles that day. It was also
the last time he saw Downey alive.
Garcia ended up in trouble again with the law in 1996 after he attacked two rival
gang members who robbed him of his carpentry tools. He was sentenced to state
prison for six years in 1997. While in prison, Garcia was approached by homicide
detectives about the murders of Rodriguez, Downey and Torres. “I was not forthcoming
so they got pissed off,” he said. When he was paroled in 2001, Garcia cooperated
with the police because he feared his parole officer might make trouble for him
if he refused to help bring down Little Pee Wee and another gangster named Scott
“Gatto” Gleason, 37. “I wanted to keep myself from going back to prison for some
bullshit I didn’t do.”
A few months later, Little Pee Wee was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to
kill Rodriguez, and for killing Torres and Downey. Gleason was already serving
time in state prison. Garcia received immunity for testifying against them.
“I cooperated because they already knew,” he said. “I didn’t lie about it. I told
them the truth. I was already part of the puzzle.”
James Maxson joined the street gang called The Insane Ones (TIO) when he was
14. On behalf of the gang, he robbed, stole and shot at rival gang members. He
started carrying a gun at the age of 15.
Maxson was “jumped in” the Avenues when he was 20 years old and living on Benner
Street in Highland Park. He started to hang out with Alex Aguirre in 1989 and
began to collect taxes.
“I would either give the talk or back up the person talking,” said the 37-year-old
former gang member. “If the dealer refused, we would take his drugs and assault
him. He would eventually end up dead.”
Maxson collected taxes weekly from 15 to 50 drug dealers in the Highland Park
and the Avenue 57 area with the help of two assistants. He would also find out
from drug users what dealers were selling in the area. If he heard a new name,
he would pay a visit, showing up with associates to let the dealer know that if
he wanted to deal drugs, he would have to pay taxes.
“We would find out how much they sold,” he said. “We would monitor the dealers.
If a dealer said he wasn’t going to pay taxes, we would shut him down, take his
money, drugs and weapons away.”
Maxson said he collected $1,500 to $2,000 a week in taxes for the Mafia. He admitted
to more than 30 assaults, dozens of robberies and four shootings, including a
shootout at the house of a drug dealer who refused to pay taxes. In 1991, Maxson
was sentenced to eight years in state prison for robbery and carjacking convertible
Porsches from unsuspecting motorists.
Maxson was back on the streets in April 1996, and collecting taxes two weeks later.
In early 1999, Maxson read in a local newspaper that he had been indicted along
with 13 others and fled to Mexico with $5,000 in cash, leaving behind his wife
and son. Maxson returned to Los Angeles six months later and turned himself in.
“I was tired of my life of crime. “I wanted to get out of the lifestyle for my
kid and me.” Under a plea agreement, Maxson pleaded guilty to racketeering and
distribution of narcotics and served four years in federal prison. He was released
in August 2002.
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He now is an ironworker. At the May trial, he testified about the murders of Downey,
Torres and Rodriguez.
Maxson told jurors that he first learned that Rodriguez was murdered one month
after he got out of state prison in 1996. It was during a meeting with Gleason
and Little Pee Wee at Danny’s Taco Stand on Figueroa Street. Gleason was talking
about taking over the drug operation on Avenue 43 when he asked Maxson if he had
heard about “his work” while Maxson was in state prison. “It was typical among
mafia associates to talk about killings.”
Gleason allegedly told Maxson a few days later that Little Pee Wee gave him the
gun to kill Rodriguez.
Maxson told the jury that the following year, he heard about the Downey murder
while he was living in Glassell Park with his girlfriend, Little Pee Wee and Little
Pee Wee’s girlfriend. Maxson told the jury that a fellow gangster, who was in
county jail awaiting trial for another murder, had called to complain that he
needed money for his defense and wasn’t getting it. Maxson said he assumed the
inmate was arrested for the murder of Downey. “I told Richie that he wanted money,”
said Maxson. “Richie said to tell him to stop crying. I am the one who shot Downey.”
Maxson echoed Garcia’s testimony and said that Downey was selling out of a Highland
Park bar and was not paying taxes.
That same year, Maxson said he heard about the murder of Torres from Little Pee
Wee, who told him that Torres had made a move on Little Pee Wee and that another
gang member “hit him with a big gun.”
“Torres had to go because he was collecting on Drew Street. It was Alex’s area,”
said Maxson. “The order was to take him out.”
Little Pee Wee and Gleason were convicted solely on the testimony of Maxson and
Garcia. Defense attorneys attacked the credibility of the ex-gangbangers without
success. Gleason’s defense attorney called Maxson a “liar for hire.”
Prosecutors have relocated Maxson and Garcia for their protection, but
they are not finished taking the stand against the Avenues. Maxson is now testifying
against two other Avenues members charged in the killing of a 15-year-old gangster.
Both will likely be called to the stand later this year against Avenues gang member
Javier “Gangster” Marquez, who faces the death penalty if convicted of killing
Downey and Torres.
The wheels of justice turn slowly for Luisa Prudhomme. Since the death of Anthony
in 2000, she has visited Highland Park many times and tried to convince police
to arrest the accomplice in her son’s killing. Police confirm they have the name
of a suspect, but say they do not have enough evidence to arrest him. The case
is no longer an active investigation, which upsets the mother. She says the police
are too busy with other cases to re-interview witnesses, but she holds out hope
that the FBI will take up her cause. The LAPD recently reinstated a $25,000 reward
for information about Prudhomme's and Bowser's murders.
Until her son's murder is solved, she can‘t move on. She hears his voice every
day. She keeps the last message he left on her answering machine on a small recorder
in her purse. Once a day it goes off, his voice offering a greeting to her and
her family. She is currently involved with Women Against Gun Violence and Parents
of Murdered Children and plans to start up a non-profit of her own called the
Murder Prevention Coalition.
“We want to make the public aware of how we treat murder as nothing. Murder is
not entertainment. After Anthony died, I couldn’t do anything for months,” she
said. “I went to group counseling, one-on-one counseling. Everything. I was devastated.
My son had the right to live where he wanted,” she said. “If I can keep them from
killing one other person, it is worth it.”
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Christopher Bowser
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