In the early ’80s, a tough-as-nails, all-female skateboard gang calling themselves “the Hags” became legendary on the streets of West L.A. By Emily Savage.

The young men who call themselves Gangster Disciples skirted by an empty lot. They marched past a “Stop the Violence” mural painted on a corner store, coming to a halt when they saw members of a rival gang, the Black Disciples. It was late September on a busy South Side intersection, and now tensions were escalating, gang members who were there recalled. There were glares, they said. Then words. “You’re a rat,” a Black Disciple said to one of the Gangster Disciples who he believed had given the police information about him.

In the middle of a drug-gang turf war, a hired killer shares his secrets.