2ND TRY IN DRUG SLAYS
Feds indict 2 in ’92 gang hits
It’s a federal case of déjà vu for a pair of accused Queens drug syndicate killers.
Alleged “Black Rain” gang cocaine and heroin slingers Darin (Satch) Hamilton, 60, and Jerome (Sha) Jones, 54, face brand-new federal indictments Wednesday for a pair of 1992 drug killings.
For Queens resident Hamilton, the charges were a blast from the past: He was acquitted of murder in 1997 by a Queens jury in the killing five years earlier of Anthony (Juice) Lloyd, 26. And he pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the September 1992 street slaying of Robert Arroyo, a man suspected as a police informant.
Hamilton now faces two federal counts of intentional murder while engaged in narcotics trafficking for the death of Arroyo and for gunning Lloyd down over suspicions the victim was skimming some of his drug profits.
Because Hamilton was never previously charged with a federal crime in the killings, double jeopardy does not apply in either case, said John Marzulli, spokesman for the Brooklyn U.S. attorney.
“As today’s charges make clear, we will not let the passage of time deter us from bringing murderers to justice,” said Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue. “It is our hope that this prosecution will bring some measure of consolation to the families of the victims.”
Jones, who now lives in West Virginia, faces the same murder count as Hamilton in the Arroyo killing. Both men were also charged with conspiracy in the second killing.
The two suspects were accused of hiring a pair of their Black Rain cohorts in the summer of 1992 to execute Arroyo, killed by multiple gunshots on a crowded Queens street on Sept. 8, 1992. The shooters mistakenly targeted the wrong man in their first attempt, wounding an innocent victim who survived the botched hit.
Hamilton was accused of handling the Lloyd murder himself while serving as a lieutenant with the violent organization during its early ’90s heyday, when the operation serviced hundreds of daily drugusing customers.
A 1997 Queens Criminal Court prosecution of Hamilton ended with a mistrial during jury selection when a juror said that she feared for her safety given the murder of Lloyd. Two weeks later, another Queens jury acquitted Hamilton in the June 24, 1992, killing.
His guilty plea to manslaughter in the Arroyo case also covered a third murder charge involving a female Black Rain employee.
“The best investigators in the world do not ever forget victims, and they do not ever forget the justice that is owed to those victims’ families,” said NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill.
The South Ozone Parkbased drug organization was described by authorities as a major Eastern seaboard distributor of cocaine and 90% pure imported Nigerian heroin.
The crew sold its heroin under the brand name Black Rain, its powdered cocaine as White Lightning and its crack as Thunder.
Authorities arrested 21 suspects in September 1995 to dismantle the powerful organization with roots stretching back 25 years to its nascent days as a local street gang.