The rumblings of a Black Mafia Family resurgence gained steam last month with the December 20, 2016 execution-style murder of BMF lieutenant Ricky (Slick) McFarlin in Detroit. McFarlin, 36, was released from federal prison in the fall. He was convicted in the DEA’s famous Operation Motor City Mafia case of the mid-2000s which led to the toppling of practically the entire organization’s rank-and-file and sent BMF founder and Godfather Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory to prison for 30 years. Flenory, 48, started BMF in his Southwest Detroit neighborhood in 1990 and in a matter of a decade, grew it into the biggest and most iconic American urban crime syndicate of all-time, seeing BMF flags planted all across the country in strategically-placed locales such as Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Louisville, Memphis and Dallas. The Motor City Mafia indictment charged close to 200 BMF figures for trafficking an estimated 3,000 kilos of cocaine per month nationally and confiscated almost 300 million dollars in cash and from BMF-connected bank accounts. “We’re aware of the continued existence of the Black Mafia Family,” said one DEA source. “Although their existence is marginal compared to where they once were, they’re functioning with a reassembled pecking order and in multiple states.” The first rumors of a BMF “reboot” surfaced in 2009 with a fatal nightclub brawl in a Detroit suburb involving a reputed “second-generation” BMF crew. They gained traction in the summer of 2014 after first-generation BMF lieutenant Christopher (Pig) Triplett, just two years removed from his release from prison on charges stemming from Operation Motor City Mafia, was busted again for drug dealing. The 45-year old Triplett was arrested for possession with intent to distribute over $125,000 worth of a controlled substance in Ohio. His car was pulled over driving southbound on I-75 in the early morning hours of August 18, 2014 and uncovered two pounds of heroin in the vehicle’s air filter. He was sentenced to four years in prison in May and is scheduled for a 2018 out date. If the past has showed us anything in relation to Pig Triplett, it’s that he’s a standup guy, someone willing to do time instead of turnover on his co-conspirators in court. He was one of the first to fall in the initial 2005 BMF case. Triplett and his then-partner in crime on the street, another Detroit BMF soldier named Calvin (Playboy) Sparks were pulled over in St. Louis in April 2004 with nine bricks of cocaine concealed in the SUV they were driving in. In conversations intercepted by court-authorized wiretaps, Big Meech’s baby brother and second-in-command, Terry (Southwest T) Flenory, stationed in L.A, was heard trying ease concerns from members of Sparks’ family that Triplett was about to turn witness and give up Playboy and the Flenorys to the government in exchange for his freedom. Southwest T, responsible for looking after BMF activity in Michigan even though he resided on the west coast, proved accurate in his assessment of the situation and Pig Triplett stood strong, refusing to fold. The younger Flenory’s point men in Motown were step brothers Benjamin (Blank) Johnson and Eric (Slim) Bivens. Their main muscle was BMF enforcer Arnold (A.R.) Boyd. Johnson, Bivens and Boyd all flipped after being indicted in Operation Motor City Mafia. Terry Flenory himself accepted the same plea deal Big Meech did in 2007 and will do more than two dozen years behind bars for his role as a leader in the colossal drug conspiracy. Talk of a BMF comeback began circulating in August 2009 when reputed BMF crew chief Darnell (C-Bird) Cooley and two of his bodyguards beat a fellow patron of a Southfield, Michigan jazz club to death after an altercation in the club’s VIP section. The only witness to the incident was killed, shot-gunned to death outside the barber shop he worked at less than a month later on the eve of testifying in front a grand jury investigating the fatal jazz club beating. Cooley, 41, and his bodyguards were categorized as “second generation” BMF by authorities in the wake of the case hitting the local media, copped to manslaughter charges and each did five years in prison. For the most part, despite its gargantuan size and formidable reputation in the underworld, BMF has not been a particularly violent group. Slick McFarlin’s murder last month was the first known member of the organization to be slain. That being said, there have been rumors tying BMF brass and specifically Big Meech, to multiple homicides. While building his nationwide narcotics empire, romancing Hollywood starlets (see reported flings with actresses Meagan Good and Vivica Fox) and crafting an everlasting image as a gangland legend of legend’s, Big Meech is suspected of carrying out at least two murders in his reign Federal informants tag Meech as the shooter in the October 1997 slaying of turncoat Dennis Walker, a Detroit drug dealer who had testified against BMF associate Tony Valentine, and Flenory was charged but never put on trial for the November 2003 double-homicide of Anthony (Wolf) Jones and Lamont (Riz) Girdy which took place outside an Atlanta nightclub. Walker was gunned down with automatic weapon fire from a passing vehicle while he was in his own car driving onto an Atlanta expressway off-ramp after leaving a party at the Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel celebrating his release from a three-year prison stint earlier in the day. Close friends of hip-hop and pop culture impresario Sean (Puffy) Combs, Wolf Jones and Riz Girdy, tussled with Big Meech and his bodyguard inside Chaos nightclub and minutes later were shot dead in the parking lot. Jones often served as Combs’ bodyguard. Big Meech’s rise and fall is currently being adapted into both a movie and television show. The McFarlin hit occurred in the basement of a Westside Detroit residence. Earlier this week, sources told Gangster Report initial word on the street is that McFarlin’s murder is unconnected to BMF activity. The Detroit Police are handling the investigation into McFarlin’s death as drug related. He was killed alongside former NFL defensive end Robert Eddins.
