by Ran Britt
Larry Marlowe Chambers was born in 1950 in Marianna, Arkansas to Curtis and Hazel Chambers. Larry was the third-born son after Curtis Jr. and Willie Lee. Larry was soon followed by Danny. Billy Joe, nicknamed "BJ", and his twin brother, Joe, was born in 1962 and followed by Otis Bernard Chambers. Curtis and Hazel, both of whom were Lee County, Arkansas natives, began dating when they were teens. They would have 16 children in all. The brothers grew up in a dilapidated trailer home on the family's 44-acre farm in the impoverished majority African-American town where their parents moved in 1948 -- the year that they married. Marianna is also the county seat of Lee County, which boasts the second-highest unemployment rate in the state and is the sixth poorest county in the U.S. The poverty-stricken siblings would, at times, wait outside the residences of their white neighbors in the evenings and ask for the leftovers of their dinner meals. In 1967, however, Curtis and Hazel opened The Tin Top Inn bar and restaurant on their property, which the boys frequented.
The first Chambers brother to run afoul of the law was Larry. On December 23, 1969, he was arrested and charged with auto theft after stealing a pair of cars in Marianna so that he and a childhood friend could use them for joyriding. Larry had moved in with his maternal grandparents in St. Louis years earlier with his brother Danny and was only in town for a holiday visit. On December 31, Larry escaped from the Lee County Jail after physically overpowering a guard who'd entered his cell in order to fix the toilet. After hiding in a church that night, Larry stole the pastor's car the following day and embarked on a two-day armed robbery spree. He was nearly apprehended by state troopers after a routine traffic stop in Arkansas' Ouachita County. However, Larry shot one of the patrolmen who approached the vehicle and ran off. He was finally caught the next morning and charged with assault with intent to kill.
After being convicted of shooting the Arkansas state trooper, Larry was sentenced to nine years in prison. Following five months of incarceration, he escaped and was subsequently apprehended in Phoenix, Arizona. Larry made yet another prison break -- from a chain-gang -- after bribing a guard to look the other way. During his time as a fugitive, he committed several gas station holdups and drove to Pittsburgh in a stolen car. Larry was arrested again in Wynn, Arkansas attempting to rob a jewelry store.
After serving six years and being released, he helped his brother, Danny Chambers, and their associate, James Cooper, to burglarize a post office in Helena, Arkansas. After the three were arrested, both Danny and James, both of whom's fingerprints were found at the scene, confessed. While Larry, who was still on parole, had refused to make a statement, the other two, who didn't have criminal records, told police that he'd been with them. The sheriff's office offered Danny and James suspended sentences in exchange for testifying against Larry. When the attorney Danny and Larry's father hired, Mike Etoch, relayed the news, Larry decided to plead guilty to charges of burglary and theft along with his brother and James. Because Cooper couldn't afford his own lawyer Etoch was appointed to represented him as well. Larry made three jailbreaks from the police station in which he was held and ultimately received a three year prison sentence. However, the Arkansas State Supreme Court found his hand-written appeal so persuasive that they overturned his conviction in 1977.
Willie Lee Chambers served two years in the U.S. Army after graduating from Lee High School in 1972. In 1974, he moved to Detroit, Michigan, where his brother Danny had relocated four years earlier. After arriving in Motown, Willie took a job as a mail-carrier for the U.S. Postal Service.
Billy Joe, nicknamed "BJ", who would stop growing at 5'5", followed in his brothers' footsteps and moved to Detroit in 1978, two years after his parents divorced. Having left Marianna during his junior year of high school, BJ enrolled in Detroit's Kettering High School. He got an after-school job as a janitor for the Eastown Shoes company to bring in some money. BJ also began selling marijuana for Lee County native L.C. "Big Terry" Colbert out of the latter's convenience store -- The T and T. BJ met Colbert through Danny, who worked with Big Terry at a Dearborn, Michigan automobile plant. Colbert, who'd already established a marijuana business to supplement his income, opened the store after losing his job at the auto plant.
That same year, Larry was found in possession of several weapons stolen from a Marianna gun store and sent back to prison. Following his release the following year, Larry embarked on yet another robbery spree that he himself has estimated to have exceeded 100 Arkansas jewelry stores. His preferred method was gaining entry by drilling a hole through the store's ceiling after hours and subsequently stealing the goods from the deserted shop throughout the night.
In 1980, after BJ's girlfriend Niece (pronounced Neesey) gave birth to his son, Billy Chambers Jr., he dropped out of school and quit his job at the shoe store in order to sell marijuana full-time. The following year, Niece gave birth to BJ's daughter. Though some of BJ's client base consisted of adults who resided in Grosse Pointe, Michigan due to his apartment's proximity to the predominately white city (which is located eight miles east of downtown Detroit), the majority of his customers were minority high school students from Detroit. He routinely generated between $200-$400 per day from marijuana sales.
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| Otis Chambers |
In September of 1981, Larry and a fellow-parolee stole a money order machine from an Arkansas post office and proceeded to sell money orders themselves. The following month, he joined Willie and BJ in Detroit. Larry was arrested by an undercover U.S. Postal Inspector at a motel in Highland Park, Michigan at a would-be meeting to sell stolen money orders which actually turned out to be a sting set up by his accomplice. After being convicted of stealing government property, Larry received a four-year prison sentence and was sent to USP Leavenworth (United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth), a medium-security federal prison located 25 miles northwest of Kansas City, Kansas. Determined to be productive during his stay, the illegal businesses that Larry established in prison (including organized gambling and extortion) brought him about $50,000. During one of his many prison stints, Larry scored a 140 (which denotes an intelligence approaching genius levels) on an IQ test administered by a psychiatrist.
In 1982, BJ decided to apply what he'd learned under Colbert's mentorship and opened Willie's Retail Store with Willie on the corner of Detroit's Kerchival and St. Clair. Using the money he'd saved while working for the postal service, Willie also opened a car wash next to the store. For his part, BJ, who was supplied by Colbert, sold both marijuana and heroin out of both locations.
In January of 1983, Willie opened a convenience store on the Lower East Side of Detroit and employed BJ, who used it as a base for selling marijuana. Following a police raid of the store, renamed BJ's Party Store, BJ relocated his operation to low-priced houses that he'd purchased. BJ's operation soon expanded to include not only Willie but his brothers Danny, Joe and David as well as his best friend Jerry "J-Man" Gant and Terry "Little Terry" Colbert, Colbert's little brother and son, respectively. BJ paid Little Terry, a native of Hughes, Arkansas, who'd initially moved to Detroit in April in order to work for his father, approximately $400 per week to sell marijuana. BJ also recruited Willie "Boogaloo" Driscoll and Perry "P-Boy" Coleman -- two of Niece's brothers. In 1984, BJ started selling crack cocaine, which Coleman (Niece's older brother) had introduced him to. Following the switch to crack, Colbert worked his way up from making $1,000 weekly to $3,000. With the drug's explosion in popularity in Detroit, the Chambers quickly established a large-scale crack-cocaine operation on the city's lower east side.
That August, BJ was arrested and charged with assault after he and Joe, nicknamed "Yo-Yo", fought a pair of Detroit police officers who'd pulled BJ over in front of his home. On September 1, Officer John Autrey, working undercover, purchased three bags of crack from Elayne Coleman Lucas at BJ and Danny Chambers' two-family Gray Street home. On September 3, Labor Day, BJ, Danny, their cousin Alvin "Frog" Chambers and Lucas were arrested following a raid of BJ and Danny's Gray Street home during which 2,000 packages of crack were seized. On September 10, police conducted another raid of the home, though no arrests were made. Seeking a respite from the increasing police scrutiny, BJ soon moved back to the Marianna farm, where he remained for the following 10 months, leaving his brother David and Grant in charge of day-to-day operations.
Unable to ignore the fact that the business suffered in his absence, BJ moved back to Detroit in 1985 and fired almost all of his non-familial employees, including Driscoll and "Little Terry" Colbert. He recruited Detroit natives Anthonty "Tony the Tiger" Alexander and Eric "Fats" Wilkins and Marshall "Cadillac Mario" Glenn from Marianna. Glenn, who subsequently enlisted other Marianna youth, including James McKinney, to work for the organization, oversaw crackhouses and conducted pick-ups and drop-offs. The staff changes subsequently helped BJ to expand his operation from six crackhouses to 50.
That same year, Larry relocated to Detroit following his April 29 release from prison and in July founded the "Wrecking Crew", the enforcement arm of the organization. Larry recruited Arkansas-natives Roderick "Hot Rod" Byrd and William "Jack Frost" Jackson and the trio became the heart of the crew.
Known for their brutality, Larry and two members of the Wrecking Crew once attacked an employee with a lamp, two-by-four and a television set for fraudulently passing off plaster chips as $8 crack pieces to customers. Following the assault, the trio poured hot grease on the offender.
By contrast, BJ's management style was marked by lavish trips to Las Vegas and Florida for his employees, and more frequently, to Cincinnati, Ohio's Kings Island water park Sandusky, OH's Cedar Point amusement park.
Unsatisfied with limiting himself to physical pursuits, Larry enrolled at Wayne State University, Michigan's third-largest, where he studied music history and Spanish. He also began a relationship with Detroit teenager Belinda Lumpkin, whom he moved into the home he shared with David on the corner of Detroit's Gratiot Avenue and Knodell Street.
As the organization grew, the amount of product required to satisfy customer demand exceeded the quantity of cocaine that Terry Colbert was able to supply. As a consequence, BJ and Larry bypassed Colbert and began obtaining the coke, via an introduction by Perry Coleman, from the duo who provided the latter with his drugs in the first place - Sam "Doc" Curry and Art "AD" Derrick.
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| Willie Chambers |
In March of 1986, the Chambers purchased the red-brick four-story, 52-unit Broadmoor apartment building located at 1350 East Grand Boulevard in Detroit for $75,000 and used it as a base of operations, overseen by Larry. The building's apartments were taken over for use as drug processing labs, sales centers and/or storage spaces by either muscling or paying off the residents. Patricia Middleton, building manager David Havard's girlfriend, was hired to do Larry's bookkeeping and to do the cooking in the bar and grill that the latter established on the Broadmoor's first floor.
The building itself was divided into different departments. Buyers were escorted to the appropriate floor upon entering the structure on the first floor, where aside from the bar and grill, a pawn shop was housed. Powdered cocaine was sold on the third and fourth floors. Prostitutes could be found on those floors as well. A lounge could be found on the second floor where buyers could consume their products. Free shots of tequila were offered to buyers on weekends. At its peak, the Broadmoor was estimated to have brought in $100,000 in profit per day.
The youngest brother, Otis, spent his summers working with his brothers in Detroit while still a high school student.
The organization attracted customers with buy-one-get-one-free sales and by issuing discount coupons. Quality control checks were performed by having workers make undercover buys at crack houses where they weren't familiar to that location's employees.
Employees, a large number of whom were high school students recruited from Marianna, were provided with photo ID cards. The typical pay was $100 per day and workers were expected to be on-call 24 hours a day. As a result, many cut school to work 12-hour shifts in crack houses with chains on the doors and barred windows. They were expected to adhere to a strict set of rules posted in the crack houses, which included prohibitions against various actions such as: driving over the speed limit; wearing gold chains and expensive sneakers when transporting cash or drugs; and carrying drugs and cash simultaneously. Fines were levied against workers for committing various infractions, including: $50 for playing loud music while collecting or dropping off drugs and/or money; $100 for neglecting one's duties and failing to follow instructions; $300 for stealing and for getting high on the job; and $500 for discussing organization business with outsiders, bringing outsiders to work and for lying. Much of the organizations' workforce, upwards of 150 employees, was recruited from the brothers' native Marianna. The teens were hired in various capacities, including couriers, enforcers, cooks and sellers. These and other labor practices helped the Chambers to amass $55 million a year. They were so wealthy that they were nicknamed the "Cash Money Brothers".
At their peak, the Chambers' crack sales totaled an estimated $3 million per day, they employed 500 workers and ran 50% of Detroit's crack houses -- approximately 200. They supplied another 500. The organization averaged $42 million in profit per year from 1983 to 1988. The foursome also had plans to branch out to Flint, Michigan and Toledo, Ohio.
The Chambers used their vast wealth to purchase, among other things, vacation property in Jamaica. They even made video recordings parading examples of their fortune. One such recording features an exhibition of gold bathroom fixtures in one of the brothers' homes and huge stacks of cash. Another recorded scene features a high-ranking member of the organization saying, "Money, money, money. Fifty thousand here. Ain't no telling how much is up there. I'm going to buy me three cars tomorrow -- and a Jeep." Larry Chambers can also be seen commenting sarcastically about the cash, "I tell you what we can do. We can give it to the poor."
In February of 1986, Joe Chambers was released from federal prison after serving a two-year sentence stemming from a conviction for the theft of food stamps and postal order slips. On March 29, he was killed when a freight train collided with his vehicle in Marianna. Joe's funeral, attended by most of the organization's members, was held in Arkansas on April 4.
That May, his older brothers showed up in Marianna for Otis' high school graduation in three chauffered limousines.
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| Larry Chambers |
In early August, Patricia Middleton began working as a confidential informant for the DEA. At 1:30 pm on August 25, police conducted two simultaneous raids on property connected to the Chambers. In October, "Little Terry" Colbert also began working as a confidential informant for the DEA and provided information that directly led to a police raid on Larry's two-story Albion Street residence. A subsequent raid of a Knodell Street crack house yielded the discovery by police of a list of the organization's rules for employee conduct, nicknamed "the crack commandments".
However, business continued to prove fruitful and Larry showed his appreciation by treating his associates to a luxury cruise in Jamaica on New Year's Eve.
On April 24, 1987, at about 4:00 p.m., Otis and his girlfriend, who was driving with no license, were pulled over by police after failing to stop at a stop sign in Hughes, Arkansas on the way to Marianna. Following a search of the blue Corvette, which Otis said he'd borrowed from a friend, a green plastic bag containing $59,624 in cash was found behind the passenger seat by Hughes Police Chief Herbert Neighbors and his partner, who'd made the stop. Both Otis and the driver were taken to the police station. Chief Neighbors drove the Corvette to the station as well. The cash was ultimately seized by the IRS.
In September of 1987, local television station WXYZ-TV ran a program about the organization entitled "All in the Family". The program's host, Chris Hansen, would go on to host the popular reality series "To Catch a Predator" from 2004 to 2007. A videotape (one of nine) confiscated during a police raid of Larry's home and featuring he and associate M.C. Poole counting cash and discussing their wealth was aired during the week-long series. One videotape featured Larry's associate William "Jack" Jackson shaking a laundry basket filled with cash and declaring, "Fifty thousand here, ain't no telling how much up there. I'm going to buy me three cars tomorrow and a Jeep." Jackson asks Larry, who is off-camera, "Should we throw these ones away, man, since we've got $500,000?".
On September 12, David Chambers succumbed to AIDS-related complications. Members of the Wrecking Crew were arrested in mid-December following the unsealing of federal grand jury indictments. Larry was arrested on December 19 when police executing a search warrant on an apartment on Detroit's East Outer Drive found him in the bathroom. They also discovered cocaine on the kitchen table and a gun in an open cabinet above the stove. He was denied bail after being deemed a flight risk.
BJ was arrested at his home on Detroit's Beaconsfield Street on January 31, 1988. He was found in possession of a handgun and seven ounces of cocaine.
Following an 18-month long investigation, the brothers were taken into custody in February of 1988. During the arrest, Detroit police officers and DEA agents seized 250 weapons, 68 vehicles, six kilograms of cocaine and $1 million in cash and jewelry.
BJ's book "Prodigy Hustler"
Twenty-two members of the Chambers Organization were named in a 15-count indictment on February 29, 1988. The defendants named included: Larry Chambers; BJ Chambers; Willie Lee Chambers; Otis Chambers; Jerry Lee Gant; Eric Lamar Wilkins; Marshall Glenn; Belinda Lumpkin; and Elayne Coleman Lucas, who was arrested September 3, 1984. The charges included: running a continuing criminal enterprise; conspiracy with the intent to possess and distribute controlled substances; possession with the intent to distribute and distribution of controlled substances; possession of a firearm during a drug trafficking crime; and tax evasion.
U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan Roy C. Hayes oversaw the prosecution of the group. By the time the trial proceedings began, four of the defendants had entered guilty pleas and four others remained at large. Though most of the defendants were tried by a jury, Willie Lee Chambers was tried by a judge. During the September trial, former Chambers employee, 19-year-old Felicia Gilchrist, who was given immunity by the government, testified that she worked 24-hour shifts selling crack through a hole cut into a wall. She explained that she sometimes shared shifts with her 14-year-old sister, Alicia, and took her newborn to work with her when the baby was a week old. "Little Terry" Colbert testified that he jumped out of a window after being beaten with a baseball bat and shot in the left leg on Otis' orders following a July 1987 argument between Colbert's uncle and Chambers. The attack ended Colbert's career as a crack dealer pulling in a $3,000-a-week income. After fleeing his assailants, Colbert was treated at Detroit Receiving Hospital. Both Colbert and James McKinney testified to Glenn's involvement in the organization. Perry Coleman testified on behalf of the government for a half-hour as part of a plea agreement that would reduce his conspiracy sentence from 25 years to 5. However, on his second day of testimony he recanted, which led to the dismissal of the indictment against two defendants. Coleman cited his fear for the safety of his own and his wife's safety as the reason for his retraction.
Later in 1988, one of the organization's lieutenants, Carl Young, was arrested in California and subsequently charged with conspiracy in Michigan.
The charges against four of the defendants were dismissed and another was acquitted. On October 28, all four brothers and five other members of their organization were convicted on conspiracy charges. In addition to the conspiracy charges, Otis was also convicted of cocaine possession and Larry and B.J. were also convicted of operating a continuing criminal enterprise. Wilkins and Lumpkin, both minors, were found guilty of conspiracy to distribute, and conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute, crack and marijuana.
The nine co-defendants were sentenced on March 25, 1989. Willie Chambers was given 21 years in prison and a $350,000 fine; Otis received a 27-year term and a $350,000 fine; Billie Joe was handed 45 years and a $500,000 fine; and Larry was sentenced to life in prison and a $250,000 fine. Eric Wilkins was sentenced to 34 years in prison to be served after the completion of a 13 1/2 to 20-year sentence for a state conviction; both Marshall Glen and Jerry Lee Gant received 30-year sentences; Belinda Lumpkin was given a 25-year prison term; and Elayne Lucas was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
In 2006, BJ published his book "Prodigy Hustler" while still incarcerated. Willie was released from prison in August of 2007. BJ was released in December of 2010. In November of 2011, Otis was released as well. Larry remains incarcerated at USP Terre Haute, a high-security federal prison located in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Billy Joe Chambers
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