A gang leader who orchestrated the murders of at least eight rivals, informants, and his own crew has been stabbed to death in prison.
Ezequiel 'Wicked' Romo ran the Blythe Street gang in Panorama City, northwest Los Angeles, with an iron fist despite being in jail for all but a year of his reign.
Punishment for the smallest infraction, like an unauthorized tattoo, could be a whole magazine of bullets as he sought to purge the gang of 'dirty homeboys'.
'All I ask for is complete control of Panorama City,' he wrote in a WhatsApp message from prison to one of his henchmenin 2017.
Romo, 47, won't be ordering any more hits from jail after he was stabbed to death by three inmates atCentinela State Prison about 8pm on Sunday.
Ezequiel 'Wicked' Romo ran the Blythe Street gang in Panorama City, northwest Los Angeles, with an iron fist despite being in jail for all but a year of his reign
The assassins were so ferocious that they didn't stop stabbing him until guards doused them with pepper spray four times, officials said.
Cristian Moreno, Johnny Garcia, and Christian Hernandez allegedly jumped him in the day room of the 3,000-man jail in theImperial County desert.
Bleeding to death on the prison floor was a fitting end for Romo after he was jailed for life without parole last year for murder, attempted murder, and conspiracy to commit murder.
The bodies began dropping in 2015, only months after Romo got out of jail in late 2014 after an 18-year stint behind bars.
Romo was in the slammer since he was just 18 and got into a fight with fellow teenagerManuel Avila atTommy's hamburger stand on Roscoe Boulevardin 1995.
Avila, 19, punched him in the face and Romo responded by shooting him dead in front of shocked diners.
He was jailed for 10 years and got years added on for assaults behind bars, finally getting out as a hardened crime boss on a mission.
Romo looked very different when he was arrested in 2015 fordriving around with a bag of meth
Romo had made some new friends in jail, associates of the Mexican Mafia, which essentially ran the California jail system.
His plan was to prove he was worthy of the syndicate's membership by transforming theBlythe Street gang into a feared crew.
He knew he needed to run a very tight ship and set about getting rid ofinformants, addicts and dissenters, witnesses told his trial.
'His thing was making things right for them people. Doing favors for them. Taking care of people in the county [jail],' one witness told the court, the LA Times reported last year.
'It sounded good, but a lot of violence came after.'
Romo's first murder, and the only one he organized while breathing fresh air, was just to make a few thousand dollars.
He acquired a kilogram of cocaine from drug supplierFelipe Delgado and promised to pay him later, but instead hatched a plan to simply kill him instead.
First he spread rumors thatDelgado was talking to the cops, then lured him to the back of a building to finally pay him.
'[Romo] wanted to kill him because supposedly he was a rat, but at the same time he had taken a kilo of cocaine. And he had kept that money. He had no intention of paying,' a witness told his trial.
Romo had an ankle monitor on, so he walked around the the other side of the building whileDelgado was shot three times in the back.
Romo had an ankle monitor on, so he walked around the the other side of this building while a drug supplier was shot three times in the back
Having gotten away with that murder, Romo managed to get pinched for something much more mundane two months later - driving around with a bag of meth.
He pleaded guilty and was jailed for four years, but this proved to be a mere inconvenience.
Romo's plan continued through WhatsApp messages to overworked middle-managers from a contraband phone atCentinela.
Next to be gunned down wasIsidro 'Topo' Alba, 38, after a series of clashes with Romo, when he was lured to a fake drug deal onAugust 27, 2017.
'Do you think this is a setup?' he asked his girlfriend, seated next to him in the car as he arrived at the ambush.
'Just hurry the f**k up,' she testified that she told him, handing him the drugs.
Gang membersJuan 'Flaco' Ramirez and Yordin 'Little Goofy' Enere riddled him with bullets almost immediately after he opened the door.
His girlfriend was largely unscathed and tried the flag down a passing car for help - only to realize it was the killers.
Somehow, their aim was bad enough that she survived by diving back in the car, lying down, and playing dead.
Next to be gunned down was Isidro 'Topo' Alba, 38, after a series of clashes with Romo, when he was lured to a fake drug deal and shot in his car
Romo's right hand man wasOscar Molina, every bit the beleaguered, micromanaged lackey who did most of the dirty work on the outside.
He extorted marijuana dispensaries, bought drugs in Mexico and had them smuggled to LA and beyond, collected protection money, and bought weapons at gun shows using fake IDs.
All the while, Romo was on him constantly and got angry if he was slow to reply to messages.
'Some say I'm too hands on,' Romo admitted in one exchange.
Molina was careful to stay on his boss' good side, showering him with praise in glowing messages.
'Don't let nothing change u Bee. Ure one of the few that I consider a good homie a good camarada so with that said just know ure boy will always Bee loyal & will always have ure back as long as I am around,' he wrote in one.
Romo replied: 'Gracias for ur words. They r a gift I accept more than money or shiny objects.'
So when Romo told Molina to 'take care of' a 21-year-old wannabe gangster called Carlos Rios, he didn't hesitate.
Rios' was marked for death because hegot a huge letter B tattooed on his left cheek without being a full member of the gang.
'Nobody can have a 'B' on his face without earning it. This is not a game,' the court heard Romo said.
Carlos Rios, 21, was killedbecause he got a huge letter B tattooed on his left cheek without being a full member of the gang
Molina organized for Rios to be shot in the back while he sprayed graffiti in rival territory, even finishing the kid off after two shooters emptying their magazines into his body failed to kill him.
Later in 2017 saw another three murders, members of the rival Columbus gang shot dead in the streets on Romo's orders.
'Everything worked out perfecto once again. And smiley was one of them,' Molina texted Romo to tell him the good news.
But Molina's relationship with his boss began to fray and he was increasingly using too much 'Halloween candy' for Romo's liking.
After missing messages and calls too many times while strung out on drugs, Romo decided he could use a better number two.
He told the rest of the gang Molina owed money to the wrong people, had been caught lying, and was 'getting way, way too high'.
Molina was shot dead when he opened his door for his close friendEder Mendoza at 4am on February 10, 2018, before he could even draw the revolver in his waistband.
Karen Tobar, 23, was killed because Romobelieved she was talking to police about Molina's murder
Two men picked her up in an unlicensed 'bandit cab' and she was next seen dumped in a park the next day, stabbed 60 times
He told a woman he was with that night, Karen Tobar, 23, that he would be right back when his friend came knocking, and 12 days later it was her turn.
Romo ordered Tobar's death, the last known hit of his reign of terror, because he believed she was talking to police about Molina's murder.
Two men picked her up in an unlicensed 'bandit cab' and she was next seen dumped in a park the next day, stabbed 60 times.
After years of cultivating snitches, prosecutors charged Romo with eight murders and a long list of other crimes, and a jury easily convicted him.
'Why would you kill your own gang members?' Deputy District Attorney Eric Siddall asked the jury in his closing argument.
'Because in Romo's world, if you don't fit the mold, if you don't do what he wants, you get killed.'
On Sunday, it was Romo's turn.
