Rap Group Enforcer Wanted For Killing Teenager

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Phoenix was just 14 years old when this picture was taken by his father.

When AMW aired the case of Dipset Crew enforcer Carlos Thompson on May 24, 2008, tipsters flooded our hotline with information about him. They told us he may be hiding in Brooklyn, and that his street name was "Bart Simpson." 

They also told us a tidbit of information that police had been keeping close to their vests: it turns out that on Halloween night 2007, Thompson was a passenger in a multi-car Manhattan crash.

The driver of Thompson's car was drunk, hit a number of other vehicles and flipped over, killing another passenger.  But, instead of sticking around, cops say Thompson -- a fugitive wanted for murder -- crawled out of the car, leaving his friend to die.  New York police say it shows how far Thompson will go to stay on the run from his past.

A Sidewalk Clash Over Bootlegs, And Cash

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Carlos Thompson may have scars on his face from where he was slashed with a box cutter.

This wasn't the first time that AMW has told you about the Dipset Crew, a group of New York area rappers who've urged fans to "Stop Snitchin," or, more specifically, to stonewall the police. The motive behind the movement is that the cops are the enemy, and people in the community can handle their own problems.

A victim of this phenomenon was a 15-year-old boy from Harlem named Phoenix Garrett.  Highly intelligent -- some might argue, perhaps a little too smart for his own good, given the dangers of his community --  and wildly ambitious, Phoenix earned money to save for a college education by selling CDs on the sidewalk.

"He wanted to steer his own ship," said Phoenix's father, James Garrett, a housing court liaison officer.  "He liked rap music.  We used to have a lot of discussions about rap music, because I thought some of it was inappropriate.  I thought it was taking us backwards, as opposed to forward, with some of the lyrics. But these were the CDs he was selling. It wasn't as if he was some conglomerate.  He was a little kid selling CDs to make some pocket change."

But to some rappers, a kid like Phoenix was a bootlegger, since a share of his minimal profits never found its way back to their coffers.  Because of the existence of large-scale bootlegging operations, many artists view bootleggers as thieves.  And the punishment for this type of theft, it's been implied, is death.

"Don't see my ones," the late Biggie Smalls warned in his song, One More Chance, "don't see my guns."

On June 16, 2005, Phoenix was selling CDs on 144th Street in Harlem, a rapidly gentrifying pocket of the city with lingering attitudes from the "bad old days" when Carlos Thompson and a group of his thug cohorts spotted him on the street. Noticing the name "Dipset Crew" on one of the CDs, Thompson apparently threatened Phoenix, then lunged at him. Police say that, feeling scared, the boy defended himself by pulling out a box cutter and slashing at the older man's face.

It may have been a fatal mistake.

While Thompson's accomplices allegedly beat and stomped Phoenix, the enforcer demanded that a member of his legion retrieve a .38 from a nearby car. Phoenix broke away from the pack, and raced around the corner.  But the group caught up to him, continuing the beating.

At that point, cops say, the gun was handed to the youngest member of the mob, a 13-year-old named L'mani Delima.

According to NYPD Det. Joseph Condello, Carlos Thompson turned to the 13-year-old that was with them and said, "Shoot him."

Delima allegedly obeyed, blasting Phoenix with five separate gunshots.

Standing near the crime scene, NYPD detective B.A. DeLeon described the killing as a "contract hit...'Get my gun,' to me," he said, "is a contract because when you tell somebody to get your gun, your intention is not to just go play cops and robbers.  Your intention is to kill."

To Phoenix's father James, a man who induces a child to commit murder is a "pedophile without the sex."

"I have to live the rest of my life being what I call the walking dead.  There's not a moment, not a second, that I'm not thinking of my son.  They talk about a broken heart. I never understood that term until they killed my son. Then, my heart was broken, and broken forever."

"I think 'Stop Snitchin' is the most asinine expression I ever heard," Phoenix's mom told AMW. "If I see a crime in the street that is going to deteriorate my neighborhood, put my life in jeopardy, I need to say something."

Cops say that on June 16, 2005, Dipset Crew enforcer Carlos Thompson helped murder her 15-year-old son for selling a bootleg CD of the group's music. But three years later, no one has given him up.

Zoo's Crew

In the New York rap community, 32-year-old Carlos Thompson was known as "Zoo" because he apparently lived by the law of the jungle.  As an "enforcer" for rap bad boys The Dipset Crew, he traveled with them to gigs and parties, serving as muscle when they encountered enemies from other hip hop factions.

This sociological phenomenon -- rap artists acting as though they are street gang members -- confounds people like DJ Red Alert, a rap pioneer listed by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the 50 most influential people in music. After all, when Red was spinning records alongside rap founding father Afrika Bambaata in the 1970s, the message was deterring young people from criminal behavior.

 "In the past," Red told America's Most Wanted while melding the sounds of the Sugar Hill Gang and Talking Heads in the studio, "rappers were being braggadocios.  As time goes on, it changed around. Now, [many rappers] glorify their livelihood. What their livelihood is? Gangbanging.  What does it glorify?  Violence."

"It's sad to say," he said.

Yet, DJ Red Alert views Phoenix as a relatively innocent kid engaging in a typical rite of passage.  As a young man, Red also mixed party tapes, and sold them on the street.  "Everybody try to find a way to make a hustle," he explained.  "At least, I would take that hustle instead of selling the type of stuff that can harm people."

Sympathy For The Shooter

The 13-year-old shooter was apprehended by a police lieutenant at the scene, a man Phoenix's family regards as a hero in the tragedy because he opted not to fire his weapon.  "If that man had killed that boy, there would have been marches against police brutality," James claimed.  "And everybody would have forgotten about Phoenix.  Instead, this lieutenant avoided violence, and saved another child's life."

Interestingly, the family harbors little animosity toward the shooter, viewing him as a victim of both street culture and Carlos Thompson's machinations. At L'mani Delima's trial, the teen was sentenced to eight years behind bars, Phoenix's mother, Jacqueline Birkett-Johnson, offered to hug the young defendant, and embraced the boy's mother instead.

"I teach middle school," she told AMW, "sixth grade to eighth grade.  And when I look at my students, I wonder which one will turn out like the young man who killed my son, and who will turn out to be the next Barack Obama.  I wonder which ones I can save"

"I hug students more now," she says. "And I do it all in the name of Phoenix."

Living Above The Law

She feels far less compassion for Carlos Thompson, who's managed to evade arrest for three years.  "That man has reached the age of reason," she said in an accent reflecting her childhood years in Trinidad.  "I believe this is the pattern of his life.  I don't think my son was the first."

Jacqueline has worn black every day since Phoenix was killed.   And she pledges not to brighten her wardrobe until the family receives justice.

This has been a trying task for law enforcement, since the "Stop Snitchin" credo infects many potential witnesses.  "We've run into a lot of walls," Det. Condello conceded.  "People who know him are afraid of him.  And he has the means to move every day."

His funds, police theorize, comes from friends in the hip hop community, as well as drug dealing circles.

Thompson has used the aliases Rodney Smith, Mark Klass and Danny Jones.  He's been known to change hair styles, could be clean-shaven, and probably still has a scar from his encounter with Phoenix.  Although he has contacts in North Carolina, Georgia, Texas and Florida, Thompson may return to the New York-New Jersey area, since he apparently has a young child in Brooklyn.

"He likes money," Condello said, "and luxury cars.  We heard that he was at a club in Manhattan in a Porsche convertible. Another time, we learned he was at an airport in a Cadillac Escalade.  But he never drives. He's worried about being pulled over.  So in his travels, he's the passenger."

James Garrett is disappointed with members of his community who've been less than outraged about the type of black-on-black crime that killed his son.

"It's like Al-Queda in the hood.  There's no bombs.  There's just bullets.  There's just bullets that are flying all over, and they are hitting babies.  And in our community, we just treat it like passing events."

Wanted Hip-Hop Enforcer Busted In The Garden State

When Jacqueline Birkett-Johnson woke up on Friday, May 15, 2009, she instinctively phoned Joe Condello, the NYPD detective who'd been pursuing Carlos Thompson since the hip-hop hanger-on allegedly handed a 13-year-old boy a gun and ordered him to kill Jacqueline's 15-year-old son in 2005.

Thompson had been a prolific fugitive, despite being featured on America's Most Wanted. At one point, viewer tips had led police to Brooklyn, but the cautious Thompson had managed to evade capture, possibly emboldened by the "Stop Snitchin" mentality that permeated his surroundings.

On that morning, however, Det. Condello assured the victim's mother that he hoped to deliver good news soon.

Hours later, the two were again on the phone.  This time, Condello made the call. 

"I always told the parents that they'd be the first people I talked to the moment Carlos was caught," he said.

Thompson had been hiding out in a comfortable townhouse in suburban Sayreville, N.J., just 45 minutes away from the Harlem street where Jacqueline's son, Phoenix Garrett, lost his life.

Police say that Thompson had been living quietly, while still remaining in touch with his alleged associates in the hip-hop and drug-dealing communities.

As Condello spoke with Phoenix's mother, he was carrying out surveillance on the townhouse, having just recently learned about Thompson's hideaway.

When police were certain they'd found the fugitive, they entered the complex.

The notoriously bad-tempered Thompson surrendered without a fight.

"How'd you get me?" he asked.

Condello didn't bother responding that the arrest was the result of perseverance, and dedication to a family that the detective that refused to accept their son's death as just another statistic of the streets.