Brenda Paz
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Brenda Paz (1985-2003) was an MS-13 (a Hispanic gang) member. She was born in Honduras and raised in Los Angeles where she joined the gang at the age of 12.[1]
She was arrested by Virginia in June 2002 where she witnessed against the gang.
When the 17-year-old was arrested by Virginia police in June 2002, she unexpectedly started telling them vivid tales about life as a member of the violent Mara Salvatrucha street gang, better known as MS-13. Her boyfriend was a gang leader and a murder suspect. Paz knew MS-13's cardinal rule—talk to the cops and die—but she hated rules, and loved to talk, and the police were very good listeners. A Honduran-born runaway who was raised in Los Angeles, she joined MS-13 at 12 and witnessed dozens of crimes, including murders. Paz's memory was so vivid that the Feds enrolled her in the witness-protection program to keep their new informant safe from fellow gang members. "She wasn't just a witness," Greg Hunter, her court-appointed lawyer, told NEWSWEEK. "She was like the Rain Man of witnesses."
Paz was relocated to another state and furnished with a new name and Social Security number. She was warned to be inconspicuous and to avoid any contact with gang members. But Paz chafed under the rules. She called old friends and invited some to visit her. Then, in June 2003, desperately lonely and homesick, she fled her safe house and returned to northern Virginia. A few days later, two fishermen found Paz's stabbed, bloated body on a riverbank.
She was 18 years old and four months pregnant.
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