THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 8, 1996 TAG: 9609070413
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LYNN WALTZ, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 388 lines
In October 1995, the mall outside the nation's capital was filling as the Million Man March got under way. Across town, Ron Pickrel and his son were busy at their vending business, keeping a steady supply of ice, hot dogs and ice cream headed to the mall. There, black men were choosing to make a recommitment to America.
Some 200 miles to the south, another black man was making a different choice.
He entered a small gun shop in Hampton and passed a handful of cash across a glass counter to buy a Jennings Bryco 59 - a cheap handgun popular on the streets.
When he came out, federal agents were watching. They tailed him to a Federal Express office in Norfolk, where he paid to have the gun shipped to Washington to be sold on the black market.
Pickrel never met that young man or his group of 14 friends, who purchased and shipped nearly 100 guns to Washington between June 1994 and October 1995. All but one were members of Norfolk State University's band fraternity, Kappa Kappa Psi. At one time or another, all had played in the band.
But Pickrel's family knows about them now - who they are, what they did. One of the guns the group bought in May 1995 was used to murder Pickrel at his family business on Easter Sunday, six months after the Million Man March.
By the time the gun-running investigation was over, federal authorities had learned that the 15 seemingly ``good kids'' had gotten entangled in the largest known gun-running scheme in the state since Virginia passed its one-gun-a-month law in 1993.
And by the time Pickrel was killed, federal agents had rounded up all 15 members of the ring, and two others, on charges that they dumped everything from cheap handguns to semiautomatic assault rifles on the streets of Washington, one of the nation's most violent cities.
The fraternity brothers never imagined standing in a cavernous, dark-paneled federal courtroom in Norfolk as a judge chastised them for wasting their lives. They never imagined being convicted felons, stripped of their rights to vote, to hold office, to serve on a jury - and to carry a gun.
And they never could have imagined looking into the eyes of their mothers and fathers, their wives, their children, their teachers and their band leader, trying to explain why.
Why had they sold their futures for a paltry $50 per gun?
THE VICTIM AND THE MAN WHO BOUGHT THE GUN THAT KILLED HIM
Only 25 of the guns have been recovered, mostly at crime scenes or in the hands of drug dealers.
One gun fired a bullet that severed the spine of a young man in Washington. He will never walk again. One was used to murder a man on the street. One was used to wound a police officer. One was found on the pavement, next to the hand of a murder victim.
One was bought by fraternity member Anthony Phillips. On May 27, 1995, Phillips walked into R&B Guns in Hampton to buy the ring's signature handgun - the Jennings Bryco 58, 9 mm, a small, squarish weapon with a nickel-finish barrel.
The short-barreled Bryco 58 is easy to conceal, the dealer there said later. ``If you keep it oiled and take care of it, it won't jam.''
Phillips, 24 then, was majoring in music media at NSU. He played trumpet.
He had a poor job record and weak academic record, a prosecutor would later say in court. Despite a close relationship with his mother - who had provided an example as the family breadwinner - Phillips' financial problems started as soon as he left home.
A friend described Phillips as ``a good kid with a good heart who just needed somebody.'' The friend described him as ``an easy target for peer pressure.''
That day in May, Phillips had no way of knowing that the gun would make a fatal journey to the nation's capital, where it would be used 10 months later to shoot Ron Pickrel at his family business, leaving him dead in a pool of blood.
At 53, Pickrel, the owner of Star Vending in Washington, D.C., was kicking back after years of hard work. He had turned over most daily duties to his son. His father had started the business in 1937.
Heart-bypass surgery five years earlier had opened his eyes to what was important - family, love and some much-deserved relaxation, his children said.
He used cash to buy a customized pontoon boat to float down the Potomac with family and friends on the weekends. On April 5 - Good Friday - he took delivery.
The next day, he took the boat out for the first - and last - time.
``He was really happy,'' said his daughter, Angela Davis. ``He was beginning to realize all the people he missed out on when he was young.''
Davis said the family thought the heart surgery would take him. ``We never thought it would be one of his own employees,'' she said.
On Easter, as the family waited dinner, a man robbed Ron Pickrel in his office after pulling a Jennings Bryco 58, 9 mm handgun from his waistband and shooting Pickrel in the face. Pickrel died on the floor of his office.
While the family waited for him, a phone call came from Pickrel's sister. She said homicide detectives were at the business, but she didn't know why. The family turned on the TV news and watched, horrified, as Pickrel was wheeled out on a gurney.
Within 24 hours, an employee confessed and led police to the gun in a trash bin near his home, where they found $8,500 in cash missing from Pickrel's business. The employee is now awaiting trial.
``My 7-year-old keeps asking how somebody who knew `Pickles' could do this,'' Davis said.
``His retirement years were stolen from him,'' his son Ron said. ``He had four grandchildren. They'll never see him again. I'm not married. Any children I have will never meet their grandfather. That upsets me the most.''
Pickrel's son and daughter favor limited gun control. They say they know the man who killed their father could have gotten a gun anywhere on the streets. And they know Phillips didn't pull the trigger. Still, they can't help but think about it.
``To do it for $100 to pay the phone bill doesn't even compare with what we have lost,'' Davis said. ``I know these are not the big, bad gun-runners, but where did they think these guns were going?''
THE BOYS IN THE BAND
As the gun-running ring unraveled, federal agents were surprised to find a group of intelligent, talented and personable young musicians.
The typical ``straw purchaser'' - someone who buys guns, then turns them over to someone else to sell illegally - is a welfare mother looking for pocket money or a crack addict desperate for a high, said federal agents.
But all of these men were members, or had been members, of the nationally renowned Spartan Legion Band. Half were in school while the ring operated.
Most had played in the band's brass section - trumpets, trombones, tubas - high-stepping before adoring, packed houses at Foreman Field on fall afternoons.
They were members of the band's service fraternity, which, to help finance the band, held fund-raisers, fixed broken equipment, copied sheets of music and supplied water to marchers on the field during practice.
Most were active in the early 1990s when the band was ranked in USA Today as No. 5 among bands from predominantly black colleges.
Those were the glory days, before the realities of life set in. Before bills came due, before babies started coming along, before grades started dropping, before $50 seemed like a lot of money.
In those days, the men met with other band members in the practice room in the Fine Arts Building every afternoon for rehearsal.
Some were brainy, like Mike Epps. Some compassionate, like Louis Simmons Jr.. Or coolly analytical, like Alfred Carrington. Corey Ball was the ultimate practical joker.
While some earned As and Bs, others struggled to make a 2.0 GPA, doing more band work than homework. While some prepared to graduate, others began dropping out or reducing their class loads.
They had met John Jackson when he was a member of the band. He played the tuba.
Jackson was a former Norfolk State student known for his compassion, persuasiveness and helpfulness. He was well-liked. He had loaned more than one fraternity brother a few bucks to see him through a rough time. He was there for Mike Epps' family through the tough times after Epps' father died. Epps' mom said he was like a son.
So, in early 1994, when Jackson began to contact his old frat brothers to call in favors, they agreed.
By now, they had bills to pay. It seemed so easy.
Buy a gun for me, he told them. Nothing will happen, he assured them. I'll front you the money and give you $50 per gun for your trouble.
THE PROSECUTOR AND THE AGENT WHO BROKE THE CASE
During the guilty pleas and sentencings in federal court this spring and summer, Assistant U.S. Attorney Arenda Allen patted her pregnant belly.
``You wind up here, I'll kill you,'' she'd say to her unborn son, shaking her head in dismay as she watched mothers and fathers beg Judge Raymond A. Jackson for mercy.
Allen had anticipated how difficult this case would be from the time she first heard in July 1995 from Mike Brooks, an agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
``Tell me it's not true,'' she'd thought as he described the scheme.
``We struggled with this, believe me,'' Allen said. ``They are intelligent young men. If they'd been idiots, white or black, no one would have cared, but ultimately it doesn't matter. We represent the people who were harmed. It was still difficult.''
More than once, Allen talked about choices.
``Some say they did it as a favor,'' Allen said in an interview. ``That will wash with those who bought one or two guns. But the favor gets old by the time you go back 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 12 times. Then it comes down to laziness or greed. Laziness - `I don't want to work at McDonalds, or park cars, or be a janitor.' And greed - `This is a quick way to make a buck.' ''
``Regardless of whether you come from a privileged or poor background, if you're trying to circumvent the law, you're going to be held accountable,'' Allen said. ``That's ultimately what Mike and I had to sit down and deal with. It's sad.''
Allen and Brooks decided to prosecute only those who had provided Jackson with more than one gun. They had made a choice: to go back and buy more guns.
Michael Veney was one.
Veney's name had first come up on June 21, 1995, while Brooks was reviewing records at R&B Guns in Hampton. Brooks noticed the same names repeating - John Jackson, Dorren Payne, Corey Ball, Michael Veney.
Three of the four were using the same Norfolk address. All marked their place of birth as Washington on the ATF forms required to purchase a firearm.
The agent began to suspect a gun-running ring. He ran the names past fellow agents and found out about an anonymous tip, phoned into the Washington office four months earlier.
The caller said John Jackson, a black male with a medium complexion and heavy build, was selling guns in Washington. Jackson was a former NSU student and had been a member of the band, the caller said.
Jackson was wanted by Virginia State Police for allegedly forging a car title. Brooks called their fugitive squad to tell them where Jackson was and to ask for a favor.
He wanted to go with them when they made the arrest. He wanted to take a look at Jackson's apartment in Norfolk, to see who else might be living there. He donned a bulletproof vest. No one at the apartment knew he was with ATF.
Once inside, Brooks talked to two men whose names he recognized from the forms at the gun store - Corey Ball and Dorren Payne.
The men told him there were no guns in the apartment. Brooks thought that was odd, since they had bought so many.
``How do you guys know each other?'' Brooks asked.
``We were all in the band together,'' Payne said. ``They blew the tuba. I blew the trombone.''
As Brooks was ready to leave, he saw a video of ``Batman Forever'' on the table. It was a bootleg copy. The film had just been released in theaters a week before.
``I didn't know this was out on video yet,'' Brooks said.
Corey Ball said, ``Oh, we bought it on the street in D.C.''
Brooks had just gotten a key piece of information. It looked like they were taking the guns to Washington themselves.
``That was a big one for me,'' Brooks said.
Seven times that summer, R&B Guns called Brooks. Each time, one of the men was buying another gun. Then came another break.
On Oct. 11, Veney walked into the gun store. He was having trouble getting approved because someone with the same name had a felony conviction. By the time the approval came through, Brooks had the shop under surveillance.
``We match competitive prices,'' the sign on the burgundy one-story building says. ``250 handguns in stock.''
Veney walked through the door that said ``No loaded handguns.'' In the right section of the long glass counter, Veney found the gun he was looking for. A Jennings Bryco 59, 9 mm pistol.
So far, Veney and the others had stayed within Virginia's one-gun-a-month limit per buyer.
Brooks needed one more piece of information. How were they getting the guns to Washington?
Late on the morning of Oct. 12, 1995, while the Million Man March was under way in Washington, Veney inadvertently showed him. He led the federal agents to the Federal Express office at 2600 Ellesmere Ave. in Norfolk. He took a box the size of a briefcase from his rear hatch and dropped it off.
It was addressed to John Jackson in Washington.
As Veney walked out of the Federal Express office, he asked an undercover ATF agent for the time.
Startled, the agent looked at his watch and gave him the time, but thought wryly to himself, as he watched Veney walk out the door:
``It's arrest time for you, buddy. It's arrest time.''
THE REVERSE STING
On Oct. 13, 1995, the day after Veney provided the break in Norfolk, Brooks headed to Washington, where John Jackson was living in a world far removed from his former band buddies. Jackson was unloading his guns on the streets through two go-betweens, a streetwise tough-guy and a drug addict.
Jackson was netting $1,300 a month from the scheme. Brooks was determined to stop the cash flow.
An undercover officer working with the ATF donned a FedEx uniform to deliver a duplicate of the package Veney had left at the FedEx office in Norfolk. The package Veney had shipped to Jackson had been confiscated by the agents.
When a woman answered the door of the apartment and signed for the package, agents moved in, finding numerous receipts inside for guns purchased in Hampton.
Jackson wasn't there. But he called almost immediately to see if the guns had arrived. Agents taped Jackson arranging for a man named ``Butch'' to pick up the guns. When ``Butch'' - Allen Toler - showed up, he was arrested. Within an hour, ATF agents tracked down Jackson at his girlfriend's and arrested him. Both Jackson and Toler started talking.
Toler had gotten at least 40 guns from Jackson. Jackson was paying about $150 for a Bryco 9 mm, paying the straw purchaser about $50 and selling the gun to Toler for about $300 to $350. The gun would sell on the street for $500 to $600.
Another of Jackson's go-betweens was his former next-door neighbor, a drug addict named Donald ``Shorty'' Bell. Bell found buyers, mostly drug dealers he knew. With Jackson cooperating, ATF agents set up the sting to net Bell.
``We came up with a scenario where Jackson would be coming into D.C. with a couple friends from Virginia played by two undercover D.C. police officers,'' said Joe Lenczyk, the ATF agent who coordinated the operation in D.C. ``We brought two fully automatic machine guns, Mac-10s and a silencer, a laundry list, and Bell had a buyer for all of it. The machine guns were $700 apiece. The silencer was $500. We had brand new Glocks.''
Jackson told Bell to meet him in a hotel room on Nov. 15 at 10 p.m. The room had been wired. A camera was set up inside a clock radio on top of the TV.
When Bell knocked on the door, an undercover agent gave a thumbs up, let him in and the reverse sting began. The guns lay under a blanket on the bed. An agent demonstrated a silencer. Bell picked out several new Glocks, then loaded them into a canvas bag. He handed Jackson $2,000. Jackson counted off $200, Bell's cut.
Lenczyk said of Bell: ``He's HIV-positive. He had open ulcers oozing and bleeding when we arrested him. He injects speedballs (a mixture of cocaine and heroin) three times a day. He stunk really bad. What was even worse was getting the money. It was secreted under his bandages. It was bloody with HIV-positive blood.''
The agents used gloves to recover the money, evidence in the case.
``I think he actually welcomed jail,'' Lenczyk said of Bell. ``He got cleaned up and got some medical attention.''
Lenczyk said he thought Jackson was in denial about what he was doing. ``He removed himself from the violence,'' Lenczyk said, by using the middlemen and never selling on the street.
Agents say Jackson - who would not agree to an interview - has since found religion and has expressed remorse. He was recently sentenced in a federal court in Washington to 22 months, a substantial sentence reduction in return for his cooperation.
That cooperation led to the convictions of Toler, Bell and the fraternity brothers in Norfolk.
Toler got 33 months. Bell got 10 years. The members of the fraternity - who declined to grant interviews - received sentences ranging from community service to two years in prison.
Jackson ``finally admitted to himself that he was a broker for a lot of damage on the streets here,'' Lenczyk said. ``The judge here told him she thought that dealing these guns on the streets of D.C. was one of the worst crimes a person could commit, and wished she could sentence him to more time.''
THE PUNISHMENT
In July, in Norfolk federal court, Judge Raymond Jackson - himself a graduate of Norfolk State - carefully reviewed the criminal files containing each defendant's personal backgrounds. He thought about each man's role, how many guns he bought, whether he had shown remorse.
Then, it was time for justice - and a blistering speech.
To Anthony Phillips, who bought the gun used to kill Pickrel, Jackson said: ``You've made a mess of everything. Your education, your family responsibility.'' Sentence: Four months in jail. Four months home detention. And 180 hours of community service.
To Corey Ball, who was Jackson's partner, recruiting purchasers, handling money and shipping guns: ``You were more involved. It was a dirty business, and you had to know that.'' Sentence: 24 months in prison. No home detention. 240 hours community service.
To Michael Veney, a veteran of Operation Desert Storm: ``You chose to get all tangled up in something that you had to know was wrong and illegal. . . . You blew your military career. You blew your university career. You were trifling.'' Sentence: Six months in jail. Six months home detention. And 200 hours of community service.
At the sentencings, held during several weeks in July, mothers and sisters wept openly in court. Fathers shook their heads. One mother, an attorney, slumped in her seat and had to be helped from the courtroom after hearing the sentence. Many parents testified for their children, asking the judge for mercy.
``I was shocked,'' Louis Simmons Sr. told the judge. ``He was almost to the point of being an ideal son . . .'' Simmons paused, then looked at his son, Louis Jr., sitting behind the defense table. ``There's no measure of my love for my son,'' he said.
One man apologized to his mother. One to his wife. Another to his son. One stood before the congregation at his church and asked for forgiveness.
Before reporting to jail to begin serving their sentences, only a couple were willing to enter the Fine Arts Building on the campus of Norfolk State University and knock on the tan metal door that says ``Spartan Legion Band.''
Most could not bring themselves to stand before the desk of band director and fraternity adviser Alzie Walker.
Walker's office walls are covered with plaques and awards the band has won. To the left of his desk hangs the charter for Kappa Kappa Psi, the fraternity Walker helped found in 1991.
Walker says the acts of these few men have cast a shadow over the reputation for integrity and discipline the 200-member band has worked so hard to establish.
But he is vehement that their actions will not sully the school or the band. Most of the men were no longer members of the band when the ring operated, he said. They made their own choices, he said.
``The media made this a Norfolk State thing,'' Walker said. ``It wasn't. It was built on the social relationships formed within the fraternity. The fraternity did not condone it.''
Still, the band was shocked, Walker said. ``They were concerned about their reputation. The band as a whole was hurt.''
Walker was closer to all of them than anyone. He had spent countless hours of practice and time on the road with each one. If anyone could understand how they got involved, it would be Walker.
But he cannot fathom why they stepped over what he calls ``a thin line'' into a criminal life. ``These guys are my fraternity brothers,'' he says, as if to say it couldn't be true.
``It drives me nuts to try to figure out what the catalyst was,'' Walker said. ``I don't think any of these guys thought these guns would wind up in somebody's hand and a bullet inside somebody's body. If they thought that, not one of them would have bought the gun. None of them are capable of killing anyone.''
THE GUNS
Federal agents believe that as many as 70 of the guns bought by the Norfolk ring are still on the street.
``Do you ever think about where those guns are now?'' Arenda Allen asked Anthony Horne during his sentencing.
``All the time,'' Horne said. ``All the time.''
The final toll, said Ron Pickrel's son, may never be tallied.
``They buy a gun and sell it, and that gun will be around for 20 years,'' Pickrel said. ``They made their money, but how many crimes will this gun be used in? How many people will be intimidated?
``How many people will this gun kill?'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
Photos
THE ORGANIZATION
These 14 men in Norfolk bought guns for John Jackson. Most were paid
about $50 per gun by Jackson, who, in turn, sold the guns to two men
in Washington, who then sold them on the streets. Guns purchased for
as little as $129 in the store would ultimately sell for up to $600
on the street.
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
KEYWORDS: GUNRUNNING STING OPERATIONS NORFOLK
STATE UNIVERSITY MURDER SHOOTING ARREST
TRIAL WEAPONS GUNS by CNB