CHICAGO _ "Fear Me" read the sticker with an image of a skeletal, scythe-wielding figure on the back of Roberto Cerda's 1991 Mercury Grand Marquis.
The image was of La Santa Muerte _ Holy Death or Saint Death _ a female deity meant to provide protection and deliverance to the afterlife. Cerda, 30, had built a shrine to the dark icon in his West Side bedroom, laying offerings of alcohol, chocolate and cigarettes at the bony feet of seven figurines.
He had good reason to seek protection.
By day, Cerda worked at a chocolate factory but, in his off hours, he plied a darker trade, moonlighting as "The Watchdog" _ an enforcer for a violent drug and robbery crew that has collectively been linked to at least 13 murders committed from 2009 to 2011, according to Cook County prosecutors, court records and trial testimony. The crew has been charged in 10 of those.
The Santa Muerte death cult was the crew's calling card, prosecutors said _ members had stickers on their vehicles, tattoos on their bodies, shrines in their homes and even Santa Muerte-stamped bands to hold their cash.
"They were a team and that was their team logo," said Assistant State's Attorney Nina Ricci at Cerda's March trial. The crew sold powder cocaine but also robbed and killed would-be customers, according to prosecutors, court testimony and records.
Last week, Cerda's days as an enforcer came to an end. Seven years after his arrest, he was sentenced to life in prison for the 2010 killings of two drug dealers and the middleman who helped set up the deal.
He is the first crew member to be convicted.
"This was a vicious, cold-hearted scheme ... to execute in this cold-blooded manner three persons whose only sin was getting involved in low-level drug dealing," Cook County Judge Timothy Joyce told the courtroom during sentencing as an emotionless Cerda looked on.
For a city dealing with an increasingly deadly and fragmented gang culture, Cerda's brutal method of operation shows how much violence even a small crew can unleash.
The crew is charged with more murders than the notorious Hobos "supergang" that in January was convicted in what federal authorities at the time said was the largest Chicago gang prosecution in recent history, for eight slayings over a decade.
Rising violence among Latino gangs has gained the attention of the FBI. Last year, the bureau's special agent in charge in Chicago, Michael Anderson, created a gang squad that focuses on Latino gangs to supplement the bureau's three other gang squads.
No trial date has been set for two other members of the outfit, the uncle of Cerda's girlfriend, Raul Segura-Rodriguez, 42, and the alleged ringleader's cousin Augustin "Auggie" Toscano, 36.
Between them, they are charged with a total of seven slayings straight out of "Breaking Bad," including four men who were bound with duct tape and shot dead in front of two young children in a Southwest Side garage, prosecutors say. Lawyers for Segura-Rodriguez and Toscano did not respond to a request for comment.
The crew's alleged ringleader, Arturo, is dead. He was killed in a wild shootout, at 37, in 2011 with Chicago police after he, Segura-Rodriguez and Toscano allegedly slit the throats of three men, only one of whom survived.
