Daily Beast's gangster matriarch of L.A.

The Daily Beast is billing former LA Weekly writer Christine Pelisek as the site's "new L.A.-based crime reporter." Her first big piece, up today, is on Maria "Chata" Leon, a mother of 13 children and once "the much-feared head of a drug-dealing dynasty" on Drew Street. Excerpt:

For decades, the Los Angeles Police Department sought to dismantle the power of the gangland matriarch, and her extended family but, ensconced in a heavily-fortified house on Drew Street in Northeastern L.A., in a notorious, gang-infested neighborhood filled with mostly single-family homes and gang-controlled apartments, the gang seemed almost impossible to dislodge.

When officers finally raided the Drew Street compound, they discovered a shrine to the patron saint of narco trafficking, Jesus Malverde as well as surveillance cameras and an extensive weapons stash that included a Tech 9 machine gun, a Smith Corona Rifle, a bag of explosive devices, and a “Muscle Man” Taser gun.

From these headquarters, Maria Leon and her family had turned the neighborhood into a hellhole.