Kingpin

CBN.com -- The movie JFK shows the true-life murder of a Cuban Mafia boss in Miami as part of the Kennedy assassination cover-up. That same month, the murdered kingpin's nephew, Mario Forte, was born. As if by some spiritual connection, young Mario grew up wanting to carry on his uncle's legacy of crime.

"I felt like his spirit was with me at all times," says Mario. "I felt I needed to impress him and make him proud of me, so I followed in his footsteps being a mobster."

Mario was helped in his quest by growing up in one of Miami's toughest projects, Opa-Locka, where there were more bars per square foot than anywhere else in the United States.

"Unfortunately, young people in neighborhoods like this aren't taught respect the way they should be. They're taught respect by violence. You acquire respect by being physically violent towards other people. The more violent you are, the more respect you have."

Mario earned a reputation as a tough street fighter. His neighborhood was 80 percent African American. As a Latino, Mario didn't feel like he fit in. He couldn't relate to his parents either. So, at age 12, Mario ran away from home. He hung out on street corners and quickly learned the fine arts of robbery and drug use. By age 14, the gangs wanted him to recruit members and sell drugs to those his own age. For Mario, gang life intrigued him.

"The thing that attracted me the most was the Hispanic pride," says Mario. "I was really searching for my roots; I was really trying to find myself -- that and the money that you can make."

But their were negatives to gang life. The gang initiation was called "Six days of hell." This included illegal activities, like retaliating against rival gang leaders. The thought of being targeted by other gangs was too much, so Mario declined joining the gang.

But then the gang leader handed Mario a $50 bill.

"He told me, 'We have a lot of love for you. Just go out and buy whatever you like,'" says Mario. Mario believed there were no strings attached. "But when I accepted the gift," he says, "I actually felt compelled that I had to do this now, almost like I had to return the favor. It had a lot to do with power and respect, and just the authority that he commanded at the meetings was really impressive."

So Mario joined the gang and went through the ritual called "the beat down."

As Mario explains, "It was six people for six minutes, and you're allowed to fight back. They're not allowed to hit you in the face. They're allowed to hit you from the neck down. And, usually, you won't be fighting back after the first 30 or 40 seconds -- you're probably just going to be taking blows."

Mario survived the beat-down and was accepted into the family. Soon he shadowed the gang leader. The gang became Mario's entire life.

"Everything I thought about, everything I believed, revolved around the gang. I broke off communication with my family totally. The gang had taken on the place of my mother, my father, my brothers, and my whole life revolved around them," he says.

But when Mario's family betrayed him, he thought differently. Mario had just pocketed several thousand dollars from a robbery.

"I decided that I was going to take part of my money and throw a big party for the whole gang," Mario says. "I was going to provide all the drugs, all the booze, everything was going to be on me."

After mixing drugs and drinks fro himself and his guests, Mario passed out. When he woke up, his friends were gone. He and the gang leader checked their pockets and realized they'd been robbed.

Mario says, "That pretty much showed me that the respect and everything that I had seen earlier was not real when they robbed him and they robbed me, because there was no respect there. One of the number one rules is that you don't rob from one another. It really saddened me to find that what I had been taught was not real."

Mario withdrew from the gang, but its effects still lingered. By age 20, Mario had become a serious drug addict.

"I was hiding," he says. "I was running away from the fact that I had tried to find myself in the gang and I wasn't able to. Now I was left with nothing."

Mario tried to fill the void in his life with his girlfriend, Maria, but Mario's gloom and anger only made him possessive, controlling, and abusive toward Maria.

"He was so violent, and he had hit me more than a few times," says Maria. "He started slapping me and punching me. He threw me out of the car in the middle of a busy street."

The fear drove Maria to church, but when she started going every night, Mario became insanely jealous. He accused her of having an affair with the pastor, forbidding her to go to church again.

"He told me, 'If this keeps on, it's going to get really violent and I'm going to end up killing you,' Maria recalls. "That wasn't all. Mario threatened to kill the pastor, too."

Maria ignored the threat and left for an all-night prayer meeting. Mario detested the idea of church on a Friday night.

"I lost my mind. I went into a rage," Mario says. "I grabbed a gun, figured I was going to go in there and start shooting people, but then I thought about it. I said, No. They're always talking about blood and redemption. When I'd gone there, I had heard the message of the Cross. I said, I'm just going to stab this pastor on the altar and make him my sacrifice. So I went and grabbed a knife and got in my car. I wasn't really thinking, just driving."

Meanwhile, inside the church the pastor had a miraculous word of knowledge.

Maria recalls the pastor's words. "He goes, 'I feel from the Lord that there's a spirit of murder. I'm going to ask all of you to pray.'"

The pastor dispatched prayer warriors to the front door of the church to pray away the spirit. Around the same time, Mario arrived outside the church.

"When I got to the church door in a rage and I tried to open it, I was physically restrained by an unseen force," says Mario. "I knew that something supernatural was happening to me. I said, 'Wow! My girlfriend's God is real! She serves a real God!' I just stood there for a few minutes and I couldn't actually open the door of the church, so I walked back to my car and I just sat inside. All of a sudden I was calm."

Mario decided to wait in his car for Maria to come out. He didn't realize it was an all-night service. Mario desperately wanted to know why Maria was so drawn to this church. While he waited, Mario turned on the radio, and the next thing he knew, some local pastor was talking as if he was speaking directly to Mario.

Mario recalls the pastor's words: "The pastor said that God had a plan and a purpose for my life and that was the only reason that I was actually still alive, having been put in the dangerous situations that I'd been involved in."

Then the radio pastor asked a question: "Why do you hate this pastor so much? Why do you hate God? What has God done to you? If anything, He's given you life and He's given it to you more abundantly."

Mario prayed with that radio pastor and accepted Jesus Christ.

"All of a sudden on the inside I felt peace," says Mario. "I wasn't worried anymore. Before, I was always looking over my shoulder. Every single person that I came across I thought was a rival gang member or a police officer or an FBI agent. Now I knew that if anything happened to me, I would go to heaven."

At the end of the service, Maria was shocked to see Mario.

"He was just so serene and so calm that I was astonished," says Maria. "I was -- 'What is going on?'"

Mario explained what had happened and promised Maria that he would start living for God.

Mario's whole attitude changed. "My new desire now was to please God and to serve Him," he says. "The more I started attending church, the more I started learning about Him."

Eventually Mario wanted only to tell others what God had done for him.

Mario proved that his conversion was real. He married Maria, got a full-time job, and earned his high school diploma. He left home only for work or church.

Over the next six years, Mario started his own Hispanic ministry and a special outreach to gang members called the "Jesus Disciples." Through Mario's influence, hundreds of hardened gangsters have transformed their lives. In fact, the Miami Herald calls Mario "the Pat Robertson of Miami's gang lands."

Maria describes the change in Mario: "Now he is just so different: patient (he had no patience), kind, humble, just so different."

And Mario tells gangsters still trapped in drugs, crime, fear, and murder that he found acceptance and identity he needed -- not in gangs, but in a relationship with Jesus Christ.

"I was a runaway from the age of 12, involved in gang life my whole life," says Mario. "Probably the worst point of my life was when I was down and out, didn't believe in anybody, Jesus showed me His mercy, came into my heart, and totally turned me around."