When Michael “Mosca” Torres was killed at California State Jail, Sacramento in July 2023, legislation enforcement officers suspected it was an influence wrestle inside his group, the Mexican Mafia.
Eight days later, law enforcement officials raced at 3 a.m. to a small home in San Fernando the place they discovered, slumped in a recliner, a girl Torres had referred to as his spouse. Stephanie Rodriguez had been shot seven occasions at point-blank vary.
Later that day, detectives arrested Torres’ niece on suspicion of homicide.
On Thursday, a decide handed Evelyn Torres, 36, a sentence of 30 years to life in jail after she pleaded no contest to a homicide cost.
Torres didn’t converse in the course of the listening to, and authorities have by no means established a transparent motive within the case.
Rodriguez was 38 when she was killed. Her kinfolk on Thursday described her as a “protector” whose kindness lifted up their entire household.
“We stay with grief, with anger, with questions that may by no means be answered,” Rodriguez’s sister mentioned in a press release learn aloud by a prosecutor.
The timing led some in legislation enforcement to suspect Rodriguez had been roped into no matter points led to her companion’s loss of life. Identified because the Mexican Mafia’s dominant member from the San Fernando Valley, Michael Torres additionally managed drug gross sales and extortion rackets within the L.A. County jails.
However when interviewed by detectives after her arrest, Torres spoke about her household coping with surprising grief.
“All people is f— dying,” she mentioned, in line with a transcript of her interview. “One other one bites the mud.”
The transcript reveals L.A. County murder detectives had been combating comparable questions of whether or not Rodriguez was the sufferer of a mob hit or one thing extra mundane.
“Is that this about my uncle or what?” Torres requested after she was dropped at an interview room.
“It’s not about your uncle,” a detective replied. “I imply, it is perhaps. It might need one thing to do with it. It most likely does.”
Michael Torres, a member of the Mexican Mafia, was stabbed to loss of life on July 6, 2023, at California State Jail, Sacramento.
(California Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation)
Michael Torres, 59, was serving 133 years to life for tried homicide, conspiracy, gun crimes and witness tampering when two prisoners stabbed him to loss of life on an train yard the morning of July 6, 2023.
He had beforehand been convicted of killing two folks. In 1981, he stabbed to loss of life a drunk who had banged in opposition to his brother’s automobile, in line with a probation report reviewed by The Instances. Convicted of manslaughter and granted parole after 4 years, he killed a Pacoima gang member exterior a market in 1990.
“Defendant is a cold-blooded, vicious, hostile, anti-social, criminally-oriented, evil particular person who ought to by no means stroll the streets of society once more,” a deputy probation officer wrote within the report after Michael Torres was convicted of manslaughter a second time.
By the point Torres was launched from the utmost safety jail at Pelican Bay in 2002, he’d been inducted into the Mexican Mafia, legislation enforcement officers testified at his later trial.
In 2003, Torres shot a person who was falsely claiming membership within the Mexican Mafia. Sentenced to life in jail, he used cellphones to gather cash from gangs and drug pushers within the San Fernando Valley and past, in line with legislation enforcement information seen by The Instances.
He additionally organized for medicine to be smuggled into the Los Angeles County jails, the place they had been offered at enormous markups. On the time of his loss of life, Torres was underneath indictment in Sacramento, charged with promoting heroin to drug runners working for the Aryan Brotherhood.
Shortly earlier than he was killed, his sister Carol died of pure causes, Evelyn Torres instructed detectives. After her uncle and aunt died, she mentioned she moved into a house on Kewen Road as soon as owned by Michael Torres’ mom.
Rodriguez was dwelling there when she was killed. In line with a relative of the Torres household who requested to stay nameless for worry of retaliation, Rodriguez had been launched to Michael Torres three years earlier. She moved into his mom’s home and spruced it up with a brand new fence and contemporary coat of paint, the relative mentioned.
The night time of the taking pictures , Rodriguez received into an argument with Evelyn Torres.
Torres instructed detectives Rodriguez tried to kick her out. She claimed Rodriguez hit her within the face, then pulled out her telephone. She thought Rodriguez was asking somebody to come back and kill her, she mentioned.
Within the interview with police, she appeared paranoid, satisfied somebody was choosing off her kinfolk one after the other. She’d been shot in 2021, she mentioned. Then her aunt and uncle died a couple of days aside.
Even perhaps her grandmother’s loss of life three years earlier concerned foul play, Torres mentioned.
“Once you take out all of the Torreses, guess what? You get to take over,” she mentioned. “You get to take all the pieces. You simply take us out. That’s what all people’s doing. It’s been a domino.”
On Thursday, Rodriguez’s household instructed Los Angeles County Superior Courtroom Choose David Fields her loss of life had modified them perpetually. “Birthdays really feel flawed, holidays really feel incomplete,” her sister mentioned. “There’s an empty area the place she ought to be.”
Rodriguez’s brother Stevie mentioned what Evelyn Torres did was “inhumane,” noting his sister wasn’t a stranger to her killer.
“I do know my sister, how a lot she was beloved, how a lot she cared,” he instructed Torres, who didn’t meet his gaze within the courtroom. “Even about you.”
