Three “foot soldiers” of the Orange County chapter of the Mexican Mafia were sentenced Thursday to life in federal prison for killing a Costa Mesa-based drug dealer in Orange allegedly on the orders of the reputed leader of the umbrella group for the local gangs.
Kevin Trejo, 38, James Mendez, 47, and Mike Escobar, 43, were all sentenced to the mandated life terms by U.S. District Judge Fred W. Slaughter. The three were convicted Oct. 13, 2023, of first-degree murder in aid of racketeering in the Aug. 21, 2017, killing of 28-year-old Richard Villeda in the 800 block of East Culver Avenue.
The defendants were the first to go on trial in the Operation Night Owl racketeering indictment in April of 2022 that sought to take down the local Mexican Mafia and its reputed leader, Johnny Martinez, who emerged as the boss following a violent struggle in the Orange County jails when federal prosecutors took down the gang’s prior leader, Peter Ojeda, who died in prison in 2018 while serving a 15-year sentence.
Trejo’s attorney, Jessica Munk, told Slaughter that her client had turned his life around while in custody and is a “completely different person” who has earned many educational certificates.
Escobar’s attorney, Robert Schwarz, objected to victim impact statements in the case being sealed and filed anonymously. He failed to persuade Slaughter that the law did not support the anonymous statements.
Villeda’s daughter, who was only identified by her initials during the hearing, told Slaughter how she was 10 when her father was killed. She said she was just getting acquainted with him after his release from prison.
“I know he loved me very much,” she said tearfully. “My heart will be forever broken… It’s been nine years and I can still remember how I felt (when she learned he died). Nothing has been the same since he was taken from us.”
She said the family members did not want to be identified through the victim impact statements because they feared retribution from the Mexican Mafia.
A niece of Villeda told Slaughter how devastating the victim’s death was for his sister.
“I was 11 when I came home to my mother looking at old pictures and I could tell something was wrong,” said the niece, who was also only identified by her initials.
“My heart sank in the moment because I had just seen him a couple of days” before that, she said of learning about her uncle’s death.
“All I wanted to do was get to know him better,” she said. “Now I’m trying to understand what we had done to deserve this. We had only just gotten Richard back only to lose him.”
Martinez, who is scheduled to go on trial next year, is accused of ordering the hit on Villeda, according to prosecutors.
Co-defendants in the racketeering indictment, Ysrael Jacob Cordova, 41, and Ricardo Valenzuela, 44, were convicted last month of murder in the aid of racketeering for the Jan. 19, 2017, killing of 35-year-old Robert Rios.
Shot-caller Omar Mejia, who testified in the trial of Trejo, Mendez and Escobar, also took the stand in the most recent murder trial. Mejia has an agreement with prosecutors.
Federal prosecutors argued the case was built on wiretaps, surveillance video, data recovered from the phones used by gang members and associates, the triangulation of cellphone movement the night of Villeda’s killing.
“One night in August 2017 these three defendants lured Richard Villea into a car and they assassinated him, they shot him in the back and in the back of the head, and they left him in the street, moaning, bleeding to death,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Matthews said in the 2023 trial.
“Why? Why did they do this… Make no mistake. This was Mexican Mafia business. This was a hit ordered by Johnny Martinez.”
Mejia would be considered “management” in the Mexican Mafia while Trejo, Mendez and Escobar were “foot soldiers,” Matthews said.
“Violence is a key aspect of this enterprise,” Matthews said of the Mexican Mafia.
The other big business is drugs, he added.
“Richard Villeda was selling drugs,” Matthews said. “He was expected to pay taxes to Johnny Martinez to sell drugs… But when he came up short, just a few thousand dollars, they decided to cut short his life.”
Investigators collected nine shell casings at the crime scene, and they believe at least two guns were used in the killing, Matthews said.
Mary Hansen, who lives next to the last orange groves in the county in a quiet and safe neighborhood, testified that she happened to be awake about midnight, staring out of the window of her bedroom, when she heard a loud cluster of explosions she assumed initially was from fireworks.
When she went to her front door she heard “some moaning, very slight moaning” and saw a “dark figure” near a tree that she later learned was Villeda, she said.
Two neighbors from across the street were dashing over hollering “call 911,” which Hansen was already doing, she testified.
Villeda worked with his girlfriend, Danielle Canales, a cousin of Martinez’s, but he was accused of stealing drugs or money intended for Martinez, prosecutors said. And it wasn’t the first time, they added.
Orange Police Department Detective Matthew Moss testified about a series of text messages Escobar allegedly sent to Canales’ phone setting up a meeting on the evening Villeda was shot to death.
In one text message, Escobar allegedly told Canales, “Hey D, let P know to get at me,” referring to Villeda’s alias of “Pedro,” Moss testified.
The two agreed to pick up Villeda in an alley running parallel to the row of apartment buildings where the victim and his girlfriend lived in Anaheim, Moss testified. Surveillance video shows the SUV picking up Villeda minutes before midnight Aug. 20.
Matthews argued that Martinez ordered the hit from jail, but authorities had not gotten a wiretap of his phone up yet so it was unrecorded.
In a later wiretapped call Martinez is heard discussing his order to kill Villeda, Matthews argued.
Escobar was in charge of planning the killing and he recruited Mendez and Trejo, Matthews argued.
Text messages from phones seized by authorities provided key evidence, the prosecutor said.
“Those texts tell the story of how the murder was set up,” Matthews said.
Escobar texted the victim, “I’m going to need your help” to lure him into a Jeep Cherokee that was stolen from an Avis rental business at John Wayne Airport by Darline Mendoza, the girlfriend of Trejo’s brother, and Trejo’s girlfriend, Carina Aguilar, prosecutors said.
Trejo eventually fled to Tijuana, where the Jeep Cherokee was found abandoned, Matthews argued.
In one of the wiretapped calls, Martinez is heard praising Escobar, saying, “You earned it, big dog.”
Martinez also said Trejo “put everything on the line for” the Mexican Mafia boss, according to prosecutors.
In another call, Martinez directs his associates to put the word out in the county jail that Mendez was to have free rein doing Mexican Mafia business, according to prosecutors.
Referring to Mendez, Martinez said, “That’s a good friend. He’s like family to me… I want everybody in county jail to know that he’s there for me.”
Matthews argued that none of the three defendants “had any reason to” kill Villeda.
“They did it for the Mexican Mafia,” he said. “They increased their status, their position in the enterprise.”