Reputed Mexican Mafia member charged in killing of L.A. club owner, B-movie actor
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One night nearly 15 years ago, two men broke into the Downey home of Hermilio Franco, an actor and nightclub owner.
The scene could have been ripped from one of the low-budget, shoot-em-up Mexican films Franco starred in — or the ballads chronicling the drug trade that were sung at his club.
The intruders shook Franco and his wife awake. Franco pulled a chrome-plated .45 from under the mattress. Screams and gunshots filled the bedroom.
When the shooting stopped, Franco was dead. One of the intruders lay moaning a few feet away, paralyzed by a bullet that struck his spine. The second would-be robber slipped out a back door.
The paralyzed assailant was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison in 2014. His companion went unidentified until last week, when Los Angeles County prosecutors charged that Manuel Quintero, a reputed Mexican Mafia member nicknamed “Snuffy,” was the intruder who got away.
Quintero, already in custody on charges of conspiring to murder a rapper who allegedly ran afoul of the Mexican Mafia, pleaded not guilty to charges that he killed Franco while trying to rob him and burglarize his house.
In a war for control of L.A.’s Armenian underworld, federal authorities say rival crews of gangsters engaged in a series of dramatic shootings and kidnappings across the San Fernando Valley.
Quintero’s lawyer, Randy Collins, said his client was innocent of the charges and noted that another man has already been convicted of murdering Franco.
“There was no credible evidence linking Manuel Quintero to these charges more than 15 years ago, and the same is true today,” Collins said in a written statement.
If the charges are to be believed, the killing of Franco would represent a stunning betrayal. Quintero had previously dated Franco’s daughter, according to a police report — and she was inside the house when her father was shot dead.
Born in the western Mexican state of Sinaloa, Franco immigrated to California at 13 and later found work washing dishes, in construction and as a security guard, The Times reported in 2011.
After managing small bars in the Florence district, he bought a nightclub in Lynwood that he named El Farallon, Spanish for “the cliff by the sea.”
The club, along with a concert and rodeo venue Franco later acquired in El Monte, was “an all family business,” his wife testified in 2012.
“I would work wherever I was needed,” she said. “If I had to wash dishes, I would. If I had to sell sodas or water or fruit, I would do that.”
El Farallon became known as a venue for narcorridos, ballads about the triumphs and betrayals of the drug trade. An early performer was Chalino Sanchez, a legendary Sinaloan singer who was gunned down in 1992.
Franco also starred in straight-to-DVD films. In “El Baleado,” “Chuy Y Mauricio 3: El Chrysler 300,” “El Corrido del Katch” and “Una Tumba Para Dos Hermanos,” he played the part of ranchers and drug traffickers avenging the deaths of loved ones.
Franco’s wife said the movies were more of a “hobby” than a career. “Mexican films don’t pay much,” she testified at his killer’s trial.
Franco made enough money to raise his three children in an affluent part of Downey. A Mercedes sedan and Cadillac Escalade were parked in the driveway, and his safe was stuffed with bundles of $100 bills held together with rubber bands, according to a video filmed by police after his death.
Franco was dogged by rumors he was in the drug business. His widow testified it wasn’t true.
“I was asked if he was involved in anything like that, but I say no,” she said. “He was a hard-working man.”
Around 2:45 a.m. on Nov. 3, 2010, Franco and his wife were shaken awake in their bed by two intruders saying “foul words,” she testified.
One of the men shot Franco, who drew his .45 and fired back, his wife testified. She grabbed a shotgun from a closet and ran out, she said, jumping over the body of a man on the floor.
The man was yelling expletives and calling out for “the other guy,” she recalled.
Franco’s daughter, Adriana, testified she woke up to the sounds of shots and her father yelling. She ran toward her parents’ room and saw a man slip out a back door. She testified she didn’t recognize the intruder.
Adriana was once in a relationship with Quintero, who grew up in the neighboring city of Paramount, according to a police report reviewed by The Times.
In 1999, detectives were tailing Quintero, whom they suspected of operating a methamphetamine lab. When they pulled him over in a blue BMW X5, Adriana Franco was in the passenger seat, the report said. She told the detectives she was Quintero’s girlfriend of six years, according to the report.
Adriana Franco declined to comment when reached last week by The Times.
Quintero served 10 years in prison for manufacturing methamphetamine. After his release, he was implicated in a kidnapping that played out days before Hermilio Franco’s death.
The powerful prison syndicate known as the Aryan Brotherhood has moved to expand its reach, testimony and court records show, relying on gang called Public Enemy Number 1, for brutal killings, kidnappings, and drug deals on the streets of Southern California.
Facing another drug case, Quintero was trying to get a stake together before he jumped bail and fled to Mexico, a witness testified before a San Diego County grand jury.
According to a transcript of the woman’s grand jury testimony, Quintero and his associate Larry Trujillo wanted her to obtain $10,000 from a fraudulently accessed bank account. When she failed, she testified, Trujillo tortured her in a San Diego hotel room for several days and cut off her ear, saying he was “taking it to Snuffy.”
The woman escaped less than 24 hours before the intruders jimmied a back door at Franco’s home in Downey.
The assailant paralyzed by the bullet from Franco’s .45 was Trujillo.
He rode in an ambulance with a sheriff’s deputy, who testified that Trujillo asked in a soft voice if he was going to die.
Trujillo said he “wanted to make things right.” The plan was to rob Franco, he admitted. According to the deputy, Trujillo said he’d broken into the home with someone called “Spooky,” whose true name he didn’t know.
Trujillo, paralyzed from the neck down, attended his trial in a gurney. Midway through it, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 2014 to 25 years to life.
He was granted medical parole two years later and released to a healthcare facility, court records show. Prison authorities revoked his parole after he gave a healthcare worker “chocolate candy laced with marijuana” and tried to “enforce prison politics” at the facility, a judge wrote in an order.
In 2023, another judge found Trujillo was “permanently incapacitated” and granted him compassionate release.
In 2012, two years after Franco’s death, Quintero was arrested in Tijuana and charged with kidnapping the woman in San Diego. He pleaded no contest to false imprisonment and served less than two years in prison.
Released in 2014, Quintero stayed out of jail until last month, when a task force of Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and FBI agents arrested him on charges that he put a hit on a Los Angeles rapper who was later slashed and beaten in jail.
Last week, Quintero’s lawyer asked a judge to release him on bail. In a motion, Collins called the conspiracy case a flimsy one, resting on hearsay and innuendo cobbled together by investigators who heard what they wanted to hear on recorded jail calls.
Collins described Quintero, now 49, as a devoted father of two who enjoys playing basketball and video games with his eighth-grader son. According to his lawyer, Quintero is a legitimate businessman who owns a trucking company, manages a restaurant in La Habra and pays his taxes. Collins filed returns that showed Quintero and his wife jointly reported earning $300,000 to $600,000 annually since 2018.
Michael Lerma, 68, was convicted of racketeering and murder in a trial that showed how he called the shots for gangs in his hometown of Pomona and took over his wing of a federal jail in downtown Los Angeles, overseeing drug sales, stabbings, and at least one killing.
According to Collins, Quintero also started a charity that gives school supplies to “underprivileged inner-city kids.”
“Mr. Quintero has personally spoken to groups of at-risk youth, sharing his time, experience and encouragement which has led to helping many of them find hope and direction,” the lawyer wrote.
A judge denied Collins’ motion, and Quintero remains detained without bail.
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