A former La Eme member, who admitted to killing as part of his gang ‘career’, has said he regrets everything about becoming mixed up in gang life.
Manuel Medrano, who went by the nickname Cricket, spent almost 10 years inside the prison gang Arizona Mexican Mafia, also known as La Eme, before eventually leaving when other gang members made threats towards his pregnant partner.
At the risk of sounding cliche, Medrano admitted he had a tough start in life and spent much of younger years ‘in and out’ of juvenile hall.
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He was released on juvenile parole shortly after he turned 17, but soon found himself facing another six-and-a-half-year sentence after being arrested again for armed robbery.
As soon as he turned 18, Medrano was transferred to adult prison and it was here he met members of AZ Mexican Mafia.
Medrano, from Arizona in the US, told UNILAD: “In Arizona we all grew up looking up to the Mexican Mafia. That was the pinnacle of the gangster lifestyle and being part of gangs. You aspired to be one of them when you went to prison.
“According to us those were the elite, the legends - those are the words used for these guys and I wanted to be one.”
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Medrano got his wish, he said he joined after letting gang members know he was ‘in their corner’ and ‘willing to do stabbings or whatever needs to be done on the yards’.
“That’s how it starts,” he explained. “You just start getting known to be that way and then little by little you just… it’s who you know.”
After joining the gang behind bars, Medrano stayed committed when he was eventually released.
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“I ended up getting involved and when I got out of prison I continued doing the stuff for them,” he told UNILAD. “Selling drugs, sending money, doing all that.”
Because Medrano wasn’t locked up, he was considered especially useful to the gang.
He explained: “I was a little more valuable because I was out on the street. When I got out during this case there were 11 of us on the street and they said that was the most members that had been in the street since the mid-1980s.
“As soon as you get out the task force is on you, they’re following you, they’re trying [to get you to] violate your parole, there’s not anywhere you can go where they’re not going to see you.
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"So members don’t last outside. Something will happen and they’re caught and back in.”
Well, this is exactly what happened to Medrano just months after his release when he was officially a gang member.
Police raided his mom's house on a violation and arrested him on 'a marijuana charge or something'. He was jailed again, and while in prison he learned what was expected of him on the outside.
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This time it was a lot more serious than moving around some money.
He said: “Coming out of jail, I was already told you know… there was a certain individual who was faltering on his duties and not exactly ‘taking care of business’, as they call it.
“So I was told, when I got out, to make him right or basically take him out.
“I get out and it's a few months - I was out for four months that time - and when I’m out, he’s just not coming around. He has other ideas, he’s doing drugs, which was against the rules at the time. So then we vote on it and we end up killing him.”
Murders, such as this one, was just a part of life to Medrano. Afterwards, things continued on as normal, until - once again - Medrano was pulled over by cops and arrested after they found a gun in his vehicle.
This time, Medrano decided to take the case to trial and it paid off, as a jury found him not guilty.
However, no sooner was he released than he ‘basically walked right into an FBI sting’ set up by a fellow member who had turned.
“He had called a meeting at a hotel,” Medrano explained. “We all went and while we were there we were discussing different things including some of the prior murders. But it was all being recorded by the FBI.”
The same man also set up a fake drug deal leading to Medrano and the others getting arrested.
Officers also picked up Medrano’s partner, who was pregnant with his child at the time.
Medrano says the cops had nothing on his partner, but they did have him on tape talking about his crimes, so he told her to ‘go ahead and just tell them whatever they wanted to know about me’. He didn't realise the huge repercussion this would have, however.
“In doing that they [the gang] started plotting behind my back about killing my kid’s mother,” he said. “They said she was the weak link in the case and that they were going to take her out. I wasn’t aware - they didn't mention it.
"We were all in the same pod together, there were 15 of us in total. We were all together every day.
“The FBI actually pulled me out. At first it was a letter that got caught being sent out trying to send someone to kill her. I didn’t believe it - or more, I believed it but I thought I could talk them out of it.”
Medrano returned to the pod and told the other gang members what he’d been told by the cops.
“One of the members points at his tattoo - the Mexican Mafia patch - and he says, ‘you know this comes first’,” he recalled.
“In the end he said, ‘tell her not to talk and it’s all good’. And I thought, ‘well you could have said that from the beginning, I'm the one who told her to talk’.
“Regardless, he told me that and he lied. Two or three weeks later the feds came out again and they had a phone call in which her murder was being planned. Once I heard that, I said, ‘go pick her up, put her somewhere safe and we’ll start talking’.”.
He continued: “That was the day I walked away from it… I was still in the same pod with everybody for months after, until they transferred me to another place. But that was the end of it for me. I just saw the betrayal.
“We all see it and we don’t think it’s going to happen to us but it always does and that was just my time. It was like nothing new, it just happened and it was my time to be betrayed and to walk away from it, so that’s what I did.
“It’s not the propaganda they use; it's not a ‘family’ or ‘brotherhood’ or any of that, it’s just not. It's whoever can have the most, make the most and be the most and they will step on each other to get all of those things.”
But being done with the gang, didn’t mean Medrano was free to go.
“Obviously I still had crimes to pay for,” he said. “I ended up doing 20 years on all of that in total.”
Medrano was released in 2015 and the first thing he did was reunite with his partner and son and moved states to start a new life.
He now has a steady, straight job and runs a YouTube channel in hopes of deterring other young men from getting mixed up with gangs - but he still laments the years he spent as part of La Eme.
When asked about what he regrets most, Medrano tells me: “Obviously, the homicides themselves.I feel bad for the families, you know?”
At this point, he appeared to become emotional, paused and cleared his throat before adding: “So there’s that. I regret it all really. Going back, I wish - and I don’t even know if it would change anything really but I wish there had been other ex-members who had walked away speaking up against it all and there never was. Everybody is too scared to.
“That's one of the things that got me. We just need to get the message to the kids that it's not something to aspire to be.
“We’re not elite. We’re not the legends people say we are.”
Claire Reid