by Ian Halperin
Max was arrested for possession of a firearm/knife, possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, and possession of Xanax. Police found a “large quantity of marijuana” and thousands of Baggies “commonly used to package marijuana” and a scale, along with a loaded Glock with a bullet in the chamber under the blanket.
The other man present was Duane Tyrone Hall, who Danyela’s mother revealed to Sharon Churcher had allegedly been present in the house when Bobbi was discovered.
Three days after that, Roswell police pulled over a gray Toyota Camry for a lane violation. When they searched the car, they found marijuana residue in the center console, though no charges were filed. The occupants of the vehicle happened to be Nick Gordon and Duane Tyrone Hall.
It is clear from this pattern of police incidents that in the almost three years following her mother’s death, both Nick and Max were cavorting with some shady characters. Without giving credence to dubious secondhand accounts from those who claim to have known them, it’s just as clear that they were heavily immersed in the local drug scene.
But if the multiple police incidents indicate that Bobbi was surrounded by drug dealers, narcotics, and thugs, there is no clearer evidence that she was immersed in the local drug crowd—at least by association—than what happened to the woman she described as her “best friend in the world.”
In March 2014, twenty-year-old Chelsea Bennett began partying with two men in an Alpharetta apartment. At the time, Chelsea and Bobbi were very close. A month earlier, Bobbi had posted a photo of the two of them on her Instagram with the caption:
“I love you chels! So much fun with you & have been friends with you since I can remember! Thanks for always being there for me . . . Ahh adore you mamacita! XO”
On that March evening when Chelsea—a longtime heroin addict—needed her fix, one of the men helped inject her. But heroin needs to be cut and this dose turned out to be extra pure. Chelsea overdosed almost immediately. Rather than phoning for help, the two men instead tried a variety of methods to revive her and waited to see if she would wake up. Only when she died ten hours later did they finally call 911.
Four months later, a grand jury returned a felony murder indictment against the man accused of selling her the heroin, Kevin McCaffrey, and the man who injected her, Cory Ben-Hanania. The other man in the apartment was charged with concealing a death. While it’s unclear whether Bobbi knew him, Ben-Hanania happens to be Facebook friends with Mason Whitaker, who is so close to Nick that he describes him on Facebook as a “family member” and who was with Nick when he overturned his vehicle after striking a fire hydrant in August 2014.
Forty-three-year-old Paige Thompson was another friend of the couple who frequently posted photos of her friends Nick and Bobbi, even though she was much older than them. Her mother, Ophelia Ward, told reporters, “Paige looked at [Bobbi] like a daughter.” In January 2014, Thompson was arrested for heroin possession with intent to sell. A year later, in February 2015, she granted a jailhouse interview to Radar Online defending Nick against the accusations swirling around him.
“You’ll never convince me that Nick had anything to do with hurting her,” she insisted. “People fight and argue; sometimes it gets physical, but as far as hurting her in a way . . . and killing her . . . no way! He would have nothing to gain really. I would not believe it. I don’t believe Nick had anything to do with this.”
This was the couple’s motley circle of friends.
It is safe to assume that, as with her mother’s tragic fate, whatever happened to Bobbi Kristina Brown on the morning of January 31, 2015, was somehow connected to drugs.
When Whitney drowned in a bathtub three years earlier, it took a coroner’s report and several weeks to verify a drug connection to the death. With Bobbi still lying in a coma, I was determined not to wait that long to find out what happened—especially since I held out hope, however remote, that she would escape her mother’s fate and that a coroner would be unnecessary.
* * *
When Bobbi Kristina sat down with Oprah only a month after her mother’s death, the talk show queen asked her what she planned to do with her life.
“I have to carry on her legacy,” she answered. “We’re going to do the singing thing. Some acting . . . I still have a voice.”
Only a month after the funeral, producer Tyler Perry—who was very close to both Bobby and Whitney—announced that he was casting Bobbi Kristina in his TBS sitcom For Better or Worse “in a recurring role.” The show was produced in Atlanta, so she didn’t have to travel far when she reported to the set for the series’ second season in May. That same month, Radar Online reported that she had “walked off the set.”
“She thought she was ready for this, but she wasn’t,” a production insider told the site. “She was crying and said she needed a minute, she needed a break to get herself together. But then she decided she couldn’t handle doing the show right now. She’s still mourning her mom.”
Perry was quick to deny that she had left the set.
“Were there tough days for her?” he said. “Yes of course. Not because of the acting or any job-related issues but because of the fact that she had just lost her mother. So yes she was grieving, but grief aside, she managed to finish her obligation and did a great job at the same time.”
But when the series aired, Bobbi appeared in only one episode, and her acting was very labored. Cast members tried to put on a brave face, saying she had done “a great job,” but watching her acting debut is quite painful. It was immediately evident that Hollywood would not be beating down her door.
That left her long-standing dream of following in her mother’s singing footsteps. On one of the episodes of her reality show The Houstons: On Our Own, Bobbi met with Whitney’s former musical director Rickey Minor, who gave her some singing tips. “I have a really versatile voice, so I don’t really know yet what genre I’m going to be in,” she tells him, admitting that she had been smoking a lot, which had affected her singing.
“Singing is an extension of you,” Minor advised her. “And so it really has to be something you connect to.”
He warned her that she would inevitably be compared to her parents and grandmother.
“Of course I’m going to be compared to my mother,” she agreed. “Being her daughter is a huge blessing, but also a curse at times.”
Minor askes her to sing “I’m Your Baby Tonight,” which she admitted put her under “a lot of pressure.” She proceeded to sing a passable a cappella version of Whitney’s classic, which demonstrated that she could carry a tune but that she didn’t come close to possessing her mother’s vocal range or phenomenal talent.
Yet it is clear from her social media postings that she still had great hopes for a musical career. In one 2013 tweet, shortly before the one-year anniversary of her mother’s death, Bobbi hinted that she would be recording in the near future, tweeting:
“Hiworld :)(: yes I am a night owl, this is when my creative side come’s out. ALLTHETIME! I need2be in the studio RITENOW! #SOONverySOON”
In February 2015, as Bobbi lay in a coma, her cousin Jerod Brown revealed that he had spent the last six months working with her, intending to head into the studio “soon.” He said they had been working on a single called “Guilty of a Love Song”—a track about “spreading love.”
Jerod claimed to have had high hopes for the recording. “That record was going to touch the world,” he said. “To her it was a very personal song of what her love life was about. She’s excited. She was real focused. She was ecstatic about her new journey that she was embarking on . . . you could see it on Instagram when she commented on it with the fans as well. She was ready to do this and let the world see what she was working on.”
But if singing was still her main ambition, it was clear that Bobbi had not yet given up hope for an acting career, despite her less than stellar debut.
In May 2014, Whitney’s former Waiting to Exhale costar Angela Bassett announced that she w
as planning to direct a TV biopic about Whitney Houston for Lifetime and that the film would chronicle the good times and bad, including her rise to fame and her tumultuous marriage to Bobby Brown.
Bassett insisted that she had great respect for Whitney and that the film wouldn’t tarnish her legacy, as many fans feared. “We worked together. We had a wonderful time working together,” she said. “She was amazing to be around. She broke through this glass ceiling of what a sister was paid, what a woman was paid for starring in a movie. We had a mutual admiration for each other.”
When news that the film would include Robyn Crawford as a character, many were nervous that Bassett planned to out the singer. None more so than Whitney’s family, who made it clear that the film was “unauthorized” and that they disapproved of the production.
At least one family member, however, was excited about the prospect of a film about Whitney’s life. When Bobbi heard that a movie was planned about her mother, she knew there was only one person who could do justice to the leading role—herself.
Within months of Whitney’s death—as rumors first swirled that Hollywood was anxious to portray the diva’s life on film—Bobbi had been lobbying for the part.
“Bobbi feels like she is the perfect person to play the part of Whitney—telling friends that no one knew her better,” a friend told TMZ in April 2012.
“That would be something I would have to give my entire life to do, because I would really want to pull it off,” Bobbi told the Daily Mail. “Whoever does it has to do a good job.” Rihanna and Jennifer Hudson were also reportedly lobbying for the part.
In early 2014, Bassett announced that she had cast Yaya DaCosta in the role of Whitney. When Entertainment Weekly asked her in June 2014 whether she had ever considered casting Bobbi Kristina—who had made it known she wanted the role—Bassett was unequivocal.
“No, I did not think about that,” she said. “I did not think about casting her. And probably for a number of reasons, you know. One being that she’s not an actress. I know she’s acted here and there. I know she’s been on their family’s reality show, but she’s not an actress, and acting is a craft. It’s an attempt to illuminate the complexities of human behavior and life. And this is a very fast-paced schedule; we have just 21 days to tell this story. It’s more than just saying lines and turning the light on. You have to drive the story—there’s a technical aspect.”
The perceived snub did not sit well with Bobbi, who immediately took to Twitter to vent her rage, tweeting two separate broadsides at Bassett:
“Ha MsAng “bassketcase” has such a damn nerve my lord, at least the world doesn’t mistake me for the wrong sex . . . she has some #XtraEquipment.”
“When I win my first Grammy or Oscar, *Shrugs* hmm whichever comes 1st, I’ll be sure 2shout URname out b-tch! Hah UrTestResults = Male. Lmao.”
If Bobbi’s career wasn’t going as she expected in the three years following her mother’s death, her personal life wasn’t faring much better. As far back as late 2012, the world first learned that she and Nick were a couple on an episode of The Houstons: On Our Own. Before long, they suddenly announce their engagement in an episode where Bobbi displays a ring that belonged to Whitney and announces to her family, “We’re engaged.”
Pat Houston makes it clear she doesn’t approve, calling the engagement “unacceptable.” Nick reveals to the camera that Cissy doesn’t particularly like him. For her part, Bobbi’s grandmother says, “I don’t know Nick that well. Let us pray that everybody finds their way.”
Pat reveals she was wary of Nick from the start. “Many people told Whitney it was the wrong decision to bring Nicholas into the household,” she tells the camera. She then makes it clear that she was one of those people. “But don’t let me have to say ‘I told you so.’ ”
Finally, toward the end of the series, Bobbi revealed that the engagement was off.
“He said after he proposed to me, like, it was a mistake,” Bobbi tells somebody on the phone. “So we’re not engaged anymore. We’re just brother and sister again.” Later, Nick is seen at an event, flirting with another woman, as Bobbi looks on, distraught. “You gotta give me your number before you get outta here,” he tells the object of his affection.
On November 18, Nick confirmed the news, tweeting:
“@REALbkBrown and I are not engaged or dating. Just close like we have always been”
Pat Houston’s eighty-two-year-old mother, Ella Mae Watson, would later reveal that it was actually Bobbi who first fell for Nick, claiming she was distraught that her love was unrequited.
“I told Krissi, ‘You can’t buy his love,’ ” she told the Daily Mail in February 2015. “The baby girl was crying on my shoulder about the boy. She said he told her that he loved her as a sister and that was all. I told her it didn’t matter how many things she gave him she could not buy his love. That was after her mother died.”
It was difficult to determine whether the romantic relationship had simply been a publicity stunt to hype the ratings or whether it was genuine. By the time the series aired in the fall, Bobbi and Nick were referring to each other on social media as “brudda” and “little sis.”
Soon after the series aired, they moved out of the Atlanta town house where they had both continued to live after Whitney’s death and into their own apartment in Alpharetta not far away. This marked a period where the two would gain a notorious reputation for throwing wild drug-fueled parties lasting into the wee hours of the morning.
A young couple with a baby was living below them and filed at least ten noise complaints in the six months that Nick and Bobbi lived there. Finally, in June 2013, Bobbi and Nick reportedly received an eviction notice because of their disruptive behavior.
Before they left, however, the neighbor who lived in the apartment below—Joshua Morse, the man who had filed the multiple noise complaints—revealed that he had received a caustic handwritten note from Bobbi on his doorstep:
Thanks.
You are shit at the bottom of my shoe.
Thank you for making a hard year harder.
You are a miserable couple, and always will be.
You were honored to have us living above you and you couldn’t stand such a young beautiful couple being far more successful than you will ever be. I pray your misery doesn’t rub off on your innocent little baby.
When reports emerged about the eviction, Bobbi claimed she and Nick had voluntarily chosen to leave to get away from Morse, tweeting:
“Awoke2CrazyNeighborStory ha Those pplR [people are] insane! nickdgordon & I choose2move THEY were the nightmare.”
Then in July 2013, a month after they moved back into the town house, Bobbi confirmed on Facebook that she and Nick were once again together.
“Yes, me and Nick are engaged. I’m tired of hearing people say, ‘Eww your engaged to your brother.’ My mom never adopted him.”
Nick would later post a photo of his engagement ring. It is this ring—the one that Nick dropped off for repair but later forgot about—that I tried on at Kay Jewelers in March while Bobbi lay in a coma.
Six months later, on January 9, 2014, Bobbi posted the infamous tweet announcing that the couple were #HappilyMarried.
At the time, Bobby Brown denied that his daughter was married to Nick, telling TMZ, “She’s still single.” When the website asked, “You don’t approve of him?” Bobby replied, “It’s not a question you know when your daughter gets married it’s different. Whether or not you like him or not, it’s ‘damn, my daughter’s getting married.’ That’s what it is.” Asked if he thinks he could grow to “be down” with the marriage, Bobby replied, “Well, when he calls me I’ll figure it out.”
Coincidentally or not, the wedding announcement came only two months before Bobbi was due to receive the first installment of Whitney’s estate trust, which had stipulated that she would receive ten percent of the money when she turned twenty-one.
Not long after her twenty-first birthday in March—wh
en Bobbi was due to come into an estimated $2 million—Pat Houston, the trust’s executor, filed an application for a restraining order against Nick. In her petition to the Fulton County Court, she claimed that Nick “made threatening comments and posted photos of guns with the intention of making petitioner fearful for her personal safety. Respondent then posted more photos of guns later and has sent harassing texts.”
She revealed that Nick had been posting a series of “terrorist threats” aimed at her. Among them, he had tweeted, “I got guns bigger than you” and “crawl your head in that noose.” Other tweets had mentioned Pat by name:
“Everybody got so fake after Mom passed away. Specially Pat.”
“Fuck that Pat bitch.”
Bobbi herself would also turn on Pat around the same time, tweeting:
“Ba hah PAT GARLAND. . (she will NEVER be a Houston) is a fucking coward !!!!!! Lmfao oh boy, you wanted this, so U got it bitch!!! #GameON”
A police report about the incident that sparked the filing notes that Bobbi and Nick “are not pleased with [Pat] controlling Whitney Houston’s estate.” The officer reported on his interaction with Pat, whose real name is Marion.
“Marion informed me that Mr. Gordon wants Ms. Brown’s monthly allowance increased,” the report said. “Marion refused to relinquish the money. Marion stated that Mr. Gordon has turned Krissi against the family and in the process has said threatening statements to Marion and other family members.”
The petition requested that Nick be barred from approaching within two hundred yards of Pat and that he be compelled to undergo “appropriate psychiatric or psychological services.”
Police declined to press charges against Nick, but the court granted the restraining order—a “Default Stalking Twelve-Month Protective Order”—that forbid Nick from having any contact with Pat and Houston’s “immediate family.”
This order, which expired on April 13, 2015, was in effect when Bobbi was found unconscious and it is believed to have been one of the reasons Nick has not been allowed to visit the hospital where Pat and her family have gathered daily.