A Student of War: (Prequel to a Broken Woman)

By MISTY

This is a true story (Prequel to a Broken Woman) of the gruesome, violent life of a real Latin King and how being in the gang affected his life. It also tells how our paths crossed in life and how we had many parallels and created a profound connection.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9781669862918

MISTY

Misty has lived and worked in the Rio Grande Valley all of her life. She has been writing poetry since she was 10, and has written and published four books to date. She finally decided to follow her passion of writing and never looked back!

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Copyright © 2023 by Misty.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 01/18/2023

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

837099

CONTENTS

Preface

Present Day

Prologue

Chapter 1     The Marine - The Beginning

Chapter 2     Misty - The Early Years

Chapter 3     The Marine - The Gang Life

Chapter 4     History of The Latin Kings

Chapter 5     Organizational Structure

Chapter 6     Latin King Awareness

Chapter 7     Rules - Latin Kings Manifesto

Chapter 8     Symbols and Practices

Chapter 9     The Marine Goes In

Chapter 10   Misty – 1998 - My Walls

Chapter 11   Misty - 1999

Chapter 12   Misty - 2000

Chapter 13   Misty - 2003-2008

Chapter 14   The Aftermath

Chapter 15   Misty - 2009-2012

Chapter 16   Present Day

Chapter 17   Misty - 2013-2015

Chapter 18   The Marine - 2013-2015

Chapter 19   Michigan Case History

Chapter 20   Security Threat Group Intelligence

Chapter 21   Texas Case History

Chapter 22   Case History From Chicago, Indiana And Illinois

Chapter 23   Case History of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York

Chapter 24   Present

Resources

Dedicated to The Marine

PREFACE

This is a true story of an ex Latin King gang member and how he got involved in the gang, why he got involved, and what it has cost him. It is a recount of his broken mentality that resulted from being in the gang and how he was able to escape from its false sense of family and security, to save his own life. This book has true accounts of the inner workings of a highly organized association – its history and some actual court documents.

It also tells how our paths crossed in life and how fate eventually brought us together - (parallels) – hence, a prequel to A Broken Woman.

Of course the names of the characters have been changed for obvious reasons, but the events and dates are real.

PRESENT DAY

So you’re better off without me?

So who’re you fucking now?

I think our problem was our age difference, he told me.

"What about the age difference with you and your wife?" I asked him. (His wife is 20 years younger than he is.)

Those were some of his last words to me before he fell off the face of the planet.

I was beginning to think that I had made a mistake in pushing him away. I was even beginning to think that I had made the whole thing up – that he was just a phantom.

I had a lot of different emotions. I’d be happy and hopeful one day. Then one day I’d feel small and lost, like a child who has lost its security blanket, its hope, its reason to live. Sometimes I’d be driving and a song would come on, and the crying jags would hit me like a ton of bricks.

Now I can actually say I know how a drug addict feels. I was addicted to him. I was addicted to that feeling of euphoria, of pure bliss.

They say that if you can think about someone without crying, you are over them. They also say it takes about two years to get over someone. I say that is true.

I hadn’t heard from him in 9 months, and I was starting to panic. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t even swallow properly. I really had separation anxiety. I kept dreaming him - that we were talking and visiting as if nothing ever happened. Usually when I’ve had dreams like that in the past about someone, it would mean something was going on in their life. Oh, how I wanted to drive up to his house and talk to him! But I knew that was impossible.

I started to think that he had gotten sick or was back in prison. I think my greatest fear was that the Latin Kings had finally caught up with him, but I didn’t want to voice it because then it might come true. After all, you know what they say, "Once a King, Always a King."

I even wanted to go knock on his mom’s and grandma’s place and ask them if he was okay. (I found out where they were living.) My counselor advised against it because it would just open up old wounds, and I might find out something that I didn’t want to know.

I found out where he was living, and I would pass by his house inconspicuously. (Every time I wanted to find out where he was living, I had to do it in secret. He always moved around and hid it very well.) I wanted him back. I knew that there was no going back because he had a wife and kids. I still wanted him back, like a stubborn, selfish child. I even texted him once after passing by his place and told him I was in the mood for some cooked rabbit. (Like in the movie Fatal Attraction, lol) He had a pet rabbit in a cage in the back patio of his house. He texted: Stalker, acting weird again. My cameras capture everything. I’m gonna keep a log of you coming around…..find peace in yourself.

So now he knew that I knew for sure where he lived. I think that scared him away. Now he wasn’t able to do anything crazy or derogatory towards me because he knew I could report him.

He always made it a point to keep his current residence a secret from me, as well as his phone number. He constantly had different phone numbers, and of course, all of them were burner phones. He always also had his phone accounts under someone else’s name, too. It was always like he was covering his tracks - no trail.

Before I knew where he lived, I always had to do everything on the sly with him. One time shortly before I stopped seeing him, I had taken him to buy groceries on a Friday evening, and he said he was calling his grandma to pick him up afterwards. (He still wouldn’t tell me where he lived). This was at the very beginning of the pandemic COVID. He would come over to my apartment and work on making T-shirts. He had convinced me to buy a T-shirt machine so we could make T-shirts together and also sell them. I even paid for someone to come over and train us on making them. Apparently, his grandma would come over and pick him up since he had his motorcycle repossessed and didn’t have any transportation (only his baby mama had transportation).

He had told me once that when he first moved down here, he met a girl, and she would buy groceries for his grandma. She ended up being friends with another girl he was dating. He always brought people together.

I decided to try and follow him when his grandma came to pick him up and try to find out where he was living. (This was before I actually found out where he was living.) He called her and told her he was going to wait for her outside. She had apparently dropped him off and picked him up before at my apartment, so she knew where I lived. I heard him even telling her "yes, at the end of the long road."

I waited until he left, and then I rushed downstairs to my car with the intention of following him. I quickly drove onto the street by my apartment and was able to see him walking ahead in the distance with his groceries in hand. I quickly pulled over to the side of the road where my car wouldn’t be so conspicuous because I didn’t want him to see me following him. I waited for about 30 seconds and then got on the driver’s lane again. By that time he had disappeared! I could never see who actually picked him up, so I couldn’t follow him home. I was so upset because I had missed my opportunity. He was very slick. He would slither around like a snake and nobody could catch up to him. I even drove to his old apartment that he had been renting before, but there was nobody there. I even went to the trailer park that one of his baby mamas had lived at before (and also his grandmother, supposedly). I never found him.

I had even seen him driving his motorcycle once from that trailer park when I was outside of my job taking a walk. A couple of years before that, I had seen him driving into the trailer park in his old truck that he used to have before. It just so happened to be right down the street from my apartment. I would drive by there sometimes but never saw the grandma’s car again. I would just see the blinds open a little sometimes, with some light from the inside. It was all very mysterious. One time I actually saw one of the baby mama’s carrying a baby in a car seat. Another time I saw his mother watering the front lawn, but they eventually moved out from there after a while.

One of the last times I talked to him he told me to look up the Latin Kings’ Manifesto. We had always talked about writing a book about his past life, but it never happened. He was too hyperactive to sit still long enough, and when he tried to record his book, (I even got him a portable recorder) he said they brought back a lot of bad memories. (or so that was what he told me.)

Two months later after not hearing from him: (texts) (I was having trouble sleeping.)

Misty - 4:40 a.m. – Hey, are you still alive?

The Marine - Who the f…..is this? Fuck you.

Misty: Guess it’s your other personality. Hate me that much?

I never heard from him again. (I’m not sure if that was still his number since he changed his number all the time.) He always pretended to be someone else and would change his voice and say that I had the wrong number.

I think he was mad at me because the last time I had talked to him, I told him that he had always been a "parasite." I needed a Word diskette that I had lent him when I had bought him his computer. He never returned it to me. All he did was take and take from me.

I was also talking to him on January 6, 2021, at the exact moment that the attack on the White House was going on. He obviously was enthralled by it – he kept saying that it was a good day for "taking the White House down." I couldn’t really talk to him because he was very distracted and obviously very affected by it. I guess his PTSD kicked in. He didn’t call me back that day.

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I would light up with hope every time I got an unknown call. He always used to do that since he would change his phone number all the time and didn’t want me to have his current number. Of course, it was never him. I didn’t have a number to get a hold of him, so I just had to wait for him to call me.

So I just kept on and muddled through the days. The days were long, and the nights were even longer.

He always used to tell me that he would never leave from my life - that we would stay in each other’s lives, no matter what. I guess that turned out not to be true, so I was just left with bits and pieces of memories…………..and that’s what gave me hope.

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After being in a gang and then in prison for so long, it took a toll on his emotional health. He still had a lot of fears and phobias which I knew were never going to go away. They would just maybe get better eventually with a lot of medication and therapy.

For example, he once told me he was in a doctor’s office waiting to be called when he heard a door shut. It reminded him of the jail cell door, and he started having a panic attack.

He was having some counseling for all his issues. He always complained that all the medication they gave him should be banned. It gave him terrible side effects. It made him function like a zombie. He hated them.

One time I was at the Island with my family visiting from out of state, and he came up to visit on his bike. We were staying at a high rise condo, and he would NOT go in the elevator. He said he didn’t like enclosed places. (PTSD from being locked up for 11 years.) I once asked my nephew, who is a doctor of psychology, whether there is a cure for PTSD. He said that it never goes away. There is medication and counseling to control it, but you don’t really ever get rid of it.

It even affected his working life. He was not able to secure a good paying job (if at all) because his record followed him everywhere he went. A lot of companies do a background check on you before hiring, so he had that strike against him already. That’s why he always made it a point to register and attend school. He had already gotten his electrician’s license, and when we met he really wanted to study to be a paralegal. He said he was always fascinated by the law. Unfortunately, he didn’t get to finish (short one semester) because he had some kind of breakdown one time while in class. He texted me that he was crying and screaming in his truck while he was supposed to be in class. I don’t think he was able to take the stress of going to school.

He did mention that he learned that his dad was a veteran - that he had been in the Army. He did try to get me to help him file a paternity lawsuit against his dad and also for abandonment, but his mother is the only one who could have done that, so he never went through with it.

I did take him with me to meet my ex-sister-in-law on the way back from a day trip we took to Brownsville for one of his court appearances for some tickets he had gotten. I was on cloud nine from being involved with my gangsta. Later when she and I were talking about it, she told me that she had been involved with some gangsters when she was younger. She said that they were the type that "when they told you to do something, you better do it, and no questions asked." She eventually left that life.

They say Once a King, Always a King. I think that’s true. He once told me that he had three attempts on his life already by the Latin Kings. One time they caught him by surprise. There were three guys who jumped him from behind and beat up on him. He, of course, was outnumbered, so he couldn’t really defend himself. The Latin Kings are always going to be after him. This was his punishment for getting out. He was always going to be moving around, etc., and always looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life. That’s the price he had to pay for being in the gang in the first place. That was his cross to bear. The Kings take their oaths seriously.

PROLOGUE

He stands outside the gates of the correctional unit that had been his home for the past 11 years. He breathes in the fresh air and looks at the sunrise. He had $3,000.00 in his pocket from money he had hustled while inside. He wondered what his next move would be and almost hesitated about getting out. He was going to miss his home, his circle, the certainty of his days inside.

He was in power and in control in the circle of his gang inside, and now he was suddenly unleashed into society and was expected to just fit right in and carry on as if the last 20 years didn’t happen (11 of those years behind bars).

He stood there waiting for his ride to take him to his home, to prepare him for his transition back to society.

He started wondering how he had gotten here in the first place, and also thought back about whether it had all been worth it. If he had to do it all over again, would he have done it exactly the same way? He had a son, and he had missed out on watching him grow up. Would he want the same thing for his son, the gangs, the violence, and the repercussions?

He decided to just keep moving and not look back. He still had a chance to make things right with his son and family.

So his ride arrived, and they took him to his grandma’s house. The first thing they did was get a woman for him. She was waiting for him upstairs already. He eagerly went and took care of his pent up sexual frustration. It had been a long time not being with a woman, so he really enjoyed it. He said he never went to a halfway house when he got out.

CHAPTER 1

The Marine - The Beginning

He was the product of an incestuous rape. His mother was 13 years old when she was raped by her uncle. Naturally, the Marine was born nine months later. He was raised by his grandmother for obvious reasons. His mother was just a child herself. So he had an absent father. I’m sure that coming from a broken family contributed to his misfortunes in life.

He was raised with a strong Hispanic culture and a long family tree record that was kept by his grandmother. As a matter of fact, his grandmother and grandfather were the first settlers with his family name here in the Valley. They were raised in Michigan, though, so he grew up in the snow and cold temperatures, and of course the gangs.

Of course he was the oldest in his family, which means he was supposed to be the most responsible. He had a stepfather and several half-sisters and a half-brother. He enjoyed growing up in a big family and always tried to do his best to fit in.

He did talk about his grandfather who was notorious for molesting his kids and was an evil man. I think he was trying his damnedest not to follow in his footsteps.

He did have an uncle that was killed at a very young age (his mother’s brother), and the Marine resembled him a lot. His brother told me that was why his grandmother and mother really made the Marine their "favorite."

He talked about an older girl cousin who sexually molested him when he was about 8 years old. He just remembers holding his tee shirt up while she performed oral sex on him.

I asked him how that made him feel, and he said, "I was 8 years old. I didn’t know what to feel." I guess that became normal behavior for him later on in life (you know how they say that you’re drawn to the familiar.)

He talked about being in junior high and being in only one class all day long. He said he hated the fact that he never got to go to a different classroom like the other kids. He was in special education because he had "learning disabilities." He said he was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder at that age and was put on all sorts of medication that made him very sleepy all the time. He would spend his summers in bed sleeping most of the time. He said his mother eventually took him off of those pills because she hated what they did to him. He didn’t know if his ADD was attributed to the fact that he was born from an incestuous relation (rape.) He always used to tell me that he "wasn’t supposed to be born," but he always tried to make the best of his life.

He also once told me that since he was 13 he knew he wanted to be in a "gang." He certainly was headed in that direction when he stole his mother’s car (at age 13) and ended up in juvenile detention.

He told me that he got into the gang at the young age of 14. They took him in as a prospect first and then he got full membership at age 18. He had his own family away from home and his security and feeling like he "belonged to something. I guess it gave him a false sense of power and being in control, which is something he never had at home. He was just a soldier" though, and he didn’t even know it.

He said