This is the moment a teenage MS-13 gangster admitted torturing and murdering a 15-year-old girl who she believed had killed her boyfriend.
Venus Romero Iraheta, 18, pleaded guilty to the murder in Fairfax County, Virginia on Monday, one year after brutally stabbing Damaris Reyes Rivas 13 times.
Now a video of her interrogation by police in February last year has been revealed, showing the gang member explaining why she killed Reyes Rivas.
Venus Romero Iraheta, 18, pleaded guilty to the murder in Fairfax County on Monday, one year after brutally stabbing Damaris Reyes Rivas 13 times. Pictured: Iraheta pointing to her neck to show cops where she stabbed her victim
A video of her interrogation by police in February last year has been revealed, showing the MS-13 gang member explaining why she killed Reyes Rivas
Iraheta (left) said she murdered Reyes Rivas (right) to avenge the death of her boyfriend, Christian Sosa Rivas, who she claimed Reyes Rivas had lured to his death
Iraheta, then 17, took Reyes Rivas to a wooded area at Lake Accotink Park with nine other people before torturing and murdering her.
She said she killed the girl to avenge the murder of her boyfriend, Christian Sosa Rivas. She blamed Reyes Rivas for luring Sosa Rivas, also an MS-13 member, to his death.
In the interrogation video, Iraheta tells cops in Spanish that she told Reyes Rivas she would ‘remember me until the day we see each other in hell.’
She added: ‘Don’t forget my name. And I told her my full name and I told her my nickname.
‘And I told it to her and I told her to never forget who I was. I told her someday we’re going to see each other again.’
When she is asked what she did next, she replies in English: ‘I killed her.’
In the interrogation video, Iraheta tells cops in Spanish that she told Reyes Rivas (pictured) she would ‘remember me until the day we see each other in hell’
She then explains that she stabbed her ‘something like’ thirteen times with a knife.
Pointing to her stomach, she said she stabbed Reyes Rivas ’12 [times] here’ before pointing to her neck and adding: ‘The thirteenth was here.’
Iraheta told interrogators she had asked Reyes Rivas if she ‘had something to do with’ her boyfriend.
When she said yes, Iraheta replied: ‘I’m not going to forgive you.’
She went on: ‘I told her, “I warned you not to mess with me. I told you not to mess with Christian. I told you to stay away from him or you would see what would happen. You don’t play with me.”
‘So I hit her. I kept hitting her. Until they stopped me.’
The disgusting murder was also recorded on video with a cellphone so it could be sent to gang leaders in El Salvador as a way of gaining promotion.
Iraheta told cops she cut off a tattoo on Reyes Rivas’s hand that Sosa Rivas had given her before the murder.
But when she is asked if the murder bothers her, she simply shakes her head.
Fairfax County’s attorney, Ray Morrogh, said on Monday that Iraheta was a ‘prodigy at violence’, NBC Washington reported.
Iraheta lured Damaris to a wooded area near this park. Gruesome cell phone videos show the gang torturing the girl
The disgusting murder was also recorded on video with a cellphone so it could be sent to gang leaders in El Salvador as a way of gaining promotion. Left: Iraheta. Right: Reyes Rivas
Iraheta could get a maximum term of life in jail plus twenty years when she is sentenced on May 25.
So far, seven of the 10 people charged in connection with the murder have either been convicted or have pleaded guilty.
They will be sentenced on May 5.
MS-13, short for Mara Salvatrucha, consists chiefly of immigrants or descendants of immigrants from Central America.
The gang is notorious for its links to cartels and organized crime, and for its ability to access high-powered weapons.
Because of civil wars and guerrilla insurgencies in Central America, many of the gang’s founding members had paramilitary experience, making them more deadly than other criminal groups.
Its primary weapons, however, are baseball bats and machetes.
The Department of Justice classifies MS-13 as a ‘transnational criminal organization’ engaged in drug trafficking, kidnapping, human smuggling, prostitution, murder and extortion.
President Donald Trump has referred to MS-13 as ‘bad hombres.’
Because many MS-13 members are under the age of 18, the U.S. is unable to lawfully return them to their home countries.
The gang has a strong presence in Southern California, Washington and Northern Virginia, all areas with substantial Salvadoran populations.
There are at least 30,000 members in a range of countries, including at least 10,000 in the United States.
The Department of Justice classifies MS-13 as a ‘transnational criminal organization’ engaged in drug trafficking, kidnapping, human smuggling, prostitution, murder and extortion. Pictured: Members of the gang in a San Salvador prison last year
Its official motto is ‘Kill, Rape, Control.’
Among the most high-profile killings attributed to MS-13 in Virginia was the 2003 slaying of a pregnant teenager who had become a police informant.
Brenda Paz, 17, was stabbed to death and her body was left along the banks of the Shenandoah River.
Thirteen other MS-13 members, ten of whom are illegal immigrants, were arrested in connection to seven slayings on New York’s Long Island in 2017.
Trump delivered his most explicit verdict on the gang in August last year, saying during a speech in New York that ‘they kidnap, they extort, they rape and they rob. They stomp on their victims. They beat them with clubs, they slash them with machetes, and they stab them with knives.’
‘They have transformed peaceful parks and beautiful quiet neighborhoods into bloodstained killing fields. They’re animals.’