Sex Money Murder: A Story of Crack, Blood, and Betrayal

by Jonathan Green

Overview

Nominated for an Edgar Award

“Exceptionally authentic.”—Jill Leovy, The New York Times Book Review

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Bronx had one of the country’s highest per capita homicide rates. As crack cocaine use surged, dealers claimed territory through intimidation and murder, while families were fractured by crime and incarceration. Chronicling the rise and fall of Sex Money Murder, one of the era’s most notorious gangs, reporter Jonathan Green creates a visceral and devastating portrait of a New York City borough and the dedicated detectives and prosecutors struggling to stem the tide of violence.

Drawing on years of research and extraordinary access to gang leaders, law enforcement, and federal prosecutors, Green delivers an engrossing work of gritty urban reportage. Magisterial in its scope, Sex Money Murder offers a unique perspective on the violence raging in modern-day America and the battle to end it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393357028
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	06/25/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	482,264
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Jonathan Green is an award-winning journalist and author. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Esquire, Men’s Journal, Garden and Gun, Fast Company, The Financial Times Magazine, and British GQ.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xiii

Act I Soundview: The Genesis of Violence

Prologue: The Roof 3

1 Li'l Gunbuster 15

2 Do Not Yield to Evil 27

3 Hit a Killer, be a Killer 41

4 The Ledger of Death 60

5 The Kids from Cozy Corner 71

6 The Birth of Sugar Shaft 85

7 Kidnapped: Blood Begets Blood 94

Act II The Rise of Sex Money Murder

1 Gold Shield #1944 113

2 Sex Money Murder 123

3 Coma 138

4 Pipelines of the Game 145

5 Money Bath 154

6 Justice 172

7 The Murder Game 179

8 Gimme the Loot 197

9 Blood 208

10 Nasty Boys 223

Act III Ultraviolence: The Fall of Sex Money Murder

1 The Fist 231

2 The Office 247

3 Thanksgiving 257

4 "Make It Reign" 270

5 Bangin' for their Rats 284

6 Myth's End 302

7 Dropping the Flag 327

8 5k 348

9 Exile 357

Epilogue: "The Streets Don't Love You" 371

Postscript 385

Acknowledgments 387

Select Bibliography 391

Index 395

Editorial Reviews

"Gripping.… This is a fascinating, albeit dispiriting read, a searing portrait of the appalling inequalities of the American Dream gone sour, a three-act tragedy played out against a soundtrack of gangsta rap."

The Mail on Sunday

"Green’s account reads true."

Star Tribune - Rochelle Olson

"This book is incredible."

ESPN - Ryen Russillo

"Expertly reported and written in a crisp, no nonsense style, Sex Money Murder is a glimpse into a violent criminal lifestyle rarely documented."

LitHub CrimeReads - Lisa Levy

"Sex Money Murder is a ferocious and long overdue piece of true storytelling about a time and a place that saw the worst of the dope business. Within it are remarkable tales of faith in a standard, friendship or what passes for it, greed, decay, the worst and the best of America."

Sam Quinones

One senses at points that Green wants to reach for novelistic flourishes, but he's restrained by better impulses…Rather than try to compensate for the material he's missing, he bets on plain language and diligent documentation, and allows his sources' unfiltered remembrances to take center stage. The result is as straightforward an account of the sordid tedium of gang life as exists anywhere…Green captures a level of detail that marks this work as exceptionally authentic…He faithfully follows the thread of innumerable petty dramas that punctuate gang life, and highlights the strange centrality of envy, something many observers miss…For outsiders tempted to believe the solutions to criminal justice challenges are simple or obvious, this book is a corrective. It shows that, wherever impunity and lucrative black markets overlap, violence is useful and easy. Ordinary kids may become remorseless killers who shoot at cops and view second chances as a license to do more harm.

The New York Times Book Review - Jill Leovy

"Doesn’t pull any punches….Green’s portraits of the good guys and the bad guys are richly layered and compelling: this is no simple cops-and-robbers story. It’s a story about an entire way of life and the way people on both sides of the law have been affected by it. A fine piece of crime nonfiction."

Booklist

"A riveting, deeply human true-life thriller of deadly New York crack gangs that also breaks fresh ground on one of the most important issues of our time, the murders of young black men. With years of extraordinary reporter's access, crisp, cinematic writing, and no small amount of courage, Jonathan Green is the South Bronx Boswell of ruthless killers in a tale reminiscent of Gay Talese's classic inside portrait of the Bonanno crime family, Honor Thy Father. Most remarkably Green captures the common humanity of gangsters, cops, prosecutors, the guilty and the innocent, victims and avengers, redeemed and irredeemable psychopaths, the living and the dead in the modern noir American city."

Michael Capuzzo

2018-02-20
The bloody history of a violent Bronx-based gang in the middle of the crack epidemic.Journalist Green (Murder in the High Himalaya: Loyalty, Tragedy, and Escape from Tibet, 2010) initially focuses on the Bronx during the 1980s and '90s, digging deep to explain how it became infested with gang-related shootings and a massive wave of deadly drug abuse. The author then moves the narrative into the present, explaining why crime has returned to the Bronx in full force after a temporary reduction. Although the saga is populated by a variety of vivid characters, Green emphasizes the importance of winning the trust of two veteran New York City policemen, John O'Malley and Pete Forcelli, and two lifelong Bronx-based criminals with experience inside the gang known as Sex Money Murder. Though the African-American gangsters, Pipe and Suge, felt no reason to trust Green, a white man with a British accent, they reluctantly met with him at the behest of O'Malley and Forcelli, who had helped bring them to justice and then encouraged them to leave their lives of crime. (Pipe mostly succeeded in becoming a law-abiding citizen, while Suge mostly failed.) The author realized the difficulties inherent in verifying much of what he heard from the gang members, and he labored mightily for confirmation by checking court records, police reports, and photographs as well as by interviewing prosecutors and defense lawyers. The bloodiness of the SMM-related crimes, as well as the lack of contrition from Suge, Pipe, and their cohorts, may turn off some readers, but Green's insights into a culture unavailable to most readers are invaluable. As the author writes, "just north of my Manhattan apartment was a world as dangerous as any I had experienced as a journalist reporting in the favelas of Brazil, the garrisons of Kingston, Jamaica, or the killing fields of Colombia."A disturbing yet necessary, significant book by a journalist willing to place himself in danger.

Kirkus Reviews