A day before Thanksgiving 1998, Donald "Pato" Schubert was shot to death in the carport of his apartment building in the San Gabriel Valley city of Rosemead.
A member of the Lomas Rosemead street gang pleaded guilty to killing Schubert, a plumber and former gang member.
With that, the case was filed away, forgotten by nearly everyone except Schubert's family.
Then, earlier this month, the case suddenly returned to life. At a hearing in Pasadena Superior Court guarded by a dozen deputies, including two SWAT officers, a judge ordered Eulalio "Lalo" Martinez, 46, a reputed member of the Mexican Mafia prison gang, to stand trial for Schubert's killing.
Martinez has sat in a maximum-security cell at Pelican Bay State Prison for nearly 15 years. But law enforcement officers and gang members say he controls the Lomas Rosemead street gang, ordering members to funnel him taxes collected from local drug dealers and directing killings, often by using notes with micro-writing -- known as kites -- smuggled out of the cellblock.
If proved, the case against him would support a belief widely held by law enforcement officers and gang members that many homicides that appear to be simple street-gang fights are instead contract murders ordered by members of the Mexican Mafia, known as the Eme, Spanish for M.
The case is noteworthy because rarely are Eme members prosecuted for street homicides. Often, any link between a specific killing and the Eme is obscure. Moreover, once an actual triggerman is prosecuted, investigators often have no time to dig further into why the crime was committed. Even when a detective believes there's something more to a killing, a link is often hard to prove.
The case against Martinez, for example, relies on the words of three convicted murderers, one a former Eme member and another a crack dealer who said he once saw a note from Martinez ordering Schubert's death. No such note is in evidence in the case.
Much of the case hinges on Daniel Ahumada, the crack dealer and Lomas gang member who pleaded guilty to killing Schubert. Recently, Ahumada, serving 15 years to life in prison, has come forward to implicate others, including Martinez.
At the recent hearing, Martinez's lawyer, Michael Belter, said the case constructs only a "very tenuous link" to Martinez by "three men who have every motive in the world" to lie. "We have no physical evidence. We have faded memories," he said.
