A federal jury returned racketeering and murder convictions against three members of the MS-13 gang in Baltimore. They and other gang members took part in a grisly string of violence over three months in 2020 that left two young women dead, one of whom was stabbed 143 times.

Jurors deliberated for about two-and-a-half days before convicting Wilson Arturo Constanza-Galdomez, 26; Edis Omar Valenzuela-Rodriguez, 25; and Jonathan Pesquera-Puerto, 24. That followed a nearly two-week trial that featured testimony from three men who were members of the gang and participated in the attacks, as well as a woman who survived her own attack.

Though the trial occurred more than five years after the crimes occurred, it shed light on a gang that law enforcement authorities say has been increasing in ranks in the Baltimore area after long having a footprint in the Washington, D.C., suburbs.

Cooperators spoke of a loosely affiliated group of young men who, because of their allegiance to the gang, were prepared to carry out vicious attacks without hesitation, on flimsy or even inaccurate pretenses.

“Kill ‘chavalas,’” Assistant U.S. Attorney Grace Bowen told jurors in closing arguments Tuesday, using a gang term for rivals. “That’s what MS-13 does. Their focus is on being the biggest, the baddest, and the most violent gang.”

Members sliced the face of a man who was wearing the Nike Cortez sneakers favored by their gang and offending colors of the rival 18th Street gang, jurors heard. They lured another rival to Patterson Park to smoke marijuana, then stabbed him until a woman yelled that she was going to call the police.

Those victims survived their attacks. Then in early June, members of the gang suspected a 16-year-old they hung out with, Gabriela Alejandra Gonzalez Ardon, was a member of 18th Street. They confronted her, took her to a trail at the Loch Raven Reservoir and went through her phone. There they found a picture of her displaying the 18th Street gang’s sign, witnesses testified.

In what prosecutors described as a “feeding frenzy,” the defendants and others were said to have taken turns slashing and stabbing her.

“They hacked her so brutally that her face was essentially in ribbons when a 14-year-old girl found her body on the trail,” Bowen, the prosecutor, said.

Days later, another teenage girl who had been hanging out with the same crowd, Michelle Tenezaca, was suspected by gang members of cooperating with law enforcement. Gang members saw a tattoo for the 2018 birth of her daughter on her arm and mistook it for a sign of gang allegiance.

She was taken to railroad tracks in Southeast Baltimore and fatally stabbed.

They attempted the next day to kill her sister, who played dead and survived her attack.

Defense attorneys said the cooperators were untrustworthy and spinning untrue stories in a bid to receive lighter sentences.

Julie Reamy, who represented Constanza-Galdomez, said that while prosecutors presented a number of witnesses and shocking images detailing gruesome crimes allegedly committed by the defendants, they failed to present corroborating evidence. The government “built its case around young men who lie with ease and have a lot at stake,” Reamy said.

Defense attorney Richard Bardos, who represented Valenzela-Rodriguez, added in his closing statement that the government’s “case rises and falls on the cooperators. The first question is, do you trust these people?”

On Friday, jurors convicted the men on all counts. Acting on a directive from the Trump administration, federal prosecutors just months before trial sought to pursue the death penalty, which was rejected by the judge. With the convictions in the case, the defendants could now receive up to life in prison.