THE VOLATILE CAREER PATH OF A DRUG CORNER KINGPIN

He was just another kid on just another corner in the deadliest city in the
nation.

Leroy Watson Jr., nicknamed "Love," attended Paul Junior High School in
Northwest Washington's Brightwood neighborhood when crack cocaine arrived
1986. Cars crawled by day and night, and crack vials and dollar bills were
everywhere.

Watson became a student of this world, slinging dope and running errands
for dealers on 10th and V streets NW in the Shaw neighborhood. He watched
as homicides doubled, tripled, quadrupled and quintupled.

In 1992, Watson made his career move and executed his drug boss, a
40-year-old named Franklin Michael Carter. He inherited a $2 million-a-year
business, according to police.

Watson's rise and eventual fall in 1996 neatly encompass the deadliest 10
years in the city's history. His was a progression -- charted in police and
court records and interviews with family, friends and detectives -- that
mirrored the decade, from selling marijuana to heroin and crack, from
carrying a knife to wielding a Glock, from a gangling want-to-be drug
dealer to king of a drug corner.

It was a path trodden by thousands of black male teenagers in Washington,
with tragic consequences for themselves and their victims.

Leroy Watson Jr. was born in 1970, into a family where both parents worked.
His nickname had an obvious provenance. "Leroy had that big smile, and he'd
beg for a hug," recalled his father, Leroy Watson Sr., who is a
construction worker. "He was the love of our life; so we named him 'Love.' "

Two years later, Watson and his wife divorced. There's no love lost, but he
doesn't blame their son's fate on her. "It's hard in this day for a single
parent," Watson said. "I saw Leroy all the time, but he just started to
drift away."

By the time Watson Jr. was 15, he tooled around on a red bike, selling dope
for Carter. Many evenings, he would sit on the steps of Garnet-Patterson
Junior High School and count his daily dope money.

Watson Jr. recruited his drug crew from the same school; a reader can leaf
through a 1985 Garnet-Patterson yearbook and pick out their faces and
coltish smiles. Under his guidance, they would shed their collective
innocence like a skin.

One day, in the late 1980s, five officers served a search warrant on a
rowhouse on 10th Street. It was a nuisance complaint. But as the door
opened, seven teenage boys whom Watson had recruited bolted toward the back
window and fire escape. In the dark, a detective ran around to the alley.

"Police! Stop!" the detective recalled shouting. A metal object clattered
down the fire escape. It was a .357 magnum. Later, officers recovered six
fully loaded semiautomatic pistols in the apartment.

"They were on their way to waste a block of rivals," the police officer
remembered.

Watson Jr.'s adolescence was a blur of judgment days postponed. His first
felony arrest came at age 15, and he got probation. Time and again, he
flashed a smile that even the cops described as "angelic," and judges would
release him in his mother's custody.

"We offered to show the judge a videotape of Watson dealing dope on the
steps of the school but he wasn't interested," one officer recalled. "Leroy
had a complete disdain for the cops and courts."

Bad segued to worse. Two police officers who worked in the 3rd District and
investigated Watson allege that he killed several men, and that his crew
dispatched a few more. Their decision-making process was rather arbitrary,
police recall.

One night a man disrespected Watson Jr. at a nightclub. Said something, did
something or brushed up against someone, no one really remembers. The man
got into his red jeep and drove to a gas station on Georgia Avenue NW, as
Watson's crew trailed behind him. Before the man could get out of his car,
he was dead.

Police counted 96 bullet holes in his jeep.

A similar fate befell Carter, the husky, bearded dealer who ran the 10th
and V drug corner for years. He and a buddy were cruising on June 3, 1992,
checking out the turf, when Watson Jr. and two other youths pulled up
alongside in their own car. Someone in Watson's car pulled a gun and pumped
a bullet into the head of Carter's friend. Carter took off, driving half a
block before he lost control and crashed into a store window.

Watson Jr. jogged over, police say, and shot his former boss in the head.

"The point was to kill Carter publicly, so people would know who did it,"
recalled an officer. "That's how you established your rep. He knew no one
would squeal."

Watson was arrested and charged with the murder. But it was 1992. Gangs had
killed several witnesses in spectacular fashion. The sole witness to
Carter's killing moved to Chicago and suffered sudden memory loss. Within
months, Watson walked free.

Several years later, police arrested Watson on drug charges. He did time in
Lorton, and was 26 before he got out and tried to reclaim his corner. Now
his own young lieutenants made a business decision.

They ambushed him at midnight. Shot him many times. Leroy Watson Jr., R.I.P.

Watson Sr. remembers the 2 a.m. telephone call. It was his sister: "Love"
was dead. He got out of bed, kissed his three young children as they slept
(Watson Sr. is remarried and fiercely protective of his children), and
drove to the drug corner.

"I knew where he was killed without asking," he said. "I just needed to see
it."

At the funeral, Watson Sr. offered his hand to the detective investigating
his son's death. The detective extended his left hand; his right hand
clasped a shotgun under his overcoat. The police feared that Watson's
former lieutenants might show up at the funeral and kill more of their rivals.

The father shudders, his eyes and body constricted with more pain than he
can give voice to. In a whisper, he renders the most terrible judgment a
father could imagine.

"It may be just as well Leroy didn't survive," he said. "If he'd made it,
the first thing that would have come to his mind was revenge."

© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company