By Hunter Clauss
Samuel “Negro” Villalba was found shot to death in a homeless camp in 2021, years after the Mexican Mafia kicked him out and put a target on him, according to authorities.
Villalba joined the gang in the 1980s while being held at Folsom for drug possession. But he fell out of the Mexican Mafia’s graces in the mid-2000s after he assaulted a fellow member, my colleague Matthew Ormseth reports.
Authorities recently arrested a suspected gunman in Villalba’s death — Andrew Reyna, who worked under the Mexican Mafia but was not a full-fledged member, according to a law enforcement official. Reyna has pleaded not guilty to murder charges.
Villalba’s story gives a glimpse into the inner workings of the Mexican Mafia. Here are a few key points from Matthew’s extensive reporting, but the entire story is really worth reading.
Villalba wasn’t just any member of the Mexican Mafia
After being released from prison in the late 1980s, Villalba took part in a plan by the Mexican Mafia to bring street gangs under their control through “taxes.”
At meetings in parks and community centers, the street gangs were told they had to pay the Mexican Mafia, according to an investigation by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the FBI.
Anyone who refused to pay up would get the “green light,” which meant they’d be shot on the streets and stabbed behind bars, Matthew reports.
In 1994, Villalba was among 22 Mexican Mafia members and associates charged in a landmark racketeering case. Villalba went on the run after the indictment, but authorities caught up to him at a motel in Buena Park in 1995. He pleaded guilty a year later.
Federal prosecutors also accused Villalba of being among those who voted to murder three Mexican Mafia members who had fallen out of favor with the gang.
One of them was Charles “Charlie Brown” Manriquez, who was an informal advisor to “American Me,” a 1992 film that depicted the Mexican Mafia’s rise to power. The movie angered the gang, especially when it came to a scene showing a founding member being sodomized. Manriquez was gunned down in the Ramona Gardens housing project in 1992.
A fight behind bars put a target on Villalba
While serving his sentence in the racketeering case, Villalba assaulted James “Rube” Soto, a respected and aging member of the Mexican Mafia, Matthew reports.
The gang did not give Villalba permission to carry out the assault, and inmates associated with the Mexican Mafia attacked Villalba in retribution. A prisoner sucker punched Villalba while he exercised, and two other inmates beat, kicked and throttled him with a ligature, according to prison video.
By 2021, Villalba was out of prison and living in a tent near the 91 Freeway in northern Long Beach. His muscular physique had grown thin, and he suffered from cirrhosis and open sores on his hips, according to a coroner’s report.
On the night of Jan. 10, 2021, two men crept through the homeless camp carrying guns in gloved hands and asking for Villalba, prosecutors allege in a complaint. He was later found dead.
Ramon “Mundo” Mendoza, a former Mexican Mafia member, said Villalba made the mistake of returning to a neighborhood within the organization’s reach.
“Sooner or later, someone’s going to report back: ‘Hey, guess who I saw?’” Mendoza told my colleague Matthew in 2021. “The guy is an open target.”
More stories from inside the Mexican Mafia
If you’d like to learn more about the Mexican Mafia, my colleague Matthew recently wrote about the “Mexican Mafia Tapes.”
The three-part series looks at how the Mexican Mafia and a drug cartel called La Familia in Mexico wanted to broker an unprecedented alliance. La Familia would provide an unending supply of methamphetamine if the Mexican Mafia protected the cartel’s leaders in U.S. prisons.
But what neither side knew was the man who took charge of the negotiations was an informant for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.