Kevin Abarca-Choto was an 18-year-old from New Bedford, Massachusetts, described in public records as a Hispanic/Latino young man with black hair, brown eyes, and a slender build, about 5 feet 6 inches tall and 125 pounds. He was last seen on August 24, 2018, after leaving his home in the city and never returning. His father reported him missing to the New Bedford Police Department on September 1, 2018. Local summaries note that he was last seen in the area of Cedar, Cottage, and Elm streets in New Bedford, and his case was entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System as case MP95500, as well as featured on regional missing-persons lists.
For years, Kevin’s disappearance was treated publicly as an unresolved missing-person case. His name appeared alongside other long-term missing individuals in Bristol County, with authorities emphasizing that multiple searches had been conducted in the areas around his home but no trace of him was found. His inclusion in local media galleries of missing people, often accompanied only by a brief description and his age at disappearance, underscores how little information was available to the public and how long his family and community were left without answers.
Behind the scenes, however, a broader federal racketeering investigation into the MS-13 gang was unfolding across Massachusetts and Virginia. Court documents in that case identified an MS-13 associate referred to as “K.A.C.” who was murdered in New Bedford on August 25, 2018. Prosecutors said that Elmer De Jesus Alas Candray, a member of the Uniones Locos Salvatrucha clique of MS-13, traveled with other gang members to New Bedford to kill this associate, and that MS-13 leadership in El Salvador had authorized the murder because they believed the victim had betrayed the gang. The group met him at a fellow gang member’s residence in New Bedford the day after he was last seen alive.
Reporting based on court records and witness testimony has since linked “K.A.C.” to Kevin Abarca-Choto by name. According to those accounts, the killing was “greenlit” as punishment for an alleged betrayal, and a witness told investigators that Kevin owed money to the gang. During the attack, he was beaten and strangled with a belt inside the residence. His body was then cut up with knives in a bathtub, placed into trash bags, and buried in the woods in the greater New Bedford area. One co-defendant, known by the nickname “Dexter,” was said to have stayed behind to clean the bloodstained bathroom with bleach. Prosecutors stated that those who took part in the killing were rewarded with promotions within MS-13. Despite these harrowing details emerging in court, Kevin’s remains have never been found, leaving his family without a place to grieve and deepening the cruelty of what was done to him.
The search for answers has extended beyond New Bedford. In June 2024, the FBI’s Evidence Response Team from the Boston Division conducted a large-scale evidence search along Route 88 in Westport, Massachusetts, a wooded highway corridor not far from New Bedford. Federal and local officials described the operation only as part of an “ongoing, multi-jurisdictional investigation,” saying that they were searching for specific evidence and that there was no threat to public safety. Massachusetts State Police assigned to the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office and Westport police assisted, and the public was warned about traffic disruptions as investigators combed the woods. Authorities did not publicly identify which case the search concerned, but it illustrated that investigators were still actively pursuing leads related to serious crimes in the region around the time of Kevin’s disappearance and presumed death.
A measure of legal accountability came in federal court years later. On January 30, 2025, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia announced that Elmer De Jesus Alas Candray, then 27, a Salvadoran national and MS-13 member, had been sentenced to six concurrent life prison terms plus additional years for his role in a racketeering enterprise that included six murders between 2018 and 2022 in Massachusetts and Virginia. Prosecutors described him as a high-ranking figure in an MS-13 clique operating in the Reston, Virginia area and one of thirteen gang members indicted in the case. The Massachusetts murder identified in court records as the killing of “K.A.C.”—the associate beaten, strangled, dismembered, and buried in a wooded area near New Bedford—was among those six killings.
Coverage of the sentencing named the victims as Kevin Abarca Choto, 18; Jose Lorenzo Guillen Mejia, 24; Iris Janet Ponce Garcia, 19; Santos Antonio Trejo Lemus, 40; Rene Alberto Pineda Sanchez, 27; and Francisco Raul Avelar Rivera, 42, noting that some were killed in Reston and Great Falls, Virginia, and that several were subjected to extreme brutality, including dismemberment and clandestine burials. Reports also noted that an immigration detainer was lodged against Alas Candray, meaning that if he were ever released, he would face deportation. Other MS-13 defendants linked to the same series of murders continue to face proceedings of their own.
Even after this conviction and sentencing, the human core of Kevin’s case remains painfully unresolved. His missing-person entry and local listings continue to frame him as a young man who left home one August day and never came back, while court records now describe in stark detail the violence he endured and the grave in the woods where his body was hidden. His family and community are left to carry both realities at once: the memory of an 18-year-old who vanished from New Bedford and the knowledge that, somewhere still undiscovered, his remains lie unrecovered. The absence of his body means the search is not only for justice, but also for the chance to finally lay him to rest.
Last Seen: Aug 24, 2018
