Mac Mall Mac Dre Beef End?
A deadly tale of underground rap / Vallejo's Mac Dre was slain in a dispute over money -- rumors led to reprisal and iii more killings, police say
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Vallejo rapper Andre "Mac Dre" Hicks wasn't on MTV, on mag covers or in movies. But his clever, hardcore rhymes had an clandestine post-obit, and when he was killed on a Kansas City freeway last November, hip-hop radio stations mourned him at length. Mac Dre was big enough for that.
Constabulary investigators say Hicks, 34, was shot in a financial dispute, only the rumor mill said something sexier: that a West-Midwest rap war had flared and that a notorious Kansas Urban center rapper dubbed "Fat Tone" had taken out Hicks. In the globe of hip-hop, constabulary say, bad claret often means good business.
Six months later on, police say, a San Francisco rap promoter nicknamed "Mac Minister" and a friend avenged Hicks in Las Vegas by firing 33 attack-rifle rounds into two Kansas City men -- including Anthony "Fat Tone" Watkins.
The 2 San Francisco men were indicted on murder charges early this month. 2 days afterward, a 21-year-one-time telephone call girl who was in Las Vegas with them turned upward expressionless in Fairfield, shot in the head.
The violent story, pieced together through interviews and courtroom records, reflects the blurry line between rumor and reality in the earth of underground rap.
Kansas City police Detective Everett Babcock, who cleared Watkins in Hicks' death, feared that rumors following the shooting might turn deadly.
"The tragedy of the whole thing is that, assuming (the adult female killed in Fairfield) was killed as retribution for being a witness, that'south three people dead over a fiscal matter over an amount of money that wouldn't pay for a weekend in Vegas," said Babcock, who would not elaborate on the alleged dispute except to say that Watkins was not a doubtable in Hicks' death.
The saga began quietly, in the early morning hours of Nov. ane, 2004, as Hicks rode in a white van driven by a friend through Kansas Metropolis. He had been performing in the city, and he and other Bay Area rappers enjoyed 2nd-dwelling house popularity there.
Hicks, who grew upwardly in Vallejo's hardscrabble Country Lodge Crest neighborhood, first gained radio airplay as a teenager with a song titled, ironically, "2 Hard 4 the (expletive) Radio." He had long been the discipline of rap world rumors. His female parent, Wanda Salvatto, said she'd heard nearly her son'southward death at least three times before.
Despite serving a five-yr prison sentence for conspiracy to commit bank robbery, Hicks was no thug, his female parent said. His problems were backside him when he was killed, Salvatto said, and he talked about mentoring teenagers to proceed them flying direct. He had recently moved to Sacramento and owned a record characterization.
Still, as his commuter moved through Kansas City in the nighttime a twelvemonth ago, a stolen blackness Infiniti G36 pulled alongside and someone opened burn down, constabulary said. The van swerved across a grass median and four freeway lanes, then crashed into a ditch.
Detective Babcock said the investigation was hampered early by the reluctance of Hicks' travel companions to cooperate. Some, when approached, even pretended they didn't know Hicks. But it wasn't long before rumors started to fly nigh a rap war -- and "Fat Tone" Watkins.
Fat Tone was a large figure, literally and figuratively. After he was shot and wounded in 2003, when he was 22, his next album cover showed him sitting up in a infirmary gurney flashing a eye finger. He was "Fatty Tone the Untouchable." He was one time arrested in the killing of a significant adult female, although the charges were dropped.
"Every shooting that happened (in Kansas City), you would get calls saying, 'Fat Tone did it, Fat Tone did it.' His name always came upward," Babcock said. Merely when it came to Hicks' expiry, he said, the rumor had legs.
Before long afterward Hicks' slaying, Watkins was summoned to Kansas City'southward constabulary headquarters for an interview. "I told him we expected retribution," Babcock recalled. "He said, 'I'm watching myself.' "
Several months afterward, Watkins denied in a rap vocal that he had killed Hicks, but "the rumor was that he admitted it," Babcock said.
Early on May 23, a security guard found the trunk of the 24-year-old Watkins in a housing development nether construction in southwest Las Vegas. He'd been shot near 20 times and was slumped over the front end seats of a blue 1992 Toyota Tercel, co-ordinate to m jury testimony. A few anxiety abroad, 22-yr-old Jermaine Akins -- a friend who was a fugitive from federal cocaine-selling charges -- also lay dead afterward being shot 13 times.
At the fourth dimension of the killing, San Francisco promoter Andre "Mac Minister" Dow, his friend Jason Mathis and call girl Lee Danae Laursen were in Las Vegas, according to police. Mathis had rented a house less than 5 blocks from the murder scene. Dow was with his 28-twelvemonth-old girlfriend. Laursen, who came from the small town of Payson near Provo, Utah, might have been turning tricks for Mathis, police said.
Slaying victims Watkins and Akins were in Las Vegas for a Snoop Dogg concert at the Palms and were staying at the MGM 1000. Co-ordinate to Las Vegas police Detective Todd Hendrix, Watkins told his female parent and girlfriend that Dow had promised him a meeting with Snoop Dogg.
Just hours before the killings, Hendrix said, MGM Chiliad cameras recorded Dow leaving the hotel with Watkins and Akins. He believes the victims were driven to the neighborhood where they were killed roughly fourscore minutes afterward.
According to Mathis' arrest warrant, he later admitted to a friend that he had shot Watkins and Akins to avenge Hicks' killing. Mathis "said he shot Watkins, and then chased Akins into the street and shot him while he was on the ground pleading for his life," the warrant declared.
The Toyota Tercel, investigators now say, had been given to Dow's girlfriend by a Berkeley activist, a adult female who once was her teacher. The car even bore a "Bush-league Lost" bumper sticker. Meanwhile, another car -- a white Pontiac Sunfire -- was spotted speeding away from the scene.
A day later, a white 2000 Pontiac Sunfire convertible was constitute called-for in Vallejo. The registered possessor: Lee Danae Laursen.
Laursen's father has told police that his daughter was forced into prostitution by Mathis, who "would escort her into various Las Vegas hotels hiding an AK-47 nether his clothing," co-ordinate to Mathis' arrest warrant. The male parent told police that he rescued his daughter once, in the month before the killing, but that she voluntarily returned to Las Vegas.
There, Laursen was seen in a gun store 9 days before the killing, where she bought ammunition similar to that used to impale Watkins and Akins, according to 1000 jury testimony.
Dow, 35, and Mathis, 26, were indicted Nov. 2 on 2 counts of murder and two counts of conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of Watkins and Akins. Mathis was arrested July 12 in San Francisco, where police said he had browbeaten his girlfriend. Investigators soon discovered he was wanted in Las Vegas, where he later pleaded not guilty. His Las Vegas chaser, Keith Brower, was not available for comment.
Dow remains on the lam, sought on a no-bond warrant issued subsequently the indictment, and may be featured soon on Boob tube's "America's Most Wanted." His San Francisco chaser, Eric Safire, says his customer isn't capable of murder but admits that Dow is capable of basking in the negative publicity.
"This is the greatest thing that has happened to him," Safire said, referring to the marketing and appeal of violence in gangsta rap. "He was proud he was a suspect."
Laursen, meanwhile, ended up in the Bay Area, where she lived out of hotels at times and offered her services -- equally "Alana" -- over the Craigslist Spider web site, police force say. Las Vegas investigators tracked her down in July, and during an interview in San Francisco, Hendrix said he and another detective begged her to cooperate, even offering assistance to help her regain her life.
"She wouldn't stand for it," Hendrix said. "She was completely snowed past Mathis. She thought he'd take care of her. We pleaded with her to leave of at that place so she wouldn't be harmed."
On the night of Nov. 4, Fairfield police officers went to a tranquillity neighborhood after residents reported hearing gunfire. Laursen was pronounced expressionless at the scene from a head wound. A dark-colored SUV was seen speeding away. Soon, Mathis' Saturn sedan, which Laursen had been driving, turned up burning in Richmond, said Fairfield police Lt. Tony Shipp.
"She had information that could be very damaging," Hendrix said. "The timing of it is uncanny."
Salvatto, Hicks' mother, said she doesn't know what to make of the killings and finds it difficult to believe that they are continued to her son's decease -- although she has noticed that "people like to be tied to the drama." She prefers to ignore the hype and enjoy the sight of young people wearing "Mac Dre" T-shirts, some who discovered his music in the past year.
Salvatto said she had never even heard of Dow or Mathis.
"I don't even know who'due south in the state of war," she said. "If Andre were here, he'd be shaking his head."
A rapper's killing triggers three deaths
Vallejo rapper Andre "Mac Dre" Hicks' slaying final year in Kansas Urban center has been linked to the killings of three other people, in Las Vegas and the Bay Area, and two San Francisco men accept been indicted in 2 of the killings.
KANSAS Metropolis
Andre "Mac Dre" Hicks
The 34-year-old Vallejo resident, who fabricated more than xx underground albums, was killed November. 1, 2004, during a trip to Kansas Metropolis, where he was performing.
LAS VEGAS
Anthony "Fat Tone" Watkins
The Kansas Urban center rapper, 24, was shot 20 times. His body was found May 23 in an unfinished housing development in Las Vegas.
Jermaine Akins
The 22-twelvemonth-old friend of Watkins was shot thirteen times. He was constitute near Watkins' torso.
SAN FRANCISCO
Andre "Mac Minister" Dow
The 35-year-old rap promoter was indicted Nov. 2 in Las Vegas on murder charges stemming from the deaths of Watkins and Akins.
Jason Mathis
The 26-yr-onetime friend of Dow too was charged in the deaths of Watkins and Akins.
Lee Danae Laursen
The 21-year-quondam prostitute - a possible witness to the killings of Watkins and Akins was shot and killed Nov. 4 in Fairfield.
The Chronicle City Hall Records
Source: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/A-deadly-tale-of-underground-rap-Vallejo-s-Mac-2592387.php
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