A gang leader who orchestrated the murders of at least eight rivals, informants and his own gang has been stabbed to death in prison.
Ezequiel “Wicked” Romo ruled the Blythe Street gang in Panorama City, northwest Los Angeles, with an iron fist, despite serving only a year in prison.
For the smallest infraction, like an unauthorized tattoo, you could get a whole magazine full of bullets, as he sought to purge the gang of “dirty friends.”
“All I ask is complete control of Panorama City,” he wrote in a 2017 WhatsApp message from prison to one of his accomplices.
Romo, 47, will not face any further murder charges from prison after he was stabbed to death by three inmates at Centinela State Prison around 8 p.m. Sunday.
Ezequiel ‘Wicked’ Romo ruled the Blythe Street gang in Panorama City, in northwest Los Angeles, with an iron fist, despite serving only a year in prison
Officials said the killers were so ruthless that they only stopped stabbing after guards pepper-sprayed them four times.
Cristian Moreno, Johnny Garcia and Christian Hernandez allegedly attacked him in the day room of the 3,000-seat prison in the Imperial County desert.
Bleeding to death on the prison floor was a fitting end for Romo, after he was sentenced last year to life in prison without the possibility of parole for murder, attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
The first bodies turned up in 2015, just months after Romo was released from prison in late 2014 after serving an 18-year sentence.
Romo, who had been in prison since he was 18 in 1995, got into a fight with his childhood friend Manuel Avila at Tommy’s Burger Stand on Roscoe Boulevard.
Avila, 19, punched him in the face, prompting Romo to shoot him dead in front of horrified guests.
He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and given an additional 6 years for assault behind bars, but eventually emerged a hardened criminal with a mission.
Romo looked very different when he was arrested in 2015 for driving around with a bag of methamphetamine
Romo had made some new friends in prison, allies of the Mexican Mafia, which effectively ran California’s prison system.
His plan was to prove himself worthy of syndicate membership by turning the Blythe Street gang into a feared gang.
He knew he had to take a very strict approach to matters and get rid of informants, addicts and dissidents, witnesses said at his trial.
“His thing was to make things right for those people. Do favors for them. Take care of people in the county. [jail]“, a witness told the court, the LA Times reported last year.
‘It sounded good, but there was a lot of violence afterward.’
Romo’s first kill, and the only one he organized while still in the fresh air, was done just to make a few thousand dollars.
He bought a kilo of cocaine from drug dealer Felipe Delgado and promised to pay him later, but instead he devised a plan to simply kill him.
First he spread rumors that Delgado was talking to the police, then lured him to the back of a building and eventually paid him.
‘[Romo] wanted to kill him because he was supposedly a rat, but at the same time he had taken a kilo of cocaine. And he had kept that money. He had no intention of paying,’ a witness said during his trial.
Romo was wearing an ankle monitor and walked around the other side of the building while Delgado was shot three times in the back.
Romo had an ankle monitor on, so he walked around the other side of this building while a drug supplier was shot three times in the back
After getting away with that murder, Romo was caught two months later for something much more mundane: driving around with a bag of meth.
He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four years in prison, but that turned out to be a mere inconvenience.
Romo continued his plan by sending WhatsApp messages to overworked middle managers from a banned phone at Centinela.
The next to be shot was Isidro “Topo” Alba, 38, after a series of confrontations with Romo when he was lured into a fake drug deal on August 27, 2017.
“Do you think this is a trap?” he asked his girlfriend, who was sitting next to him in the car when he arrived at the ambush site.
“Just do it quickly,” she testified as she handed him the drugs.
Gang members Juan “Flaco” Ramirez and Yordin “Little Goofy” Enere riddled him with bullets almost immediately after he opened the door.
His girlfriend was largely unharmed and tried to flag down a passing car to get help, only to realize that they were the killers.
Somehow their shot was so bad that she survived by diving back into the car, lying down and playing dead.
The next to be shot was Isidro “Topo” Alba, 38, after a series of confrontations with Romo, when he was lured into a fake drug deal and shot in his car
Romo’s right-hand man was Oscar Molina, a true, beleaguered, closely managed lackey who did most of the dirty work on the outside.
He extorted marijuana dispensaries, bought drugs in Mexico and smuggled them into Los Angeles and beyond, collected protection money, and bought weapons at gun shows using fake IDs.
Meanwhile, Romo kept nagging him and got angry when he was late responding to messages.
“Some say I’m too practical,” Romo admitted in an interview.
Molina made sure to get along well with his boss and showered him with praise.
“Don’t let anything change you Bee. You’re one of the few I consider a good homie, a good buddy, so know that your boy will always be loyal to Bee and will always have your back as long as I’m around,” he wrote in one of the letters.
Romo responded, “Thank you for your words. They are a gift I accept more than money or shiny objects.”
When Romo told Molina to “take care of” a 21-year-old wannabe gangster named Carlos Rios, he didn’t hesitate.
Rios was sentenced to death for getting a large letter B tattooed on his left cheek without being a full member of the gang.
“Nobody can have a ‘B’ on their face without earning it. This is not a game,” Romo was heard saying in court.
Carlos Rios, 21, was killed because he had a large letter B tattooed on his left cheek without being a full member of the gang
Molina made sure Rios was shot in the back while he was spraying graffiti on the opponent’s turf, and even finished the boy off when two gunmen emptied their magazines into him and failed to kill him.
Later in 2017, three more murders took place, with members of the rival Columbus gang being shot dead in the street on Romo’s orders.
“Everything was working perfectly again. And smiley was one of them,” Molina texted Romo to tell him the good news.
But Molina’s relationship with his boss began to deteriorate and he started using more and more “Halloween candy,” which displeased Romo.
After missing too many texts and phone calls while on drugs, Romo decided he could use a better number two.
He told the rest of the gang that Molina owed money to the wrong people, that she had been caught lying, and that she was getting “way, way too high.”
Molina was shot dead when he opened the door for his good friend Eder Mendoza at 4 a.m. on February 10, 2018, before he could pull the revolver from his waistband.
Karen Tobar, 23, was killed because Romo thought she was talking to police about Molina’s murder
Two men picked her up in an illegal ‘bandit taxi’ and the next day she was seen dumped in a park, stabbed 60 times
He told 23-year-old Karen Tobar, a woman he was with that night, that he would be right back when his girlfriend came to the door. Twelve days later, it was her turn.
Romo ordered Tobar’s death, the final act of his reign of terror, because he believed she was talking to police about Molina’s murder.
Two men picked her up in an illegal ‘bandit taxi’ and the next day she was seen dumped in a park, with 60 stab wounds.
After years of using snitching, prosecutors charged Romo with eight murders and a long list of other crimes, and the jury easily convicted him.
“Why would you kill your own gang members?” Deputy District Attorney Eric Siddall asked the jury in his closing arguments.
‘Because in Romo’s world, if you don’t fit in, if you don’t do what he wants, you get killed.’
On Sunday it was Romo’s turn.