Thread: THE NEWARK SIX MURDER MASSACRE SUSPECTS

Melvin Jovel

[img]http://media.philly.com/images/300*400/15be35b4-711a-4a60-a77f-d92c76353859.jpg[/img]

In this undated photo provided by the Essex Sheriff Department, Melvin Jovel is shown. Jovel, 18, the sixth and final suspect in the execution-style slayings of three college students in a Newark schoolyard two weeks ago was arrested early Sunday morning, Aug. 19. 2007, authorities said. Jovel was captured without incident at the home of a relative. (AP Photo/Essex Sheriff Department)

The arrest of the man, Melvin Jovel, an immigrant from Honduras who lived in Elizabeth, N.J., ended a manhunt by scores of investigators who were seeking to calm a city rattled by the killings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/nyreg ... f=nyregion

Jose Carranza



A Peruvian national in the U.S. illegally and who was previously charged with raping a 5-year-old girl pleaded not guilty Friday in the execution-style slayings of three young college students, a day after he surrendered to the Newark mayor.

Jose Carranza is an "undocumented" immigrant. His criminal career did not begin with the triple murder he's alleged to have committed, nor with the barroom assault from earlier this year, nor with the 31 counts of aggravated sexual assault relating to the rape of a 5-year-old child, for which Mr. Carranza had been released on bail. (His $50,000 bail on the assault charge and $150,000 bail on the child-rape charges have now been revoked.) No, Mr. Carranza's criminal career in the United States began when he decided to live in this country unlawfully.
Jose Carranza isn't exactly a member of an exclusive club. Violent crime committed by fine upstanding members of the Undocumented-American community is now a routine feature of American life.

Rodolfo Antonio Godinez Gomez



On the same day Newark buried three victims of last week's schoolyard slayings, authorities yesterday identified a 24-year-old Nicaraguan national with a record of robbery and weapons arrests as a "principal player" in the execution-style attack.

Godinez has lived on Midland Avenue and Manor Drive in Newark, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement records indicated he may have also been in the country illegally. Rodolfo Antonio Godinez Gomez entered the U.S. from Nicaragua on Oct. 24, 1992. He was ordered deported on May 5, 1993, but it isn't clear if he ever left the country, according to Essex County Sheriff Armando Fontura.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2007/0 ... r_3_n.html

Jose Lachira Carranza



Jose Lachira Carranza, a 28-year-old illegal immigrant from Peru

Jose Lachira Carranza, in court in Newark on Friday with a translator, pleaded not guilty ..................


Authorities said Carranza, a native of northern Peru and an illegal immigrant, is suspected of firing one or more of the fatal shots, though investigators remained uncertain whether the handgun was passed among the suspects.

He is charged with three counts of murder, one count of attempted murder, four counts of robbery, two weapons offenses and one count of conspiracy. His bail was set at $1 million.

He is married with a toddler daughter and works in demolition, according to his family.

Last month, a 31-count indictment was handed up accusing him of having sexual relations with a child, now 9, between 2003 and this year, according to court records. The specific charges are aggravated sexual assault, endangering the welfare of a child.

He also is facing charges in connection with an Oct. 21, 2006, bar fight in West Orange. He allegedly assaulted four patrons with a broken bottle and a chair at Huguito's, a small Peruvian restaurant and bar at White Street and Ashland Avenue.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2007/0 ... k_sla.html
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JOSE Lachira Carranza is not your typical illegal immigrant. But the immigration problem he now symbolizes needs to be faced just the same.

Carranza, 28, from Peru, did not sneak into America just to work hard and build a better life for himself as so many illegal aliens from poor nations are trying to do. Carranza, who is not known to have ever held a job except as a day laborer, is accused of playing a role in the execution-style murders of three Newark college students earlier this month.

It's worth knowing that the murders are not the first crimes Carranza was accused of committing. In just the last 10 months, he has been charged with beating up bar patrons and with routinely raping a girl, beginning in 2003 when she was only 5, then threatening to kill her family.

It's also worth knowing that Carranza spent only three weeks in jail after being accused of the rapes and bar fight. He was freed on bail. A state judge even cut his bail in half in the rape case to let him out.

But neither the judge nor Essex County prosecutors ever told federal immigration authorities that the guy they were charging with sexually assaulting a little girl over a period of years and beating up bar patrons – and then freeing on bail – was an illegal immigrant. Incredibly, Essex County authorities say they do not tell federal authorities they have charged an illegal immigrant with a crime until that immigrant is convicted.

So a man who broke the law to get into America in the first place, and then was accused of breaking even more serious laws after he was here, was given the benefit of the doubt and allowed to go free while he awaited trial. Just like any other American citizen.

http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qst ... FlZUVFeXk5

- Fifteen-year-old male: The Newark teenager was arrested late Wednesday and pleaded not guilty in Essex County Family Court the next day to the same charges facing Carranza. He was being held in a youth detention center outside Essex County.

He lives in the Ivy Hill Park Apartments. Neighbors describe the boy as a popular and impressionable teenager. He attended Mount Vernon School, where the triple homicide took place.

Essex County Prosecutor Paula Dow said she would seek to try him as an adult.

His name and those of the other juvenile suspects are being withheld by authorities.

- Fifteen-year-old male: The teenager was taken into custody Friday afternoon in Morristown, where he lives in an apartment with his mother and her boyfriend. The family moved from Newark about two months ago.

He is expected to be arraigned tomorrow in Essex County Family Court on murder, felony murder, attempted murder and other counts.

The teen at one time lived in the Ivy Hill Park Apartments and attended the Mount Vernon School. Residents in the apartment complex said he was known as a troublemaker.

Alexander Alfaro


Tracking Newark shooting suspects on MySpace

by Jonathan Schuppe
Sunday August 19, 2007, 12:10 PM

Alexander Alfaro - 16-year-old

But the profile of his 16-year-old half-brother, Alexander Alfaro, was packed with clues. It listed the boy's nickname, "Smokey," and the names of dozens of friends who had sent him messages. It seemed to confirm reports that Alfaro is a member of a Latino street gang called ....... MS-13: It included the name of an MS-13 clique (Guanacos Little Cycos Salvatruchos) and pictures of Alfaro throwing gang signs. The page also verified a crucial clue from early in the investigation: The boy had fled New Jersey.

Thursday, Peppers took an hour to build a bogus MySpace profile so he could try to strike up a conversation with Alfaro's friends. For Peppers, a deputized member of the U.S. Marshals Service task force for the New York-New Jersey region the past five years, it was an online version of the old gumshoe technique of finding friends and neighbors.

The detective spent the rest of Thursday trying to draw out the online friends. That night, the FBI in Washington, D.C., shared an informant's tip that the little brother was in in Virginia.

Peppers, remembering the MySpace page had listed friends from Virginia, asked the FBI to hold off until he and other New Jersey members of the task force could get there. Peppers, Daniel Potucek of the U.S. Marshals and Lydell James, the lead Newark homicide detective on the case, jumped in a car at 3 a.m. Friday.

Once they arrived in Virginia, the FBI told them the informant had seen Alfaro in Woodbridge, Va., hanging out with local members of MS-13. Alfaro was with another gang member from New Jersey, nicknamed "El Guapo."

"Guapo?" Peppers said he asked. "I know Guapo."

Peppers went back to the MySpace list of friends.

Peppers showed FBI agents El Guapo's pictures, which included some tattoos that matched the description provided by the informant.

By Friday night, Peppers and others tracked El Guapo to a Salvadoran restaurant in Woodbridge called Bongo's. El Guapo wouldn't tell them anything useful, so Peppers pressed his partners to raid the seven or eight houses they had been staking out.

As they were preparing for the raids, James got a tip from another informant: Godinez was in nearby Prince George's County, Md., where a black car was waiting to pick him up. The tipster said the car would leave at 2 a.m. Godinez would meet Alfaro and the two would head to Texas, then Mexico, then El Salvador, birthplace of MS-13.


At 1 a.m., investigators rushed to an apartment house in Oxon Hill, Md., about a 45-minute drive from Woodbridge, and raided a first-floor apartment with about 10 adults and teenagers inside, including several MS-13 members getting tattoos.

Godinez was in the crowd, but there was no sign of Alfaro.

Peppers and his partners called authorities in Woodbridge and told them to go ahead with their planned raid on a townhouse at Grist Mill Terrace. At around 1:45 a.m., they caught Alfaro walking out the back door. He didn't put up a fight.

Back in his Newark living room on Saturday, hours before he was finally able to sit down to his first hot meal in more than two days, Peppers said citizens should know Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Police Director Garry McCarthy and Police Chief Anthony Campos had let the fugitive team do whatever they needed to catch the two brothers.

"We'd do this for any citizen of Newark, not just those in a high-profile case," Peppers said. "This happens all the time. Hopefully, this shows that your police officers and public servants are really out there trying."


http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2007/0 ... ck_ne.html

I have called Allard and Perlmutter several times regarding this issue and Dani C.

Although Allard has helped to stop these absurd amnesty bills...my direct question is "what are you doing about this???? There are many more victims just like these!" I ask staffer at Perlmutters office the same question...

I is great that Allard is on our side when it comes to stopping these bills, but those in office who have decency, honesty, integrity...and common sense...need to step up to the plate AGAINST THOSE SENATORS, CONGRESSMEN...THAT ARE CORRUPT!!!! Stand with Tom Tancredo against corrupt politicians and STOP THIS INSANITY!!!!!!!!!! This is pathetic to allow crimes such as these because these corupt men in government seats and corporations that want "FREE TRADE" get away with this. By rights, they should be held accountable too for allowing it to happen!!!! Close our borders and come down on employers!!!! Take all benefits away from ALL illegals!!!!! ENFORCE OUR LAWS!!!!!!!!!!

Nice work skip thanks for the pictures

'Gang overtones' acknowledged in schoolyard killings


by Katie Wang and Claire Heininger
Monday August 20, 2007, 9:49 PM

Newark Mayor Cory Booker acknowledged today there were "gang overtones" to the execution-style killings of three college students in a Newark school playground Aug. 4 but said police have no evidence to indicate the shootings were a gang attack.

"It is obvious that, as information continues to come forward, that we're seeing some gang overtones that are involved with this," Booker said at press conference a day after police arrested the sixth and final suspect. "Though we do not know with any specificity if this was a gang-related event whatsoever."

Police Director Garry McCarthy said the shootings have prompted his department to step up its intelligence on MS-13, a Hispanic gang with which some of the suspects identified.

Over the weekend, cops picked up the remaining three suspects wanted for the triple killing that has shaken residents and intensified calls to get the city's violence under control.

Rodolfo Godinez, 24, was arrested in Oxon Hill, Md. Saturday, and his 16-year-old half-brother was arrested 20 miles away in Woodbridge, Va. less than an hour later. The final suspect, Melvin Jovel, an 18-year-old former resident of the Ivy Hill Park Apartments in Newark, was arrested at about 3:45 a.m. Sunday at a relative's home in Elizabeth.

According to an informant, the 16-year-old was spotted hanging out with members of MS-13 in the Washington, D.C. area, authorities said. The notoriously violent Central American street gang has a strong grip in neighborhoods outside of the nation's capital.

Two of the juvenile suspects praised the MS-13 gang on their MySpace pages, and residents living in the Ivy Hill area who knew the suspects said they were known in the neighborhood to be members of the gang. Jose Lachira Carranza, 28, of Orange and two 15-year-old juveniles are also in custody. The defendants in the case were all residents or former residents of Ivy Hill.

"It's very clear that if you look at MySpace, you see people claiming to be members of gangs," Booker said. "We we are aware of specific gang overtones ... but as it stands right now, we still don't see any specific motivation or provocation."

The six suspects are charged with the killings of Terrance Aeriel, 18, Dashon Harvey, 20, and Iofemi Hightower, 20, behind the Mount Vernon School, where they were hanging out and listening to music on a Saturday night. The three were forced to kneel in front of a wall near the basketball courts and shot in the head.

A fourth person, Natasha Aeriel, 19, was also shot in the head, but survived and is recovering at University Hospital.

Three of the four shooting victims graduated from West Side High School in Newark, where Jovel was also a former student. Authorities said they do not know if Jovel knew the victims.

Jovel is being held on $2 million bail. He will be arraigned Tuesday at 10 a.m. in front of Essex County Superior Court Judge Donald Volkert.

The two brothers caught Saturday in Virginia and Maryland each made initial court appearances today and may not return to New Jersey until at least next month, officials said.

Godinez, a Nicaraguan national described as a "principal player" in the case, is being held in Prince George's County, Md. after deciding today to fight extradition to New Jersey. Had he waived his extradition hearing, he could have been returned to New Jersey this week. Instead, he will remain in the Maryland jail until a Sept. 20 hearing.

Ramon Korionoff, a spokesman for Maryland State's Attorney Glenn Ivey, said the only argument Godinez will be allowed to make during his extradition hearing is that he is not who the authorities say he is. If he can't make that case, Korionoff said, Godinez will be returned to New Jersey.

His 16-year-old half brother, identified by authorities as Alexander Alfaro, made his first appearance today in Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court in Prince William County, where an attorney and guardian were appointed for him, said Paul Ebert, the Commonwealth's Attorney for Prince William County. He will be held in a juvenile detention facility in Manassas, Va. until another court hearing Sept. 10, Ebert said.

As a juvenile, Alfaro must consult with the attorney and guardian before deciding whether to fight extradition to New Jersey, Ebert said. "He can't make that decision," Ebert said. If they decide to waive Alfaro's extradition hearing, they can do so at any time, but no decision has been made, Ebert said.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2007/0 ... ights.html