- [Mark] All right, Johnny. Johnny, what neighborhood
did you grow up in? - I'm from Santa Fe Springs, Canta Ranas, that's Southeast L.A.
and Whittier and Norwalk. We're the only neighborhood in two cities. We take up a section of Whittier and Santa Fe Springs, so we're the only gang in Southeast L.A. That occupies two cities. - [Mark] So it has to be a big gang? - Yeah, we're a big gang. We came out in 1941, but we used to be called Flood Ranch, but they changed the name 'cause there was a lot
of frogs right there by the river bottom, so they changed us to Canta Ranas, which in English means singing frogs and in my hood, you couldn't be from my neighborhood unless
you had family members. Maybe your brother, your sister, your daddy or mom. If you didn't have nobody, no kind of family members in the hood, you couldn't get in. And that lasted till about 89. After that, went a
little bit different way, different, somebody created an action and what he did was we got at him and we let him know he wanted to get in the hood so bad, but he couldn't get in 'cause he didn't have no family members, so one of the guys threw out there okay, well, bring us two bodies
and you can get in. Well, he didn't bring two, he brought five in one weekend. So we let him him, so
he broke that tradition. That's my homie today. Right now he's in Pelican Bay. He's doing about 80 years. He broke the tradition, so that tradition was broken. Me, I didn't really agree with it due to that fact that I feel that if you know somebody for a long time since say grammar school, they're most likely not to tell on you, but nowadays you get people
from other cities and stuff. There's no type of, there's not type of- - [Mark] Loyalty. - Yeah, loyalty or comradery there. But I been from my neighborhood since the age of 13. I've had my teardrop. That was the first tattoo I got. I got it at 15 years old. - [Mark] What does the
teardrop tattoo signify? - Well, you know it didn't represent that I had been to prison for a few years, 'cause I was only 15 and I wanted it filled it in, so it really represents
when you do the deed. In other words, you take care of business. You put somebody in the dirt. So I earned my teardrop at 15 years old. - [Mark] 15. - And it's been on my face since then. I was gonna remove it, but my little girl,
she's from neighborhood, she's my home girl, she told me nah, that if I removed it, it wouldn't be me, so I left it on my face. I went to prison, did 17 years, but I've been to juvenile hall, YA. I've been to placement
juvenile camp three times and I went to prison first time for two counts of kidnap and I was picked up for
three counts of murder and four counts of kidnap. They ended up convicting
me of two counts of kidnap. They gave me 15 years. I did seven out of that, got out for a year. I went back and did seven more straight, got out and then went
back and did four more. Right now I just barely got off parole. So right now I'm doing all right. - [Mark] So you just got out? - Yeah. I've been out for about two years now, but I been to the county
here and there, you know. But the longest I did
was seven years straight. They had gave me seven years or 80% for a 20 sack of crystal meth. They gave me seven years for that. - [Mark] Seven years for that? - Yeah, they were trying to strike me out, trying to give me 25 to life for a 20 bag of glass. I ended up having to take a deal for seven years of 80%. I did every seven. I did it over till the last day. I was in there getting high. I was in there stabbing people, you know. Went to the shoot program and then that's when I got affiliated. They took me, sent a packet to Sacramento to see if they could, in other words, place me with these gentlemen and I didn't have no
photos with anybody in it, I didn't have no letters. I didn't have no identifying marks. One thing about me is I
never got any type of marks except this one where it affiliated me, where they could see my body and say well, that tattoo
right there means something. All my tattoos meant something. I got my daughter's name, my wife's name and my frogs. - [Mark] You have a lot
of frogs on your back. - Yeah, I wanted to earn my frogs. I got seven total. In my hood you had to earn them. If you didn't earn them, then we would take you out ourselves. One of my little homie ended
up getting five frogs on him. He didn't earned them, so they killed him like a week later. - [Mark] These frogs represent what? - It represents a soul. - Somebody you- Somebody's soul. So once you get a soul, you can put it on your body. - [Mark] Understood. - Yeah, one of my homies didn't earn it, so they killed him. My other homie that earned, he had a triple murder, he put three frogs on him, this guy put five, so
they guy that had three killed the guy with five
'cause he never earned them. Mainly I was the one
that used to find people that couldn't get found. I used to go undercover. I've had my hair red. I've had my hair blonde. I've shaved my mustache off, wore glasses. I grew my hair long, shaved my head. I used to change my identity a lot. - [Mark] So change your identity. - Yes. - To protect yourself from? - Getting found, getting caught. - [Mark] By who? - By the FBI for a while. - [Mark] The FBI? - Yeah, the FBI was on me for a while. They were on me for maybe out, total they were on me for about 10 years due to the fact that I
had five family members that were those guys. - [Mark] You could pass for Caucasian with blonde hair. - Yeah, yeah, I could, exactly. I used to cover up my tattoos with makeup. - [Mark] Yeah. - I used to do a lot of things. Sometimes I had my
mustache trimmed real small or I let my goatee and mustache and I'll shave it real thin, you know what I mean? Sometimes I wore glasses. I've had red hair before. - [Mark] Red hair. - Yeah, I had red hair before. They were looking for me for, they were looking for me for a double murder and
I changed my hair to red, but they ended up busting my homie. It's just that me and him
had the same first name. - [Mark] So in prison, which you've spent half you life in, right? - Yes. - [Mark] In prison. How different is the
gang world than outside - What's the different in the gang world? Out here, there's more room to get around. There's more things you can do and get away with 'cause you can duck and hide and maneuver. In prison, you ain't going nowhere. You can't hide, you can't duck. You know, you gotta
face everything head on. The way I learned it best is if you did it, you did it. There's one thing I did, they asked me stab somebody, I end up stabbing them and then the other guy asked me why'd you stab him? I said, well, I felt it
was the right thing to do. I was the type of person
if I did something wrong, well, then stab me. And due to the fact that I carried myself at a certain level, well
my punishment was severe. My punishment wasn't do 50 pushups or do 113 burpees. My punishment was they would get a knife and maybe they would make the handle, they'd make the handle
about five inches long and you got the seven-inch knife, so they would leave about
may an inch and a half out and they would stab you with that. And that's just a checking. More or less that's just
don't do that again. I wouldn't get beat down, I wouldn't get regulated. Yeah, because I knew better. I had been to prison. There was no excuse for this black dude bought an ice cream and I went and got his ice cream and took a bite. I know better than that. But if I did take a bite, well, then my punishment would be severely. You know I've been stabbed twice just getting checked,
you know what I mean? And each time I got
stabbed about seven times. But it was just because
I needed to get checked in a level I carried myself on. You know, I already been
to prison five times. There was no excuse for me more or less and I'm a strong believer in that. I'm a strong believer in you get punished in the, we'll say at this level because you carry yourself at this level. A lot of things can be told but in a certain way. You know there's
information I can give you, but there's certain information, vital information that I can't give you. As in names, places, but I
can speak of things I did in my life, you know what I mean and I did it all. I've heard about things
that dudes did in prison, like I heard about a guy
that they sent four dudes to stab this guy and he stabbed them all. Well, when that came about to me and they sent four dudes at
me, I did the same thing. I stabbed all four of them and they were supposed to come and get me and I ended up stabbing all of them. So apparently they sent the wrong guys to get at me, so what they did is they didn't try it again,
you know what I mean? And that was simply out of hate, out of people just not liking me, not liking the way I did things. Like I was saying, I was
19 years old in prison and I was running all the Centinela and that was level four and level three and I was only 19 years old. You known what I mean? I was speaking to gentlemen that were 45, 50, been to prison like 10, 15 years and I had more rank than them for the simple fact was the way I carried myself. - [Mark] A lot of that has to do with the respect that you command. - And you earn, you know what I mean? Yeah, and I went to the county jail and the first time I
went through, you know, I didn't really do anything in general. I did my time and got out. The second time I went through, I went balls out. I stabbed everybody and anything, you know what I mean? I've ran five prisons, the whole prison, every yard, every dude. I was in charge of everybody. I ran Centinela, Ironwood,
Chuckwalla, Tehachapi and Delano and I'm talking about all five. Every dude on there, I was responsible for all of them. And I was 23 years old, 24 years old and there was a lot of times that dude go into it, the Muslim brothers and they don't play. You know, the Muslims they don't play, especially on level four, you know. One of the homies I left in charge because I went to a family visit. When I came back, this dude just totally disrespected
these individuals and they wanted to take his wind. Due to they were lifers, they didn't care, they'd kill this fool. So I had to get at the Muslim guy, he's an older guy and I said "Yeah, you
know, apparently I heard that you wanted someone to talk
to that was in charge here." He said, "Yeah, can you get him." I said, "Well, yeah,
I'm that guy, you know." And he looked at me and he's like, "Man, how old are you?" And I said, "You know,
age is but a number, man." And the way I approached him was I said, "Excuse me, you know,
it'd be highly appreciated if I could get a little bit of your time and understanding, you know." And when I approached in that fashion, he's a lot quicker to speak to me. And he spoke to me, we resolved everything and I had little homie removed because he did disrespect the man. But I was 23 years old at that time, you know what I mean, and I was already running a prison. I got out here and I ran
three cities in Orange County and I'm from L.A., so
you know when I had got out of prison the first time, they knew of my reputation. When I was a youngster I earned my bones in the hood by finding people that couldn't get found. In other words, I was the guy that they called when this guy burned one of the main connections and they wanted him found. Like I said, I used to
change my hair color, change my name, my
appearance and everything. Well, one time we had this girl. She was moving pounds of glass, pounds, moving maybe six, seven pounds a day. And nobody- - [Mark] And glass is? - Glass is crystal meth and nobody could get close to her. So I sat back and I thought how would I get close to this woman, you know what I mean? So what I did was I went
and changed my appearance. I went and borrowed an ounce of glass that was powerful, it was pure, no cutting it or nothing. So I got that ounce of glass, I went to this girl's house
and knocked on the door, they opened the door, I went in there and I spoke to her, you know, I introduced myself as
somebody totally different because I knew she was on top of her game, she didn't want nobody
to get close to her. The way I got close to her was I went in there. I got on the phone, had
a fake conversation, told this guy, "Hey, man send
that 15 jack grand over here, send a 10 over here." So now she's listening. So what I did was I got the ounce of dope and I threw it on the table, boom. And I told her, "Go ahead, man. You go ahead and try that." So on the way out the door, she's like, "Hey, you
forgot your ounce of dope." I said, "Nah, that's nothing. I get that constantly, you can have that." So what I did was I gave it to her. Really I borrowed that
ounce from somebody, but I used it so that she would see that that was nothing to me, 'cause I wanted to get to the pounds because that's what she was dealing and nobody could get close to her. So I left the pounds there, I left her my number. I know she was gonna get high. She called me about 15 minutes later. She said, "Damn, this shit is pure. How can I get more of it?" I said, "It depends on
what you want, you know." I wanted to get her up to the pounds due to the fact that she was only saying she was dealing ounces, but I knew she was dealing pounds. So she called me the
following day about 10 in the morning. She tells me if I can come over. I go over and I get there and when I get inside, she's sitting with two individuals. Now I know these two
individuals have a weapon, 'cause I have a weapon myself. Well, what happens is she has to use the bathroom, so she excuses herself. So at that time it gave me the opportunity to talk to these two individuals, which these two individuals
were her torpedoes. In other words, they
were used to protect her, but now I needed to get
at them, excluding her. So I spoke to them in Nawa and what Nawa is, it's the Aztec language and I knew that these dudes knew Nawa because previously I knew of one guy, his reputation and who he was. So I spoke to him in Nawa. The other one didn't know Nawa, so as I'm speaking to this guy in Nawa, the other guy don't understand
what we're talking about. Well, what I'm really doing is I'm lacing this guy up and letting him know who I am, who I represent and who I work for, 'cause he's unaware of what I'm doing. I'm letting him know why I'm there. I'm there to take over her business, keep him as a torpedo, but yet I'm gonna take over her business and how I'm gonna do that is I'm gonna infiltrate on what she does. So she came back into the room. Now I have one of her
torpedoes on my side. But he's really working for her. But now this is my inside man. This is how I'm getting in. I didn't use a woman, I didn't use nobody. I used an individual
that was protecting her and that was my way in. So what happened was
she came out the shower, we talked a little bit. Now he's on my team. So what we did was we got her to do a deal for five pounds. And what happens is we
went to a Starbucks. All we did was we were switching cars. She had one car with all her dope in it, and then she had another car, same color, same mark and everything, so what happened was she ended up giving the keys to the individual who was taking care of her, but all along he was working for me. He had already got paid. So we ended up getting
her for five pounds. Five pounds of glass. Took her out of business, stepped in her house, took over, make her force to sign
the house over to us. She signed her house over, she signed her car over. Matter of fact, we even kept her dogs. Two of her dogs that she had at home. Well, the bitch got boasty after awhile. She seen us in her house, took over, took over her business, we're dealing out of her house. We're selling women out of there, selling drugs out of there, we're selling guns out of there. Well, one day she comes back. She sits there and she's
crying on her couch. And she had all this, she had pounds of weed, she had pounds of dope, she had nice cars. Now she bleed all the way down to zero. And the reason why we got this broad was for the simple fact that
she worked 10 years alone on just saying that she
took care of my uncle. She never sent him a dollar, but she had his backing because of the fact that once you get so big and you start dealing pounds, well, you have a lot of people that will be on your every beck and call. You have motherfuckers
that'll raise their hand just to kill this fool
for an ounce of dope just because this girl has so much dope. Well, she had so much dope and so much clout about her that once we took all that, we shrank her down to practically nothing. So she went from being way up here to way down here, you know what I mean? And after a while she got real boasty, real, really boasty, so what
we did was we set her up with an amount of dope. She got busted with like
three pounds of dope and a dirty gun, so she got busted. They sent her away for 20 years. She just got out about two years ago and we just let her back in, 'cause is till do my thing, but I do it from a distance now. I'm in charge, but I'm sitting what they call in the back line. I let everybody go in the front, dealing, yeah, you calling
shots all you want. Yeah, you can tell them
you're running everything. I don't care, you know what I mean? It's really me, but I
always have a front man, like I stated to him, I'd tell him I've got things I did where individuals wouldn't
even fathom the idea of how this was done. Like I did something in three days that seven fools couldn't do in 19 months coming out of Pelican Bay. And that was with that girl. No one could get close to her. Nobody could do anything, but the way I played her was I got inside with her, I got in her business and then what I did was I created an army without her knowing it, so I took everything she had. Everything. Everything, all her dope, her money, I got a Rolex watch out of it, a herringbone chain, a brand new 2005 Nissan Pathfinder just with this. No physical. No physical harm came to nobody. It was all mental. I had to get inside her head. And that was like one
of the best things I did 'cause it earned me a lot of bones, it earned me a lot of respect, a lot of clout, you know what I mean? And also my name got changed. I used to be Casper from Canta Ranas, now they call me Johnny Casper because they wanna simplify
who they're coming to get because there's five of us. There's five Caspers, but they changed my name to Johnny Casper and when you're from a gang and you've been in prison, you can't change your name because if you change your name, something's wrong. Either you're hiding,
you told on somebody. You just can't be from a gang and change your name. I didn't change my name,
they changed my name. So now they call me Johnny
Casper, JC for short. But to be honest with you, I'm a soldier. I'm a sold out for the mob, I'm a soldier. I've been one for let's say 20 years now. I was one since 1993. And I've been in trouble for stating this. I've been scolded very, very bad, verbal tongue lashing because I felt that you're supposed to go around and say this is me,
this is me, look at me. No, a real soldier stays in the cut, lays back in the cut. When it's time, you come out
and handle your business, but you shouldn't put yourself on front and I was the kind of
individual like everybody else, wanted everybody to see me, like the Teflon Don, look at me, look at
me, look what I'm doing and I wanted that. And I got scolded very,
very harshly for doing that. So, now I necessarily don't do that unless it has to be put out there and I have to tell it, like out here. In all of downtown in Skid Row, I'm the last Mexican individual that they'll come at when something needs to get done here. In all of Skid Row. In all of Skid Row, I got more juice than anybody around here and I don't say that boastfully or look at me, know. I'm speaking the real. Any black individual you'll talk to or any Mexican individual, when it comes down to the last man you're gonna talk to, I'll be the last one. - [Mark] So you're
talking to me right now. - Yeah, I'll make the final shot. - [Mark] Is this gonna get you in trouble? - No, not at all. Only I can get myself
in trouble, you know me. - [Mark] So you're okay
to talk about this. - Yeah, yeah, that's no problem, you know. I'll speak about freely
what I gotta speak about. No, I have that respect. - [Mark] No details. - No, and I have the right to speak about things that I did myself, you know what I mean? Things that I've accomplished, that I've did for the
cause, for the swoot, you know what I mean, for the mob. There's are certain things that I've did and like I say out here, I'm the last man on the totem pole. When you get to a last man, you wanna speak to a last individual, it's gonna be me. There might be 10 guys in front of me, but the last guy you're gonna speak to and get the shot is from me. I'm a be the last one that calls the shot. You know, whether it's gonna happen or whether it's not. Whether this guy gotta move
out of his fucking tent and get off the street. You know what I mean. I'm like one of the
only Mexican individuals that can sling dope anywhere right here. Really we're limited to one street, town. Me, I could sling on any
street, any corner, anywhere. I don't. There's certain parts I won't go, like, we'll say for instance, San Pedro and San Julian
right there on sixth, I won't sell a dime back right there. 'Cause I know better. I know that I'm not supposed to sell or these black individuals are selling. I'm limited to where
actually I could sell, but, me, because I got the
respect and understanding of a lot of these guys, I could sell on any street corner I want. I can move on any street I want because of the fact, I know what to go through and who to get at, who runs what street, what gang. It's kind of falling through, you know. They're trying to make wax right now and they're cooking it in a tent and two days ago it blew up on them. And a dude got burned, all his legs, half his neck. - [Mark] Who's making wax? Wax is what? - Out of weed. They're getting weed and
they're draining the weed for the juices, the
nutrients that are in there and what it really is, it's keef, it's the TCH that's on there, but they have to boil it
at a certain temperature and you gotta use a certain type of gas. You know, and if you get cheap gas, then you burn your shit
and it tastes like gas, but if you get that real expensive gas that runs you like $80 a can, you know that shit right
there burns so fine and so clean that your
stuff comes back clear and it's really clear,
the clearer, the better. And I got two individuals
cooking it right now, but one of them just blew himself up. - [Mark] So what's the
closest you've ever come to dying yourself? You've seen a lot of violence I'm sure. - The closest I came to dying was, shit I got stabbed in my neck. Oh, I got my throat cut
from all the way across. My throat, my whole throat got cut. - [Mark] Jesus. - They tried to carjack me in- - [Mark] You have a scar
on your face too, I see. - Well, yeah, this one right here. - Yeah.
- This was discipline. - [Mark] That was discipline? - This is what I'm proud of, yeah. This is discipline. - [Mark] That was just discipline. - This is to know, you know- - [Mark] In prison? - This is saying too much. You're name's out there too much. You know and I did something I knew I shouldn't have did. The guy that did it,
he's my best friend today because I felt that he gave me action, remaining real, keeping real because he could've did much, much more. But this right here,
this is just a checking. - [Mark] So, you won't
get in trouble like this- - No, no, not at all, not at all, nah. This one I got checked. This was for something I did wrong. This one right here I got carjacked. They cut my throat all the way across. Dude was behind me, he had a knife to my throat and he said, "I'm taking your car." And I was like, "You ain't taking shit." - [Mark] So this, to me- - Compton Cribs. - [Mark] To me, what I've learned is that the Mexican
mafia is 10 times more- - Yeah. - [Mark] You respect them more
than anybody on the street. - Oh, yeah, yeah. - [Mark] One of the police- - They're at the top of the food chain. - [Mark] More than the
Crypts, the Bloods, Hoovers all put together. - Oh, yeah, they're the
top of the food chain. - [Mark] They're at the
top of the food chain. - Yeah, I walk through
these streets by myself all hours of the night. A lot of individuals tell
me, "Why do you do that? Why you walk through these
certain streets, man, where you know that there's
nothing but blacks down here?" I said, "Well, I'm a walk
down there regardless. I don't give a fuck what street it is." And I'll walk any yard, I'll walk any street, any hood, you know, because of the fact that I'm not there to cause any harm. If I'm there, I'm either there to talk to who's running shit right there, to fix what the fuck they're doing or I'm there for a simple reason. If somebody sees me in their hood and they know me, they know I'm there for a certain reason. I'm there to either talk to the guys that are in charge or I'm there to fucking scold them and I'm there to pick up a car someone possessed, some money and they're going to give it up. You know there's times I've walked in and, you know, the
individual said he knew me, he didn't even know me. But I sat there and talked to the guy. I gave him a different name and everything and then when I was
tired of talking to him, I told him, "You know
who you're talking to? The person you said you
were taking care of." So now he's in trouble. Took his car, his gun,
his money, everything. I even took a dude's
woman out of his house. You know, it wasn't his wife, but it was a girl that he was being with and I took her from him right on the spot for the simple fact that he was stating he was paying rent, more or
less taking care of business and he wasn't given a penny up. And there's a lot of
individuals that do that. You know you might be
selling pounds of dope, but when I ask you, you tell
me you're selling dimes, but I already know your whole business. I already infiltrated your business. I already talked to all your clientele, gave them dope. You give people who use dope, you give them dope, they'll
tell you anything they want. You just keep up pumping
them for information, giving them more dope, they'll tell you anything you wanna know. So every time I approach somebody about a situation, I know all the outs and ins and rights and lefts, ups and downs, I knew all about their business. So I was asking the questions to see how much they would lie to me, what type of false
information they would give me and nine times out of 10, they would like to me,
you know what I mean? And I would find out they were lying and I would decide how much I wanted to tax them for. I been in the county jail where I took a dude's
shit all the way down to his toothpaste, all the way down to his toothpaste and had him beat up three times a day for
a whole month straight. It's different, strokes
run for different folks, you know what I mean. I've been in so many
situations, like I said. I run my gang, my area,
prisons, yards, tiers, you know what I mean, I did it all and nine times out of
10, 98.9% fools fuck up that run yards. They're no longer any good. They're SNY now, you gotta lock it up. And I'm 46 years old and I'm still on the main line. - [Mark] You're still active. - Yeah, I'm still active, hell, yeah. Around here a lot of
people are non-active. But the way I do it is I just roll through and treat an individual
the way he treats me. I don't give a fuck if
he's wanted by the mob or he's wanted by his hood. As long as his name don't come past me, then he's cool. I used tell dudes on yards, I used to hit yards and I'd hit a yard and fools would see me there and they would start acting
funny and everything. Finally, they get at me and say "Hey, man, I'm doing this right,
I'm doing that right, I'm this right." I'd be like, "I don't give a fuck what you're doing right here." "Yeah, but I know you're here and I know that, you
know what's up with you. I'm just letting you know
I'm doing everything right." I said, "Look, let's put it like this. The only thing you gotta worry about is your kite comes with
name on the outside and your name on the inside. That's the only thing
you gotta worry about. Other than that, you're cool. Just remember if a kite comes and has my name on the outside and your name on the
inside, you're in trouble." - [Mark] What's a kite? - A kite is another word for a note. - [Mark] A note. - You know they send you a note. Dude might get it, right
it in the shoe program, hoop it up his ass, take it to Delano, pass it out to somebody in Delano and puts it in his ass and brings it to me and it's a note for me, but it came all the way from the Bay and I might be down in Delano, it took maybe two months to get to me, but it got to me, though. And it was probably transported in four fools' asses. But that's how it is. And it's written maybe on a piece of paper the size of those little yellow tablets, but it has like five pages in a book. That's how small the writing is. Some guys can write so small, I can't believe how small they can write. I can write small as
fuck, small, real small. I can write you a whole letter on just a wrapper of gum, a gum wrapper, the gum wrapper, just the
white piece, that big, I could write, I could tell
you a whole story on that just by writing. You become, be able to write so small with so small of a pencil and then fold it, small,
so stick it in my nose. That's how small. I used to stick like four kites inside of my nose all the way back in my nose cavity. And not to brag, but the biggest thing I've ever hooped was
like a nine-inch knife. And I actually felt that
shit poking me right here. Yeah, I had to sit down on one ass cheek. If I rolled like this, I actually feel it poking my spine and we're talking just
picture a banana, you know and to keyster that is very
fucking hard, difficult. There's a certain way you have to do it or a certain way you gotta place your body when you put it in. As you have it in, say
I'm gonna hoop a knife. The first thing I do
is wrap it in plastic, wrap it in plastic, wrap it in plastic and then I get a eraser from a pencil and I'll stick the
eraser right on the tip. Then I'll tie it so fucking tight that if I gotta take it out my ass, as soon as I pull it out my ass, all I do is pop the top of that erase off, all the plastic shoots back, foom, and I got nothing but the blade. Now remember, once I hit this guy, I have to rewrap that and hoop it again. I gotta recycle. - [Mark] When you say put it up your ass, you mean literally- - Yeah, I mean hoop it, I
mean keyster it up my ass. Yeah, and that's the way
you transport weapons, phones, dope, kites, we'll say fucking the birthday card. The birthday card, a birthday card is slang for everybody's information. Your name, your number,
what they call you, your hood, your court dates, what you're busted for,
you know what I mean? Everything, it's all on
one line, your information. There might be a hundred guy son one piece of paper that I have. And I've been to places where, I was in L.A. County
gang module in 95, 96, they'll give you a piece of paper with 25 names on it and you have to memorize these names. Every fucking name, every fucking hood and you hoop it, hoop it,
keyster it and then go to court. And you have to remember every individual that was on there, 'cause
if one of those individuals slip through and you don't get 'am, your ass is grass, your ass is grass. Then, top of that, remember you keyster that eight-inch knife, you come back you're in court all day with it in your stomach and believe me, metal's very, very heavy. So you actually feel like
you gotta take a shit all day long, but it's just
that the metal's so heavy that it feels like you
gotta use the bathroom. First time I made a mistake, I thought I had to take a shit, hell nah. I took that shit out, I didn't
have to use the bathroom. I had to hoop it again. So, in other words, I
was just raping myself. To be honest with you
that's what I was doing, I was raping myself. But that was how I learned. I learned by experience,
you know what I mean? When I hooped that shit, I had it in there all day and then you come back from court from seven in the morning, no, from 4:30 in the morning all the way to 5:30 in the evening, I've
had this knife inside me. And I wanted it to come out so bad, but when we get back from court, they strip us butt naked, now they want you to
squat, 20 times like this. 20 times, then 10 times,
then 15 times more and now turn around, cough. All that, that knife
wants to come out bad. You know what I mean, and then they got 15 individuals and they're just gonna pick who everybody has a knife on them. But they just pick who they wanna pick. They find you with that knife, that's another charge, another five years. So you're taking a risk just taking it, but the way they used to do it was if you were from the age of 18 to 35, mandatory you take a weapon, mandatory you stab anybody on that list. But if you're 35 and older, you don't have to take one. But if you're from 18 to 35, mandatory you take a weapon, but in certain courthouses, Norwalk Court, CCB, Long Beach, there was only certain courthouses that you can take them to because they wanted
certain individuals hid and they you had to take
it with you all day, you're responsible for that thing. You lose it, it's your ass. You lose it, you're gonna get stabbed. You know what I mean? It was so on key in there that I can have a knife and you can be seven cells down and there's noises going on, talking, I drop that knife and it
would hit one time, bink, and I'd snatch it. Within seconds you would see shoot a name. A dude heard me drop a knife one time and all it did was just
hit the cement once and I snatched it, he heard that little bing and it's shoot a name. And when you shoot a name, I dropped it. By the time I shoot the name, my name, these individuals in my cell are already putting their shoes on. I'm already knowing
what's gonna happen to me. I'm gonna get a full force Southside and that's 39 seconds of
getting beat full force. - [Mark] By the guards? - Kicking, everything, all
five of your cell mates are gonna beat you up. - [Mark] Oh, the cell mates? - Yeah. And you might have been
with these cell mates for fucking three years
fighting your case. You know, the next day,
they might have to kill you. You know, I've been where
these dudes been together for like five years, they got drunk, they got disrespectful and they'd have to kill this guy in the cell. And they been with this
dude for three years. But they had to kill them and some guys are not just going out like that. There's individuals that, I
mean, you stab him 80 times and they're still standing up and they're telling you hit him until he's on the ground. You're like, but he don't
wanna get on the ground. He's not going down. There was a big old Samoan dude that they fucking must
have hit him 180 times. He was not going to the ground and they wanted him on the ground and I said, "Hey, he's
not going down, bro." We could sit him and we
could stab him all day, he is not going to the ground. And the initial, they
shot, the initial kite said that they wanted him laid out. Well, the individual's
not going down, man, he's not laying down. I don't give a fuck what we're doing. We're trying to do everything do him, he's not falling. This individual never fell, he never fell. He stayed up on his feet. Must have hit him 180 times. And that was because he owed $50 for heroin and they were calling him to catch the chain to go to the state. Before he went to the
state he had to get stabbed and just because he bought, but that's the chance you take. There's a two-week
period, I got sentenced, I'm ready to go to prison. Within those two weeks, I can buy dope, but I better hope that
one day don't come up where they call my name and I owe- - [Mark] You still owe him money. - And I owe two, I owe
$50 here and $50 there. Okay, for each 50, you're
gonna get hit five times. So you're gonna get stabbed 10 times, then you can catch a chain and go. So you know just say I owe three 50s, well, I'm getting hit 15 times and the way they would do like I told you, they would get the knife and they would cover it up and leave maybe no more than three inches, 'cause it takes three inches, three pounds of pressure and three inches of knife will kill you. Anything below that won't. So, two and a half inches won't, two inches won't, inch and a half won't. But once you get three and up, it's killing you because
it only takes three pounds of pressure and three inches of steel to kill an individual. You know, so mainly they
might shoot five dudes each knife and everybody gots like an inch and a half. Me, I'm the type of individual, I'll stab a fool in his ass. That's more of a check. Instead of stabbing his face or his neck, anything visible, nah, I'd rather stab him in his ass. That way every time he
goes to sit down, uh, you know, fuck, you know what I mean? He's knowing he shouldn't have did that. And it's really not visible. Yeah, I've stabbed a man in his ass like four different occasions. And he's a friend of mine, but I asked to stab him in his ass because they wanted him stabbed 15 times and they shoot you in order like, okay, I want you to stab the
guy 20 times, all visible. Visible, they want visible
means with clothes, they wanted to see the holes in this guy. Okay, well, you're telling me to stab the guy 20 times, make him visible, but
you don't want him dead. I can't promise that. When you work for the mob, you decide to take that step, you have to remember that there are some things they're gonna ask that you're not just capable of doing. There's time they asked
me to do certain things and my answer was no. And they were like, "What do you mean no?" No, that's not me, that's
not my bowl of fucking wax, you know what I mean, I don't rob stores. I don't rob people. Now, I could go talk to them and let them know they gotta send money. Okay, I can do that. But I'm not the type of individual to get a gun and rob a liquor store. That's not in me. I can't rob you on the street corner, that's not in me. But now I can go to someone else and keep point and watch the door while he does the deed. I can do that. I can go find somebody. I can go take somebody's wind, but I'm just not the type of individual, give me your money. It's not me, that's not me. I wasn't made for that. I wasn't cut, I'm not cut
from that type of cloth. I'm more or less cut from the same cloth where for instance when I was a youngster, I've never been jumped, ever. And I've been caught 15 dudes catch me, but always because when I caught people, I might have 15 homies with me and catch one individual and I'll tell them, "Don't run. We're not gonna jump you. I'm not gonna allow my
homies to jump you," 'cause I was always the one in charge. So I'm saying, "I'm not
gonna allow them to jump you. I'm a fuck you up. You know it's just gonna
be me and you one on one. Don't worry about nobody getting in." I'm letting my homies, don't get in. I'm gonna beat this individual up. So I'd whip his ass, foom, everything be and send him on his way and the maybe two weeks
later, I'd get caught by him and his homies. And they're gonna jump me and dude would step up stay, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait up. Nah, we ain't jumping him. You're going down with my homies." No problem and I'll get busy and that happened like seven, eight times and they tell me but they got jumped. I told them I never been jumped before. Oh, you never got rushed
by a gang, guys, yeah. I've been surrounded by
like 30 motherfuckers, but because of the fact
what I did in the past came back to haunt me, but in a good way and dude's like, "No, we
ain't gonna jump you homie. I know who you are, man." He's the motherfucker that caught me, and I was very far from my homies and you didn't jump me, you let me go ahead with your homies, so, I'm a give you the same action. So a lot of times that has been, that has fell right in front of me where I thought I was
gonna get my ass beat by like 20 motherfuckers, and it only took one individual to step up and tell his homies nah,
this motherfucker right here had a chance to jump me, he could have killed me with his homies, nah, we're gonna give him
action just like he gave me. And a lot of times that has saved my life. A lot of times I've beat them up. You know, there's like 20 of them, I beat up like five of them. And they're like they
wanna jump me so bad, but this dude's like their homie that's running shit, it's like nah, we ain't jumping this fool, man, 'cause this fool don't,
and his other homie would vouch and say, "Yeah,
dawg, he did the same to me. He caught me, but he didn't jump me. Whoop my ass, but he didn't jump me." And I used to whip
motherfuckers' ass on the daily. That was my reputation in my hood that I wouldn't jump a motherfucker, try to run the motherfucker over or shoot a motherfucker, nah, I'm a beat your ass. I wanna go head up because we went through the Santa Fe Boxing Club before we got to my hood. From nine years old to 12 years old, nine, 10, 11, 12, you used to have to go through the Boxing Club and then once you turn 13, you can get in the hood, but that was a tradition we went through. So every one of my homies went through the Boxing Club
for three or four years and the reason it's four years because in four years
you fight the Hawaiians and then once you beat
one or two Hawaiians, we leave the Boxing Club alone and get into the hood. And I was never jumped and
I just walked in my hood. I jumped in everybody else. So you know, my homies have never put their hands on me to get me in the hood. I was always from the hood. My dad's from my neighborhood, my brother, both my brothers, my sister, all my family. The only one that's not is my mother. Even my daughters are from my hood. - [Mark] So you're family,
they're all still alive? - Yeah, a few of them dead, but they're all from my hood, all of them. Except maybe two of my cousins that are males and two that are females. But everybody else is from my hood. Every cousin, every aunt, every uncle. - [Mark] When you say from your hood, you mean in the gang? - Yeah, from my hood, every gang, my gang, it's just the Canta Ranas,
all my familia's from there, all my uncles, all my aunts. - [Mark] Do you have family of your own? Do you have children of your own? - Yeah. My little girls are from my hood. - [Mark] How old are they? - My 26-year-old, she lives
in East L.A. right here. She's married and she got out the hood, so she's living her life now. Then I got my 23-year-old, she's Washington with her husband. She went and did her life out there and she don't speak to me. She only speaks to her mother. And then I got my 22-year-old, she just got 21 years. She got picked up for three murders and attempted murder. She fought it for three years. She end up taking 21 years. She's in, what's that
Chowchlila right now. She just barely started her time. Well, she got six years' credit, so she gots to do I think eight, 19. I'm about to get to see her 'cause I got off parole
like five years ago. So I'm about to go see her pretty soon. I just gotta clear up this little misdemeanor bullshit I got. But she took 21 years. I didn't go to court one time for her. When I was a young man, I seen these two individuals
take this guy's eyes out with a hammer. Yeah, he took his eyes out with a hammer with the back of the- - [Mark] The claw. - Yeah, the claw and
took both his eyes out. - [Mark] That was a lot. - Yeah, I was only 14,
15 when they did that. We were all 14, 15. I think the one that got killed was 13. - [Mark] And then after
that, they killed him or? - They killed him on the spot. Yeah, left him in there with no eyes, took his eyes out. I've only thrown up one time. We were sitting in the back of a truck on Whittier Boulevard and my homie removed some dude's head with a Mowbray shotgun. I threw up that time. And my homie's really a sick individual. I threw up that time. One of the most gruesomest thing I ever seen was in L.A. County Gang Module where they stabbed a dude and then when they were
trying to cut his body up and flush him down the toilet, but his torso wouldn't fit, this part, they already had got the foot down, I think a foot, both his hands, they just couldn't, his torso was too, so what they did was they
threw him in a trashcan and just wheeled him to the shower. And I looked at his head in the trashcan. I didn't know he was in there. I looked in there and that was one of the gruesomest things
I ever heard and observed. The L.A. County Gang Module, they stabbed a dude today, killed him and then they tried to cut his body up. - [Mark] Once you're exposed
to that kind of violence, do you almost develop, I don't wanna say an appetite for it, but a- - A hunger. - [Mark] It's easier for you to deal with and to even do? - Yeah, like say I
stabbed somebody and then- - [Mark] Like a whole new world of you- - What it's about is me and you can go stab somebody
and then all of a sudden after we're done stabbing them, he's still laying right
there fucking bleeding and everything and I'll tell you, yeah, make some soup, man, I'm hungry. I mean, it always end up the individual, we stabbed this dude,
he's dead on the floor in our cell, you know we done tucked him under the bunk, but he's in their dead and I'll tell them hey,
hook up a soup, you know. Put some beans and rice in there and the dude's dead under the bunk, that type of shit. That's where your mind
just automatically gets to where it's nothing. It's a rush, it's a
different type of high. - [Mark] Yeah. - I figure after the first, after the first time,
everything else is easy. The first time is the hardest. That was the hardest
for me the first time, 'cause you know after
I did what I had to do, I remember my blankets
got pulled off of me. I don't know how many days it had been, I don't know how long it had been, but I know it was hot as fuck in that room because my grandmother
pulled blankets off me, I was fully clothed under my blankets, tennis shoes, everything on. I had been wearing the
same thing for three days. I hadn't showered, I hadn't ate, I just laid there. I had been laying there
for almost three days. This is like the third day and my grandmother comes
in, I would hear her. "What the hell's going on here." She pulls the blankets back off me, she opens the windows in the room, she's like, "Oh, my God,
it fucking smells in here." I looked to the side like that and my little brother's
sitting in the closet and he just gots a pair of shorts on and his tennis shoes and he has all the guns like this in front of the closet
lined up in front of him and he's just looking at me and I'm just looking at him and he's looking at me. We're not saying a word. And my grandmother's like,
"What the fuck is going on here? You fucking guys don't wanna go outside, what the fuck did you do?" And as soon as she said
that, it was like, phew, you know what I mean. So I shoved my little brother and said, "What the fuck are you?" As I said, my little brother's
sitting in the closet, nothing in the closet, just
five guns in front of him. 'Cause we both knew what
we had did out there, so we didn't wanna move. We didn't wanna go outside. We didn't want nobody to see us. You know, we were so scared 'cause we're so young and we did what we did and we did something really fucking, really, really bad and it was just the feeling that we didn't wanna go outside, so my grandmother came in, opened the windows and everything, made us something to eat and she brought us back
to where we were at. We were so far gone already. - [Mark] What age were you? - Oh, man, I think I was, my little brother was 12, so I was 13. - [Mark] Wow. - Yeah. And that was the first time we didn't wanna come outside. There's been other times that we didn't go outside for a long time, but my grandmother already knew if we didn't go outside, you know she stared asking questions and started finding out what had got done because we wouldn't say nothing. We would just be in the room and we don't wanna go outside. We don't want nobody to come over, we're not home, we're not here. We just wanted to be
away from everybody else because we knew what we had did out there. And it was me and my little brother. We did that from the age of like 13 all the way to like 17 years old, just me and my little brother, me and my little brother and then he caught a murder. He went to YA. He got YA life and I caught my kidnaps
and gave me 15 years. So I ain't seen my little
brother in a long time. - [Mark] Where is your brother today? - He took himself and put himself on the unactive list. - [Mark] Oh, really? - Yeah, so we no longer talk. - [Mark] You can't even speak to him? - Nah. I don't speak to him, no. He's my little brother. It bugs me, hurts me, but
I cannot speak to him, 'cause he's not on the same side of the fence I'm on. And I don't wanna kill my little brother. That's the least I wanna do, you know. It was bad enough I had to tell him to stay the fuck away from me and not come around me. That's my little brother. I've been through shit with him that I've been through with nobody. But I can't speak to him. There's days that I just wanna get up and go find him and hear dudes tell me about him and shit. I tell dudes, "Don't you
know what's up with him?" His own product. Ain't no women, money, individuals, I mean hate, envy, everything runs hand in hand, you know. I've been stabbed, I've been shot, I've been put a green light on. I put a green light on motherfuckers. It's been so much shit done to me, so many things that happened in my life that now I walk through here any hour of the day, any time of the day, any street I want because I finally can say that in certain fashions I embrace death. I embrace it, I'm not
afraid to die anymore. I used to. I think I'm more or less afraid of how I'm gonna die. What's gonna happen to me? Is somebody gonna shoot me or if he'll run me over? Bitch gonna set me up. Might just one grab my chest and have a heart attack, you know. I don't know. I'm not welcoming it, but I can actually honestly tell you that I embrace death. I don't feel that death is the last stop. I feel it's just another door opening. I can feel that way.
I'm kinda having trouble believing him. He seems to have an outlandish, self-aggrandizing story for everything. He also seems like a tweaker.
I thought he was blind at first the way he closes his eyes and talks about things
theres was one foo who said he was locked up with this guy and that he made up a lot of bs but was a good storyteller