Drug Kingpin Poses as Lawyer, Nearly Escapes

Elrader (Ray Ray) Browning Jr., a notorious cocaine kingpin facing life in prison for running a major Los Angeles drug organization, was foiled in a weekend escape attempt at the federal prison at Terminal Island when he donned a wig, mustache and civilian clothes and attempted to pass himself off as a lawyer, authorities said.

Browning, who authorities say ran a violent, $2-million-a-month South Los Angeles cocaine and heroin ring, apparently donned the disguise and clothing in an attorney interview room, picked up a briefcase and a copy of the Rules of Criminal Procedure and telephoned the guards to let him out, said Assistant U.S. Atty. John Gordon, who prosecuted Browning and 21 alleged cohorts in Los Angeles federal court earlier this year.

Browning nearly pulled the escape off, Gordon said, but a guard who hadn’t recognized him behind the wig and mustache suddenly did recognize his distinctive gait--kind of a jaunty strut.

Just two days before Saturday’s escape attempt, Browning, 33, filed a motion to avert transfer to a federal prison in Marion, Ill., the nation’s highest-security institution, arguing that the federal prison here was “a much more hospitable environment” in which to seek legal help.

“I do not believe the government has any legitimate interest in opposing this motion for, should the court grant my request, I will at all times remain in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons whose several facilities in and around the Los Angeles area are adequately equipped to serve the government’s interest in security. . . ,” wrote Browning, who has represented himself throughout the legal proceedings.

The incident was the seventh escape or attempted escape in the last four months at Terminal Island, the only federal prison in the Los Angeles area. It came just a month after a colorful 2 1/2-week trial in which Browning personally cross-examined many of his former partners in crime.

He was eventually convicted of 43 drug-related felonies, for which he faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole when he is sentenced on Aug. 22. His alleged top associate, James H. (Doc) Holiday, a former leader of the Black Guerrilla Family prison gang, was found guilty on two drug-related counts and faces 20 years in prison.

Browning has already served a state prison term for second-degree murder. He was acquitted on charges of murdering two men in a Pacoima cafe in 1979, in what authorities said was a drug-related revenge attack, after a California Supreme Court decision effectively threw out the testimony of a witness who had identified Browning as the triggerman.

In a report to U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson for Browning’s Aug. 22 sentencing, federal prosecutors urged a $2 million fine in addition to a life sentence.

“Even if the court ignores all of the other evidence in the record of Browning’s violence, Browning is an admitted murderer who because of his ruthlessness, intelligence and sophistication will pose a continuing threat to society unless he is incarcerated for the rest of his life,” the government said.

Meeting With Attorney

According to U.S. Marshal’s Inspector Walter Dayton, Browning and Holiday were meeting with attorney Larry Elkins in the prison interview room while an attorney who had represented another defendant in the case, Arthur Mabry, was in an adjacent room.

Elkins left while Browning and Holiday stayed behind. About an hour later Browning telephoned the guards, posing as an attorney who was ready to leave. The guard, who was not identified, didn’t recognize Browning until he saw his distinctive walk, Dayton said.

“Amazingly enough, the guard also remembered that he’d only let in two attorneys, one of whom he’d let out and the other, he knew, was Art Mabry,” Gordon said.

Browning was wearing a false mustache, an Afro wig, a pair of Italian loafers and a “nice” but casual set of civilian clothing, authorities said. He had a jacket over one arm and carried a briefcase and a copy of the federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.

Inside the briefcase was a driver’s license, a credit card, a jail jump suit and the glue that he had apparently used to affix the mustache.

“All we can hypothesize at this point is he’d been squirreling away these items,” Gordon said. Loose ceiling tiles in the interview room may indicate that the items had been brought in by visitors over the last few weeks and hidden above the ceiling, he said.

Gordon said Mabry is not believed to have been aware of the escape attempt.

‘Some Lawyer’

In an interview Wednesday, Mabry said he had seen Browning but had not recognized him, despite spending more than two weeks in a courtroom with him. “I was looking at this guy in civvies, I saw this guy in a long, dark Afro, and I said, ‘Oh, well, some lawyer.’ I’m not that observant as a witness, I found.”

Gordon and other authorities said they have not been able to locate Elkins for questioning. The Times was also unsuccessful in trying to reach him.

Warden R. D. Brewer attributed the recent rash of escape attempts to a nearly 50% increase in the number of prisoners awaiting sentencing housed at Terminal Island, a low- to medium-security facility that he said was never designed to house the kind of high-risk prisoners who are often detained there pending trial.

“What we’re doing is we are tasked with a heavy-security mission in a not-heavily-secured physical plant,” Brewer said.

In March, two men nearly escaped when they hid in a stack of wooden pallets on a forklift but were detected by guards at the rear gate of the prison.

A month later, two suspected bank robbers temporarily escaped by climbing a 12-foot fence topped with razor wire and dropping into the water below. One was caught at the mouth of the harbor about an hour later; the other was recaptured on the rocks near shore the next day.

Then in May, three men successfully escaped, one of them a Colombian national believed responsible for importing at least 60 tons of marijuana. All three were recaptured within about a month. Authorities say they do not know how the three escaped, though some have speculated that they hid inside some large, concert-sized speakers that were hauled out of the prison after a concert.

Minkow Lockdown

Earlier this year, ZZZZ Best whiz kid Barry Minkow, awaiting trial on a variety of securities fraud charges, was placed in lockdown status after prison guards found civilian clothes in his cell that they believe may have been connected to an escape attempt.

“In 1982, because of the serious overcrowding in the county jails in the area, we became essentially the federal jail for Los Angeles District Court, and that’s a mission that we’re not suited for physically. We have a lot of very, very dangerous people here now, at least based on the crimes they’re charged with,” the warden said.

A year ago, Terminal Island housed about 700 convicted prisoners designated for a low-to-medium-security facility, and about 400 “jail” inmates--those of all security levels awaiting trial or sentencing. Now the prison has 600 regular inmates and 640 jail inmates.

“So not only is . . . overcrowding a constant problem--but here the jail inmates who represent the biggest security risk have increased over 50%,” Brewer said.

Prison officials say the problem should be alleviated with the expected completion at the end of this year of a new Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles with heavy security designed for pretrial inmates.