The FBI investigated The Wu-Tang Clan for two murders in 1999, according to newly released court documents.
The files have emerged as part of the trial of a pair of drug kingpin, in a report by SILive.com.
Anthony and Harvey Christian were found guilty last October in a decades-old drug right in Staten Island and the murder of 17-year-old Jerome “Boo Boo” Estella.
The counsel for the Christian brothers maintains that Estella was really killed after his death was ordered by members of the Wu-Tang Clan. Estella allegedly robbed family members of Raekwon and RZA. Michael Gold, Anthony Christian’s lawyer, says an FBI report already said that Estella was killed “at the instruction of members of the Wu-Tang Clan, a rap group, as revenge for robberies.” Another man named Corey “Shank Bank” Brooker was also killed as well. He clarified that he didn’t necessarily feel Wu-Tang did any crimes – the FBI asserted this notion, he told silive.com.
“These reports seem to suggest someone else was liable for those murders,” Gold stated. “I’m not suggesting that Wu-Tang committed these crimes. The FBI did. What I’m trying to ascertain is their stated belief in an official file that Wu-Tang ordered this homicide.”
Gold wants the files turned over, suggesting they may clear his client in the murder.
The news is not completely new. Ol’ Dirty Bastard has a lengthy FBI file that was released in 2012. Here is part of the detailed report from silive.com.
In a filing last month, federal prosecutors described what they had sent Gold through the trial’s discovery process, based on interviews from 1999 with Brian Humphreys, a Bloods member who later turned federal informant.
Humphreys was the trigger-man in Estella’s killing, and testified against the Christian brothers.
“A couple of weeks before the Boo Boo shooting, Uncles (the street name of drug supplier-turned-informant Paul Ford) told Humphreys about a Blood named Boo Boo who just came home from jail. He stated that Boo Boo had robbed RZA’s little brother and had also gotten into something with the Christian brothers,” the filing reads.
RZA, or Robert Fitzergald Diggs, is one of Wu-Tang’s founding members.
“Uncles was talking about Boo Boo and said that he had just come home and robbed RZA’s brother and that they would likely come after him for that. Humphreys believes Uncles was referring to members of Wu Tang,” the prosecutors’ filings read.
The documents also refer to conversations between Ford, Humphreys and Anthony Christian about Brooker, who was shot to death on June 22, 1999.
In those conversations, Ford said that Brooker robbed both RZA’s brother and the cousin of another Wu-Tang member, Raekwon (real name Corey Woods), leading to RZA issuing a $30,000 contract to kill Brooker.
“Ford stated that he had previously heard that Shank Bank was killed by Phife (ph). Ford believes that Phife collected money from RZA for executing the hit,” the filings read. It’s not clear who “Phife” refers to.
Prosecutors maintain that the Christians brothers were responsible for bother murders. The prosecutors say Estella was slain so he wouldn’t tell Brooker, a rival drug dealer, about the plot to murder him.
Representatives for Wu had not responded to request for comment at press time. See the whole court filing below.
