Homicide Watch Trenton

Jose “Boom Bat” Negrete, then the new leader of the Latin Kings street gang, was charismatic. He was also two-faced, a former member of the street gang testified.

Jose “Boom Bat” Negrete

Standing over the casket of Latin “Queen” Jeri Lynn Dotson, Negete and a now ex-Latin Kings gang member turned state witness Jonathan Rodriguez were paying their final respects at Dotson’s funeral. Negrete placed black and yellow rosary beads — the gang’s colors — and a yellow bandana in Dotson’s casket.

Then, growing enraged, Negrete blamed the woman’s fate on her choices. Dotson was found dead inside her home August 30, 2004, suffering from a single execution-style gunshot wound to the back of the head, after she witnessed the abduction of another gang member, Alex Ruiz.

The state contends Negrete feared Dotson, who was believed to have already broken the gang’s street omerta, or code of silence, by providing information to police and a rival gang, the Ñetas, would break her silence and speak about the abduction.

“This is what you get for being a snitch, b****,” Negrete said, according to Rodriguez. He warned “Boom Bat” members of Dotson’s family could have heard.

Rodriguez, whose testimony provided a dramatic backdrop Friday on the opening day of Negrete’s fourth murder trial, said he recalled Negrete responded he didn’t “give a [expletive]” whether the family heard.

Later, the duplicitous Negrete held a march in honor of Dotson and vowed to her family at a “bogus speech” he would help bring about justice for her death, Rodriguez said.

He also testified that, at one point, Negrete enlisted him in a plot to kill Ruiz, but he declined, potentially exposing himself to the top’s boss’ wrath.

Few escaped the wrath of Negrete, the newly enshrined “Inca,” or leader of the Latin Kings street gang. Not Dotson, nor Ruiz, who was abducted by three gang members who were instructed to beat, strangle and leave him for dead in a garbage dumpster on Duck Island, Assistant Prosecutor John Boyle said during opening statements.

“That falls at the feet of Jose Negrete,” Boyle said, pointing to the defendant, “because it was all done on his orders.”

But Ruiz survived.

Thomas Keyes, a state police detective who responded to the area where motorists reported seeing Ruiz, testified Ruiz appeared to be hallucinating when he encountered him walking on a southbound entrance ramp along New Jersey Route 129.

He was holding a towel, his eyes were swollen shut and he had a deep red ligature mark around his neck, from when he was choked out.

Keyes said he attempted to get Ruiz to sit on the ground but he insisted he wasn’t safe because there were snakes on the ground.

“It was almost as if he was on narcotics,” said Keyes, who placed Ruiz in handcuffs and into the back of his patrol unit until an ambulance arrived to transport him to a city hospital.

Ruiz was targeted after he defected from the Ñetas, triggering a “war” between the rival factions that resulted in brutal beatings, stabbings and gunfights, Rodriguez testified.

On one occasion, a handful of Ñetas planned to fight more than a dozen members of the Latin Kings at a city park. Cops arrived and interceded within minutes, Rodriguez testified. As soon as Negrete saw the cops, he handed off a silver revolver, Rodriguez said.

Furlong loudly objected to the testimony and immediately moved for a mistrial, which wasn’t granted after a lengthy sidebar between the attorneys and the judge, Pedro Jimenez. The judge instructed jurors to disregard that part of the testimony.

Beef wasn’t something Negrete, the gang’s new top boss who wanted to expand the Latin Kings’ numbers, needed at the time.

So top leaders from each gang met to broker an end to the violence. Members of the Ñetas, including Ruiz’s own brother, wanted Ruiz handed over to atone for his defection, Rodriguez said.

The Latin Kings, on Negrete’s orders, were told to hand over Ruiz.

Rodriguez, a “pee-wee” or low-ranking solider who was recently ranked in, went with several gang members to pick up Ruiz, who was unaware he was being handed over. Boyle called the process “sleepwalking,” or lulling a gang member into a false sense of security.

Rodriguez said they smoked marijuana and talked, waiting for members of the Ñetas to arrive so they could hand him over.

But the beating at the hands of the Ñetas was apparently not enough for Negrete, who allegedly enlisted three of his own gang members to finish the job.

Rodriguez testified “Boom Bat” and several other gang members visited him and Negrete asked him to “take out” Ruiz. Negrete shouted Ruiz was a “goner” and referred to Dotson as a “snitch” who had to be eliminated, according to Rodriguez.

Boyle asked Rodriguez to explain the meaning of snitch to the jury.

“I’m basically considered one now by being on the stand,” he said.

Rodriguez said he called Negrete “crazy” and refused the top boss’ order, exposing him to punishment that included the possibility of death.

Negrete’s attorney, Jack Furlong, looking to paint the street gang in less violent terms, referred to the Latin Kings as a “community organization” with national leadership and localized chapters, saying members were encouraged to seek and maintain steady employment, not take drugs and do good in their community.

The central theme in the defense’s theory is that Negrete would have never done anything to “contract the membership” of his new empire, Furlong said during his opening statement.

“Are they a gang or are they a community organization?” Furlong asked. “Nothing in their manifesto says ‘break heads.’”

Furlong’s opening statement included a lengthy preamble about his client’s constitutional right to a jury trial. He told jurors they were obligated to keep an open mind, hear all the evidence and not conclude Negrete is guilty simply after hearing the state’s opening argument.

As long as his client was not “starting out 30 yards behind the end zone or 40 points down in a basketball game” after the state’s opening remarks, Furlong said he could live with the jury’s verdict.

“You’re the best 16 people we could find,” he said.

Furlong planned to attack the allegations by calling into question the credibility of the “young men and women who will point the finger at Jose Negrete.”

Poking holes in Rodriguez’s account, Furlong suggested it was unlikely Negrete would have asked a newly ranked-in member to partake in such a heinous crime.

“These three guys just came to you as a pee-wee and said, ‘Hey, do you want to shoot up Alex?’ That’s how it went down?”

“Yes,” Rodriguez responded.