? By John Simerman and Brendan McCarthy, Staff writers
A year ago this week, on a windy spit of neutral ground along South Claiborne Avenue, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu issued a battle cry against a force that prison bars couldn't seem to contain. His target: Telly Terrence Hankton, and anyone who had his back.
Curtis Matthews, the brother of a key witness at Hankton's recent murder trial, was dead, shot down outside the Jazz Daiquiris lounge. The killing had no apparent purpose other than to make a statement: It came just days after a judge handed Hankton a life sentence for pumping 11 bullets into rival Darnell Stewart on nearly the exact same spot in 2008.
Matthews' brother, John, who owned the daiquiri shop and said he saw Hankton bolt from Stewart's killing had himself been shot 17 times at his home in eastern New Orleans several months before the trial. Telly's hot-headed cousin, Thomas "Squirt" Hankton, was later arrested for that shooting, which John Matthews somehow survived.
Those weren't the only times it appeared Hankton had tried to mete out his own brand of justice from behind bars.
At Hankton's first trial, two women allegedly perjured themselves to conjure a false alibi for him. The jury deadlocked, and charges were later lodged against Thomas Hankton and three women.
A few weeks after a jury came back guilty in the second trial, in September 2011, a teal pickup truck rumbled up the steps and smashed through the entrance of the district attorney's office. The widespread suspicion: Team Hankton at work.
By the time Landrieu got in front of the cameras, Hankton's alleged exploits as an Uptown drug mogul, shot-caller and merciless killer with a loyal and lawless posse had reached epic gangland status.
"Behind us is the scene of what I'm sure the Hankton clan thinks is a site of intimidation. If they spray enough bullets and they scare enough people, that the people of New Orleans are gonna walk away. Well, I'm here to tell you that we're not," Landrieu said.
"I'm sending a message loud and clear to Telly Hankton was arrested in Houston a week after Hurricane Katrina on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He pled guilty to a lesser charge, records show Hankton and his family and anyone else associated with this: We're coming to get you."
Within 48 hours, police had planted cruisers outside the homes of Landrieu, Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro, Cannizzaro's prosecutor daughter and others, after threats that a source said were specific enough to warrant concern. The cars would stay there for two weeks.
The bloody twists and turns in the Hankton saga -- with relatives and associates allegedly chipping in -- have only burnished his brutal legend in a city worn raw by murderous street violence.
Soon, that legend -- skeptics call it more of a myth -- is likely to grow.
U.S. Attorney Jim Letten's office is poised, within days or weeks, to unleash a major racketeering indictment against Hankton, at least two cousins, the alleged hit-man accused of killing Curtis Matthews on Hankton's behalf, and several others. The defendants may number a dozen or more.
The indictment is expected to portray a wide-ranging criminal enterprise responsible for numerous murders and brazen shootings across the city, along with armed robberies, drug crimes and possibly the perjury plot, according to sources with knowledge of the probe.
Letten has declined to discuss the case, citing federal rules, and few others are willing to tie their names to it.
But court documents, police reports and a variety of sources, including some people who acknowledged being questioned in recent months by federal agents over potential aspects and targets of the case, indicate that Hankton and Co. are about to get thrown into the federal fire.
The case promises to shed new light on claims that Hankton, 36, sat at the helm of a broad criminal operation, sustained by violence, that stretched from Central City to the farther reaches of Uptown.
"It's going to show the inter-relationships between the violent street crews and drug trade in this city," said a criminal justice source with close knowledge of the federal investigation. "It's going to encompass multiple neighborhoods and a vast, expansive turf."
A shift in Hankton-related cases from Tulane and Broad to federal court downtown has been taking place for months now.
Cannizzaro's office has dropped several pending cases involving Hankton or his alleged associates, turning the files over to federal prosecutors.
Among them, an indictment accusing Hankton and another man, Edward Allen, in the June 20, 2009, killing of Jessie "TuTu" Reed -- while Hankton was free on $1 million bond in Stewart's killing -- is now dead in state court.
Allen went free when the state case was dropped in August. It doesn't appear that the feds plan to include him in the indictment.
Moving to federal court as well is the murder case against Hankton's cousin Andre Hankton, 34. He is accused of ramming a Mustang into Stewart, sending him flying into the air before he landed on the pavement -- where Telly Hankton coolly finished him off under the bright streetlights of South Claiborne.
That case against Andre Hankton recently was dropped last month from state court, with the file turned over to Letten's office. In the meantime, the feds have revived an old stolen gun charge against him.
Stewart was killed by four fatal shots to his cheek, delivered by Hankton in neat succession, prosecutors said at his trial. Hankton, they said, preferred to shoot people in the face.
Federal prosecutors also appear poised to take over the perjury case related to the alibi testimony that Danielle Hampton and Sana Johnson lent Hankton in the first Stewart murder trial, along with the attempted murder allegation against Thomas Hankton in the shooting of John Matthews.
That case has been delayed in state court for months now.
Hampton claimed she'd just met Hankton that morning, then met him for a drink at the W Hotel the night of Stewart's murder. She confessed in a written statement that she'd lied about that.
She said Squirt put her up to the subterfuge.
"I only testified because I felt that if I had not, I would have been a target for not helping Telly," wrote Hampton, who was a manager at the Audubon Zoo at the time.
Ex-bail bondsman Rufus Johnson may also get sucked into the case. Johnson helped Hankton secure his $1 million bond by putting up $220,000 on a property under a business name.
Federal authorities have scrutinized the transaction, a law enforcement source said, and FBI agents have questioned several people about Johnson.
The look at Johnson, a source says, overlaps with a federal grand jury probe into bond practices in Orleans Parish.
Johnson let his bonding license lapse in 1989, applied again in 2003 but failed to complete the paperwork, then tried again this year but was denied because he's a convicted felon, according to the state Department of Insurance.
Josephine Spellman, who had worked for Johnson, was charged last spring with accessory to second-degree murder after she turned in her grandson, who was wanted for a February murder in the River Garden complex.
Spellman said she didn't understand the charge against her, but added that the questioning quickly turned to Johnson and featured a federal agent.
"They asked if I can get some dirt on him," Spellman said. "One was a fed. They wanted me to say something I don't know."
Johnson, who mans a desk at a bond firm across the street from the courthouse at Tulane and Broad, declined to discuss what he knows about the federal probe, saying, "I don't talk about my business."
An Orleans Parish prosecutor said Letten's office still is deciding whether to go federal in yet another case, this one involving attempted murder charges against Telly Hankton and a cousin, former prized LSU football prospect Troy Hankton.
Both are accused of firing away into a car where Stewart, Reed and another man, Karim Peters, sat on April 12, 2007, on Clara Street.
A Cohen High School star, Troy Hankton apparently never played a down at LSU, leaving in 2003 on a medical hardship after his red-shirt freshman year.
Court records show a return home to New Orleans street life. Along with the attempted murder charges from the Clara Street shooting, he's been arrested, but not convicted, for heroin distribution and a pair of weapons counts.
His most recent address in online records is a pink one-story house on Josephine Street in Central City, home to Telly Hankton's mother, Shirley, and also the last known address for Telly Hankton.
State prosecutors have accused Shirley Hankton in court of helping prod the perjury scheme, but she has not been charged.
She declined to talk to The Times-Picayune about her son or the impending federal case. It's unclear whether the feds have an interest in her.
The federal indictment is expected to extend beyond Hankton's immediate orbit.
Near the center of it is Walter Porter, an alleged hit man for Telly Hankton who grew up around Valence Street near Freret.
Even as Landrieu spoke in front of the daiquiri lounge a year ago, police were quietly on the hunt for Porter in the murder of Curtis Matthews, later saying that a witness identified him as the shooter.
Cannizzaro's office dropped Porter's murder charge in May, apparently pending a move to federal court, although he has yet to be charged there.
In the meantime, Porter is being held on federal gun and bank robbery charges. He is accused with an associate, Brian "Beano" Hayes, of sticking up two Capitol One Bank branches in summer 2011, one in Metairie and the other on Elysian Fields Avenue in New Orleans.
Hayes and seven other men -- but not Porter -- are also accused in state court of possessing stolen property, for allegedly trying to launder red ink-stained cash from one of the bank robberies at machines inside Harrah's casino downtown.
It's unclear whether the feds intend to tie that case in to their racketeering indictment.
Sources said federal agents have tied Porter, conservatively, to a half-dozen murders. It's unclear whether the federal indictment will allege that any were done at Hankton's behest.
One law enforcement source with knowledge of the case said Porter, 36, was known to fire a 9 mm and a .45 caliber handgun at the same time, double-fisted, and that he enjoyed keeping those same weapons to commit other crimes later -- which could help the federal case against him.
Hankton and Porter first hooked up nearly two decades ago while they were both being held at a juvenile detention center in Scotlandville, just north of Baton Rouge, the source said.
"His affinity for his own weapons ended up leading a trail back to him. Porter's pretty well boxed-in," the source said.
"He is the ultimate hired gun. In a sick way. he takes pride in his job. You may not be able to define him as a sociopath, a psychopath or just a natural-born killer. You can't pigeon-hole Porter, but you can know that he is a killer."
Celestine Skia pleaded guilty on Oct. 4 to gun charges, confessing that she made three straw gun purchases for Porter, one of them on the day of Curtis Matthews' shooting. None of those guns, however, has been linked to the murder.
Skia, who faces a sentence of up to 10 years, also has been accused of helping Porter hide out after Matthews' killing.
Porter, Hayes and another man, Gerard Howard, also are caught up in a federal gun and obstruction case, in which they allegedly tried to pin a gun rap on another man, Kernell Evans, from a 2007 traffic stop of Hayes, Howard and Evans near Jackson Avenue and South Claiborne.
Howard, 37, who has a prior manslaughter conviction from 1999, has pleaded guilty in the federal case and is awaiting sentencing.
His attorney, John Garrison Jordan, declined to comment on the case, as did Porter's attorney, J.C. Lawrence.
Porter also is closely connected with recently convicted rapper Christopher "B.G." Dorsey of the famed late-'90s rap super-group Hot Boys, which included Lil Wayne, Juvenile and Turk. Dorsey and Porter grew up together around Valence and Freret.
In jail phone-call transcripts, Porter is heard talking with Dorsey and Jerod "Fetti" Fedison about a failed murder attempt by Dorsey and Porter. Porter suggests to Fedison that he aborted the attempt because Dorsey was too loaded.
A year ago, Fedison was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison for obstructing justice. Fedison and Dorsey were in a stolen car during a November 2009 traffic stop where police found three guns.
Prosecutors alleged that Fedison and Dorsey tried to get the third man, Demounde Pollard, to admit they were his guns.
Dorsey, who frequently raps about the shame of "snitching," pleaded guilty to gun possession and obstruction and was sentenced in July to 14 years.
In a video posted online, Dorsey looks into the camera and rants "free my boy Telly... They hatin' on him right now...they got him all over the news...witnesses coming up dead and s--t." Porter, sitting in an SUV in the background, shouts out "Free my dog Telly ...he didn't do it!"
Porter wears glasses and also goes by "Eurkel," an apparent take on the bespectacled "Urkel" character from the old TV sitcom "Family Matters."
In a jail tape recorded four days after Reed's killing in 2009, Fedison is talking on the phone to a girlfriend, Yashica Bickham, claiming Telly Hankton "was trying to pay me $50,000 to kill TuTu."
Fedison said he refused, because "Me and (Reed) share the same baby momma, you heard me? And I need him out there," according to a transcript.
In a later tape, Fedison is heard threatening Bickham, saying he'll "get Eurkel" to kill her, "just like he killed TuTu ...and (Hasan Williams) when I told him do it."
Williams, a.k.a. "Hockie," had identified Telly Hankton as Reed's killer, according to police, then turned up dead on the street two weeks later.
Whether true or not -- Fedison was known to run his mouth -- the jail calls leave little doubt that the Hankton mystique thrives on both sides of prison walls.
Though he gets a shout-out in Porter's video, Telly Hankton's connection to rap circles appears looser. They run through a man -- his murdered cousin, George "Cup" Hankton -- whose killing appears to have sparked the alleged revenge slayings that have landed Hankton behind bars for life.
Cup Hankton was chummy with Cash Money Records co-founder Brian "Baby" Williams and several rappers, according to a police report and other sources, and was a well-known drug trafficker Uptown.
Reverence for Cup Hankton in the neighborhood is documented in a 2-minute YouTube video that crowned him the "King of Holly Grove."
"People just respected him. People lined up to talk to him," one woman says in the video.
Cup Hankton earned his share of enemies, said one man who knew him growing up.
"People wanted Cup dead. He was a hit man who backed off (killing), but still had to pay for those lives," the man said.
Federal officials aren't expected to make any connections to Williams in the indictment.
"Baby (Williams) knew all them guys," said the man who knew the family. "Just because you sell dope and you're a killer, it's not like I'm not going to talk to you."
Skeptics of the developing federal case -- which aims to corral not just Hankton and Porter, but many of their associates -- are quick to note that in New Orleans, a city grounded in family connections and native ties, guilt by association comes cheap.
While Telly Hankton is accused of killing Stewart and Reed out of revenge for Cup Hankton's killing, the bad blood between the two camps clearly preceded Cup's December 2007 murder in Gert Town.
Telly and Troy Hankton's alleged attempt to kill Reed, Stewart and Peters on Clara Street took place eight months earlier.
They weren't always enemies, but a dispute -- likely over drug dealing -- that prompted a string of violence seems to date earlier still.
After Jessie Reed's murder, Hasan Williams told police that Telly Hankton and Cup Hankton, "threatened by street rumors," had fired on Reed with automatic weapons back in 2004, outside a pizza joint in the French Quarter.
"Reed survived the attack and the war started between the two families," a police synopsis of the interview says.
The feud escalated quickly, several sources said, after Cup Hankton's killing, in which Reed and Stewart were both suspected but never charged.
While the killings of Reed and Stewart were chilling for their brazenness, hundreds of pages of police reports and court documents, as well as criminal justice sources, point to a long list of other criminal acts that could fall under the pending indictment.
Ballistics tests, for instance, link dozens of violent crimes and weapons counts.
Among them: One of the guns used to shoot John Matthews also was used to bump off Reed as he sat eating chicken on a porch on June 20, 2009.
Police tie the same gun, a recovered Glock 9mm pistol, to several other shootings in Central City and elsewhere.
For instance: the armed robbery of a pizza delivery woman in the 5500 block of Tchoupitoulas Street in January 2009; the March 2009 killing of 33-year-old Emmanuel Holmes in the 3500 block of Clematis Street in Gentilly; the murder of Christopher Smith, 30, on Helen Drive in Terrytown in November 2010; the June 2010 killing of 28-year-old Kenneth Robertson in the driver's seat of his red Lexus in the 2700 block of Second Street in Central City; a shooting spree along Amelia and Clara streets in June 2007 that left a man with gunshots to his chest, legs, arm and neck; and others.
Just whose hands fired the Glock in several of those cases remains in doubt. Telly Hankton and Edward Allen, the two men who were charged in state court with Reed's killing, both were behind bars during several of those incidents, as were other suspected members of the Hankton clan.
In all, police ballistics tests have identified five guns used in Reed's killing, in which at least two people unloaded a spray of 50 bullets.
Two of those weapons have been tied to the murder two weeks later of Hasan Williams.
By the time Williams was killed, Hankton was back in jail. He is suspected of ordering the hit, but hasn't been charged.
The feds, who started looking into the Hankton clan nearly four years ago, were so concerned about Hankton's influence in the Orleans Parish jail that they asked to have him moved to St. Tammany Parish, to isolate him, Cannizzaro said last year.
The DA intimated that Hankton had been able to order hits from the Orleans jail with help from deputies, though Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman bristled at the suggestion.
From Angola, state corrections officials recently flew Hankton in by helicopter for a court appearance.
Cannizzaro's office has taken on a few of its own racketeering cases under state law, but is glad to let the feds take this one.
"We welcome their involvement. They have prosecutorial tools we don't possess. That is their stock in trade," said Cannizzaro spokesman Christopher Bowman.
He said one of Cannizzaro's "primary goals" when he took office in 2009 was to get Hankton off the streets for life.
"Telly Hankton stood for the worst of the criminal justice system," Bowman said, referring to the suspect bond that set him free after Stewart's killing and his alleged manipulation of the system. "He was symbolic of it."
Hankton was likened by one law enforcement source to Keyser Soze, the mythically ruthless villain from the 1995 film "Usual Suspects." Among the film's cast of hardened criminals, brutal stories about Soze are legion, yet the stories are all different and no one is quite sure whether the tales -- or even Soze -- are real.
While federal authorities recognize that Hankton's reputation is nearly mythic, he's earned it, in their view.
But not everyone agrees. In the old neighborhood, some respect him as a sort of Robin Hood figure, a kind of street-level family scion. In court, during the trials over Stewart's murder, Hankton came across as mild-mannered and polite, even as he stood facing a trembling witness who was testifying about a surveillance video that captured the shooting scene.
The source who knew Telly -- everyone knew Telly, he said -- argued that he is far from the monster or drug kingpin painted by authorities.
He recalls Hankton cheerfully rolling through Central City on a motorcycle. The man mocked the depiction of Hankton as the most dangerous man in New Orleans -- a title first granted by former police Superintendent Warren Riley, then echoed by Landrieu.
"The most dangerous people in the city are young, 15-, 16-year-olds who will blow your brains out over nothing," he said.
"Telly wasn't this guy who goes out killing people. This guy was a good dude. Every dope dealer liked Telly. Darnell (Stewart) was f*ing with Telly. I guess he assumed, 'If I kill Cup, I gotta kill Telly, too,'" he said.
Calling out Hankton's family unfairly cast a harsh light over the entire clan, the man said, noting that the sprawling Hankton family includes a former pro football player, Cortez Hankton, and an NOPD officer.
There are also dozens of Hanktons with criminal records, court records show.
"Telly wasn't the type of dude saying, 'I want to be the biggest dope dealer in the city,'" the man added. "He was a conventional drug dealer. He had little things going. Maybe a little more than others, probably."
Hankton was arrested in Houston a week after Hurricane Katrina on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He pled guilty to a lesser charge, records show.
Until Stewart's murder, he largely steered clear of arrest in New Orleans. He was arrested for possession of a weapon in a bar in 2003 -- a case that went nowhere -- and nothing else in Orleans Parish, court records show.
That is, until Stewart turned up slain on the pavement in front of the daiquiri shop.
The man said he didn't condone the street justice that Hankton allegedly meted out, but still called him "a lovable guy."
His downfall, the man said, was the same thing that lent him respect on the street -- taking matters into his own hands.
"That was his biggest mistake," he said. "He had dudes who would have killed for him."
Despite his defense of Hankton, the man adamantly refused to be identified for this story.
"I could get killed," he said.
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John Simerman can be reached at jsimerman@nola.com or 504.826.3330.
Source: http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2012/10/telly_hankton_network_targeted.html
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Public release date: 26-Oct-2012
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