Four L.A.-Based MS-13 Members Found Guilty of Committing Three Grisly Murders in the Angeles National Forest

LOS ANGELES – Four members of Mara Salvatrucha, a violent street gang and terrorist organization known as MS-13, were found guilty by a jury today of brutally murdering three victims in the Angeles National Forest, including one victim who had his heart carved out of his chest and his body dismembered then tossed down a canyon.

The following defendants, all of whom remain in federal custody, were found guilty of racketeering conspiracy and violent crimes in aid of racketeering – murder:

• Angel Amadeo Guzman, 31, of Panorama City;
• Fernando Garcia Parada, 28, of Panorama City;
• Edgard Velasquez, 43, of Reseda; and
• Jose Jonathan Castillo, 34, of Koreatown.

According to evidence presented at a 17-day trial, MS-13 Los Angeles is a violent criminal street gang that operates through subsets known as “cliques,” including the Fulton clique in the San Fernando Valley and the Francis clique around MacArthur Park. The gang derives income from drug trafficking, extorting legal and illegal businesses, committing robberies, and via other illicit means.

The gang implemented rules that require its members to use murder and extreme violence to rise within its ranks. 

From March 2017 to June 2017, the defendants committed three murders on behalf of MS-13. In March 2017, one victim was accused of painting the graffiti of a rival gang. Velasquez authorized the victim’s murder. Guzman, Garcia, and others later abducted the victim, strangled him, and drove him to the Angeles National Forest, where they and several co-conspirators attacked the victim with machetes. Later, they dismembered the victim, carving out his heart and throwing his body parts into a canyon.

In April 2017, Guzman and co-conspirators killed another victim, who had fled El Salvador without MS-13’s permission when it had been investigating the victim for cooperating with law enforcement. One conspirator used the Facebook account of a teenage girl to catfish the victim, who was lured to the Angeles National Forest and then killed. 

Finally, in June 2017, Castillo, Garcia, and co-conspirators murdered another victim, an MS-13 associate who was accused of overstating his position in the gang. The victim was taken to the Angeles National Forest, where he was stabbed and hacked to death.

United States District Judge Stanley Blumenfeld, Jr., scheduled October 20 sentencing hearings for these defendants, all of whom will face one or more mandatory sentences of life in federal prison.

Federal prosecutors have secured more than 30 convictions in this case. 

In November 2025, five MS-13 members were convicted of committing six murders to advance their standing in the gang. Their sentencing hearings are scheduled to occur in the coming months. 

The FBI, the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office investigated this matter. 

This case is part of the Homeland Security Task Force (HSTF) initiative established by Executive Order 14159, Protecting the American People Against Invasion. HSTF is a whole-of-government partnership dedicated to eliminating criminal cartels, foreign gangs, transnational criminal organizations, and human smuggling and trafficking rings operating in the United States and abroad. Through historic interagency collaboration, the HSTF directs the full might of United States law enforcement towards identifying, investigating, and prosecuting the full spectrum of crimes committed by these organizations, which have long fueled violence and instability within our borders. The HSTF utilizes all available tools to prosecute and remove the most violent criminal aliens from the United States.

Special Assistant United States Attorney Eric W. Siddall of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, and Assistant United States Attorneys Jason C. Pang of the Transnational Organized Crime Section, and William Larsen and Suria M. Bahadue of the Criminal Appeals Section are prosecuting this case.