Opinion ID: 6970661
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Seven Acts of Racketeering

Text: (1, 2) The Attempted Murder of Rafael Gonzalez and the Murder of Victor Hirschman In May 1993 Felipe began to view fellow Latin King Rafael Gonzalez, a/k/a “King Mousey,” as a threat to his leadership and therefore enlisted William Cartegena, a/k/a “King Lil Man,” a friend and subordinate leader of the Kings, to kill him. When Car-tegena proved unsuccessful at killing Gonzalez, Felipe enlisted three other Latin Kings to commit the murder. On October 30, 1993 those three individuals selected five other Kings to carry out Felipe’s assassination order. The five Kings went to a building where Gonzalez was supposed to be, and there shot and killed Gonzalez’s brother-in-law, Victor Hirschman. They fired shots at Gonzalez too, and although they seriously wounded him, they did not succeed in killing him. (3, 4) The Murder of William Cartegena and the Attempted Murder of Margie Carderon Unhappy with Cartegena due to his failure to murder Gonzalez, and also because he believed Cartegena had stolen money from the Latin Kings’ treasury, Felipe enlisted Jose Gabriel, a/k/a “King Teardrop,” in July 1993 to strip Cartegena of his leadership position and have him murdered. Felipe also ordered the murder of Cartegena’s girlfriend, Margie Carderon, a/k/a “Queen Margie,” because he believed she knew too much about the organization’s criminal activities. In September 1993 Cartegena was choked to death by several Latin Kings who thereafter dismembered him and removed his Latin Kings’ tatoo from his body. Later that same month, after the Kings who were selected to murder Margie Carderon proved unable to shoot and kill her, they decided to burn the apartment building where she lived. Although Carderon escaped the fire, two of her neighbors suffered severe burns in the course of the conflagration. (5, 6) The Murder of Ismael Rios and the Attempted Murder of Ronnie Gonzalez Next, Felipe ordered the murders of Ismael Rios, a/k/a “King J.R.,” and Ronnie Gonzalez, a/k/a “King Ronnie,” in September 1993, after they refused to follow the orders of, and aligned themselves in competition with, Gabriel. The orders were carried out in January 1994, after Felipe deceived Rios and Gonzalez into believing that them dispute with him was at an end. Latin Kings gunned down Rios and attempted to kill Gonzalez, who ran away and escaped unharmed. (7) The Conspiracy to Murder Pedro Rosario Pedro Rosario, a/k/a “Pete Rock,” an inmate at Riker’s Island Correctional Facility, was considered an enemy of the Latin Kings because he had slashed several of that organization’s members who were incarcerated with him. Felipe gave the “green light” to Latin Kings at Riker’s to assassinate Rosario in early 1994. After Rosario was slashed at Riker’s, however, the Latin Kings’ leader at that facility, Jose Cruz, a/k/a “King Blaze,” issued an order taking the green light off of Rosario. Felipe overruled the order and wrote in a letter that Rosario must be terminated because he had attacked Latin Kings and “[w]ho ever try to challenge our Nation in any kind of way or fashion must feel the Almighty Wrath.”