Gang member does himself in - twice

Good story about a sheriff's detective who was thumbing through photos of gang members and recognized a Pico Rivera murder scene tattooed on one guy's chest. The whole detailed scene was there, and investigator Kevin Lloyd recognized it only because he had been there as a young uniformed deputy. The 2004 murder had rolled over into the cold cases. Robert Faturechi in the Los Angeles Times:

Each key detail was right there: the Christmas lights that lined the roof of the liquor store where 23-year-old John Juarez was gunned down, the direction his body fell, the bowed street lamp across the way and the street sign — all under the chilling banner of RIVERA KILLS, a reference to the gang Rivera-13.

As if to seal the deal, below the collarbone of the gang member known by the alias "Chopper" was a miniature helicopter raining down bullets on the scene.

Lloyd's discovery of the tattoo in 2008 launched a bizarre investigation that soon led to Anthony Garcia's arrest for the shooting. Then sheriff's detectives, posing as gang members, began talking to Garcia, 25, in his holding cell. They got a confession that this week led to a first-degree murder conviction in a killing investigators had once all but given up hope of solving.