The Family : Authorities Hope to Crush Bryant Organization After Years of Having It Fall Between the Cracks

Two-year-old Chemise English would hardly have made a reliable informant. But a killer bent on eliminating all witnesses to a gun battle at a reputed Lake View Terrace cocaine cash house last August executed her anyway with a bullet in the back of the head.

It didn’t matter that Chemise was sitting idly in a car outside the house with her mother, Loretha Anderson, while neighbors washed their cars and read the Sunday paper on their porches. After an ambush slaying of two of Anderson’s male friends, the killer ran to the car, sprayed it with gunfire and climbed in to shoot the toddler with a pistol.

The quadruple murder was not just another drug deal gone bad. Police believe it was a brazen attempt by a sophisticated criminal organization to snuff out competition for the San Fernando Valley cocaine trade. Now, seven months later, the brutality of the killings may help turn the tide against the so-called Bryant Organization, which authorities say has dominated the lucrative local drug market for nearly a decade.

Series of Raids

Following the murders, police raided 26 businesses and houses allegedly connected with the Bryant Organization, filed murder conspiracy charges against six purported leaders, and for the first time succeeded in persuading a key insider to take the stand and testify against his employers.

“Things are getting out of control when stuff like this happens,” said homicide Detective James Vojtecky, the lead investigator of the quadruple murder.

The new initiative against the Bryant Organization is being applauded in the community. But some are asking how an enterprise with an estimated 200 members and associates managed to elude police and stay in business longer than many legitimate firms. The answer lies in the intelligence of this unusual drug gang, as well as the inability of law enforcement to mount an effective campaign against them.

Documents seized in the raids show how two low-key, entrepreneurial brothers named Jeff and Stanley Bryant built a corporate-style illegal empire in poor neighborhoods in and around Pacoima, authorities say.

Vacations, Company Cars

With weekly drug receipts estimated at $100,000 and a dozen killings to its credit, according to police, the organization became so successful that some of its employees received paid vacations and the use of company cars. Members walked the streets of poor neighborhoods in jackets bearing the corporate insignia of “The Family.”

“Their claws are pretty well-extended and dug deep into the community,” said a local activist who, out of fear, asked not to be identified. “What they have done and what they are doing will affect the community for a whole generation.”

Court records and interviews with law enforcement and community experts indicate that the Family has survived by wooing or intimidating witnesses to its crimes, driving off or killing competitors, and by outmaneuvering law enforcement.

Rock Houses

Among the oldest community-level drug organizations in the city, it was one of the first to come up with the idea of turning houses into armored fortresses to sell drugs. There is evidence that it placed agents inside the state Department of Motor Vehicles to produce phony drivers licenses, enabling the organization to cover its tracks. And the Family frequently changed the way it does business to confuse police.

Even today, with both Bryant brothers in jail, the organization’s drugs continue to flow on the streets, police admit.

Police “were always one step behind,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Jan L. Maurizi, who is prosecuting the quadruple murder.

Among those charged with murder, conspiracy and special circumstances that could bring the death penalty in that case are: Stanley Bryant, 31; Le Roy Wheeler, 20; Antonio Johnson, 30, a longtime Family associate; Nash Newbill, 53, another alleged Bryant leader who is reported to be the Family’s personnel director; Anthony Arceneaux, 19, and Tannis Curry, 27, nicknamed “the Black Widow” by police because some of her male friends wound up injured or dead.

Two other alleged organization members are expected to face lesser charges in connection with the slayings.

Unrelated Sentence

Jeff Bryant, 37, who has not been charged in the case, is serving the final months of an unrelated sentence for violating probation on a drug charge.

The longevity of the Family is due in part to the fact that it fell through the cracks of the Los Angeles Police Department’s anti-drug efforts. As middlemen who allegedly funneled drugs from the importers to the street dealers, the Bryants were too small for the department’s Major Violators Narcotics Unit in downtown Los Angeles, which focuses on stopping drugs from entering the country, and too big for the narcotics unit based in the Valley, which was out-manned and burdened with other cases.

“It wasn’t that their organization wasn’t worked on. It was,” said Sgt. Mario Mascolo, a ranking official in the Valley narcotics unit. “But as far as trying to build a major case, there was never any time. It has been somewhat of a salvation for his type of operation,” Mascolo said of Jeff Bryant.

Special Force

Recognizing the growing importance of these middlemen of the drug trade, the police department in the past year created a “mid-level enforcement group” to go after distributors such as the Bryants.

Now, “other people are looking at all aspects of closing this operation down once and for all,” Vojtecky said. This effort involves federal agencies reviewing the Family’s activities, including their possible investment of drug profits in dummy corporations, from legitimate businesses to land investments.

But for some, this response should have come sooner.

“Where were they 10 years ago?” the activist said of law enforcement authorities. Now, Jeff and Stanley Bryant have been allowed to become heroic figures to some poor people in the Pacoima area. The activist quoted one young girl who said Jeff treated her better than her own family. “He’s like God,” the girl had said.

Close to Father

Unlike many of the needy children from broken homes who are attracted to them, the Bryants appear to be the products of a good family. They were close to their father, who is dead, and their mother, Florence, is a regular churchgoer. “I donate clothes and things and I pay my little tithings,” she said in an interview.

She feels her sons have gotten an unfair reputation. “They’re nice,” she said. Of police accusations, she added, “They’re just talking and they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

But Jeff Bryant’s police record shows he has been in trouble since he was 16, when he was arrested and placed on probation for stealing a car, according to a probation report.

Then came arrests and judgments over the next seven years for carrying a loaded firearm (fined), battery on a police officer (suspended jail sentence), burglary (probation, violated on the following arrest), assault with intent to commit murder (dismissed), drunk driving (fined), possession of drugs for sale (45-day jail term), assault with intent to commit murder (dismissed), assault with a deadly weapon (dismissed), and another assault (no disposition shown, but Bryant told his probation officer he received a year in jail).

Bank Robbery

Two cases were dismissed when witnesses failed to testify against him. It wasn’t until he was convicted of robbing a bank in 1974 at age 22 that he went to jail for any length of time: four years and four months.

“We don’t have the power to sentence these people the way they should be” is one reason they have been able to prosper, Maurizi said. The Legislature, she said, has not given judges the ability to make a distinction between small-time crooks and “these kinds of high-powered criminals.”

Theresa Taylor, counsel for the state Senate Judiciary Committee, said existing state laws allow tougher sentences for drug kingpins. Other weapons recently given to prosecutors include expanded ability to tap phones.

Jeff Bryant is believed to have become a member of the Black Guerrilla Family in prison. Once a political organization with ties to the Symbionese Liberation Army--the group that kidnapped Patricia Hearst--the BGF, as it is more commonly known, eventually developed a second branch more interested in money than in revolutionary social goals, according to Rufus Downs, a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department BGF expert.

Previous Group

At the time Jeff Bryant was released from prison in 1979, according to authorities, a BGF general who had been moving large quantities of drugs into the Valley was arrested. Not long after that, the Bryant Organization took over the market, authorities said.

Jeff Bryant refused an interview request. But Carl E. Jones, Stanley Bryant’s attorney, said his client denies membership in the group he is supposed to head. “I’m not sure anybody outside of the district attorney’s office and law enforcement believes there is an organization,” Jones said.

According to authorities and insiders’ testimony filed in court, Jeff Bryant, with the help of his brother, Stanley, created a criminal enterprise that had the stability and benefits of a Chamber of Commerce member. Using money from the 1974 bank robbery, according to the probation report, the Bryants purchased several houses in the East Valley and set about turning some of them into fortresses. That way, according to Maurizi, they could close down some and move to others if the heat was on.

Police had difficulty keeping up with them. For example, last year’s quadruple murders occurred in a house that had been raided at least twice before. But narcotics agents admitted that they did not know it was back in operation.

The organization used a fleet of somewhat dented company cars to move around Pacoima without attracting attention, according to investigators. The Family’s headquarters, according to police informants, was in a pool hall owned by Jeff Bryant called “Neighborhood Billiards” on Van Nuys Boulevard.

High School Athletes

Other Bryant touches included recruiting high school athletes to work in the rock houses because they knew how to take orders and did not use drugs, police said.

Investigators say they don’t know where the Family gets its cocaine, but Vojtecky said he believes the Family has a Colombian source. “They’re buying it direct,” he said.

Jeff Bryant presented the demeanor of a successful businessman with a stake in the community, according to those who know him. Despite the money he was making, he kept his modern Spanish-style home in Lake View Terrace. Even so, it is in one of the community’s best areas, with a hillside view and a satellite dish in the back yard. His closet was filled with expensively tailored business suits, according to those who had visited his home.

Stanley avoided conspicuous consumption. Unlike some of his dealers, who drove BMWs and wore thick, gold chains, he borrowed cars and wore little jewelry, according to Vojtecky, who knows both men.

‘Peanut Head’

His employees called Stanley “chief” or “boss” to his face. Behind his back, however, he was derided as “peanut head,” said Vojtecky, leaving little doubt about which of the brothers was considered the driving intelligence behind the organization.

In 1985, police upped the ante in the suburban drug war. Narcotics Detective Roger Dunn assigned two officers to Jeff Bryant full time. “You’ll do no other narcotics enforcement,” he told them. Jeff had “finally pushed me over the line.”

In 1986, Jeff Bryant was sentenced to prison for maintaining a place where drugs were sold--the Lake View Terrace house where the quadruple murder would later take place. But if police thought that would hamstring the organization, they were wrong.

Investigators believe Jeff Bryant continued to administer the organization from his prison cell, passing information to runners who used phony identities to visit him in prison. A confiscated drivers license under the name of Jeff Bryant’s wife, Rochelle, bore another woman’s picture. Police said they have evidence that a Bryant agent in the DMV was making the licenses. They also say the Family had informants inside other agencies, such as the district attorney’s office.

Members’ Loyalty

The organization also counted on the loyalty of its employees to confound police. When they went to prison, hit men knew their families would be cared for, so they kept quiet, according to police records filed in court.

Jeff Bryant also apparently tried to inspire good will in the community through generosity. The community activist said Jeff Bryant was for a time something of a local philanthropist who donated money to families in trouble.

“If somebody’s mother needed money for an operation, he would come up with the money,” the activist said.

But eventually this image wore thin as the violence mounted.

A March 19, 1985, shooting of a Bryant Organization employee illustrates the Family’s violent code and the difficulty of prosecuting organization leaders. Clarence Johnson, an employee in a company rock house, was shot after he came up short on a night’s receipts and was found sleeping on the job, police said.

Guilty Plea

Johnson survived but refused to testify. David Hodnet, a paroled murderer, was arrested in the shooting and at first agreed to testify, telling authorities he had been paid $3,500 by the Bryant brothers to kill Johnson. He suddenly changed his mind, pleaded guilty to attempted murder and accepted a 10-year prison sentence rather than testify.

“He knew that the Bryants would take care of him and his family while he was in prison,” officers said in a search warrant affidavit filed last year. “If he informed on them, he or his family would be murdered.”

The organization also used violence to enforce its firm grip on the drug trade in the East Valley, according to police. Tracy Anderson was a local football standout in high school and in college, who allegedly had been recruited as a dealer. But in 1988 he decided to buy his cocaine from a cheaper source in south Los Angeles and set up his own franchise, according to investigators.

Police said he was gunned down when he stepped out of his girlfriend’s house to meet Le Roy Wheeler, one of the poor youths who venerated Jeff Bryant, calling him “uncle.” Police said Wheeler was paid $7,000 to arrange the hit. Wheeler has been charged with murder in the case and has pleaded not guilty.

Former Hit Man

The latest chapter in the Bryant story opened when lanky Andre Louis Armstrong, 31, was paroled from prison in August, 1988. A former self-proclaimed Family hit man, he had bragged that he could take over the drug organization whenever he wished, police said.

On Aug. 28, a meeting was arranged between Armstrong and Stanley Bryant at the Lake View Terrace “ram house,” a name the group gave to the house in the 11400 block of Wheeler Avenue after police hit it with their celebrated battering ram three years earlier.

According to testimony at a four-month preliminary hearing that ended in February against the quadruple-murder defendants, Armstrong and James Brown, a friend, went to the house with Loretha Anderson and her two small children, Chemise and Carlos English. Anderson was a friend of Armstrong’s who went along for the ride because she wanted to get the children something to eat.

Maurizi said Brown and Armstrong were gunned down in the entryway of the house. Wheeler, she said, ran to the car and began shooting. Carlos, 1, was the only survivor.

Grant of Immunity

For the prosecution, a key to the case is James Franklin Williams III, 19, who has broken the Family’s code of silence and agreed to testify in return for a grant of immunity. To protect him, authorities have moved him and his family to a secret location away from Los Angeles.

Williams, Maurizi said, had become involved with the Family accidentally after his mother demanded that he get a job or move out. He came home one night and reported that he had been hired to work in a pool hall. Once the Family found he could do arithmetic, however, he was promoted to being a money counter in a Bryant Organization cash house, where money--but no drugs--was kept, according to evidence presented at the preliminary hearing.

He had a company car and earned $500 a week, he said.

Essential Witness

His testimony is crucial because it is through Williams that police have been able to place most of the defendants at the house at the time of the murders. Williams has testified that he saw Stanley Bryant, Wheeler and others gathering in the house with guns. He said he heard shots and cries from the entryway and moments later saw Wheeler run out with a shotgun to the car where Anderson and her children were waiting.

Police believe the attack on Armstrong was ill-planned, hatched by Stanley Bryant while his older brother was in jail. They said Stanley Bryant had panicked, giving authorities at long last a real opportunity to break the Family.

Once authorities have documented the group’s holdings, they can confiscate the houses, property and businesses under laws allowing the forfeiture of property acquired with drug profits. When the government tried to take such action against two Bryant houses last year, however, they found both had already been sold.

Once again, the Bryants had outmaneuvered their pursuers.