BOCA RATON, Fla. –
BOCA RATON, Fla. – The Broward Sheriff’s Office, the NCIS Southeast Field Office, FBI Miami, Customs and Border Protection Miami, Homeland Security Investigations Miami, the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida recently announced nine arrests in connection with four homicides in South Florida related to the MS-13 gang in 2014 and 2015.
Six suspects have already pleaded guilty and are facing mandatory life prison sentences. Three suspects were indicted last month by a federal grand jury, and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said during a press briefing April 4 at the Broward Sheriff Office’s headquarters in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
As early as 2015, the Broward Sheriff’s Office Homicide Unit investigators noticed similarities in several violent local murders, carried out with knives or machetes and which appeared to be gang related. However, leads were exhausted and the cases remained unresolved.
In 2020, the Broward Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit reopened the unsolved homicides and pieced together evidence using a variety of investigative techniques and modern technologies. NCIS special agents provided pre- and post-clandestine grave excavation support, conducting scans that captured detailed digital information of the crime scene for further analysis.
The above story references information from a Broward Sheriff’s Office press release dated April 4, which may be found
here.