A Brooklyn Crips member was charged Tuesday with a nearly decade-old murder, accused of whacking his gang’s leader to avenge the death of a close friend.
Jason “Twin” Soto, 36, lured Cypress Gangsta Crips leader Shakim Rivera out of a Brooklyn apartment in 2015 and shot him to death at a time when the gang was feuding with a rival Bloods faction and waging an internal battle, according to federal prosecutors.
Soto blamed Rivera for the death of another member of the gang, Demetrius “Duke” Graham, who he thought of as a younger brother, prosecutors said.
Graham was killed on Feb. 19, 2015, by two gunmen his fellow Crips believe were dispatched by Rivera, and that led his underlings to turn on him, considering him a “traitor,” according to court filings.
“This comrade of ours was no longer a friend of ours, and that envy made him a monster,” Soto wrote of Rivera in what the feds describe as an “autobiographical manuscript,” according to court filings.
He allegedly wrote of Graham, “I failed him as a brother, but would never fail him again.”
The day of Graham’s murder, Soto joined a phone call made by his twin brother, who was locked up on Rikers Island, and told him that he planned to kill Rivera. “I’m touching him,” Soto said during the call, while his twin tried to get him to “stop talking” on the recorded line, according to court filings.
Soto got on a bus from Pennsylvania and headed for Brooklyn, the feds allege. On Feb. 22, he lured Rivera out of an East New York apartment to a spot on Bayview Place in Canarsie, and shot him in the back of the head, the feds allege.
Federal prosecutors have known for years that Soto was their prime suspect in Rivera’s killing, calling him a “cold-blooded assassin who has vowed to kill again” shortly before he was sentenced on federal gun charges in 2018.
At the time, prosecutors were angling to convince a judge to lock Soto up for 40 years. They hadn’t charged or convicted him of Rivera’s 2015 slaying, but after an evidentiary hearing in January 2018, Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Leo Glasser found that prosecutors and presented “clear and convincing” proof that Soto committed the killing.
“I haven’t the slightest doubt that there is more than a preponderance of evidence,” Glasser said. “I would, without any hesitation, say the evidence was clear and convincing, and had this matter gone to trial before a jury, Mr. Soto might well have been convicted of the murder of Shakim Rivera.”
Prosecutors had also said at that evidentiary hearing Soto was planning to poison an elderly woman for complaining to his grandmother about a $100 debt, but abandoned that scheme when he saw two federal agents in the area and realized they were law enforcement.
Nevertheless, Glasser sentenced him to five years behind bars on the gun charge. Soto, who finished the gun sentence in December 2023, was locked up in Pennsylvania until this past May for violating his parole there.
He was arrested on a new indictment charging him with Rivera’s murder Tuesday, after visiting a federal probation office.
“This indictment makes clear that my office and our law enforcement partners are relentless in our pursuit of violent gang members who have committed murders and harmed communities like the Cypress Hills Houses for far too long,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said Tuesday.
The feds describe Soto as a key player in the Cypress Gangsta Crips, with a violent past that includes a 2005 shooting, and a 2007 armed robbery at a Pennsylvania jewelry store.
A federal investigation into violence in the Cypress Hills Houses in the mid 2010s revealed that his gang, a subset of the Eight Trey Crips, held sway in the “Backside” and “Teamside” parts of the complex in Linden Ave. and the west end of Sutter Ave., while their Bloods rivals controlled the “Frontside” on the east end of Sutter.
Rivera, for his part, was suspected in the murder of a Bloods member, Rayvon Henriques, in July 2014 as part of the feud.
In his manuscript, the feds allege, Soto described his philosophy about gang life, explaining how being a Crip meant never backing down from a fight or talking to law enforcement — and how a shootout is “one of many ceremonies a youth must go through in the pursuit of manhood.”
Rivera pleaded not guilty in Brooklyn Federal Court Tuesday and was ordered held without bail. His lawyer declined comment.