Three times this year, people linked to a Pueblo street gang repeatedly made attempts to kill a Pueblo man identified only as R.M. in court documents.
Documents filed in U.S. District Court in Denver outline the plot:
- On May 30, someone shot R.M.
- On July 11, Ricardo “Rico” Estevan Suazo, 26, allegedly shot R.M. in the stomach.
- In September, Suazo, then in jail, alternately tried to hire a member of the Surenos’ East Side Dukes gang known as “Crazy,” an undercover police officer and a fellow inmate to kill R.M.
Already facing first-degree assault and serious bodily injury charges for allegedly shooting R.M. for the July shooting, Suazo, along with his girlfriend, Reina Ashley Gonzales, 30, were indicted Wednesday in federal court on two counts each of conspiracy to commit “murder-for-hire.”
The succession of murder attempts was investigated by agents from Laredo, Texas, and members of the ATF Pueblo Gun Task Force including Pueblo police detectives.
An affidavit gives a gritty play-by-play description of how an undercover agent and the task force built a federal case against Suazo and Gonzales over a period of several weeks in September.
Being locked up in the Pueblo County Detention Facility allegedly didn’t deter Suazo from allegedly attempting to complete the murder he was first charged with when he allegedly shot R.M. in May, according to ATF records.
At 12:20 p.m. on Sept. 10, a confidential informant called B.R. who is an undercover Pueblo detective on the task force, said Suavo was trying to finish the job by hiring “Crazy,” the nickname for a 32-year-old Sureno named Robert Tenorio.
During the same phone call, the C.I. handed the phone to Suazo, who was in the same cell block. Suazo, identifying himself as “Rico,” began speaking with detective B.R., the affidavit said.
When B.R. asked Suazo what he wanted, Suazo said “he had a job” for him and that B.R. should speak to his “home girl” Gonzales and she would tell him everything. The detective asked if the woman knew what job he wanted done and Suazo allegedly replied that “No, no Reina’s gonna understand. Just talk to her straight-up. She’ll know what’s up.”
B.R. asked about the payment for the job and Suazo told him the woman knows “exactly everything,” the document says. He allegedly led B.R. to believe that when he killed “R.M.” he would get paid “very quickly.” Suazo allegedly gave the detective her phone number. Gonzales agreed to meet with B.R. in the Big “R” Farming and Ranch Supply parking lot. They met there at 10:40 a.m. on Sept. 14 and Gonzales told the undercover officer that the payment would be $10,000, the court record says.
Gonzales indicated they had tried to hire someone else to kill R.M., but that “it hadn’t worked out.” She described the home of R.M.’s uncle, where R.M. was staying. Gonzales then called Suazo in jail and said: “Just had a date with your boy, Junior,” adding that she wanted to buy a house for $10,000.”
The following day, she met with Suazo for 13 minutes, the court record says.
“Homie called me this morning and he already wants me to go on a date. I’m going to move into this house cause it’s a sure thing,” she allegedly told Suazo, according to a jail recording of the call.
In a later phone call with the undercover officer, she expressed misgivings about following through because Suazo is an “idiot.” She said R.M. had already testified against Suazo at his preliminary hearing on the assault charge. Later that day, the undercover agent drove to the front of the Tinseltown movie theater to meet Gonzales at her request but she never arrived, the report says.
Suazo called the C.I., who said Suazo was still serious and would give the undercover officer $1,500 and a title to his Lexus. A recorded call between Suazo and Gonzales confirmed the new deal, court records say. But on Sept. 26, Suazo told Gonzales in a phone call that she could forget about buying the house. He had a new plan. He was going to pay $600 to the jail to bond out Andrew Mousseaux, 27, from the Pueblo jail, and he would help them get the house.
A second confidential informant came forward on Sept. 27, saying that he was speaking out because his daughter had been murdered three years earlier because no one helped her and he didn’t want to see someone else killed because he wouldn’t step forward. He told detectives that Suazo hired an inmate he knew only as “Red” to kill a man.
That night when Gonzales told Suazo during a phone call that she would turn her phone off for a week, he dared her to so.
“What are you gonna do? Bond somebody else out and have them come and get me?” she said.
Federal agents arrested Sauzo and Gonzales the following day on Sept. 28.
