Napoleon: Life of an Outlaw

I was three years old when my mother and father

got murdered.

My father was African American.

My mother was Puerto Rican and Cuban.

He bought homes for his mother.

Successful businessman.

When my parents got killed,

it's some incidents that happened

during the murdering of my parents that I remember.

My oldest brother, he remember more than all of us.

'Cause I still remember that day as a clear memory

in my head, I'll never forget that day.

I was four years old, Mutah my brother, he was three,

and my youngest brother Kamil, he was four months, yeah.

At first, I seen my father get murdered

while talking on the telephone laying on the ground.

He was on the phone, he wasn't paying his friends,

or the guys that was so-called his friends,

he wasn't paying them no mind.

He let 'em in, said, "How you doing?"

Once he let 'em in, he just got back on the phone,

laid on the floor, and when I seen the guy,

I ran up to one of the guys and jumped in his arms

because I remember when I was small,

he was the guy who used to pick me up when he seen me.

And my brother, I believe my brother ran to the other guy

and put his arms out like that for the guy to pick him up.

I remember one of the guys who entered to the house,

he was actually my so-called godfather.

I remember sitting on his lap,

and I remember that he pushed me off his lap,

and I remember that this was a violent push.

Growing up, every time I think back

about how he pushed me off,

as a kid it felt like it was violent.

When he pushed me off, I just heard gunshots,

and I'm okay back then,

so I'm just standing around, at first I didn't know

where it was coming from until I seen the guns.

I seen my father, his chest was bleeding,

and he was just laying on the ground,

and I heard my mom scream.

Once my mother started screaming, she,

she grabbed my brother, he was the first thing she saw,

so she grabbed him and was running to,

we had a big house then, grabbed him

and was running to the back room,

and I remember one of the guys, when she slammed the door,

kicked the door in to the back room,

and my mother was, she couldn't go nowhere.

Her back was against the wall, and so he killed my mother

while she has her back against the wall.

After they murdered my parents,

me and my brothers, we was in the house

with the dead bodies for 24 hours, and I remember, as a kid,

that I was biting my mother trying to wake her up.

Laying there trying to wake our parents up,

and they wouldn't wake up, and we just fell asleep,

and the next morning, the guy my father

was on the phone with, he kept calling the house,

it kept being busy, so he just came over there

and that's when he discovered us.

I headed back, I was headed to Snoop's house.

Yes, both went out and took care of some business,

and as I was at the door, his cousin was driving up.

His cousin was Hakim.

As we opened the door,

Snoop was looking at me up on the floor.

Seemed like he had a bullet hole in his chest.

Pops, hey, I said pops was 8 a.m.,

that morning I received a call from my niece

saying my brother got shot.

Soon as he pushed this door,

my brother was laying right there.

Upon going to his bedroom, I saw my brother's friend

at the dining room table, slumped over.

Then, I find his wife curled up here on the floor.

Now that I checked the other bedroom on the first floor,

his three children were there,

and one was laying on the bed crying, Johnny's son.

As I picked him up, his other two sons woke up.

Mutah.

And, the community was in uproar because we was on edges.

We was, basically, we was in hiding

because we didn't know where were they,

or were they coming back, or were they coming for us?

We had no idea what the situation was.

The children, at an early age, a lot of Snoop's friends

coming to the house, they knew everybody came there,

and so they were able to identify one of the shooters

that killed their mother and father.

In all the time, it was my brother's so-called friends.

They were very close, I mean, they worked together.

They went out together, went on trips together.

Hey, matter fact, they came up all through the boys club,

west side, I mean, as far as 14, 15 years old.

They came up together.

These guys used to just literally, actually eat

at my mother's table, and my mother actually fed them.

They have slept in my mother's home,

and to see that,

it was uncalled for, first of all.

What it was behind, unknown, so.

Basically, my father, he was into,

he was a diamond dealer, he used to sell diamonds,

and at his age at this time, my father was around

28 years old, he had a lot of money,

he owned a lot of properties within New Jersey,

he was able to purchase houses for my grandmother,

my grandfather, he was driving out pink Cadillacs,

renting Sevilles when they first came out,

so he had a lot of attention and a flashy lifestyle,

which this lifestyle sometimes brings envy,

animosity, et cetera, so one of the guys

who was very close to my father

who was actually one of the guys who, like we said,

back in the day, was my godfather.

He had been to, one day, he owed my father some money,

and he decided to, basically, instead of paying my father

the money, he decided to pay some people a less amount

of money to put a hit out on my mother and father.

So what happened, you had a driver outside,

and two shooters inside, and the other two

was sitting back in the cut waiting for the phone call

when the hit was done, so it was, in all actuality,

it was five, but it was three that came to this house.

Everyone in the city, in the surrounding area

was aware of the aftermath of the murder.

Was there going to be a second killing?

Was there going to be a return of these killers

to come back to try and kill the children?

It was tense, the people was threatening,

if they catch my brother they're gonna kill him.

They was trying to intimidate our family.

I remember one incident, I was on the porch.

Me, my aunt, and a few other, my brothers and my cousins,

we was on the porch and some of the people

that was affiliated with the people that killed

my mother and father, they rolled up on the block

at my grandmother's house, and when they got in front

of our house, they tried to slow down,

they tried to stare at us, intimidate us,

and I remember my aunt, she grabbed us

and made us run in the house, she was afraid,

so she said, "Come on, run in the house."

And, my brother Moonie, he was, we never had a discussion

about the death of my mother and father.

We never spoke about it with each other.

It's more hard for him because

he remembered the most out of all of us.

He even had to go to the courthouse and point everybody out.

One question, did you see anybody here

who killed your parents?

And he pointed, he said, "That's who killed

"my mommy and daddy," and they took him off the stand.

That's that one question, they pointed,

said, "That's who killed my mommy and daddy."

The people that got convicted, they're in prison.

The main ones that have life in prison,

I heard a few of them came home, but the one

who was the main shooter and got the most charges

put against him, he got life in prison.

So, from after the death of my mother and father,

me and my brothers, we went to move with my grandparents,

the parents of my father, and this was

a very packed household 'cause my grandmother was

one of them ladies that she don't say no to no one,

so we had other relatives in the house,

aunties, uncles, cousins, it was a very packed house,

and she was a strong woman who basically,

she was the foundation of our household at this time.

My grandfather, he worked at nights,

so he slept during the day, so the one who was

in control of the house was actually my grandmother.

She was the one that was taking care of us,

she's the one that was putting the rules down,

she was basically the head of the household at this time.

She basically was the glue that kept my family together.

Growing up, since I can remember, Mu, he was a normal child.

He did okay in school when he felt like it.

We didn't take school serious.

Soon as school was over, we hung on the block.

We went to Chess Ave, which was our neighborhood

which was our block, and we just hung on the block.

My brothers and my cousins, they were selling drugs,

and me and my younger cousins and younger brother,

we would just be out there with the drug dealers.

That's how we spent our days.

I thought this was normal because, since a very young age,

that's all I seen, so I thought that

this was the normal life, man, that you grow, you come up,

this is a quick way to make some money,

and it was only two sides.

To me, the only two sides of life was

either you're a crackhead or you're a drug dealer,

and it was one of them things growing up,

I used to have to say which side that I'ma be on.

It's almost, you gotta pick what side you wanna be on,

so we grew up, when you see the condition of the crackheads,

you grew up in fear of crackheads.