An MS-13 leader is on trial in Virginia for his role in a half-dozen gruesome murders over the past five years, including one in which he and his gang shot a young waitress in the face so many times that her corpse was unrecognizable.
Federal prosecutors say Elmer Alas Candray, a 27-year-old resident of El Salvador, became one of the busiest killers in Virginia as he rose through the ranks of the ferocious gang, known for its gruesome violence. according to the Washington Post.
But now he faces the music in federal court in Alexandria, where he faces murder, racketeering and gun charges stemming from the six killings, which left five bodies in posh Fairfax County, Virginia, and another in Massachusetts, the outlet said.
Prosecutors say the murder case – which would lock Alas Candray for life if convicted – is the largest they have brought to trial in years.
Ironically, it may be his own people who trap him.
Of the eight other gang members charged in the slayings last year, seven pleaded guilty — and five plan to testify against Alas Candray, the only person alleged to have participated in all six killings between 2018 and 2022, the newspaper said .
In the courtroom, Assistant U.S. Attorney Megan Braun recounted the details of the case as photos of the victims’ battered bodies flashed across the TV screens.
In one instance, Alas Candray’s crew became angry because people were drinking, smoking and selling drugs in a small patch of woods behind a shopping center, about ten minutes east of Dulles International Airport, that they considered their turf.
The nefarious activity brought officers around — so one night in 2019, they sent a message by killing the first person they saw in those woods: 24-year-old Jose Guillen Mejia.
The gangbangers left his bullet-riddled body among a group of beer bottles and bullet casings, a detective testified.
The following year, Alas Candray and three others lured Iris Ponce Garcia, a 19-year-old waitress who had spoken to MS-13 in a social media video, into the same forest and killed her.
“They shot Iris 16 times, mainly in the face, rendering her unrecognizable,” Braun told the court.
They killed Rene Pineda Sanchez, 27, in the same spot two years later simply because he was hanging out in those woods, according to the Washington Post.
Gang members beat the man so severely that a medical examiner said he looked like the victim of a car accident, with ruptured internal organs and a crushed skull that they crushed with a rock.
And in 2022, they cut off one of their own, beating 42-year-old Francisco Avelar Rivera (known as “Papalito”) to death with a baseball bat and stabbing him several times at Seneca Regional Park in Great Falls, Braun added.
The man was known as a heavy drinker who would increase his position within the gang, she said.
That was enough.
“They cut off his head. They cut off his hands. They cut off his arms. They cut off his legs,” Braun said.
“They buried Papalito’s remains in the forest, where they remained undiscovered for more than a year.”
The details take into account the gang’s reputation for almost unparalleled brutality, with its thousands of members often relying on guns and machetes to carry out their bloody acts.
Unfortunately, Candray has also been accused of participating in the 2021 murder of rival Santos Antonio Trejo Lemus, as well as the 2018 murder of Kevin Abarca-Choto, 18, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, over unpaid debts, according to the Washington Post.
Despite this, Andrew Stewart, Alas Candray’s attorney, said prosecutors do not have the evidence they need to convict him of the crimes.
“These gruesome photos do not show that Mr. Alas Candray was guilty of these crimes,” Stewart said in his opening statement this week.
He also claimed that the five turned gang members are only trying to shift blame “to serve their own self-interest,” the outlet added.
Meanwhile, prosecutors say they found a murder list — which included Pineda Sanchez’s name — on Alas Candray’s phone.
They also picked up a gun linked to the shooting when they raided his home in Manassas, Virginia — as well as two revolvers, two machetes, a baseball bat, knives and ammunition, Braun said.
MS-13 has thousands of members in El Salvador, where the movements are led by leaders in the country’s prisons, the newspaper said.
Although authorities in Northern Virginia have convicted dozens of alleged gangbangers for murders, drug dealing and human trafficking, their presence in the Capitol region remains.
Unfortunately, Candray’s trial will likely last several weeks.
