OFF THE WIRE
By ROBIN EPLEY - Staff Writer
Posted: 08/15/2010 10:03:59 PM PDT
OROVILLE -- The first time Alfonso "Big Al" Aceves committed armed robbery, he was 15 years old.
The life of crime quickly elevated to heroin use and three tours of duty in Vietnam, where he killed men with his bare hands and was shot three times. Aceves said he remembers cutting off men's ears and putting them in his pocket as a token and then carving his initials into their chest.
A few years later, he co-founded the notorious Mongol Nation motorcycle gang and was accused of bombings and trying to set President Ronald Reagan on fire.
Today, Aceves is a self-proclaimed "Man of God" who, along with other former gang members Ernesto "Kilroy" Roybal of the Mexican Mafia and "Fast Fred" Mendrin of the Aryan Brotherhood, stood on the stage at Oroville's Church of the Nazarene on Sunday and spoke of their former lives and their earnest repentance.
"'God wants to forgive you,' " Aceves said he was told by a friend. "And I told him, 'You don't know what you're talking about. You don't know what I've done.' "
The lecture was brought to the area by Mike Tomlinson, founder and director of Jordan Crossing Ministries. Aceves, Roybal and Mendrin are all pious Christians now, and tour the country speaking about their experiences and commitment to God.
"I had a problem with my self image," said Mendrin about why he joined the gang in the first place. "I wanted to prove I could walk around and not be afraid, but I was still scared." He said he became "sick and tired" of
putting on a "facade."
Mendrin said that in 1969, someone asked him what he was doing with his life. "I told him, ignorantly, that I was working my way towards prison," he said. The next year, Mendrin was sent to San Quentin for murder.
"I don't even know why I murdered the guy," he said. "I was told ... it was up to me to kill him."
San Quentin is where Mendrin joined the Aryan Brotherhood gang and killed another man. "The only reason I did it was because he was black," he said. He was then transferred to the Los Angeles County Jail, where he stabbed the leader of the Black Guerilla gang, who managed to take the knife away from Mendrin and stab him 10 times.
"I praise God he did that," Mendrin said. "Because it took him doing that to save me and to save him." With another murder on his rap sheet, Mendrin would have been placed on death row. This coming September, he will have been out of prison for 25 years. Now after becoming a Christian, he said he feels like he's been "freed" to accept others regardless of race or belief.
His fellow gang member and would-be former enemy Ernesto Roybal also spoke about his time in prison.
"I remember when I used to condemn Christians in Folsom (prison)," he said. "I used to say, 'Stay away from that man, he needs a crutch.' " But Roybal said he realized those men were much stronger than he ever was.
"I tried to do it on my own for 40 years, but all it got me was prison," he said.
Roybal credits God for three miracles in his life: getting him out of prison; his lack of fear toward those still in his old gang, the "Mexican Mafia;" and his survival after being involved in a near-fatal crash with a semi-truck.
"It's human nature to want to be a part of something," said Roybal, who joined his first neighborhood gang at the age of 13. "Little did I know I'd be spending the next 40 years in prison."
Nazarene parishioner Steve Houghton of Oroville said he was moved by the men's stories.
"Their words were not their own words, but the words of God," Houghton said. "When he speaks through people like this, it's beyond description."
He said God's change in the three men was like the wind — you don't see it coming, but you can see it changing the things around it.
"God stopped them and changed their life. (Their) job was to kill, and now they hug each other?" Houghton said. "That's God."
Staff writer Robin Epley can be reached at 896-7761 or repley@chicoer.com.
