Rayful Edmond, who stoked a crack cocaine epidemic in Washington in the 1980s and later cooperated with prosecutors to bring down cocaine traffickers years after he was sentenced to life in prison, died on Tuesday in Florida. He was 60.
Kristie Breshears, a spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, confirmed his death. She said she had no information on the cause.
Mr. Edmond had been living at a halfway house in Miami, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Calls to the house were not immediately answered.
Mr. Edmond, who was sentenced to life in prison at 25, was one of the most powerful drug lords in nation’s capital in the 1980s. His profile grew as charges against him were aired in court. Prosecutors accused him of distributing up to one-third of the cocaine in the city during a period when Washington had the nation’s worst murder rate. They said his drug empire moved 400 pounds of cocaine and generated up to $2 million per week.
Mr. Edmond oversaw an 150-member drug ring that employed minors and imported cocaine from around the country, prosecutors said. His success financed a lavish lifestyle that included luxury cars and designer goods, they said. Mr. Edmond denied being involved in drug dealing during the case.
As his influence grew in the late 1980s, he was seen with stars from the Georgetown Hoyas basketball team. That prompted the team’s coach, John Thompson, to request a meeting. In his biography, Mr. Thompson said he urged Mr. Edmond to keep his players out of trouble.
Mr. Edmond shared his wealth with loyal friends, even giving children in his neighborhood $100 bills, according to prosecutors and testimony. But prosecutors said that his enterprise devastated lives, and they charged him with three counts of murder.
His trial for drug trafficking charges became a test case for prosecuting suspected drug lords who are feared in the communities where jurors live. Jurors were separated from spectators by bulletproof glass and their identities were kept secret. A key informant whose name was accidentally disclosed in court was later shot in the leg.
Mr. Edmond was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole in 1990, after a jury convicted him of running a criminal drug enterprise. He was not convicted of the murder charges.
“I think that me and my family and my friends all should have been found not guilty,” he told The Washington Post after his conviction. “All of us are loving, caring people who have kids. We’re just like everyone else in Washington, D.C.”
At first, even from prison, he did not stop drug trafficking.
Mr. Edmond was trafficking more cocaine while in prison than he had outside, then-Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder told the television program “60 Minutes” in 1997. He expanded his operations after building deeper connections with drug traffickers while in prison, Mr. Holder said.
His success led the Justice Department to create a task force to curb the proliferation of drug trafficking in prisons. He pleaded guilty in 1996 to brokering deals between D.C. dealers and Colombian drug cartels from a Pennsylvania prison.
Mr. Edmond eventually became a major informant. He testified as a government witness in cases that led to the convictions of other cocaine traffickers, participated in covert sting operations, and fed the government information on the killings of two inmates in a Pennsylvania prison.
“A lot of my friends from my neighborhood lost their lives because I brought drugs into the community,” he told “60 Minutes” in 1997. “I feel bad about them. Back then, I was just thinking about the power.”
Information on his survivors was not immediately available.
Rayful Edmond III was born on Nov. 26, 1964, in Washington, D.C. to Constance Perry and Rayful Edmond II. His parents were government workers and he grew up in a tightknit household with 20 to 30 relatives squeezed into the home, he said in a 1990 Washington Post interview.
But money was tight, and Mr. Edmond was exposed to the drug trade at a young age when he saw his parents dealing. His mother told “60 Minutes” that she sold diet pills illegally, and said that her son was drawn to the lifestyles of friends who were also dealers.
“He saw the fast money, or he saw them driving big cars and he said: Hey man, how did you do this?” she said.
Mr. Edmond briefly enrolled in classes at the University of the District of Columbia before dropping out, he said in interviews, and tried his hand at being a cook. But the paydays from drug dealing were too appealing.
“My mother always wanted a nice big house and I wanted to be able to buy that for her one day,” he said.
Years later, his decision to cooperate with the authorities would put him in danger. The government placed him in a witness protection program for his own safety and transferred him to an undisclosed prison, where he lived under a different name.
It also led to the arrest and conviction of more than 100 drug dealers, the government said.
“I am sorry for everybody I hurt, for everybody I disappointed,” he said in a 2019 court hearing over a motion to reduce his sentence, The Washington Post reported. “If I ever get the opportunity, I will do my best and whatever it takes to make up for all of my crimes.”
The attorney who had prosecuted him, John Dominguez, was among his supporters at the hearing. “He made a decision to show everyone that he had changed,” Mr. Dominguez said, according to Post, adding that “he was no longer the same 24-year-old that I prosecuted, and who I argued in 1990 should be put in jail for life.”
In 2021, Mr. Edmond’s sentence was reduced from life to twenty years. A federal court in Washington pointed to the “unparalleled magnitude” of his cooperation. His release had been scheduled for November 2025.
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