Deported in 2006 from the US after serving a six-year federal prison term, Madrigal was known to travel between Tijuana, Rosarito, and Ensenada in Baja California. He developed a drug-trafficking network to support the Mexican Mafia in California and brought California-style prison gang politics to Mexican prisons.
According to reliable sources, whom we are unable to name for security reasons, “Evil” was shot and killed in Rosarito, Baja California, Mexico. Borderland Beat was provided exclusive photographs confirming the Mexican Mafia member’s death, on a beach in Rosarito, in September 2023. He was wearing a Chicago Bears jersey, with the number 54 (he has often been seen in football jerseys, Dallas Cowboy insignia is a common sight on members of his former Oxnard based gang). And a Santa Muerte medallion around his neck. It appears he had been shot in the back of the head.
Around the same time, officials in Rosarito were praising the decline in murders and violence in the area, a popular tourist beach destination for many, including American tourists.
According to numbers made public by Rosarito’s head of public safety, Francisco Javier Arellano, 117 murders were committed in all of 2022. In the first 8 months of this year, only 37 have been reported.
We are not sure if Martin Madrigal Cazares was number 37 or 38.
Our source alleged the reason for his killing was possibly related to the robbery of a Los Aquiles-controlled safe house in the area by men under his control. It is not known if “Evil” was also a perpetrator of the robbery, or killed as punishment for allowing it to happen.
US officials have stated however according to the LA Times, that it’s unclear whether Madrigal’s dealings with drug traffickers or an internal dispute within the Mexican Mafia led to his death.
Our source, familiar with Tijuana’s drug trade, and who requested anonymity, said that at the time of his death, Madrigal was doing business with two brothers, Rene and Alfonso Arzate Garcia, whom US Treasury Department
officials sanctioned last month as the Sinaloa Cartel’s plaza bosses in Tijuana.
Los Aquiles & The Arzate Brothers
The Arzate brothers have long controlled drug trafficking activity in the Tijuana area for the Sinaloa Cartel, primarily under the wing of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada. They are currently wanted by the FBI for a large 2014 federal marijuana importation conspiracy charge.
Alfonso “El Aquile” Arzate Garcia and his brother, Rene “La Rana” Arzate Garcia, manage the Sinaloa Cartel’s drug trafficking operations in Tijuana and the surrounding municipalities and are involved in importing large quantities of illicit drugs, including fentanyl, into the United States. Known to be extremely violent, the Arzate Garcia brothers are also involved in carrying out enforcement operations, such as kidnappings and executions.
Recently, the brothers have threatened their rival in Tijuana, Pablo “El Flaquito” Huerta of CAF and connected to Los Chapitos. They also announced their
alliance with Los Rusos under “El Mayo.” Los Rusos primarily controls the Mexicali border region. This alliance is meant to solidify Sinaloa’s control over the Baja border region. The brothers, at a meeting with “El Mayo” are said to have requested that Tijuana operations be all brought under a single command, that of the Arzate’s.
The brothers and their men are said to be behind many of the recent massacres in Baja California including the 10 men killed at an off-road event in San Vicente, Ensenada, days after a large shipment of cocaine was seized at the nearby port. The goal was to kill Alonso Arámbula Piña “El Trébol”, who left the Sinaloa Cartel to join a CAF faction supported by the CJNG.
January 2023 Arrest
On the evening of January 24, 2023, officers from Tijuana’s police department and Mexico’s national guard
arrested Madrigal and 9 other men near the beaches of Rosarito. “Evil” was riding in the bed of the truck with several others.
The men were traveling in a Ford F-150 with California license plates, carrying an arsenal of assault rifles and handguns, authorities said. Baja California authorities published photographs of Madrigal and the other detainees with their faces blurred, standing in front of a table arrayed with the seized weapons.
The men had in their possession 7 pistols including an FN 5.7mm “police killer” pistol and 2 rifles, a short AR-15 variant in .223 caliber, and a 7.62mm AK-47 type Draco rifle as well as ammunition. Also in the truck were 3 large packages of marijuana.
Among those arrested were La eMe members known as “El Evil,” and “El Bullet” the leaders of the local cell in Mexico. The other detainees, José Fernando also known as “El Bullet”, 41 years old; Gerardo, 46; Henry, 33; Eric, 45; Randy, 34; Fernando, 34; Luis Alfredo, 29; Alberto, Luis Julio, and Armando, all three 51 years old.
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| Past 805 area Colonia Chiques gang members (El Evil is not pictured here). |
Who is “El Evil”?
Raised on the east side of Oxnard, California; Martin Madrigal Cazares came up in the Colonia Chiques gang before being inducted into the Mexican Mafia in the early 2000s, said Leo Duarte, a retired California state prisons official who investigated the organization for decades.
After becoming a “made” member of the Mexican Mafia, also known as La eMe, Madrigal “thought he was all that and a bag of chips,” Duarte recalled. His outsized ego rubbed many Mexican Mafia members the wrong way. One was Thomas “Wino” Grajeda, of the infamous Grajeda Family faction of La eMe; who mailed a letter to Madrigal that began:
“Órale Martin, just these few lines your way hoping that they find you well, considering that things have somewhat gone to your head.” Grajeda rebuked Madrigal for what he considered to be abuses of his newfound authority. “Keep in mind,” Grajeda signed off, “you make your bed in life or the life we live, then sleep on it. I don’t want to hear no crying later on.”
A Mexican national, Madrigal served a 77-month sentence for illegally reentering the country at federal penitentiaries in Victorville, California and Leavenworth, Kansas, law enforcement records show.
After his last deportation in 2006, Madrigal retained control of his old gang and others in Ventura County, according to investigations by the FBI and the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department. Wiretapped calls revealed that Madrigal’s lieutenants were collecting “taxes” from gangs and drug dealers in the coastal county and sending the money to Madrigal, who was being held in a high-security Mexican prison on unknown charges at the time.
Rise to Power in Mexico
Held in a Tijuana jail, it had been reported that Madrigal found that many of the inmates were deported California gang members accustomed to taking orders from the Mexican Mafia in prison. He began taxing the drug trade and disciplined inmates as part of his taking over the jail. He proved to be a headache for administrators so much so that they transferred him from lockup to lockup, hoping to break his hold over the jail rackets in the area.
Madrigal and several of his underlings in California were all charged in federal court in 2013 with conspiring to traffic meth in Ventura County. Madrigal’s key lieutenant, Edwin “Sporty” Mora’s federal case was dismissed after county prosecutors convicted him of conspiring to commit extortion and drug trafficking in 2015. Mora, now 39, is serving a 23-year sentence in Calipatria State Prison.
Prosecutors at the time had filed paperwork to extradite Madrigal from Mexico, where they said he was already serving life in prison, but he was never handed over to US authorities and eventually was seemingly released from custody.
At some point, Madrigal was released from custody despite being named in two US cases, one federal and another in Ventura County, in which he was subject to extradition. At the time of ‘Operation SuperNova’ targeting gangs in the Ventura area, he was stated by the FBI to be a fugitive in Mexico. It came out the following year that he was serving a life sentence in a Mexican prison and his defense attorney argued that extraditing him to the US didn’t make sense due to this fact.
American officials said their Mexican counterparts have never explained why Madrigal was allowed to walk free. Officials from the Mexican attorney general’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment at the time.
Evil’s eMe Power Struggles
Madrigal became locked in a power struggle with another Mexican Mafia member, Michael “Mike Boo” Moreno, who was contesting not just Madrigal’s hold over the Ventura area but his collections rackets in prisons in California and Mississippi, wiretapped calls showed.
Informed that some inmates were still taking direction from Madrigal, Moreno was overheard on the wiretap telling an underling: “Whoever continues, they’re going against what we tell them, man.”
“He had his opportunity already,” Moreno continued. “He had his chances. We gave him the benefit of the doubt. And he still screwed up. And whoever continues to fuck with him after we already told them, they’re going to find themselves in trouble too.”
Moreno was arrested in California in 2013. After pleading guilty to conspiring to distribute methamphetamine imported by La Familia Michoacan, he was sentenced to 11 years in December 2022. With time served, Moreno was released earlier this year.
Recent Mexican Mafia Killings
Last month, an inmate was stabbed to death in LA Men’s Central Jail, an incident that authorities suspect may represent more fallout from the killing of Mexican Mafia leader Michael Torres a month prior. Torres was a longtime Mexican Mafia member who controlled rackets in the Los Angeles County jail system.
L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputies were conducting a security check at the downtown Los Angeles lockup the evening of August 4 when they found Joseph “Capone” Hutchinson, 51, suffering from stab wounds in a cell that he shared with another inmate, said Lt. Art Spencer of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau. Hutchinson was pronounced dead at the scene. The circumstances of Hutchinson’s death remain unclear, but it came just one month after Torres was killed in the yard at California State Prison, Sacramento known as New Folsom.
Torres was attacked on the morning of July 6 by two inmates, identified by prison officials as Ray Martinez, 49, and Juan Martinez, 47. Both men, who are not related, were already serving life in prison for murder. They have been held in a restricted housing wing of California State Prison, Sacramento, pending the investigation into Torres’ death, authorities said.
A week later, a woman said to be associated with Torres was shot to death in his mother’s home in San Fernando, California. Stephanie Rodriguez was found shot to death in a home on Kewen Street owned by Torres’ mother. Torres’ niece, Evelyn Torres, was arrested at the scene and later charged with Rodriguez’s murder. She has pleaded not guilty.
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