BMF: The Rise and Fall of Big Meech and the Black Mafia Family (11 page)

The growing divide between the brothers meant that Meech had to start operating on his own turf. Meech needed a network that, aside from the connect, was independent of Terry’s. The brothers already had their own crews. With the exception of Doc Marshall, who crunched BMF’s numbers for both brothers, Terry and Meech did not share employees. What Meech really needed were some properties of his own, to serve as stash houses. He quickly amassed three in Atlanta. One was a handsome, traditional home that sat far off the road on a wooded lot. The house was in a residential part of one of Atlanta’s wealthiest neighborhoods, Buckhead, and it was called “the Gate,” after the iron security gate that Meech had installed at the foot of the driveway. BMF associates from out of town often stayed there, but the real purpose of the house was to have a place to receive cocaine shipments from California. High-ranking managers, including J-Bo, broke down the arriving shipments into
smaller loads and handed them over to the distributors. Meech seldom if ever showed his face at the Gate.

Two other houses also served as temporary shelter for the big shipments, and few distributors were allowed there. In fact, only the most trusted insiders could visit those locations. One was a brick home in a sterile Atlanta subdivision. It was dubbed “the Horse Ranch.” The other, a classy town house, was called “the Elevator,” because there was a small glass elevator in the home. Once the brothers fell out—and Terry assumed control of the White House—Meech and J-Bo took up permanent residence at the Elevator.

Unlike the White House, investigators were completely in the dark about the Elevator’s whereabouts. But while Meech’s living arrangement was shrouded in secrecy, his dominance in Atlanta was no mystery. Local cops and federal agents couldn’t help but speculate about what Meech was thinking, but one thing was clear: He was advertising his presence in a way that got
everyone
talking. At several Atlanta intersections, including ones at I–75 and at Peachtree Road, Meech announced his intentions from the sky. The testament of his power was printed in white block letters on a black twenty-by-sixty-foot expanse. The words were a nod to
Scarface
—a frequent source of Meech’s inspiration. In the film, Cuban-born drug lord Tony Montana looks to the Miami sky and sees a message ticking across the side of a blimp:
THE WORLD IS YOURS
. Likewise, the billboards that Meech placed around town declared,
THE WORLD IS BMF
’
S
.

Of all the rumors being tossed around about Meech and BMF, it was the news of the billboards that really got Fulton County Assistant District Attorney Rand Csehy worked up. By mid-2004, Csehy (pronounced
SHAY
-hee) was used to cops coming to him with increasingly outlandish stories about the Black Mafia Family. But a drug dealer advertising on a billboard?

Csehy had been with the DA’s Office for two years, and he loved the work. As part of the office’s narcotics division, he didn’t have to deal with the heartache of violent crime (victims weren’t his thing) or the monotony of theft investigations (not enough drama). Best of all, he got to work with a group of men he viewed as peers and equals. Csehy had close ties to the detectives who brought him their drug cases—some say too close. He knew that several of his coworkers frowned on his cozy relationship with the police, and as with all the other things about Csehy that caused a stir at the DA’s office, he didn’t care.

From the hoops in his ears to his tattooed triceps, his heavy silver rings to his tattered jeans, Csehy looked more like a narc than a prosecutor. He possessed an undeniable excitability, an intensity betrayed by wide eyes that flashed an almost too brilliant blue. Csehy was passionate, and if that sometimes got him in trouble, so be it. He often caught flak for speaking too much of his mind to his boss, District Attorney Paul Howard. Then there was his chumminess with the cops—an affinity that dated back to his days at a suburban DA’s office. After moving from the small suburban office to the big city one, he found himself gravitating toward Atlanta’s narcotics investigators. He rode with them when they executed search warrants. He participated in their stings. He carried a gun. And after wrapping up a day’s work, he and some of the detectives would go out drinking—a ritualistic occurrence in the summer of 2004, when Csehy’s second marriage in three years was falling apart.

Csehy made himself available to the police when they needed legal advice, and they, in turn, filled him in on the talk of the streets. At the time, there was a lot of talk about the Black Mafia Family, but not a whole lot of legal advice to hand out. That’s because the DA’s office had not landed a single indictment against the crew—in a town where hundreds of BMF associates were believed to be controlling the drug trade.

When one cop came to Csehy with the startling revelation that the
crew was advertising on billboards around town, the prosecutor was incredulous. He went to Buckhead to check it out. And he realized that, as with so many other rumors, the billboard wasn’t what people were making it out to be. The billboard was advertising a record label—in much the same way that Atlanta’s iconic neon yellow So So Def billboard graced I–75 on the south side of town. “What are we gonna do?” Csehy mused to himself. “Take down So So Def while we’re at it?” And so while the myth of the BMF crime syndicate was everywhere, the evidence to prove its existence was nil. In fact, there was only one person on the Atlanta police force with any institutional knowledge of BMF. He also happened to be Csehy’s best friend.

Detective Burns had learned about the Black Mafia Family on a fluke. In 2001, after he was promoted from a patrol officer in the city’s most dangerous police zone to an investigator in the department’s elite organized crime unit, he was trying to squeeze information out of a suspect. The guy didn’t have the insight Burns was looking for; instead, he wrote down a name on a piece of paper and slipped it to the detective. The name meant nothing to Burns at the time. A year later, however, the name came up when Burns went undercover in a white-collar crime ring. An Atlanta company called XQuisite Empire was using the identities of innocent men and women to buy cars and homes for drug dealers. One of XQuisite’s employees was the same man whose name was printed on that slip of paper. And Burns soon began to suspect that XQuisite’s president, William “Doc” Marshall, played a significant role in a drug crew that called itself BMF.

Burns’s impeccable work in the XQuisite investigation helped qualify him for his next career move: inclusion in a multiagency federal task force that was committed to rooting out drug kingpins. DEA agent Harvey helped out with the task force as well. And Csehy, who like Harvey was not an official member, served as its liaison to the DA’s office. Csehy would assist in obtaining search warrants and, hopefully, drafting affidavits seeking wiretaps on BMF associates’ phones.

All three men—as well as a dozen others—were called together in the summer of 2004 to go over one of the task force’s primary initiatives: Target the highly secretive, seemingly impenetrable Black Mafia Family. To some in the room, the letters
BMF
meant nothing, and the term
Black Mafia Family
seemed almost comical in what it implied. But to Harvey and Burns, who were well ahead of the curve, and Csehy, who was catching up, the difficulty of the mission was obvious.

The meeting made clear the need to nab a BMF associate on drug charges (most likely an associate on the organization’s lowest rungs) and persuade him to talk. The information would have to be good enough to set up an undercover buy and, from there, build a case for a wiretap. For that to happen, someone inside BMF would have to get sloppy. Until then, the task force agents would watch the streets as closely as they could, hoping they might catch a break.

For some reason, they took it to another level.

-
WILLIAM “DOC” MARSHALL

R
ashannibal “Prince” Drummond was a big kid who liked big parties. The aspiring musician with espresso-shaded skin and a wide smile had a knack for figuring out where the action was—and when he couldn’t find it, he’d create it. His most recent bash, a celebration for his twenty-second birthday the year before, lasted two full days. Prince treated every party like it was his last. And while he didn’t have the kind of money to do it up the way he hoped, he managed to pull off a lot with a little. That’s something he learned from his mother.

Prince was the third of Debbie Morgan’s four children, and over the years, she’d scraped by to make sure they wanted for nothing. Debbie’s singsong lilt and sparkly black eyes, her close-cropped hair and petite frame, gave the impression of a woman eternally optimistic, perhaps bordering on naïve. But her pixieish looks masked a strong
will. If she wanted something, she’d go after it with a fire that surprised those who mistook her peaceable nature for passivity.

Debbie had been through a lot. Her marriage had failed, leaving her to raise four kids on her own—until she later fell in love with a handsome Puerto Rican boxer. She’d weathered several years in one of Atlanta’s sketchiest neighborhoods, a few blocks off Boulevard, only to see the area begin to turn around. She’d steered her three boys through several arrests on minor drug charges—charges that they beat. (Another, more serious aggravated assault charge against Prince proved baseless.) Debbie knew her boys would find trouble, as boys do, but she raised them well enough to know they’d somehow find a way past it.

Now that her children were grown, with their own aspirations, Debbie felt she could finally start tackling her own dreams. Before moving to the United States as a young woman, Debbie grew up in eastern Jamaica, and she was part of a culture that prized three things. The first is Rastafarianism, a religion that honors the African roots from which Debbie’s ancestors were displaced, respects the value of all living things, and eschews the corruption of “Babylon,” or modern society. Intertwined with Rastafarianism is another of Jamaica’s most influential contributions: reggae, dub, and dancehall music. Those genres heavily influenced hip-hop, and Debbie’s sons looked to their musical heritage for inspiration as they tried to make music of their own.

Not least of Jamaica’s cultural offerings—not to Debbie, anyway—is the country’s food. Debbie’s longtime dream was to open her own restaurant. She wanted to serve Jamaica’s staples, the spicy dishes adapted from African, Chinese, and East Indian dishes, but somehow uniquely Jamaican: curried goat, grilled plantains, barbecued tofu, and jerked chicken. She’d held down various office jobs over the years, but in the summer of 2004, Debbie felt ready to start something new. And with her children finding their independence, her goal seemed within her grasp.

Her daughter, who’d grown into a lovely likeness of Debbie, was the most responsible of the clan, despite being the baby. And her sons, whom Debbie treated like royalty, were working to carve out a spot in Atlanta’s hip-hop scene. Her eldest, Rasheym (everyone called him “Sheym”), was learning to shoot video, and Prince and Raschaka (who went by “Tattoo”) were writing and recording rap songs on a shoestring budget. The Drummond boys closely followed Atlanta’s hip-hop players and the happenings in the city’s clubs. And so it was to be expected that Prince and Tattoo, along with their cousin and three of their friends, headed to a Midtown club called the Velvet Room for what was hyped as the club’s final night. If you were young, into the rap scene, and interested in rubbing shoulders with those who made the industry tick, there was no better place to be. On July 24, 2004, and well into the following morning, all the Velvet Room regulars would be on hand to offer the club a final salute.

Though small compared with other Midtown venues, the Velvet Room, up until the end, pulled in a steady crowd. And on its last night, the long rectangular space was as swanky as ever. The club’s swooping drapes were no less dramatic, its red velvet ceiling still sultry, its crystal chandeliers just as sparkling. And the crowd of beautiful people, hip-hop flossers, and wannabe players was in full force. The neighborhood itself had its share of mega-clubs and celebrity sightings, but it was still a more organic place than its neighbor to the north, Buckhead. In Midtown, there were fewer of the tensions that arose between Buckhead’s revelers and residents. There was a party atmosphere, for sure, but not quite an out-of-control one.

And yet as the Velvet Room’s final night wore on, the vibe was getting more and more like Buckhead. Even after last call had long come and gone, the crowd was still spilling from the doors of the club, which faced Peachtree Street, and down into the sloped parking lot behind the building. The scene out back was not unlike the one inside. Music was blaring from the speakers of well-buffed cars. Groups of drunk and emboldened guys were trying to hook up with
the departing cliques of girls. Some of the men in the crowd, a conspicuous group in a caravan of conspicuous cars including a silver Lamborghini, gray Ferrari, and black Porsche SUV, were even clutching bottles of Cristal that they had smuggled from the club.

In the middle of the lot were Prince’s three friends: Marc, who at age twenty was the youngest of the three; Black, the quietest of the group; and Jameel, who at six-foot-five towered over the other two. Jameel had dipped into his car, a white Mitsubishi, to listen to music while Marc and Black chatted up some girls. They all were waiting on Prince, who’d been the last in their circle to leave the Velvet Room.

Prince’s brother Tattoo and his cousin Jahmar had been the first to reach the parking lot. They stopped at Tattoo’s car, and Tattoo was ready to roll. But Jahmar decided to stay. Just before Tattoo took off, Jahmar warned him, “Don’t drive all crazy.” Tattoo drove north on Peachtree and cut over toward Georgia Tech. Jahmar headed back toward the club. He didn’t want to leave without Prince.