A Portrait of Crime : Prosecutor Paints Picture of Deadly Drug Ring as Trial Starts in Bryant Family Murder Case

Opening statements in the long-awaited Bryant Family murder trial began Tuesday with a riveting portrait of a San Fernando Valley-based cocaine ring so sophisticated that it synchronized its dealers’ work schedules with police roll calls so that street sales could be conducted before patrol cars were deployed.

Bryant Family members were so careful, Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin McCormick told the jury, that they gave rock cocaine customers a receipt for their cash at one house and then sent them to another location to pick up their drugs.

Moreover, within the Family’s network of northeast Valley crack houses, workers always kept a pot of hot oil or battery acid on the kitchen stove in case police showed up, for emergency disposal of the ring’s trademark rock cocaine.

The ring racked up at least $1.6 million in sales for a three-month period in 1988 from a single crack house, McCormick said. The crack houses were so heavily fortified--with barred windows and a series of electronically operated, steel-mesh entrances--that police had to use battering rams to get inside, according to the prosecutor.

“This is one of the biggest, most financially lucrative and violent dope-dealing organizations you have ever seen,” said McCormick.

It was so ruthless, McCormick said, that nearly seven years ago a mother and her 2-year-old child were shot at point-blank range as they waited outside a crack house, still seat-belted in their car, for two mid-level drug dealers who were executed inside.

The Aug. 28, 1988, killings in Lake View Terrace are at the center of the case, which was delayed for years by legal maneuvering and a series of sensational, pretrial allegations claiming misconduct by prosecutors and Bryant Family infiltration of several law-enforcement agencies.

All four defendants--alleged ringleader Stanley Bryant and his alleged employees Donald Franklin Smith, John Preston Settle and LeRoy Wheeler--could face the death penalty if convicted.

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All are charged with four counts of murder--one each for the deaths of Andre Armstrong, James Brown, Brown’s girlfriend, Loretha Anderson, and her daughter, Chemise English.

They are also charged with one count of attempted murder for the injuries suffered by Anderson’s infant son, Carlos English Jr., who was cut by shattered glass in the back seat of the car.

Security was extremely tight at the courthouse. Several prosecution witnesses are under state or federal protection. Extra sheriff’s deputies in plainclothes, one for each of the four defendants, were assigned to the courtroom.

And each defendant wore a bulging, electronic security belt under his clothes. If a suspect tries to escape, a deputy can activate the stun gun-like belt, shock the defendant with 50,000 volts of electricity and immobilize him.

McCormick told jurors Tuesday that Armstrong was a convicted hit man for the Bryant Family who had been blackmailing the ring’s leaders from prison in St. Louis, Mo., and plotting to take over their empire when he was freed.

Once he was released, in July, 1988, McCormick continued, Armstrong joined Brown and a third prison friend in Monterey, where the Bryant Family had set them up in an arm of its interstate ring.

But Armstrong wasn’t satisfied, McCormick said, and he drove to Los Angeles to confront Stanley Bryant, who ran the Family with his brother Jeff and knew of Armstrong’s ambitions.

When Armstrong and Brown arrived at a Bryant Family crack house on Wheeler Avenue at about 5 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon, defendants Smith and Settle trapped them within a steel security cage at the house’s entrance and opened fire, killing them, as Stan Bryant drove away, according to the allegations.

Then Wheeler went outside with a sawed-off shotgun in one hand and a .357-magnum pistol in the other, shot Anderson first through the car window and then went inside the Toyota Camry to shoot the girl through the base of her neck, McCormick said.

But Wheeler’s lawyer said authorities were charging the wrong man for the deaths of the mother and child, which he blamed on a key prosecution witness he said strongly resembles Wheeler.

The witness, James Franklin Williams IV, “cut a sweetheart deal” in which he would testify against the other Bryant Family employees in exchange for immunity from murder charges, said attorney Bill McKinney.

“Even on Valentine’s Day you couldn’t beat this deal,” said McKinney, who said Williams was a convicted drug dealer who ran afoul of the law even while on a witness-protection program in Minnesota.

Wheeler worked for the Bryant Family counting money, McKinney acknowledged, but he worked the graveyard shift at the Wheeler Avenue house and was not present during the 5 p.m. slayings. But Williams, McKinney continued, normally worked from 7 a.m. until 3 p.m., and stayed late the day of the slayings to help his boss and win a promotion.

“When you see those photographs of the bodies the district attorney showed you,” McKinney said, “that was the overtime Mr. Williams was putting in.”

Defendant Settle also attacked Williams’ credibility and claimed that he, too, was not present during the slayings.

Instead, the executions were carried out by a Bryant Family member who remains in hiding, suggested Settle, who is defending himself in the trial. That man is a friend of Williams, who is covering up for him, Settle said.

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As he addressed the jury--a large security device poking out from the back of his gray business suit--Settle explained he was representing himself “because this is a truth-seeking process and I feel the best way to get at the truth is through the defendant.”

He had prepared a number of charts, including one stapled with pay stubs from legitimate jobs, and showed jurors a photograph of his wife and daughter, which he had pinned to a bulletin board.

“There’s no way I’d aid and abet someone killing a woman and a child because my wife and child are the two most important things in my life--and here they are,” Settle said.

Settle said he became unwittingly involved with the Bryant Family in 1986, after he lost a job because of an injury and was facing foreclosure on his Lake View Terrace home.

But Settle, speaking before Superior Judge Charles E. Horan, adamantly denied ever going to the Wheeler Avenue house or taking part in the quadruple slayings there.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to remind you there are two sides to every story,” he said. “I am innocent and I have been wrongly accused.”

Lawyers for Smith and Bryant were to make their opening statements this morning.