THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 7, 1995 TAG: 9505080203
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LYNN WALTZ, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 370 lines
On Jan. 28, 1994, federal drug agents spotted Robert Bruce Gillins leaving a parking garage in Newark, N.J., in his 1993 Toyota Camry. The feds fell in behind him.
As Gillins crossed the George Washington Bridge, he spotted the tail, sped onto the Grand Central Parkway in Queens, then spun out on the rain-slick street. He jumped from the car and vaulted over a brick wall. He made it two blocks on foot before two of the agents caught up and ordered him face down on the ground, guns pointed at his head.
Gillins looked up at them and said: ``I've been meaning to call you guys.''
The arrest on that rainy afternoon in New York was the beginning of the end for the largest drug ring ever to operate in Virginia, according to federal authorities. Gillins was the kingpin of the sophisticated outfit that, from 1989 to 1994, sold drugs with a street value of $500 million, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration estimated.
Gillins' arrest on a murder charge threw the massive drug distribution organization into disarray, sending the dozens of members into hiding in several states.
On Dec. 2, 11 months later, federal authorities handed down 21 indictments in Norfolk. Marshals began rounding up suspects with street names such as Pop, Dread, Tiz, Shakim, Hassan, Pretty, Truck, Spice, Carmel, Mo, Dre, Shaborn, C, Easy and Monday.
Most worked out agreements to plead guilty or got promises of immunity from prosecution, in exchange for their testimony against other gang members. In all, 60 witnesses took the stand in the federal trial of eight accused gang members. The trial lasted three weeks and ended Wednesday. Six of the eight were convicted on drug conspiracy charges and face possible life sentences.
Earlier, most of the gang's ringleaders, including Gillins, had pleaded guilty. To date, 28 people have been convicted in connection with the organization. One kingpin is still on the lam.
By the end of the trial, a picture emerged of a violent organization that managed, between 1989 and 1994, to peddle some 5,000 kilos of cocaine primarily in Hampton Roads and Richmond, with smaller outlets in South Carolina, North Carolina, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. and Ohio.
The cocaine generated retail street sales of about $100 million per year. By comparison, the 79 Revco pharmacies in Hampton Roads sold about $95 million in prescription drugs in 1994.
``This is the first time I've seen an organization set up with weekly salaries not linked to drug sales, organized like a business, with a CEO, where members drove company cars,'' DEA agent Craig Wiesner testified. ``And it's the largest drug quantities I've ever seen.''
The trial provided a detailed look at the huge operation as one witness after another took the stand: gang members, former members, wives and associates of gang members. Childhood loyalties forged in Queens fell by the wayside as tales of treachery and murder poured out in the courtroom.
It was 1989. Paul ``Pop'' Ebanks, a Queens high school student, decided to seek his fortune. Virginia was virgin territory. The homeboys were wusses and the profits were good.
He was just 18 when he started making the journey down Interstate 95, the biggest pipeline for the powdered cocaine that would be sold as chunks of crack on the streets of Hampton Roads.
It was going to be so easy, Pop promised, while recruiting buddies from his childhood neighborhood to join him in the gold rush. The business would ultimately grow into an underground corporation, with Ebanks as ``vice president.''
The ``CEO'' - a term used by federal prosecutors - would be childhood friend Robert Gillins. Gillins' brother-in-law, Sam Kelly, would later join him in a merger that would link Hampton Roads and Richmond operations.
But that would come later, in 1993.
At first, it was a series of small-time deals made in rooms in low-rent motels on the major thoroughfares of Newport News.
Business was very good. The men started to move bigger and bigger quantities. Customers were hungry. Ebanks went to New York to recruit more distributors.
By 1991, Gillins was buying about five kilos a week in New York City for about $18,000 a kilo and sending it to Hampton Roads, where it was converted to crack. One witness told the jury of Gillins' stove-top recipe for converting powdered cocaine into crack - how he melted the powder cocaine in boiling water, added ice until it was the consistency of taffy, then let it harden on a dinner plate, broke it into chunks and bagged it in desired quantities.
At first, transporters used low-grade technology: Cocaine hidden in a Folger's coffee can with a bottom that unscrewed; stash houses with fake car batteries in the garages to hold money and drugs.
But soon, quantities were too big for coffee cans. The organization hired a company called Audio Intellect to outfit the cars with secret compartments called ``spots,'' which were car safes using complex combinations.
One combination in a 1992 Toyota 4Runner required the driver to hit the cruise control, position the vents in a certain manner, turn the defroster on, then hit a toggle switch under the dash and the side mirror. A center console would then pop up, with room for guns, money or a small stash of cocaine.
Larger stashes were kept in compartments behind back seats or over wheel wells, reached by a variety of combinations. One opened when a quarter was run through a series of screws under the steering wheel. Another simply required tapping a metal plate with another piece of metal. One console opened when the emergency brake was lifted up and down.
By 1992, the major centers of drug commerce in Richmond and Hampton Roads were linked to Philadelphia; Baltimore; Columbia, S.C.; Charlotte, N.C.; and Washington. Richmond was still divided in a friendly competition, with Gillins' brother-in-law, Sam Kelly, handling part of the city, Gillins another.
By now, a guy named Papito from the Bronx was equipping stash houses with high-tech safes - with an occasional low-tech feature. In one house, a safe on a small elevator was held down by a powerful magnet under the subfloor. An electronic remote control released the magnet. But the distrubutors had to use a plunger to pull the elevator up above floor level.
Only middle managers had access to the safes, where the large amounts of cash and kilos were kept. One testified to using a money-counting machine to tally $700,000 in one night.
Distributors who supplied the street dealers knew the ``spot'' combinations in the cars. Gang members seldom went onto the streets, usually distributing to large customers or independent franchisees, who then coordinated the street sales.
In 1993, Gillins and Kelly merged their Richmond operations and Kelly was brought in as a partner in the combined operation, forming a powerful shift in allegiances and company policies.
One of Kelly's money-laundering businesses in New York City was an important asset to the rapidly expanding corporation. Nu-Look Auto Services, which employed legitimate car body refinishers, provided the organization with its growing fleet of cars. Nu-Look serviced the cars and repaired bullet holes as needed.
Nu-Look took stolen cars and put them back on the road. Kelly would buy a car that had been totaled and would remove all the car parts with Vehicle Identification Numbers, unique serial numbers called VINs. He would then steal an identical car and replace its numbered parts with the numbered parts from the wrecked car, essentially giving the stolen car the identity of the wrecked car.
Blood and marriage ran through the core of the growing business.
Kelly married Gillins' sister, Annette, in New York in the late 1980s. Morris Eugene Hayes, a top Richmond operator, was married to Kelly's sister.
There were cousins, and cousins of cousins, and brothers and sisters, on the fringes of the organization.
Blood, marriage and friendship sometimes meant loyalty, but not always. Courier Camille Ford refused to speak out against the men she'd grown up with, the men she called ``brothers.''
Ford, charged with making half a dozen cocaine runs from New York and Florida, refused immunity, taking the stand instead, claiming she had no idea the half-dozen men she'd entertained at dozens of family barbecues were drug dealers.
Annette Gillins Kelly, 27, on the other hand, calmly took the stand, looked down at her husband in the second row and told the jury all about his business dealings.
She pleaded guilty to money-laundering and agreed to cooperate with the government. Kelly kept all financial records for her husband's two New York City companies, Nu-Look and a pest control company. Those records showed questionable cash deposits that helped bring about the downfall of the organization.
Daphne Kelly Hayes also took the stand, telling of her husband's addiction to crack, and of how her brother Sam and her husband Eugene fought over drug money. Drug use was strictly forbidden in the organization, and her husband's hunger for the drug caused countless family rows.
As her husband listened, Daphne outlined the trips she made up and down the cocaine highway from Hampton Roads to Florida in a silver Lincoln Continental.
Women in the organization usually played peripheral roles, such as couriers.
Organization members used the women's names and good credit ratings to rent apartments, make deposits on utilities and register cars.
Sometimes, the organization ensnared people with solid pedigrees. Renee Leigh, 29, has a bachelor's degree in early childhood education from Queens College and is a high school teacher in New York.
Yet she made trips for the organization, driving cars cross-country to hotel rooms, handing over the keys to organization members and waiting for them to bring them back. In return for immunity, she admitted she knew she was running drugs. She continues to teach.
Couriers were paid between $500 to $1,000 per trip. They were sometimes stopped for speeding between New York and Florida. It happened so often, Judge Smith couldn't resist asking one courier: ``You're intelligent. Why, if you've got a carload of money, drugs and guns, what baffles me is that you get lead-footed and open yourself up for a stop.''
``I guess I just got comfortable,'' the courier replied.
Business and profits expanded, but so did the violence, as members jockeyed for position within the organization and against rival dealers in new territories.
In January 1992, organization ``enforcer'' Ivan Gibson was found face-down on a Washington street, his right hand next to a Cobray Mac-11 semiautomatic pistol. The magazine was intact with 28 rounds. One round had jammed in the chamber.
Organization members believed a fellow distributor in the organization was responsible. Word of his killing got to Terrance ``T.J.'' James in Newport News, a local dealer who had been recruited. James was heartbroken. In a world where loyalties are fleeting, Gibson had been like a big brother. James became convinced a fellow distributor named Shorty was responsible.
An impromptu meeting was called. Shorty was reassigned to work side-by-side with James in Newport News. On Feb. 26, 1992, in the 600 block of Bellwood Road in Newport News, James pulled a gun and killed Shorty in his 1989 Pontiac Grand Am. He left Shorty in the driver's seat, four bullet holes in the back of his head, a 9 mm pistol loaded and cocked in his waistband.
Meanwhile, Gillins wanted revenge against a Philadelphia man named Alvin Baker, who had kidnapped a woman friend of Gillins, left her naked in the street, taken off in Gillins' Lexus, then burned it.
Though Baker apparently promised to pay Gillins for the car, he later reneged.
In the fall of 1992, ``Gillins hired a Colombian to kill Alvin Baker,'' Terrance James testified. ``He was impatient. He wanted to get him.''
The Colombians had a Caprice outfitted like a police car with lights, sirens and walkie-talkies they used to communicate with Gillins as he drove behind them.
Their plan was to pull over Baker's car, a 1989 tan Dodge Sprint. If the driver was Baker, they would kill him. If not, they would kidnap the driver and use him to lure Baker. Instead, as Gillins followed, they drove past Baker's car and kept going. James testified about what happened next.
``What the ---- are they doing?'' Gillins yelled. ``Stop the car. Stop the car.''
Gillins yelled to the man parking Baker's car. ``Freeze. Don't move,'' James testified. Then Gillins started firing.
The man he left badly injured was not Baker.
James offered to ``take care of things.''
On the afternoon of Oct. 17, 1992, James drove past Baker's house in the 3100 block of North 30th Street in Philadelphia. He and a partner spotted Baker in his tan Dodge.
``When I saw him, I said, `Let's do it right now,' '' James testified. ``We pulled up beside him. I had a Ruger with hollow points. My partner had a Glock. We both had 16 shots. He emptied his. I had three left, so we used 29 shots. We killed him.''
Violence seemed to erupt at every corporate meeting, often scheduled around college or fraternity events.
In July 1992, organization members met in Philadelphia during the Greek picnic at Fairmount Park, where black college students had gathered to party. More than a dozen members were at the Adam Mark Hotel on July 12 to prepare for the main event - cruising up and down Broad Street.
``Everyone's showing off their cars with rims and fancy stuff,'' one member testified. ``Up and down Broad Street, everyone's hanging out the windows with big systems with the music blasting.''
One group in a 1991 Green Acura Legend forced a taxi to swerve in front of a car with some men who had been out drinking. The men were off-duty police officers.
They ``exchanged words,'' police would later testify. Everybody piled out of the cars, some pulling guns. More than 20 shots were exchanged in less than a minute.
One bullet burned through the thigh of officer Erick Madison.
``The cops threw us on the ground,'' Sam Kelly later remembered. ``They were yelling, `Hey, y'all shot a cop.' They threw us to the ground like we were criminals.''
Three carloads of organization members were arrested, then released because the off-duty officers, who had been drinking, could not identify the shooters.
When cocaine prices skyrocketed in New York in 1993 to more than $20,000 per kilo, the organization started scouting for new markets in Florida, where prices were generally lower than in New York.
It was one of a series of critical mistakes that began a slow internal disintegration within the organization. And it coincided with an expanding federal investigation.
A middle manager was arrested in Florida after purchasing a kilo from an undercover police officer. Kelly and Ebanks flew down to bail him out and tried to get back the company Cadillac, seized with $120,000 in a secret back-seat compartment.
In a bizarre turn of events, organization members managed to get the car back from police, who never found the cash. The car had been badly damaged by Hurricane Andrew, so gang members arranged to have it towed. But the car and tow truck were stolen, so they lost the money anyway.
In 1992, another middle manager, who handled large purchases of cocaine from Dominicans and Colombians in New York City, was charged with bank fraud when he tried to cash a $1 million check.
He was arrested again with Ebanks on May 10, 1993, when the two went to buy drugs in New York. As Ebanks was taking $280,000 from a secret compartment in the car, they were spotted by police.
By August 1993, nerves were frayed. Along with the huge losses of cash, organization executives were starting to get calls from employees. The feds were snooping around, asking questions of low-level workers.
A half-dozen executives took a trip to South Carolina to get new aliases and documentation.
By late 1993, Ebanks testified, lower ranks of the organization were becoming aware that things weren't quite right.
What members didn't fully understand was how all-consuming the investigation had become. As early as 1991, an insider had turned against them and had been yielding information.
At first, the Peninsula Narcotics Task Force, which included state police, Hampton, Poquoson and Newport News police, became involved, comparing notes from numerous interviews with small-time street dealers. The same names kept coming up - Kelly, Pop, Dread, Pretty. They were linking them to real men: Robert Gillins, Paul Ebanks, Lenny Lewis and Anthony Moore.
By then, the task force was working with an inside informant who provided the first information that they were dealing with a highly organized gang.
They began working closely with the DEA. Combining information from informants with national arrest data, agents pieced together information about a shootout involving three cars and some off-duty police in Philadelphia in 1992.
Every name on the investigation list was on the list of people taken into custody after the shootout. The feds realized the men had been at a corporate summit meeting at the time. It confirmed their belief that they were dealing with a highly organized criminal conspiracy.
Throughout the fall of '93, federal agents gained the cooperation of more and more informants, some of whom were angry for punishments or beatings after they were accused of stealing money. Others, who were deserted by the gang after they were arrested, retaliated by giving information to government officials.
But the critical blow came when the DEA arrested Gillins in January 1994. Drug distribution quantities dipped precipitously, cutting deeply into profits as members tried to lay low and sell just enough to get by.
Top executive Ebanks had gone from making $40,000 a month with the organization to barely getting by.
``Everyone stopped working,'' Ebanks testified. ``I'd dropped down to a kilo a month. Richmond wasn't moving the quantity. We were just making sure everybody was OK. We were keeping in contact, helping people pay their bills and waiting for the outcome of Gillins' arrest.''
Distributors in Richmond and Hampton Roads got antsy as salaries were paid later and later. Regional managers along the Atlantic Seaboard panicked as beepers went off reporting arrest after arrest.
The arrests continued throughout 1994, virtually dismantling the Richmond and Hampton Roads operations, until the indictments were handed down in December. The feds, who had Sam Kelly on the run, came within days of catching him in Baltimore, then California.
On Jan. 25, 1995, marshals filed a search warrant on Ebanks' residence in New Jersey. There they found a Mac-10 machine gun holding 36 rounds, with a silencer attached. They found something else that interested them - a list of 45 people Ebanks thought would be indicted by federal authorities.
All 21 people named in the December 1994 federal indictment were on Ebanks' list.
By February 1995, a half-dozen marshals in Los Angeles were trying to track down the last drug kingpin - Sam Kelly.
On Feb. 25, 1995, a tipoff from a tapped phone had marshals hot on his trail at the Continental Plaza Hotel near the Los Angeles airport. A marshal walked into the mirrored foyer and leaned over the green marble registration desk.
A desk clerk told him the picture in his hand was a man who registered as Douglas James. A maid said the man's suitcases were in his room, but he had gone to dinner.
Kelly, dining with his wife at the Cheesecake Factory in nearby Marina Del Ray, made a critical mistake. He made a phone call to a tapped phone. Within minutes, the marshals converged on the restaurant.
By the time they got their bill, Samuel and Annette Kelly had guns pointed at their heads and handcuffs on their wrists as alarmed diners called police on cellular phones to report a disturbance.
During the trial, Kelly ignored admonishments by Judge Rebecca Beach Smith and his own attorney by taking the witness stand.
It was Kelly's last gambit: If the jury didn't buy his story, he faced life without parole.
``With God as my witness I'll speak nothing but the truth. I don't want to rat, but I want to speak (for) myself,'' he said. ``God be my witness, may my kids drop dead right now,'' Kelly said more than once.
Kelly eventually admitted to the jury that he had sold a little powder cocaine in the Richmond area, but only to help a friend who needed help with an overdue mortgage payment.
``I never did no crack like the government says. I never bought no k's. I never sold no crack. My father was a crack user and that was taboo. I didn't want to use any crack.
``They never found me with no drugs or spots, they never found no guns, drugs or money,'' Kelly said. ``You don't understand what I just said. I'm trying to explain it to you. You'd understand if you'd just listen.''
The jury listened, then deliberated for two and a half days before finding him guilty on Wednesday of conspiracy, running a continuing criminal enterprise and money laundering. He could be sentenced to life without parole. ILLUSTRATION: MAL THORNHILL/Staff illustration
Graphic
Photos
STAFF
THE CORPORATION
SOURCE: FEDERAL COURT RECORDS, FEDERAL AUTHORITIES
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
Map
THE COCAINE HIGHWAY
SOURCE: Federal Court Records, Federal Authorities
KEYWORDS: DRUG ARREST DRUG RING by CNB