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16, and decided to make his way in the world by robbing.

It started with chain-snatching sprees. Joker, Carter, and

other 42ndStreet homeys, likePrince "Tool"Woodard(who

earned his nickname because of his obsession with guns)

and Joker's good friend "Mat" (short for "Mafia"), would

spot a guy wearing a gold chain and simply take it, some-

times at gunpoint. The gang's main muscle was the sole

non-West Indian in the crew, a hulking 6'2", 270-pound

black Hispanic.named Francisco "Psycho" Lake. "If Jokessaid, 'Go fuck with somebody,''' Carter recalls, "Psycho

wouldn't stop and ask why."

The baby gangsters got $150or $200forevery chain, but

Joker wanted more. He devoured street-racing magazines

and bought his first bike, a Kawasaki. He needed cash to

support his passion.

"We taking off this gold one by one," Joker allegedly

told his fledgling crew. "Why don't we go where they got a

hundred, a thousand gold chains?"

their mouths and eyes, bound them hand and foot, and took

them to the deserted parking lot of the Linden Motor Inn,

near John F.Kennedy airport.

"I parked my car a little ways away," Lake later told

police, "and I was approaching [Padmorej. I saw him take

[Sheldonand Amos] out ofthe car, put them onthe ground,

and shoot them in the head. "

Padmore rooted through Sheldon's pockets and took his

house keys. Then the crew burst in on Sheldon's parents,Keith Granger and his wife. Padmore shot Granger, killing

him, and lootedhis house ofpound bricks ofpot. Heleft the

wife bound and gagged in duct tape but alive.

' ""\

J OK ER 'S A CE IN TH E HOLE

The Granger triple homicide remained unsolved.

Emboldened, Padmore's crew met almost every day in

Lincoln Park, drinking 40s through straws because they

thought you got higher that way, smoking blunts, and plot-

ting "works"-armed robberies, usually of drug dealers.

"Eating their food" meant stealing money and dope, "blow-

ing the works" meant something went wrong. Everyone

drove a new Lexus, and the more they robbed, the more

they needed to rob to keep up their lavish lifestyles.

Padmore enlisted foot:soldiers on an oil-stained garage

blockofShepherd Avenue inEast New York.He'd met them

through street racing. His disapproving homeys from the

old neighborhood labeled the new recruits "grimyniggers. "

At times the two groups seemed to compete to see

which couldbe more outrageous. Aaron "Fish" Myvett, one

of the Shepherd Avenue thugs, boasted that as a child he

once put a rat in his grandmother's soup. Rumor has it

Psycho Lake responded in kind, once getting down in the

middle of 42nd Street and humping a German shepherd

frombehind, just to justify his nickname. In the summer of

1996,Psycho gave guided tours of his basement, where he

kept the mutilated body of "Jimmy," a dope dealer he had

murdered and stashed in a 50-gallondrum. ~

TH E SCHGOl! .KiDS GIiADUl i ij 'E

The young crew didn't have to lookfar for larger prey. In the

early '90s, East Brooklynwas teeming with drug dealers,

other young Caribbean immigrants who had brought the

trades of smuggling and pot dealing up from the islands.

The dealers trafficked in the rich, high-grade dope of

Jamaica, operating from street-level outlets called "spots."

One ofPadmore's early targets was KeithGranger, a dealerwho operated a spot on Hancock Street. Still an amateur,

Padmore's first strike against Granger failed, and about two

weeks later, in September 1992,Granger struck back.

Joker was sitting in a car on Nostrand Ave.with his run-

ning partner, Mat, when gunshots exploded around them.

A bullet tore at Padmore but passed through the sleeve of

his jacket. Mat, meanwhile, was slumped over, shot dead.

Joker's revenge was immediate and harsh. He and

Psycho kidnapped Granger's son, Sheldon, and Sheldon's

innocent-bystander friend, Kurt Amos. They duct-taped

AXIMONLlNE.COM August 2004 117

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. GANG O F NEW YORK

Padmore became obsessed with planning and surveil-

lance, and with the use of gun silencers to mask the group's

activities. One of the group's trademarks was "micas,"

homemade silencers 'made from aluminum baseball bats

that they'd attach to assault rifles and submachine guns.

Tomake use of all that firepower, Joker needed drug spots.

That's when he reached for his ace in the hole.

Padmore's old grammar school classmate Jamil "Germ"

Jordan was still a shadow presence in his life, a guy othercrew members saw but rarely interacted with.

"They was always huddled together," Carter says ofthe

pair. "Wenever knew what they was talking about."

In 1996Jordan tookhis civil service exams, and the next

year he became a cop inthe 77th Precinct, in nearby Crown

Heiq ts. Ten years earlier, the precmct hadbeen home to

the "BuddyBoys," one ofthe largest policecorruption rings

in NewYorkCity history.

"Did Jordan become a cop to become a true cop?"

Christine Howard, the FBI case agent who investigated

Joker's crew, wonders to this day. "Or to try to hide things

he wanted to get into?"

According to Carter, "Jordan never even spit on the

sidewalk without Jokes knowing about it and telling himhe

could do it."

Whatever Jordan's motivation for joining the NYPD,

. . F A S H I O N F E L O N ST h e s e d u d es m a y h a v e w o rn p a n ti e s, b u t th e y c ro s s - d re ss e d t o k il l .

118August 2004 MAXIMONL lNE .COM

T H E T H A I T Y S O N

R e t ir e d b o x e rP i c h e r d S a e n k a e w

c r u i s e d B an g k o k

n i g h t c l u b s i n a tr a -

d it io n al T h a i d r e s s ,

t h e n b e a t u p a n d

d i s m em b e r e d m a le

t o u r i s t s . " ] h a d t o k i ll

' e m s o t h ey c ou ld n ' t

c an ce l t h e i r c r e d i t

c a r d s ," h e t o ld p o li c e

a f te r h i s a r re s t.

M R S . E D

B a c k i n t h e ' 5 0 s ,E d d i e G e i n k ep t h is

p r o p e n s i t y f o r c r o s s -

d r e s s in g s e c r e t -

a l o n g w i t h h is p en -

c h a n t f o r r ob b in g

g r a v e s , h a v i n g s e x

w i th c o rp s es , a n d

e a t i n g t h em . P o l i c e

e v en tu a ll y f o u n d

t h e r e m a i n s o f 1 7

w o m e n in h i s h o m e .

B A D S T R IP

A f te r g e tt i n g a s e xc h a n g e , G l e n " le s li e "

N e l s o n w a s P h i ll y 's

m o s t b ut t - u g l y

s tr ip p e r a n d t r u c k -

s to p p ro s t i t u t e . S h e

h ea d ed o ff t o j a il i n

1 99 5 i n h er f a vo ri te

b lu e g o - g o o u t f i t

a ft e r s h o o t i n g tw o

c o p s i n v e s ti g a ti n g

c h i l d a b u se c la im s .

W H O Y O U

C A L L I N G A G IR L ?I n O l d e E n g l a n d , t h e

r e a l m e n w e r e n ' t.

T a k e M o l l C u tp u rs e :

S h e d r e s s e d li k e a

g u y a n d h a d q u i te a

r e p a s a h ig hw a y

r o bb e r , h av in g s ho t a

g e n e r a l a n d k il l e d

h is t w o g ua rd s w h en

t h ey h e s it a te d t o

t u rn o v e r t h e i r g o ld .

there was no question he was use-

ful to Joker, who jotted down the

license plates of luxury cars as they_._.

passed through the neighborhood. He had Jordan run the

plates for addresses. Jordan also checked the police com-

puters and gave Padmore locations ofdrug spots or dealers

that might be vulnerable to robbery. And toward the end of

1996, they quietly began hatching an audacious plan.

A COP ON TH E ROCKS

In January '1997, Jordan took a new partner. Anthony

Trotman was a different breed of officerfrom Jordan. Like

others in the crew, he had an island background-his

people were fromBarbados-but the Trotman family was

-well'est'""ablished-ift-Bi-eeklyft-'l'(}R'"yad a-brotaer-who was.

a bank vice president. While Jordan got mediocre reviews,

Trotman had a spotless record as an NYPDpatrolman.

That was surface. The deeper reality revealed a

profoundly troubled man. Five years earlier, Trotman's son,

Anthony Jr., was taken to SUNYHealth Center in Brooklyn

for treatment of sickle cell anemia. It was supposed to be a

simple procedure, a routine hookup to a heart-lung monitor

to check the three-year-old's vitals. But a nurse allegedly

plugged the electrodes attached to Anthony Jr.'s chest into

an electrical outlet. The resulting electrocution sent the boy

into a coma and eventually a vegetative state."I saw the change in Tony after that," says Valerie

Amsterdam, a lawyer and longtime friend of the Trotman

family. By the time he partnered up with Jordan, the

two shared what could be charitably characterized as a

situational approach to police ethics.

Once, a proverbial little old lady stopped the two officers

on the street to ask for directions. Trotman said they looted

her purse, stealing jewelry and $200in cash. Another time,

they encountered a DOA and robbed the corpse. "I di

disgusting, terrible things," Trotman would later admit.

Jordan introduced Trotman to the crew in the spring 0

1997. "I knew Padmore was robbing drug dealers and that

he had grOWl!upWithJordan;" Trotman recalled.

"Jordan caused Trotman to go bad," Howard says

unequivocally.. "They would be working on patrol, and

Jamil would get a cell phone call from Padmore and Lake,

saying, 'Comemeet us over here.' They'd meet at the park,and Padmore would pull up in a Lexus with the Rolexes,

with the bling-bling on and wads of cash going around."

Jordan slowly showed his partner the good life Padmore

was offering, hinting around. In late July 1997, Padmore

laid it out to Trotman: a jewelry store robbery, just across

the city border in Garden City, Long Island. Padmore had

found the target by searching the YellowPages for stores

advertising Rolexes, his favorite watch.

Padmore and his crew had already robbed the place five

months earlier and gotten away with diamond jewelry and

Swiss watches, including 20Rolexes.DidTrotman want to

come along this second time around? Or, as Padmore

always phrased it when inviting crew members on a ~

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