Yesterday, OC Weekly published a feature story, about ex-FBI informant and Irvine-raised hoodlum Kenji Gallo and his quest to solve the 22-year-old murder of Joe Avila, the restaurateur of El Ranchito fame who allegedly was also one of OC's biggest coke dealers in the 1980s. You can read that story, “Blown Away,” here, and follow updates at Gallo's blog, over here.
Avila was murdered just after midnight in May 1987 as he was driving his Porsche convertible in the Santa Ana Heights neighborhood of Costa Mesa. Whoever pulled the trigger was a professional: the neat line of bullet holes in the car suggested either a MAC 10 or an Uzi outfitted with a supressor to stabilize the weapon. The presence of a motorcycle left at the scene hinted that the killers may have been Colombians, because motorcycle-riding assassins known as sicarios were all the rage in South America's top cocaine exporting country at the time.
]
One of the last people to see Avila alive is Kenji Gallo, who recently published a bestselling memoir, Breakshot: A Life in the 21st Century Mafia,
which Gallo co-wrote with true crime writer Mathew Randazzo V. Anyone who read that story
and wonders if Gallo really exists might want to show up tomorrow at 2
p.m. at the Irvine Spectrum Barnes N Noble, where he's signing
copies of his bestselling book.
All are welcome except for angry mob guys!
Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou is Editor of OC Weekly. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), which provided the basis for the 2014 Focus Features release starring Jeremy Renner and the L.A. Times-bestseller Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). He is also the author of The Weed Runners (2013) and Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood (2016).