Gangbusters: How a Street-Tough Elite Homicide Unit Took Down New York’s Most Dangerous Gang

by Stone, Michael

  DUGAN, prompted by Rather, had broadened the scope of his investigation. Since February bodies had been dropping at the rate of one per week, not including the three Orange-Top workers shot by Platano on Cypress Avenue or the fifteen people wounded and killed as the result of Cowboy drive-bys on Cuevas’ crack location. Dugan used each case as a spade to dig deeper into the vast subterranean network of the Cowboy gang. Every few days, Dugan, armed with new lists of victims, suspects, and their associates, would trek downtown to the Bureau of Police records, pull their rap sheets and arrest folders, and painstakingly copy out their pedigrees. Then he transferred the information to file cards and cross-referenced them, looking for connections. Madonna, the Cuevas soldier murdered on February 2, turned up in the photograph of a car that belonged to Lenny’s brother, Nelson. Levington Rojas, the Cowboy soldier known as Mask, was shot and killed in a red Plymouth, the same car he’d used to drive Cuevas worker Frankie Gonzalez to the hospital just three weeks before, after Gonzalez was shot and wounded by an unknown assailant—thought to be Platano—in the Three-Four.

  Each new piece of evidence spawned new questions. Did Lenny and Cuevas represent warring factions within the same gang? Or were they separate gangs battling over turf? What was the origin of their rift? Even as he scrambled to identify the names and affiliations of new players, Dugan revisited the starting point and center of his investigation, the West 171st Street block that Lenny called home. Working with local beat cops, Dugan spoke to several neighbors willing to give information about the Cowboys. One of them, known as Blue Eyes (a pseudonym), described a core group of boys who had grown up together: Lenny, Nelson, Victor Mercedes and his half brother Daniel Rincon, and a fifth crew member named Jose, who he felt was running things while Lenny was in jail. Jose was playing the “big man” on the block, setting up a basketball court and showering the youngsters with toys and sneakers—a way of recruiting future workers for the gang. Some weeks later, after exchanging information on the case with Tebbens, Dugan realized that Jose was Jose Llaca—Pasqualito—the Cowboy enforcer who had been a defendant, along with Mercedes, in the Double murder case, and who had beaten Tito Cruz and threatened his family.

  Dugan began meeting regularly with Mark Tebbens at this point. Tebbens’ sources informed him mainly about the gang’s activities on Beekman Avenue. Dugan’s informants were knowledgeable about the Cowboys’ Dominican hierarchy and their Manhattan-based rivals and allies. Tebbens had also told Dugan about the Cruz-Morales family. Tebbens thought they could help link the two investigations. Already, they had supplied Tebbens with enough probable cause to collar Platano, who was still recovering at Columbia-Presbyterian. The two detectives agreed to meet at the hospital and interrogate Platano one last time before Tebbens formally arrested him.

  Platano was still not out of the woods when Dugan and Tebbens visited him on the morning of May 11. His wounds had become infected, and he was scheduled for another operation that day. Dugan decided to play on Platano’s vulnerability, as he had once before, and on whatever religious impulses Platano had retained since his service as an altar boy. Tebbens used a different tack: He told Platano that he had massive evidence against him in the Quad and other cases, and that even if Platano survived his operation, he would likely spend the rest of his life in prison unless he began cooperating.

  “I know you did the Quad,” Tebbens told him. “But I also know that there were others involved. You don’t want to go down the tubes on this when there were others who did worse things than you.”

  “You’re still a Catholic?” Dugan asked him. “You still believe in God and your immortal soul?”

  Platano nodded his head affirmatively.

  “What happens if you die today?” Dugan went on. “What happens to your soul? I know you’ve killed a lot of people. I know that you’ve shot and wounded a lot of people. I know about the thirteen-year-old girl. You don’t want to die with this on your shoulders.”

  At one point, Platano opened his mouth to speak, and Dugan bent close to hear him. But though his lips moved, no sound came out. Finally Tebbens’ sergeant told him to wrap it up and make the arrest. Even then, Dugan stayed another forty-five minutes, cajoling Platano until the hospital technicians came to prepare him for surgery. But either Platano was confident he’d pull through or his fear of eternal damnation wasn’t as powerful as his fear of Lenny’s retribution. No confession was forthcoming—nor would Platano ever confess.

  LENNY

  JUNE 1992

  COWBOY LEADER Lenny Sepulveda was released from the Tombs at 6 A.M. on June 8, having served an eight-month sentence for gun possession. He walked up Centre Street to Canal in the fresh early morning air, the sun poking through the side streets, throwing long shadows across the intersections, and bought a beer at a twenty-four-hour deli. Then he hitched a cab ride with another inmate, stopping first at his mother-in-law’s apartment on West 171st Street and then at the Queens high-rise where his wife and daughter lived. By afternoon, word had spread that Lenny was “out.”

  That evening, Lenny drove with his two brothers-in-law to Cypress Avenue in the Bronx to check on the business. A light rain was misting as they saw Fat Danny, his girth enormous in the arc light, standing in front of Miraya’s, the ground-floor apartment at 354 Cypress that the Cowboys used as their clubhouse. He looked uneasy when they pulled up in an unfamiliar car, but relaxed when he saw Lenny get out. “I was expecting you,” he said, hugging his former boss.

  “You looked at the car kind of nervous,” Lenny told him.

  “There’s a war going on,” Danny said.

  Inside Miraya’s the mood was festive. Pasqualito was showing off his new gun—a .454 Magnum with bullets “big enough to stop an elephant,” in Lenny’s words. The neighborhood girls kept coming into the room on one pretext or another.

  “Yo, Len, they’re coming to see you,” Pasqualito said.

  “Don’t play me,” Lenny said. But he was pleased. He hadn’t been certain what kind of reception he’d get. Before starting his sentence, he’d made sure the organization was running smoothly, and he’d called the block every day from prison. But a lot had happened since he’d left—the blowups with Frankie Cuevas and Yellow-Top, Nelson’s departure to the Dominican Republic, Platano’s shooting and arrest. Lenny knew plenty of gang leaders who’d lost control after spending time in the joint, and Lenny’s relations with Pasqualito and Fat Danny had been rocky in the past. But they seemed genuinely glad to see him now.

  “Let’s go where we can talk private,” Pasqualito said.

  The two men repaired to Rob Lopez’ apartment in the next building. Pasqualito had transformed the manager’s living room into the gang’s new headquarters, adding a weight machine and video games, as well as a safe and counting table. Fat Danny joined them, and he and Pasqualito filled Lenny in on the hostilities with Frankie. After Cuevas had shot Platano, they told him, they’d organized several drive-bys at Frankie’s spot on Watson and Manor, and firebombed his restaurant, hoping to draw him into retaliating at the Hole. They’d posted gunmen on the rooftops at Beekman, and ordered their workers to shoot Cuevas and his men on sight.

  Lenny listened quietly, and then the three locked themselves in the bathroom to insulate themselves from the stream of Cowboy workers passing through the apartment, to hammer out an arrangement among themselves.

  “Business is slow,” Pasqualito told him, which made it clear to Lenny why the others seemed so happy to see him.

  With Fat Danny seated on top of the toilet to the right, and Pasqualito propped against the opposite wall, they formed a ragged triangle, the geometry of friendships and rivalries dating back to early childhood. Growing up on the same block, they had changed over time, spurred by drugs, guns, and more money than they’d ever imagined. Danny had been a big, soft kid, glad just to hang around the older Lenny and Nelson. Pasqualito had grown up with religion, thanks to his mother, a Jehovah’s Witness; the other kids used to tease him, calling him “chu
rch boy.” Lenny himself had changed too, he realized. How much? In what ways?

  From what he was being told by Pasqualito, the business was in trouble. The Quad had burnt Beekman Avenue; the Hole, when it was open, generated a fraction of what it once earned. Moreover, Pasqualito and Fat Danny proved to be even less adept at management than Nelson. They were sloppy about details, spent more than they brought in, and owed money to their supplier, who withheld “work” from them. As a result, the gang’s sales spots were often without product—the cardinal sin, Lenny had often told them, in running a crack operation.

  But Lenny wasn’t put off by Pasqualito’s bleak assessment. He knew what was wrong with the business, and he knew he could fix it. The problem was, he wasn’t eager to go back to the old arrangement. He didn’t want to be a street boss anymore; he didn’t want anything to do with Beekman Avenue. In fact, he’d been thinking of getting out of the business altogether—joining his brother in the Dominican Republic, or taking up Detective Dugan on his offer to wipe the slate clean.

  But what else could he do? he wondered privately. What else would bring him a fraction of the cash or respect he got from dealing? Besides, he liked the nuts and bolts of the business, the details involved in running a complex operation. The socializing he could do without—the nightclubbing and the joyrides, the drinking and the shooting. Eight months in the joint had sobered him up, and he’d never loved that part anyway. What he’d missed was the day-to-day stuff, making sure of the supplies and the receipts, making it all work. It was the first thing, perhaps the only thing besides sports, that he’d been able to make sense of, that he’d been good at. He liked that feeling, without being able to articulate it. It made him feel powerful, just as it made him powerful now to know that he could take Pasqualito’s and Danny’s mess and make it work again, make it efficient, make it profitable.

  Lenny looked at Pasqualito and Danny. Their faces looked worried. Good.

  “Don’t worry,” he told them. “I’m here now.”

  NAMED AFTER the Russian revolutionary and party leader—Lenny’s parents belonged to a generation of Dominicans that believed in sweeping social reform—Lenin Sepulveda was born in New York shortly after his parents emigrated from the Dominican Republic. His father, Roberto, the son of a Santiago blacksmith, repaired radios and televisions; their mother found factory work. But neither parent assimilated well. Roberto developed a drinking problem, bickered strenuously with his wife, and separated from her when Lenny was three.

  After a series of moves through the Heights, the family settled at 640 West 171st Street, not far from Roberto Sepulveda’s tiny repair shop. But Lenny hated his father for the way he left his mother—homeless and penniless—and for his heavy drinking, which had taken on a public aspect. Once, walking home from school with a group of friends, he ran into his father, unkempt and smelling of alcohol. Asked who the older man was, Lenny replied, “Just some bum I know.”

  Lenny was headstrong from the start. His mother, a quiet, religious woman, tried to curb his impulsiveness. But with four other children to care for, she was often overwhelmed, and Lenny had a willfulness that couldn’t be tamed. “We lived in the same room and fought all the time,” recalled his older brother Nelson. “I used to beat him up, but he just kept coming.”

  Lenny’s first love was sports, especially baseball. At seven, he used to wander over to nearby Inwood Park to watch the other kids play. Later he organized pickup games in the neighborhood. But his school didn’t have an athletic program, and there was never money to join a league.

  School was also a disappointment. Bright but undisciplined, Lenny was bored by classwork, too young to understand its purpose or importance, like so many fatherless children growing up in the slums without role models to provide guidance. He showed an aptitude for drawing in grade school, and a teacher fostered his talent and offered to help shepherd his application to one of the city’s magnet design schools. But the teacher was transferred unexpectedly, and his replacement was indifferent to Lenny’s interests.

  As Lenny entered his teens, gangs ruled the Heights. The Ballbusters held sway from 135th to 145th streets, the Playboys from 160th to 171st streets. Uptown was the province of the Bad, Bad Boys, whose leader was a tough banger named Frankie Cuevas. These gangs were social in the tradition of West Side Story’s Jets and Sharks, mostly concerned with turf—who owned what streets, what schools, what playgrounds. They stole cars and snatched gold chains, mostly to buy beer and weed; but their association wasn’t about money. It was about status; neighborhood boys like Lenny looked up to the gang leaders as celebrities, and dreamed of being tapped to join them.

  A big, scrappy kid, Lenny was a natural for membership. Even before high school, he was constantly in trouble—cutting classes, jumping turnstiles, getting into fights. When he was 15, he joined the Playboys and gained a reputation for toughness, once shooting at and fending off some twenty members of the rival Ballbusters. But the gangs were already in eclipse. “At one point, gangs died because when we grew a little, we finally realized we were fighting for nothing,” Lenny remembered. “Then all of a sudden the Heights became a snowstorm of cocaine. To have coke meant status. Everybody wanted to be a part of that.”

  By the early 1980s, the Dominicans had replaced the Cubans as the Colombian cartels’ wholesale suppliers in New York, but they hadn’t yet begun to exploit its vast retail potential. Then, in 1982, two former members of the Bad, Bad Boys, Santiago “Yayo” Polanco and Eduardo “Capo” Mejias, both 21, started Coke Is It, an outfit selling grams and half grams of cocaine along Audubon Avenue, east of the George Washington Bridge—a prime drug location because of its suburban traffic from New Jersey. The operation was small, but profitable enough to enable Polanco to walk into an Englewood Cliffs car dealership in 1984 and plunk down $43,000 in cash for a Mercedes-Benz.

  At first Coke Is It operated along Audubon from 173rd to 175th streets, just around the corner from where Lenny and Nelson lived, and employed local teenagers, many of them former gang members, to sell their product. But when crack hit the streets and profits soared, Yayo and Capo imported a team of hit men from their families’ village in the Dominican Republic to protect their organization’s turf and ease its expansion. By 1985, they had wrested control of the intersection of Edgecombe Avenue and 145th Street—a prime spot, with easy access to the Bronx across the 145th Street Bridge—from a group of Jamaican dealers and opened a string of new spots in Harlem and the South Bronx.

  Polanco became the first dealer in the Heights to use marketing techniques to sell crack. He changed the name of his brand to Basedballs, packaged it in distinctively colored vials, and offered free samples and specials to local addicts whenever he opened a new spot. As Basedballs’ business expanded, so did its organization. Polanco secured a major supplier, a Dominican who dealt directly with the cartels in Colombia. Polanco also centralized Basedballs’ operations in a headquarters at 2400 Webb Avenue in the Bronx. There, his workers cooked, packaged, and stockpiled crack in separate apartments. And he arranged with one of the many money-changing companies along upper Broadway in Manhattan to launder Basedballs’ revenues through an investment company he set up in the Dominican Republic.

  Meanwhile, Polanco began distancing himself from Based-balls’ day-to-day operations, adding layers of bureaucracy and spending more and more time in the Dominican Republic. By the summer of 1986, Basedballs employed as many as nine mid-level managers to deal with street-level managers at a score of locations around the city. Each location manager, in turn, supervised teams of dealers, none of whom were supposed to know the people more than one level above them.

  Lenny was a sophomore at George Washington High School and a member of the Playboys when he first heard about Yayo and Basedballs. Two of the toughest Playboys stuck up one of Basedballs’ spots. That same afternoon Yayo and Capo, and a carload of their enforcers, drove over to George Washington in Yayo’s signature yellow Mercedes, descended on a group of gang
members hanging out in front of the school, pummeled one terrified teenager, and sent the others running in all directions. Lenny, who barely escaped, realized he’d just seen the A-team, and he became determined to work for them.

  He didn’t have to wait long.

  Lenny had already begun to distance himself from the Playboys. Along with some of the gang’s newer recruits—Miguel Castillo, Ramon Tijada, and Jose Reyes, a former schoolmate of Lenny’s known as El Feo (The Ugly)—he formed his own group, the Young Playboys, as they sometimes called themselves. In part, the reason for breaking away was a matter of style. The older Playboys were part of the Hip-Hop generation—break-dancing, graffiti-writing, going to parties, dressing sharp. Lenny and his pals were into a different kind of cool, Gangsta Cool—rap music and baggy pants. But they also had another aim: to break into the drug business that was then turning enterprising young hoods into millionaires. Lenny apprenticed with a dealer from 125th Street; El Feo interned with an old-time drug lord from his block known as Chocolate.

  Smart and ruthless, El Feo moved up the ranks of Chocolate’s organization, becoming Chocolate’s right-hand man, taking over the reins when his mentor went to jail. Lenny, however, was having a hard time just getting paid. His boss had neither Chocolate’s clout nor his savvy. Then, in early 1985, Mike “the Dom,” a top manager for Yayo who’d grown up on Lenny’s block, began recruiting youngsters from the neighborhood to work in Basedballs’ expanding operation. Lenny volunteered.

  Lenny was not the only one from the neighborhood to join Yayo’s organization. Nelson signed up too, as well as friends Miguel Castillo and Ramon Tijada. But they just wanted to make some extra cash to attend sports camp. Lenny saw his job as an opportunity to rise in the organization. In a business notorious for unreliable workers, Lenny was industrious and dependable, as well as tough, and after trying him out at spots in the Bronx and the top of the Heights, Yayo installed Lenny at 166th Street and Amsterdam Avenue and promoted him to manager.