MS-13 trial: Prosecution says defendant was the 'bait' and 'mastermind' in quadruple killings

Leniz Escobar was more than just the bait that drew four young men into the woods of Central Islip to their gruesome deaths at the hands of MS-13, federal prosecutors said Wednesday at her trial nearly five years after the quadruple homicide.

The devoted teenage associate of the gang also was "a driving force and one of the masterminds behind these horrific murders," Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Scotti told jurors during closing arguments.

Defense attorney Jesse Siegel conceded in his closing argument that Escobar, now 22, of Central Islip, was present when the victims were hacked to death in a park on April 11, 2017.

But the Manhattan lawyer insisted prosecutors hadn't proven the racketeering and murder in aid of racketeering charges against his client beyond a reasonable doubt.

Jurors are expected to begin their deliberations Thursday following about three weeks of testimony in the trial before U.S. Circuit Judge Joseph Bianco in Central Islip.

The slaying rattled a Suffolk County community that already was beset by fears about MS-13's reach and violence before the discovery of the victims' mutilated remains near a soccer field not far from the courthouse where Escobar's trial is happening.

The victims were Jorge Tigre, 18 of Bellport; Justin Llivicura, 16, of East Patchogue; Michael Lopez, 20, of Brentwood; and Lopez's cousin, Jefferson Villalobos, 18, who was visiting from Pompano Beach, Florida.

The gang had believed based on social media posts that the eventual sole survivor of the attack, Elmer Alexander Artiaga-Ruiz, 22, and his friends were either members of the rival 18th Street gang or had disrespected MS-13 in photos, and so targeted them for death, prosecutors said Wednesday.

They said Escobar, then 17, and cooperating government witness Keyli Gomez, then 16, lured the young men to their deaths with the promise of smoking marijuana before gang members approached and launched the attack that only Artiaga-Ruiz escaped from by running and jumping over a fence.

“She wanted this to happen,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Justina Geraci said Wednesday of Escobar — whom prosecutors said used the street name "La Diablita" or "the little devil."

Geraci also said that separate from the testimony of cooperating witnesses, Escobar’s own words — in recorded jail phone calls to her then-boyfriend on the day after the killings — showed she was happy about what happened.

“The defendant makes crystal clear in these phone calls that she was not forced to do what she did,” the prosecutor added.

But Siegel said the calls were really just a defensive show of strength from a terrified witness to four slayings who feared the gang would target her because of what she had seen.

"As bad as these calls sound, they're not what they seem when you first hear them," he added, saying that much of what Escobar told her boyfriend "wasn't true."

The defense attorney also argued Wednesday that prosecutors hadn't made their case because four counts of the five-count indictment require them to prove Escobar knowingly and intentionally murdered the victims in order to maintain and increase her position in MS-13.

"Whatever role you think Leniz played here, she did not do anything to maintain or increase her position in MS-13 … she was not an associate," Siegel told jurors.

He  portrayed his client as simply the girlfriend of an incarcerated MS-13 gang official, who got protection from the gang for that reason.

Siegel also argued that his client’s actions to dispose of a cellphone as police were trailing her and to dump a bloody sweatshirt were simply the behavior of someone who “understood she potentially was in a lot of trouble.”

But prosecutors stressed Wednesday that Escobar wasn't only a "devoted associate" of the gang, but acted in order to gain respect by taking part in the murder conspiracy.

Sindy Escobar, a relative of the defendant, said outside the courthouse that she wouldn’t comment on her family member’s guilt or innocence. But she said Leniz Escobar's life had been filled with suffering and she had fallen victim to both physical and mental abuse.

“We know that God is with her. … We pray for the families and for her,” Escobar added.