On Oct. 19, 1993, D.C. homicide detective Joseph Schwartz took the stand in U.S. District Court in a narcotics conspiracy and murder case against leaders of the First Street Crew, a drug gang that in recent years had terrorized the LeDroit Park section of Northwest Washington.
In a routine pretrial hearing, Schwartz described what various citizens had said about a police informant's killing. To protect their safety, Schwartz identified them only by number: "W-2," "W-3." No age, no sex, no location -- nothing, Schwartz hoped, that crew members sitting in the courtroom as spectators could use as a clue.
For all that caution, the hearing unleashed an astonishing fury of violence, police and prosecutors said.
By the time the trial ended, three more people directly connected to the case had been slain. Beginning with the informant's slaying in October 1992, a total of eight people connected to the case were killed. A ninth person was killed apparently because he saw one of the slayings.
In addition, more than 40 witnesses, their friends and family members had changed their names and moved after being taken into the federal witness protection program. Officials said they could not recall an equal or larger number of people protected in one case since the program's inception in 1972. So far, the protection has cost $526,000.
Intimidating or killing witnesses in serious criminal cases has increased dramatically in the District in the last two years, said U.S. Attorney Eric H. Holder Jr., who has proposed that the D.C. Council increase the maximum prison sentence for obstruction of justice from 10 years to a possible life term.
"I think there's a new culture on the street, in which people try to resolve criminal charges before they get to court," Holder said.
Two days after Schwartz testified, Janellen Jones, 41, a former member of the First Street crew who police said had seen the two alleged killers just before and after the informant's slaying, was slain on a rainy afternoon as she walked home from a bus stop. Jones was shot in the mouth, a message to other witnesses, police said. She had a subpoena in her pocket.
A 53-year-old man who was walking with Jones also was shot to death. And the shootings continued. The killings connected with the case began with the slaying of the police informant in October 1992 and ended in January 1994, about a month before the trial came to a close, prosecutors said. Others who knew about the case, and one family member of a government witness, were wounded.
Detectives and prosecutors believe seven of the victims were shot because crew members believed -- mistakenly -- that each was helping police or already had agreed to testify. At one point, crew leader Antone White, 21, hired his own private investigator to interview witnesses, a prosecutor said in a court hearing.
Although investigators had interviewed each of the eight victims connected to the case, only one -- the police informant -- had agreed to cooperate and testify, they said. Others, like Jones, had turned down offers of protection in exchange for their cooperation, prosecutors said. Just before Jones was killed, a prosecutor subpoenaed her, hoping she would change her mind.
The violence prompted officials to take extraordinary steps to protect witnesses, tactics more commonly associated with Mafia or drug cartel trials. Caravans of detectives and federal agents, some armed with machine guns, escorted some witnesses to court. Different routes and decoys were used.
As many as 15 agents and detectives at a time protected witnesses at their homes and in a network of safe houses and hotels. They also protected the prosecutor who'd received a threat on his voice mail, said John Walsh, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent who helped protect witnesses.
Despite the carnage that followed Schwartz's court appearance, not one witness who actually testified was harmed, said assistant U.S. attorney Michael Volkov, who tried the case with Steven Roman.
Prosecutors and police agreed to talk about the case because White and the other crew members in effect face no other pending criminal charges. They said they also want to highlight the problem of witness intimidation to underscore to Congress and local legislators that police and prosecutors need help.
"Five years ago, killing witnesses was virtually unheard of," said D.C. police Sgt. T.J. McCann, a homicide investigator who worked on the First Street Crew case. "Now, if you talk to any homicide investigator or prosecutor, they'll tell you they've had a witness killed."
Capt. William Hennessy, commander of the homicide unit, estimated that detectives successfully identify killers in 85 percent of all cases. "We know exactly who's doing the shooting," Hennessy said. "The problem is getting witnesses to testify. That's the crux of it."
In the First Street trial, crew leader White and three other crew members were found guilty in March of federal narcotics and racketeering charges. White, Ronald Hughes, 20, and Eric A. Hicks, 24, were sentenced to life in prison without parole. Dan R. Hutchinson Jr., 22, was sentenced to a 25-year prison term. The jury could not reach a verdict on the charges that White and Hughes killed the police informant. None of the four has been convicted of murder.
Based on information from informants and their own knowledge of circumstances, detectives and prosecutors believe White ordered the shootings, Volkov said during White's sentencing hearing. There was no evidence of robbery or another motive for the attacks, police said.
"We are fully confident he is responsible for orchestrating and directing the violence against witnesses," said Volkov, the prosecutor who was threatened. "These were people he believed had, could or would cooperate with the government."
White, who is being held at the D.C. Correctional Institute at Lorton pending a transfer to a federal institution, declined a request for an interview. His attorney, R. Kenneth Mundy, has denied repeatedly that White had anything to do with the witness intimidation. At his sentencing in May for his narcotics and racketeering conviction, White denied he was involved in the violence.
The expense of protecting witnesses goes beyond what the U.S. Marshals Service has spent on relocation.
Heavily armed members of the task force called REDRUM (murder spelled backwards), the DEA-police unit that helped investigate the case, provided short-term protection at hotels. FBI agents protected witnesses. And DEA headquarters allocated $75,000 to protect witnesses, said DEA Agent Ron Provencher, a REDRUM supervisor. "We were determined to do everything in our power to protect {government} witnesses," Provencher said.
Killing or scaring witnesses has increased in large part because it sometimes works, investigators said.
Criminals and law-abiding residents in the most crime-ridden parts of the city have seen accused killers set free because witnesses were slain or were too frightened to testify, police said.
But the level of violence against witnesses in the First Street Crew case was unprecedented, police and prosecutors said.
The case is a study in how crew members abide by a code of bloody vengeance and how they kill lifelong friends to protect their own interests, according to detectives and federal and D.C. Superior Court records.
The case that police allege triggered the killings began when Arvell "Pork Chop" Williams, 24, a former associate of the First Street Crew, went to the U.S. Attorney's office and volunteered to help police buy crack from the crew.
Williams came forward out of anger with the crew because its members had information about the murder of his uncle but would not share it with him, prosecutors said. He also was afraid he would be prosecuted for his own involvement in selling drugs.
On Oct. 6, 1992, Williams was trying to set up a meeting between crew members and undercover officers from the vice unit of the 3rd Police District. At about 5 p.m. that day, Williams was sitting in a car in the 1800 block of Second Street NW when two gunmen shot him about 18 times and ran away.
A witness would later testify that Antone White and Ronald Hughes were the gunmen. Other witnesses would testify that they saw the two run from the scene and that they heard White tell other crew members, "Don't worry about 'Chop,' we took care of him."
When Williams was killed, REDRUM, which investigates drug-related violence, was put on the case.
According to Schwartz and other REDRUM investigators, the intimidation of witnesses began before officials removed the body of Williams, which was slumped inside a white sedan.
Witnesses told Schwartz and other detectives that while investigators interviewed witnesses, White and Hughes returned to the scene and joined the gawkers. White stood some 20 feet from Williams's body, casually eating a bag of potato chips and watching to see who was talking to the police, witnesses told detectives.
Witnesses told detectives that White and Hughes had killed Williams because they suspected he was a police informant, Schwartz said.
Detectives also were told that White and Hughes had planned to kill undercover Officer Dale Sutherland if he had accompanied Williams, Schwartz said. Sutherland was about a block away when Williams was shot.
Two days after Williams was killed, REDRUM investigators raided the homes of several crew members, seizing weapons, cash and drugs. Detectives worked virtually around the clock interviewing witnesses.
In the neighborhood, it was no secret who the detectives were interviewing.
"We had to go to their neighborhood to interview them," Schwartz said. "Some people didn't have phones. Some who did would hang up on us. Because everybody grew up in the neighborhood, it was easy for members of the crew to learn who had been interviewed by police, though they didn't know who was cooperating."
The chain of witness killings police link to the First Street Crew began with Williams. The second occurred 20 days later, police said.
On Oct. 26, 1992, Gregg A. Ingram, 20, was shot to death near the White House. Ingram, known as Chinese Gregg, was killed two days after Schwartz interviewed him about the Williams killing. Ingram lived on the block where Williams was killed and was not a member of the crew.
Volkov said that an informant told police that after Ingram was killed, one of White's uncles, who was part of the crew, said, "Too bad what happened to Chinese Gregg. That's what happens to snitches."
No one has been arrested in the Ingram case.
A week after Ingram was killed, three young crew members were shot to death as they rode in a car. Police were seeking them for questioning about the slaying of the police informant, Volkov said. Through their attorneys, two had told police they were considering coming in for interviews just before they were killed, Volkov said.
Within six weeks of the triple slaying, White, Hughes, Hicks and Hutchinson were arrested on federal narcotics racketeering charges. White and Hughes also were charged with killing the police informant.
For some 10 months, no other witnesses were harmed, until Detective Schwartz testified, Volkov said.
Each of those who were killed or wounded after Schwartz testified had information about the informant's killing, Volkov said.
Detectives were particularly troubled by the slaying of Jones, 41. She had once been a crew member and had spent four months in jail for distribution of cocaine. But she had broken her ties to the group and been drug-free for more than two years, according to investigators and relatives. Jones considered cooperating with the government, but refused when Volkov told her she would have to plead guilty to a felony drug charge -- though do no jail time -- for her past role in the drug enterprise.
As the trial wore on and more and more witnesses were shot, in the minds of police and prosecutors, the case became a moral crusade.
"Never have the lines between good and evil been so clearly drawn," Volkov said.
In sentencing the four convicted crew members, U.S. District Judge Harold H. Greene cited the destruction caused by the crew's drug dealing. Police estimate that over several years, the crew sold the equivalent of 100,000 $20 rocks of crack.
"It is hard to know but easy to imagine how many persons had to rob, burglarize, even kill, to get money to buy the amount of drugs distributed by this organization," Greene thundered. "It is hard to know but easy to imagine how many babies were born with crack addiction to be plagued with that through no fault of their own."
Greene then spoke of the intimidation of witnesses in the case.
"Arvell Williams was killed because he gave information to law enforcement," the judge said. "The record is replete with threats to others. Several witnesses who appeared for the government were obviously scared, and some refused to give candid testimony when they finally did take the stand.
"The judicial systems of several countries {such as} Colombia and Italy at one time were paralyzed by witness killings and intimidations," Greene continued. "We must prevent that kind of development {from taking place} in the District of Columbia and in the federal courts at all costs because if witnesses can be intimidated, injured, or killed, all the crime bills Congress may pass will be just illusions, limited in practical effect."
The pace of killings in the LeDroit Park area has abated since White and his co-defendants were convicted.
On the wall of one row house that borders an alley, the names of several crew members killed during the investigation and prosecution of the case are spray-painted.
This is also spray-painted: "1st 4 life. RIP. WE AINT DEAD YET."
Police and prosecutors say that eight people connected to the First Street Crew narcotics conspiracy and murder case were shot to death. A ninth person who was with one of those victims also was killed.
There were two flurries of killings. The first began in October 1992 with the slaying of a police informant and ended a month later. The second wave of violence began after Detective Joseph Schwartz testified on Oct. 19, 1993, in a case against the crew and ended in January 1994.
None of the four crew members on trial was convicted of murder. The four were convicted of federal narcotics and racketeering charges.
These killings comprised the first wave of violence:
* Oct. 6, 1992: Police informant Arvell "Pork Chop" Williams, killed as he sits in a car in LeDroit Park. Williams was trying to set up a drug buy by an undercover police officer. Two gunmen shot him 18 times as he sat in a white sedan on Second Street NW just south of Rhode Island Avenue.
* Oct. 26, 1992: Gregg A. Ingram, 20, shot to death on 17th Street NW in the shadow of the White House. "Chinese Gregg," who was not a crew member, was killed within days of being questioned in connection with the slaying earlier that month of Williams.
* Nov. 3, 1992: Crew members Damani Jwanza Colvin, 18, Richard L. Sowell III, 17, and Clifford White III, 20, gunned down in a car in the 500 block of T Street NW. Police had been seeking the three to question them in connection with the slaying of Williams. Two teenage crew members were charged with the killings, but the charges were dropped.
The second wave consisted of:
* Oct. 21, 1993: Janellen Jones, 41, and John P. Barton, 53, shot to death in the unit block of U Street NW. Jones at one time worked for Antone White and had been questioned in the Williams case but did not cooperate when she was told by the U.S. attorney's office she would have to face a drug charge. Barton had no involvement with the case and was killed apparently because he witnessed the Jones slaying.
* Nov. 19, 1993: Andre "Dre" Brighthaupt, 17, killed 10 days after detectives interviewed him about the case. Crew member Brighthaupt had been charged with the Nov. 3, 1992, triple murder. Those charges were dropped.
* Jan. 26, 1994: Jermaine Lewis Austin, 16, killed in the 2000 block of First Street NW. Austin, known as "Little Jay," had been one of three youths shot and wounded in November 1993. In that attack, crew member Austin identified the two men, both Antone White associates, who are charged with killing him and are now awaiting trial.
SOURCE: Metropolitan Police Department and U.S. attorney's office and Drug Enforcement Administration