‘They went out hunting’: prosecutors describe brutal killings in federal MS-13 trial

Federal prosecutors told jurors Monday that three MS-13 officials committed a series of 11 brutal killings, including one that left the victim unrecognizable and others prompted by flimsy information tying those killed to a rival gang.

Defense attorneys attacked the credibility of witnesses expected to testify in support of prosecutors and tried to minimize their clients’ role.

Jose Luis Reynaldo Reyes-Castillo, David Arturo Perez-Manchame and Joel Vargas-Escobar face counts including murder, RICO conspiracy and possessing a firearm during a crime in the Las Vegas trial that could last up to three months.

Prosecutors have said the defendants would be subject to removal proceedings if they were released from custody. The killings occurred in Nevada and California between 2017 and 2018, according to court records.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Melanee Smith told jurors that other men who also participated in the killings have agreed to cooperate with the government.

Defense attorney Richard Wright, who represents Reyes-Castillo, advised the jury to be skeptical of those witnesses, saying they had lied repeatedly and were trying to shift blame to curry favor with prosecutors and reduce their sentences.

“The more you squeal, the better the deal,” he said.

Wright acknowledged Reyes-Castillo’s MS-13 membership, but argued that there was no evidence of his participation in killings.

“If that evidence existed, they would not have had to make the deals they made to buy the testimony of the cooperators,” he said.

Smith, who spoke before defense attorneys, seemed to be trying to address concerns about the witnesses’ credibility.

“I’m not asking you to like these men,” Smith said of the MS-13 members testifying for prosecutors.

But she encouraged the jury to listen to their testimony and see if it was corroborated by other evidence.

The Nevada U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment on the defense arguments about cooperating witnesses.

Slayings detailed

Smith walked jurors through the homicides that prosecutors have accused the defendants of committing on behalf of MS-13 to enhance their standing in the gang’s hierarchy.

The gang’s purpose is not to enrich its members, she said, but to encourage violence and loyalty. Some of the defendants shared a car and slept in rented rooms. Most nights, she said, “They went out hunting, looking for people they could kill.”

The slaying victims included Abel Rodriguez, a 19-year-old father kidnapped, taken to a field and stabbed so brutally that he became unrecognizable, and Izaak Towery, who was forced into a car at knife-point and stabbed 235 times, she said.

Authorities are not alleging that every slaying was directly carried out by all three defendants on trial, but each of the men is accused in connection with multiple killings.

An indictment accuses Reyes-Castillo of killing Rodriguez and Reyes-Castillo and Perez-Manchame of killing Towery. Smith said others also participated in the Rodriguez and Towery slayings.

MS-13 and the 18th Street gang are rivals, according to Smith, and in multiple cases, she said the MS-13 members killed people based on slim information that made them believe their victims had a connection to the other gang.

Some of the victims died on Mount Charleston or in the desert, she told the jury.

In Towery’s case, MS-13 members did not know him but thought he was part of 18th Street, she said. They tried to question him, she said, but it did not go smoothly because he could not speak Spanish, and they did not know English.

“Towery had no idea what was going on,” said Smith.

Defense makes case against witnesses

Like Wright, defense attorneys for the other men on trial focused on attacking the credibility of expected witnesses.

Andrea Luem, a lawyer for Perez-Manchame, told the jury that the case was about the testimony of the “highly incentivized” cooperators.

Some face mandatory life imprisonment, she said, and know their sentences cannot be reduced unless prosecutors decide they’ve provided substantial assistance.

One, Miguel Torres-Escobar, participated in 10 killings and another, Josue Diaz-Orellana, has claimed to have killed 200 to 300 people in El Salvador, she told the jury.

Perez-Manchame, an immigrant from Honduras, spent time with MS-13 members and was involved in residential burglary and gun possession crimes, but did not became a member of the gang and chose to distance himself from the organization, according to the attorney.

Only one murder occurred in 2017 before he “jumped out,” or ended his association with gang members, and he did not play a role in it, Luem argued.

Prosecutors have accused him of killing seven people in early 2018.

Perez-Manchame wore shoes with Towery’s bloon on them, said Smith, who added that gun and DNA evidence tied the defendants to the killings.

Nathan Chambers, an attorney for Vargas-Escobar, said his client is only charged in two killings based on the word of government witnesses whose statements have changed dramatically.

“Consider if you would trust any of these people if you had the misfortune of running into them outside of this courtroom,” he told jurors.