June 11, 2024 • 38 mins
We think we know what happened to Darren Seals. From the beginning, word spread about another investigator from the New York Times who had spent years looking into the case. When a box of Mosi Secret’s materials makes it into our hands, it leads to a deep dive into a series of federal indictments, a seemingly dirty St. Louis cop, a Mexican drug cartel and some uncomfortable questions about who was “snitching,” or was simply made to seem like they were.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Previously when after the uprising.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
The people at this traffic stop are FBI special as
in at US Deputy.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Marshall, we received this case and the day it was refused.
Speaker 4 (00:16):
Well, and that's where things get weird and you know
them lose even got Q what a imprevent for some
other SEP waves going life?
Speaker 5 (00:24):
Because that's who they was.
Speaker 6 (00:26):
It was two managers, two guys managing us.
Speaker 5 (00:28):
At one time.
Speaker 6 (00:30):
It was a street guy. I don't know if I
will mentioned his name.
Speaker 7 (00:33):
I mean he was in the streets before man he
was dealing with this.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Dude named j Bird.
Speaker 7 (00:37):
Bird just locked up Sill was supposed to be taking
care of some shit for his family. They didn't go
as it was supposed to go, and they lined them up.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Let me ask you season even if I did want
to tell you something, what I'm saying is that's a
dangerous game to play.
Speaker 8 (00:52):
If I even wanted to play there, and you're scaring me,
I could get hurt by talking to you.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Of what you're.
Speaker 9 (01:09):
Looking for is the aftermath of the grand jury deciding
not to indict off.
Speaker 10 (01:17):
A nine year old Darren Seals was murdered before his
killer set his car on fire.
Speaker 11 (01:24):
Once they put out the flames.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
They discovered Seal's body inside with a gunshop.
Speaker 11 (01:31):
You want a gun on me?
Speaker 12 (01:32):
Am I am I footing your other brothers farguson PD,
grab me by my heart, slam me.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Off the car.
Speaker 11 (01:43):
He says, you might want to you might want to
pick your enemies better.
Speaker 13 (01:48):
This is after the Uprising season two, the murder of
Darren Seals.
Speaker 7 (02:02):
Yeah, hey, gave you hear him?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
He said, who ahead to look gay?
Speaker 14 (02:05):
Bad? Then you?
Speaker 11 (02:09):
He said, what do you do you have on a
great one? Piece of soun like that?
Speaker 13 (02:12):
Hey, gay, did you have on a a great one?
Speaker 11 (02:14):
D It ain't no limit to.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
What they had do for the fame.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
We think we know what happened to Darren Seals. Not
an intimate detail maybe, but from a high level view,
how we got there is a bit roundabout and this
episode is going to be one of the most minutia
pact of the season. So if you're going to sit
forward and pay close attention to any of our episodes,
(02:42):
this is the one. The audio you heard at the
beginning of this episode comes from a video posted on
Bottom Boys member l R's Facebook page on September thirtieth,
twenty sixteen. So a few weeks after Darren's murder. In
the video, Darren is hanging out with two other men.
One is a music producer named Chop Squad DJ who
(03:04):
produced music for the Bottom Boys. The other is Darren's
childhood friend and second Bottom Boys manager, Jaybird. He's teasing
Chop Squad DJ about the medallion on his gold chain.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
If it is Yo.
Speaker 5 (03:21):
Jesus right.
Speaker 11 (03:26):
In my head next to.
Speaker 9 (03:30):
As.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
We'd heard so many stories about Jaybird from different people
about how close he was with Darren. We thought it
was important to figure out who he was to try
to talk to him. Like l R said in episode eight,
finding out how to get in touch with Jabird is difficult.
So while we were working on that, we had another
(03:53):
conversation with Darnell and Demir from Real STL News to
share with them what we'd been working on.
Speaker 5 (03:59):
You were able to reach out to the reporter. He
had done a lot of homeworking reference to Darren, and
you know, we were kind of trading information, but he
did a lot of digging. He had the resources to do.
Speaker 12 (04:13):
So.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
The reporter AMR is talking about is a journalist's named
Mosey Secret While working for the New York Times, Mosey
began digging into the mystery behind Darren's death, and in
doing so, he became acquainted with a Mirror and Darnell,
and they developed a working relationship. As it turns out,
(04:34):
Mosey was the investigative reporter that Bonnie told us about
back in episode five, the one whose name she'd never
share with us.
Speaker 5 (04:44):
He came to the same conclusion that we did not
sure if Darren's death also had something to do with
an ongoing drug charge. All of the information in publicness
the Adrian Lemon.
Speaker 14 (04:58):
Case, authorities deliver a major blow to a Saint Louis
drug ring with connections to Texas and Mexico. According to
the federal indictment, thirty seven year old Adrian Lemons was
the key player in the drug ring. A total of
eighteen men and women now facing serious charges including drug
(05:19):
trafficking and murder.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
The story of the Adrian Lemon's cocaine ring in Saint
Louis and how it connects back to Darren is long.
It involves a lot of people, so we are going
to do our best to keep it to the most
necessary facts. First, we have to go back to December
twenty fourteen, when an off duty Saint Louis Metropolitan Police
(05:44):
officer named Don McGhee was shot at by a man
in another car, returning fire. In the ensuing gunfight, McGhee
killed the shooter, who is named to Rell Beasley. The
crazy thing is that a few hours later, Beasley's body
was found in a burning car. Now, at that time,
(06:05):
the Adrian Lemon's gang was moving drugs in Saint Louis
at the behest of people linked to the Sinaloa cartel.
The rival Bluemyer gang was trying to eliminate someone running
a drug house for Lemons. The attempt on McGee's life
seems to have been a case of mistaken identity because
McGee was driving a friend's car, and shockingly, that friend
(06:28):
was running the drug house. It's pretty convoluted, but what
matters is that the story of Beasley being shot and
left in a burning car led us to research these
hits between rival drug gangs, which were commonplace in the
early twenty tens. Not surprisingly, the Lemon's gang had also
(06:48):
executed several hits on their rivals, and in August twenty fifteen,
a man named Anthony Tit Jordan was indicted for having
committed a large number of those murders for lemons and
arrested by the federal government.
Speaker 9 (07:05):
Federal prosecutors in Saint Louis are seeking the death penalty
for a man they accuse of killing nine people and
playing a role in two other deaths over the past decade.
Prosecutors say Jordan was involved in a cocaine dealing conspiracy
that resulted in two other killings, three attempted murders, two kidnappings,
and five assaults. They cite those aggravating factors in their
(07:26):
bid for the death penalty if Jordan is convicted.
Speaker 13 (07:29):
We spoke with the public affairs officer at the US
Attorney's Office for the Eastern District Court of Missouri, Robert Patrick,
about the case against T. T.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Jordan Engan Lincollect thirteen to heard he is allegedly the
you know, like the ors.
Speaker 13 (07:44):
As the case against TT is still awaiting trial, Robert
couldn't say much.
Speaker 15 (07:49):
Do you happen to know since that indictment of TT
around August twenty fifteen, has he been held behind bars
that entire time or has he been out at at point?
Speaker 13 (08:01):
Another Looking at the press release announcing the crimes TT
was accused of. We see that he had actually shot
Terrell Beasley twice before Officer McGhee finally killed him. Aside
from the burning car that Beasley's body was found in.
How does any of this connect to Darren? As it
turns out, Darren was friends with Anthony TT Jordan. In fact,
(08:25):
the year after TT was arrested by the federal government
for essentially being a hit man, Darren took to Facebook
on April thirtieth of twenty sixteen, where he posted a
photograph of himself with several men, one of them being TT.
He captioned that post it ain't about what you know,
It's about what you can prove hashtag free big T.
(08:47):
It's hard not to see the contradiction here. Darren, a
folk hero of social justice in Saint Louis who used
his wide reach to condemn killings of black men by police,
was using that same place platform to call for the
freeing of T. T. Jordan, a man who allegedly was
involved in the deaths of eleven people, seemingly to further
(09:08):
the aims of a drug gang. And TT wasn't Darren's
only connection to the Lemons gang. Darren's childhood friend, Jay Bird,
was also indicted by the federal government for his role
in the cocaine distribution conspiracy piloted by Adrian Lemons. His
arrest came in December of twenty sixteen, three months after
Darren's murder.
Speaker 5 (09:28):
It's a possibility that might have been what led to
Darren's death is cooperation with the government.
Speaker 13 (09:36):
Amir isn't saying that he knows for a fact that
Darren cooperated with the government, just that it's possible, And
despite the sensitivity around this issue, there are reasons to
at least explore it. For one, there's the naked fact
that in March of twenty sixteen, the surveillance operation on
Darren was opened. This was long after the uprising in
(09:58):
Saint Louis had calmed, but it was in the midst
of an active task force in Saint Louis trying to
disrupt and eliminate the Adrian Lemon's gang, and Darren was
friends with and, through managing the Bottom Boys business, partners
with members of this gang, including T. T. Jordan, Jaybird,
and possibly others. Further, over the course of all of
(10:20):
our interviews, we have heard stories and rumors about the
possibility that Darren was reporting to some law enforcement agency.
Many people who spoke about this with us refused to
go on the record, but it was something we would
bring up to people who knew Darren so we could
get their take on it.
Speaker 10 (10:36):
They get something on somebody and they find a way
to get them cooperating. Did you ever believe anything like
that happened within Bottom Boys?
Speaker 5 (10:45):
I hope not, but.
Speaker 6 (10:47):
Maybe the possibility is like even with the situation, No,
we don't know how everybody fell out.
Speaker 11 (10:53):
This is main event.
Speaker 13 (10:54):
Again, he's the rapper you heard in the previous episode
talking about how he did some features with the Bottom
Boys and how Darren also managed his career for a time.
Speaker 10 (11:03):
And I don't want to offend you, but there have
been rumors with some folks that we talked to that
some thought Darren himself might have been cooperating in a
limited way.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Did you ever hear that?
Speaker 16 (11:16):
Oh?
Speaker 6 (11:16):
Wow, No, I actually did hear that.
Speaker 5 (11:19):
Actually, I've never heard that.
Speaker 6 (11:21):
See even with see now now that you say that,
we don't know, I never heard that, And maybe it's
because I was incarcerated, But well.
Speaker 11 (11:32):
I think it's gonna be the same answer.
Speaker 7 (11:33):
But the you know.
Speaker 10 (11:34):
Again, Look, the rumor mill is crazy around. As I've
gotten to know a lot of people in the story
of Bottom Boys, I mean, it's hard to tell what's
up or down or who's talking out their ass frankly,
and who's actually got something that's real.
Speaker 11 (11:49):
But there was at least.
Speaker 10 (11:51):
One or two folks who implied the same about and
again I don't mean to offend, but about Kilo.
Speaker 11 (11:57):
Did you ever hear that he might have gotten flipped
at one point?
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Wow?
Speaker 16 (12:03):
I didn't.
Speaker 13 (12:04):
I didn't.
Speaker 17 (12:04):
I haven't heard of it.
Speaker 5 (12:06):
I haven't heard of it.
Speaker 6 (12:07):
But a lot of things, like a lot of as
I as I as I as you say that I
don't know. I don't know because like every time I
get in trouble, they see where I go, I gotta go,
I sit down and do these little stretches, you know,
so I can't put myself in in their in their
shoes and if that's if that's the case, and be like, hey, yeah,
(12:29):
that was that's that's what occurred, or it's just so
confusing to me. It's like where the things go wrong?
Is it because people were snitching or became informance or
I don't know though, because I'm inculcerated, So it just
it just throws.
Speaker 12 (12:48):
Me for a loop.
Speaker 13 (12:49):
You know, here's Tef Poe speaking on the issue with
the sales thing man.
Speaker 11 (12:54):
What I think?
Speaker 3 (12:56):
And I wasn't near to confirm none of this ship.
Speaker 7 (12:58):
And the police will put anything into paperwork, but there
is some paperwork flying around saying that his house got
kicked in. They wrapped them up, kept them for a
certain amount of time.
Speaker 11 (13:08):
I forgot.
Speaker 7 (13:08):
It was like some peculiar It might have been like
seventeen minutes or something. I can't remember exact the exact
time frame they had them, but it was distinctive enough
for me to go like, why would you kick somebody's
door in and hold them for this specific amount of time.
So there's a lot of wondering what he told the
police put.
Speaker 13 (13:27):
It like that.
Speaker 7 (13:27):
I ain't gonna give nobody a jacket that I can't
wipe off of them. But I knew Sills well enough
to And I'm not saying this in terms of like
YO saying Sills is telling on people.
Speaker 11 (13:37):
But what I am saying is he used.
Speaker 7 (13:40):
To talk to the fucking trolls as if he was
their ally to get information.
Speaker 11 (13:45):
About other motherfuckers.
Speaker 7 (13:46):
You know, trolls might be like, Yo, this person got
wah wah wah whapper.
Speaker 16 (13:49):
This person's who it is.
Speaker 7 (13:50):
They found a willing listener in Darren Phills. That's already
murky territory because they're telling you shit and you can't
tell me you ain't telling the troll shit back. And motherfucker,
most trolls are fucking pigs. So then, like I said,
the paperwork says they kicked in his crib took him
into custody. From that understanding of what I've seen, you
(14:13):
could say that there was some corroboration going on between
him and the police.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Possibly back when Bonnie was alive and she would call
Ray from her chair at the dialysis center to talk,
he asked her about this incident.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Now there's a story where he gets taken in for questioning,
where he gets arrested and they let him out in
like fifteen minutes or something like that.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Yeah, we pum down there.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
They took him down there for questioning. And for me,
I don't know if they were trying to get him
by himself then, but all I know is I was
told that they was really, really really trying to stop
them trying.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
To shed them up.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
As Bonnie remembered it, Darren, his girlfriend, his brother Byron,
and Bonnie were all preparing to have a movie night.
They were headed to the house in separate cars, and
Bonnie arrived a few minutes after Darren, only to find
him being arrested.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
He was with his little girlfriend, were set good to
have movie nights and I popcorn.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
But few weeks before he dies or a few months, Yeah,
it had to be.
Speaker 5 (15:19):
It was some month.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Wasn't on weekend some months. See, they didn't know that.
Me and my daughter was sent to pull up behind him.
We was probably like a block away and he got
out the car. Next thing we know, he's standing. They
got him himed up.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Soon as we pulled up.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
I looked, I'm like, who is that? So I jumped
out and so litter. He said stay back. I said, no,
I'm not standing back. I said, because I don't know
who you are. You in front of my house and
you got My son hemmed up, who are you?
Speaker 6 (15:51):
And then he went on.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
He took his beds up and he showed and he said, ma'am,
you're right. He said, I'm sorry. He said, we here
to pick your on for question, and I'm like, for whoo.
They said they desire to pick him up, the saying
that City Polly told us to come and give him
because they want to question him.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Bonnie explains that the police told her the reason for
taking Darren in for questioning is that a witness had
claimed to have seen him speeding in his car and
hitting a road sign.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
How far are you serious?
Speaker 2 (16:28):
No more?
Speaker 4 (16:30):
This is about more than a fine. I said, this
ain't eving.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
And you knew they were FBI because it was on
the badge or they said they were FBI. How did
you know they were FBI.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
That's what I'm saying. They had to either be FBI
or detakers. Okay, it was it was, it was one
in the other.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Regarding this specific incident, Bonnie wasn't sure if the men
who arrived to arrest Darren were FBI or local detectives.
And we can't be sure that she referring to the
same event that tef Poe spoke of, and we never
could pinpoint what paperwork he was talking about. But we
(17:09):
do have a lot of paperwork, a lot as you've
heard us discussed previously over the two and a half
years that we've investigated Darren's death. We have requested many,
many government documents, with varying levels of success, but our
files were greatly augmented by those of journalist Moscy secret
(17:32):
After Bonnie's death, when he felt that he was at
an impasse investigating Darren's murder, he gave all of his
files to Darnell and a Mirror, and at the end
of twenty twenty three I swung by a Mirror's office
to pick them up. He said we were free to
look through them and to make our own copies. After
my third readthrough, I called Ray and our other producers.
(17:55):
So like, I'm on a third review, filling in blanks
right now, and I have like sixteen pages of notes
for myself. I mean, it's just a list of characters,
new characters, and I think that some of them may
fill in the blank of who Number two, three, and
four may have been MOSE's files after the break.
Speaker 13 (18:25):
Now back to the show. Mossey's files contained a lot
of police and court records on Darren, the Bottom Boys,
and several of the young men they hung around with.
After reading through the files multiple times, a few facts
really stand out. For one, the Bottom Boys at some
(18:46):
point became perceived as a gang by Saint Louis County
police after Darren's death. Each member of the group lr
LP and Keilo were involved in one or more crimes.
Ricky Smith AKALR, who we spoke with in the previous episode,
was jailed after carjacking a woman in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 16 (19:07):
A woman carjacked in broad daylight in downtown Saint Louis,
and it didn't take long for police to track down
a suspect. After getting a hit on a license plate
recognition camera, police arrested Ricky Smith. Police say he confessed
to the crime after being identified in a lineup.
Speaker 13 (19:24):
You already know that Lopez Watson Simms AKALP spent five
years in jail on a murder charge and that he
was found not guilty, but in Moses files we see
that on October fourth, twenty sixteen, one month after Darren's death,
an officer in Castle Point witnessed a train of cars
driving recklessly, so the officer began to follow them, and
(19:47):
when the people in the cars noticed, they sped up
and separated. The officer pursued one car, which, after trying
to make a sharp turn, rolled into someone's front yard.
Two young men fled from the upside down car, and
the officer followed one of them on foot. After catching him,
the officer found that that person was LP, and it
(20:08):
turns out the overturned car had been reported stolen and
it also had a loose fire arm in it. While
in jail, LP called his mother, who told him Kilo
has just been shot.
Speaker 17 (20:18):
You know that boy all right?
Speaker 4 (20:21):
Oh yeah, I just know that he's okay.
Speaker 12 (20:30):
Where he shot it?
Speaker 17 (20:31):
He said, he got shot in the head with a
minderstanding the grades before him. But he's fine, he's stable,
he's talking to his mother.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
He's fine.
Speaker 17 (20:42):
So everybody got the praying and said that boy is
all right. Both of y'all are all right. Guy he
found firing y'all, y'all better change. Letting another nigga take
y'all like one. Y'all work, say the time working. Y'all
got too much talent and invested in y'all can be
fucking million nerves, and y'all let him bomb take you life.
I got to do better than this.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Uh.
Speaker 13 (21:06):
This was the major shooting where Kilo was shot twenty
one times, as described by his grandmother Peggy back in
episode seven. In this shooting, Keilo was with his friend
Christopher Moore, and apparently they were shot at by someone
named Melmel. While on the jail telephone, LP's father warned
him about Kilo's demeanor.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
Anybody that just move off, impose the case a trolley
emotions and just act got to keep them and learn, man,
because it's gonna cause an accident for you.
Speaker 13 (21:38):
There was another shooting of Kilo, the one that happened
the night after Darren's body was discovered that you heard
us talk about with LP in the last episode. That
shooting we learned about from a report in Mosy's Box
that describes how Keilo and another man, Mark Kwan Lee,
were shot on the same day, at the same time,
in almost the exact same location, though police found them separate.
(22:00):
Keilo told police he was shot by a person in
a car who he thought was a dealer.
Speaker 11 (22:05):
That he could buy percocet from.
Speaker 13 (22:07):
Mark Kwan told police he was shot after leaving a
vigil for Darren in Castle Point by an unknown person
in a passing vehicle as he stood outside of his
own car searching for where he dropped his keys. The
men's claims to have not been together when they were
both shot. Defies reason and logic would have us believe
that Kilo and mar Kwan shot at each other, but
(22:29):
we don't know why. For his part, Keilo is involved
in a good number of crimes, including going to his
aunt and uncle's house, where at gunpoint he robbed his
own cousin of cash and a pistol. His family reported
this to the police, and the following day, Keelo came
back and shot at his uncle as he was driving
down the street in his car, fortunately missing him. Viewing
(22:52):
this and his other crimes, we're reminded of Detective Bray
Miller's statement in episode seven that Kilo was no angel
and that he dealt with him for years. If it's
true that Kilo was the trigger man who killed Darren,
as the Saint Louis County police believed, were these two
shootings of Kilo that happened within one month of Darren's
murder related, Were either of them an attempt at exacting
(23:14):
revenge or even an attempt at keeping him quiet? While
nothing in our box of files can answer those questions definitively,
we think it's worth pointing out that mar Kwan Lee
is also very close with Jaybird and speaking of Jaybird,
we were able to find a police report from June sixth,
twenty sixteen, exactly three months before Darren's murder, in which
(23:37):
jay Bird was pulled over in a car with LP.
Jay Bird was in possession of a firearm and LP
was in possession of what appeared to be crack cocaine.
Both men were arrested more after the break. Now back
(23:59):
to the show, we found in Mosey's box a lot
about Darren that we didn't previously know. We'd been aware
that in his younger years, Darren had been a drug dealer,
which was the source of his nickname Dee Boy, and
we had seen in his FBI file that he had
been convicted of felony distribution of a controlled substance, but
we never had the documents covering the specifics of that conviction.
(24:22):
Fortunately they were in Mosey's box. He had the court
documents outlining Darren's two thousand and seven arrest charges and
sentencing for distribution of cocaine. Reading them, we see that
Darren pled guilty to the felony counts against him, and
that he was given five years of probation. Mossey also
had the court documents from Darren's earlier charges for assaulting
(24:43):
an officer and resisting arrest, to which he'd also pled guilty.
More interesting, still, Mosey had documents about an incident we'd
somehow never heard of only months before Darren's five year
probation was set to be completed.
Speaker 11 (24:59):
He was in a shootout.
Speaker 13 (25:02):
If you remember, in twenty thirteen, Darren was shot six
times outside of an apartment complex. Well, it turns out
one year prior, he had been in a parked car
with a young woman in front of that very same
apartment complex when a man approached the car and banged
on the hood. According to the woman's testimony in the
police report, Darren said he knew the man. The man
(25:23):
pulled a gun, and Darren jumped out of the car,
drawing his own weapon. The two exchanged fire, and the
man fled up the street. Witnesses saw Darren stash his
gun in a parked car, which police later had towed.
Bonnie later called the police as the car was hers
Soon after the police arrested Darren. What happened in the
interview room is very important. According to the report, Darren
(25:48):
answered very few questions and he was visibly shaking after
he was told that he was being booked on three
different felony charges, assault, armed criminal action, and unlawful use
of a weapon. The detective offered Darren one more chance
to explain what happened. After a long pause, Darren told
the detective quote, they will kill me for saying after
(26:11):
this arrest. We don't see any legal consequences for Darren.
No probation violation, no new charges or sentencing, which is
significant because Darren was already a convicted felon, so he
could not legally possess a firearm. In the report, in
a box marked status, it says cleared January nineteenth, twenty twelve,
(26:33):
so eight days after the incident itself. Seemingly the police
have passed the case on to a prosecutor for review
or something. We requested documents from the Saint Louis City
Police about what happened next in this case, but we're
told they had no records to give us. Now, just
because we don't know what happened to Darren as a
(26:53):
result of his illegal possession of a firearm while he
was on probation, we need to be clear we cannot
say that necessarily means he made a deal to cooperate
with the police.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
We just don't know.
Speaker 8 (27:06):
You tell on me, I tell on the next person,
and we're both out. And at the end of the day,
all of this negative energy is out on the streets.
Speaker 11 (27:14):
And that just continues to go on day in and
day out.
Speaker 8 (27:18):
And that's what's actually pushed a lot of the confusion
that a lot of times result in somebody or some
people being killed. This is what we're dealing with in
our community daily, and it starts down there at the
federal courthouse, and then from that, you know, sides are picked,
(27:38):
and we have a community that is usually I know
everything about you, you know everything about.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Me, and we're at war.
Speaker 8 (27:46):
The worst enemy in the world is somebody that knows
everything about you.
Speaker 5 (27:50):
And that's what we're dealing with.
Speaker 4 (27:53):
Man.
Speaker 8 (27:53):
And when they get done prosecuting their case of making
their arrest, they go off to the safety of their
safe impart and they do what they do in the
community as a whole, where these the suspects are from.
They have to walk on pins and needles and hope
that they are not innocent victims being are being an
(28:15):
incident that they have absolutely nothing to.
Speaker 7 (28:17):
Do with for years.
Speaker 13 (28:19):
I think Lewis has been known as the most dangerous
city in America.
Speaker 18 (28:22):
And that's not just referring to gun viners, and that's
talking about what you have to do as a black
person to survive in Saint Louis.
Speaker 13 (28:31):
Is a battle for resources.
Speaker 18 (28:33):
And not only are they battling environmental factors, they're battling
legal structures. And our legal structure is.
Speaker 11 (28:40):
Such that if you can pay, you can play.
Speaker 18 (28:45):
But if you don't have the resources to fight for
your freedom, you're in trouble, you know. And most people
in those situations will do anything to keep their freedom,
whether that being informant, whether that be whatever.
Speaker 17 (28:59):
It is is, you know, just not to be incarcerated,
which is a.
Speaker 14 (29:04):
Terrifying thing for someone.
Speaker 18 (29:05):
Who has never been incarcerated, you know, when you get
caught in that track.
Speaker 10 (29:12):
And so, you know, I definitely think we need to give.
Speaker 18 (29:15):
A little attention to that toxic environment. And Darren Sales
was facing a giant. There's nothing that he could do
with the government. They have way more resources than he does,
and they could put their timb on the scale whenever they.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Want, curing a mirror in Darnelle talk about the pressure
to take a deal to inform on someone else in
order to reduce your own sentence. Brings to mind what
my friend Paul Jones told us in episode two about
police using children for information. It also reminded us of
(29:54):
something Chariff Allen said, bro the police, your.
Speaker 7 (29:58):
Fame was leaving to the person who will be come
to you. Gill Candy, the more little one that will
literally pull up on the sea until you where a game.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Many parts of Saint Louis and Saint Louis County are dangerous,
and we're not under any Candyland delusions that making them
safe is a simple task. But what goes unseen by
most people is that the conflict between criminals, law enforcement,
and regular citizens who are just trying to live their
(30:27):
lives is the information war. Law enforcement is always trying
to stay ahead of criminals, and criminals are always trying
to stay one step ahead of law enforcement. As police
gather sources and information, they also put information, true or not,
back into the community. And when we think of Darren
(30:49):
being pulled over by a long stretch of police cars,
or the story about him being arrested, only briefly held
and then quickly released, we have to wan if these
weren't attempts by law enforcement to make it appear to
people in the community that Darren was cooperating with him.
After all, if he is pulled over by a string
(31:11):
of officers when his driver's license is revoked and has
then let go, as we discussed in episode six, is
the point of that exercise or others like it to
endanger Darren, to make him suspicious in the eyes of
the people around him, to make it appear as though
he's gotten a good deal from the police, so the
(31:33):
criminal element will begin to question his loyalties and motives.
We wonder if this pressure wasn't placed on Darren by
law enforcement so he would feel as though he had
no choice left but to cooperate. Or perhaps he had
at one point given information and had then changed his mind,
(31:54):
refusing to tell police anything more, and the police decided
to turn the screws on him to bring him back
in line. It's anyone's guests, and Darren himself warned people
about this information war before he died.
Speaker 12 (32:09):
I think it's important that people learn from all mistakes
he made a furnuson and become a little bit more intelligent.
I mean, we got to learn from the part of
the states he's made for the instut employ ary. I mean,
how did it take down Marcus Guardy, How did it
take down Malchael? Makes you gotta come more educated on
things like Corntail Prome.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Let's look at a timeline. In August of twenty fifteen,
friend of Darren's, Anthony T. T. Jordan, is arrested as
part of a sealed federal indictment for conspiracy to distribute
cocaine and a spate of murders. He was suspected of
committing on behalf of the Adrian Lemon's gang. A few
(32:50):
months later, in January of twenty sixteen, eighteen more people
were arrested as part of this investigation, including Adrian Lemons himself.
This likely began to send cracks into the day to
day operations of that cocaine distribution network, and if other
members were worried that they were next, it stands to
(33:12):
reason that they would want to eliminate any possible informants
who might leak information that would help the government in
their crackdown. Then two months later, in March of twenty sixteen,
the FBI opens its surveillance operation on Darren and from
then on we see him followed and pulled over and
(33:32):
let go several times, including the incident his mother described
and believed occurred about a month before he died. That summer,
j Bird is arrested, which leaves Darren in charge of
the Bottom Boys and sees that it is him that
goes to Rock Nation to present the group. Then three
(33:53):
months later, in September of twenty sixteen, Darren is murdered.
Months after that, on November thirtieth, we see in Darren's
FBI documents what appears to be a request to access
this file. The language reads quote request redacted be opened
(34:14):
and captioned investigation. The referred to investigation is also redacted.
But the very next day, December one, twenty sixteen, Jaybird
is arrested as part of the federal indictment into the
Lemon's Cocaine Gang. Less than two weeks later, another redacted
action is taken by a redacted person in Darren's FBI file,
(34:38):
but we can see that a stated reason for the
redaction is listed as quote sealed pursuant to a United
States court order. While perhaps it's a coincidence, we do
note that the indictments in the Lemon's cases were all
sealed by the court. Taken together, these items make us
(34:59):
at least I suspect that something in Darren's FBI file
was being used to prosecute Jabird. And finally, we have
one piece of evidence that we cannot entirely reveal in
order to protect the safety of its source. We have
shared it with an independent third party fact checker, who
(35:19):
confirmed to our attorney its validity and hopes that you
will trust us when we say that this piece of evidence,
while not ironclad, suggests that Jaberd did believe that Darren
was an informant and that's why Darren was killed. We
know it doesn't make for Sexy Radio to present it
(35:40):
this way, but we had no choice. We never would
have accessed it otherwise. To be absolutely one hundred percent clear,
this evidence does not in any way prove that jaber
told Kilo to kill Darren, but as of this writing,
based on everything that we have seen and heard, we
(36:01):
think that this is the most likely case. Jay Bird
has since been released from prison. We reached out to
him through his lawyer, hoping to arrange a conversation so
he could give comment. That lawyer happens to be Travis Noble,
the same lawyer who represented LP in his murder case
(36:23):
and who sat with LP during our interview with him.
So far, he has not responded to our request, and
that is where we landed. After more than two years
of work, we were wrapping up the season, waiting on
a few documents and responses to our request for final comments,
(36:43):
when something happened, something big, something that answered everything, And
that's next time on After the Uprising.
Speaker 13 (36:59):
After the Upright is a production of Double Asterisk and
iHeart Podcasts in association with True Stories. Season two was written, reported,
and produced by Maria Chappelle, Nadal, John Duffy, Mallory Kenoy,
and Renovashlski.
Speaker 11 (37:12):
Executive producers are.
Speaker 13 (37:14):
Nikki Atore and Lindsay Hoffman for iHeart Podcasts, John Duffy
and Renoviashewski for Double Asterisk, David Cassidy and Ruth Baka
for True Stories. Directed by John Duffy and Renoviashlsky. Theme
song and score by Zachary Walter, sound engineering and mixed
by John Autry. Fact checking by Muffin Humes, marketing by
Alison Canter Fair Use legal by Peter Yazzi. And Brandon Butler.
(37:38):
Legal by Holly Decan for iHeart Podcasts and Keith Skarr
for Double Asterisk Missouri Sunshine Legal by David Rowland. Show
logo by iHeart Podcasts using a photo by at Tillo Dagostino.
Our interns were Hannah Madura and Rosemary Fiery. Website by
Stephanie Clark, recorded at David Weber's Airtime Studios in Bloomington, Indiana.
(38:01):
We want to acknowledge additional investigation that became part of
this podcast was conducted by Detective Adams in the Saint
Louis County Police and the FBI, who did not participate
in this podcast, and by a Mere Brandy Mosey, Secret
and Darnell Singleton. If you like our work, check out
our other podcasts. You can find us at Double asteriskmedia
dot com and on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Support us
(38:25):
on Patreon. If you're enjoying the show, leave us a
rating and review.
Speaker 11 (38:29):
On your favorite podcast app.
Speaker 13 (38:31):
Thank you to Jamie Dennis, Danny Gonzalez, Jonathan Hartwig, Bethan Macalouso,
Matt McDonough, Melissa McKinnes, Ryan Mears, Tony and Valovyshlski and
the family and loved ones of Darren Seals, Bottom Boys
and Doa tracks used via fair use, So was the
news reporting. Archival copyright twenty twenty four Double asteriskink
Previously when after the uprising.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
The people at this traffic stop are FBI special as
in at US Deputy.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Marshall, we received this case and the day it was refused.
Speaker 4 (00:16):
Well, and that's where things get weird and you know
them lose even got Q what a imprevent for some
other SEP waves going life?
Speaker 5 (00:24):
Because that's who they was.
Speaker 6 (00:26):
It was two managers, two guys managing us.
Speaker 5 (00:28):
At one time.
Speaker 6 (00:30):
It was a street guy. I don't know if I
will mentioned his name.
Speaker 7 (00:33):
I mean he was in the streets before man he
was dealing with this.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Dude named j Bird.
Speaker 7 (00:37):
Bird just locked up Sill was supposed to be taking
care of some shit for his family. They didn't go
as it was supposed to go, and they lined them up.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Let me ask you season even if I did want
to tell you something, what I'm saying is that's a
dangerous game to play.
Speaker 8 (00:52):
If I even wanted to play there, and you're scaring me,
I could get hurt by talking to you.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Of what you're.
Speaker 9 (01:09):
Looking for is the aftermath of the grand jury deciding
not to indict off.
Speaker 10 (01:17):
A nine year old Darren Seals was murdered before his
killer set his car on fire.
Speaker 11 (01:24):
Once they put out the flames.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
They discovered Seal's body inside with a gunshop.
Speaker 11 (01:31):
You want a gun on me?
Speaker 12 (01:32):
Am I am I footing your other brothers farguson PD,
grab me by my heart, slam me.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Off the car.
Speaker 11 (01:43):
He says, you might want to you might want to
pick your enemies better.
Speaker 13 (01:48):
This is after the Uprising season two, the murder of
Darren Seals.
Speaker 7 (02:02):
Yeah, hey, gave you hear him?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
He said, who ahead to look gay?
Speaker 14 (02:05):
Bad? Then you?
Speaker 11 (02:09):
He said, what do you do you have on a
great one? Piece of soun like that?
Speaker 13 (02:12):
Hey, gay, did you have on a a great one?
Speaker 11 (02:14):
D It ain't no limit to.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
What they had do for the fame.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
We think we know what happened to Darren Seals. Not
an intimate detail maybe, but from a high level view,
how we got there is a bit roundabout and this
episode is going to be one of the most minutia
pact of the season. So if you're going to sit
forward and pay close attention to any of our episodes,
(02:42):
this is the one. The audio you heard at the
beginning of this episode comes from a video posted on
Bottom Boys member l R's Facebook page on September thirtieth,
twenty sixteen. So a few weeks after Darren's murder. In
the video, Darren is hanging out with two other men.
One is a music producer named Chop Squad DJ who
(03:04):
produced music for the Bottom Boys. The other is Darren's
childhood friend and second Bottom Boys manager, Jaybird. He's teasing
Chop Squad DJ about the medallion on his gold chain.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
If it is Yo.
Speaker 5 (03:21):
Jesus right.
Speaker 11 (03:26):
In my head next to.
Speaker 9 (03:30):
As.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
We'd heard so many stories about Jaybird from different people
about how close he was with Darren. We thought it
was important to figure out who he was to try
to talk to him. Like l R said in episode eight,
finding out how to get in touch with Jabird is difficult.
So while we were working on that, we had another
(03:53):
conversation with Darnell and Demir from Real STL News to
share with them what we'd been working on.
Speaker 5 (03:59):
You were able to reach out to the reporter. He
had done a lot of homeworking reference to Darren, and
you know, we were kind of trading information, but he
did a lot of digging. He had the resources to do.
Speaker 12 (04:13):
So.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
The reporter AMR is talking about is a journalist's named
Mosey Secret While working for the New York Times, Mosey
began digging into the mystery behind Darren's death, and in
doing so, he became acquainted with a Mirror and Darnell,
and they developed a working relationship. As it turns out,
(04:34):
Mosey was the investigative reporter that Bonnie told us about
back in episode five, the one whose name she'd never
share with us.
Speaker 5 (04:44):
He came to the same conclusion that we did not
sure if Darren's death also had something to do with
an ongoing drug charge. All of the information in publicness
the Adrian Lemon.
Speaker 14 (04:58):
Case, authorities deliver a major blow to a Saint Louis
drug ring with connections to Texas and Mexico. According to
the federal indictment, thirty seven year old Adrian Lemons was
the key player in the drug ring. A total of
eighteen men and women now facing serious charges including drug
(05:19):
trafficking and murder.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
The story of the Adrian Lemon's cocaine ring in Saint
Louis and how it connects back to Darren is long.
It involves a lot of people, so we are going
to do our best to keep it to the most
necessary facts. First, we have to go back to December
twenty fourteen, when an off duty Saint Louis Metropolitan Police
(05:44):
officer named Don McGhee was shot at by a man
in another car, returning fire. In the ensuing gunfight, McGhee
killed the shooter, who is named to Rell Beasley. The
crazy thing is that a few hours later, Beasley's body
was found in a burning car. Now, at that time,
(06:05):
the Adrian Lemon's gang was moving drugs in Saint Louis
at the behest of people linked to the Sinaloa cartel.
The rival Bluemyer gang was trying to eliminate someone running
a drug house for Lemons. The attempt on McGee's life
seems to have been a case of mistaken identity because
McGee was driving a friend's car, and shockingly, that friend
(06:28):
was running the drug house. It's pretty convoluted, but what
matters is that the story of Beasley being shot and
left in a burning car led us to research these
hits between rival drug gangs, which were commonplace in the
early twenty tens. Not surprisingly, the Lemon's gang had also
(06:48):
executed several hits on their rivals, and in August twenty fifteen,
a man named Anthony Tit Jordan was indicted for having
committed a large number of those murders for lemons and
arrested by the federal government.
Speaker 9 (07:05):
Federal prosecutors in Saint Louis are seeking the death penalty
for a man they accuse of killing nine people and
playing a role in two other deaths over the past decade.
Prosecutors say Jordan was involved in a cocaine dealing conspiracy
that resulted in two other killings, three attempted murders, two kidnappings,
and five assaults. They cite those aggravating factors in their
(07:26):
bid for the death penalty if Jordan is convicted.
Speaker 13 (07:29):
We spoke with the public affairs officer at the US
Attorney's Office for the Eastern District Court of Missouri, Robert Patrick,
about the case against T. T.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Jordan Engan Lincollect thirteen to heard he is allegedly the
you know, like the ors.
Speaker 13 (07:44):
As the case against TT is still awaiting trial, Robert
couldn't say much.
Speaker 15 (07:49):
Do you happen to know since that indictment of TT
around August twenty fifteen, has he been held behind bars
that entire time or has he been out at at point?
Speaker 13 (08:01):
Another Looking at the press release announcing the crimes TT
was accused of. We see that he had actually shot
Terrell Beasley twice before Officer McGhee finally killed him. Aside
from the burning car that Beasley's body was found in.
How does any of this connect to Darren? As it
turns out, Darren was friends with Anthony TT Jordan. In fact,
(08:25):
the year after TT was arrested by the federal government
for essentially being a hit man, Darren took to Facebook
on April thirtieth of twenty sixteen, where he posted a
photograph of himself with several men, one of them being TT.
He captioned that post it ain't about what you know,
It's about what you can prove hashtag free big T.
(08:47):
It's hard not to see the contradiction here. Darren, a
folk hero of social justice in Saint Louis who used
his wide reach to condemn killings of black men by police,
was using that same place platform to call for the
freeing of T. T. Jordan, a man who allegedly was
involved in the deaths of eleven people, seemingly to further
(09:08):
the aims of a drug gang. And TT wasn't Darren's
only connection to the Lemons gang. Darren's childhood friend, Jay Bird,
was also indicted by the federal government for his role
in the cocaine distribution conspiracy piloted by Adrian Lemons. His
arrest came in December of twenty sixteen, three months after
Darren's murder.
Speaker 5 (09:28):
It's a possibility that might have been what led to
Darren's death is cooperation with the government.
Speaker 13 (09:36):
Amir isn't saying that he knows for a fact that
Darren cooperated with the government, just that it's possible, And
despite the sensitivity around this issue, there are reasons to
at least explore it. For one, there's the naked fact
that in March of twenty sixteen, the surveillance operation on
Darren was opened. This was long after the uprising in
(09:58):
Saint Louis had calmed, but it was in the midst
of an active task force in Saint Louis trying to
disrupt and eliminate the Adrian Lemon's gang, and Darren was
friends with and, through managing the Bottom Boys business, partners
with members of this gang, including T. T. Jordan, Jaybird,
and possibly others. Further, over the course of all of
(10:20):
our interviews, we have heard stories and rumors about the
possibility that Darren was reporting to some law enforcement agency.
Many people who spoke about this with us refused to
go on the record, but it was something we would
bring up to people who knew Darren so we could
get their take on it.
Speaker 10 (10:36):
They get something on somebody and they find a way
to get them cooperating. Did you ever believe anything like
that happened within Bottom Boys?
Speaker 5 (10:45):
I hope not, but.
Speaker 6 (10:47):
Maybe the possibility is like even with the situation, No,
we don't know how everybody fell out.
Speaker 11 (10:53):
This is main event.
Speaker 13 (10:54):
Again, he's the rapper you heard in the previous episode
talking about how he did some features with the Bottom
Boys and how Darren also managed his career for a time.
Speaker 10 (11:03):
And I don't want to offend you, but there have
been rumors with some folks that we talked to that
some thought Darren himself might have been cooperating in a
limited way.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Did you ever hear that?
Speaker 16 (11:16):
Oh?
Speaker 6 (11:16):
Wow, No, I actually did hear that.
Speaker 5 (11:19):
Actually, I've never heard that.
Speaker 6 (11:21):
See even with see now now that you say that,
we don't know, I never heard that, And maybe it's
because I was incarcerated, But well.
Speaker 11 (11:32):
I think it's gonna be the same answer.
Speaker 7 (11:33):
But the you know.
Speaker 10 (11:34):
Again, Look, the rumor mill is crazy around. As I've
gotten to know a lot of people in the story
of Bottom Boys, I mean, it's hard to tell what's
up or down or who's talking out their ass frankly,
and who's actually got something that's real.
Speaker 11 (11:49):
But there was at least.
Speaker 10 (11:51):
One or two folks who implied the same about and
again I don't mean to offend, but about Kilo.
Speaker 11 (11:57):
Did you ever hear that he might have gotten flipped
at one point?
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Wow?
Speaker 16 (12:03):
I didn't.
Speaker 13 (12:04):
I didn't.
Speaker 17 (12:04):
I haven't heard of it.
Speaker 5 (12:06):
I haven't heard of it.
Speaker 6 (12:07):
But a lot of things, like a lot of as
I as I as I as you say that I
don't know. I don't know because like every time I
get in trouble, they see where I go, I gotta go,
I sit down and do these little stretches, you know,
so I can't put myself in in their in their
shoes and if that's if that's the case, and be like, hey, yeah,
(12:29):
that was that's that's what occurred, or it's just so
confusing to me. It's like where the things go wrong?
Is it because people were snitching or became informance or
I don't know though, because I'm inculcerated, So it just
it just throws.
Speaker 12 (12:48):
Me for a loop.
Speaker 13 (12:49):
You know, here's Tef Poe speaking on the issue with
the sales thing man.
Speaker 11 (12:54):
What I think?
Speaker 3 (12:56):
And I wasn't near to confirm none of this ship.
Speaker 7 (12:58):
And the police will put anything into paperwork, but there
is some paperwork flying around saying that his house got
kicked in. They wrapped them up, kept them for a
certain amount of time.
Speaker 11 (13:08):
I forgot.
Speaker 7 (13:08):
It was like some peculiar It might have been like
seventeen minutes or something. I can't remember exact the exact
time frame they had them, but it was distinctive enough
for me to go like, why would you kick somebody's
door in and hold them for this specific amount of time.
So there's a lot of wondering what he told the
police put.
Speaker 13 (13:27):
It like that.
Speaker 7 (13:27):
I ain't gonna give nobody a jacket that I can't
wipe off of them. But I knew Sills well enough
to And I'm not saying this in terms of like
YO saying Sills is telling on people.
Speaker 11 (13:37):
But what I am saying is he used.
Speaker 7 (13:40):
To talk to the fucking trolls as if he was
their ally to get information.
Speaker 11 (13:45):
About other motherfuckers.
Speaker 7 (13:46):
You know, trolls might be like, Yo, this person got
wah wah wah whapper.
Speaker 16 (13:49):
This person's who it is.
Speaker 7 (13:50):
They found a willing listener in Darren Phills. That's already
murky territory because they're telling you shit and you can't
tell me you ain't telling the troll shit back. And motherfucker,
most trolls are fucking pigs. So then, like I said,
the paperwork says they kicked in his crib took him
into custody. From that understanding of what I've seen, you
(14:13):
could say that there was some corroboration going on between
him and the police.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Possibly back when Bonnie was alive and she would call
Ray from her chair at the dialysis center to talk,
he asked her about this incident.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Now there's a story where he gets taken in for questioning,
where he gets arrested and they let him out in
like fifteen minutes or something like that.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Yeah, we pum down there.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
They took him down there for questioning. And for me,
I don't know if they were trying to get him
by himself then, but all I know is I was
told that they was really, really really trying to stop
them trying.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
To shed them up.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
As Bonnie remembered it, Darren, his girlfriend, his brother Byron,
and Bonnie were all preparing to have a movie night.
They were headed to the house in separate cars, and
Bonnie arrived a few minutes after Darren, only to find
him being arrested.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
He was with his little girlfriend, were set good to
have movie nights and I popcorn.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
But few weeks before he dies or a few months, Yeah,
it had to be.
Speaker 5 (15:19):
It was some month.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Wasn't on weekend some months. See, they didn't know that.
Me and my daughter was sent to pull up behind him.
We was probably like a block away and he got
out the car. Next thing we know, he's standing. They
got him himed up.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Soon as we pulled up.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
I looked, I'm like, who is that? So I jumped
out and so litter. He said stay back. I said, no,
I'm not standing back. I said, because I don't know
who you are. You in front of my house and
you got My son hemmed up, who are you?
Speaker 6 (15:51):
And then he went on.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
He took his beds up and he showed and he said, ma'am,
you're right. He said, I'm sorry. He said, we here
to pick your on for question, and I'm like, for whoo.
They said they desire to pick him up, the saying
that City Polly told us to come and give him
because they want to question him.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Bonnie explains that the police told her the reason for
taking Darren in for questioning is that a witness had
claimed to have seen him speeding in his car and
hitting a road sign.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
How far are you serious?
Speaker 2 (16:28):
No more?
Speaker 4 (16:30):
This is about more than a fine. I said, this
ain't eving.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
And you knew they were FBI because it was on
the badge or they said they were FBI. How did
you know they were FBI.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
That's what I'm saying. They had to either be FBI
or detakers. Okay, it was it was, it was one
in the other.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Regarding this specific incident, Bonnie wasn't sure if the men
who arrived to arrest Darren were FBI or local detectives.
And we can't be sure that she referring to the
same event that tef Poe spoke of, and we never
could pinpoint what paperwork he was talking about. But we
(17:09):
do have a lot of paperwork, a lot as you've
heard us discussed previously over the two and a half
years that we've investigated Darren's death. We have requested many,
many government documents, with varying levels of success, but our
files were greatly augmented by those of journalist Moscy secret
(17:32):
After Bonnie's death, when he felt that he was at
an impasse investigating Darren's murder, he gave all of his
files to Darnell and a Mirror, and at the end
of twenty twenty three I swung by a Mirror's office
to pick them up. He said we were free to
look through them and to make our own copies. After
my third readthrough, I called Ray and our other producers.
(17:55):
So like, I'm on a third review, filling in blanks
right now, and I have like sixteen pages of notes
for myself. I mean, it's just a list of characters,
new characters, and I think that some of them may
fill in the blank of who Number two, three, and
four may have been MOSE's files after the break.
Speaker 13 (18:25):
Now back to the show. Mossey's files contained a lot
of police and court records on Darren, the Bottom Boys,
and several of the young men they hung around with.
After reading through the files multiple times, a few facts
really stand out. For one, the Bottom Boys at some
(18:46):
point became perceived as a gang by Saint Louis County
police after Darren's death. Each member of the group lr
LP and Keilo were involved in one or more crimes.
Ricky Smith AKALR, who we spoke with in the previous episode,
was jailed after carjacking a woman in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 16 (19:07):
A woman carjacked in broad daylight in downtown Saint Louis,
and it didn't take long for police to track down
a suspect. After getting a hit on a license plate
recognition camera, police arrested Ricky Smith. Police say he confessed
to the crime after being identified in a lineup.
Speaker 13 (19:24):
You already know that Lopez Watson Simms AKALP spent five
years in jail on a murder charge and that he
was found not guilty, but in Moses files we see
that on October fourth, twenty sixteen, one month after Darren's death,
an officer in Castle Point witnessed a train of cars
driving recklessly, so the officer began to follow them, and
(19:47):
when the people in the cars noticed, they sped up
and separated. The officer pursued one car, which, after trying
to make a sharp turn, rolled into someone's front yard.
Two young men fled from the upside down car, and
the officer followed one of them on foot. After catching him,
the officer found that that person was LP, and it
(20:08):
turns out the overturned car had been reported stolen and
it also had a loose fire arm in it. While
in jail, LP called his mother, who told him Kilo
has just been shot.
Speaker 17 (20:18):
You know that boy all right?
Speaker 4 (20:21):
Oh yeah, I just know that he's okay.
Speaker 12 (20:30):
Where he shot it?
Speaker 17 (20:31):
He said, he got shot in the head with a
minderstanding the grades before him. But he's fine, he's stable,
he's talking to his mother.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
He's fine.
Speaker 17 (20:42):
So everybody got the praying and said that boy is
all right. Both of y'all are all right. Guy he
found firing y'all, y'all better change. Letting another nigga take
y'all like one. Y'all work, say the time working. Y'all
got too much talent and invested in y'all can be
fucking million nerves, and y'all let him bomb take you life.
I got to do better than this.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Uh.
Speaker 13 (21:06):
This was the major shooting where Kilo was shot twenty
one times, as described by his grandmother Peggy back in
episode seven. In this shooting, Keilo was with his friend
Christopher Moore, and apparently they were shot at by someone
named Melmel. While on the jail telephone, LP's father warned
him about Kilo's demeanor.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
Anybody that just move off, impose the case a trolley
emotions and just act got to keep them and learn, man,
because it's gonna cause an accident for you.
Speaker 13 (21:38):
There was another shooting of Kilo, the one that happened
the night after Darren's body was discovered that you heard
us talk about with LP in the last episode. That
shooting we learned about from a report in Mosy's Box
that describes how Keilo and another man, Mark Kwan Lee,
were shot on the same day, at the same time,
in almost the exact same location, though police found them separate.
(22:00):
Keilo told police he was shot by a person in
a car who he thought was a dealer.
Speaker 11 (22:05):
That he could buy percocet from.
Speaker 13 (22:07):
Mark Kwan told police he was shot after leaving a
vigil for Darren in Castle Point by an unknown person
in a passing vehicle as he stood outside of his
own car searching for where he dropped his keys. The
men's claims to have not been together when they were
both shot. Defies reason and logic would have us believe
that Kilo and mar Kwan shot at each other, but
(22:29):
we don't know why. For his part, Keilo is involved
in a good number of crimes, including going to his
aunt and uncle's house, where at gunpoint he robbed his
own cousin of cash and a pistol. His family reported
this to the police, and the following day, Keelo came
back and shot at his uncle as he was driving
down the street in his car, fortunately missing him. Viewing
(22:52):
this and his other crimes, we're reminded of Detective Bray
Miller's statement in episode seven that Kilo was no angel
and that he dealt with him for years. If it's
true that Kilo was the trigger man who killed Darren,
as the Saint Louis County police believed, were these two
shootings of Kilo that happened within one month of Darren's
murder related, Were either of them an attempt at exacting
(23:14):
revenge or even an attempt at keeping him quiet? While
nothing in our box of files can answer those questions definitively,
we think it's worth pointing out that mar Kwan Lee
is also very close with Jaybird and speaking of Jaybird,
we were able to find a police report from June sixth,
twenty sixteen, exactly three months before Darren's murder, in which
(23:37):
jay Bird was pulled over in a car with LP.
Jay Bird was in possession of a firearm and LP
was in possession of what appeared to be crack cocaine.
Both men were arrested more after the break. Now back
(23:59):
to the show, we found in Mosey's box a lot
about Darren that we didn't previously know. We'd been aware
that in his younger years, Darren had been a drug dealer,
which was the source of his nickname Dee Boy, and
we had seen in his FBI file that he had
been convicted of felony distribution of a controlled substance, but
we never had the documents covering the specifics of that conviction.
(24:22):
Fortunately they were in Mosey's box. He had the court
documents outlining Darren's two thousand and seven arrest charges and
sentencing for distribution of cocaine. Reading them, we see that
Darren pled guilty to the felony counts against him, and
that he was given five years of probation. Mossey also
had the court documents from Darren's earlier charges for assaulting
(24:43):
an officer and resisting arrest, to which he'd also pled guilty.
More interesting, still, Mosey had documents about an incident we'd
somehow never heard of only months before Darren's five year
probation was set to be completed.
Speaker 11 (24:59):
He was in a shootout.
Speaker 13 (25:02):
If you remember, in twenty thirteen, Darren was shot six
times outside of an apartment complex. Well, it turns out
one year prior, he had been in a parked car
with a young woman in front of that very same
apartment complex when a man approached the car and banged
on the hood. According to the woman's testimony in the
police report, Darren said he knew the man. The man
(25:23):
pulled a gun, and Darren jumped out of the car,
drawing his own weapon. The two exchanged fire, and the
man fled up the street. Witnesses saw Darren stash his
gun in a parked car, which police later had towed.
Bonnie later called the police as the car was hers
Soon after the police arrested Darren. What happened in the
interview room is very important. According to the report, Darren
(25:48):
answered very few questions and he was visibly shaking after
he was told that he was being booked on three
different felony charges, assault, armed criminal action, and unlawful use
of a weapon. The detective offered Darren one more chance
to explain what happened. After a long pause, Darren told
the detective quote, they will kill me for saying after
(26:11):
this arrest. We don't see any legal consequences for Darren.
No probation violation, no new charges or sentencing, which is
significant because Darren was already a convicted felon, so he
could not legally possess a firearm. In the report, in
a box marked status, it says cleared January nineteenth, twenty twelve,
(26:33):
so eight days after the incident itself. Seemingly the police
have passed the case on to a prosecutor for review
or something. We requested documents from the Saint Louis City
Police about what happened next in this case, but we're
told they had no records to give us. Now, just
because we don't know what happened to Darren as a
(26:53):
result of his illegal possession of a firearm while he
was on probation, we need to be clear we cannot
say that necessarily means he made a deal to cooperate
with the police.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
We just don't know.
Speaker 8 (27:06):
You tell on me, I tell on the next person,
and we're both out. And at the end of the day,
all of this negative energy is out on the streets.
Speaker 11 (27:14):
And that just continues to go on day in and
day out.
Speaker 8 (27:18):
And that's what's actually pushed a lot of the confusion
that a lot of times result in somebody or some
people being killed. This is what we're dealing with in
our community daily, and it starts down there at the
federal courthouse, and then from that, you know, sides are picked,
(27:38):
and we have a community that is usually I know
everything about you, you know everything about.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Me, and we're at war.
Speaker 8 (27:46):
The worst enemy in the world is somebody that knows
everything about you.
Speaker 5 (27:50):
And that's what we're dealing with.
Speaker 4 (27:53):
Man.
Speaker 8 (27:53):
And when they get done prosecuting their case of making
their arrest, they go off to the safety of their
safe impart and they do what they do in the
community as a whole, where these the suspects are from.
They have to walk on pins and needles and hope
that they are not innocent victims being are being an
(28:15):
incident that they have absolutely nothing to.
Speaker 7 (28:17):
Do with for years.
Speaker 13 (28:19):
I think Lewis has been known as the most dangerous
city in America.
Speaker 18 (28:22):
And that's not just referring to gun viners, and that's
talking about what you have to do as a black
person to survive in Saint Louis.
Speaker 13 (28:31):
Is a battle for resources.
Speaker 18 (28:33):
And not only are they battling environmental factors, they're battling
legal structures. And our legal structure is.
Speaker 11 (28:40):
Such that if you can pay, you can play.
Speaker 18 (28:45):
But if you don't have the resources to fight for
your freedom, you're in trouble, you know. And most people
in those situations will do anything to keep their freedom,
whether that being informant, whether that be whatever.
Speaker 17 (28:59):
It is is, you know, just not to be incarcerated,
which is a.
Speaker 14 (29:04):
Terrifying thing for someone.
Speaker 18 (29:05):
Who has never been incarcerated, you know, when you get
caught in that track.
Speaker 10 (29:12):
And so, you know, I definitely think we need to give.
Speaker 18 (29:15):
A little attention to that toxic environment. And Darren Sales
was facing a giant. There's nothing that he could do
with the government. They have way more resources than he does,
and they could put their timb on the scale whenever they.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Want, curing a mirror in Darnelle talk about the pressure
to take a deal to inform on someone else in
order to reduce your own sentence. Brings to mind what
my friend Paul Jones told us in episode two about
police using children for information. It also reminded us of
(29:54):
something Chariff Allen said, bro the police, your.
Speaker 7 (29:58):
Fame was leaving to the person who will be come
to you. Gill Candy, the more little one that will
literally pull up on the sea until you where a game.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Many parts of Saint Louis and Saint Louis County are dangerous,
and we're not under any Candyland delusions that making them
safe is a simple task. But what goes unseen by
most people is that the conflict between criminals, law enforcement,
and regular citizens who are just trying to live their
(30:27):
lives is the information war. Law enforcement is always trying
to stay ahead of criminals, and criminals are always trying
to stay one step ahead of law enforcement. As police
gather sources and information, they also put information, true or not,
back into the community. And when we think of Darren
(30:49):
being pulled over by a long stretch of police cars,
or the story about him being arrested, only briefly held
and then quickly released, we have to wan if these
weren't attempts by law enforcement to make it appear to
people in the community that Darren was cooperating with him.
After all, if he is pulled over by a string
(31:11):
of officers when his driver's license is revoked and has
then let go, as we discussed in episode six, is
the point of that exercise or others like it to
endanger Darren, to make him suspicious in the eyes of
the people around him, to make it appear as though
he's gotten a good deal from the police, so the
(31:33):
criminal element will begin to question his loyalties and motives.
We wonder if this pressure wasn't placed on Darren by
law enforcement so he would feel as though he had
no choice left but to cooperate. Or perhaps he had
at one point given information and had then changed his mind,
(31:54):
refusing to tell police anything more, and the police decided
to turn the screws on him to bring him back
in line. It's anyone's guests, and Darren himself warned people
about this information war before he died.
Speaker 12 (32:09):
I think it's important that people learn from all mistakes
he made a furnuson and become a little bit more intelligent.
I mean, we got to learn from the part of
the states he's made for the instut employ ary. I mean,
how did it take down Marcus Guardy, How did it
take down Malchael? Makes you gotta come more educated on
things like Corntail Prome.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Let's look at a timeline. In August of twenty fifteen,
friend of Darren's, Anthony T. T. Jordan, is arrested as
part of a sealed federal indictment for conspiracy to distribute
cocaine and a spate of murders. He was suspected of
committing on behalf of the Adrian Lemon's gang. A few
(32:50):
months later, in January of twenty sixteen, eighteen more people
were arrested as part of this investigation, including Adrian Lemons himself.
This likely began to send cracks into the day to
day operations of that cocaine distribution network, and if other
members were worried that they were next, it stands to
(33:12):
reason that they would want to eliminate any possible informants
who might leak information that would help the government in
their crackdown. Then two months later, in March of twenty sixteen,
the FBI opens its surveillance operation on Darren and from
then on we see him followed and pulled over and
(33:32):
let go several times, including the incident his mother described
and believed occurred about a month before he died. That summer,
j Bird is arrested, which leaves Darren in charge of
the Bottom Boys and sees that it is him that
goes to Rock Nation to present the group. Then three
(33:53):
months later, in September of twenty sixteen, Darren is murdered.
Months after that, on November thirtieth, we see in Darren's
FBI documents what appears to be a request to access
this file. The language reads quote request redacted be opened
(34:14):
and captioned investigation. The referred to investigation is also redacted.
But the very next day, December one, twenty sixteen, Jaybird
is arrested as part of the federal indictment into the
Lemon's Cocaine Gang. Less than two weeks later, another redacted
action is taken by a redacted person in Darren's FBI file,
(34:38):
but we can see that a stated reason for the
redaction is listed as quote sealed pursuant to a United
States court order. While perhaps it's a coincidence, we do
note that the indictments in the Lemon's cases were all
sealed by the court. Taken together, these items make us
(34:59):
at least I suspect that something in Darren's FBI file
was being used to prosecute Jabird. And finally, we have
one piece of evidence that we cannot entirely reveal in
order to protect the safety of its source. We have
shared it with an independent third party fact checker, who
(35:19):
confirmed to our attorney its validity and hopes that you
will trust us when we say that this piece of evidence,
while not ironclad, suggests that Jaberd did believe that Darren
was an informant and that's why Darren was killed. We
know it doesn't make for Sexy Radio to present it
(35:40):
this way, but we had no choice. We never would
have accessed it otherwise. To be absolutely one hundred percent clear,
this evidence does not in any way prove that jaber
told Kilo to kill Darren, but as of this writing,
based on everything that we have seen and heard, we
(36:01):
think that this is the most likely case. Jay Bird
has since been released from prison. We reached out to
him through his lawyer, hoping to arrange a conversation so
he could give comment. That lawyer happens to be Travis Noble,
the same lawyer who represented LP in his murder case
(36:23):
and who sat with LP during our interview with him.
So far, he has not responded to our request, and
that is where we landed. After more than two years
of work, we were wrapping up the season, waiting on
a few documents and responses to our request for final comments,
(36:43):
when something happened, something big, something that answered everything, And
that's next time on After the Uprising.
Speaker 13 (36:59):
After the Upright is a production of Double Asterisk and
iHeart Podcasts in association with True Stories. Season two was written, reported,
and produced by Maria Chappelle, Nadal, John Duffy, Mallory Kenoy,
and Renovashlski.
Speaker 11 (37:12):
Executive producers are.
Speaker 13 (37:14):
Nikki Atore and Lindsay Hoffman for iHeart Podcasts, John Duffy
and Renoviashewski for Double Asterisk, David Cassidy and Ruth Baka
for True Stories. Directed by John Duffy and Renoviashlsky. Theme
song and score by Zachary Walter, sound engineering and mixed
by John Autry. Fact checking by Muffin Humes, marketing by
Alison Canter Fair Use legal by Peter Yazzi. And Brandon Butler.
(37:38):
Legal by Holly Decan for iHeart Podcasts and Keith Skarr
for Double Asterisk Missouri Sunshine Legal by David Rowland. Show
logo by iHeart Podcasts using a photo by at Tillo Dagostino.
Our interns were Hannah Madura and Rosemary Fiery. Website by
Stephanie Clark, recorded at David Weber's Airtime Studios in Bloomington, Indiana.
(38:01):
We want to acknowledge additional investigation that became part of
this podcast was conducted by Detective Adams in the Saint
Louis County Police and the FBI, who did not participate
in this podcast, and by a Mere Brandy Mosey, Secret
and Darnell Singleton. If you like our work, check out
our other podcasts. You can find us at Double asteriskmedia
dot com and on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Support us
(38:25):
on Patreon. If you're enjoying the show, leave us a
rating and review.
Speaker 11 (38:29):
On your favorite podcast app.
Speaker 13 (38:31):
Thank you to Jamie Dennis, Danny Gonzalez, Jonathan Hartwig, Bethan Macalouso,
Matt McDonough, Melissa McKinnes, Ryan Mears, Tony and Valovyshlski and
the family and loved ones of Darren Seals, Bottom Boys
and Doa tracks used via fair use, So was the
news reporting. Archival copyright twenty twenty four Double asteriskink
Hosts And Creators
Ray Nowosielski
Maria Chappelle-Nadal
John Duffy
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