A leader of the violent MS-13 gang was convicted Monday of killing six people between 2018 and 2022 over several petty grievances, in what prosecutors called the biggest murder trial in Virginia in recent years.
Elmer de Jesus Alas Candray, 27, was second-in-command of MS-13′s cell in the Reston area, known as the Uniones Locos Salvatrucha, prosecutors said. A jury found him guilty of all 14 felony counts, deliberating for just two hours after a two-week trial in Alexandria that featured graphic photos of the victims’ bodies and testimony from five gang members who admitted in grisly detail to participating in the slayings.
The victims, ranging in age from 18 to 42 years, were shot, strangled, beaten to death, mauled with a large rock, stabbed or clubbed with a baseball bat – and then left in public view as a warning to others, or their dismembered remains were buried to leave no trace behind, witnesses testified.
“The defendant got his hands dirty in every single one of these crimes,” Assistant U.S. Attorney John C. Blanchard said during closing arguments.
Alas Candray was eager to climb MS-13′s leadership ranks, prosecutors said. The gang, which originated in Los Angeles and is now run out of the prison system in El Salvador, maintains a heavy presence in the D.C. area. The FBI, Northern Virginia police agencies and federal prosecutors in Alexandria have secured convictions for dozens of the gang’s ringleaders and foot soldiers in recent years. But none have been accused of participating in as many killings as Alas Candray, who prosecutors said was bent on punishing people who disobeyed or disrespected MS-13.
The first victim was 18-year-old Kevin Abarca Choto, who was killed in New Bedford, Mass., in 2018 because he owed money to the gang, witnesses testified. His dismembered remains have not been found, authorities said. The second victim, Jose Guillen Mejia, 24, was drinking with friends in a wooded area behind a Reston shopping plaza that MS-13 would patrol as its turf. Alas Candray was the first to shoot that night in 2019, hitting him in the back when they ran into him, according to the trial testimony.
‘NO MATCH FOR THE DEFENDANT’
A 19-year-old waitress who had badmouthed MS-13 on social media, Iris Ponce Garcia, was befriended by the gang’s members, lured to the same woods and fatally shot by Alas Candray and three others in 2020, witnesses said. “Unsurprisingly, she was no match for the defendant and three other armed men who shot her repeatedly in the head,” Blanchard said.
Alas Candray faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison. U.S. District Judge Michael S. Nachmanoff set sentencing for Jan. 30. Seven co-defendants have pleaded guilty in connection with the deaths, and five of them took the stand and incriminated Alas Candray.
Defense attorney Andrew Stewart said during closing arguments that much of the government’s case hinged on the credibility of a rival gang member who admitted to participating in four of the murders, Jose Manuel Lozano Duran, 25. And that was after he admittedly killed six other people in El Salvador, Stewart said, making him a killer 10 times over who was looking to shave years off his life sentence by cooperating with prosecutors.
“Mr. Alas Candray is innocent,” Stewart said, adding later, “The number of charges the government has brought is simply not supported by the evidence.”
A .45-caliber handgun and several kitchen knives that were traced to the killings were found in Alas Candray’s bedroom in a Manassas home, according to the trial evidence.
Acting alone while two lookouts waited in a getaway vehicle, Alas Candray ambushed and fatally shot Santos Antonio Trejo Lemus, 40, at the entryway of his apartment building in Reston, near the same woods that MS-13 viewed as its turf, Blanchard said. The victim was thought to be in a rival gang, prosecutors said, though his relatives dispute that was the case.
By the time Alas Candray was killing his fifth victim, he had become a skilled multitasker, according to witness testimony. While Alas Candray had access to a washer and dryer in his home, Lozano Duran said, he preferred to wash his clothes at a laundromat in the Hunters Woods Village Center, the shopping plaza in Reston, so he could patrol the gang’s turf while waiting for his clothes to dry.
Alas Candray dropped off his dirty laundry one day in 2022, then joined others from MS-13 to fatally beat Rene Pineda Sanchez, 27, who had been placed on a hit list simply because he was known to hang out in the same Reston woods, prosecutors said. The victim’s skull was crushed in, and a large rock with his blood on it was found at the crime scene, witnesses said. Once it was done, Alas Candray picked up his clothes from the dryer, according to the trial testimony.
“This case is a stark reminder of the violence and disregard for human life inherent in MS-13’s criminal enterprise,” U.S. Attorney Jessica D. Aber said in a statement after the verdict. “Their deadly activities, from flooding our streets with dangerous narcotics to the brutal murders by which they attempt to impose their presence, will not go unchecked.”
By mid-2022, Lozano Duran testified, the gang had amassed a lot of people on its hit list, and hadn’t been killing many of them, so the top-ranked members all voted in a conference call to assassinate Francisco Avelar Rivera, 42, who would drink excessively and overstate his rank in MS-13. He was beaten with a baseball bat, stabbed to death and then dismembered in Seneca Regional Park in Great Falls, witnesses said. His bones were slashed and “macerated” when authorities dug them up, Blanchard said.