anyone know about this guy. He's was a crack kingpin in brooklyn from late 80s managed to make it till 2002.
B’KLYN KINGPIN’S REIGN OF CARNAGE
By Murray Weiss March 5, 2007 | 10:00am
HE WAS New York’s killing machine.
John “Bloody Hatchet” Hatcher, the brother of a minister, has admitted to involvement in more than 80 shootings – including 30 homicides – while operating a notorious gang that made tens of millions of dollars selling crack, cocaine and marijuana.
During a two-decade reign of terror, Hatcher and his gang, The Rugby Boys, littered the streets in the heart of Brooklyn with victims and bodies, authorities said.
“He was the crack epidemic,” said John Gilbride, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s New York Office, comparing him to murderers Lorenzo “Fat Cat” Nichols and Kenneth “Supreme” McGriff and infamous Harlem druglord Nicky Barnes.
But unlike the others’ brief reigns as crack and heroin kingpins, Hatcher’s ring flourished like no other, before the DEA finally mounted a six-year operation buying $10 bags of crack that snared him.
Rather than face a possible death-sentence prosecution, Hatcher, 43, spilled his guts.
Veteran federal agents and hardened homicide detectives were left slack-jawed with disbelief as Hatcher methodically detailed a litany of murder and mayhem that took him an astonishing four months to tell.
“There were times when we actually had to stop him and say, ‘That’s enough for today,’ ” DEA Special Agent John Profetti said, recalling a particularly grim session when Hatcher described an assault in which one of his henchmen was stabbed, shot, choked, set on fire and then doused with a pail of urine.
The victim survived, after pretending he was dead, and gave an interview to detectives and Star Jones, the former co-host of ABC’s “The View” who was then a Brooklyn assistant district attorney.
When the man was released from the hospital, Hatcher paid two hit men $5,000 to finish him off.
Hatcher’s brutality and sophisticated criminality belied his upbringing by loving parents who owned a record store in Canarsie and raised three other children, including a minister and a U.S. Naval Academy officer.
But by age 12, Hatcher was showing his propensity for crime, running with a crowd that committed robberies and burglaries and were tied to fearsome Jamaican drug dealers.
His fledgling talents were noticed by a local “Fagin-like” hood, who recruited him.
“It was like Oliver Twist with a gun,” said Daniel Anderson, DEA associate special agent in charge in New York.
Added Profetti, “He was a natural, starting with pick-pocketing and escalating into robberies and burglaries.”
By the end of high school, Hatcher was forming a gang of his own. He recruited kids, dubbed Rugby Boys, who played football and basketball when they were not selling drugs. One fearsome teen, Tyrone Hunter, was made Hatcher’s deputy.
Coupling a businessman’s acumen with an iron fist, Hatcher established control over several key crack dens in Bedford-Stuyvesant and East New York and skillfully built an empire with scores of workers in the heart of the city’s most populated borough.
If a rival tried to poach his territory, someone would be pay. “He shot people just to make a point, leaving them wounded in the stomach and legs,” Profetti said.
Hatcher lived large. He had a spacious apartment in Park Slope, hoards of women, “Superfly” clothes and flashy luxury cars and treated himself and his crew to lavish Caribbean trips.
But in 1991, he was with a couple of his henchmen and mistook undercover cops for rival dealers. One of his crew opened fire, grazing an officer.
Hatcher was the only one caught. He did not rat and spent eight years in prison.
When he was released, he quickly reclaimed his throne.
But two seemingly unrelated criminal matters – a murder in East New York and a credit-card scam in Alabama – ultimately toppled his empire.
On Jan. 27, 2000, a city bus driver made the mistake of being a go-between in a Colombian heroin deal with Hatcher, who shot and killed him and stole his drugs.
Rugby Boy Charles Thomas was identified as a suspect.
Seven months later, in Alabama, Thomas’ nickname, “Boo,” and his Brooklyn phone number showed up on a piece of paper linked to a ring ordering hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise from Home Depot.
The DEA joined U.S. Postal Inspector James Buthorn and NYPD detectives in early 2001 and starting with $10-bag buys, launched their probe that snared a “weak-link” lieutenant in Hatcher’s operation. Fearing “Bloody Hatchet,” the lieutenant cooperated, and Hatcher finally was scooped up in a massive roundup May 13, 2002.
Hatcher started spilling the beans, saying, “I am not going to do any one else’s time. They will do their own,” referring to his eight-year stint in prison over the cop-wounding case.
With a treasure-trove of cases to cherry-pick from involving Hatcher – some which had already been attributed to others by the NYPD – Assistant Brooklyn U.S. Attorneys Christina Dugger and Scott Morvillo and the federal agents zeroed in on five killings.
“It took six years to peel back layer after layer to unveil these horrific crimes,” Gilbride said.
Investigators dug up old witnesses and other evidence they used during a three-week trial that ended last month with the racketeering and murder conviction of the final bosses of Hatcher’s gang: Hunter and Adrian Payne.
Hatcher, who testified for two days, is being held in federal prison and, along with Hunter and Payne, is awaiting sentencing in May. He is expected to receive what amounts to a life sentence.
