Law&Crime Sidebar - 6 Executed 'Cartel-Style' in California Massacre: Everything We Know

Episode Date: January 19, 2023

Six people, including a baby and teenage mother, were executed "cartel-style" on Monday in Goshen, California. Authorities have begun releasing information related to the shootings, including possible connections to gang activity. The Law&Crime Network's Jesse Weber breaks down everything we know so far about the massacre with former DEA agent Derek Maltz.LAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo Editing - Logan HarrisGuest Booking - Alyssa FisherSocial Media Management - Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieObjectionsThey Walk Among AmericaCoptales and CocktailsThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking FreelyLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. We have victims that are located inside the home. We have one victim who was alive as death that he's arrived and CPR was being given to multiple victims on scene. Unfortunately, no one, including the man who went to the hospital via ambulance, he was also pronounced dead at the hospital. Six people are gunned down in California in what investigators initially called a cartel or gang-related hit.

Former DEA and DOJ operative Derek Malts comes on to give his thoughts on what may have happened. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. We want to get into this horrific shooting that happened in Goshen, California over the Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. Six family members were found dead, 72-year-old Rosa Perez, 52-year-old Aladio Perez Jr., 50-year-old Jennifer Anala, 19-year-old Marcos Perez, and 16-year-old Alyssa Perez, as well as her 10-month-old. old baby, Nicholas Perez. She was found, along with the infant, laying next to her mother, his mother, down the street. We believe that the 16-year-old teenage mother and her small infant actually was fleeing

and running from the scene. What we have since learned through forensics, that it was clear that the shooters stood over the top of the 16-year-old mother and fired. rounds into her head. The 10-month-old infant also suffered from the same attack. None of this was by accident. It was deliberate, intentional, and horrific. Now, the sheriff had initially indicated that this appeared to be a cartel-style execution,

but then kind of walk that back and said that this could be gang related. It is very clear that this family was a target and that they're getting associations involved as well as drug investigations with this and his home. But let me make this very clear. Not all these people in this home are gang members and not all these people in this home are drug dealers. At the time of this recording, police have indicated that there are apparently two suspects, perhaps a third. So let me bring in Derek Maltz, who worked for the DEA for 28 years and was special agent in charge of the United States Department of Justice Special Operations Division.

Derek, it is a pleasure to have you here on Sidebar. Thanks for taking the time. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. I'm looking at this. You have gunfire at 3.30 a.m. 6 victims. Authorities indicated it was targeted.

Two found in the street. One, the doorway of the home. What do you think led investigators to initially say? that this could be cartel-related? Well, based on all the reports that I've read, obviously, I wasn't at the crime scene. It certainly has all indications that this is another horrific act of cartel or a ruthless gang out there. But as you know, the gangs in California work very closely with the Sinaloa cartel, and there's a lot

of turf battles. So it's definitely drug-related. There's a very good chance the cartels are behind it. They actually are sending in operatives and hit men into America on a daily basis now because the southern border is wide open and they're taking advantage of the weakness there. Can you just elaborate on that connection between the cartels and the gangs? Well, I mean, the gangs are all over America and the cartels now, the two major cartels, the Sinola cartel and the Citilal Cartel and the Cartel, Helisco, New Generation, they are dominating all aspects of the drug trade. So they're producing the drugs, especially the poisonous fentanyl that's killing Americans at a record rate. They are distributing this stuff into their hub cities.

So like Los Angeles area has a hub for transportation across America. And then in each of the cities, they have their cartel representatives. But in many cases, it's the gangs that are distributing the drugs and collecting the money in these different cities. So the gangs routinely operate with the cartel. And then there's always these disputes and these territorial, you know, challenges for the gangs to, you know, dominate. So this is nothing new. I mean, if you look at the El Chapo case, you know, in Chicago, I'll never forget it when I was briefed. It was the Chapo, you know, Sinolaa cartel that was sending tons of cocaine and methamphetamine into Chicago.

And all that stuff was being distributed by gangs in Chicago. so there's it's like seamless it's overlapping everywhere so uh you can't really distinguish one from the other in many cases what stands out to me is the ruthless nature of this right you know police have indicated that not everybody in that house was somebody who was involved in the drug trade you know they indicated that this young mother was an innocent victim the baby was an innocent victim i have also been quoted to saying this was a cartel-like execution make no mistake i'm not saying that this is a cartel but also be clear that i am not eliminating that possibility these people were clearly shot in the head and they were also shot in places

that the shooter would know that quick death would occur and for me when i look at this the first thing that i thought of well maybe they're thinking gang maybe they're thinking cartel because of the ruthless nature of it is it typical that you would have these hits where innocent victims are, I don't want to say the target, because it almost makes me want to say maybe they were a target. Maybe it's a calling card. Obviously, there was somebody in that house or maybe there's someone in the house that was the primary target, but you kill innocent victims to send a message. Am I off with that? No, absolutely not. I mean, the cartels right now are operating like a global terror organization, like ISIS or al-Qaeda or Hezbollah. And they are trying

to intimidate people. And it's really taking it to a new level when you're executing a 16-year-old mother and a 10-month-old baby. But that's exactly what they're trying to accomplish. They're trying to send powerful messages across not only the United States, but the world that they are growing, they are powerful, and they're not going to stop, and they're not afraid to kill. And by the way, just so you know, when I ran the Special Operations Division for about 10 years, I tracked, and I have a book that I kept on the most ruthless murders, both in Mexico and in America. But my interest was this cartel violence in America because I had never seen anything like this in my life, burning people down to a crisp with gasoline, you know, taking jump the cables and attaching them to people's ears and then torturing them, electrocuting them, and then shooting them up in the place. they're very big on dismembering bodies, the capitations.

So they go all the way, full speed ahead, and they're trying to do that. So it has all the signs of a cartel hit. And I'm not going to be surprised when the details come out, because that's what I believe. There was a change, right? I mean, the way that I always remember it when we think of the traditional mafia and organized crime, maybe I'm naive, but I always thought families were you put those to the side that you don't target the families. There was this escalation and it's based on fear. Is that what it is? Instilling. Yeah, well, first of all, you're not off base at all. You're

100% correct. You know, the families were usually off limits in the old days, right? Traditional organized crime. But the cartels are not, like, people got to stop calling them drug cartels. They are transnational criminals at the bare minimum, but they operate in like global terrorists. So think about what terrorists do on YouTube videos and how they chop off heads and how they burn people to death. These cartels, they're dumping humans in acid pits in Mexico. They have no, you know, no, you know what I'm saying? Like they just are so ruthless that they just don't care about human life. It's so hard for me to articulate because I've never seen anything like it in my life.

I want to give you a little bit of a timeline here because if we're talking about potential motives and we're trying to, understand who might have did this. Let me give you a little bit of a timeline on what was happening. So we know that on January 3rd, a search warrant was issued for the home, and that led to the arrest of Aladio Perez Jr., who was a convicted felon in one of the victims in this case. Apparently, police have indicated that he was not initially the intended target. He had an extensive criminal record, including driving recklessly. He possessed firearms and drugs. That search warrant was to do a compliance check. You know, basically was he following the law as a convicted felon. I believe that police were initially turned away. They returned with

another search warrant and they ended up arresting Perez Jr. They found ammunition. They found a rifle, a shotgun, drugs like methamphetamine, methamphetamines. He was released on bail four days later and then this shooting happened. I don't want to engage in speculation. But does it not seem that perhaps that timeline's important, that were they afraid that he spoke to police and what he might say next? I find that arrest important in this. Do you? Yeah, I mean, look, we could speculate all day, but it's very common that they want to, you know, they want to kill potential witnesses. They certainly want to destroy anybody that's a source of information for law enforcement. I mean, the torturing that they've done to people over the years, I'll never forget

at the time where they cut someone's hand off, stuck it in the guy's mouth, and then put a note around his neck saying like, you know, anybody that's out there that's thinking about being a rat, this is what's going to happen to you. So yes, you're 100% correct. All of this stuff, the timeline is critical. I'm very confident that the law enforcement community out there will figure it out very quickly because the entire United States should be aware of this event because this is coming to cities all over America. That's the reality. That's the reality. This is the new America with the wide open border. We have an invasion of migrants from 160 countries.

There's a lot of people coming into this country now that hate America. It's just common sense when you look at over a million guardaways. I mean, this month alone, the numbers aren't out, but they're estimating 65,000 godaways at the border this month alone. That's a lot of people in this country. We don't know who they are, where they came from, what they're doing here. So we have a huge national security crisis here. I'm not embellishing it.

I've been tracking this for years. We focused on the cartels for many years at the Special Operations Division, and we know what's going on. I mean, just look at what's happening in New York this week with the trial of the highest-ranking Mexican government official ever because he was taking multi-million dollar bribes from the Sinaloa cartel and protecting their infrastructure and their operations. When you mention this community where this happened is farming community, I think 3,000 people. Some might listen to this story and say, well, this is a perfect place to commit a crime like this. They did it at 3 in the morning, between 3 and 5 in the morning. It's rural area. Before we get into the search for these suspects, do you what you said you anticipate things like

this happening maybe in bigger cities? It's happening all over America. We just don't hear about it. It's kind of like, you know, did you know, like for an example, like just a few days ago, 25 Americans were poisoned in one day in central New York. Did you know that seven died from fentanyl poisoning in 11 days in Broom County, New York, early December? The media is not reporting this stuff. They're trying to protect the politicians who are letting these people in the country. The other thing that you're not going to hear too often is when these people are arrested,

what's their immigration status? So I have my network of friends that find out and they tell me The vast majority of these people that are being arrested for these crimes are illegally here. But you never hear that in the media. They don't want to tell anyone because that makes the current administration look bad because they're allowing this to happen. You can't be soft on these criminals. You have to have deterrents. And we don't have that right now, both north and south of the border.

So this is going to continue. You don't have to be a border expert or a cartel expert to understand that these people have a multi-billion-dollar enterprise. They're trying to maximize profits. They don't care about human life. And they're just going to continue to dominate in communities throughout America. We do know of three surviving

victims from this, what we're describing as massacre. Three. We will be interviewing them and collecting as much information as we can. There was one person inside the home, hiding, as they could hear the gun.

fire erupting inside the home. The description from him is that he was in such a state of fear that all he could do was hold the door. So what, how do you think authorities are going to ultimately move forward with this investigation? I believe they said they're looking for two people, might be a third, what do you think is happening behind the scenes? Because my understanding is when this happened, they immediately went to the scene and started processing and collecting evidence.

What's happening behind the scene? scenes to find these people. Well, look, the Los Angeles law enforcement community is very advanced. Even though it's a small department, small county, they have plenty of support. Those law enforcement agencies work together. They solve crimes very quickly. And just to interrupt. So this is Goshen, California, right near, by Fresno, you're saying that they're getting help from other agencies. Absolutely. Federal agencies as well. I mean, they have incredible capabilities. There's a lot of patriots out there that will work 24-7 to find these people and hold them accountable for these horrific acts of violence. That's what law enforcement does. But this is another thing that the

public doesn't realize, right? They want to, you know, defund the police, they want to go after law enforcement. They want to hurt morale. But when the bell rings, they always step up and they go into the danger and they solve these crimes. And I'm guaranteeing this crime will be solved. If it's not already. The problem's going to be when these guys get back over the border and they're back in Mexico or Central America, wherever they're from, guess what? Then good luck getting them because right now we can't get these guys captured, you know? I was going to ask you that. What makes anyone think they're still in the country? I mean, most likely, I mean, my instinct, again, I don't have the facts of the case. They're not in the country. They're back

south of the border. They're protected by the cartels because the cartels run Mexico. And by the way, you're aware of it because you seem like a very sharp guy. The corruption, not just in Mexico, but we arrested in the DEA, the president, the former president down there in Central America, his brother, who is the councilman, okay, who's in jail for doing 185 ton cocaine conspiracy with Chapo Guzman and taking bribes. So the whole region is loaded with corruption because they're getting paid by the cartels. And so we have huge issues like Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and some of them have made improvements. Like I understand, El Salvador has made some advancements. But we, once they get down there, it's very difficult

environment for us to go after them. One of the biggest issues real quick is that when U.S. law enforcement goes after these cartels and they identify and indict the network, when they go overseas, we can't capture them and we can't extradite them. So that's kind of really frustrating for law enforcement. Oh, I can imagine. And let me tell you what I think, at least from what the reporting is indicating, local businesses, neighbors for their surveillance footage from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m., which, again, is a questionable time in a farming community, somebody being out at the time, again, we cover the Brian Coburger case. It's one of the key pieces of evidence. His car driving around that neighborhood at that time. It's odd. So I think getting surveillance footage,

asking anybody for any information. There's a tip line where you can also be anonymous. We have investigators working literally 24 hours of May. With forensic analysis and the collection of forensics, we have our crime lab, digital forensics, our coroner's office and property and evidence. There has literally at this point been hundreds, hundreds of items of evidence collected. And we expect more items of evidence to be collected.

as of this press conference detectives are still canvassing here yet looking for surveillance videos asking for the public's else help i was always curious do you think that authorities maybe have confidential informants in these absolutely how does that work well look the bread and butter of law enforcement is having sources that have information now everyone in america was was criticizing the police in washington right with the with the serial killer, whatever you want to call him, that, that monster up there that killed those four college kids, right? Was it Idaho, Washington? I just had a brain.

Well, it happened in Idaho, but in Washington is where he went to school. And then they captured him in Pennsylvania because that's really much. The whole American community was criticizing those cops. Oh, they don't know what they're doing. They knew what they were doing from the beginning. They put together the evidence. They kept their mouths quiet because they went, they focused on the targets. and they focused on this guy, they got him, he'll be convicted, he'll go to jail for life, hopefully

get the death penalty. Same thing is going to happen here. The only difference is that guy was an American that's here when these illegals get involved with this stuff, they flee, they go to other countries and we don't always have the success. By the way, I wanted to ask you one other thing about the investigation, and I agree with you, there's definitely a difference there, but the international issue. But police have to be careful, right, because they don't want to reveal too much to tip off the suspects because I and walk me through that as well because this is a very sensitive case.

What are you have to, what are you going to be looking out for to make sure they don't reveal or what do you think they're not revealing that they might know at this point? Well, look, anytime anything is disclosed about a law enforcement technique like tracking, for example, the bad guys learn from us. They learn from their mistakes. So they implement other processes so they can avoid apprehension in the future. I mean, they're very, very complex, very smart, very calculating. And unfortunately, in America, we have antiquated laws.

We have policies that are old and they don't make sense anymore. We're in a high-tech world, but we're still operating like we have rotary phones from 1968. So it's a disaster for law enforcement with all the encrypted communications. So everyone thinks it's cool when you're on your WhatsApp and your signal and all these apps that, you know, can't be penetrated by law enforcement. It's all cool until somebody's kid gets murdered or captured and brought over the border. And then you can't identify the suspects. You can't develop evidence because law enforcement has all these challenges. But Congress doesn't do anything to help.

The politicians don't do anything. So it's very complex. And that's another reason why right now we're getting beat bad by the cartels because they're working closely with the Chinese transnational criminals. and they're doing the money laundering for the cartels now. They have encrypted apps. They use re-chat pay. They move money instantly around the world. And it's so sophisticated in advance,

but we're still acting like, you know, guys are talking on the telephones like they used to. So it's really, really complicated. But law enforcement, my hat goes off because with all these obstacles, they still figure out how to accomplish their goal. That's a fact. So before I let you go, Derek,

I just want to go back to the crime scene, right? So they're processing it. We know that there are survivors of this who have talking with police about what they saw and heard. But processing the ballistics of this shooting, what do you think they're getting? Do you think they're getting fingerprints? Do you think they're able to match the bullets to guns? Because I'm also wondering, did whoever did this actually register the weapons in general? I'm curious how much they can get from the crime scene.

Well, look, I'm not a crime scene expert, but I know from working with ATF, working closely with FBI, working with some of these state agencies. They have very sophisticated, you know, evidence technicians. They have awesome work. They've done awesome work with DNA and, you know, fingerprint. It's so far advanced now. They will figure it out. They will, they will exploit all communications that was in that area at the time of the murder. They will figure this out very quickly. The bad guys are very smart, but the good guys are very smart as well. And in this case, it's so amazing to think of a poor 10-month-old infant, probably in the mother's hands, right, being executed by these monsters. So they're going to really put a lot of resources into this.

And like I said, it's not going to be just the state and locals in that small little Goshen, California. They're going to have the support of the federal agencies. And they're out there right now. And they're interviewing witnesses. They're looking at videotape. They're tracking communications. So they're doing all this good stuff. And by the way, because you asked, they're developing sources all over the place.

You got to remember, every time they do these gang roundups and they get 50 guys arrested and they charge them federally, these guys don't want to stay in prison for life. So they cooperate. A lot of them cooperate. And they talk about it. And they know because it's a small community in a lot of ways when you get into that level. And so I'm very confident in law enforcement. And I look forward to the arrest really soon.

Derek Maltz, I hope you're right. I hope the good guys win here. Thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. And thank you so much for your insight. Thank you. Now, before we wrap things up, if you have any information about what may have happened,

you're encouraged to call the sheriff's office at 559-733-6218. Tipsters can also remain anonymous by calling or texting at 559-725-494. And that's all we have for you here on Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us, everybody. subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcast. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time.