Sex Money Murda, Pistol Pete and the United Blood Nation (and Young Thug!)
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He's only 23 years old, but he's in Rikers facing a slew of charges worth dozens of years in prison that he's picked up as the creator and head of the Sex Money Murder Gang that ruled over parts of New York City's notorious South Bronx neighborhood in the early 90s. O.G. McPorty is another gang leader in Rikers at the time.

Only a few years earlier there, he had formed the United Blood Nation, a collection of black gangs he hoped to be able to protect black inmates from the more powerful Latino gangs that dominated Rikers at the time, like the Latin Kings. To form up, he brought together more than a dozen different crews. He wants Pete to join to bring his crew under the umbrella, but Pete's not really sure about it. See, Pete's not a small-time player, right? He's not some no-name dealer.

Despite only being in his early 20s, he's already got a huge reputation. Built a bit of a legend in the Bronx, more so than anyone else in the United Blood Nation. And he's now becoming known citywide. He runs big housing projects, has had a number of people killed, killed a number of people himself. And he's been up in all the popular Manhattan nightclubs like The Tunnel, showing up in a fleet of luxury cars and buying out dozens of bottles of Cristal with his crew.

sometimes even assigning them numbers of bottles that they have to buy, while he parties with supermodels like Tyson Beckford and Tyra Banks, and racked Kim Kins like Puffy. People are terrified of him and his crew, and they take no shit. One of his lieutenants actually even cracked a bottle over the rapper Nas' head in the club one night. Pete's also a stone cold killer himself, known for sneaking up on people, catching them when they're not suspicious, and shooting them in the back of the head, sometimes even in broad daylight.

Only recently, Pete had been on the cover of the New York Daily News as the Bronx Most Wanted after he was named as a suspect in the broad day murder of a man in Harlem at a street fair a couple years ago. Stupidly, Pete had gone back to the festival two years later where he was promptly arrested and sent to Rikers. His crew is also warring with another crew in the Bronx ran by a one-time NBA prospect called Carlton Duncan Hines. Pete killed him and one of the other members of his crew like it was nothing.

But things are starting to close in on him. He's already locked up facing life sentences, and a lot of the top guys in his crew are talking to the police already. But what Pete does next with OG Mac is going to have consequences that far outlast his original Sex Money Murder Crew, even playing a role in one of the biggest gang cases involving a superstar rapper in 2022. This is the Underworld Podcast. ♪

Welcome back everyone to the Underworld Podcast, where two journalists who have reported on crime all over the world of all types take the listener into underworld stories from New York City to Japan and everywhere else in between. I am one of your hosts, Danny Gold. I am here with Sean Williams, who always requires me to thoroughly explain slang from 90s rap songs. Yeah, and there's going to be no shortage of that in this episode, I'm sure, right? I mean, I should have done my homework. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's all right, man. No, everyone forgives you.

You know, no, there's no there's no there's no blame here. But you thank you. You're working on the Nepal thing. Yeah. You got that coming out soon. Yeah, man. I mean, I'm writing that up. I've got another two weeks to get that finished. So I've been getting up at 5 a.m., going to bed at midnight and thinking that I'm really tortured is when I'm just like looking at a TV screen and watching YouTube. And then we're going to have like a show about that trip as well, which is going to be pretty wild. Actually, it ended up being this crazy show.

through the outback of Nepal, which is pretty fun to listen to. And there's a lot of new metal involved. So people like that. With a bunch of like weed dealers, right? Or weed growers or something along those lines. Yeah. A bunch of like dreadlocked Nepali weed dealers who are really into Slipknot and Linkin Park. Yeah. So that was, that was quite cool that you guys have the same taste.

I know. I couldn't get enough of it. Three days, nonstop, 12 hours listening to Nu Metal, man. It's a privilege. Okay. Yeah, as always, we have bonus episodes, mini episodes. I just did one on LaBarbie, the American-Mexican cartel boss who has disappeared. Disappeared from federal custody. So we talked about that. Mini episodes, interviews, they're up at patreon.com slash the underworldpodcast.

where you can become a subscriber and get those as well as scripts and other benefits we're talking like 10 20 30 hours of bonus episodes i think all that good stuff and also we just set it up so you can sign up through itunes with like one click if you don't want to deal with the hassle of going through patreon and uh and all that but yeah our numbers are actually kind of down in general because of a certain video game company dicking us about for three months but anyway if you can you

you know, steal your friend's phones, download the podcast on that. Uh, you know, what is it? What are they? Ratings. Give us a rating, subscribe, spread the word. So, you know, we, uh, don't feel like failures anyway, moving on.

This is another and kind of, I feel like the classic New York series stuff that I've been doing. And I definitely want to branch out and start doing more West Coast and Southern episodes and Canadian and whatever. But, you know, New York stories are just so much fun. You know, it's a bit of an interesting one because typically I think we try to stay away from more well-known stories, both with like mafia guys and street figures that are obviously, you know, a ton of stuff that is out there on like Don Diva and all these YouTube channels that basically just read Wikipedia entries. But, you know,

You know, we'll dip into foreign stuff that people know about cartels and gangs like MS-13 because we actually report on that in person. But sex, money, murder, and Pistol Pete, I'm usually less inclined to just story like this because there's just so much out there. But two things kind of convinced me to do this one. And the first is that I read this book by Jonathan Green, which is about sex, money, murder. I think it's called Sex, Money, Murder.

that it's just one of the best reported, most intimate portrayals of a gang life in the US like this, and how these gangs sort of function that I've ever read. It's just a phenomenal piece of work, and of course I'm using it as the major source for this episode, but go out there and get that book if this interests you. I actually spent the beginning part of my career as a journalist covering murders and gang stuff and breaking news in New York City for a few years, and I just never had the opportunity to go even remotely close to a level of depth

that this book has, and the access is just unparalleled. So the second thing about this, though, is that I wanted to try to understand how Pistol Pete became this legend, this mythical figure, because there's so many gangsters and gang leaders out there, like a dime a dozen from the 80s and 90s in New York City. A lot of them might have been moving more weight or had more bodies or more...

you know, just more notoriety, I feel like, or did stuff that should earn them more notoriety than this gang or control bigger territories. You know, he's got this rep that's like folklore, like a hood Jesse James. And I wanted to see why that is and try to understand it because I think it's important. We talk a lot about how lore forms, you know, how this sort of stuff happens with gangs. And that's kind of part of, you know, the stories that we're telling is trying to understand that, what the reality is, why these things kind of form up. So, yeah.

We've talked a lot about how law enforcement and street dudes, it kind of benefits them to hype up these legends. Every bad A&E or History Channel doc is like the scariest gangster ever, the biggest gang ever, and all that.

It's interesting to kind of analyze, while somehow ignoring those superlatives that are just kind of thrown out there, why that is, how it comes to be, besides just newspaper editors or executive producers or federal task forces coming up with a catchy, attention-grabbing headline and titles. Pete is shouted out by rappers like Nas, even now shouted out.

But it really was just kind of like, you know, a relatively small operation, though he did have a way with just murdering people. So that's part of it, you know? Are these rap references going to get more obscure? Because I reckon, I mean, I've heard of Nas, so I'm doing all right so far. You might not have heard of some of them, but I think a lot of our listeners will, especially the ones in the tri-state area. But like, Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz, is that going to ring a bell? Absolutely not.

Yeah. Well, that's a shame. It's like me and cricket. But yeah, anyway, sorry. I know I'm going on this. I don't know if I found a clear answer for why that is, but we're going to try to – we're going to dive into it. So these guys, they seem kind of disorganized.

As you learn about them kind of small time, the guys at the center of it weren't around that long, but somehow it's just flourished and it became this kind of franchisee thing. And that's where we draw on Young Thug, allegedly, and movements and takedowns in other states far from New York that are still going on now.

But yeah, the story begins in the streets of the Bronx, New York, in the 80s. Specifically, the notorious Soundview housing projects. Obviously, the South Bronx has a reputation that it's had forever as one of the most dangerous, violent, and poor places in America, actually. I think it's always...

the poorest zip code or poorest County in, in the country, like more so than Appalachia, anything like that with a huge drug problem and everything that goes with it, it's still kind of maintains that rep though. It's definitely, you know, a lot less violent now, but the Bronx, it's still, it's still wild, man. It's still, uh, it still can catch you, catch you off guard. Um,

And if you're from New York or you're not from New York, you've heard of Soundview because of the single by Lord Drake and Peter Gunz, Deja Vu. That was just huge in New York City when it dropped, especially with the Yankees who were just killing it those years. And they're both from Soundview and they talk about that a lot.

They knew Pistol Pete actually really well. He had tried to get Puffy to sign them to Bad Boy. The album is kind of like an ode to him and Sex, Money, Murder. All right. Now here we go with the references. Yeah. Also, like the Bronx, is it weird to New Yorkers that Yankee Stadium is like the most run down part of town? Like, was it always that way? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the South Bronx has always been, always been rough, you know, going back like a hundred years. It was always just a...

Rough, rough. It's like East New York, you know, or Brownsville. But no, I guess it's not. I mean, there definitely were, you know, I'm sure a lot of stand-up comedians in the 80s or 90s talked about

The just craziness that you'd see going to Yankee games and all that sort of stuff and whether it was worth it. But no, it's always been like that. I mean, there's the famous, I'll talk about it a little bit, but there's the famous Bronx is burning thing from, that's a call from a Yankees game. And I'll get into that. But the Soundview House is, it's 13 buildings, seven stories each, about 1,250 families are in there. And nearly half of them are on welfare, according to the research that Jonathan Green had done.

And it's also right next door to the Castle Hill projects. And there's this fierce rivalry there that comes into play later on. And also when you've got that many poor and desperate people crammed in together, it's going to be a big base for selling drugs. And there's always, you know, crews from each project beefing with each other, then beefing with the other projects, all trying to set up and just take over and take advantage of that customer base.

Soundview was built in the 50s at the behest of Robert Moses, who, if you don't know, did a ton of urban planning in the city that basically screwed over minorities and poor people. Have I read The Power Broker? No. Do I even own it? No. Do I pretend to have read The Power Broker? Also, no. Like, I'm not that guy. You know, I read The New Yorker, but I'm not some guy carrying a New Yorker tote bag. You know what I'm saying?

So we're not going to get into that. Oh man, don't ever come to Berlin. There's plenty of those. Interestingly, Soundview was supposed to be diverse when it was originally brought up, right? Best intentions. They had a plan where there'd be one white family, one Puerto Rican family, and one black family living

to occupy apartments on each floor, which is best intentions and all, but by the mid-60s, it's going to shit already. It's kind of like the cycle that we've seen with a lot of these housing projects. We talked about Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis, that big one that was torn down only like a decade or two after it was built.

It's kind of like, you know, they have these plans, like, here's a place to live, but also no resources whatsoever. We're not going to do any upkeep and no police. So by the 70s, most white families had already fled with white flight and all that, and the area is just disintegrating. With that disintegration, we also have the heroin epidemic.

the Bronx is burning and that's where everything is so messed up because of drugs and violence and poverty that landlords are setting fire to their buildings to collect insurance money. There's actually a book called The Bronx is Burning which is great about this time period. I think there's a documentary too but it's this infamous baseball call, I think during the 70s, maybe 78 or 79, when during a broadcast of a Yankees game, they were able to show, like look outside the stadium, you know, from the stadium you could see there are just buildings on fire, like big, big fires.

And the play guys, they're basically just like, ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning. So it became this kind of notorious thing that happened. And that's when you have these photos of the Bronx in the 70s and 80s where it kind of looks like a bombed out war zone. You know, politicians would go there to talk about urban blight. Even Jimmy Carter as president did that. I remember the first ever book review I did was a photographer taking pictures of the Bronx back around that time.

It actually looks like Mosul or something, like insane, insane levels of decay. Isn't that what disco and hip-hop came out of as well, like people just hooking up?

like amps and rigs to the, to like the bombed out street lamps and stuff like that. I think I read that somewhere. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know about disco. Um, but yeah, hip hop, that's what hip hop came out of that era in the Bronx. And that was also a huge gang era. You know, we're talking about the warriors and all that sort of stuff and leather cuts and savage nomads and all that. And, and yeah, savage skull seven, whatever, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. It was a really, really wild era in the late eighties. What's happening is the street drug of choice is changing. Um,

from heroin to crack. And crack is a whole different ballgame. I think we've talked about this a bit in other episodes. Heroin is a lot tougher to get a hold of than cocaine, right? And a lot more expensive to buy it wholesale.

heroin was also mostly kind of controlled, almost monopolized by the mob back then. Think of the French connection and what followed. With crack, it was a lot easier to find coke to find a good connection. You had all sorts of Dominicans and Colombian crews that were freelancing and bringing it in, and it was easy for anyone with a dollar and a dream to just get involved. And that's what happened. That's a big part of the crack wars and why they were so wild. There's so many crews fighting over territory and customers.

I think we got into that a bit more in the Wild Cowboys of Washington Heights episode, if you want to go back and listen to that, which you should. So Jonathan Green, the author of this book I mentioned above, he pulls an estimate of 150,000 people in New York City at the time working in the crack industry, which I don't know. I mean, that seems kind of insane. Yeah, that seems what? Like every 60th New Yorker is like dealing or doing crack? That's mad. I think it's like, yeah, it's pretty insane. I think...

I mean, maybe that includes fronts, right? Like bodegas and store shops. And who knows? Maybe you throw in banks and real estate, right? And that brings it into that. But I don't think there's any way it could be 150,000 people on the street dealing or chopping stuff up in some ways. That just sounds insane to me. But who knows? Anyway, two of those 150,000 people are Pete and Pipe.

Pipe is 11 years old, his mother is a heroin addict, he's already working on what they call Cozy Corner, which is a major crack spot in Soundview, selling, even shooting at people by then. And he's basically like a crack dealing prodigy. I mean, one of those kids who never had a chance. And then there's Pete. Pete's a few years older than Pipe, he's 14 then. And he had a little money growing up actually, he went to private school, all that sort of stuff. But Pete was always just destined to be a gangster.

His dad had worked with the infamous Nicky Barnes, who ruled Harlem heroin in the 70s and worked with the mob. He also had created like a black gangster governing body called the Council. Leonard P.D. Roelock was his name. He was a low-level distributor. He actually got busted in an undercover DEA sting in 1976. He got sentenced to 15 years, though he was out in a lot less or substantially less.

And when he got out, he started again a new crew with one of Nicky Barnes' relatives. All right, Pete and Pipe. It's like turning out into a pretty great buddy movie plot. Yeah, a pretty grim one. But it is. I mean, get Jonathan Green that money, man. He deserves it if you're out there. Get the rights. Make this happen. So they're selling stuff. This is the father. They were selling stuff they got from that Gambino family, which is Gotti's crew at the time. You know, he never prayed to God. He prayed to Gotti.

Anyway, he gets busted again in 87. Barnes and his relative flip, but Pete actually, his dad doesn't, right? He solidifies his rep. He ends up getting 50 years for racketeering. Personally, I would have gone with the flipping and not the rep, but that's why I'm not in the game, right?

Pete carries that rep with him everywhere, right? His dad is a standup guy, work with the mob, doesn't talk, doesn't snitch. And when Pete's dad goes to jail, he goes and lives for a period of time with his uncle, this guy, George Wallace, who was also like, you know, a major player, one of these seventies, eighties cats. That's just a smooth operator, you know, doesn't raise his voice, dresses really well. It's the mentor of sorts. And we'll get to him a little later on.

Growing up, Pete had posters of guys like Lucky Luciano and Albert Anastasia in his room, which, interesting segue, Sean, what was the worst poster you had in your room growing up? I can't even imagine. Well, apart from the Libertines lyrics, I painted on some A3 paper and stuck on my dorm wall. Jesus Christ, saying that is so, that is bad, man. That is really cringe. Anyway, moving on. Yeah.

Yeah, another crew member named Suge. Pete was already boys from playing youth football with him. Suge kind of looked up to Pete, even though he was the one on the block doing favors for the neighborhood dealers and stuff. Pete was just this real shitster, always getting into fights, always getting other people into fights. And he grabs Pipe and Suge, a couple other guys, and he kind of organizes them into this crew to fight other crews. Pipe and Suge, the reason I mention them too is because they end up being the ones who talk to Green for his book. Like, they gave him...

the entire rundown, which is really, really interesting. By high school, Pete's into distribution a bit, right? Pipe is selling firm, these guys are toting guns everywhere. Pete was never actually on the street, he was always in distribution, he always focused on the bigger picture.

And he was getting more and more stuff from Dominicans he knew in Washington Heights and basically falling into a vacuum after a couple of other neighborhood guys got murdered. And then it's just the usual, right? These guys are hustling on the block. They're fending off other crews and crooked cops and stick-up kids. It's just, it's a real jungle out there in those days. It's like 2,000 murders a year in New York at this point, the highest it's ever been. And these kids are like 14, 15, 17, like on the street, just trying to make things happen.

And they soon start their own crew. They call it KINGS, which stands for Killing Innocent

And we're gangster style, which is, I don't mean gangs and their acronyms, right? Uh, I think that's technically an initialism, but, um, but why killing in like, yeah, I would rap about killing innocent. Like that's not, I mean, that just doesn't, doesn't really serve a point, but you know, like it ends up being relatively true. So they get a rep for fighting and Pete also gets this rep for carrying these small handguns, which is where he earns the nickname pistol Pete after shooting someone in the leg.

Shug branches off at one point with another dealer. They're going to Springfield, Massachusetts, which is a working class city where they're soon earning tens of thousands of dollars a day. And the reason I bring this up is because this is a period where New York City had so many dealers and so much drugs coming in, they would relocate to smaller cities and towns all over to move weight.

and basically bully out the other local dealers. And they could charge more for their products, right? Double, triple profits. They were earning more, it was more profitable, and there was less competition, as Shook learns. And this is a big part of how their crew grows. They take off to smaller cities, not just Springfield, Massachusetts. They're in Kingston, they're in Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, North Carolina, eventually. They call it going OT, right? Going out of town and just taking over it.

Shug, unfortunately, he makes the mistake of coming back to Soundview and flashing his cash around. That's, you know, the wolves aren't going to let that stand. He soon gets robbed by a rival crew, the biggest one in Soundview at the time, led by a guy called E.T. Larry, which I'm only mentioning because I know there's a lot of names going around, but E.T. Larry is just a, that's a great, it's a great little gang nickname, you know? Great alias. Him and his goons kidnap Shug, but Shug breaks free and he comes to Pete. I guess Shug shouldn't have phoned home.

All right, I'm going to let that one slide. That's not bad. That's not bad at all. And then, of course, obviously it's war. And this is the first war where Pete and his crew really are facing serious guys and where they make their name.

Basically, there's like shootouts all over the projects, you know, broad day stuff like like it's a game of fucking paintball. Right. These kind of younger generation of killers that just don't play by the rules. So much so that E.T. Larry, after one of his guys is killed, he just backs away. Right. He's had enough. He's like, I'm done with this. These kids are too out of control. And he flees to Seattle. I mean, to be fair, all this crazy stuff going on, like I'm starting to believe that 150,000 figure.

Yeah, I mean, it's wild. So Pete and his crew, they now run SoundView. And they're the major Coke supplier for every dealer who wants a piece in the neighborhood.

Pete also soon connects with two twin brothers who are basically the biggest guys or second biggest guys in the Castle Hill projects, and they kind of unite. It's kind of that's a big part of the genesis of Sex, Money, Murder. Pipe actually relocates to Buffalo. He starts a little franchise there for catching a charge, and he's making a ton of money there. Sex, Money, Murder, the thing is that they never seem like this super set thing.

super organized thing, which is weird in how it's grown so big now. It just seemed like Pete's supplying a lot of kind of almost independent guys, and his top guys are going off on their own to do their own things, and it's kind of like, it's amorphous, you know, it's very vague. That's also right around the time Pete had a cousin come visit from LA that had been a crip, and that, you know, that's LA's major gangbanging days, right? The 80s and 90s, the days of colors and all that.

He didn't understand this kind of non-gang mafia type thing that Pete had dreams of, right? This like almost autonomous operation thing. So he tells him, all you guys care about is sex, money, murder. And that's how the name of the gang is born. Because Pete's like, yeah, that's true. Yeah, fair enough. I mean, you mentioned franchises before. It's kind of like, yeah, it's kind of like a Starbucks franchise or something. I don't know. Like just to name these guys throw around. It's not very...

like you say. It's kind of interesting, yeah. It's weird because it kind of, at some points it does seem like that and you'll see later on Pete tries to make it like that.

But, I mean, that's one of the things I couldn't wrap my head around with the book. I think the impression we get is a lot of this stuff is like super, especially with Struke Gangs, is like super top-down, organized, at least in the States. And it doesn't really appear that that's the case for a lot of it. So, yeah, they had people, Buffalo, Springfield, Massachusetts, Pete supplying major weight to the street dealers, spending money all over, getting a little bit of the Robin Hood thing going, you know, turkeys on Thanksgiving Day and all that.

Then in October 1992, Pete gets a gift from his dad, something he had left for him when he locked up. It's $250,000 in cash. And his dad's brother, his uncle, the older gangster George Wallace, G. Dub Wallace is how he was called, who's like the smooth debonair guy, he's really starting to mentor Pete right now. With the new money, Pete and Pipe start looking for new cities, new places set up.

You know, they really focus hard on Kingston, which is upstate New York. They start, what they do is they show up, they recruit youngsters to be their soldiers, they chase other dealers off the block, and that's how it works, the expansion. It's as simple as that. Sex, money, murder, hands out monies to kids in these projects, they help older women with their groceries, and they keep a lock on other violence at the time. Ah, yeah, nice. The old Escobar trick, right? Don't argue your crimes, but definitely do help the old deers in the hood.

get across the roads, get all your potential snitches on side. I want to just shout out, by the way, in case you can hear something in the background, there is a monkey fighting a pigeon outside my window. So, yeah, there's stuff going down here. Yeah, I mean, I've got rats fighting pigeons outside my window. You don't hear me bragging about it.

At that point, sex, money, murder, it's only really like eight guys. But Pete soon links up with a new connection who has really good and constant supply of top-level cocaine. The guys who are supplying it, they need Pete for protection at this point. So they set up in Pittsburgh, and it's like, despite this being a tiny crew, they're expanding to all these other states already. The guy helps connect Pete with Dominicans connected directly to Colombia, and now he's getting kilos, like major...

you know, big time wait for a guy on the street. And the Dominicans actually, this is like an interesting side thing. They get Pete into Santeria and he starts practicing and doing like weird rituals. Wait, what's that? Like peyote and stuff? No, Santeria is like the sort of African folklore that mixed with Latin America.

I don't have a good definition of it. Like a voodoo kind of thing. But, you know, it involves like, yeah, like I think voodoo would be, would be, or similar to that, somewhat accurate. But yell at me or yell at Sean. Yeah, yell at me. In the comments or whatever people yell at people these days. Yeah, just do that if I get that wrong and it's insensitive or something.

By this time, they are flashing big money, luxury cars, all that, going to those famous New York City 90s nightclubs, Puffy's promoting parties at this time. He's giving Pete the VIP treatment, putting him on all the lists. They got the big chains, the diamonds. Pete would actually tell his crew how many bottles of Cristal they had to buy, depending on how well they did that week. At one point at a party, late in the night, we're...

Words are exchanged and Pipe, who's still like a teenager, right? A kid, like 14 or 15. He cracks a champagne bottle over someone's head. That ends up being Nas.

You know, and I think the story is like Nas eventually rounds up like some of his guys or his muscle and like goes over and realizes Pipe is who he is and he's with Pete. And he's like, no, I don't want I don't want any problems. Right. Nothing like that. And these guys, you know, they're like 15, 16, 17, just spending thousands of dollars at the clubs, going to strip clubs, having like wild orgies and fancy hotel rooms. It's just, you know, they're getting a little out of control. Yeah. I mean, this pretty much sounds like my youth. Same here, right?

Yeah, sure, sure. One week in August, they're in Harlem for this block party that's like a street fair thing. It's called Harlem Week. One of the twins gets into a confrontation over a dice game at like 11 a.m. Pete just doesn't hesitate, right? He pulls out a gun, shoots the guy in the back of the head, just like that.

And the thing is, it's actually his first murder at that time. You know, Pete was this guy known for, for, for like his violent rep, but that was the first time he ever killed someone. And he's kind of like also getting this rep as like a playboy, just like slick, you know, he's also getting darker and darker and paranoid. And they're turning sound view into this fortress where like even the police don't want to go. And then after that, after that first murder, the violence just hits overdrive.

There's this roller skating rink that people would go to at night. I don't know if that's a thing anywhere else. Well, I guess in New York and parts of the South, I've heard it. That was a big thing in the 80s and 90s, these roller skating rink parties and all that sort of stuff. People would go and flash. Oh, you did have that? Yeah, yeah, we had that. I thought that was just a US thing. Pete goes up to the roller skating rink. He tries to say hi to this guy, Carlton Duncan Hines, who...

who was like, you know, one of these guys who was supposed to make it to the NBA, but he ended up turning into a drug dealer in the Bronx. He's six foot five. He's wearing a full length fur jacket. He had been a serious ball player. He'd actually went to boarding school in Maine and kind of bonded with this, this like white family up there, which is like this weird side story in it, which is really interesting. But yeah,

He flunked out of school. You know, there was obviously some racism stuff that happened to him there. I kind of think he lost his interest. So he started playing at the infamous Rucker Park, which is, you know, where a lot of the major dealers would hang out and sponsor teams. He gets to know them. He starts getting fronted his own coke and he starts dealing. And by 1993, he was led to the earning $40,000 a day in sales from controlling the Melrose projects.

So Pete goes up, tries to say hi. People weren't really sure. I think Hines, the story goes that Hines didn't know who he was or knew his legend but didn't know he was him. So he kind of disrespects him. There's a fight and Pete walks away and it's like dead set on killing him. Hines at this point is terrified, right? He's considering fleeing back to Maine, right?

But Pete and his crew, they catch him at a car dealership near the Bronx Zoo and they kill him. And Pete starts getting infamous burrow-eye now after this. It's like a big news story because this kid was supposed to have gone to the NBA and was apparently trying to get back into playing college ball or something. Yeah, I mean, there's always a point in these stories where I'm like, oh yeah, he's not some plucky entrepreneur. He's like, he's a cold psychopath. And there we go. I'm sure he just settles down in Seattle himself now, right, Pete? Yeah.

I don't know. No, he just goes nuts after that. Right. He kills a few more people, some other like hood celeb drug dealers. He's even claiming murders. He didn't do at this point. And nobody's no, like people know people that are witnesses, but nobody's going to talk. You know, there's never anyone who's going to testify against Pete. He kills another one of Duncan Heinz crew in broad daylight. And like in no time, he single handedly killed three people in less than a year. He also kills a dealer who his uncle George thought was setting him up and

Pete had 30 kilos for this guy, apparently like serious weight. And they met up at Wallace's house and Pete just walks up behind the guy and shoots him in the head. And Wallace is just pissed. You know, these guys, these old school guys, they were smooth operators. They weren't pulling stuff like this with like, you know, he hadn't cleared it with Wallace. It's in his home too, you know, blood everywhere. So it just, it's a different way of operating. That's just wild. By then sex money murder had a hookup with a car company at a state and

And they would lease cars and they would just mule coke and take their guns out of New York City. That's how they got things out of there. They actually developed, and I hadn't heard about this before this gang, but it could have been the case. They developed special consoles in the car to hide guns, monies, and drugs. You know, one of those things where you've got to have like the air conditioner and the radio station set to a certain area to open up the console. Yeah.

which became like a really popular thing. And this is crazy and kind of stupid, but one of Pete's lieutenants actually has them incorporate in where else? Delaware. So Sex, Money, Murder Incorporated. And these guys are getting weekly paychecks, some of the guys in the gang, which is like...

I mean, I don't know, man. I guess it's good for handling your taxes, but it strikes me as a bit too much paperwork for a criminal conspiracy to have it on. Like, got to give them some respect for innovating there, you know? But it's like... That is legit hilarious, though. I just imagine these dudes that are like 17 just like being like, what the fuck is FICA? Why am I losing, you know, 20%, 10% to whatever the fuck FICA is? But Pete...

Pete makes a fatal mistake with those 30 kilos he had gotten from the guy he killed at his uncle's place. He decides to take it to North Carolina to offload

And something happens with like one of the local guys there gets pissed at him, snitches on him. He ends up getting arrested with coke, guns and money on him. He's eventually freed out on a huge bail, but it's the first of like his serious legal troubles. Also, another big New York player was rumored to have wanted to kill Pete because he had been selling in North Carolina and Pete kind of took it over. So he hires a shooter to take Pete out like a hit man in the club in New York City. But Pete's guy gets him first and just shoots him in the head in the middle of the club. This is the kind of stuff these guys were doing and getting away with for the most part.

So yeah, there's arrest, hit men coming after him. It's 1995 and the walls are just closing in a bit. Sex money murder is not only garnering the attention of the NYPD, but also the feds. And one day around then, Pete wakes up and he's on the cover of the Daily News with the headline reading, Most Wanted in the Bronx. And I guess, I mean, that's a part of it, right? That's a big part of the answer for how the lore gets going or really kicks in. That's the kind of thing that makes you notorious.

The story's actually about the murder in Harlem and the guy who was playing the dice game with a twin at the Harlem Festival and Pete shot him in the head. So that's... I mean, you put somebody on the cover of one of the local New York tabloids and it's kind of like... I mean, that's the kind of Gotti treatment, you know? Yeah. But...

By then, Pete Singlehandley killed four people in two years and been taking credit for others because he also wanted the notoriety and everything that came with it. It's kind of like a boneheaded move, to be honest. You know, it's, I guess, the before ways of Instagramming your crimes. Yeah.

He actually goes back to that annual Harlem Week Festival, gets arrested, and now is sent to Rikers. And Pipe takes over the gang. He probably gets robbed by a Jamaican weed dealer. And afterward, Pipe pretended he wanted a truce with a guy who somehow believed him and then shot the guy a bunch. The guy miraculously lives. And then he fingers Pipe for the cops. He did what now?

He points him out for the police. And so now him and Pete are both in Rikers. And this is when they really actually start to build up. As one of the docs about him says, I think there was an A&E doc I watched, like most scary gangsters are most notorious. So I use a little bit of that info as well.

quote, behind bars, he was made bigger than life. Before they were just kind of known in the Bronx. You know, you had tough, hard Brooklyn and Queens crews in Rikers as well. They had their own legends and affiliations, but the Sex, Money, Murder guys quickly assert themselves, mostly through violence. And Pete kind of bonds with O.G. McPorty, who had just founded the United Blood Nation and quickly starts building one of the largest, or what would become one of the largest East Coast prison gangs.

porty grew up in the bronx he had been locked up before for armed robbery when he was a teenager he gets sent out to la this is late 80s i think or early 90s by family to escape the streets but his cousins out there they're in the bloods they're in the sets right and he gets wowed by the whole la gang scene which is popping off like crazy at the time this is the days like i said of colors yeah and um yeah great great movie

Young Sean Penn. He comes back to New York City. You know, he's got his own little gang and he tells them he's sanctioned to make them Bloods, which is apparently not true or debated. But he initiates its crew. He calls them the 1-8-Tray Bloods. And now there's Bloods in New York officially. He quickly gets an attempted murder charge in 1992 and he's sent back to Rikers.

The thing about Rikers back then is that it was dominated by the Latin kings who ran everything. Remember, this is before the Trinitarios, who I think are basically the most dominant gang there now, at least Latino-wise. But they didn't even really exist then. And Rikers, for those who don't know, it's the largest jail in New York City, and it's a madhouse. I mean, they're trying to shut it down now. It's a brutal, brutal place and has been for decades and decades.

But the main issue for OG Mac is, at the time, the black gangs or crews, they're not united. They're all clashing with each other, and Latino gangs are just dominating them. So he wants to change that, and he starts preaching black unity, really selling people on it, trying to unite all these different crews. He links up with a powerful gang leader from Brooklyn, this guy OG Deadeye, and together they form up, and it works. He anoints himself the Godfather.

And 14 different crews join as the United Blood Nation. He starts writing up, like, you know, the codes and the gang statutes, the usual sort of stuff. Snitches die. You must obey. Gang comes first. All that sort of stuff. No loud music after 10. Taco Tuesdays. I don't know. Yeah. Anyway, that's the one we're going to miss. But, you know, you're trying. You're doing better these days. Your average is definitely higher than it was. Thank you so much. Thank you. It means a lot. Yeah.

Within no time, the United Blood Nation goes to war against the Latin Kings and just starts taking over territory, right? The first thing they do is they claim the phones. And that's a big thing as well. And there's all sorts of slashings and stabbings. They get pretty infamous for slashing people's faces. That's where a buck

50 comes from if you ever heard that term it's 150 stitches in your face and there's always like rumors i remember in high school like about how the bloods were doing initiations right it was always big on halloween like it was always like don't if someone asks you for the time uh don't do it because that's like a blood initiation they're gonna slash your wrist they're gonna slash your face so those were the kind of rumors i feel like that went around i don't know if they still do in like the mid 90s especially around halloween

Yeah, that was a big day. I think we just had to look out for the old pedophile guy on the edge of the street, but this sounds worse. Well, you guys weren't Knife Crime Island back then, right? That's only like a recent thing? No, that's recent, yeah. So, United Blood Nation, it keeps growing. The authorities make the same mistakes they always do. They spread them around to different areas of the prison and different prisons and sections and jails, and they just grow more and more.

So when Pete's in Rikers, him and OG Mac grow tight and he wants Pete to join up, blooding, crewing, whatever you want to call it. But Pete's already like this boss that has a bigger rep on the streets at that point than OG Mac does. So he's not really sure, you know, he's doing his own thing. He's doing well. He says no at first, but then OG Mac kind of offers him this thing where SMM, they're going to have complete independence on the street. You know, they'll just be clicked up in prison. They can do their own thing. They're pretty much just like, they get the special offer. And Pete just says, yeah, fuck it. Like now,

I'm in. So him and his crew, they now have hundreds of United Blood Nation guys pretty much at their disposal in all the prisons, which is like a wild, wild thing. They grow from this small crew to this.

Pete later gets out of Rikers when a witness recants, but he gets arrested again on charges related to North Carolina. And from there, he starts ordering murders from prison, greenlighting people to die, doing it all through these coded letters. He calls it a murder is a wet t-shirt contest because the code causes the blood to soak through. But of course, those letters eventually all get found out.

And it starts this pattern, arrest, incarceration, all these guys in Sex, Money, Murder turning on each other, robbing each other, testifying against each other, killing each other. And it's like, you know, it's like that last third of Goodfellas, basically. That's kind of always how it ends, right? At least it's not the last third of the Godfather trilogy, am I right? I don't remember the last third of Godfather trilogy. Oh, man, it's crap. Is that Cuba or is that the second one? No.

I haven't seen the third one in a long time, man. Yeah, it's not good. I watched the end recently. Nah, don't bother. Yeah. So meanwhile, Pete's in jail devising these new systems because he kind of gets inspired, I think, by maybe the United Blood Nations. He calls it like the fist where the command structure has five guys and three units. It's modeled after the five families. You know, each is a different set, different leader, five deuce, four tray, three O's. It's like a semblance of organization that Sex, Money, Murder never had on the outside. Yeah.

He starts writing formal letters to the gang about organization, having them read at meetings, right, in Soundview, trying to formalize. And he actually orders now one of the twins killed, who had expanded like crazy, thinking he was doing the right thing. But Pete actually grew really jealous. They had gotten like 100 kilos from a Colombian connect. They were rising up and getting sophisticated. Pete's locked up. He's getting jealous. He tries to convince everyone he was an informant and needs to be killed, according to Jonathan Green's book. So basically, this...

like all the top brass for SMM are like prison shot callers and the gang on the outside is still kind of loose knit or is it are they big players outside too at this point

It's kind of confusing. A lot of the top original guys are locked up. There's still a few on the outside. And the original crew is like tight knit in a way. And Pete's trying to make them tighter, but they're getting new members, younger guys who don't have the same loyalty as all these guys that sort of grew up together. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, these guys are like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And these, I just realized like, these are not old guys even now, right? These are still...

I mean, are they like in their 30s or 40s or something? It's crazy. I think in their 40s, there's a really big thing. Pete actually has a podcast. He's locked up in ADX Florence, you know, the super, the super strict. And there was a big thing with him. So he, I talk about this later, but I guess I'll just do it now. You know, he had a really strict isolation sentence because of all these letters he was writing.

So he was locked up in isolation for a decade plus. I think it's obviously loosened now because he has the podcast, but there was even New York Times articles about it in 2012, 2013 because of how strict his sentence was. And he apparently had been a model prisoner by then, but they were worried because of his influence is so huge. Anyway, we'll get to that. By then, by the mid-90s, there's a big RICO investigation against sex money murder, and all sorts of members are being arrested and just starting to flip. And that's when the infamous Thanksgiving killing happens.

this is just too much. I mean, it's kind of seals the deal. It's the end of Pete and his original crew. It happens at this football game. That's been a tradition for a few years where the sound view projects plays the castle Hill projects. It's kind of thing, you know, the Turkey bowl, we have those high school rivalries too. It's like a good natured rivalry at this point.

But that's where Pete orders the killing of the twin. It's broad daylight. Two people are killed in a shootout. And this is when New York was already getting a little bit safer, right? So this sort of wild double murder on Thanksgiving Day in broad daylight, it becomes a big, big news story. It's not your average South Bronx housing project murder, you know? Residents of South, we even start talking to the police. That's not usually something that was done. You know, they're starting to be like, it's too much, it's too much. So all the guys in Sex, Money, Murder,

They're now cracking under the federal attention. You got task forces. Everything is falling apart. Meanwhile, Pete is just being made into this legend, right? He's having guards smuggle out letters. He's getting caught banging another guard. And this whole time, Sex Money Murders is blooding in new members while it grows outside. But it's not the same from what it was like when it was like a 12-member, 8-member thing, right? It's a different thing, just widespread all over the place.

Most of Pete's top lieutenant's turn states evidence and end up testifying. Pete pleads guilty at his trial to avoid the death penalty. Afterward, his mom gives this interview to, I think it was Feds or Don Diva, you know, one of those like street gang magazine type things where she's like unapologetic. And she's basically like, look, Pete killed people who would have done the same thing to him. He was just quicker. That is, that's real parental love, man. I wouldn't see, you wouldn't see many British moms and dads doing that.

I'm sure you've got a few that are in the lifestyle that would feel the same way, right? Actually, yeah. There's one of them getting buried today. Really? Who? The Queen. Oh, right. Right, right, right. Right, right, right, right, right. So Pete's in his mid-20s at that point, and he's getting sent to ADX4 in Supermax, which is the most maximum security prison in the U.S.,

Just an unpleasant, you know, where all the terrorists go. It's an unpleasant place to be. But he becomes this cult figure. You know, there's even posters saying Free Pete put up all over the Bronx. The NYPD actually hangs up their own posters of him saying how he's got life now and all that. So it's, you know, competing a little. It's almost like an early meme war, you know, just hanging up posters all over the projects. Yeah.

He's actually locked up, like I said, for years and years in isolation because he had ordered hits through the coded letters, through a girlfriend, whatever it is. So there's actually this big court battle and a big New York Times article about it in 2012. And again, I'm not even 100% sure on his status right now, but he has this interview podcast, so I assume it's not as severe. But I couldn't find a direct answer to that.

O.G. Mack of the United Blood Nation, he gets released briefly in 1999. The New York Times actually has an interview with him from 2000 at his hideout fortress in the Bronx. It's kind of a weird article. They seem to kind of take him at his word for some stuff, that he was coming home to give to the Bloods this new ideological bent of stopping black-on-black crime, which is nonsense, and he's devoted to political and cultural solidarity, but...

It doesn't really work out. There's internal divisions that are rife. Apparently some sets even wanted to kill him, but he ends up locked up shortly later. And now Night of Blenation is just huge. I think they're one of the biggest, if not the biggest prison gangs on the East Coast.

And Pete and Sex, Money, Murder, their little franchisee expansion thing worked too. It wasn't just Kingston, Buffalo, Springfield. There's sets now, big sets in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Atlanta. Here's a quote from a New Yorker article called,

on the sex money murder case in Atlanta, which is currently ongoing, which is where Young Thug and Gunna and YSL, they're all involved in it. It's mostly about using the RICO statutes against these gangs. And it's from Lance Williams, who's a professor at Northeastern Illinois University, who writes extensively about black street gangs. I thought it was really interesting. Back in the day, there was absolutely grounds for RICO when prosecuting black street gangs, he said.

He was referring to the 80s and early 90s when he said the most prominent gangs had clear and acknowledged leaders, boards of directors, and rank and file titles and responsibilities. At that time, he said, drugs had to be purchased from the organization with profits that were shared within the organization. Members were recorded as being on count, meaning that they were recognized within a particular set under the leadership of a designated ranking member and had to pay dues that were calculated accordingly.

They were required to attend meetings and were subject to violations for breaking established rules and regulations. None of this structure is in place today and hasn't been for nearly 30 years, Williams said. In the 90s, when the crack epidemic was at its peak, federal authorities went after all of the major black street gangs and their leaders, he explained, have been pretty much put away. Today, by contrast, the label of blood is a hugely disorganized identity, Alonzo said.

Whatever the case, sex money murder, they keep getting locked up all over the East Coast. In April of 2022, Polk County, Florida hits 41 members and associates of sex money murder with RICO charges, 20 pounds of meth, which you usually don't think of that as a...

as a gang drug like that, but more power to them for expanding their portfolio. There's still a presence in Kingston where I actually go a lot. Shout out Kingston, great city. There was a February 2020 murder connected to it. Rapper K-Flock, who was like a huge Bronx Joe guy who had just got arrested for murder. He's allegedly a sex money murder guy. And that brings us to Thugga Thugga, who is currently locked up, despite making Do You Love Me, which I think should get you immunity from any crime, to be honest with you.

He's caught up in that huge RICO bust in Atlanta that I'm sure you've seen on the news if you pay attention to these things.

The whole thing stems from an ongoing gang war that had kicked off in 2015. It's actually between two blood sets after a leader of one was killed. Young Thug is alleged to have rented the car used in the shooting. There's actually a really good couple of articles from The Intercept that detail it. Now, one of these warring sets just happens to be a sex money murder set, which Young Thug is allegedly a member of. I mean, we say allegedly, but like, this is from Young Thug on the track Sex Money Murder by Bloody Jay. This is a quote.

This one, for my Bloods, we got the same brother. Bloods fly high, sex money murder. Bloods fly high, sex money murder. You know, I'm not like... Again, with a little bit more... Yeah, I think you need to give it a bit more there. Just a little note for you in the studio. Yeah, I'm not...

Yeah, I'm not like, you know, I'm not going to, you can't believe everything rappers say, obviously, and they shouldn't be tried for what they say on their songs. You know, it gets a little, when you're starting to admit to stuff, when you're like, it's different between being like, you know, I shoot people and I defend myself between being like,

I killed this guy on April 27th and this is the gun I used. You know, like if you start rapping like that, it's going to be used against you. You know what I'm saying? Like if you're, if you're literally giving evidence on yourself, that's gonna, it's gonna happen. You know what I'm saying? Like it's one thing. Clever.

It's one thing, you know, there's artistic merit and freedom between like rapping about a lot of stuff. But when you get really specified in what's going on, like, what do you expect is going to happen? You know? Yeah. Are rappers getting locked up for rhymes like on the regular now in the US? Because a couple of years back, this London gangster went down for life after he bragged about murder on lyrics he'd written in jail.

It's a thing. I think prosecutors will use, or DAs will use, sort of generic lines about killing people and being part of a gang or whatever, which is kind of bullshit, you know, because that is like artistic freedom. But there also is, I mean, the Jacksonville thing is crazy. Like, these guys are rapping about murders they've actually done. What did we tell you guys? You know, like...

I'm all about artistic freedom and merit, but it's like, when that becomes the case, it's like, what do you expect to happen if you're giving evidence like that, literal evidence on shit that you did against yourself as opposed to more generic stuff, you know? Like...

Come on, bro. Smart enough. Anyway, the other set involved in this gang war is YFN with another not quite as big rapper as Young Thug, but still decently famous as YFN Lucci. He's been locked up since 2021. So the trial, I mean, it's going to take a while to get going, but it still kind of shows you the growth that Sex, Money, Murder had after starting from nothing. And like I said, if you want more, buy that Jonathan Green book. It really is something, it's a really...

amazing piece of work about gang culture, especially in the nineties and how these things happen. And it gives like a really, really intimate portrayal of the guys that get involved in their life and what it's like. So I think it gives a, it's not just like salacious details, right? It's a really, really great book that if this kind of thing interests you, you should definitely buy. Cool. Yeah.

Anyway, I want to end on another segment from that New Yorker article that I think is interesting to think about. Quote, Lance Williams, a professor at Northeastern Illinois University who has written extensively about black street gangs, described YSL to me as one of literally thousands of bloodsets with a three-letter name and informal ties to active gang members that's only well-known because a few members became prominent rappers.

Record deals can be transformative for such groups, he said. That money attracts more guys and more visibility. They get fashionable, they travel together, and they keep some hitters, real live gangsters, because it fits the narrative and the culture. But also because if you don't have those guys, then you're susceptible to being robbed and aggressed by other groups.

who you may also be rapping and talking about. Those are your protectors. You know, it's kind of like a chicken and egg thing. You know, I don't know. I mean, some, like, look what happened to PNB Rock like a couple days ago. Like, you definitely need, these guys are living dangerous and, uh,

You kind of understand if you want people by your side that are strapped up, that are there to protect you. It kind of, it makes a lot of sense. But yeah, that is the sex money murder story. And I hope we did it justice. Yeah, that was cool, man. And I'd just like to report that I'm pretty sure the monkey just won the fight. So yeah, one nil monkey pigeon. Not surprising, actually. I would have probably put money on that.

Stay safe out there. Patreon.com slash underworldpodcast. Go listen to the criticals. They're going to be huge. They're awesome. And yeah, that wraps it up for this week.