Crime Beat (22 page)

It was another four weeks before police had gathered evidence of what happened and began arresting the lieutenants in the Bryant Organization.

Times
staff writer Claudia Puig contributed to this story.

MASSIVE DRUG, MURDER CASE INCHES ITS WAY TOWARD TRIAL

Courts: Charges against the so-called Bryant Organization grew out of 1988 slayings. Getting verdicts may take years.

April 19, 1992

With its 10 defendants, 58 volumes of investigative records containing 20,000 pages, and 34 defense attorneys, prosecutors and investigators, the Bryant Organization murder and drug conspiracy case moves through the justice system like an elephant.

Its sheer bulk dictates that it move slowly.

Already nearly 4 years old, the massive prosecution resulted from the slayings of three adults and a child at a Lake View Terrace house where the proceeds from a $500,000-a-month rock cocaine business were allegedly counted. And the end is nowhere near.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Jan L. Maurizi, the lead prosecutor in the case, said the criminal trial of the 10 people charged with either the slayings or with taking part in a conspiracy to control the crack trade in the northeast San Fernando Valley could make U.S. legal history.

“I think there is every possibility that it will be the longest and most expensive trial ever,” Maurizi, who has been working full-time on the case for most of the last three years, said last week.

A trial date for the case has not been set. Court officials have not found a courtroom that will be available—and big enough—for a trial expected to last by some estimates as long as three years.

Bills for the taxpayer-paid attorneys representing both sides in the case run nearly $2,000 per hour when court is in session. The prosecution’s investigation has already cost at least $2 million, by one defense attorney’s estimate.

And when a courtroom is chosen for the trial, there will undoubtedly be renovations. Bulletproof glass partitions will be added for security. Bleacher seats will likely be built to allow all of the attorneys and defendants a clear view of the witness stand. All of it will add to the cost of the case.

Once the logistics of where and when are set, the complexities will continue. The case may require more than one jury, and the selection process may take months. Each witness who takes the stand will be subject to cross-examination by 10 attorneys representing the different defendants. Since four defendants face a possible death penalty, a lengthy penalty phase could follow any convictions.

The landmark case for such lengthy and costly prosecutions was the McMartin Pre-School molestation case. The first of two Los Angeles trials in the McMartin case lasted 32 months from the start of jury selection until the return of verdicts. The bill to taxpayers was estimated at $15 million.

The murder and drug case is the result of a sweeping investigation of the so-called Bryant Organization, named for two Pacoima brothers who allegedly headed the group. The investigation began after the Aug. 28, 1988, shootings on Wheeler Avenue.

Also known on the streets as The Family, the organization had as many as 200 associates and had controlled much of the flow of cocaine to the northeast San Fernando Valley since 1982, according to the charges against the defendants.

Maurizi said the group also was extraordinarily violent in maintaining a grip on its territory. She blames the organization for 25 murders over the past 10 years.

Those killed in the 1988 shootings were Andre Louis Armstrong, 31; James Brown, 43; Lorretha English, 23, and her 2-year-old daughter, Chemise. Investigators said the killings occurred at a time when the Bryant group was fending off competition and demands for money from Armstrong, a former associate who had recently been released from prison.

According to authorities, Armstrong was set up to be killed when he was lured to a meeting at the organization’s “cash” house on Wheeler Avenue. Armstrong and Brown were shot to death as they entered the house. A gunman then ran out to their car and shot English and her daughter. The little girl was executed with a point-blank shot to the back of the head.

Within six weeks of the slayings, squads of officers with search warrants raided 26 houses where suspected members of the Bryant Organization lived or did business. Investigators said they recovered numerous records detailing the group’s drug business—which grossed at least $1.6 million quarterly.

Evidence from the raids and the shooting scene and information from a key member of the organization who agreed to cooperate with authorities led to charges being filed against 12 people believed to make up the top leadership and enforcement arms of the organization.

Among those charged is Stanley Bryant, now 34, the alleged leader of the group at the time because his older brother, Jeff, was in prison. Also among the defendants is Le Roy Wheeler, 23, a suspected hit man for The Family who authorities said ran to the car where English and her daughter were sitting and dispatched them with a shotgun and handgun.

Because it took three years to round up all 12 suspects, six separate preliminary hearings—some lasting months—and a grand jury session have been held during the past few years. It wasn’t until September that the last suspect was ordered to stand trial.

Earlier this month, two of the defendants pleaded guilty to drug and aiding and abetting charges, the first convictions in the case. One was put on probation after spending the last 18 months in jail. The other has not yet been sentenced.

What remains to be decided on is a date for the trial—and a venue.

“We still haven’t found a home,” said Maurizi, explaining that a Los Angeles Superior Court judge who has been hearing pretrial motions in the case has been reassigned to civil matters, leaving the Bryant case without a courtroom.

With trial length estimates running from Maurizi’s conservative one year to as long as three years, courtrooms with clear dockets are difficult to find. Finding a courtroom large enough is also a problem. During pretrial hearings the defendants and attorneys have filled audience seats and jury boxes.

But that extra room won’t be there during the trial. Steve Flanagan, an attorney representing defendant Tannis Curry, said the case may require two or more juries because evidence against some defendants cannot be heard by jurors considering different charges against other defendants.

“I think at a minimum we are looking at two juries and possibly even more,” he said.

Maurizi said a courtroom may have to be renovated for the case. She also said all of the logistic problems may make it so unwieldy that the defendants will have to be tried separately—possibly in simultaneous trials.

However, the prosecutor said she opposes breaking up the defendants and hopes the case will find a home soon in one of six courtrooms used for “long cause” cases in downtown Los Angeles or the four courtrooms used for that purpose in Van Nuys. She believes that the trial may finally start by early fall—four years after the killings.

Attorneys involved said the trial is expected to be lengthy because of the complex conspiracy charges, which require a massive amount of documentary evidence as well as testimony. Also, having so many defendants automatically lengthens the process.

“With 10 defendants there could be 10 attorneys conducting cross-examinations of every witness,” Maurizi said.

“The more defendants you have, the length of trial increases geometrically, not arithmetically,” said Ralph Novotney, who represents defendant Donald Smith. “I think somebody even said this would last four years. I think one to two years is realistic.”

Flanagan said jury selection alone could take months. Between the prosecution and all of the defendants, there will be more than 200 challenges to jurors allowed, he added.

“I have no idea how long it will take,” Flanagan said of the trial. “As a general rule, a prosecutor’s estimate is conservative. If she says one year, I would at least double it.”

In addition to the defendants, the case has a massive attachment of attorneys and investigators. There are 17 defense attorneys—all court-appointed. Seven defendants have been granted two attorneys each because they face the death penalty or life in prison if convicted. Each defendant also has at least one court-appointed investigator.

On the prosecution side, Maurizi heads a team of four deputy district attorneys and four investigators, including Los Angeles Police Detective James Vojtecky, the lead investigator since the beginning of the case.

Most of the prosecutors and investigators have been working full-time on the case for a year or longer. They primarily work out of an office near the San Fernando Courthouse, its location kept secret for security reasons. In the course of the investigation, members of the team have traveled to 11 states to interview witnesses and gather evidence.

While most murder cases result in investigators accumulating reports and other documents that fill two or three thick blue binders called “murder books,” the Bryant case has filled 58 so far. During one preliminary hearing, they were lined up in the unused jury box so they could be easily referred to by prosecutors. Side by side, they stretched more than 10 feet.

“It’s a nightmare when you try to get everything collated,” Flanagan said. “I have attempted to computerize everything. But there is so much. There are approximately 20,000 pages. There are thousands and thousands of telephone numbers.”

It is difficult to estimate how much has been spent on the case or how much taxpayers will eventually have to pay. The investigation of the shooting involved numerous law enforcement agencies, and at times as many as 200 officers were brought in to conduct searches. Flanagan estimated the investigation has cost more than $2 million. Maurizi said that estimate could be in the ballpark, but she could not confirm it.

The true costs of the case would include the salaries of prosecutors, police investigators, bailiffs, judges and court staff. The defendants’ attorneys are each paid about $100 an hour. At that rate, a year in trial—minus a two-week vacation—will cost taxpayers more than $3.5 million for defense attorneys alone.

Defense attorneys said the cost of the trial should not be criticized because the defendants are constitutionally guaranteed competent counsel and a fair trial. They said the prosecution has set the stage for the lengthy and expensive battle by alleging complicated conspiracy charges.

“Millions have been spent on their investigation,” Flanagan said. “I don’t think anybody can quibble over the money” spent on defense attorneys.

Novotney said that if the prosecution dropped some of the “garbage charges” against the defendants, such as the allegation that the organization was involved in a drug conspiracy, the trial and costs would be greatly trimmed.

“The cost of justice sometimes is expensive,” Novotney said. “This is a megacase. I have a client who faces a possible death penalty. I have an obligation to prepare the best defense possible. It’s an expensive proposition.”

Citing confidentiality, he declined to say what his defense team has been paid in the 1 1/2 years he has been on the case.

Maurizi said the length of the case works to the advantage of the defendants as well as their attorneys. As a case drags on, the prosecution’s evidence can unravel.

“Memories fade to a certain extent, evidence can be lost or destroyed,” she said. “In this case, there has always been a great danger factor to our witnesses.”

Vojtecky said one of the case’s defendants, Nash Newbil, 56, had been free on bail awaiting trial but was then jailed in September when he allegedly directed an assault against a witness in the case. Newbil was charged with assault for allegedly ordering two men to hold down the witness and inject a hallucinogenic drug into her tongue with a hypodermic needle. During the alleged attack, Newbil called her a “snitch,” police said.

Defense attorney Flanagan countered that the slow movement of the case causes defendants an enormous hardship.

“It’s a nightmare for those individuals,” he said. “There is a presumption of innocence, but they languish in jail.

“I don’t think it is anybody’s fault. There is an investigation that has been done by both sides. I don’t think anybody is trying to hold it up.”

NOTE:
The sheer size of the prosecution spawned by the quadruple murder in Lake View Terrace proved to be unmanageable. The case was eventually pared down and split. Still, over the next five years there were several prosecutions and convictions of members of the Bryant Family Organization for crimes ranging from murder to drug dealing and money laundering. Stanley Bryant and two others were eventually sent to death row for the killings. His brother, Jeffrey Bryant, was returned to prison as well after being convicted of drug-related crimes. By 1997, the organization most responsible for bringing rock cocaine to the northeast Valley was completely dismantled and irrelevant, according to police and federal authorities.

HIGH TIME

BILLY THE BURGLAR

SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL

June 7, 1987

B
ILLY SCHROEDER
is 24 years old. But he looks, at his best, like 24 going on 40. Put him up next to his boyish mug shot of just a few years ago and the boy is long gone. The bleached blond hair has turned to brown and shows signs of thinning. The body, too, is thin, having been tapered by its addictions. Sometimes the eyes, set in a ruddy face, are glassy and have a thousand-yard stare in a six-by-six room.

Permanent blue ink wraps around both his arms. The lion, the hawk, the skull. He wears his philosophy—his former philosophy, mind you—forever beneath his sleeve: the man with a dope pipe, the inscription “Get High” on his biceps. All of it the work of jailhouse tattoo artists.

Looking at Billy Schroeder, it is easy to imagine what a nightmare it would have been for someone to have come home to find this stranger inside. Though on occasion that did occur, hundreds of times in the last year Schroeder was in and out of homes without being seen. He was a burglar, one of the most prolific that local police have known about in recent years.

For a time, it seemed as though nothing could stop him. He cruised through the streets of South Broward and North Dade, through the back doors and windows of up to five homes a day. Fueled by cocaine or the craving for it, he broke into at least 350 homes in a year’s time and stole an estimated $2 million worth of property.

D
ESPITE THE
big numbers he posted, Schroeder was no master burglar. He lived high and blew every dollar he got. He was just another crack addict, who in actuality was not as good as he was lucky. Locked up now, even he will tell you that. And he’ll tell you that his luck worked against him as much as it worked for him.

“I guess I was a good burglar, but it seemed like I was lucky more than anything,” he says. “I was sloppy. It seems if they really wanted me, they could have gotten me sooner. I wish now that they would have. My good luck was really bad luck, I guess.”

Burglary is a mid-level crime, meaning that on a seriousness scale it is far below murder, somewhere above petty theft. Also meaning it inspires similar priorities in most police departments and prosecutors’ offices.

Still, burglary is a crime that cuts across social strata, leaving its scars on the poor and the rich, the young and the old. And it is one of the most prevalent of crimes in our society. In Broward County there were 25,000 burglaries last year; 22,000 in Palm Beach County. Across Florida it happened more than 250,000 times. Only 16 percent of the cases were cleared by arrest.

The story of one of the most prolific burglars in Broward is not just a story of a man’s addiction to a drug and what that drug made him do. He is part of an epidemic. And the proper way to tell Billy Schroeder’s tale is to also tell the stories of those he stole from, and those who hunted him.

B
ILLY SCHROEDER
was born and raised in the blue-collar Lake Forest area west of Hollywood. He grew up in a home with a mother and sister, and sometimes he lived with his grandparents. There was no father in the house after he turned four. He learned about authority and manhood on the streets. And by the time he was 11 the streets had already led him into the sampling of drugs and burglary. It was during his 11th year that he was caught for the first time: he was inside a neighbor’s home, and placed on juvenile probation.

From there he moved deeper into a life of drug use and thievery. He was kicked out of Hallandale High School for dealing the drug THC in the bathrooms. He was arrested selling Quaaludes to an undercover cop.

Incarceration may have been the best thing for Schroeder, but he avoided prison and always won the second chance. That changed in 1981 when, at 17, he was sent as an adult to DeSoto Correctional Institute for burglary. In prison, he finished high school, took carpentry classes, got his tattoos, temporarily ended his addiction to drugs and, most of all, waited for his release. That came in late 1984 and he returned to his old neighborhood.

Schroeder says he stayed clean for more than a year, working first as a gas station attendant and then using his prison-learned skills as a carpenter. When he was tempted by the old life of drugs and thievery he would carefully unfold the prison release papers he kept in his wallet.

“Every time I was slipping I would look at my papers,” he says. “I didn’t want to go back. I looked at them and said I’d earned my freedom and paid my debt.”

But by the end of 1985, Billy Schroeder had misplaced his papers and he started slipping. And one night a friend came by his apartment and introduced him to cocaine in the form called crack. Within 24 hours of smoking his first rock, all that Schroeder had learned was gone. So was his TV and stereo and living room furniture, all traded for crack. A week later the job was gone, too. Urges controlled Billy Schroeder again. His first break-in was into the house next door.

Schroeder quickly became re-addicted to both drugs and burglary. The two were the all-consuming parts of his life. He could not have one without the other. He began cruising the neighborhoods of South Broward wearing a phony Florida Power & Light shirt and carrying a screwdriver.

O
N EASTER SUNDAY
1986 Gladys Jones became one of Billy Schroeder’s statistics. The revelation came to her like a cold finger running down her spine when she opened the front door of the home where she lived alone near Hollywood. Immediately she saw the doors of the dining room buffet standing open and its contents spilled on the floor. She turned to the left and saw the empty shelf in the living room, the TV gone.

She knew right away what had happened. It came to her with the weakness in her knees and the catch in her breath. Gladys, who is in her 60s and asked that her real name not be used, turned and ran.

It was two hours before she returned. That was after the police searchers had come and gone, the K-9 dog had come and gone, and her son-in-law had even searched the house. Gladys walked unsteadily into her home to learn what the invader had taken. She found that the floors were covered with things apparently considered by the burglar and then discarded. The jewelry boxes were dumped on the bed, Gladys’ underwear drawer had been rifled, and the Easter basket for her granddaughter was turned over on the kitchen floor.

About halfway through this sad inventory she realized that mostly it was her peace of mind that had been taken. She asked her daughter to stay with her. She couldn’t sleep alone in the house.

B
ROWARD COUNTY
Sheriff’s Investigator Bill Cloud has worked burglary cases for nine years. His experience has taught him two constants: That nowadays almost all burglars break into homes to get money for drugs, and that drug-fueled burglars do very careless work—to the point of hitting homes in their own neighborhoods before moving on to other areas.

When in early 1986 Cloud began getting a number of similar Lake Forest burglary cases dropped on his desk, he figured he had one burglar out there hitting homes at a fast pace. So he took to the neighborhood streets and culled a list of suspects’ names from the steady cast of informants he maintains.

One of the names was Billy Schroeder’s. Cloud ran it through the crime computer and learned of Schroeder’s rap sheet. He then asked the Sheriff’s Office crime lab for a “zone run,” a comparison between Schroeder’s fingerprints and those found at burglaries in the patrol zone that included Lake Forest. It was a request that would take weeks because of the backlog of requests to the crime lab. While he was waiting, Cloud distributed fliers bearing Billy Schroeder’s 1983 mug shot to deputies and South Broward police departments. And he went out looking.

B
ILLY SCHROEDER
worked enviable hours, usually less than five hours a day. He worked when he had to, when the cocaine ran low and his body’s craving for it ran high. He would put on the FPL shirt and cap that he had had made at a flea market T-shirt concession, and clip a can of Mace to his belt. The getup made him a meter reader. He would drive a borrowed car through neighborhoods before and after lunch—9 to 11 and 2 to 4—the best times of finding empty homes. After spotting a target house he would just knock on the front door.

If somebody answered, Schroeder was ready with a variety of lines and would then move on. But if the knock went unanswered, he’d go around back—a meter reader doing his job—and break in after checking for alarm systems. With his screwdriver he was an expert at breaking locks and windowpanes, removing jalousie windows. He knew how to pop a sliding glass door in just the way that it would crumble into a pile of glass dust without noise enough to alert a neighbor.

Once inside, first to consider was the refrigerator, full of all the food he had neglected while binging on crack. After a snack, he’d grab a bag or a pillowcase, and then there were all those drawers and cabinets and hiding places to find. It was a quick operation: 10, maybe 15 minutes max. Cash and jewelry, guns if there were any, and on the way out he’d grab the big stuff, a TV or a VCR or both, the hot trade items in the crack houses of South Florida. “I didn’t care about being seen by neighbors or anybody,” he says. One time he broke in the front door of a home while a woman was watering flowers across the street. He just ran when she yelled. Once while driving through Miramar he saw a lighted Christmas tree through the front window of a house. He backed his car up, broke through the front window and loaded his car with gifts from beneath the tree, going back three times for more.

A
FTER EVERY DAY
of burglary, Billy headed to the crack houses west of Hollywood to trade his goods. The drug peddlers who worked the perimeters of the houses called him the “gold man” because of the jewelry he always had for trade. On a good day, he’d have loot from four or five homes.

Schroeder kept nothing he stole, turned everything into crack and the cash he needed to pay for the hotel rooms where he binged on cocaine, crashed and hid. Detective Cloud estimates that if Schroeder stole $2 million in merchandise, his return was not much better than a dime on the dollar: a few hundred thousand dollars’ worth of cash and drugs.

“Almost every single day I was robbing another family,” Schroeder says. “It started with one burglary a day to support my habit for the day. I needed $200. Then it got to be $300 and I had to rob two houses. Then it got to be $500 a day and four houses and on and on from there.

“It got to be a game. I didn’t care about anything else. I would drive down a street and decide, Eenie, meenie, minie, moe, that’s the house I’m going to do.

“I was living for my drug. It was my life, my future. I spent every penny I had on it.

“And I was scared. I figured the cops were looking for me because of my prints so I was living in hotels, moving almost every day. I never came out except to rob another house or get drugs. I would stay in the room behind a chain, a deadbolt and a desk pushed up against the door.”

T
HE ZONE RUN
with Billy Schroeder’s fingerprints that Detective Cloud had asked for came back with several positive IDs. Cloud asked the State Attorney’s Office for a felony warrant, a request that would take several weeks to go through the legal morass. Still, Cloud was now sure who his man was. He just had to find him.

Meanwhile, detectives in other departments—Hollywood, Hallandale, Miramar and North Miami—were learning that Schroeder was an increasingly active break-in artist.

“It got so that I could just pick up a burglary report and be able to tell Billy had been there,” says Hallandale Detective Dermot Mangan. “When it was a daytime job with the place ransacked and food eaten, it was usually him.

“We were all looking for him,” recalls Cloud. “I once got word that he was going to a certain store to cash a check. I waited in there and when he saw a man in a jacket and tie he ran. He was so paranoid, anybody in a suit was a cop. That time he just happened to be right. We kept just missing him like that. At the motels, on the streets. Sometimes by minutes. It became a mission to get him.”

G
LADYS JONES
spent the time after the burglary arranging for new lights to be placed outside her home, having the bushes cut away from the windows, putting steel mesh screens over every window.

“I hate it,” she says. “The house looks awful and it makes me feel like I’m the prisoner when I’m the victim. I’m still afraid to be here by myself.”

One night long after the burglary, Gladys was dressing for an evening out when she reached into her jewelry box for a certain gold necklace. It was gone, one of the belongings she hadn’t noticed missing after the burglary. The discovery brought the whole thing, the intrusion, the loss, the anger, all back down on her. Most of all it rekindled the fear.

Gladys started counting the days left until her retirement from her office job in two years. That would be when she would put her house up for sale and move away from South Florida. But, still, at night, she would lie awake in bed and listen. . . . She would return from outings, unlock the door, stand there and listen. . . .

Often when home alone, she found herself asking, did I just hear a noise out there or is it my imagination? The legacy of fear that Billy Schroeder left behind will remain with her always, she says.

Billy Schroeder could have gotten away. On one job, in North Dade, he hit the jackpot—a pile of jewelry that he converted to bags of cash and crack.

“I ended up with $20,000 cash in my hands,” he recalls. “I said to my girlfriend, ‘Let’s get out of here. I have the money now, let’s go to a rehab center and get off this.’”

They decided on New Jersey, even got the airline tickets. But on the way to the airport, Billy and his girlfriend went to a friend’s house to say good-bye. And they celebrated the good-bye with one more rock. Within a few hours Billy checked into a Hilton suite with a bag full of rocks. Within days the jackpot money was gone.

Schroeder wouldn’t get another chance to get away. His habit was growing and costing him close to $1,000 a day. He was breaking into more homes each day and the risks were getting greater while he was getting sloppier. He even stopped wearing his phony FPL uniform.