MS – 13

David Paul served with the Suffolk County Police Department for 20 years. Since that time, he has written true crime books, helped with Russian Organized Crime investigations, and has become an expert in the infiltration of Long Island by the MS-13 gang from El Salvador. This podcast tells the story of the MS-13 gang, how they got from El Salvador to Long Island, and about the crimes they have committed.

David Paul, police officer, Russian organized crime expert, screenwriter and MS-13 expert

David’s most popular book is Unearthing a Serial Killer and can be found by clicking on the title. In this book, David tells the horrifying story of Alex J. Mengel’s violent and brutal crime spree in the suburbs of New York City. He became the ‘Most Wanted’ man in North America in 1985. Thirty years later, other acts of evil committed by Mengel, were uncovered and that is what led David Paul to write Unearthing a Serial Killer.

Transcript of the MS -13 story

I am trying something new and I had the audio podcast transcribed and below you will find the unedited transcript of the entire show. let me know how you like hits effort. I have to pay a transcribing service and I cannot decide if it is worth the cost to have this done.

Steven Colbert: You are listening to gang land wire hosted by former Kansas city police intelligence unit, detective Gary Jenkins.

Gary Jenkins : Welcome while you are camera’s out there. I’m here on the cell phone, actually not the zoom this time. So there won’t be a video with my friend, David Paul, who is a retired Suffolk county police officer from [00:00:30] up in New York. He lives in upstate New York. Now he’s retired. He’s written a book on a serial killer, but more importantly for you. Guys’ information. He’s worked a lot on Ms. 13 and you know, we do organized crime primarily on this show. We’ve strayed out into serial killers a little bit, but we lack organized crime and learning about that. He knows about Russian organized crime even speaks Russian pretty fluently. It looks to me like, so now I couldn’t judge that because you can say anything to me in a Russian accent. [00:01:00] And then I just assume you were speaking Russian David. Welcome. Hi

David Paul: Gary. Hey, thanks for having me on. I appreciate

Gary Jenkins: It. All right. Cool. And I saw you on LinkedIn. I think for, at first, I am always just noodling around trying to find somebody, a guest for the show. That sounds interesting to me and I love getting other ex-coppers out there that are doing this kind of media stuff or writing books, doing documentary films. Like I am, I’ve done a couple of three books and then four documentary films all together as these guys know. [00:01:30] And so I love talking to you guys. So let’s talk a little bit about your and my police experience. Now. I was in the organized crime unit and that’s for most of my career. I did a little bit of everything. What did you do back there in separate county?

David Paul: I’ll tell you what I was in the car of my whole career. I just didn’t have enough political juice to make the phone ring. Yeah. And you know, we had a saying great job, terrible career, but it, I had a lot of fun, especially [00:02:00] my first, you know, 10, 11 years. So I worked actually in Brentwood, Bayshore, which is in Suffolk county, long island. And it’s probably the biggest hub of Ms. 13 guys in New York state, to be honest with you. So I was in patrol for, uh, another whole 21 years. My last 13 or 14, I did the midnights, which I knew would know, not a lot of good decisions, man, after midnight.

Gary Jenkins: Oh [00:02:30] man, I tell you what the worst call is at about four 30 or so in the morning disturbance or domestic disturbance or just disturbance because at four 30 in the morning, people have been drinking all night long and they are nuts. Nothing good comes up. Disturbance called after about 4, 4 30 in the morning, the earlier ones, you got to get why you go here and you go there and sit there by their own separate way, boy, by four or four or five o’clock in the morning. Oh my God.

David Paul: Yeah. Yeah, no, that was Sunday mornings.

David Paul: [00:03:00] You just run it all night. 20 calls all the cool shots. But yeah, I mean, whether they believe it or not, Suffolk county is the 11th largest department in the country because I mean, it actually pretty much entails the five towns of five big towns of Suffolk county, long island. They have your east Hampton, south Hampton, they do their thing. But you know, we’re bigger than Boston or bigger than Houston. I think manpower and [00:03:30] personnel altogether was 3000. And of course we never came close to that. That’s why we want, we’re not shutting cars here and there. And unfortunately that happened on the midnight. Somehow we come the old sheriff in town, but I had a great time. It was a great job. And the guys and girls 99.5% of doing the right thing out there. Yeah,

Gary Jenkins: Yeah. That was my experience too. I, majority of us I’ll do the right thing. And the people that do the wrong thing many times, some of them are just spontaneous. You just it’s hot. [00:04:00] You can’t take it anymore. I did a few bad things and I don’t mean Steve thing, but, but I got to register liquid because I just couldn’t take it anymore. And so I feel for these guys that are getting in so much trouble for those displays of temper, it’s tough.

David Paul: Yes. It’s really, really disgusting. What’s happened over the last, you know, whatever it is, eight, two months, and look, let’s face it defeat violence. You need greater violence. That’s just a matter of fact.

Gary Jenkins: Yeah. I mean, well, we don’t need to go down that path. It’s it’s tough. And [00:04:30] I don’t know, I couldn’t, I wouldn’t do it today. I know that I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t go back today. I mean, it was cool being out of patrol now is out of control off a lot of my career. So you spent all your career in patrol and you know what it is. It’s just one uncontrolled situation after another and you’re supposed to bring some control to this uncontrolled situation. It’s tough. It’s tough.

David Paul: Yeah, no, it’s exactly what it is. And it’s different than being a detective because obviously like a guys like you, and you’re a detective, you take that case home with you. [00:05:00] And pretty much my day is over when it’s over. But you know, I was a guy that the detective squad would always dial up and ask them and say, Hey, come to this guy.

Gary Jenkins: Yeah. I know you. I had to have one guy and tried to have at least one gung ho guy that would work with me and did a little bit extra because you could be invaluable to detective you can’t be out there everywhere. And you’re out close to what he’s looking at. And they get a guy that like do something. Cause everybody, a lot of them would just be mad at you because [00:05:30] you’re a detective and their patrol car. But I was one of those guys when I was in patrol, I was a guy they’d call to when I went into detective unit way, I found guys out and you get a reputation among other detectives. I’ll call this guy. He’s working Doug. What’s over there. Call him, he’ll do something for you. He won’t just like blow you off.

David Paul: Yeah, no, I mean, I can remember one situation where we had been offered a few days and we, my partner come into the precinct and probably had like 15 minutes before we really it roll out. And uh, one of the detectives he’s like, Hey, can [00:06:00] I do with ya? I’m like, yeah, what’s going on? He says, last night we had a cab driver shot in the face three times with a 45 caliber. And he actually, he did survive. He needed like 200 statements in his face. And as you know, a lot of times in police work, they usually charge what they think they can find the guy guilty at. So they don’t upcharge. But instead of reassort, they do charge attempted in this case. And then the other thing about working in the midnights was we were the only guys out there. So we were able to talk to people.

David Paul: [00:06:30] And I always kind of tried to talk to people civilly. I mean, if you were going to give me a hard time with that, I’ll give you one time. But we roll up on this canine a bike. And I thought he was maybe 15 or 16 winds up being like 23. It was just kind of small. And I said, Hey man, what’s up? And he says, oh good. You know, I work down in the industrial factory on pioneer drive. It’s like, yeah. You know, just get back to home. I live with two blocks away and I just looked at him and I say, Hey, we shut the cab driver the other night. And he says, Jamal, [00:07:00] everybody knows that Backwoods he used. And then I figured, let me test him a little bit. I said, oh yeah. So it was, he carried that 22, right? He goes 22. What are you talking about? Carrie’s in 45. Matter of fact, he went up to me at the crack house last week.

David Paul: So I said, look, man, can you come in? And I said, could you come in to the precinct? Because obviously it’s like three o’clock in the morning. Can you come in tomorrow? He’s like, yeah, I hate that. I [00:07:30] hate that, man. I’ll come in. So sure enough, he comes in, he’s got the guys, you know, pedigree. And the funny part about it was they wanted to Rob the cab driver because he was from New York city the very next day. So he wanted to have cash in his commissary account. So we wound up locking him up, upstate bringing them back to Suffolk county for the attempted murder. Yeah. So, but I know you were talking about before about the organized crime angle of it. The kind of the reason I got involved a little bit with the district attorney’s office was that state farm insurance [00:08:00] had met the district attorney at an awards ceremony.

David Paul: And he says, you know, Tommy killed Bucklin and Queens that the Russians, what they’re doing is they’ll have a car in front of you. And so they’ll have two cars. And then Joe citizen is the third car. So the first Russian car will hit their brakes. The second Russian car will hit their brakes. And Joe citizen will Ram into that second Russian car. Meanwhile, the first one is in the wind, right? So now I have Joe citizen [00:08:30] saying, oh, I saw the whole thing officer. And you know, he got cut off and the guy took off, but now you have four or five guys rolling out of the car that Joe citizen hit. And they were all getting anywhere from eight to 10 to $12,000 for personal injuries. So Spota says, you know, maybe Tommy’s photos, the da at the time, he says, maybe I can help you out with that.

David Paul: So there was a thing that if you are domiciled in the county, that we could go anywhere in the state to go lock you up because New York city police would say, now it’s [00:09:00] gotta be individual 50 grand for us to go find somebody. And it’s a, it’s it. And the FBI would say a hundred grand. So we would go into Brooklyn and go knock on the door and give them a little spear. And I’d say, who is Ivan? And he’s like, oh, he’s in the bathroom. I’ll tell him to come out here. Are you Ivan? Yes, I’m Ivan. Okay. Turn around. You’re under arrest. We snapped the cuffs on him and we bring them back to Suffolk county. So at the end of the day, we were in that million dollar range, as far as locking these guys up, putting them transferred and state farm was pretty happy about it.

Gary Jenkins: [00:09:30] Yeah. That a Russian organized crime pretty strong there in New York city, the whole area in long island and all around in that.

David Paul: Oh yeah. And the city and the NYPD, the Jersey PD, the SBI, they really knocked the hell out of them in Brooklyn, in the late nineties. Uh, yeah, they really did, but the scam guys were still there. You know, it’s just like I was saying with the insurance. Yeah.

Gary Jenkins: We had, you know, these ethnic groups many times come in, we had a group of Somalis that were doing something like that, having these accidents and always making an insurance claim. So anyhow, before [00:10:00] we get started too much further with Ms. 13, let’s talk a little bit about your book unearthing a serial killer.

David Paul: Sure. So honorary thing is serial killer was released on labor day, weekend of 2015. I was kind of proud of it because it was about two days or three days before my first year of retirement anniversary. So I felt like I had gotten something done, you know, that first year and the Connie strange, not funny, funny, but I grew up in Yonkers, New York and I was in the army in 1985 and a Westchester county police officer was murdered on [00:10:30] the sawmill Parkway, which is basic 20 minutes north of the west side highway that goes into Manhattan. And I was home on leave when he was assassinated. And the next day, the same guy kidnaps a woman out of an IBM business office. He takes her in her vehicle up to the Catskills region in New York and he proceeds to murder her there. And then he sculptor and he did go up to her face and her yeah. And her name was Beverly Capone. So the intention of the [00:11:00] bad guy whose name is Alex J mango was to actually wear not only the scalp, but to actually wear her SES. Yeah. And get through customs up in Canada. And what he found out due to his skeletal structure, facial structure, obviously wasn’t going to be able to wear this woman.

David Paul: Yeah. So he does make it through, up in Canada and the guy wasn’t a brain surgeon by any means. So he did a lot of things, very cunningly. [00:11:30] He did a lot of things, right. As far as his criminal sophistication, but he wound up staying in Beverley poems vehicle. So there’s big mall up there on a suburb of Toronto. And this guy’s just amazing cop. His name is Clive Richards. And he’s just doing that thing that we all do when you get that notification of, Hey, this guy, I believe he’s coming to Canada. It’s got friends in Toronto, we murdered a police officer. He’s kidnapped this woman and he might be in his vehicle and sure enough, he’s going through the parking lot at his huge mall and [00:12:00] to March. And there’s a lot of snowbanks, you know, piles and stuff. And he says, oh wow, that’s a white Toyota.

David Paul: Oh. And as a New York license glean on, oh, and that’s the plate. And there’s somebody sitting behind the wheel. So he actually takes off and they had a bit of a decent pursuit. And then they have a slick pursuit. Mango is attempting to pull something out of his waistband. And of course it is a gun and Richards is now just drawn down on him and he was ready to just come down and mango drops the gun. So the gun is, the police [00:12:30] has gotten from Westchester, Gary stim, Alaska, we murdered. Then they find in the car, which is heavily component’s car. They find the nine millimeter actually, I’m sorry. It was a three 80 that he killed Gary with. And the Canadian say, yeah, you know, let me find this wig in there. Well, it wasn’t a wig. It was Beverly coupons, scalp. Wow. So to me, am I going straight shoot.

David Paul: There had never been a book done on this, that several articles and things like that. I just made the decision to do it, did it with a gentleman named Kevin McMurry. [00:13:00] And he’s done a lot of writing over the years. And unfortunately he took ill, but I still want it to have Kevin’s name on it. And you know, so we went ahead with it and I just thought it would kind of open and closed. You know, when you hadn’t known about the two murders and sure enough, I go to pick up the freedom of information law stuff from Westchester county day and a Sergeant at the desk. He says, you know, we always threw up that mango had murdered that girl from the city that we found up here in Westchester county. And sure enough, just kind of followed [00:13:30] the trail that another detective and NYP detective like Tony Lombardi by the name of Tony and Barney had done. And we a descent actively linked mango to the 1984 abduction murder of antenatal and Matina. So that’s how we made, he’s certainly a serial killer and I believe he has other bodies out there. Yeah. And the bottom line with mango is that I can prove definitively it’s not in the book because it’s still like a work in progress. A little bit things. We blind that mango was also the catalyst for [00:14:00] a doctor. Hannibal Lecter was Mr. Hyde.

Gary Jenkins: Really? I mean, from those details, wouldn’t be surprising at all. Some odds are like I heard about that, that incorporated it in him. I’m sure that he would be that whole like wearing people’s skins and stuff. That’s the God that’s happened in other places too. That’s a crazy one. That’s like, oh my God,

David Paul: That’s pretty

Gary Jenkins: Shocking. It’s really shocking. Well, it’s interesting. So that’s unearthing a serial killer folks that’s out there on Amazon. [00:14:30] I’m sure it’s that was a primary place to get the Kindle book. And what most people do, I think is rekindles anymore. A few people’s

David Paul: It’s funny you say that. Cause that’s exactly what happened. I started getting emails to the website that said, Hey, I don’t do this Kindle stuff. Can you have a baby?

Gary Jenkins: Oh really? Yeah. I’ve seen that too. I’ve seen that too. So you gotta have both anymore. You really have to have both. It seemed like.

David Paul: Yeah, I agree.

Gary Jenkins: So let’s talk about an Ms. 13 and we talked a little bit before we started recording here. I am in the Midwest and I understand [00:15:00] Italian organized crime. And even I understand the Crips and the bloods, and even like maybe, you know, the west side seemed to be before I left or by the time I left, there was some kind of cartel action going on, led back directly to Mexico, but no Ms. 13, which is really from what down in central America is at Costa Rica, El Salvador, El Salvador, clear down in central America. And then I remember reading in the paper about this big infestation, if you will, I may not [00:15:30] be the best word, but problems with this Ms. 13 gang and recruiting among other immigrants and doing things. And I suppose, running the narcotics up there, I would imagine that that was the big moneymaker for these immigrant gangs and in long island, like what the hell how’d they get clear up in New York city? So talk to us about that, David.

David Paul: Sure. So [inaudible] we said comes out of El Salvador and it pretty much started while they were having their civil war down there in the late seventies and eighties. [00:16:00] And the first time they were on us soil was in Southern California. Like I said, once again, the late seventies was very early eighties and they just decided to Mandurah meander east and Brentwood is a very large Latin population. And that population was generally Puerto Rican descent. So I guess in their minds, Ms 13, maybe they thought that it would be easier to infiltrate a place like that. That already had a large lack of community that were actually right. [00:16:30] Because a lot of those people that have been there for years moved out as soon as these characters started coming in. But I mean, my first encounter with these guys and I would say was in 1994 and I mean, dumb as a stump, just in a sense, more like more like hillbillies.

David Paul: These were not like Latin king members who were streetwise gash in New York city. You know what I’m saying? Yeah. So anyway, in the beginning, I mean I was taking, believe it or not, I was taking slingshots and box [00:17:00] gutters off of them. And within a few years it did go to guns and they’ve, well, let’s put it this way. So since 2010, they’re responsible for 60 murders alone on long island and probably double or triple that and attempted murders. So one of the most famous ones occurred back in September of 2016 and it got national attention. It was in Brentwood and two young ladies abroad, high school students, Kayla Quavis. I [00:17:30] need some mic. They were both really good students. So basketball players and Kayla had had something on social media with one of the [inaudible] clowns and sure enough, they were actually walking to Brentwood high school, like two or three o’clock in the afternoon to practice and a couple of carloads go up and they act and beat these girls to death in the middle of a residential street that I had patrolled.

David Paul: And actually president Trump had Evelyn Rodriguez, who was the mother of Kayla. [00:18:00] He had her at the state of the room 2017. It was a remarkable markable thing, but it was funny when I retired in 2014, it seemed to explode. And of course, a friend of mine couldn’t resist. So he texts me and he says, oh man, when red retires, you know, things go crazy. And that couldn’t have been further from the truth. What actually had occurred was there were 4,000 unaccompanied minors at the Mexican Texas border and 4,000 and then was sent to long island. So you’re [00:18:30] looking at 14 to 17 year olds. And I mean, if you do the numbers with the rule of thumb of 8% of any population or criminals, you’re looking at 320 new gangsters introduced into your towns in long island. And it was just, it was just an explosion.

David Paul: And the justice department had come in, told us Suffolk county police department. And we think we don’t really like the way you guys are operating that. We’re, we’re making sure [inaudible], doesn’t murder people. And so the guys kind of, you know, if you’re going to tell me I’m going to [00:19:00] be federally indicted for doing my job, I’ll just write some parking tickets and right. And they flourished for about the next two years. I mean, there, the violence was just through the roof. There was an incident in April of 2017 where they actually had female gang members, more these four teenage boys into a park in Suffolk county. And they were hacked to death, machetes clubs. What have you? And, but as you said, with the organized crime, they’re transnational, [00:19:30] I mean, they are now they’re everywhere and they’re not going to stop until it shut down.

David Paul: And it took 20 murders over two years on long island for a really overwhelming response. And right now [inaudible] 13 on long island is not operable due to Suffolk county police, FBI, and United state police and a few other entities. But the reason I think they’re actually able to thrive is that you have some very smart, very cunning people at the top with the capitals and the lieutenants. And they’re taking [00:20:00] these kids literally out of, you know, a rainforest and El Salvador. And they’re in Austin, Texas in there and Maryland and Virginia and Baltimore and long island. So I mean, it’s like, they’re at Sandra’s workshop, I’ll do whatever you want me to do. And that’s how they put the drugs and the extortion and the murders. We just had a guy put away, got two weeks ago, a guy named Ronald catalog, 25 years old. And they got him on three attempted murders, numerous Rico, two ideas, the Rocketeer and drugs. He got 25 [00:20:30] years federally. So he’s not going to see the light of day for quite a while.

Gary Jenkins: Hmm. So now did they do kind of your typical, even like the black hand did when they first got here, did they start preying on other immigrant populations, store owners and people like that to kind of the usual, I guess if you will, they had, they brought some organization up here now, do you know, how are they broken down? Are they broken down into some kind of a family or a split, a structure of any kind? Or is that really

David Paul: Well? I think originally, even [00:21:00] till today, I think it’s pretty loose that I wouldn’t be surprised that they’re still reporting to people in California, the really higher ups or Maryland, Virginia, where they have quite a foothold down there. But otherwise I think it was pretty loosely based. And the unfortunate part really was the more violent you were, that’s the way you would go on up the ranks that you were selling them, that you could do this. And most of the extortion is kind of hard for them to extort the store owners here only because there was, [00:21:30] you know, not too many of them where they’re big recruiting grounds and extorting grounds where the sky schools and I blame it on the school districts and the, and the school boards and friends of mine telling me that year ago, two years ago, that school board side schools is sending a poem letters.

David Paul: It’s a, you know, your kids should not dress in red clothing. Well, really, you know, I thought this was a United States of America. I didn’t know. You could tell them what not to wear. Well, you don’t want to wear that because [inaudible] will perceive [00:22:00] that as an enemy gal. And that’s what they’ve done to these kids. There’s two or three radio cars at the high schools in Brentwood, central Islip in Bayshore every morning and every day that they get out. But it’s not like you can follow every kid home when they’re getting on a bus or they’re walking to 10 different neighborhoods. Um, so yeah, no, that’s a tough one. But I think with their major thing that they bring to organized crime is they’re the muscle. They are the violent guys. So, [00:22:30] and you know, they can be paid by anybody. So, you know, whether it be the Latin Kings, I mean, right now, they’re still at odds with them, but I have to take the stomach, their muscle work.

David Paul: But it’s amazing. I think as the close you get to the border to the south, I think you’re getting at a more command and control down there than a long island. And the good news on long island right now is Suffolk county. They’re inoperable, unfortunately, Nassau county, right next door. That is a huge base set of Hempstead long island. [00:23:00] And they got a pretty good structure, their command structure. But once again, it’s really based on how violent you can be, not how much money you could bring in which as you would know, well, it’s great if you’re going to be in a muscle and you’re going to be violent, but bottom line is to bring in money. Yeah,

Gary Jenkins: Yeah. In most of your traditional organized crime things, the moneymaker, you always got the bad guys who muscle, but the moneymakers are the ones that keeps her head down and doesn’t draw any attention and just makes money. Those are the guys that, that become important.

David Paul: Oh, [00:23:30] absolutely. Yeah. I mean a hundred percent at the narcotics is certainly there probably some loan shark and me as well. And the extorting of, Hey, you know, we just got into town, so we’re going to help you out here. And you know, like you had a reference to black hand, which I know a lot of people don’t know it was a four run into the mafia.

Gary Jenkins: Yeah. That the criminal organization among the immigrant population, then praise on them. But they also like kind of help them to, and in some manner they more hip and more [00:24:00] and understand, you know, local customs and what’s going on and businesses. And so they can, but they also will extort money from him and then, and use them to further their own ends. Like if they wanted to a drug house ran or a safe house for the whole drugs or something, then they’ve got a whole immigrant population that is pretty much doesn’t trust the established police or established governments because where they come from couldn’t trust any kind of law enforcement or any kind of governmental agency. So they bring that [00:24:30] distressed of police with them and your criminals then can prey on that.

David Paul: Hi Eric. You’re absolutely right. I mean, the population of El Salvadorians and Suffolk county is so large that they actually have a Salvadorian consulate in Brentwood, long island.

Gary Jenkins: Wow.

David Paul: Yeah.

Gary Jenkins: I guess they brought a, brought their regular people who then among them, they brought the gangs the same social problems that they had down in El Salvador, along with them. That’s crazy. Oh [00:25:00] yeah,

David Paul: Absolutely. I mean, I could give you probably one more example of how they were hired by other gangs. And there was a huge heroin deal on Brentwood. And he was considered probably the biggest one in Brentwood at the time, and going back to about 2008 and he did have some Ms. 13 gang members who was selling for him. And apparently one guy was not only stealing the product. He was stealing the money and blah, blah, blah. So he has him whacked. And so he’s killed in a car. They set the car on fire. And now the friends of this [00:25:30] gentlemen who was, you know, on the, uh, on the product and ripping this dealer off, they decided they’re going to kill the dealer. And it happened to be in my sector, which I did not appreciate. Uh, you’re, you’re familiar with the decline of fitness franchises throughout the country.

David Paul: Right. So I actually was kind of a retirement car for me, 2008. I was kinda done molest, you know, and knocking heads, doing all that stuff. Right. So I got a call that shooting at planet fitness, sunrise highway Bayshore, and I’m thinking, [00:26:00] oh, that’s interesting. So when I get there, it had been an AK 47 that was used. They had it on video. The gym probably had 50 people in it and oh yeah. It was like 11 o’clock at night. And two people were down and thinking to myself, gee, what is going on? I just can’t believe that these networks would just come up to the gym and start spraying down. Sure enough, there was a guy that comes up behind me and he goes, Hey officer, what’s up? What’s going on? I’m like, why, who are you? What are you doing here? What’s your name?

David Paul: He turned out to be the target. Yeah. Yeah. He was [00:26:30] a heroin dealer. So I just slapped cuffs on him, put him in the back of my car. We’re looking at the video and sure enough, the guy that in the back of my car had been on a treadmill. He was the target and he just turned tail as, as an elbows and went out the back door, came back to the island. He wanted to see if he had been caught on tape, I guess. But it was a happy ending that he got about 25 years for heroin trafficking. So

Gary Jenkins: Somebody was already working a case on him. Sounds like on the heroin trafficking. And these were Ms. 13 people that had been working for [00:27:00] him. That was a retaliation. Yeah. Yeah. I tell you what, that’s not the first story I’ve ever heard one right here locally. I got, you should run marijuana from the border up here for one of the cartels told me a story out of it now, but he told me a story a few years ago that one of their local dealers that had a bar in this area thought he was all that. And he just refused to pay him one time, but maybe found another source or supplier. And he said, these guys brought it up from down in south Texas. They brought up two carloads of people, like about [00:27:30] eight people altogether. And they went to this guy’s business and surrounded it and then went in and had a little talk with him and said, then look outside. And there’s all these guys outside just like the TV with it was easier. Or, uh, you know, those cards, those AKA’s and, and all those big types of lens, just like the movies. And you know, this guy didn’t have any reason to lie to me about that. Or, you know, I wasn’t even gonna use it on the podcast or interview with him because he’s still in witness protection. So I’m not going to, [00:28:00] I didn’t really want to get in with him. And I tell you, I told him, I said, I’m afraid those cartels myself.

Gary Jenkins: So that’s a tell you what, it’s a crazy world and is a crazy, crazy world.

David Paul: Oh yeah, yeah, no. I mean, we also, I mean, being a suburb of, you know, probably the biggest city in the world that the Latin Kings are basically their headquarters is in sunset park, Brooklyn, but they have their mothers or their children out in Al Brentwood. So we would see them [00:28:30] all the time and we got threats and we didn’t care. We were going to do what we had to do. And in the late nineties, early two thousands, even today, if you want to target a long island cop, you’re really, really asking for trouble because it’s going to be taken seriously. And unfortunately it should be taken seriously in every municipality.

Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Yeah. What about the facial tattoos? That’s what I always think of. When I think of these El Salvadorian central American gang bangers or gang members. Did you see much of that or did they, those guys are so easily [00:29:00] identify me, just see a guy is who you are. Dude.

David Paul: There are so identifiable that one of the first, fairly high level guys that I’ve arrested, who a man, he was just, I don’t know how he could run, you know, a little league team. Well, he’s given me a bad name. I turn them around a toss him and uh, sure enough, his name is tattooed on the back of his head, his last name. He goes, oh yeah, you got me, you got family. [00:29:30] You gotta be kidding. Right. But yeah, you’re not the tattoo structure. It’s not like in the, you know, the Russian organized gangs, where is a little more of a sale of a, more of a hierarchy to it. I would say with DMS guys, it’s more a bluster and, uh, things of that nature. It’s not like a you’re, you know, you’re going to have to kind of recognize them. Maybe that’s different today, but I mean, the tattoos were just, they were all over and I signed it with the other gang as I’m sure you did that. So with the Latin Kings [00:30:00] and the grips, the bloods, their tattoos kind of had a little more of meaning to it, I would think.

Gary Jenkins: Yeah. And you remember the Cubans, they had river reading things that had like a code of what particular tattoos men on a Cuban. They had some meeting in, I don’t know the Russians do too. So they don’t have that. What you’re telling me is in all those tattoos, these guys got in there noted. I mean, I’ve seen these pictures of them with the whole face practically covered with tattoos, but they don’t really mean they don’t really have kind of a meaning [00:30:30] to that than anybody’s ever figured out. They’re just random. They want to be tattooed and it looks scary again.

David Paul: Yes. I think that’s more the case. I’m sure there was some kind of, you know, a rhyme or reason to it some sort of way, but I don’t really remember any of our gang guys being so serious about the [inaudible] tattoos as opposed to the other guys. And I mean, you can know every tattoo on the world, if you don’t know how to talk to a gangster, you’re in trouble. I mean, I saw more guys, you know that, oh, you know, I know there’s Griffey and I noticed, okay, that’s good. [00:31:00] But uh, do you know how to lock them up?

Gary Jenkins: Yeah, it really, yeah. I remember the guy when the whole bloods and Crips got going, he was a national expert on interpret in the graffiti and M was huge because he cities in the Midwest that weren’t used to that. And all of a sudden we have this strange graffiti appearance and everybody’s trying to figure out the meaning of it. And I got into that with, I was in the TAC unit. I was back out in patrol when I first got promoted to Sergeant and I had gone to a SWAT team or a Tactical Unit. And we got assigned to the LA boys [00:31:30] taskforce because they were just appearing. So we started looking at this graffiti thing and by the end we figured it out. It’s mainly doesn’t have that much meaning as mainly a couple of young kids that go around, they might write the 31st street Crips, but they’re just two kids or three kids.

Gary Jenkins: And in the end, right, it didn’t really mean all that much. It wasn’t that big a deal as they, the expert from LA was trying to, but people were petrified. I’m telling you, people in the neighborhood are petrified my neighborhood. We started having it. [00:32:00] I don’t live way out in the suburbs. I live over in the city. And we started having to showing up around here on any wall that wasn’t painted you to have that stuff show up. And mainly it was just a couple of three kids that wanted to go out and tag stuff.

David Paul: I’ve seen many, a guy parlay a career into that. We had a guy as well, and he was, you know, traveling around the country.

Gary Jenkins: You’ve given talks on that kind of a thing. Oh yeah. All right, David, we’re up here about 45 minutes. So let’s maybe come back and talk [00:32:30] about it and Russian organized crime and your experience with that. Cause I know you speak and translate Russian, is that correct?

David Paul: I’m a little rusty now at my best, I would have never done a homicide or a good rape because if they got me on the stand with, Yeah, I did a lot of the fraud at one point I could actually take a statement and Cyrillic. So yeah, I did the fraud. I did some assault cases. They call me out for a domestic, which, you know, cause they couldn’t make heads or tails of whatever was going on, but [00:33:00] Yeah. Yeah. But you know, I just tried my best and I was pretty into it. I would say I probably went so bad. Good. Eight years from late 19 90, 98 to maybe like, oh 5 0 6.

Gary Jenkins: Okay. David Paul. He has a book on earthiness, serial killer. If you’re interested in a pretty McCobb story, as you guys heard from the start of this podcast, why go out and get that book from Amazon, David, I really appreciate you coming [00:33:30] on the show. Hey Gary,

David Paul: I appreciate it. If I could just throw one more thing, we also have a Facebook page. That’s only been up for about six, seven weeks. It’s on our thing, a serial killer. And that’s leading up to one limited podcast that we believe it will be out sometime.

Gary Jenkins: Oh, you’re going to do, you got my guesting partner going to do one of those limited ones. That’s cool.

David Paul: It’s going to do on our thing, a serial killer and see where that leads. Yeah. We’re going to do probably five 40 minute episodes. [00:34:00] This December will be my 10th year on the project.

Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Wow. Well I’m I want to give you a little piece of advice there, David, on that podcast, the serial killer horror crime podcast genre is it’s huge. I mean, it’s much more attractive to more people than the organized crime. I’ll tell you that from my experience, that’s got a much bigger audience, so good luck with that. And if you get into it, well, I’m going to actually, I’ll go like your Facebook page and I’ll be able to follow that and probably listen to some of your podcasts.

David Paul: [00:34:30] Great. I really appreciate it, Gary. And congratulations on your successes here and on the job. And then thank you for having me on thank you, David. Bye. Take care.

Gary Jenkins: Well folks that ends another gang land wire episode. I just want to thank you all for listening and for all your nice apple podcasts and other podcast app reviews and the nice comments you make on my YouTube page and on my Facebook and questions you ask on my Facebook pages. As most of you all know, I upload my zoom interviews on YouTube so he can [00:35:00] see what my guests look like in real life. And also put most of those on my gang land wire podcast, Facebook group. And in regards to those Facebook groups, I’ve got two, one is a Facebook page, gang land wire Facebook page. And the other was my podcast group and the group is smaller and I monitor that pretty closely. So get on that. I want to thank Ken Coulter and several others for keeping fresh content on my Facebook page.

Gary Jenkins: If you want more mob information, you can shake a stick at, just go to the gang land wire [00:35:30] podcast, Facebook group. And remember if you support the podcast with donations, you’ll get an invite to my monthly live zoom calls where we’ll share our stories, answer questions, and sometimes have guest speakers. And then generally we have a good time. A lot of guys will be sitting back and they’re dealing with a cigar and a drink. And uh, we just have a really good time on those monthly zoom calls. The main method of making a donation is on my website, donate page. You can use a credit card or use PayPal, but you can also buy me a cup of coffee or [00:36:00] shot in the beer with your Venmo app or make any donation that you want to make. If you do it on Venmo, make sure you get me an email.

Gary Jenkins: If you want to be on my zoom call, I asked for donations to help do my next documentary. And a lot of you guys really responded big time and I’ve been able to pay people and it’s going to have a little higher production by using what I’ve had before. I’m getting really close to completing that. It’s about Kansas city organized crime and politics. I have a title. Finally, it’s vote fraud here, again, politics and the mob. And don’t forget [00:36:30] about my previous documentaries gang land wire skimming from Las Vegas and brothers against brothers. The Savella Spiro war. Both of those can be purchased or rented on Amazon. Now finally, last thing I’m selling and then I’ll leave. Y’all alone. Is my book leaving Vegas. The true story about FBI wiretaps ended mob domination, the Las Vegas casinos. Now that title is a mouthful and I forget to get that book.

Gary Jenkins: You’re going to find that I use a lot of the actual wiretaps transcripts from the skimming investigation. And if you get the Kindle version, I got the [00:37:00] audio from those wiretaps and you just click on a link and you’ll go to that other website and it will allow you to listen to all those wiretaps. I think that’s kind of unusual. So go to Amazon and get that book and get it in the Kindle version. And if you don’t have a Kindle, Amazon has free Kindle software for your tablet or your phone. Now I’m going to let you guys go. But first I want to say that gang man wire supports the veterans administration they’re programs that help veterans out with PTSD. You can get help with their hotline 808 7 3 8 2 5 5 [00:37:30] and then push one. Or you can go to their website, www.ptsdthatva.gov. Thanks a lot for listening. And I must credit over our music to our good friend and Frank Costello expert. Casey McBride from Portland, Oregon. Check out Casey’s Frank Castello, Facebook page, uncle Frank’s place. Thanks Casey.

Show notes by Gary Jenkins
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