Joe "Pegleg" Morgan

Joseph Morgan (born Joseph Međugorac; April 10, 1929 – November 8, 1993) was a Croatian-American gangster who became the first non-Mexican American member of the Mexican Mafia (La eMe). He received the nickname "Pegleg" by authorities because of his prosthetic leg.

Early life The youngest of four siblings, Morgan was born on April 10, 1929, in San Pedro, California to Croatian immigrants Clara (née Radišić from Imotski) and Grgo Međugorac, a truck driver who was an ethnic Croat from Ljubuski. Shortly after his birth his father naturalized as a U.S. citizen, anglicizing the family name to Morgan due to anti-immigrant and anti-Slavic sentiment at the time (in 1929, the same year Morgan was born, the U.S. passed immigration laws limiting immigration from the Balkans. It is believed that more than half of the Croatian population in the U.S. at the time was deported from the nation). Morgan grew up in a primarily Mexican and Croatian neighborhood in San Pedro. Later, he was raised by his mother in a Mexican neighborhood in Boyle Heights. In the late 1930s, he joined the Ford MaraVilla street gang, one of the oldest documented gangs in Los Angeles.

Morgan became fluent in Spanish.

Prison time In 1946, Morgan beat to death the husband of his 32-year-old girlfriend and buried the body in a shallow grave. While awaiting trial, he escaped using the identification papers of a fellow inmate awaiting transfer to a forestry camp. He was recaptured and sentenced to nine years at San Quentin State Prison. He was only seventeen years old at the time. but a year later, he returned to prison for an armed robbery at a West Covina bank where he ran off with $17,000 . while serving a life sentence at California State Prison, Corcoran. His wife requested that he be released on compassionate release, but he died on November 9, before the process began. "When I visited him about six months ago, he appeared to be losing some weight and his color didn't look good, but Joe is a very private person and he didn't complain", said his attorney, Shirley MacDonald, after his death.

At the time of Morgan's death, his wife filed a $500,000 lawsuit against Olmos and the filmmakers, arguing that the film did not request her permission for basing one of the characters on Morgan.