$100,000 Offered in 4 Slayings

The Los Angeles City Council offered $100,000 in rewards Friday for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspected gang members who are responsible for four recent execution-style murders southwest of Downtown.

All four slayings are believed to be linked to a vicious turf war between a prison gang and another gang based in the so-called South City neighborhood, south of Koreatown. The maximum possible reward for each murder case is $25,000.

As many as seven additional murders during the last year or so may also be connected, said Deputy Chief Mark A. Kroeker, operations chief for the LAPD’s South Bureau.

Control of lucrative drug sales in the district is probably behind the killings, police said.

The series of murders is considered especially violent, police said, even by the bloody standards of Los Angeles street wars. The extent of the carnage--and the fact that the drug battle may claim additional victims--prompted the council to authorize the rewards.

“These evil criminals must be apprehended to save others from being victimized,” said Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, who held a news conference Friday with police at 24th Street and Vermont Avenue, a few blocks from the sites of the killings. The violence, Ridley-Thomas said, “has terrified the community.”

Police declined to identify the groups involved, but sources said the protagonists were the Mexican Mafia, a prison-based gang whose control stretches to neighborhoods in Los Angeles and elsewhere, and Harpys, a longtime neighborhood street gang whose name is painted in stylized graffiti lettering throughout the area.

The hope, authorities said, is that the rewards will encourage witnesses or others with knowledge to come forward. By offering financial incentives, police are attempting to crack the violence-enforced wall of secrecy that has long discouraged informers from talking to authorities about organized criminal activities.

The multiple-murder case, Kroeker said, is “on the verge of being solved.”

Experts say rewards, whatever their value, are often not enough to encourage fearful witnesses to come forward. In fact, many rewards in criminal cases go unclaimed, despite the existence of witnesses.

Along with the rewards, police said, authorities are offering protection to those who provide information that helps crack the murder cases. Assistance could include relocation of witnesses.

Lt. Sergio A. Robleto, a homicide detective who is investigating the murders, said witnesses and others who have knowledge of the murders may be in danger whether they come forward or not.

In fact, police said that the most recent murders may have been an effort to eliminate a witness in an earlier pair of slayings.

The latest two killings occurred on the evening of July 6, police said, when gunmen drove up in a car and opened fire on Marco Jasso, 27, and his niece, Erika Briseno, 17, in the 2900 block of South Walton Avenue. The killers fled.

Police theorize that Jasso may have been killed because he possibly saw or had knowledge of two earlier killings--those of Xavier Flores, 25, and Mario Miranda, 24. Both were shot dead July 3 during a dispute at a neighborhood residence, police said. Jasso’s niece was probably a victim of circumstance who just happened to be accompanying her uncle when he was targeted, police said.

Anyone with information on the case is asked to contact detectives at (213) 237-1310, or the Drop a Dime on Murder Hotline, (213) 237-1776.