“Socalj” for Borderland Beat
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John Turscak stabbed Derek Chauvin 22 times at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson and said he would have killed Chauvin had correctional officers not responded so quickly, federal prosecutors said.
Turscak, serving a 30-year sentence for crimes committed while a member of the Mexican Mafia, told investigators he thought about attacking Chauvin for about a month because the former officer, convicted of murdering George Floyd, is a high-profile inmate, prosecutors said.
Turscak is accused of attacking Chauvin with a makeshift knife, or shiv, in the prison’s law library around 12:30 p.m. on Nov. 24, the day after Thanksgiving. The Bureau of Prisons said employees stopped the attack and performed “life-saving measures.” Chauvin was taken to a hospital for treatment.
However, in contrast to what corrections officers reported, Turscak told FBI agents that even though he’d been thinking about assaulting Chauvin for a month because he is a high-profile inmate, he denied wanting to kill him.
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Chauvin’s lawyer at the time, Eric Nelson, had advocated for keeping him out of the general population and away from other inmates, anticipating he would be a target. In Minnesota, Chauvin was mainly kept in solitary confinement “largely for his own protection,” Nelson wrote in court papers last year.
Chauvin’s stabbing comes as the federal Bureau of Prisons has faced increased scrutiny in recent years following the beating death of James “Whitey” Bulger in 2018 and wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein’s jail suicide in 2019.
The attack on Chauvin was the third incident involving a high-profile federal prison inmate in the last six months. Disgraced former sports doctor Larry Nassar was stabbed in July at a federal penitentiary in Florida and “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski killed himself at a federal medical center in June.
Who is John Turscak?
Turscak led a faction of the Mexican Mafia in the Los Angeles area in the late 1990s, going by the nickname “Stranger,” according to court records. Tusrcak was initially a member of the Rockwood street gang in Los Angeles, having jumped in at the age of 13. He was first arrested for robbery at 16 years old in 1987. Similar to eMe ‘Godfather’ Joe “Peg Leg” Morgan, Turscak was not of Mexican descent but Slavic and had grown up in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Highland Park.
During his decades in prison, he was suspected of carrying out stabbing attacks on over 10 fellow prisoners at the direction of the Mexican Mafia, or La eMe of which he became a member in 1990. During his time in the Mexican Mafia, he said he authorized “assaults of individuals for infractions of Mexican Mafia rules,” and collected “taxes” from street gangs and drug dealers in “return for Mexican Mafia protection and permission to engage in narcotics trafficking.”
He also said he murdered a man in 1990 while he was incarcerated in Folsom Prison, and authorized the murder of another man in 1998, according to court documents.
eMe Faction War
The feud arose after Martinez, “who already had territories in East Los Angeles, began moving into several other areas of the city and was considered to be getting too big” by Turscak and others in the gang, a former member-turned-informant named Max “Mono” Torvisco would later tell the FBI, court records show.
The schism led to violence, distrust, and several murder attempts. At one point during the Spring of 1998, Turscak plotted to kidnap an ally of Martinez named Rolo Ontiveros by luring him to a vehicle where hitmen were waiting, according to Torvisco’s statement to the FBI.
On Easter Sunday, 1998, Turscak was at a family gathering in Atwater Village when two Mexican Mafia foot soldiers drove up and sprayed him and his family members with bullets. No one was killed in the shooting, and Turscak avoided gunfire by ducking under a vehicle. Torvisco would later testify he was angry at the shooters because they weren’t Mexican Mafia members and, therefore, didn’t have the right to kill someone who was.
Torvisco added, though, that he was so angry at Turscak at the time that Torvisco wanted to kill him personally, according to a transcript of the hearing. He testified there were other attempts to kill Turscak, including one where two hitmen waited for him with guns and walkie-talkies at an area he was known to frequent, but he never showed up.
After the Easter Sunday shooting, Martinez left a voicemail on the phone of one of Turscak’s close friends in which he laughs and references his “Easter Salundas,” according to an unsealed FBI report.
Former FBI Informant
The government presented evidence that Martinez, Fernandez, and Sanchez had approved the murders of Turscak and Detevis and had discussed plans to carry them out. On Easter Sunday in 1998, Torvisco, Rochin, and others actually made an unsuccessful attempt to murder Turscak.
The government also presented evidence of a conspiracy to commit murder unrelated to the Turscak dispute. That conspiracy involved Fernandez, Martinez, and Gonzales, who discussed killing James “Bouncer” Lopez because of Lopez’s interference with the collection of drug taxes in the Valley.
On appeal, according to court documents, the appellants claimed that various aspects of the government’s involvement with and reliance on informant John “Stranger” Turscak resulted in conduct so improper that their due process rights were violated.
30 Year Sentence
Turscak was attacked by his cellmate after paperwork confirming his government cooperation was widely distributed, he wrote in a lawsuit filed two years later. He wrote that he was housed in the same yard as a co-defendant who knew of his cooperation and that after being stabbed and spending a week in the hospital, no one tried to interview him, “although I have expressed a desire to press criminal charges.”
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“I ask the court to grant this petition in all fairness before I end up murdered or lose my sanity waiting for the BOP to transfer me,” Turscak wrote.
He petitioned for a transfer out of that prison, fearing he would be targeted as a “snitch.” He stated he was being housed with other Mexican Mafia members in the SHU, including the one who had previously attacked him. He wished to be transferred back into California state custody in their dropout or “Special Needs Yard.” He was moved to a solitary unit in North Carolina before complaining of the conditions and was transferred to Tucson.
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“Turscak harbored obvious animosity toward the government due to the government’s decision to prosecute him for the unauthorized criminal conduct he engaged in while an FBI informant,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Dugdale wrote in an August 2008 legal filing.
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