Michael Torres, 59, was stabbed to death Thursday morning, allegedly by two other prisoners at California State Prison, Sacramento, (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation)
SACRAMENTO — A Mexican Mafia member with a reputation for generating lots of illicit revenue was stabbed to death at a Northern California prison Thursday, in what appears to be an attack from within his own gang.
Michael “Mosca” Torres, 59, was killed around 9 a.m. Thursday by fellow prisoners Juan Martinez, 47, and Ray “Cisco” Martinez, 49, at California State Prison, Sacramento, according to a news release by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. All three men were serving life sentences for various violent crimes, authorities said.
Both suspects, who are not related, appear to be affiliated with the Mexican Mafia or its subsidiaries. Ray Martinez was identified in a Los Angeles Times report as a Mexican Mafia member. Juan Martinez has a tattoo on his neck of the number 13, symbol for both the Mexican Mafia and its primary offshoot, the Sureño gang.
Torres was widely known as a moneymaker for the notorious prison gang, which controls multi-million drug, fraud, robbery, and extortion rackets throughout the United States, in addition to having a hand in legitimate business. He had business interests in the San Fernando Valley, as well as alleged involvement in huge heroin rings inside and outside of prison, authorities say.
In 2019, Torres was the lone Mexican Mafia member to be indicted alongside more than a dozen alleged Aryan Brotherhood members and associates in a major racketeering case. Torres was accused of conspiring with Aryan Brotherhood leaders to distribute heroin, while others in the indictment were accused of murder conspiracies and fatal prison stabbings.
Torres was initially housed in administrative segregation, but served as his own attorney and wrote several handwritten motions demanding to be placed back into general population, court records show. One such motion, filed in December 2020, says that his restrictive housing was affecting his ability to mount an effective defense and that the windowless cell caused him to suffer from claustrophobia.
“It’s my belief that the government conspired with its agents CDCR to use the pretext of an alleged investigation to keep me in ad-seg,” Torres wrote.
Federal prosecutors rebutted the motion by arguing that Torres was a danger to others, writing in a court filing that he had been caught with a handcuff key during a cell search. Prosecutors also said he’d been caught with a note to another inmate, “Lee,” discussing heroin sales and an apparent dispute over money.
Torres was eventually transferred to a general population section of the prison and allowed to interact with other inmates. The news release says that both suspects have been moved to restrictive housing and that authorities limited inmates’ movement on the yard where the attack occurred.
Torres is now the second person to die since the racketeering case was filed. In October 2019, an alleged Orange County skinhead gang member named Matthew Hall died of suicide after being arrested in Costa Rica.
Originally published at Nate Gartrell