Man Tattoos Murder Scene On His Chest, Gets Arrested

Anthony Garcia of Los Angeles may not wear his heart on his sleeve. But he does wear the murder he committed on his chest.

In Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” a murderer’s guilt and fragile mind leads him to break down and confess his crime. A story in the LA Times today tells a similar story, except it’s real and could be called “The Tell-Tale Chest Tattoo.”

The article tells of Los Angeles gang member Anthony Garcia who killed a man at a liquor store in 2004. The case went unsolved for years, until Garcia was picked up and released on a minor offense in ’08, and was photographed with his shirt off. Over the previous four years he had incrementally tattooed the scene of the crime and a confession on his chest.

The inked details are amazingly precise: the way the lights were hung on the roof of the convenience store, the position of the victim’s body, the bend in the streetlamp. Then, as if that were making his guilt too vague, Garcia tattooed ”RIVERA KILLS” over the scene in reference to his gang, Riviera-13. He also got a tattoo of a helicopter, in reference to his nickname “Chopper,” raining bullets down onto the tableau.

The LAPD’s practice of photographing arrested gang members with their shirts off is well known amongst gangs. It helps police identify Graffiti artists who often tattoo their tags to their bodies, and in some cases, distinct tattoos can help an eyewitness to identify a criminal.

Finding a detailed confession like this must be every Los Angeles detective’s dream. And so must this be:

Then sheriff’s detectives, posing as gang members, began talking to Garcia, 25, in his holding cell. They got a confession that this week led to a first-degree murder conviction in a killing investigators had once all but given up hope of solving.

Bragging about a crime in a holding cell implies stupidity or a desperate attempt to be caught. I know there are a lot of traditions in gang culture regarding tattoos, but Garcia’s story is next level. If he was so set on being an asshole with a tattoo, he should have gone with this one: