Michael Stone goes 'Gangbusters'

Author tells tough tale about the NYPD takedown of the Wild Cowboys gang

Michael Stone describes how a group of New York investigators broke the back of a large and deadly gang in "Gangbusters"

In this story: Herculean efforts A $30,000-a-day crack franchise 'Always concerned' RELATED STORIES, SITES

By Adam Dunn
Special to CNN.com

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Much ado has been made over plummeting violent crime statistics and "safer" American cities. Much of the credit has been taken by various interests, including politicians, police, and perhaps even a general cultural weariness in the wake of the crack wars of the '80s. But there has been considerably less effort to actually plot, track and chronicle the drop in crime over a period of years and with an emphasis on changing law-enforcement techniques.

First-time author Michael Stone, a veteran of New York magazine, wound up doing just that in "Gangbusters" (Doubleday), the true story of the South Bronx/northern Manhattan "Wild Cowboys" crack gang. At its peak, the gang was one of the most savage criminal organizations in New York history, and Stone's book tells how the frustrated, hamstrung group of policemen and prosecutors known collectively as the Homicide Investigations Unit (HIU) spent years taking it down.

"I first did it as a story for New York magazine in 1993, just after the takedown of the gang," he said in a recent interview. "I was working as a journalist for the magazine, and an editor saw the story (about the sweep of the gang's leaders) in one of the papers and suggested I look into it." The sweep led to a two-year trial ending in triple-digit sentences for more than 60 homicides. It was the focal point of a years-long investigation between federal agencies and the detectives and district attorneys from three boroughs.

Herculean efforts

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Mostly, however, the gang's fall was due to the herculean efforts of the HIU, which had spent years on the Cowboys and repeatedly been undermined by bureaucratic red tape, personality clashes within the unit, and potential witnesses too frightened to speak out against Cowboy members (or outright murdered by them).

HIU was the brainchild of Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, a unit designed to specifically target the most violent gang-related killers in the city. First assembled in 1983 out of the district attorney's office, HIU was a mixed bag. It included local and out-of state prosecutors (including Dan Rather, son of the news anchor) and "buffs -- cops and detectives who loved their work and went beyond the routines of their job to try to root out the core sources of crime on their own turf," Stone writes.

In 1988, a senior prosecutor named Walter Arsenault joined the team with an agenda: As an overburdened trial attorney, he'd seen the connections between drug cases and gangs. He resolved to strengthen HIU's trial power to trace the violent offenders to their colleagues and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law, using a combination of informants and RICO-type statutes.

The inception of HIU roughly coincided with the rise of crack cocaine on the streets, and HIU's first big cases were against the new type of "posses" -- largely Jamaican gangs supplying the new drug and enlarging their territories at the point of a gun. But it was the Wild Cowboys gang that proved to be HIU's biggest case, as well as its worst nightmare.

A $30,000-a-day crack franchise

A loosely-organized group of Dominicans under the brothers Lenny and Nelson Sepulveda, the Cowboys ran a $30,000-a-day crack franchise in various locations around the South Bronx, Washington Heights in northern Manhattan, and Brooklyn. The gang earned its name through its fearsome reputation for wholly unpredictable violence, carried out by ruthless enforcers with nicknames like X-Man, Freddy Krueger, and Platano. These young men were unleashed on competitors, customers, and even colleagues -- the latter when money or merchandise went missing or lower-echelon operatives began branching out for themselves.

Two such savage incidents brought them to HIU's attention. The first, described in the book's opening, was the 1991 car-to-car murder of a college student on the West Side Highway (which the gang's kingpins ultimately admitted was to test-fire a jammed Uzi). The second was the brutal quadruple homicide at a crack distribution point known as the Hole in the South Bronx, where the Cowboys sprayed automatic weapons fire into a crowd in order to discourage a rival crack franchise from dealing on their turf. The incidents occurred only weeks apart, and the massive police follow-up quickly brought HIU's "buffs" on the cases, which would spill into a four-year quagmire of murder and mayhem as the Cowboys turned on each other and settled their grudges in the streets.

Stone came on the scene after enough corroborating evidence had been assembled to pull the senior Cowboys off the streets. "After doing the article, I remained friendly with most of the guys (at HIU), and we stayed in contact over the years," he recalled. "In late '95 (following the Sepulvedas' sentencing), Morgenthau's office called me in and asked me if I wanted to do something on them generally and HIU in particular. ... I had to find a way of profiling them, and I came up with a way through a historical treatment of the Wild Cowboys case."

"Gangbusters" is more than a true crime book: it effectively describes a complete changeover of the drug trade, from a wholesale-based model to a retail one. Drug retail gangs first began appearing in the '70s, Stone said, and due to several factors took over the streets. "They were sort of the equivalent of fast food franchises," he said. "It was a particularly lucrative, efficient way of dealing drugs, and they became more available and cheaper."

The gangs began fighting for territory, which made prime locations into battlegrounds. "That's were the violence came in. Selling became more lucrative, the gangs had more money to spend, and they hired outside enforcers, and they became far more deadly than they had been in the past," said Stone. Meanwhile, the rise of the gangs and the low cost of crack allowed business to run rampant -- hundreds of mom-and-pop organizations set up shop, and customers could buy anywhere, Stone observed. The result: an enormous increase in violence.

'Always concerned'

Stone had his work cut out for him when he set out to research the story. Aside from notes for his article, he had to conduct interviews with people directly involved with the case, including witnesses under protection, and incarcerated Cowboys. The possibility of compromising sources was a tricky issue.

"I was always concerned. The detectives and prosecutors were also, when I was talking with their informants," Stone said. "The gang is no longer operating, but the cops took strict precautions where anonymity was important." Presumably the author did so as well, when he interviewed the Sepulvedas in prison.

Transforming a news horror story into book form was no picnic either, with thousands of pages of legal material and a huge cast of characters. "I'm not a good model for anyone trying to do a book," he said. "This is enormously complex material, and I'm not sure I've even streamlined it enough -- there are so many characters, so much law enforcement to learn, it's a huge task to try to simplify it for a reader and at the same time not lose the richness and complexity of the course of the investigation."

Washington Heights is calmer now, with a strong economy rejuvenating the crack-scarred streets. Violent crime statistics in Manhattan are down. Stone duly acknowledged the tougher anti-crime stance between City Hall and One Police Plaza playing a significant role in lowering crime, but his focus remains fixed on HIU as the tip of the spear, both in the past and for the future.

"I just read an article that cocaine is back among certain groups, Wall Street people and so forth," Stone said. "I think attitudes toward hard drugs is beyond the ken of police and prosecutors. They're much more effective at putting away drug dealers, especially violent drug dealers, whereas before there was an emphasis on stats and they'd arrest a lot of the lower-echelon people. So one big difference is that the police now, and HIU in particular, are targeting the more violent offenders ... and getting the message out."

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