Blood for Blow

No.

Did anyone hear shots? Smith asked.

No.

Dale also explained the reason that he had to kill Olivia Raya.

"Can't leave witnesses alive," he told Smith. "You have no one at the murder scene."

"Right," Smith said.

"When the bitch heard the noise — pop, pop — she played it off," Dale said.

Dale excused his role as executioner. "That's the way the game is played," he said.

Smith suggested that Dale should have killed Dyshawn Johnson, too. "You should've knock that nigger, too."

"You're right. You're right," Dale said. "There's still time for that."

But Dale wasn't concerned about getting caught.

"This is going to be real special," Dale said. "We're going to get back out of this."

After an hour, and presumably back in a cell, Smith told Dale that he was going to play some chess.

"Relax," Dale reassured him.

Smith could relax. In exchange for wearing the wire and testifying against Dale, Smith's sentence would later be reduced from 94 months to 44 months.

Smith was released from federal prison on June 18, 2007. He also received a $20,000 reward.

Despite Dale's bragging about his skill as a killer, the case against him and Johnson was shaky. Prosecutors had no physical evidence against them as the six-day trial began in late November 2007. The trial started on the cold Monday afternoon of November 26, nearly five years after Raya and Rios were shot.

Dale, 33, dressed in slacks and a cream-colored sweater printed with black triangles, mostly stared straight ahead and popped Altoids. He had pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine and unlawfully transporting firearms, in an unrelated case, in January 2006.

Johnson, 33, wore a black suit and tie. He periodically winked, nodded and smiled at his family, sitting behind him.

On the second day of the trial, the Rios and Raya families sobbed loudly as photos of their slain loved ones were projected on a screen. Senior U.S. District Judge Dean Whipple halted the proceedings. The judge matter-of-factly warned family members that if they couldn't handle seeing the photos, they had to leave the courtroom.

Despite a lack of physical evidence, prosecutors did have the tape of Dale admitting to Smith that he had killed Rios and Raya. They also had Smith's testimony supporting the tape. And they had Johnson's own family testifying against him and Dale.

Bryant Burton, Johnson's 39-year-old brother, had cut a plea deal with prosecutors on October 19. Burton was originally indicted with Johnson and Dale on charges of conspiracy to distribute cocaine. Now awaiting sentencing in federal prison for distributing crack cocaine, Burton testified in hopes of shortening his time.

On the witness stand, Burton claimed that Dale and Johnson had both confessed to the murders. Burton, unshaven and defiant, testified that in the spring of 2004, Dale bragged about taking advantage of "the Mexicans."

Burton recalled Dale telling him, "That's how the game goes."

Burton asked Johnson about the killings. Johnson told Burton that he took someone over to Rios' house to make a deal.

"Motherfucker went crazy and started shooting," Johnson told Burton.

"Why take someone over there?" Burton asked.

"You know how it goes," Johnson told him. "That's how the game goes."

The defense portrayed Rios as a man with many enemies. Several people were bragging about having killed Rios and Raya. Defense attorneys called the government's witnesses — a parade of shackled men in orange jumpsuits — snitches trying to jump on the bus out of prison by cutting deals for reduced sentences.

The jury returned the verdict at 3:48 p.m. December 3, finding Johnson and Dale guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy to distribute more than 5 kilograms of cocaine.

Dale and Johnson could face life in federal prison when they're sentenced later this year.

After the trial, the families remained quiet. Sylvia Raya declined several requests for an interview. Rios' father, Anthony Rios Sr., didn't return phone messages left at his home in Texas. Neither did Rios' grandfather, Francisco Rios.

In the years before the arrests of the killers, Sylvia Raya pleaded with the public for answers about her daughter's murder. She offered reward money for clues. And she hounded police officers for information, just to know the case hadn't gone cold.

Then, before everyone in a federal courtroom, Rios' skeletons spilled out. If his drug dealing had been a secret, it no longer was. Rios' father and grandparents listened as investigators detailed the pounds and pounds of marijuana and cocaine found in the house.

If Sylvia Raya didn't know before that her daughter was living with a drug dealer, she knew now. Olivia Raya may not have been involved in her boyfriend's business, but she knew what he was selling.

Maybe the families didn't speak because there was nothing more to say. The silence that had protected Rios' memory was shattered by the trial. Rios was neither a saint nor a martyr. He was another dead dope dealer.