Mexican Mafia Dropout Rene "Boxer" Enriquez Granted Parole After 32 Years

"Socalj" for Borderland Beat

Rene Enriquez, also known as Boxer was a high-level Mexican Mafia member for 17 years until dropping out in 2002.

California parole officials have approved the release of a notorious former Mexican Mafia prison gang leader who has been cooperating with law enforcement for nearly 20 years.

Two consecutive governors previously blocked parole for Rene “Boxer” Enriquez in part based on the argument that he is safer in prison than on the streets, where he may be targeted as a snitch by his old cronies.

“They can’t deny him parole based on, 'He might be in danger.' That’s kind of his risk to take,” his attorney, Laura Sheppard, said Tuesday.

Authorities have taken extraordinary steps to protect him over the years, once booking him into custody under a false name on a bogus charge of possessing a swordfish without a license. In 2015, the Los Angeles Police Department used SWAT officers and a police helicopter to secure a downtown building so Enriquez could speak to a group of police chiefs and business leaders about the gang's growth and operations. Just last week, prison officials refused to provide his current photograph, citing security concerns.

“With his knowledge of the Mexican Mafia, it’s his belief that if he stays out of their way ... that he’ll be fine," Sheppard said. "He doesn’t believe they’re going to chase him down like you see in the movies, hunt him throughout the world.”

Yet Enriquez plans to keep cooperating with federal authorities as they are again prosecuting the leadership of the prison-based gang that began in the 1950s in a juvenile jail and has since grown into an international criminal organization.

“It’s how he makes amends," Sheppard said. "He’s probably prevented more crimes than he was ever involved in.”

Mexican Mafia Member

He has been in state prison since 1993, serving a life sentence for two second-degree murders, multiple assaults, and a drug trafficking conspiracy.

Enriquez joined the Mexican Mafia — nicknamed the Black Hand or “La Eme,” its Spanish language initial — in 1985 while serving an earlier prison stint for rape and armed robbery, according to parole records. He spent nearly the next two decades building a reputation within the gang through murder, drug-running, and terror, both in and out of prison.

Gov. Gavin Newsom turned over the final decision on the fate of Enriquez, now age 60, to a hearing by a 12-member panel of the 21-member parole board. He cited in part the “unique security threats.” Enriquez has revealed “the inner workings of large-scale gang associations and informed on individual gang members. He testified for the prosecution in numerous cases,” Newsom wrote.

Officials including a retired assistant director for the California prison system told the parole panel during a hearing Monday that Enriquez is a changed man who will continue contributing to law enforcement's battle against the gang.

“I’ve seen the worst of the worst and I know that he has definitely changed his world," said retired San Diego Police detective and gang expert Felix Aguirre. But relatives and friends of Cynthia Figueroa Gavaldon lined up to argue that he is still dangerous and they fear for their safety upon his release. She was a 27-year-old mother of two young children when Enriquez ordered her killed on Christmas Eve 1989. Enriquez "has nothing to offer the community. All he ever has known and touched has died,” said her father, Raymond Figueroa, referring to Enriquez as a “monster.”

He had two gang associates, including Figueroa's daughter, killed for violations such as stealing drugs and money. In the second case, he and an accomplice first forcibly overdosed their victim with heroin before driving him to a remote area where Enriquez fatally shot him.

He and another man also stabbed a Mexican Mafia leader Salvador “Mon” Buenrostro 26 times with inmate-made weapons in 1991 in an interview room in the Los Angeles County Jail, though Buenrostro survived. The attempted murder was committed in full view of lawyers and Sheriff Deputies that attempted to intervene.

Enriquez has said he quit the gang in 2002 when he discovered its members were killing children and innocent relatives of gang members who fell into disfavor. Since then he has debriefed with prison officials, testified in court cases, and provided information to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. He has become a speaker educating law enforcement on the structure and activities of gangs. He has said that he would have help from a witness protection program if he is released.

Controlling Sureño Gangs

While serving time for armed robbery at the age of 19, Enriquez started carrying out assaults and murders for Mexican Mafia leaders in San Quentin and Folsom prisons. The mafia had deep roots in the California prison system, having been formed there in the 1950s.

"And once we got into the gangs, we understood that the homeboys that got out of prison were well respected. You go there, and you learn prison," Enriquez says. "We wanted to get to prison somehow. And we were destined to get there."

Enriquez learned the art of making homemade knives and hiding them in his rectum. He carried out assaults for the Mexican mafia on other inmates. Then, after he was paroled, Enriquez used his connection with Mexican mafia leaders in prison to extort drug dealers on the streets, where the cocaine and crack trade was booming.

Perhaps Enriquez's greatest achievement was in helping extend the Mexican Mafia's brand to dozens of L.A. street gangs. In the mid-1990s, the group put out calls to stop drive-by shootings among L.A. Latinos. But Enriquez says the aim wasn't peace. Enriquez treated the street drug dealers like owners of a fast-food franchise. They could use the Mexican Mafia name in return for part of their profits, and they were intimidated into paying.

"Our true motivation for stopping the drive-bys was to infiltrate the street gangs and place representatives in each gang, representatives which then, in turn, tax illicit activities in the areas," he says. Gang members in Southern California were taxed on their drug deals and forced to buy from Mexican Mafia associates supplied by their cartel connections. In exchange, the gangs receive protection in prisons and from other drug dealers.

Jose "Bat" Marquez was extradited from Mexico to the United States.

Eme member and AFO Chief Enforcer "Popeye" was killed during a botched hit on journalist Blancornelas.

Cartel Connections

One of the most direct connections of the Mexican Mafia prison gang to Mexican drug cartels came out of the infamous Arellano Felix v Sinaloa war of the early 1990s.  

San Diego gang and Mexican Mafia member David "Popeye" Barron Corona helped protect the AFO brothers during the shootout at Christine's nightclub. Popeye famously recruited gang members from Logan Heights in San Diego for the failed hit on El Chapo at the Guadalaraja airport resulting in the death of Cardinal Ocampo. Prosecutors in the U.S. charged nine Logan Height members with the cardinal's hit-squad murder. Three pled guilty and they are serving 18 to 22 years in prison. Later, Popeye would be killed by a ricochet bullet during the failed hit on Zeta journalist Jesus Blancornelas in 1997.

Popeye recruited fellow members such as Jose "Bat" Marquez who was the one who had initially recruited Popeye into the Mexican Mafia. While in Mexico, Bat was working as an enforcer and trafficker for the Tijuana Cartel run by the Arellano Felix family before falling out of favor due to his meth use.

Bat's purpose was to ask his Mafia brothers to assist Popeye and the Arellanos to find and kill El Chapo Guzman — the head of the Sinaloa Cartel. The Arellanos offered $2 million and whatever state they wanted in Mexico. They also offered drugs and "heavy artillery" and their help crossing it into the U.S.

Bat Marquez said that he wanted to start a chemical lab store and would pick up five drums of ephedrine a week in Mexico. He will keep the chemicals on the Mexican side of the border but the Eme brothers were welcome to all they wanted. Bat Marquez only asked for help on how to make the meth.

Several Mexican Mafia members who attended this meeting took trips to Tijuana in the days that followed. Several returned with ephedrine or meth. But 22 of them would be arrested on April 29, 1995, and charged under federal RICO statutes. Bat is currently in federal US prison for murder and racketeering after being a fugitive in Tijuana, Mexico for years.

Operating from the SHU

A secret to Enriquez's success was his transforming the punishing isolation of the SHU into a sort of sanctuary. Rival gangs couldn't get to him, and most cops and prosecutors thought their job was already done. After all, Enriquez was serving two life sentences. The prison couldn't do much more to punish him. But lifers have time to think and scheme.

Enriquez remembers participating in something called "the thousand concepts" at Pelican Bay. "We'd spin off a thousand ideas. And if only one of them was profitable, we were succeeding. So we'd do this every day up in Pelican Bay, a thousand miles from our base of power, spinning off ideas that paid money," he says.

Previous Parole Decisions

And over the years, Enriquez has had dozens of letters of support for his parole from the FBI, local law enforcement officials, multiple state and federal prosecutors, and a deputy state attorney general.

Newsom previously blocked Enriquez's parole twice, in 2019 and 2020, and then-Governor Jerry Brown blocked it three times, in 2015, 2016, and 2017.

“He personally molded and shaped the Mexican Mafia’s expectations of its members and expanded the gang’s reach outside the prison,” Brown wrote in 2016. He said that included pioneering the gang's control of a vast network of drug dealers and gang members outside the prison walls.

Newsom this time said he was leaving a decision to the parole board because of its “unique procedural and appellate history” and “other unusually complex factors.” He asked parole officials to consider both Enriquez's “particularly violent criminal history and his singular rehabilitative record.”

A Los Angeles County judge overturned Newsom's 2020 parole reversal in August, saying the governor hadn't shown proof that Enriquez is still dangerous. The Second District Court of Appeal had blocked Enriquez's release while it considers Newsom's appeal.

Sheppard said she hopes the appeals court still rules on the case, even with Enriquez paroled, to set a legal precedent that “the governor can’t just make a decision based on speculation and historical issues.”

Source NBC LA, NPR, Borderland Beat