One-time NYC king of crack cocaine seeks forgiveness from murder victims' families (Part 2 of 2)
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BY
ADAM SHRIER
MARY MCDONNELL
GRAHAM RAYMAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Sunday, March 5, 2017, 12:29 PM
He has blood on his hands and redemption in his heart — 30 years after leaving a trail of bodies in Brooklyn and Queens.
Former crack king Brian (Glaze) Gibbs says he wants a chance to make amends with the families of his victims.
It won’t be easy.
Gibbs — as the Daily News detailed Sunday — pleaded guilty to either arranging or committing five murders and two attempted murders between 1985 and 1988 during his time as a Brooklyn drug lord and a top lieutenant with Queens drug kingpin Lorenzo (Fat Cat) Nichols.
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“I wish I could turn back the hands of time, and I know it’s going to be hard for a lot of people to understand, but I want to make amends and redeem myself,” said Gibbs, 53.
He’s living in the South under an assumed name after flipping on the murderous crew and spending time in prison and the witness protection program.
“I would like to meet with them,” he says of his victims’ relatives, “or tell them I am not the person now who I was then.”
Brian (Glaze) Gibbs, seen in 2017.
Brian (Glaze) Gibbs, seen in 2017. (OBTAINED BY NEWS)
But even after 30 years, the wounds he and his crew inflicted on the relatives remain profoundly raw.
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YOU NEVER FORGET
“It’s like it just happened,” Monica Bellamy, 51, said of the coldblooded murder of her father Maurice Bellamy, 49. He was gunned down in his laundromat in December 1987 by a hitman acting on Gibbs’ orders.
“To see my father lying in the hospital with burn marks and a bullet, that’s just memories all over again. You have to go on with your life, but you just never forget. You never forget.”
Her father’s murder was triggered two years earlier when Nichols ordered assassins to murder Parole Office Brian Rooney because Rooney had sent him back to prison.
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The dead man’s son, Perry Bellamy, then a member of the Nichols gang, had become a witness against Nichols for the crime. When Nichols learned of that, he ordered Gibbs to take vengeance.
Murder victim Sybil Mims in an undated photo. Her niece Tania Finley says she can't believe Gibbs is out of prison.
Murder victim Sybil Mims in an undated photo. Her niece Tania Finley says she can't believe Gibbs is out of prison. (OBTAINED BY DAILY NEWS)
Gibbs had risen to a top aide in Nichols’ organization after building his own crack and heroin business out of East New York’s Cypress Hills Houses that spread drugs across Brooklyn. He had already killed and had no qualms about killing again.
But Perry was protected by the authorities, so Nichols couldn’t get to him. Gibbs said the initial idea was to murder one of Perry’s parents so he would come to the funeral. There, he said, his guys would knock out the cops with tranquilizers and then kill the witness.
Gibbs sent the hitman to the Linden Ave. laundromat.
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“It had to look like a robbery,” Gibbs said. “He was supposed to ask for change and then execute him.”
But the gunman just walked in and shot Maurice Bellamy in the head. Cops immediately made the connection.
THE COST
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The Cypress Hills Houses, seen on March 2, which served as headquarters for Gibbs in the 1980s. (DEBBIE EGAN-CHIN/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)
When The News approached Bellamy to talk about her dad, the mere mention of his name led her to cover her face in her hands. She buried her face inside her shirt and wept audibly, rocking back and forth.
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“My father was a generous man and he was a good man,” she said. “The neighbors loved him. He loved his kids.”
Bellamy, then a 20-year-old York College student, haltingly recalled rushing to the hospital, where she thought her father was still on life support. He had already died. She had to go home and deliver the news to relatives.
“I thought he was going to get better and then he just died,” she said. “It was really bad. I took it the hardest.”
After the murder, the victim’s family was terrified. Nichols actually called their house on Long Island and claimed he wasn’t involved.
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“We were really scared,” she said. “We didn’t know who was going to be next.”
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The Cypress Hills Houses' lobby. "Cypress was not a very nice place or a very safe place to live during those days," says Dwayne Faison, the head of the tenants' association. (DEBBIE EGAN-CHIN/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)
Bellamy said she had no idea that Gibbs arranged the hit.
“I never heard of him before,” she said.
Gibbs’ talk of amends didn’t initially sway her. She was shocked that he was free.
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“That’s my father,” she said. “(Gibbs) put a hit out and I know people can be redeemed in jail but there’s so many people that he killed.”
Told that Gibbs would like to apologize in person, she recoiled in fear.
“I don’t want him to contact me or my family,” she said. “It’s too scary. I don’t know if someone will be on the street watching me coming in and out of the house. That organization was really bad.”
The funeral service for Officer Brian Rooney. Gibbs arranged the murder of Maurice Bellamy in December 1987 after his son Perry cooperated with authorities investigating the killing.
The funeral service for Officer Brian Rooney. Gibbs arranged the murder of Maurice Bellamy in December 1987 after his son Perry cooperated with authorities investigating the killing. (DEMARIA, PAUL)
But Bellamy softened slightly later in the interview.
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“I can’t hate him,” she said. “I don’t know who he is and if he’s trying to keep other kids from doing the same thing, I can (support) his effort to redeem himself in that way.
“I don’t know if the rest of my family would go for it, but I’m different. You’re supposed to forgive. I don’t know if it would bring me closure because my father’s not here anymore and he died young. But I believe in rehabilitation.”
She said the family’s relationship with her brother Perry was badly strained after the murder.
“We blamed him at first,” she said. “But to see your brother coming into the funeral home with chains and stuff on… after that we let it go. We didn’t blame him anymore. We’ve forgiven him.”
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Perry Bellamy remains in state prison on a murder conviction related to his involvement with the Nichols gang.
Handout sent to Graham Rayman by Gibbs
Gibbs with Lorenzo (Fat Cat) Nichols at Attica State Prison in an undated photo. (OBTAINED BY NEWS)
CHILDREN WITHOUT MOTHERS
Tania Finley, 32, was only a year old when Gibbs shot her aunt, Sybil Mims, to death in 1986. When The News approached her, she also didn’t know that Gibbs was out of prison.
“It gives me bubble guts,” she said. “I can’t believe he’s out.”
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One of Gibbs’ drug spots had been robbed twice in February 1986, and he suspected Mims’ boyfriend, “Crazy Clyde,” was responsible.
Gibbs confronted her at gunpoint, but Mims told him, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Enraged, Gibbs shot her in the stomach and she crumpled to the ground. He then leaned over and shot her in the head.
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What look like bullet holes in a stairway door on the fourth floor of the Cypress Hills Houses. (DEBBIE EGAN-CHIN/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)
Gibbs was acquitted at trial. He claims he paid a key witness $25,000 to refuse to cooperate, crippling the prosecution’s case.
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After Gibbs was indicted for drug trafficking by the feds in 1988, he pleaded guilty to the murders of Mims, Bellamy and three other people.
“I would watch my mother and grandmother cry a lot,” Finley said. “That's all I remember — a lot of crying.”
Finley said her grandmother developed depression and became overprotective after her daughter’s murder. Finley learned the gruesome details of her aunt’s death years later when she Googled the case after discovering a yellowed newspaper clipping about the murder.
“My grandmother tried to shield us from a lot of it,” she said. “She didn’t want us to know it was related to drugs.”
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Mims’ daughter Shanika Chillious, 32, said Gibbs’ desire for redemption means little to her. She refused to forgive or accept an apology.
Murder victim Maurice Bellamy.
Murder victim Maurice Bellamy. (OBTAINED BY NEWS/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)
“That’s great for him,” she said, sarcastically. “There’s children that grew up without mothers and fathers because of (him). I lived 32 years without a mom. I don’t want to know or speak to him."
Chillious believes Gibbs is hungry for the spotlight.
“If he wants to be a superstar, let him go on,” she said.
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IN THEIR SHOES
Gibbs isn’t surprised by the reactions of his victims’ relatives. But he insists his intentions are genuine. He says the 1992 death of his mother, Dorothy Gibbs, spurred him to seek forgiveness.
“It took my mom’s death to put myself in their shoes, and that pain never goes away,” he said. “They lost a loved one to a violent death at an early age. They have the right to feel the way they feel.”
Queens drug kingpin Lorenzo (Fat Cat) Nichols.
Queens drug kingpin Lorenzo (Fat Cat) Nichols. (OBTAINED BY NEWS)
Gibbs, who works as a salesman, served nine years in federal prison for murder and narcotics trafficking, much less than he would have served had he not cooperated with investigators.
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Joseph Ponzi, the former chief investigator for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office, credits him with helping dismantle the murderous Nichols organization, but he also called Mims an innocent victim and says he can’t forgive Gibbs for what he did.
After prison, Gibbs spent about 18 months in the witness protection program and lives under an assumed name. He has never reoffended and is married, with two children.
“I would have traded what I did for anything,” he said. “I wish I had been a correction officer for 20 years and was now retiring.”
As part of his efforts at redemption, Gibbs has tried, with limited success, to reach out to the families of some of his victims. He has also given about 20 talks to young people about the dangers of the streets, and would like to do much more.
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“I want to let them know that I did a lot of stupid things,” he said. “I want to tell them to get decent jobs. Later for watching these bootleg rap videos and thinking that’s the life. That’s a temporary high.
Gibbs is an undated photo.
Gibbs is an undated photo. (OBTAINED BY NEWS)
“I’m hoping to minister to the younger generation, prevent them from making the same choices I made,” he said.
He has also self-published a book, “Beyond Lucky,” in which he expresses regret — though he also piles on the lurid details of his crimes.
WITNESS TO THE PAST
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In the yellow-tiled hallway of the Cypress Hills Houses building where Gibbs had his headquarters, bullet-pocked security glass bears silent witness to the past. When Gibbs roamed that hallway with his crew 30 years ago, the city development was awash in crime — so much so that people slept on their apartment floors to avoid stray bullets.
Dwayne Faison, 60, the head of the tenants association, said that Gibbs is still lauded by some.
“Cypress was not a very nice place or a very safe place to live during those days,” he said. “In certain circles, Gibbs is glorified. The younger guys, they glorify how he had his s--t on lock, the clothes he wore, the cars he had — ‘I’m gonna be like that.’”
Faison said things are much better today than they were then. But, while muted, the cycle of violence continues.
“Little by little it started getting better. But now you have these guys, the new crop, who emulate those guys (of the 80s and 90s) and it starts over."
Faison’s nephew, Anthony Levine, was murdered seven years ago at the age of 23 trying to help a woman being beaten by her boyfriend.
Reflecting on Gibbs, Faison said, “Sometimes all wounds don’t heal.
“I know regret. Regret’s a mother,” he adds. “But regret is just that. You cannot take it back. Especially with lives.”
