July 15, 2020 — Black Mafia Family lieutenant Chris (Pig) Triplett was murdered this week, becoming the second BMF soldier slain since members of the goliath organization began filtering out of prison in recent years. Triplett, 49, was gunned down on Detroit’s Westside early Monday morning in a hail of bullets shot from a passing automobile. BMF was the nation’s biggest drug crew of the early 2000s, expanding out of Detroit in the 1990s to establish satellite wings in two dozen states around the country and embedding itself smack dab in the middle of pop culture and the hip hop renaissance of the New Millennium. The organization was founded by Pig Triplett’s childhood friends, the infamous Flenory brothers, Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory and Terry (Southwest T) Flenory. Triplett acted as one of the Flenorys top couriers. They were all convicted in 2005’s Operation Motor City Mafia bust and pleaded guilty to non-violent drug offenses. The Flenorys were sentenced to 30 years apiece. As high as BMF rose in the drug game, the crew was considered relatively violence free, preferring diplomacy to bloodshed as a means of settling disputes. Pig Triplett did six years in federal prison, got out and then was locked back up in 2014 on a state drug-possession charge out of Ohio when he was pulled over on the highway heading towards Michigan with two pounds of heroin hidden in the air filter of his car. He served four years on that case and was released in the spring of 2018. On December 11, 2016, BMF member Ricardo (Slick Rick) McFarlin was killed in a drug deal gone wrong on Detroit’s Westside. The 32-year old McFarlin had just gotten out of prison on the Operation Motor City Mafia case two months earlier. Southwest T Flenory, 51, was released from prison back in May on a compassionate release resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Big Meech, 52, is still waiting on U.S. District Judge David Lawson to rule on his compassionate release motion. Rapper and actor 50 Cent is producing an upcoming scripted television show on the rise and fall of BMF for the Starz network.
