Gang crosses borders — and the line

The gruesome slayings were each more than 1,000 miles apart, an arc of bloodshed that spanned much of North America.

On a rutty street near a crowded slum in Honduras, gunmen sprayed automatic-weapons fire at a bus filled with Christmas shoppers. Twenty-eight people, including six children, were killed.

In the woods near Dallas, a 21-year-old man was shot in the head, his remains eaten by animals. His pants were pulled down, and police suspect he may have been sodomized.

And near the banks of a quiet river in Virginia, a 17-year-old informant was hacked to death. She was four months' pregnant and stabbed 16 times in the chest and neck.

The killings were similar in their brutality and their lineage: Authorities said all three are tied to a single Los Angeles branch of Mara Salvatrucha, a street gang formed 20 years ago in the immigrant neighborhoods west of the downtown skyline.

Today, the gang's extreme violence, vast reach and increasing sophistication have made it a top priority at the highest levels of law enforcement and political leadership from Washington to San Salvador.

In recent months, the departments of Justice and Homeland Security have started a series of initiatives to confront the threat posed by the gang, also known as MS-13, which has 30,000 to 50,000 members in half a dozen countries, including up to 10,000 members in the United States, according to federal law-enforcement statistics.

The FBI's creation of an MS-13 task force, the first nationwide effort targeting a single street gang, was ordered by Director Robert Mueller after several high-profile slayings blamed on MS-13 in the suburbs of Washington. On May 10, Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency for the first time placed an MS-13 member on its most-wanted fugitive list. The Los Angeles gang member is suspected in a string of violent crimes.

In Honduras, four Central American presidents gathered in April to address the gang crisis. Citing the destabilizing influence of groups such as MS-13, they appealed for economic aid to curb the poverty and joblessness fueling the growth of gangs.

Authorities are scrambling to contain forces unleashed in part by past U.S. policies. Refugees formed the gang in the 1980s near MacArthur Park, just west of downtown Los Angeles, after fleeing a U.S.-backed civil war against insurgents in El Salvador. As the gang grew, immigration officials began a 10-year campaign to deport members, including ex-convicts and hardened leaders who helped spread MS-13 across Central America and solidify its structure.

In the United States, the gang has spread from California into 33 other states, including Washington, and the District of Columbia. Investigators said members are involved in homicide, extortion, drug dealing and witness intimidation. The expansion has come from migration and calculated efforts by its Los Angeles leaders to tap new markets of criminal activity.

In Seattle, for instance, gang members arrived from Los Angeles in 1997 to distribute marijuana, heroin and crack cocaine, according to investigators.

"Everywhere you turn these days, you're hearing about MS-13," said Assistant FBI Director Chris Swecker, who is overseeing the nationwide task force targeting the group.

Gang members recycled

Although it remains unclear how well-organized the gang's leadership is, Swecker recently told Congress there were signs of greater cohesiveness within MS-13.

Interviews with law-enforcement officials in four countries and reviews of intelligence reports, letters between MS-13 members, transcripts of phone conversations and surveillance videos show that gang members communicate and coordinate criminal activity across state and international borders.

Gang leaders in the United States and El Salvador have shared information on informants, discussed punishing rivals and plotted an ambush to free an accused murderer, these records show.

In Central America, the gang allegedly targeted top government officials and law-enforcement leaders.

"If these criminals are capable of killing 28 innocent people," Honduran President Ricardo Maduro said, "they are capable of anything."

Law-enforcement crackdowns in Honduras and El Salvador are helping reverse the flow. MS-13 gang members recruited in those countries are arriving in the United States and bolstering the gang's ranks from California to Maryland.

This north-south recycling of gang members has put intense pressure on Mexico, where MS-13 is involved in robbing immigrants and human trafficking, according to officials. "It has to be treated as a regional phenomenon," said Magdalena Carral Cuevas, Mexico's top immigration official.

Mexico recently began a campaign against MS-13, particularly in the southern state of Chiapas, where the gang preys on stowaways trying to jump freight trains headed north.

Gang members also have leapfrogged north along the rail lines through central Mexico. The gang established strongholds in Mexican border cities near Laredo and Brownsville, Texas, according to interviews and law-enforcement reports.

One result of the stepped-up enforcement is that jails in Chiapas are filling up. At a federal lockup, a new wing has been devoted solely to MS-13 to prevent attacks on rival gang members.

About 30 members of the gang recently gathered in a dirt courtyard at the prison. One, who is doing five years on a drug charge and gave his name as Oscar, said he left his native El Salvador because there was no work. He wore a Dallas Cowboy jersey with the blue and white favored by MS-13. Gang tattoos covered his thick neck and muscular arms.

Oscar complained that authorities unfairly single out his group. "Despite our reputation, we aren't what they think," he said in Spanish. "They have satanized us."

He cut off the conversation when an apparent MS-13 leader demanded money from a reporter for the interview to continue.

Los Angeles roots

Central American refugees were pouring into the brick hotels and old Victorian homes in the Pico-Union and Westlake areas of Los Angeles, some of the nation's most crowded neighborhoods.

It was the mid-1980s, and they were transforming entire blocks, opening Salvadoran restaurants, or "pupusarias," and markets stocked with plantains and black beans from home.

Many of the new arrivals were veterans of the civil war in El Salvador, which displaced nearly 1 million people. About half came to the United States.

Partly out of self-defense against established Mexican-American gangs, Salvadoran youths formed the first cells of Mara Salvatrucha. "Mara" is a Salvadoran word for gang, and "Salvatrucha" means Salvadoran guy. They also adopted the number 13, just as local Mexican-American street gangs had for years.

MS-13 opened its arms to other Central Americans, who also faced hostility from entrenched gangs, as crack cocaine flooded the streets and violence exploded.

The Los Angeles City Attorney's Office, which said that about 1,400 MS-13 members operate in the county, last year obtained a civil injunction restricting the gang's activities in the Rampart and East Hollywood areas.

In Los Angeles and other cities, more than 200 members of the gang have been arrested by Homeland Security agents in recent months, said Michael Garcia, assistant Homeland Security secretary for immigration and customs enforcement. Most are suspected illegal immigrants with criminal records.

"Horror-movie" killing

Sgt. Alan Patton had never heard of Mara Salvatrucha when he was called in 2001 to a gory scene in Grand Prairie, Texas.

In a dense woods off an interstate, fishermen had found the partly clothed remains of Javier Calzada, 21. His T-shirt was pulled around his neck, his pants down around his ankles. Exposed sections of his torso were gnawed away by animals.

"It was like something out of a horror movie," Patton recalled.

Calzada had been shot in the head. His car was missing, and he was robbed of jewelry, cash and tennis shoes, records show.

He lived with his parents, worked at an auto-detail shop and drove a shiny 2000 Chevrolet Malibu with large chrome wheels. Police said Calzada was an innocent victim befriended at a shopping mall by girls associated with MS-13. According to court testimony, he was later lured into a deadly trap. In mid-December 2001, the girls called Calzada and asked for a lift to a friend's house.

One of the girls, Brenda "Smiley" Paz, 15, was a member of the Normandie Locos clique in Los Angeles. She had moved to Texas to live with an uncle after her parents separated, relatives said.

Paz was running with a crew of MS-13 members, including Livis "Junior" Flores, 29, a leader of the Normandie Locos, records show.

As Calzada picked up Paz and another girl, Flores got in the rear seat, told Calzada to drive to a wooded area and put a gun to his head, according to court records and interviews. Other MS-13 members helped march Calzada into the woods where he was shot by Flores, court records show.

Back in the car, Flores made a sign of the cross, according to an affidavit Paz gave to police. "God forgive me for my sins," she recalled Flores saying. He then turned on the radio, flashed gang signs and laughed, Paz told police. She said she suspected Calzada was raped because MS-13 members had done the same thing to other victims.

Flores, who has MS tattooed across his forehead, was arrested and convicted in a separate armed robbery after the killing. After his conviction in that case, Flores admitted murdering Calzada and is serving two concurrent life sentences.

Paz told investigators she and Flores traveled to meet MS-13 leaders in Seattle; San Diego; Tijuana, Mexico; Eagle County, Colo.; and Meridian, Idaho, often collecting and transferring money from drug dealing and auto thefts, said attorney Greg Hunter, appointed as Paz's legal guardian because she was an unsupervised minor.

Texas authorities said MS-13 operates in Houston and Dallas, where it has been linked to homicides, robberies, drive-by shootings and auto thefts. Federal, state and local authorities in Houston have formed a task force to investigate the gang's stepped-up activity. Twenty members of the group were arrested in recent months.

In suburban Grand Prairie, Patton said, two decades of police work hadn't exposed him to anything like MS-13. "I've never encountered a more dangerous or vicious street gang."

"We are super crazy"

Meting out discipline was apparently on the agenda as dozens of MS-13 members gathered in a tree-lined Virginia park by the banks of the Potomac River, according to a law-enforcement surveillance video of the meeting. Gang members jumped two attendees, knocking them to the ground and kicking them repeatedly in the head and ribs.

Such sessions occur regularly in Virginia, where MS-13 has more than 1,500 members and is the largest, most violent gang in the state.

The gang's involvement in a recent series of high-profile homicides in Virginia has thrust it into the headlines and onto the agenda of top policy-makers.

The most sensational crime involved Brenda Paz, the Normandie Locos member. She arrived after the murder near Dallas, was arrested by Virginia police and became an informant. "She knew if she stayed with the gang, she was going to end up locked up or dead," said Hunter, the attorney appointed as Paz's legal guardian.

She was placed in a federal witness-protection program, records show, but the pull of the gang proved too strong. In June 2003, she rejoined MS-13 after voluntarily leaving the program. A month later, her tattoo-covered body, slashed with knife wounds, was found on the banks of the Shenandoah River. She was 17 and 4 months' pregnant.

The slaying was ordered because Paz was working with authorities, prosecutors allege. On Tuesday in Virginia, two members of MS-13 were convicted of her murder, and two others were acquitted.

The trial and hundreds of pages of federal court records in a related murder case offer a rare inside look at the gang. In one instance, Flores, the Normandie Locos leader imprisoned in Texas, wrote to an MS-13 member jailed in Virginia. He told Denis Rivera, a local gang leader who was one of those acquitted in Paz's death, that she was "singing" to authorities, according to a copy of the letter.

In a letter to another gang leader, Rivera boasted about the gang's legacy of fear and violence.

"Wherever the Mara Salvatrucha is, [we are] going to kill, control and rape again," he wrote. "We are super crazy."

Kraul reported from Mexico, Honduras and El Salvador. Connell reported from Mexico and Houston, Dallas, Laredo and Grand Prairie, Texas. Lopez reported from Mexico; Washington, D.C.; Hyattsville, Md.; and Arlington and Alexandria, Va. Los Angeles Times researchers Vicki Gallay and Scott Wilson contributed to this report.