A 35-year-old MS-13 gang member who had been on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list admitted Monday he killed a potential recruit more than eight years ago because the man socialized with a rival gang.

Walter Yovany-Gomez, a citizen of Honduras, pleaded guilty in federal court in Newark to one count of racketeering conspiracy, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for New Jersey said in a statement. He faces 25 years in federal prison when he is sentenced July 31 after accepting a plea deal.

Yovany-Gomez was arrested in Woodbridge, Virginia in August 2017 after more than six years on the lam with the help of tips from the public. The FBI placed him on their most wanted list in April 2017 and later offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.

He and fellow MS-13 member Cruz Flores and another man went to the Plainfield apartment of Julio Matute on May 8, 2011. The group spent several hours drinking and doing drugs before Matute went to sleep. When Matutute woke up a few hours later to go to work, Yovany-Gomez and Flores beat him with an aluminum baseball bat, sliced his throat with a knife and then stabbed the man in the back 17 times with a screwdriver.

Authorities found Matute’s body later that day. When investigators later went to Yovany-Gomez’s home to question him, he jumped out the window and escaped. Fellow gang members then drove Yovany-Gomez to Maryland to hide out.

Though he was one of 14 MS-13 members indicted in 2013, Yovany-Gomez lived in Mayland and Virginia until his arrest six years later, assuming a new identity for part of the time.

Flores was previously convicted of murder.

Eight other MS-13 members were convicted in 2016 for committing various other violent crimes in and around Plainfield. All were part Plainfield Locos Salvatrucha, a New Jersey branch of MS-13.

Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman.

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