Leroy Barnes

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Leroy Barnes
Born October 15, 1933 (1933-10-15) (age 74)
Harlem, New York
Alias(es) Nicky
Occupation Former drug lord

Leroy Antonio "Nicky" Barnes (born October 15, 1933) is a former Harlem, New York drug dealer who at one time, along with Frank Lucas and Guy Fisher, was one of the biggest heroin dealers in New York.[1] Barnes was dubbed "Mr. Untouchable" by The New York Times magazine.[2] Barnes was eventually prosecuted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. [2] After several years in prison, Barnes turned State's evidence and testified against others in his criminal organization in order to reduce his sentence. Due to the efforts of Rudolph W. Giuliani and others he was released from prison in August, 1998 as a reward for his cooperation. [2]. In 2007 he released a book, “Mr. Untouchable,” written with Tom Folsom and documentry DVD of the same name about his life.[3][4] In the 2007 film American Gangster Barnes is portrayed by Cuba Gooding Jr. .[5]

Contents

[edit] Early career

Leroy "Nicky" Barnes mugshot after he was stopped for a traffic violation and was not carrying identification. The two arresting officers did not know who they had caught until they brought him into the police station.
Leroy "Nicky" Barnes mugshot after he was stopped for a traffic violation and was not carrying identification. The two arresting officers did not know who they had caught until they brought him into the police station.

Leroy Barnes was sent to prison in 1965 for low level drug dealing. While in prison he met Colombo crime family member Joe "Crazy Joe" Gallo [6] and Lucchese crime family heroin dealer Matthew Madonna.[4] Gallo wanted to have more of a stake in the Harlem Heroin market but didn't have any personnel to deal in the mostly black Harlem. It is believed Gallo passed on his knowledge of how to run a drug trafficking organization to Barnes and asked Barnes to assemble the necessary personnel.[6] When Gallo got out of jail he provided a lawyer for Barnes. The lawyer got Barnes conviction overturned on a technicality and he returned to New York City.[7] Once home, Barnes began to assemble his personnel and began cutting and packaging low-quality heroin. To deal more efficiently Barnes and other black gangsters created, The Council, a seven man organization modeled after the Italian mob families. The Council settled disputes, handled distribution problems and other drug related issues.[7]

[edit] The Council

The Council included seven people:

  • Leroy Barnes
  • Joseph "Jazz" Hayden
  • Wallace Rice
  • Thomas "Gaps" Foreman
  • Ishmael Muhammed
  • Frank James
  • Guy Fisher

[edit] Prison

According to Barnes, while in prison, he discovered that his assets were not being taken care of, The Council stopped paying his attorneys' fees, and one of his fellow council members, Guy Fisher, was having an affair with his favorite mistress .[8][9] The Council had a rule that no council member would sleep with another council member's wife/mistress. In response, Barnes became an informant. He forwarded a list of 109 names, five of which were council members, along with his wife's name, implicating them all in illegal activities related to the heroin trade. Barnes helped to indict 44 other traffickers, 16 of whom were ultimately convicted.[8] In this testimony, he implicated himself in eight murders. While in prison, he won a national poetry contest for federal inmates, earned a college diploma with honors[9] and taught fellow inmates math.[2] A former altar boy, he also converted to Islam while in jail.[2]

[edit] Release and life after prison

The cover to Nicky Barnes' autobiography Mr. Untouchable
The cover to Nicky Barnes' autobiography Mr. Untouchable
The poster for Barnes' documentary Mr. Untouchable
The poster for Barnes' documentary Mr. Untouchable

After Barnes cooperated with the government by working as an informant, Rudolph Giuliani sought a reversal of Barnes' life sentence. Eventually, he was resentenced to 35 years and housed in a special Witness Security Unit at the federal prison in Otisville, N.Y.. By working in jail Barnes earned two months off and was released in August 1998.[10] Work was something Barnes seemed to thrive on during the more than 15 years he spent at Otisville.

“ He worked all the time ... He worked in the kitchen, in the dining area, separating the recycle stuff from the regular garbage. You name it he did it. He seemed obsessed. ”
 
— Prison official [10]

Barnes and his former competitor, Frank Lucas, sat down with New York magazine's Mark Jacobson recently for a historic conversation between men who have not spoken to each other in 30 years.[11] Now in his 70s, Barnes is part of the Witness Protection Program.

Barnes wrote Mr. Untouchable, a book about his life, in 2007 and appears in a documentary about his gang life entitled Mr. Untouchable.[3][4]

On January 31, 2008, Barnes was interviewed by Howard Stern on Stern's Sirius Satellite Radio show.

[edit] Popular media references

  • It often thought that the 1973 Jim Croce song "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" was inspired by Barnes but it was in fact inspired by one of Jim Croce's friend from the Army[13]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ DVD Documentry, 45min, The Guy Fisher Story: A New York drug dealer; June 21, 2005
  2. ^ a b c d e SAM ROBERTS (March 4, 2007). Crime’s ‘Mr. Untouchable’ Emerges From Shadows (HTML). The New York Times. Retrieved on 2008-03-12.
  3. ^ a b Leroy "Nicky" Barnes, Tom Folsom. Mr. Untouchable: My Crimes and Punishments, March 6, 2007, Rugged Land, 352. ISBN 159071041X. 
  4. ^ a b c Mr. Untouchable (2007) at the Internet Movie Database
  5. ^ Roger Moore (8 August 2007). After swearing off comedies, Cuba Gooding is back (HTML). The Orlando Sentinel (MCT). Retrieved on 2008-03-12.
  6. ^ a b DEA History 1975 - 1980 (HTML). DEA (2007). Retrieved on 2008-03-13. “There, he teamed up with gangster "Crazy Joey" Gallo who taught him how to operate a drug trafficking organization. Gallo had wanted to be a major force in the Harlem drug trade, but he lacked the personnel. He urged Barnes to recruit African-Americans into the business. With the help of a lawyer provided by Gallo, Barnes' conviction was reversed and he was released from prison. Barnes went back to the streets of New York and began establishing his own trafficking network.”
  7. ^ a b ORIGINAL GANGSTAS (HTML). ORIGINAL GANGSTAS (2007). Retrieved on 2008-03-13.
  8. ^ a b "Telling Tales;Mad, mad Leroy Barnes," TIME Magazine, January 30, 1984, p.16
  9. ^ a b Jerry Capeci (March 15, 1999). Barnes Free At Last (HTML). ganglandnews. Retrieved on 2008-03-12.
  10. ^ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named ganglandnews_1989
  11. ^ "Lords of Dopetown". New York Magazine, 5 November 2007.
  12. ^ Chloé A. Hilliard (May 22nd, 2007 12:00 AM). New Jack Comeback - Can a series of six-minute web films revive Barry Michael Cooper's storied career? (HTML). pub. Retrieved on 2008-03-13.
  13. ^ Jim Croce (2007). Bad, Bad Leroy Brown (HTML). superseventies. Retrieved on 2008-03-14. “I met him at Fort Dix, New Jersey. We were in lineman (telephone) school together. He stayed there about a week, and one evening he turned around and said he was really fed up and tired. He went AWOL, and then came back at the end of the month to get his pay check. They put handcuffs on him and took him away. Just to listen to him talk and see how 'bad' he was, I knew someday I was gonna write a song about him”

[edit] External links