John Jefferson
Alexi Saenz, right inset, pleaded guilty to eight murders, including the killings of Nisa Mickens, left inset, and Kayla Cuevas, middle inset. (Saenz photo from James Carbone/Newsday via AP; Victims’ photos from Suffolk County Police Department; crime scene screenshot from WCBS/YouTube)
A high-ranking MS-13 gang member pleaded guilty to eight murders, including two teen girls who were chased down, beaten with bats and hacked with a machete near a Long Island elementary school.
Alexi Saenz, 29, aka “Blasty” and “Big Homie,” entered his plea to federal racketeering and weapons charges on Wednesday in New York, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced in a news release. He ordered the Sept. 16, 2016, murders of Kayla Cuevas, 16, and Nisa Mickens, 15. He also admitted to his role in the slayings of Michael Johnson, Oscar Acosta, Javier Castillo, Dewann Stacks, Esteban Alvarado-Bonilla and Marcus Bohannon and the attempted murder of two suspected rivals. He faces between 40 and 70 years in prison when he’s set to be sentenced on Jan. 31.
Freddy Cuevas, Kayla’s father, had an emotional reaction after the hearing, Newsday reported.
“He’s an animal,” Freddy Cuevas said. “He’s inhumane.”
In a statement, U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said authorities vowed to keep fighting MS-13, one of the country’s most prolific gangs started by Salvadoran immigrants who came to the U.S. to flee civil war in their home country.
“To say that Alexi Saenz’s hands are drenched in blood does not begin to describe the multiple killings and extreme mayhem he personally directed and committed in the span of one year in Suffolk County,” Peace said. “While those murders and violent crimes were intended to further the sordid mission of the MS-13, the defendant has failed miserably. As a result of the exceptional work of this Office’s prosecutors and the members of the Long Island Gang Task Force, the MS-13 has been decimated in the district and we will continue working tirelessly to hold every one of these violent gang members accountable for the crimes they have committed and harm they have caused. It is my sincere hope that today’s guilty plea brings some measure of solace and closure to the families of his victims.”
Saenz, who prosecutors described as the leader of a violent and well-established clique of MS-13 on the East Coast, killed for the gang to maintain and increase his membership and status within the ranks.
Johnson, 29, was the first of his admitted victims, a rival Bloods street gang member marked as MS-13 gang member “food,” in a twisted reference to their intention to kill him, authorities said. On Jan. 28, 2016, Johnson was lured with the false promise of marijuana to a wooded area in Brentwood, where MS-13 gang members ambushed him, hit him with a baseball bat, stabbed him with a knife and took turns hacking him with a machete, prosecutors said. The killers fled when they heard police sirens.
On April 29, 2016, 19-year-old Acosta was beaten with tree limbs, then loaded into a car trunk and driven to another location where he was hacked to death by members of his gang, taking turns with a machete because the killers thought he had been associating with rivals from the 18th Street gang. Saenz supervised the murder, prosecutors said. Acosta’s body was discovered by law enforcement nearly five months later in a shallow grave. Authorities found Acosta’s body while searching for another MS-13 victim.
Bohannon, 27, was killed on Sept. 5, 2016, while Saenz and other MS-13 members were out “hunting” for rival gang members to kill. Bohannon was gunned down as he walked along an avenue in Central Islip when the MS-13 members flagged him as a possible rival from the Bloods gang.
Cuevas and Mickens were hacked to death on Sept. 13, 2016, after Cuevas had been in a series of monthslong disputes with MS-13 that culminated in a fight between gang members and Cuevas and her friends at her high school. Cuevas and Mickens were slaughtered by gang members wielding baseball bats and a machete. Mickens’ cut and beaten body was discovered later that evening near Cuevas’ home.
Cuevas’ body was discovered the following day behind a house near where Mickens’ body was found.
On Oct. 10, 2016, Castillo, 15, was lured to an isolated marsh area in Cow Meadow Park, where he was hacked to death with a machete. He was believed to be a member of the 18th Street gang, one of MS-13’s main rivals.
Stacks, 34, was murdered three days later because he, too, was suspected of being a rival. Prosecutors said the trauma to his face and head left his body nearly unrecognizable.
On Jan. 30, 2017, Alvarado-Bonilla, 29, was gunned down from behind at a deli because he wore the wrong football jersey. It bore the number “18,” which led Saenz and his crew to conclude he was a rival. One of the bullets pierced Alvarado-Bonilla’s head and hit a deli employee who was standing in front of him. The employee survived.
The killings of Cuevas and Mickens shook the community. It prompted Cuevas’ mother, Evelyn Rodriguez, to become a gang activist. She and Mickens’ family were invited to appear at then-President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address in January 2018.
Months after that event, Rodriguez’s life was cut short at age 50 when she was killed at the site of her daughter’s memorial in a dispute with a motorist over her daughter’s commemorative display. Law&Crime reported in May that the motorist, Ann Marie Drago, pleaded guilty to a charge of criminally negligent homicide in the death of Rodriguez.
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