The story so far

ATF agents and Philadelphia narcotics detectives had spent two years building a case against a rap music entrepreneur who they believed was running a $25 million drug ring - one of Philadelphia's largest. People connected to drug deals, shootings, and murders seemed to work for him, but investigators needed more evidence.

Shortly after 4 p.m. on Jan. 20, 2005, Joe Smith was found riddled with bullets in the backseat of an SUV at a Getty station in Southwest Philadelphia.

Smith, a barrel-chested, 30-year-old drug dealer, had been shot 20 times in the chest, abdomen, arms, legs, back and pelvis. Two shots perforated his right lung. Another shot, fired from a gun pressed against his back, sliced through his liver and right kidney.

Before he died, Smith named the man who had shot him.

The homicide, one of the first of 380 that year in Philadelphia, received scant attention - one paragraph in The Inquirer, no mention at all in the Philadelphia Daily News.

It was, however, big news for a group of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agents and Philadelphia police narcotics investigators who had been working to build a case against Alton "Ace Capone" Coles - a seemingly successful Philadelphia rap music executive whose high-flying lifestyle they had been tracking for more than two years.

Coles portrayed himself then - and portrays himself now - as a businessman who was producing videos and CDs for the company he founded, Take Down Records, and promoting parties and after-concert events for big-name rap acts.

"I'm not the leader or boss of nothing besides Take Down Records, and that's that," Coles said from prison last week. "I'm not no boss of a street organization running a big, giant drug conspiracy."

The 240-pound rap mogul drove a $220,000 Bentley, was building a $480,000 home in a South Jersey suburb, and had been a fixture at antiviolence rallies, often posing with top officials in the city, including Mayor Street and Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson.

"He was cultured. Very charming," said Barry Michael Cooper, 49, a screenwriter who had hoped to develop a reality TV pilot tracking Coles' legitimate rise in the rap music world.

To federal authorities, Coles' livelihood was anything but legitimate.

 

His dying words

Joe Smith was still alive and able to speak when emergency medical technicians found him in the backseat of his van.

As an EMT tried to stop the bleeding, he noticed that flexicuffs - plastic handcuffs - were dangling from Smith's wrists.

Police theorized that Smith had been the target of a drug underworld abduction - what is known on the streets as a "trunking." They figured he had been grabbed, cuffed, then thrown in the back of his own vehicle.

At some point, he managed to break the cuffs.

That's when the shooting apparently started.

Smith, in the ambulance, told one of the EMTs, "Terry Walker did it. Terry Walker did it."

Terry "Taz" Walker, 31, was someone investigators knew.

He and Coles' uncle had been arrested two years earlier on drug- and gun-possession charges tied to a bust at Tamika's Lounge, a Southwest Philadelphia bar.

Walker also was an associate of another reputed Coles organization drug dealer who was then awaiting trial in connection with a 2002 murder outside the Philadelphia Zoo.

Smith's murder, investigators believed, was the result of a botched attempt by the Coles organization to hold him for ransom - a ploy not uncommon in turf wars involving drug gangs.

Walker was a suspected enforcer for the organization, which authorities said was becoming more violent as it expanded its operations beyond Southwest Philadelphia.

The trunking theory gained support as the homicide investigation unfolded.

Another Southwest Philadelphia drug dealer told police that on the morning Smith was killed, they'd had drinks together at the Gold Coast Bar at 40th Street and Lancaster Avenue. Smith had said that he was going to meet Walker that afternoon to settle a dispute over a $1,500 drug debt, the dealer said.

With that information and Smith's dying declaration, police picked up Walker and charged him with murder, robbery, unlawful restraint and firearms offenses.

The case against him became even stronger when his DNA matched a trail of blood leading from the vehicle and blood found on the backseat.

 

'Whatever we gotta do'

At the time Joe Smith was killed, Coles' image on the streets was that of a savvy, hustling, independent record company entrepreneur.

ATF and police investigative files, however, depicted him as a man suspected of calling the shots for an organization that abducted and ambushed rivals, killed competitors, and moved large quantities of cocaine and crack.

Ironically, that was the same picture Coles - as "Ace Capone" - painted in his 31-minute rap music video New Jack City: The Next Generation, in which he played the role of a Southwest Philadelphia drug lord.

The video featured music from rappers who recorded for Coles' Take Down Records label; a story line splattered with gangland-style assassinations; a sex scene involving nude go-go dancers gyrating to hip-hop; and street-smart Ace Capone as head of the notorious "Take Down Family."

"We do whatever we gotta do," gang leader Capone says as the story opens. This is followed by a scene in which a drug rival is brought to a basement, forced to beg for his life, and then shot in the head.

Investigators shook their heads at the audacity of it all. The words, the attitude and the violence were typical of what they had been seeing for months as they intensified the tracking of Coles and his associates.

Surveillance and tips from informants gave them a street-level view of the organization. This helped them set up hand-to-hand drug buys from street corner dealers. It also allowed them to more easily follow Coles - who seldom slept in one place for more than a few nights - as he moved around the city and into Delaware and New Jersey.

But by the spring of 2005, investigators determined that they needed more to make their case. They wanted to be inside the organization.

They wanted - needed - wiretaps.

The court-authorized tapping of Coles' cell phone began on May 19, 2005.

In the first 15 days, the ATF intercepted 4,300 calls, according to one affidavit. On average, Coles made or received about 280 calls a day.

One of the first conversations paid immediate dividends.

Three days earlier, Jamar "Mar" Campbell, a Coles associate, had been arrested in the parking lot of an apartment complex near the Granite Run Mall in Delaware County.

Tipped off by an informant, Delaware County detectives had nabbed the 6-foot, 220-pound Campbell carrying five ounces of cocaine and a .40-caliber Glock handgun.

He'd been released on bail, but his gold Buick Park Avenue had been impounded. On the phone, he told Coles his "work" was still in the car.

Campbell was a volunteer firefighter, and among the things he wanted to recover were fire boots and pants that he kept in the trunk.

The next day, he called Coles again: He now had a lawyer who was trying to get his "stuff" back.

"I didn't tell him what was in the boots," Campbell said as the ATF listened.

Later that night, Coles was heard phoning a girlfriend and complaining: "Mar got locked up. . . . I took a loss on this."

By then, county detectives had inventoried Campbell's car and returned the fire pants and boots to the Green Ridge Fire Company.

As a result of the wiretaps, the ATF asked to inspect the gear.

An ATF agent examining the pants noticed that inside the left leg - "between the outer protective layer . . . and the inner insulation," according to an ATF report - there was a brown bag. Inside that bag was a plastic bag containing a half pound of cocaine.

Campbell's arrest provided one other dividend to investigators.

The gun that police seized when they arrested him matched several of the fired cartridge casings found at a notorious shoot-out on Kingsessing Avenue in October 2004. Authorities had suspected that the firefight, in which 54 shots were fired in about two minutes, was tied to a drug dispute between the Coles organization and another drug gang.

Now they had evidence to back that up.

 

Buying a second Bentley?

During the next three months, the ATF overheard Coles conducting business, talking in code, barking at underlings, and constantly cautioning others to be wary of law enforcement surveillance and informants.

They also caught glimpses of Coles' personal life.

To his associate, Tim "Gotti" Baukman, Coles complained about the aggravation of moving. He and his current girlfriend had vacated a townhouse in Newark, Del., and were building a $480,000 home near Mullica Hill, Gloucester County.

Coles was putting his clothing and furniture in storage and was camping out in an apartment until the house was ready.

"I hate this," he said. "I swear, I ain't moving no more. This is the last time."

He then complained about "the crew" moving his stuff: "I gotta be here to make sure they don't break nothing."

In a conversation with another girlfriend, Coles was heard debating the pros and cons of buying a second Bentley.

She argued against the $200,000 purchase.

"What the hell is the purpose of having two Bentleys?" she asked.

"One is a four-door, one is a coupe," Coles replied.

Eventually, Coles saw the logic in her argument and asked her instead to look up information about a BMW.

"What's up, pimp?" was the greeting Coles typically used for male associates.

And while code words were apparently used in most conversations to refer to drugs or guns, Coles occasionally seemed to let down his guard.

Agents monitored more than 900 calls between Coles and a drug dealer who appeared to be conducting business even though he was in a halfway house and still on probation for a drug-trafficking conviction.

They also learned that the dealer was concerned about failing a urine test for his probation officer.

Agents said they heard Coles on another call tell an associate that the dealer had to be more careful while cutting and packing cocaine.

"I put the mask on, and the gloves," Coles said.

 

'Didn't play his mirrors'

On June 28, 2005, agents were listening as Baltimore-based rap music promoter Gary "Dirtbike Hov" Creek set up a meeting with Coles.

A few days earlier, Creek, then 23, had been released on bail after being arrested in Maryland on drug charges. His incarceration had forced him to miss a June 23 rap party he'd promoted there with Coles.

Based on the wiretap conversations, the ATF and Philadelphia police staked out a Kentucky Fried Chicken parking lot on Island Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia. They expected Creek to rendezvous there with the Coles organization to buy more than a half-kilogram of cocaine.

Undercover police and ATF agents, in unmarked cars, watched as a silver Lexus, driven by Creek, and a red Honda pulled into the lot around 3:15 p.m. A few minutes later, a silver Cadillac pulled in.

Agents recognized the Cadillac as a car that Coles, Baukman, and another suspected associate, Donte Tucker, frequently used.

They watched as a woman got out of the Honda, entered the Cadillac, then carried a white paper bag back to her car.

The Lexus and Honda exited the parking lot. A half-mile later, both were pulled over by surveillance police.

What followed was more Dazed and Confused than New Jack City.

According to a police report, the woman in the Honda "became very nervous and began breathing heavily."

A male passenger in the Lexus "became extremely agitated and began to tremble."

And Creek proclaimed loudly, "Nothing in these cars is mine."

After obtaining a search warrant, police discovered a half kilogram of cocaine in the Honda. Creek and his three associates were arrested and charged with narcotics offenses.

Later that day, Coles appeared to abandon his usually cautious phone demeanor while talking with a woman in Baltimore. Coles complained to her that Creek had stayed in the parking lot too long and was unfamiliar with "those narc cars."

Then he asked the woman whether any of the others - in particular, the female driver of the red Honda - might have been undercover police.

"My man thought she was a cop," Coles said. "She never ordered nothing to eat."

Later, Coles was heard saying that Creek should have been more aware of his surroundings.

"Hov didn't play his mirrors," Coles said. "If he had, he would have been cool."

Instead, he was in jail.

 

Time running out

Early in August, about a month after the KFC bust, Alton Coles and his girlfriend, Aysa Richardson, moved into their new home in South Jersey.

The two-story mini-mansion was one of about a dozen built in an upscale residential community that abutted cow pastures and cornfields a two-mile drive from the quaint antique shops and restaurants of Mullica Hill.

As Coles moved in, his time was running out.

ATF agents Michael Ricko and Anthony Tropea, who had spearheaded the investigation, had obtained search warrants and had set up 24-hour surveillance on Coles.

"They knew where he was day and night," said agent John Hageman, a spokesman for the Philadelphia ATF office.

The plan was to launch a series of coordinated "no knock" raids at dawn on Aug. 10.

More than 200 law enforcement personnel - local and county police, state police, and ATF and Drug Enforcement Administration agents - would simultaneously descend on homes and apartments in Southwest and North Philadelphia, East Falls, Chester, West Chester and South Jersey.

Many of the suspects were considered armed and potentially violent, so investigators got court approval to bust in the doors without announcing their presence.

Three hours before the raids were to begin, agents monitoring Coles' phones overheard the first of eight calls he would make that morning to Monique Pullins, a girlfriend living in North Philadelphia. The calls went out between 3:07 a.m. and 3:50 a.m. Most lasted less than a minute.

Agents heard the always cautious and now apparently concerned Coles tell her to get rid of the "black thing" he had left at her apartment - a gun, agents believed. First he told her to put it in a bag and drop it down the building's trash chute.

After she'd done that, he told her to retrieve it in the morning and "take it to work" or "leave it over somebody else house."

"Why you telling me all this?" Pullins asked.

"Evidently it a little bit of drama, but you cool. Just do what I ask you to do. . . . Nothing to get upset over. . . . All right?"

 

Guns and lots of cash

At 6 a.m., agents - some armed with assault rifles - launched their raids.

At a modest bi-level home on Burdens Hill Road in the small town of Quinton, N.J., they came through the front door looking for James Morris, suspected of being a major cocaine supplier for the Coles network. He was asleep in the master bedroom. Also in the house were two young children and their mother, Thais Thompson.

Cash was stashed everywhere.

It was on the floor and in a purse in the master bedroom where Morris had been sleeping, in a dresser drawer and in a bag in the closet of another bedroom, in the pockets of a pair of men's jeans in the living room, in a New York & Co. shopping bag in the attic, in two duffle bags and a Gap shopping bag stashed behind a loveseat in the basement, and in a suitcase in the storage shed behind the home.

Agents also found an electronic money counter, a 9mm Smith & Wesson semiautomatic pistol, and bullets.

According to an ATF report, as agents left, Morris noted that "it's not illegal to have a money-counting machine." He also wanted to know how he could get his money back.

A final count of the cash seized in the house that day: $559,396.21.

In all, authorities grabbed more than $800,000 during the raids. This included $114,780 found bundled in rubber bands in a floor safe in a home just outside Woodstown, N.J., where another one of Coles' girlfriends lived.

They also seized an arsenal of weapons - 31 handguns, rifles and shotguns and nearly 500 rounds of ammunition.

The biggest cache was found in an apartment in the 300 block of East Essex Avenue in Lansdowne that was rented by Baukman. It included:

A Ruger rifle.

A Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun.

A 9mm High Point rifle.

A 9mm Intratec semiautomatic handgun with its serial number obliterated.

A 9mm Leinad semiautomatic handgun and a magazine loaded with 32 live rounds of ammo.

A .22-caliber Stogeger Arms semiautomatic handgun loaded with 11 live rounds.

A .357 Magnum Dan Wesson revolver loaded with six live rounds.

A 9mm Smith & Wesson handgun.

A .22-caliber Magnum Davis Industries handgun.

A 9mm Feg semiautomatic handgun.

483 additional live rounds of ammunition.

Also found in the apartment was a heavy-duty hydraulic press typically used to form cocaine powder into kilogram "bricks."

 

ATF at Coles' new home

A few minutes before sunrise on a muggy summer morning, a team of more than a dozen ATF agents moved in on Alton Coles' home.

It sat on about a half-acre along Dillon's Lane in Harrison Township. Stands of trees lined either side of the property and stretched across the backyard. An all-window, high-ceilinged sun porch was attached to one side of the house, and a two-car garage was on the other. Cole's $220,000 Bentley was parked in one of the bays.

The agents, armed with shotguns, rifles and pistols, moved quickly toward the ornate, wooden front door. Others covered back and side entrances. All wore standard-issue blue uniforms with ATF Agent in large, yellow letters across the back of each shirt. Many had bulletproof vests.

A team trained in surreptitious entry breached the front door, and the agents poured into the house.

Coles and Richardson were asleep in the master bedroom when the raid began.

According to one ATF report, as he emerged from the bedroom in his underwear, Coles appeared more perplexed than surprised to see a group of armed agents swarming through the house.

"How did you guys find me?" he allegedly asked. "I've only been here, like, a week."

 

197-count indictment

Coles was arrested that morning on gun-possession charges. During the next several months, the case was expanded to include charges of drug dealing, money laundering and conspiracy. Denied bail, he has been in the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia since that summer morning.

"This is beyond a nightmare. It's torture," Coles said last week. "These charges are not who I am."

Coles, Baukman, Richardson, Pullins, Morris, and Morris' girlfriend Thais Thompson are scheduled to go to trial Jan. 7 in the first case to come out of the 197-count, 22-defendant federal indictment. Among other things, Pullins is charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine and weapons offenses. Police recovered a Glock 9mm semiautomatic handgun in the trash bin when they raided her apartment on Aug. 10.

One defendant, Gary Creek, has pleaded guilty. Several others are believed to be cooperating. The rest are awaiting trial, including Terry "Taz" Walker, who was convicted in March and sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Joe Smith.

If found guilty of the major drug-dealing, money-laundering and weapons charges, both Coles and Baukman could be sentenced to life in prison.

The evidence that is expected to be presented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Richard A. Lloret and Michael J. Bresnick will include hundreds of secretly recorded conversations; testimony from more than a dozen witnesses who allegedly had dealings with the drug network; testimony from the agents and investigators who conducted the probe; financial and real estate records, including deeds, mortgages, bank statements, loan documents, and lists of automobiles that were bought and sold; and the guns and drugs seized during the raids.

The jury is also expected to be shown New Jack City: The Next Generation.

 

'The Hustle Diaries'

Screenwriter Barry Michael Cooper says he still cannot reconcile the Alton Coles and Tim Baukman described in the indictment with the two street-smart record company executives he met in 2002 when he began filming Streets Inc., the reality TV pilot that was to tell the story of their rise in the music industry.

"I understand they had to present a certain kind of image," said Cooper. "But I think they were a lot more complex than people will give them credit for."

Coles, he said, "sounded like somebody from a Fortune 500 company."

Cooper now hopes to resurrect Streets Inc. as The Hustle Diaries. Coles' trial and related publicity could help promote the project that he now says focuses on "how Ace and Tim misinterpreted the American dream."

A snippet from the new version appeared briefly on YouTube earlier this year.

It opens with a dark screen.

Then a scroll reads:

This is not The Wire.

This is not a Rap Video.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next is a montage of Philadelphia street scenes with a voice-over that intones:

"Hello, America. Meet your two newest corporate superstars, Ace Capone and Tim Gotti, the CEOs of Take Down Records.

"These are two venture capitalists who understand two things: The shortest distance between the street corner and the board room is a Bentley. And the only difference between a gangster and a record executive is an expense account.

"Streets Incorporated!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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To see video of reporter George Anastasia talking about Ace Capone, excerpts from Capone's films, and more, go to http://go.philly.com/ace