The Set Up: Inside Ohio’s Death Squads

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What they discovered was beyond what any of them could have imagined or hoped for.

It turned out that not only had Crystal predicted in writing exactly how she would be killed.

It became clear that she’d made an enemy out of the man who’d made murders happen in the short north posi.

The short north posi formed in the late 80s and early 90s as a natural phenomenon within the neighborhood of the same name.

In the9s, the Crips aligned posi sought to gain a monopoly on the local crack trade.

According to Fed’s magazine, quote, “It was said that any outsider who dared to sell drugs in the SNP territory was beaten and robbed or even killed.

Wars for control of the neighborhood streets raged as hustlers from Detroit and Indiana tried to move in on the area.

Short North Posi members were known to congregate at local carry outs around 4th Street as well as pool halls and after hours bars.

Columbus is one of the Midwest’s largest and fastest growing cities with a population of nearly 1 million people.

But it also has an extremely high murder rate consistently two to three times higher than national average with roughly half of recent murder suspects being 21 years of age or younger.

As the short north posy considers itself a [ __ ] gang that has had problems with the many blood sets around Columbus, including the Po Dexter Thug Life, East Haven Bloods, Deuce Deuce, or the DBlock Bloods to name a few.

Despite this, one of the gangs most consistent targets over the years has not been opposing gangs so much as independent crack dealers, marijuana sellers, or anyone operating in elicit cash business who seems like they could be an easy mark.

And in the 2000s, a new generation of Short North came to prominence that rejected the Posi label altogether.

They formed aligned crews while still technically operating as the short north posi came with names that left little doubt what they were all about.

These new crews members were the byproduct of what you might expect from kids who grew up in a gang-infested neighborhood several generations deep.

Many of them became used to the concept that shootings, fights, and death were normal.

Some of them like to play a game as kids whereby they would wander the streets of the short north and sucker punch anyone they felt like hitting with the explicit goal of knocking the person out.

It was called the knockout game and one of the youngsters who played it was named Troy Patterson who started knocking out people at age 13.

By age 17 he was tried as an adult and convicted for sexually assaulting a woman with a pistol during a home invasion robbery.

By age 25, he was a government witness facing multiple murder allegations who had spent his entire adult life behind bars and who was clinging to the hope that he would get out someday decades down the line if he told on his friends.

A defense attorney asked him this in a cross-examination.

By the time you were 17, you were in jail for rape, robbery, and kidnapping.

Would you consider that to be a career criminal at that point? I just calling it having a few bad years, Patterson replied.

The cutthroat committee came first, wielding AK-47s and revolvers in a 2-year war with a Bloods gang called DBlock, centered about 3 mi away from the Short North.

One inciting event was the May 1st, 2005 murder of a respective Posi member named Tyrone Hill, a man who was known as a voice of reason in the gang.

when he was shot and killed at a BP gas station.

The CPC kicked off a manhunt for his suspected killer or any other DB block member whose death could even the score.

On another day in 2005, two cutthroat members, Tommy Coats and Lance Green, shot an AK at DBlock member Ricky Darthur, missing him but killing Sena Hester in the process.

The following year, the crew engaged in a shootout at a local park with DBlock, where 100 rounds were fired and four people escaped with non-fatal injuries.

That’s just a taste of some of the incidents during this 2-year gang war, which hit a lull when the feds rounded up eight suspected CTC members.

But then came the homicide squad, which, as a federal prosecutor put it, quote, made the cutthroat committee look like Boy Scouts.

One older member of the squad stood out.

He held a legitimate job in addition to being a drug dealer, and he had outside connections to the Mexican cartels that brought a whole new element to the table.

He was the aforementioned Robert Brandon Led Better, better known as B or Killer B.

Having formed his own robbery crews within the posi, Led Better became the reconnaissance man, someone capable of convincing a potential target that they were friends right before the worst happened.

His shrewdness, combined with the homicide squad’s sheer tolerance for violence, was enough to make a mark on the region.

They committed so many house robberies that no one truly knows how many people were victimized or how much money exchanged hands.

All we truly know are the instances that went bad, where people wound up dead.

Like many other life-changing cataclysms, The Homicide Squad was inspired by Project Pat, specifically his song Homicide Faux Cashide, >> which more or less spells out the group’s philosophy.

They were a mix of contract killers and home invasion robbers, dedicated to making money and perfectly fine with taking a life or two along the way.

By the case’s end, the feds would claim to have evidence definitively linking the short north posi to 14 murders, as well as evidence tangentially linking them to other homicides and to have documented numerous instances where SNP members were killed by rivals.

Here are some prime examples.

The sleepy town of Granville, Ohio, might be the last place folks would expect to find a residence transformed into an after hours gentleman’s club, complete with stripper poles, pool tables, a full bar, jacuzzi tubs, and private bedrooms.

But that’s exactly what Greg Cunningham had in his business, Tapout Entertainment, which was known for keeping $2,500 in singles on hand to tip the working ladies during extravagant parties.

On August 19th, 2007, there were 60 to 70 individuals there enjoying a typical evening when the short north posi crashed the party.

Rostaman Wilson, Clifford Robinson aka Tink, RJ Wilson aka Gizzel, and Christopher Harris aka Od Dog teamed up for this home invasion after offering a man named David Hurt $5,000 to simply drive them there.

Their mere presence instantly created chaos with a man named Donathan Moon instantly taking refuge in one of the bedrooms with two women.

While attempting to break through, Tink fired an AK-47 through the door with R.

J.

Wilson following this up by running inside and killing Moon with a pistol.

They rifled through the bedroom, but didn’t find any cash and left a short time later.

As all this played out, another guest jumped out of a window to escape.

OD Dog had previously proven his loyalty to Lead Better in part when he, Marcus Peters, and Lead Better scoped out and killed a man named Alan Johnson in 2006.

For Lead Better, it was personal.

He paid the shooters $10,000 and waited by the door while they shot Johnson, who was blamed for killing Lead Better’s little brother, Elijah, aka White Tone, weeks earlier.

In October 2007, OD Dog and others would accidentally shoot and kill Peterson while attempting to rob a drug dealer on Columbus’ Bridgestone Dr.ive.

In November 2007, Lead Better RJ Wilson and OD Dog teamed up with other SNP members for another home invasion robbery that turned bad.

This time bringing Rashad Lon aka Buckwheat along for the ride.

The target this time was picked not just because of his status and cash, but because Lead Better held a grudge against him.

His name was Rodrio Williams, but he was known to the community as Rowdy Rod, a rapper who had been gaining traction with a recent video and single featuring Juvenile.

Rowdy Rod’s wife, Lata Boyce, had previously dated Led Better, and there was friction between the two men.

It’s clear from the court records that Lata hadn’t completely cut Lad Better out of her life.

And on November 3rd, 2007, the two began texting back and forth after Rowdy Rod left for a movie.

Led Better and Lata reportedly texted about meeting up, but in Lead Better’s mind, it was all a ruse.

Once he was certain that Rowdy Rod was gone, he planned on alerting the others to rob the house.

They rented a Mitsubishi and made their way to Rowdy Rod’s home, which again was located in a sleepy town outside of Columbus called Pickerington.

As a lastminute addition, Led Better called his good friend Earl Williams, a contract killer who had so much love for Led Better, he’d have willingly murdered someone for him for free.

The group arrived in Pickerington just a few minutes too late for Rowdy Rod, who made an unexpected arrival just as the robbery crew was getting out his front door.

As was his MMO, Lead Better stayed behind in the Mitsubishi while others made their way to the residence, intercepting Rod while Earl Williams ran upstairs and held Latana at gunpoint inside the home.

Earl Williams would later recount what happened next.

She has the phone in her hand.

She has a baby right there.

I told her, “Put the baby under the bed.

” I grab the phone.

She’s on the phone with the police.

I close it.

I said, “Please, just give me the money.

We just keeping it real simple.

And then we hear some shouting.

Dun dun dun dun dun dun.

Outside, the group had jumped on Rod, then killed him as he attempted to flee.

Once the shots rang out, Earl Williams was then able to convince the woman, who’s now Rod’s widow, to show him the location of tens of thousands of dollars in cash, which the group later split between them.

While R.

J.

Wilson kept a distinctive jeweled necklace with Rod’s initials on it.

He would later wear the necklace in public.

And when Led Better found out, he was so enraged he told Earl Williams to kill R.

J.

Latana was no fool and quickly deduced that Led Better had set her up and had her husband murdered.

Even though he denied it when she angrily confronted her, Lata was able to use a friend who worked for Verizon to locate the pings off Lead Better’s cell phone, proving he was in Pickerington when the robbery and murder went down.

It turned out that the reason Led Better’s phone pinged off a local cell tower was because he called another woman in his life, Crystal Fe, and asked her for directions to Rowdy Rod’s house.

Now, she too was a loose end who could potentially link him to what happened.

Less than two weeks later, Lead Better was caught outside a Columbus trap house with $45,000, 7 g of weed, a gun, and some crack, but released from jail shortly thereafter.

As for Earl Williams, he didn’t end up killing R.

J.

Wilson for wearing Rod’s chain, but soon Led Better had another job for him.

kill a man named Andre Brown aka Paco who’d been plotting to rob DBlock drug dealers that Lead Better was doing business with.

Earl linked up with Paco at a Columbus residence where two other SNP affiliates named Chad Ays and Taran Culvin were hanging out.

Earl asked Paco to show him some stolen rims around the side of the house and kept his gun at the ready.

But as Paco did this, Earl heard the other two men coming up behind him, saw Paco begin to draw his own weapon.

It was in this instant that Earl realized that Paco wasn’t the target for the setup that day.

He was.

The men emptied their guns into each other.

A threeon-one gun battle in Columbus.

All were struck multiple times.

Earl passed out.

When he came too, Chad Ays and Taran Culvin were lying next to him, either dead or dying, and Paco was barely alive a few feet away.

It’s unclear whether Earl shot Kulvin or Chad, but he finished one of them off, then attempted to walk to a firehouse that was more than a mile away.

He soon discovered he couldn’t walk, so he dragged himself behind a dumpster just as Paco was getting up and searching for Earl with an AK.

Outgunned, Earl prayed silently that Paco wouldn’t notice his trail of blood.

And when Paco turned a corner, he dragged himself out into the middle of the road, stripping off his clothes to check the bullet holes as he did so.

That’s where the cops found him.

At the hospital, doctors removed half his intestines, half his pancreas, and half his liver.

But he survived in time to be charged with double murder of Chad Ays and Teran Culvin.

After all this, Earl agreed to testify against Brandon Led Better, the government coped a plea that allowed Earl, a self-admitted hitman, to receive 8 years behind bars.

The Posiy’s reputation attracted young men who weren’t even gang members, but wanted a piece of the action.

Jonathan Doughboy Halt was one of them.

He had barely turned 18 in 2010 when he sought a role in a robbery crew led by an SNP member named Lancy Reynolds, an elder who was known around Columbus as a professional robber.

But why rob you can get youngsters to do it for you.

Reynolds turned Hol and an S&P member named Christopher Wharton into a Family Dollar store that seemed like an easy lick.

Holt ran in with a gun, demanded money from the teller, but apparently got spooked by the crowd inside the store and ran out empty-handed.

So later, they tried again, this time targeting a local marijuana dealer named Quincy Battle, who was said to have had £18 in his possession.

The plan was to use a $50 bill to pose as weed buyers, then rob Quincy when he opened his door.

But that’s not what happened.

Quincy’s door man was a crackhead named Moody.

And when he opened up, Hol and Wharton fired inside, killing Quincy in the process.

They fled on foot once again empty-handed.

And in fact, they dropped the $50 bill.

So, the robbery was a complete and utter failure.

Months later, Hol would get shot in Columbus and suffer paralysis and be confined to a wheelchair.

Then, he would be successfully prosecuted for murder along with Reynolds.

Wharton was also charged with killing Quincy, but agreed to testify in order to avoid a life sentence.

With all of these witnesses racking up, Lead Better’s legal problems got even worse in 2011 when federal prosecutors caught him red-handed, arranging to receive 2,000 lb of marijuana from a Mexican source of supply.

From behind bars, Led Better knew he’d lost several of his most trusted allies to jail, the streets, or what he saw as disloyalty.

and now he feared that Crystal Fe was turning on him too.

The two had a rocky relationship with Led Better once tying her up, shooting her in the hand, but later attempting to make up for it by funding a romantic vacation to Hawaii.

Now Led Better feared she’d tell the Pickerington police about Rowdy Rod’s murder.

But Led Better had at least one more shooter on the outside, a mysterious man known only as Santa Claus.

It turned out that Lead Better wasn’t entirely incorrect in his beliefs.

The cops had been pressing F for information and she seemed willing to provide it, but she was not convinced the smalltime Pickerington police department was equipped to protect her from lead Better whether or not he was in jail.

Sure enough, a letter came addressed to Fe from a federal detention center that spelled everything out.

Wow.

God knows if I knew you were going to abandon ship like that on some cold-blooded [ __ ] that I would have made certain preparations for this.

Before you know it, Santa Claus will be coming to town.

On October 19th, 2011, Crystal’s worst fear came true.

She was killed.

The mysterious hitman known as Santa Claus was never captured or publicly identified.

But federal and state authorities had gathered enough evidence against Lead Better and nearly two dozen others to bring one of the biggest RICO cases in Ohio’s history.

It was a wild trial.

Federal prosecutors put one cold-blooded killer on the witness stand after another.

Men like Al Nuts and Troy Patterson, each openly hoping to receive leniency that he probably didn’t deserve.

The end result was a series of guilty verdicts which led better still maintains were a miscarriage of justice.

But what if the promise by the government to eliminate the short north posy completely? Well, it turns out that sending the gangsters to prison was only half of the battle.

Nowadays, the neighborhood once described by Feds Magazine as a modern-day crackfueled war zone and quote hangout for killers and cutthroats had been replaced by what’s now known as the Short North Arts District, backed by a nonprofit called the Short North Alliance.

While the area still does have problems with crime, this is how the Short North Alliance describes it to the world in the present day.

The Short North Arts District is a vibrant and inclusive destination of discovery and community for creators.

Located in the heart of Columbus, Ohio, our historic buildings are home to more than 300 exciting businesses, the majority of which are locallyowned or headquartered.

It has received numerous national accolades and is considered a model for urban revitalization.

Ow.

Ow.