Background: Police started a pursuit of Bully Gang member Frank “Spazz” Gillespie on Troy Avenue and Bergen Street in Brooklyn, New York, after a shooting (image via Google Maps). Insets, left to right: Photos of Moeleek Harrell, Derrick Ayers, Frank Gillespie and Anthony Kennedy (via U.S. Attorney’s Office).
Following a 13-week trial — and a sprawling yearslong investigation — a federal jury in New York has convicted key leaders of the “Bully Gang,” a violent crew based in Brooklyn accused of stalking and shooting their victims, trafficking drugs in and out of the notorious Rikers Island thanks to an effective bribery scheme and committing a series of other crime that prosecutors said left a trail of terror in its wake.
It took jurors 12 days to deliberate. U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan presided.
The Justice Department announced the verdicts of “Bully Gang” leaders Moeleek Harrell, 34, Derrick Ayers, 37, Franklin Gillespie, 33, and Anthony Kennedy, 38, on Tuesday. Each man was convicted of racketeering, drugs or firearms charges though jurors deadlocked on some of the murder charges prosecutors brought tied to the slayings of three “Bully Gang” rivals.
The four men are among the very last members of the “Bully Gang” to be tried. Prosecutors said that since 2020, authorities sought to take down the 53-member gang piece by piece, and now 49 members have been convicted in total and only three defendants await trial. Just one gang member is still considered a fugitive, the Justice Department said this week.
Jurors convicted Ayers of murdering Jonathan Jackson in March 2018 following a gender reveal party in Brooklyn for fellow “Bully Gang” leader Moeleek Harrell. Jurors convicted Gillespie of conspiring to murder rival Mike Hawley in April 2020. Evidence showed Gillespie was trying to stop Hawley from talking to police about the murder of a man named Paul Hoilet in Brooklyn that same month. Hawley was murdered in Queens, New York, just days after Gillespie launched the conspiracy to kill him. According to the Justice Department, Ayers and Harrell were found guilty of conspiring to murder Jackson by implementing a plot: the men accessed public databases and scoured records for tickets issued to cars belonging to their rivals.
That stalking culminated in no less than three shooting incidents in 2017 and 2018 in which members of the “Stukes Gang” were shot or injured. One such episode of stalking led to the attempted slaying of a former “Bully Gang” member, Chris King. Prosecutors say Ayers and Harrell plotted his murder, even tracking dates when King was to appear in court. The feud between the three men began after King killed a former “Bully.”
King was not killed after he was shot outside of a restaurant in Queens, however. Both he and a woman he was with at the time were wounded but survived the attempt on his life.
Prosecutors said Tuesday that jurors also convicted Harrell, Ayers, Gillespie and Kennedy of a number of gun charges including illegal possession of a firearm and illegal brandishing and discharging of firearms.
Ultimately, the prison sentences for the men range anywhere between 15 to 55 years once sentenced. However, according to a report by the New York Daily News, there is potential for a retrial for charges the jurors deadlocked on.
“Their criminal enterprise is a shell of the violent crew that wreaked havoc on Bedford-Stuyvesant, other parts of New York City and the Eastern Seaboard with murder, broad daylight shootings, robberies, arsons, drug trafficking and bribery,” Breon Peace, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said Tuesday.
“They used force against their rivals, terrorized the surrounding communities and enriched themselves and their members with the illicit proceeds of their criminal activities,” Pearce added.
From the courtroom this week, the New York Daily News reported that through his attorney, Harrell — the alleged leader and co-founder of the “Bully Gang” — tried to persuade jurors that he couldn’t possible be responsible for any of the charges since he has been incarcerated for the last few years. His attorney Darren Fields told jurors the state’s case against him was built only on innuendo and “guesswork.”
But prosecutors argued that key records in evidence, including GPS tracking records, cellphone data and more, connected the dots to the crimes. There was also testimony by former gang members turned informant.
The New York Daily News reported that at least one former Rikers Island correction officer testified about how he smuggled comic books dipped in K2 into the prison where Harrell was detained. K2 is a synthetic marijuana substance and can come in a liquid form, making it easy to slather pages of books with it, allow them to dry and then smoke or ingest them.
The Justice Department said Harrell and Kennedy smuggled the drug-soaked books into Rikers Island for at least two years, selling off the goods to fellow inmates at a profit. Those profits were then laundered through CashApp accounts or other intermediaries and then the money was used to buy more K2 or bribe Rikers officials.
Jurors also found Harrell, Ayers, Kennedy and Gillespie guilty of overseeing schemes to traffic cocaine base — commonly known as crack — as well as heroin and fentanyl over state lines.
At trial, prosecutors said the gang members transported the drugs from New York and New Jersey to Maine, using “traps,” or concealed compartments in their cars, to move the narcotics. The “Bully Gang” members would use stash houses in Maine to sell the drugs but it was Ayers, the jury concluded, who oversaw the conspiracy to sell them out of those houses.
At trial, Harrell maintained his innocence, saying the “Bully Gang” wasn’t a gang but a rap group he started with childhood friends over a decade ago. One of those founding members was shot, and according to prosecutors, Harrell made it his business to track down his friend’s killer and seek revenge. Prosecutors said it was Chris King — who was nearly killed outside of the Queens restaurant — who killed Harrell’s friend.
In the end, the lucrative drug trade allowed all of the defendants and their fellow “Bully” members to buy expensive clothes, cars and jewelry and prosecutors said Harrell and Ayers quickly learned to launder their cash by having co-conspirators, including some who had “legitimate jobs” to make what were ostensibly legal purchases, the Justice Department said.
A statement from the Justice Department also notes that Gillespie was convicted of multiple robberies in 2020.
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