Pubdate: Fri, 08 Sep 2000
Source: Washington City Paper (DC)
Copyright: 2000 Washington Free Weekly Inc.
Contact:  (202) 332-8500
Mail: 2390 Champlain St. NW, Washington, DC 20009
Website: http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/
Author: Annys Shin
Note: This is part 9 of a 13 part feature edition of this weekly newspaper.

RUNNING LOW ON RAYFUL

Has D.C.'s Most Famous Crack Dealer Become Just Another Has-Been?

The 11-year-old has no idea what I'm talking about. Straddling his beat-up 
freestyle bike near the corner of 4th and L Streets NE on an overcast July 
afternoon, the kid just shakes his head. So do his five pint-sized buddies, 
who stand in a circle, each one parked over a set of wheels. "What he look 
like?" the boy says.

It doesn't take an anthropologist to know that the tall tales of 
11-year-olds are the true barometers of society's myths. I expected to hear 
this batch of Near Northeast youngsters tell me that Rayful Edmond III was 
8 feet tall, had a limousine that stretched whole city blocks in length, 
and wore enough gold to crush an ordinary man. Instead, when I ask them 
about the District's most infamous crack dealer, a man who made his 
headquarters just blocks from here, they just look confused.

For these kids, Edmond is ancient history. They were still in diapers in 
April 1989, when police hauled him off, along with 16 others, on charges of 
running the city's largest cocaine-distribution organization. Older 
residents, of course, remember the days when Edmond would pull up to the 
corner store in a white stretch limo. Some of them even clam up, 
reflexively, when his name is mentioned. But far more of them talk about 
Edmond in the same matter-of-fact tone they'd use to talk about the local 
florist, or the local florist's cat.

There are, of course, occasional echoes of Edmond, who is serving multiple 
life sentences on drug charges and is being held at a secret location 
within the federal prison system. When prosecutors indicted Kevin Gray and 
Rodney L. Moore earlier this year on charges of running one of the city's 
most violent heroin- and crack-dealing operations, they noted that Moore 
had paid Edmond a prison visit in 1992 to arrange a drug deal. When Antoine 
Jones, 16, opened fire on a group of teenagers at the National Zoo last 
May, the old kingpin was in the background again. Jones, newspapers soon 
reported, was the son of James Antonio Jones, one of Edmond's enforcers.

But then, Edmond was granted only a simple moniker, one that bundled him in 
with every other two-bit hustler: "notorious drug dealer."

Just a few years ago, it seemed impossible to imagine that Edmond could 
pass from public consciousness. He was to D.C. what Al Capone was to 
Chicago: part real-life terror, part legend. During his 1990 trial on drug 
conspiracy charges, prosecutors dubbed him "the Babe Ruth of crack."

The Washington Post called him a "drug tycoon" and said his organization 
was the "biggest" and "deadliest" in the city. Back when Edmond was the 
subject, every other word was a superlative. Even his name had an epic ring 
to it, which suited the multigenerational production of which he was the 
undisputed star.

Before their son got famous, the Edmond family was like many in Washington. 
Rayful Edmond's mother, Constance "Bootsie" Perry, worked for the 
Department of Health and Human Services. His grandmother, Bernice Perry, 
owned a town house at 407 M St. NE, on a tree-lined block just south of 
Gallaudet University.

Little Rayful played his first game of basketball nearby, at the J.O. 
Wilson Recreation Center at 7th and K Streets NE. His jump shots later drew 
crowds to the No. 9 Boys and Girls Club, where he played tournaments with 
his team, Men at Work. Off the court, he hung around with Georgetown 
University basketball stars John Turner and future Miami Heat center Alonzo 
Mourning.

Indeed, Edmond might have landed a college scholarship of his own, but he 
wasn't interested in higher education. He had already found a vocation.

As a teenager, Edmond started in the business by collecting drug money for 
his father, who had worked in a government office and sold drugs on the 
side. But then, according to a tape recording the FBI made of Edmond's mom 
during its investigation of Edmond, he "got too big" and "just up and went 
out on his own."

By the time Edmond was arrested, at age 24, he controlled between 30 
percent and 60 percent of the city's market for crack and cocaine. From his 
grandmother's home, he built an organization that employed about a dozen 
enforcers toting Uzi submachine guns and 150 sellers who made as much as 
$5,000 a week each . With their help, Edmond and his family—including his 
mom, his siblings, and various other relatives—distributed up to 1,700 
pounds of cocaine a month.

Edmond's operation had so many customers that buyers would cause traffic 
jams around "the Strip," the open-air drug market that Edmond operated on 
Orleans and Morton Places NE, right around the corner from his 
grandmother's home. Edmond later estimated that his organization grossed 
more than $30 million over four years.

Edmond may have perfected the role of chief municipal outlaw, but he didn't 
invent it. A long line of bootleggers, numbers-runners, and pre-crack dope 
dealers came before him. In the 1950s, for instance, James "Yellow Jim" 
Johnson ran D.C.'s biggest dope ring, peddling heroin in capsules for $2 a 
pop. Johnson created a furor when he testified before a Senate subcommittee 
that he had paid the chief of the Metropolitan Police Department's 
Narcotics Squad up to $20,000 in protection money.

But Edmond's notoriety, unlike Yellow Jim's, extended well beyond D.C.'s 
borders. In 1994, Ed Vulliamy, a writer for London's Observer, gave the 
Brits a quick lesson in D.C. vernacular: "If someone who was once a hoodlum 
on the streets is now driving a flashy car and has a good-looking girl on 
his arm at a classy club, he is 'rayfulling,' has 'rayfulled' his way to 
the top through the only business likely to have got him there."

When Edmond rayfulled his way into police custody, prosecutors managed to 
make his legend grow still bigger. William H. Murphy Jr., the Baltimore 
attorney who represented Edmond in 1990, argues that District Judge Charles 
R. Richey's decision to try Edmond before D.C.'s first anonymous jury—even 
the judge, the prosecutors, and the defense attorneys didn't know the 
jurors' names—in a courtroom protected by bulletproof glass ensured that 
the trial would be a spectacle. "Except for the quantities involved, it was 
a regular drug-conspiracy case that could have been tried under calmer 
circumstances," Murphy says in a recent interview. "I tried a case in 
Baltimore with a defendant who allegedly was involved in more than 20 
killings, and we didn't have any of that."

Of course, the details of Edmond's posh lifestyle—from $12,000 in cash that 
littered the floor of partner Tony Lewis' Crystal City apartment to 
Edmond's own diamond-studded Rolex—didn't hurt his celebrity status. Over 
the past decade, the Washington Post has run more than 300 stories about 
Edmond.

But if Edmond was a ruthless drug lord linked to 30 murders, he wasn't a 
stingy one. At trial, witnesses talked about the $200 worth of flowers he 
bought for the family of neighbor Stacie Lanier when Lanier's brother died, 
the cars he lavished on girlfriends, the free trip to the Super Bowl in San 
Diego on a chartered plane that Edmond gave to his employees.

Prosecutors and the press turned Edmond into Robin Hood, Al Capone, and 
Horatio Alger rolled into one. His well-spoken, even-tempered demeanor—the 
way he winked at reporters in court and showed up promptly to meet 
investigators—made it hard for anyone to buy into the notion that he was 
some badass motherfucker.

Instead, Edmond fell into another category: a case of great potential gone 
wrong. "But for the way he was raised and permitted to grow in our society, 
[he] could be running a major American corporation," Murphy said shortly 
after his client was convicted.

"Edmond is one of the first to be that notorious at a young age. What's 
unusual about his case is that people at his level in Los Angeles or 
Chicago were usually not very publicly visible, but Washington is much 
smaller," notes William Chambliss, a sociology professor and criminology 
expert at George Washington University, who used Edmond as a case study in 
his classes up through the early '90s. "Part of it was his personal style. 
He liked to be known, and he paid a price for it."

Chambliss doubts whether the hero worship was ever as widespread as the 
Post made it out to be. "To say Edmond was a hero in his neighborhood is 
like saying the Gottis or the Gambinis are heroes to Italian-Americans," 
Chambliss says.

"He isn't as well-regarded as when he was running around," notes Sgt. John 
Brennan, an MPD narcotics officer who helped bust Edmond. "Too much 
attention was paid to him by everybody. People think he ran an airtight 
operation, but he didn't. It was a loose-knit, poorly run organization that 
our department was able to infiltrate. To us, Ray's a criminal. All he did 
was hurt people."

When Edmond's empire went down, his family went up the river with him. 
Constance Perry's tape-recorded words helped send her son away. But during 
her own trial on drug-conspiracy charges, Perry denied that $70,000 worth 
of improvements to her house came from her son's drug profits. She even 
claimed ignorance of a $4,000 whirlpool in her basement—telling prosecutors 
that she was usually too tired from her government job to "go all around 
the house."

Perry—along with a total of 33 other people—was convicted for being part of 
Edmond's operation.

Edmond, meanwhile, occupied himself in prison by brokering $200 million 
worth of drug deals from a cell in Lewisburg, Pa. With phrases such as "You 
should meet my new girlfriend. She's 6 feet tall," Edmond would hawk 6 
kilos of cocaine over prison phones as clueless guards stood by. He later 
explained his prison drug dealing, saying, "At the time, my mind-set was, I 
had to still have people look up to me and prove that I was still capable 
of making things happen."

By 1995, though, law enforcement officials had caught on. Edmond agreed to 
become a government witness to win early release for his mother, who was 
serving a 14-year sentence. In 1998, after Edmond's testimony helped 
convict 11 people, Perry walked out a free woman. And Edmond was put in 
witness protection. He's in the slammer for life, but no one will say which 
slammer.

Edmond's street credentials, though, tanked. "Some people want to kill him 
now. He put a lot of guys away," says Sgt. Diane Groomes, who patrols 
Edmond's old neighborhood.

Rayful Edmond III, the Babe Ruth of crack, had become just another snitch.

You can still buy crack a couple of blocks from 407 M St. NE. And if you 
look for some of the drug's old users, you can also find folks who remember 
Edmond. In front of Blair House, a residential drug-treatment center on the 
600 block of I Street NE, a group of men waiting to wash cars share their 
Rayful lore.

"In one minute, he and all his workers could sell 10, 20 kilos. One 
minute!" says James, 38, a lifelong neighborhood resident who says he used 
to buy drugs on the Strip. "I was in line one time, on Orleans, in line in 
the alley. You can't have no short money, no $49. You got to have $50."

"[Edmond] had a lot of parties, a lot of cabarets," says Leon, 24, a hefty 
fellow in a sleeveless undershirt and camouflage shorts. What Leon knows 
about Edmond, he learned growing up around 21st Street and Maryland Avenue 
NE. "He got young guys who wouldn't normally be hustling," he says.

James holds his hand out about 4 feet high. "Little kids like this," he says.

"I looked up to him," chimes in a smaller guy sitting next to Leon, who 
gives only his nickname, Bam Bam. "Hell yeah. I like the fact that he made 
money. He started small. Even if it wasn't an honest job, he worked hard. I 
see why people looked up to him. He's like Tupac or Biggie."

"I think he was an all-around good dude who made some bad choices in life. 
We all make bad choices," Leon muses.

James, though, paints a more sinister picture of Edmond. When Edmond picked 
up a bill here and there for neighbors who were short of cash, "there was 
always a catch," he says. "If he paid your bills, that meant he wanted to 
hustle from your house. If he bought your kid sneakers, he wanted your kid 
to hustle for him."

If there's one thing that the three agree on, it's that Edmond was popular 
with the ladies. "He had a lot of kids," says Leon.

James elicits a couple shouts of "For real?" from his fellow car-washers 
when he adds, "I heard he was bisexual."

"The government took all his money," says Leon, succumbing to a wave of 
sympathy. "He had to pay all those people, lawyers—"

"What bills did he have?" James interrupts. "He lived with his grandmother!"

Today, Bernice Perry's former home sits abandoned. So many steps have been 
removed from the rusting iron staircase at the three-story home's main 
entrance that anyone attempting to climb them would simply fall through. 
There's a gash through the front door, and the windows on the top floor are 
shattered. A stained-glass window on the second floor is the only remaining 
indication of any opulence.

Bernice Perry—who as far as anyone knows is alive and well somewhere—told 
police she never lived in the house while her grandson was using it to 
distribute cocaine. She was never charged with any crime. Residents around 
the Strip say they've seen a son of Edmond's, about 15 years old, come 
around his dad's old turf. "I got nothing to say about [Edmond]. He's my 
man's father," says Tony, 19, a skinny kid with a black-and-white bandanna 
wrapped around his head who sits on the corner of 4th and L Streets NE. 
"He'll always be known," he says of his friend's father.

Just as he says that, Antoine, 20, who is perched next to him, brags, "I 
never looked up to him."

Only the older residents still fear Edmond. A retired cop, who has lived on 
the corner of 4th and M Streets NE most of her life and goes by the 
nickname Smiley, refuses to comment on Edmond. "I have to live here," she 
explains.

"I can't say something bad about someone who has such long arms," says a 
teacher who had Edmond's nephew as a student at J.O. Wilson Elementary a 
few years ago. The teacher, who refuses to give his name, now teaches in 
Maryland. But he remembers when grown-ups and kids alike worshiped Edmond 
as a hero—as long as he was doling out gifts. "People didn't perceive him 
as a drug dealer. But people's memories are short. It's a 'What have you 
done for me lately?' kinda thing." 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake