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16, and decided to make his way in the world by robbing.

their mouths and eyes, bound them hand and foot, and took
It started with chain-snatching sprees. Joker, Carter, and them to the deserted parking lot of the Linden Motor Inn,
other 42nd Street homeys, like Prince "Tool" Woodard (who near John F. Kennedy airport.
earned his nickname because of his obsession with guns) "I parked my car a little ways away," Lake later told
and Joker's good friend "Mat" (short for "Mafia"), would police, "and I was approaching [Padmorej. I saw him take
spot a guy wearing a gold chain and simply take it, some- [Sheldon and Amos] out of the car, put them on the ground,
times at gunpoint. The gang's main muscle was the sole and shoot them in the head. "
non-West Indian in the crew, a hulking 6'2", 270-pound Padmore rooted through Sheldon's pockets and took his
black Hispanic.named Francisco "Psycho" Lake. "If Jokes house keys. Then the crew burst in on Sheldon's parents,
said, 'Go fuck with somebody,''' Carter recalls, "Psycho Keith Granger and his wife. Padmore shot Granger, killing
wouldn't stop and ask why." him, and looted his house of pound bricks of pot. He left the
The baby gangsters got $150 or $200 for every chain, but wife bound and gagged in duct tape but alive.
Joker wanted more. He devoured street-racing magazines
'"\"
E and bought his first bike, a Kawasaki. He needed cash to
support his passion.
JOKER'S ACE IN THE HOLE
The Granger triple homicide remained unsolved.
"We taking off this gold one by one," Joker allegedly Emboldened, Padmore's crew met almost every day in
told his fledgling crew. "Why don't we go where they got a Lincoln Park, drinking 40s through straws because they
hundred, a thousand gold chains?" thought you got higher that way, smoking blunts, and plot-
ting "works"-armed robberies, usually of drug dealers.
THE SCHGOl!.KiDS GIiADUliij'E "Eating their food" meant stealing money and dope, "blow-
The young crew didn't have to lookfar for larger prey. In the ing the works" meant something went wrong. Everyone
early '90s, East Brooklyn was teeming with drug dealers, drove a new Lexus, and the more they robbed, the more
other young Caribbean immigrants who had brought the they needed to rob to keep up their lavish lifestyles.
trades of smuggling and pot dealing up from the islands. Padmore enlisted foot:soldiers on an oil-stained garage
The dealers trafficked in the rich, high-grade dope of block of Shepherd Avenue in East New York.He'd met them
Jamaica, operating from street-level outlets called "spots." through street racing. His disapproving homeys from the
One of Padmore's early targets was Keith Granger, a dealer old neighborhood labeled the new recruits "grimy niggers. "
who operated a spot on Hancock Street. Still an amateur, At times the two groups seemed to compete to see
Padmore's first strike against Granger failed, and about two which could be more outrageous. Aaron "Fish" Myvett, one
weeks later, in September 1992, Granger struck back. of the Shepherd Avenue thugs, boasted that as a child he
Joker was sitting in a car on Nostrand Ave. with his run- once put a rat in his grandmother's soup. Rumor has it
ning partner, Mat, when gunshots exploded around them. Psycho Lake responded in kind, once getting down in the
A bullet tore at Padmore but passed through the sleeve of middle of 42nd Street and humping a German shepherd
his jacket. Mat, meanwhile, was slumped over, shot dead. from behind, just to justify his nickname. In the summer of
Joker's revenge was immediate and harsh. He and 1996,Psycho gave guided tours of his basement, where he
Psycho kidnapped Granger's son, Sheldon, and Sheldon's kept the mutilated body of "Jimmy," a dope dealer he had
innocent-bystander friend, Kurt Amos. They duct-taped murdered and stashed in a 50-gallon drum. ~

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--- __~ -= -L _
. GANG OF NEW YORK

Padmore became obsessed with planning and surveil- there was no question he was use-
lance, and with the use of gun silencers to mask the group's ful to Joker, who jotted down the
activities. One of the group's trademarks was "micas," license plates of luxury cars as they_._.
homemade silencers 'made from aluminum baseball bats passed through the neighborhood. He had Jordan run the
that they'd attach to assault rifles and submachine guns. plates for addresses. Jordan also checked the police com-
To make use of all that firepower, Joker needed drug spots. puters and gave Padmore locations of drug spots or dealers
That's when he reached for his ace in the hole. that might be vulnerable to robbery. And toward the end of
Padmore's old grammar school classmate Jamil "Germ" 1996, they quietly began hatching an audacious plan.
Jordan was still a shadow presence in his life, a guy other
crew members saw but rarely interacted with. A COP ON THE ROCKS
"They was always huddled together," Carter says of the In January '1997, Jordan took a new partner. Anthony
pair. "We never knew what they was talking about." Trotman was a different breed of officer from Jordan. Like
In 1996 Jordan took his civil service exams, and the next others in the crew, he had an island background-his
year he became a cop in the 77th Precinct, in nearby Crown people were from Barbados-but the Trotman family was
Heiq ts. Ten years earlier, the precmct hadbeen home to -well'est'""ablished-ift-Bi-eeklyft-'l'(}R'"y
Had a-brotaer-who was.
the "Buddy Boys," one of the largest police corruption rings a bank vice president. While Jordan got mediocre reviews,
in New YorkCity history. Trotman had a spotless record as an NYPDpatrolman.
"Did Jordan become a cop to become a true cop?" That was surface. The deeper reality revealed a
Christine Howard, the FBI case agent who investigated profoundly troubled man. Five years earlier, Trotman's son,
Joker's crew, wonders to this day. "Or to try to hide things Anthony Jr., was taken to SUNYHealth Center in Brooklyn
he wanted to get into?" for treatment of sickle cell anemia. It was supposed to be a
According to Carter, "Jordan never even spit on the simple procedure, a routine hookup to a heart-lung monitor
sidewalk without Jokes knowing about it and telling him he to check the three-year-old's vitals. But a nurse allegedly
could do it. " plugged the electrodes attached to Anthony Jr.'s chest into
Whatever Jordan's motivation for joining the NYPD, an electrical outlet. The resulting electrocution sent the boy
into a coma and eventually a vegetative state.
"I saw the change in Tony after that," says Valerie

. . FASHION FELONS
I
Amsterdam, a lawyer and longtime friend of the Trotman
family. By the time he partnered up with Jordan, the
two shared what could be charitably characterized as a
These dudes may have worn panties, but they cross-dressed to kill. situational approach to police ethics.
Once, a proverbial little old lady stopped the two officers
on the street to ask for directions. Trotman said they looted
her purse, stealing jewelry and $200 in cash. Another time,
they encountered a DOA and robbed the corpse. "I di
'fi
disgusting, terrible things," Trotman would later admit.
Jordan introduced Trotman to the crew in the spring 0
1997. "I knew Padmore was robbing drug dealers and that
he had grOWl!up With Jordan;" Trotman recalled.
"Jordan caused Trotman to go bad," Howard says
MRS. ED THE THAI TYSON BAD STRIP WHO YOU unequivocally.. "They would be working on patrol, and
Jamil would get a cell phone call from Padmore and Lake,
Back in the '50s, Retired boxer After getting a sex CALLING A GIRL? saying, 'Come meet us over here.' They'd meet at the park,
Eddie Gein kept his Picherd Saenkaew change, Glen "leslie" In Olde England, the and Padmore would pull up in a Lexus with the Rolexes,
propensity for cross- cruised Bangkok Nelson was Philly's real men weren't. with the bling-bling on and wads of cash going around."
dressing secret- nightclubs in a tra- most butt-ugly Take Moll Cutpurse: Jordan slowly showed his partner the good life Padmore
was offering, hinting around. In late July 1997, Padmore
along with his pen- ditional Thai dress, stripper and truck- She dressed like a
laid it out to Trotman: a jewelry store robbery, just across
chant for robbing then beat up and stop prostitute. She guy and had quite a the city border in Garden City, Long Island. Padmore had
graves, having sex dismembered male headed off to jail in rep as a highway found the target by searching the Yellow Pages for stores
with corpses, and tourists."] had to kill 1995 in her favorite robber, having shot a advertising Rolexes, his favorite watch.
eating them. Police 'em so they couldn't blue go-go outfit general and killed Padmore and his crew had already robbed the place five
months earlier and gotten away with diamond jewelry and
eventually found cancel their credit after shooting two his two guards when Swiss watches, including 20 Rolexes. Did Trotman want to
the remains of 17 cards," he told police cops investigating they hesitated to come along this second time around? Or, as Padmore
women in his home. after his arrest. child abuse claims. turn over their gold. always phrased it when inviting crew members on a ~

118 August 2004 MAXIMONLlNE.COM

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