Thread: SIX Suspects in Newark Killings

Manhunt continues as gang rumors swirl in Newark killings
by Joe Malinconico and Jonathan Schuppe
Wednesday August 15, 2007, 10:30 AM

As police continue to hunt for more suspects in the Newark schoolyard slayings that left three college students dead, investigators struggle with one of the case's most provocative mysteries: rumored links to a notorious street gang called MS-13.

The gang, rooted in the 1980s Salvadoran civil war and dominated by Latino immigrants, is considered one of the country's most violent criminal groups. Although MS-13 doesn't have large numbers in Newark, residents of the Ivy Hill neighborhood where the killings took place say they've seen more young men enticed by the gang. That included five of the suspects in the Aug. 4 execution-style shootings.

Neighbors of three juvenile suspects say the boys claimed to be members of MS-13. At least two of them maintained MySpace pages that praised the gang. The adult suspects, Jose Carranza and Rodolfo Godinez, were active members, residents say.

Because of those reputed connections, investigators are exploring whether they played a role in the Aug. 4 attack, in which three college students died and a fourth survived a gunshot to the face.

In Essex County, where most gang violence comes at the hands of Crips, Bloods and Latin Kings, MS-13 -- also known as Mara Salvatrucha -- hasn't been much of a menace, authorities said.

MS-13 started in Los Angeles in the 1970s to protect Salvadoran immigrants from being preyed upon by other gangs, according to law enforcement experts. Los Angeles remains its base, along with strongholds in the Washington D.C. area.

Over the years, MS-13 has made connections with organized crime in Mexico, gained a piece of the cocaine trade and developed a violent gang culture in which members sometimes used machetes or wood chippers to carry out attacks on rivals, experts said.

At least one of the victims in the Aug. 4 attack in Newark was sliced with what the lone survivor told police was a machete, authorities have said.

Three of the six suspects are in custody; three are at large. Authorities have extended their manhunt to as far away as Virginia for Rodolfo Godinez, 24, who police have described as a "principal player" in the killings. Police also are searching for his brother, 16, and another male teenager.

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

I have an uneasy suspicion that these 3 are long gone. Their fellow hispanics probably helped them escape from the country. I am not kidding. In Chicago the police/ICE arrested a criminal gang of illegal aliens running a counterfeit document and drug ring and the local hispanics were FURIOUS!! They just went bananas. They were not angry that dangerous criminals had been operating in the midst of their community, they were mad that the police arrested them. There is this allegiance to their RAZA that overrides everything else.