BMF: The Rise and Fall of Big Meech and the Black Mafia Family (35 page)

Debbie Morgan had been waiting nearly two years for an arrest in the murder of her son. She’d been in regular contact with detective Cooper and special agent Harvey. Early in the investigation, she’d tried to help investigators by convincing Prince’s friends to tell police about what happened that night. She’d also rebuffed an offer, sent to her through people she assumed were Meech’s minions, to handle this whole ordeal “the street way.” Instead, she sought out a distraction—something that might help her forget that there’d been no closure in Prince’s case. She found a small space for rent inside a tattered shopping
center just off Boulevard, along the gritty but hip stretch between the Atlanta neighborhoods Old Fourth Ward and Cabbagetown. She would open a Jamaican restaurant there, called One Love.

But before the restaurant opened, Debbie’s world fell apart again. Her eldest child, Rasheym, was gunned down in broad daylight by two men on Martin Luther King Drive. At first, she thought Rasheym’s death was retaliation for the heat drawn to BMF over Prince’s murder. But she was mistaken. The killings were unrelated. Nonetheless, agent Harvey responded to the crime scene himself, just to be sure. Rasheym’s suspected killer was arrested the following day. It was a small consolation, but consolation nonetheless.

Of course, Rasheym’s death was an excruciating reminder of the loss she’d already suffered. After the second of her three sons was killed, Debbie needed closure for Prince more than ever. Doc Marshall helped deliver that. After he agreed to talk to detective Cooper, Debbie finally had a clearer picture of what happened that night. And she was relieved to know that the man believed to be her son’s killer was finally locked up. From the beginning, she felt that the Black Mafia Family was responsible for Prince’s death. She’d been looking for validation for three years. In fact, her quest had started with a letter she wrote to the Atlanta mayor days after Prince was killed.

Within months of Ill’s arrest, another seemingly dormant murder investigation would be revived. And another mother who lost a child would be left wondering how, under the watchful eye of the government, such a terrible thing could happen.

Nearly three years after Misty Carter’s death, her town house on Atlanta’s Highland Avenue was just as she’d left it. Katie Carter wanted it that way. To Katie, the mere thought of the town house was excruciating at times. She imagined the police trudging into the bedroom that had become a crime scene. She imagined the paramedics carrying Misty out. But the town house also was a source of solace. Katie kept it for as long as she did because, at other times, it helped convince her—if only for a second—that Misty was still there. Katie could visualize her daughter surrounded by all her things, breathing and laughing and alive. She didn’t believe she was crazy to think that. She believed she had to do what she could to keep going. Her only child, the joy of her and her husband’s life, was gone. So it was okay to pretend. When she stopped pretending, then she’d have to admit to herself that Misty was truly and forever gone.

After Misty died, Katie began to work long hours at her husband’s medical practice. The work took her mind away from things. At home, the pain was constant. Plus, being away from the house gave Katie another chance to make believe. She’d often call home from the office to check her answering machine. One of the messages would always
be from Misty. It was the last message Katie got from her daughter. She couldn’t bring herself to erase it.

By the spring of 2007, three years had passed since that terrible night, and time had done little to ease the pain. But there was one small source of solace. In April of that year, Katie and her husband, Dr. Paul Carter, traveled from their home in Fayetteville, North Carolina, to a federal courthouse four hours away. They wanted to be sitting in the courtroom when the judge read the prison sentences of Tremayne “Kiki” Graham, Scott King, and Eric “Mookie” Rivera.

The hearing in Greenville, South Carolina, would be unusual as far as sentencings go. Prosecutors were hoping to prove that Kiki had lied to the feds, thereby breaking his “contract” for a reduced sentence. To prove that he’d misled the government, his associates Scott and Mookie would be testifying against him. If the judge believed them, Kiki could be sentenced to life without parole on his cocaine charges. Still, there was a chance the judge wouldn’t buy their stories—and Kiki was willing to gamble on that. The possibility of a life sentence hadn’t been his only option. Even after he failed his polygraph, Kiki got one last offer from the government. The prosecution was willing to go as low as thirty-five years—five years less than the sentence his boss, “J-Rock” Davis, received. But Kiki turned the deal down. Despite the fact that prosecutors intended to bring up evidence of his alleged role in the murders of Misty and Hack, he was willing to risk it all.

When Scott King took the stand on the morning of April 17, 2007, he spared no detail. In front of a room full of onlookers, including the families of both Misty and Hack, he methodically laid out the history of his friendship and business relationship with Kiki. He described how the two met, back when Kiki was still a student at Clemson University. He talked about how they both fell into the local cocaine trade. He mentioned that Kiki helped him get back in the drug game after he finished a three-year stint on a cocaine charge. By that time, Scott recalled, they’d both ended up in Atlanta. He said
Kiki was clearly doing well for himself. Soon, he said, they combined forces. They found a big-time dope supplier in J-Rock. They opened a high-end car dealership to help their drug income seem legit. They each dated one of the mayor of Atlanta’s daughters. They pulled their friends, including Ulysses “Hack” Hackett, into their drug ring. Then, the cocaine operation they so carefully pieced together began to crumble. Scott described his decision to flee to California after he learned he’d been indicted. He said Kiki, who would be added to the indictment a little later, decided to stick it out in Atlanta. Scott claimed that, even then, Kiki was suspicious about Hack.

“Did y’all discuss any particular concerns about Mr. Hackett?” assistant U.S Attorney Mark Moore asked Scott.

“Yes. Tremayne told me he felt that Hack was cooperating, and that we might need to take care of him.”

“When you say, ‘Take care of him,’ what did that mean to you?”

“Kill him.”

“How did you feel about that, Mr. King?”

“I didn’t want no part of it. He was like my brother. But to Tremayne, he was just somebody who could finger him and get him convicted.”

“Did you agree to assist Mr. Graham in doing something to Mr. Hackett?” Moore continued.

“No,” Scott said.

“Did Mr. Graham let it die at that point?”

“No.”

“What, if anything, did he say to you?”

“That he was going to find somebody to take care of him.”

According to Scott, that person was J-Rock. Kiki had convinced the boss that Hack could incriminate him, too. “So if Jerry didn’t want to get fingered in our indictment,” Scott testified, “maybe he needed to think about taking care of Hackett.”

“Did you have any other discussions with Mr. Graham about doing something to Mr. Hackett?” Moore asked.

“Yes. He discussed getting a gun from Ernest Watkins to take care of the murder. He told me that Ernest had come across a gun and gave it to him.”

“And did he tell you what, if anything, he did with that gun?”

“He told me that he passed it along to Jerry Davis.”

Scott said Kiki was out on bond and under house arrest one morning several months later, when he was roused from sleep by a ringing phone. He said Kiki was on the line, and he had news to share: “Stupid and the girl are dead.”

Within weeks, Kiki jumped bond and joined Scott in L.A., Scott recalled.

“During the time period that he was living as a fugitive in California with you,” Moore continued, “did y’all have any other further discussions about what happened to Ulysses Hackett and Misty Carter?”

“Yes,” Scott said. “Tremayne told me that Jerry and him had went over to T’s house.”

“Who is T?”

“Big T from BMF.”

“Is that Terry Flenory?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know Mr. Flenory?”

“Yes.”

“And where did you meet him?”

“In Atlanta at my place of business.”

“Why did you meet him in Atlanta at your place of business?”

“Because he invested in the business.”

“So Tremayne told you about an occasion where he and Jerry Davis went over to Terry Flenory’s house?”

“Yes. And somehow Hack’s name came up, and Jerry boasted that he had took care of it.”

Under cross-examination, Kiki’s attorney hinted that Scott might be saying whatever he could to make sure he served the least possible
sentence. “You obviously don’t want to spend any more time than you have to in prison, correct?” the attorney, J. Bradley Bennett, asked.

“I’m saying, I done the crime, so I’m going to do the time,” Scott replied.

“Do you have a desire to spend less time in prison?” Bennett reiterated.

“I have a desire to tell the truth,” Scott shot back.

After Scott wrapped up his lengthy testimony, U.S. District Court Judge Henry Herlong called a short break. When he returned to the bench, one of the prosecutors approached him with an alarming bit of information. She said the government’s next witness, Eric “Mookie” Rivera, had just been threatened by Kiki.

“May it please the court, Your Honor?” prosecutor Regan Pendleton interjected. “Mr. Rivera, the government’s witness and codefendant in this case, was brought in the courtroom by the marshals service and placed in that chair, at which time the court was in recess and everyone was standing around talking. And I glanced over and I observed Mr. Graham make a threatening gesture toward Mr. Rivera. He pointed his fingers as if shooting a gun and then put the gun to his heart. Mr. Rivera observed it and I observed it. And Mr. Rivera is very concerned about it.”

The judge said he would get to that in due time. But first, a somewhat shaken Mookie launched into his testimony. Like Scott King, he gave a sprawling narrative of his history as Kiki’s friend and drug associate. Mookie described himself as a courier-for-hire who transported kilos of coke and huge shipments of cash across the country on private jets. He recalled meeting Kiki through their mutual employer, J-Rock. He said he continued to do business with Kiki while he was under house arrest, and that the two became friends. Mookie said Kiki opened up to him.

“Did you have a conversation with him about Ulysses Hackett’s death?” prosecutor Moore asked.

“It came up,” Mookie said.

“How did it come up?”

“I was over there. We were discussing our next trip. And out of curiosity, I asked him how the case was going. And he says, ‘Oh, it’s looking good right now.’ I said, ‘What’s going on?’ He said the one guy that could say anything about him got murdered. He just said that the guy is gone. He can’t say anything about him.”

Mookie testified that after Kiki became a fugitive, he traveled to the East Coast to pick up drug money for him—and that while he was in Atlanta, Kiki had him deliver bundles of the cash to his wife. Mookie said he also met with Kai Franklin Graham to pick up Kiki’s son. He said he transported the child across the country so that Kiki could spend time with him. Mookie then returned the boy to Kai, in Atlanta.

At the end of his testimony, the judge asked Mookie to describe what had just happened between him and Kiki in the courtroom.

“He, um, made eye contact, and then he shot one time,” Mookie said, pointing with two fingers the way children do when mimicking a gunshot.

“And what did you take that to mean?” the judge asked.

“That, you know, they’re going to try and kill me.”

Later in the hearing, Mookie took the opportunity to address some of the people seated in the courtroom: “I want to apologize for the loss that the Hackett family received, and the Carter family. I hope that they do get justice.”

The judge then sentenced Mookie to three and a half years in federal prison.

As for Scott King, his situation was more serious. Scott was a higher-level dealer, one who’d spent two years as a federal fugitive. What’s more, he’d brought his friend Hack into the fold—eventually leading him to his death, even if Scott didn’t have a hand in the murder. After Mookie’s testimony, the judge asked Scott if he had anything more to say before his sentence was read. “I would like to apologize to the Hackett family and the Carter family and let them
know that I loved Misty and Hack like a brother and sister,” he said. “I’m just so sorry.”