Tattoo Leads to Murder Conviction

And now, the donkey of the week....The case of a 2004 liquor store shooting that left a man dead had run cold. That's until L.A. County Sheriff's homicide investigator Kevin Lloyd was flipping through snapshots of tattooed gang members and found the details of the crime all there in ink -- tattoo ink, that is. Anthony Garcia, a member of the Pico Rivera gang, had a tattoo of the homicide on his chest, every gory detail -- "The Christmas lights that lined the roof of the liquor store where 23-year-old John Juarez was gunned down, the direction his body fell, the bowed street lamp across the way and the street sign — all under the chilling banner of RIVERA KILLS, a reference to the gang Rivera-13. As if to seal the deal, below the collarbone of the gang member known by the alias 'Chopper' was a miniature helicopter raining down bullets on the scene." The tattoo was discovered in 2008 and detectives soon went to work to get a conviction. They arrested him and placed him in a cell with a undercover detective (who was pretending to be in jail on attempted murder charges). Through their jailhouse conversations (which were being recorded), Anthony bragged about the shooting. Earlier this week, he confessed and was charged with murder.

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