While I agree there is always the possibility this murder was a hate crime
I don't know where the idea came from that it was a hate crime....that seems even less likely to me.
I look at unsolved crimes from the point of view of human psychology and criminal profiling.
Most often, a particular type of crime has been committed by a particular type of perp, for a particular reason which reflects their psychological state of mind. Understanding the probable psychology behind the crime gives a good starting place in sleuthing, because it provides a preliminary explanation of the potential relationship between perp and victim, the motive, methods, and so on.
For eg, when a married woman disappears, LE first look at the husband, rather than speculate she was part of a gang. When a known gang member is shot in his car by someone in another vehicle who races off, LE don't first assume it was his wife.
From the autopsies, "He had been tied up, sexually mutilated by a sharp object, burned and beaten before being shot in the chest and head." This was not just a case.of being tackled and beaten up by several gang members (which sensationalistic headlines you cite mislabel 'torture'. )
For the other googled citations, sadistic sexual torture, rape and murder of complete strangers: young women by straight perps, and young men by gay perps, is all too common, and IMO, has nothing to do with gang membership. Some perps may happen to belong to gangs, the vast majority don't. In the UK there's currently a case of such a perp who was a police officer at the time.
To me, that is not a crime that has anything whatever to do with gang payback. It is a crime involving the perps acting out sexual fantasies involving complete control and sadistic sexual domination over the victim. That is it's psychological motivation. Only someone who gets turned on by that kind of sexual fantasy, and who consunes that kind of *advertiser censored* and wants to act it out in real life, is going to commit that kind of crime. If it doesn't turn you on, it doesn't matter how angry you are at the victim, or how much you hate them, tying them up and repeatedly attacking their exposed genitals, etc, will be totally gross.
So I would assume this was a sadistic sexual crime, quite likely committed by a stranger, and I fail to see how it can be assumed that his alleged gang membership accounts for it.
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