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Gang leader took unusual route to the top
Monterey
County Herald | February 19, 2008 Tuesday
Copyright 2008 Monterey County Herald. All Rights Reserved. Posted with
permission.
By
JULIA REYNOLDS Herald Salinas Bureau
To the young gangsters slinging heroin in Chinatown, he was always known as Bubba.
Robert Patrick Hanrahan, 36, had an unlikely trajectory within the Nuestra Familia gang.
The "crew" members working under Hanrahan said he didn't speak Spanish and wasn't even Mexican-American. But gang members know the Nuestra Familia as an equal opportunity employer to members who are loyal and put in work.
Hanrahan by his own admission already had a long career with the Nuestra Familia and its Norteno gang offshoots when he was sentenced to 13 years in prison last April on drug and gang charges.
His name came to light last week through his romantic involvement with Sara Gracia, whose appointment to the Salinas police advisory commission sparked a controversy that led to Gracia's withdrawal. (See story on page 1).
Hanrahan has been in and out of state prison since a 1993 robbery and drug sales conviction, and for the next seven years, solidified his relationship with the Nuestra Familia. But it was a prison stint in 2000 that netted him a big promotion within the gang.
According to FBI documents, when Hanrahan was paroled in 2001 he came home with a letter from Salinas gang captain Daniel "Stork" Perez in Pelican Bay State Prison.
Leader in Salinas|
The document put Hanrahan in charge of Nuestra Familia's Salinas regiment, one of the gang's most coveted positions.
But Hanrahan's reign over the city was cut short when a gang leader demoted him, replacing him with Armando Santa Cruz of East Salinas. Hanrahan's former crew members complained that the new boss, Santa Cruz, wouldn't let them party like Bubba did, preferring the military-style discipline Nuestra Familia is known for.
Hanrahan soon went back to prison and, some would say, caught a lucky break the gang leader who demoted him turned out to be an FBI informant.
In 2001, his former crew members and Santa Cruz were all swept up in federal and state gang conspiracy cases. Santa Cruz got 20 years in federal prison, and dozens of others were sent away for life.
When he was paroled again in 2003, court records show Hanrahan took up again with gangsters in Salinas and Watsonville, and from 2004-07 he was one of dozens of Nuestra Familia members and associates who fell under the competing lenses of federal and local law enforcement as each faction vied to make its own conspiracy bust.
Among those under the microscope in Salinas were Hanrahan; Larry "Paqui" Amaro, known as Hanrahan's mentor; and Gabriel Caracheo, a longtime associate and the brother of Hanrahan's off-again, on-again girlfriend Sara Gracia.
In Castroville, law enforcement officials were also eyeing a paroled Nuestra Familia associate named Mario Diaz. While on parole, Diaz skipped town, later surfacing in Los Banos, where he opened a clothing store that federal agents say was a front for the gang's drug operations.
Search warrants|
Salinas police rushed to execute search warrants and make arrests as prosecutors waited, eager to nail the whole bunch in court.
But there was a conflict: to federal agents sniffing around the same turf, it was more convenient for Amaro to stay free while the FBI built a case against what they called the Mario Diaz Drug Trafficking Organization, aided by a wired informant and hundreds of wiretapped telephone conversations.
Between federal and local law enforcement, there was a brief but uncomfortable period of bad communication and stepping on each other's toes as the two factions pursued the same men.
In August 2004, Salinas officers obtained a search warrant and raided a house where they found Hanrahan and another girlfriend, Leticia Salcido, asleep on the floor.
In the room were more than two pounds of crystal methamphetamine, three-quarters of a pound of cocaine, pagers, cell phones, ledger sheets, two digital scales, empty plastic baggies, a stolen .40 caliber semi-automatic handgun, a 12-gauge shotgun and a Russian rifle.
Cash in pants pocket|
Detectives said a wide-angle surveillance camera was mounted outside the house. A pair of men's pants found next to Hanrahan had $4,645 in cash in the pocket. Inside a safe were Nuestra Familia documents listing the names of gang members in various regions of California.
Hanrahan posted bail so quickly officials couldn't request a denial before he hit the streets.
The trial was postponed and in March 2006, Hanrahan failed to appear in court. It didn't take long for the court to declare him a fugitive.
Rumors flew around Salinas and in the prisons: Was Bubba dead? Hiding in Tijuana? Was he working for the Arellano-Felix Cartel? Other rumors placed him in Las Vegas because Hanrahan was known to love boxing.
Acting on a tip, agents learned he was indeed alive. They apprehended him in November 2006 at the San Ysidro border crossing, on the U.S. side facing Tijuana. Officials did not say which way he was headed.
He pleaded guilty to gang and drug charges and was sentenced to 13 years. A few months later, Amaro and Caracheo were arrested and indicted in a huge federal drug conspiracy case dubbed Operation Valley Star that will play out in the Eastern District Court of California over the next few years.
Once again, Hanrahan had narrowly missed being swept up in a federal conspiracy case.
Under federal sentencing laws, Caracheo, Amaro and more than a dozen others in that case now face the possibility of life in prison.
Salinas regiment in chaos|
With Amaro and Hanrahan out of the picture, gang investigators say the Salinas regiment of the Nuestra Familia is now in chaos.
"There's no clear leadership in the Central Coast," said Santa Cruz County sheriff's Sgt. Roy Morales, who has investigated the gang for years.
"There are no new guys" filling the space left by Amaro's group, he said. "Now's the time for law enforcement to really pay attention."
In fact, the Nuestra Familia is undergoing power struggles at all levels across the state.
Besides reeling from the loss of its top street operators, the gang has been hurt by an unprecedented number of defectors as prisons across the state are setting up protective custody yards for gang members who profess to give up the life.
Hanrahan is not among them. He is currently in state prison in Tehachapi.
As a validated member of the gang, corrections officials say he will soon be transferred to Pelican Bay Prison, where Nuestra Familia leaders run the organization's business from the maximum-security unit.
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Robert "Bubba" Hanrahan
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