Over a week in mid-February, an ad hoc team of FBI agents, state troopers, Kingston cops and Investigators with the Ulster County District Attorney’s Office relied on a combination of old-school police work and cutting-edge technology to identify and capture four gang members wanted in connection with the October 2017 murder of a suspected informant in Saugerties and the Feb. 2 slaying of a rival gang member in Queens.

‘They were asked, “Why Kingston?” And the answer was, “Because nobody hassles us, nobody asks questions so we settle in here.” We heard that more than once.’

An indictment unsealed in Brooklyn federal court this week contained new details of a brutal slaying allegedly committed by members of a violent street gang at the Turkey Point state forest in Saugerties last year. In the indictment, prosecutors charge that a three-man “cancha,” or cell, of the 18th Street Gang based in Kingston helped a downstate associate murder a suspected informant and later sheltered him after he gunned down a member of a rival gang on a Queens street.

According to law enforcement officials and court documents, at least three alleged members of a notorious street gang are accused of stabbing to death and burying an unnamed victim at a state park in Saugerties last year.