Mexican Mafia mourns leader

GANGSTERS in the small, but deeply feared, Mexican Mafia in California were in mourning yesterday following the announcement that their reputed leader, Joe 'Pegleg' Morgan, a one-legged Slavic- American, had died from cancer in a maximum security prison.

It was less clear, however, whether their grief was fully shared by Edward James Olmos, the Oscar-nominated actor who directed American Me, a film about Morgan's organisation, otherwise known as 'La Eme' (The M).

To say that Mr Olmos, formerly of Miami Vice fame, has had nothing but trouble since his movie came out is an understatement. One of the film's consultants was shot dead 10 days after last year's premiere; another died several months later after being shot outside her home in Los Angeles.

Although the authorities never proved the deaths were connected with the film, observers with experience of La Eme were strongly suspicious. Mr Olmos applied in vain for permission to carry a concealed weapon, sought a meeting with the police and tightened his personal security.

Confirmation that the film, conceived as a Mexican version of The Godfather, put at least one criminal nose out of joint came when Mr Olmos and Universal Studios received a lawsuit from Morgan, seeking dollars 500,000 ( pounds 340,000) punitive damages for allegedly basing one of the film's characters on him without permission.

But it is widely believed that the wrath of La Eme centred on its view that the film committed the cardinal insult: it treated members with disrespect. Scenes showing one boss being sodomised in jail and impotent with a woman, were not deemed to have reflected their true sense of honour.

Whether the death of Morgan, who grew up in a Hispanic neighbourhood of Los Angeles, will do anything to abate La Eme's wrath is unclear, but it certainly ends an extraordinary life. At the age of 16, Morgan became involved with a 32-year-old woman and bludgeoned her husband to death.

After several stints in prison, he led an escape from a county jail, using hacksaw blades hidden in his prosthetic leg. Later he was captured while shopping and began a career in Mafia management from his prison cell. 'He had his own sense of honour,' a veteran from the US Drug Enforcement Administration told the Los Angeles Times. 'Whether you agreed with it or not, he lived by it.'