BONUS: Blood Feud (The Real Murders Of Atlanta)

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We are bringing you a special bonus episode today from Oxygen True Crimes hit series, Real Murders of Atlanta, airing on Oxygen True Crime on Fridays at 9-8 Central.

You can also watch full episodes live or on demand on the free oxygen app by clicking the link in our description.

Enjoy.

A terrifying public execution in the parking lot of a busy public hospital.

The most obvious evidence was the victim's white Audi A7 that had six bullet holes in the back window.

And to the right of that are six shell casings laying on the ground.

There were several witnesses that observed two males that were outside the parking deck.

A beloved Atlanta rapper, Melvin Vernell III, aka Little Fat, whose rising star is brutally extinguished.

He was a young, talented kid that had a promising rap career in front of him.

Did the quest for fame in Atlanta's infamous rap scene lead to dangerous decisions?

There is this expectation to portray this street credibility,

even if it gets them in trouble.

In the desperate hunt for the killer, can confidential informants be trusted?

I was shocked to learn that this guy was a CI for the FBI.

He kept the books for the Russian mob.

So I know there were some rumors about there being some disagreements between Lolfad and Boozy over the residuals.

The perfect storm was starting to evolve.

Sometimes success can come with a deadly price.

We begin to get a clearer picture of this was more of a targeted hit rather than a random shooting.

This really gets freaky.

Somebody was literally hunting him down like a dog.

Just a stone's throw north of Atlanta, Sandy Springs is among the nicest of the leafy suburbs the the metro area has to brag about.

Sandy Springs is a city that sits on top of Atlanta, Georgia.

It's a very diverse city.

It's one of the newest cities in Georgia.

We have very affluent people that live here.

As a community that prides itself in having the best of everything, It's no surprise that they boast on one of the country's most renowned maternity wards.

Northside Hospital is like the baby factory of the United States where so many lives and happy memories are developed because people are giving birth there.

But one night in June of 2012, the miracle of birth and tragedy of death collide.

It was around 6.40 p.m.

and the dispatchers dispatched units to Northside Hospital in the parking lot at the Women's Center.

There's a person shot.

We had an officer come over the radio and say they need a detective, so we knew it was going to be something of a larger scale.

We didn't know if we had an active shooter.

The shooter might still be in the area.

Were they on scene?

We did have a tactical unit clear the parking deck at every level to ensure that the suspects were gone.

The victim had been removed from the car by hospital staff at that time and rushed into the hospital to perform life-saving measures.

Approximately 10 to 15 minutes after my arrival, I was informed that he had been pronounced dead in in the emergency room.

The most obvious evidence was the victim's white Audi A7

that was in a parking space partially out that had six bullet holes in the back window.

And to the right of that are six shell casings laying on the ground.

Detectives note that these aren't just any shell casings.

They're specifically designed to work in only one particular semi-automatic pistol.

We knew the murder weapon used was a Glock 357 SIG, which is a Glock handgun that has ported barrels.

Inside the car, investigators find blood on the driver's seat and dashboard and a gun on the floor.

The victim had a Glock 9mm handgun with an extended magazine.

The gun was fully loaded with a 30-round magazine and one round in the chamber.

It had not been fired.

It appears the shooting had been an ambush.

The victim laying on a hospital bed with four bullet wounds in his back is a young black man in his late teens.

He has no ID on him, so all the police have to go on is the car in the parking garage.

When we ran the license plate of the audi the victim was in and determined the owner of the vehicle was a male that lived out in Covington, Georgia, we obtained a picture of the owner.

We then texted the detective over in the emergency room that picture.

He looked at the victim to which he stated they are two totally separate people.

So we then utilized a fingerprint scanner and scanned our victim and was able to determine he was Melvin Vernell III.

When they run Melvin's name through the police database, investigators find only a recent traffic stop.

Police need to determine why this 19-year-old was in the parking lot of this prominent maternity ward.

At that time, we only knew him as Melvin Vernell III and had no knowledge of why he was there.

We were really concentrating on figuring that out.

You know, he had to be there for a reason.

Another piece of evidence I got was when my commander handed me a bag with over $5,000 in cash from the victim's front right pants pocket.

The victim was in possession of two cell phones.

One of them continued to ring with the name Baby Ma on the screen.

We applied for a search warrant for phone records.

While detectives wait for the search warrant to clear in order to investigate the victim's phone, police continue to work the scene.

We immediately begin to canvass the area and several witnesses observed two males outside the parking deck just before this shooting happened.

Witnesses consistently described the suspects as a tall, black male, muscular build, approximately 6'1, 185 pounds.

And the shooter, who had a black gun, was approximately 5'4 with a short afro.

There was a camera approximately 15 feet away in the parking deck.

When you look at the car and you look over your left shoulder, there's the little bubble.

I mean, there's the camera.

And we were very excited.

Unfortunately, Northside Hospital at that time, were still utilizing VHS tapes.

When they ejected it and pulled it out, the machine had been eating the tape.

So we were unable to obtain any video whatsoever.

The evidence was destroyed.

It was heartbreaking.

When we got the search warrant signed for the victim's cell phones, 30 minutes later, somebody called him.

So I answered the phone.

A young lady stated that was her fiancé's phone.

She was upstairs in labor and delivery, high risk, was on bed rest.

I was in a hospital because I was going into labor labor with my daughter.

They was trying to prevent me from going to labor because I was only seven and a half months.

I'll call Fat Foam and he wasn't answering.

And finally,

the detective, he was like, this is like Sandy Spring Police.

Detective Williams heads into the hospital to handle the unenviable task of delivering the devastating news.

to Melvin's fiancée.

The death notification that we gave Donise Frazier was very hard when you're holding her hand and you have to explain to her.

And I regret to inform you that your fiancé was shot and murdered a few minutes ago outside.

That was very hard.

I didn't know what to think would happen.

It was just like, I've never felt something that bad that happened to me ever.

When you have a case like this, you've got to jump into this kid's lifestyle head-on and conduct a victimology.

find out who he's hanging out with what he's doing is there a beef

investigators question melvin's fiancé who says that he's a local celebrity in atlanta's music scene i was told that the victim was a rapper and that he went by the name little fat

apparently he was up and coming in the music industry and did concerts routinely throughout the area so the thing about little fat little fat is melvin fornell Jr.'s son, the head of Trill Entertainment.

He was one of many teen stars to kind of stand out and make the label the success story that it is today.

His debut mixtape was a collaboration with DJ Khaled.

He was really being set up for success.

I met Fat after a show at Denny's.

And then we exchanged numbers that night.

So we just always like text and kept in contact.

After like a year and a half when we started living together, then I got pregnant.

Me and Fat lived in Sandy Springs.

It was like a five-bedroom house.

It was nice, really nice.

And every time he would go on a road, he would bring his starter, something back, like candy, toys, anything.

He was a great father.

Investigators asked Lil Fatt's fiancé to take them through Fat's timeline of the day leading up to the murder.

Donald East Frazier walked us through where he was going.

We learned that Melvin Vernell had been out that day in Atlanta and later in the day he went up to the hospital room.

They talked for a little bit and he told her he was leaving and was going to go meet up with his crew and work on some records.

So we learned that he had walked out to the car to leave to go meet with his friends.

We obtained a search warrant for the victim, Melvin Vernell, house, to see if there was anything there that might have have any evidentiary value.

We got there and the back door was kicked in.

We didn't know what to think at that time, but if we were to put two and two together, possibly the people that killed him went looking for him at the house first and then found him at the hospital.

Which then became concerning for us because at that time we're beginning to now realize he was targeted.

Somebody was waiting on him.

Somebody wanted him dead.

Hey,

something's not right about this.

There's more to this than just a killing that had taken place in a parking deck.

He would rent these luxury vehicles to individuals in the game, you know, drug dealers, individuals who had large amounts of cash.

There were some rumors about there being some disagreements between Lolfat and Boozy over the residuals.

You got little Boozy, who was accused of committing multiple murders.

I felt like he was wanting to make a point.

Sandy Springs homicide detectives, like many in Atlanta's music scene, aren't sure if the murder of Melvin Lil Fat Vernell III is another hip-hop feud turned violent, or if it's something more personal.

What I remember about Lil Fat's death was that it was just hard to really make sense of it.

He was so young and he was still kind of coming up.

I think that is part of a larger and unfortunate phenomenon in hip-hop where we're seeing a lot of these artists die young, a lot of times because of shootings.

So, you know, people were just struggling to make sense of it.

Within hours of the shooting, detectives discover that Melvin's house has been ransacked and takes the investigation into a significantly ominous direction.

You could tell that somebody had been in there looking around,

trying to find something.

You could smell a strong odor of marijuana where large quantities of marijuana had been.

We thought that they may have found it and seized it.

With evidence of drugs taken from the victim's home and a public execution the next day,

it's no fluke for police.

The two crime scenes are obviously linked.

Possibly the people that killed him went there first looking for him and then

found him at the hospital.

That's now lending a lot of credence to that idea that this was a hit.

The biggest question we had is: how did they know he was at the hospital?

If we can determine how the suspects knew he was there, we felt that that would be very advantageous for us.

Following the trail of breadcrumbs, investigators must now question the owner of the car Lil Fat was driving.

So at about 10 o'clock that night, Detective Smith and I left for Covington, Georgia, to try to find and to meet the owner of the car, the Audi A7.

At about 11 o'clock, we arrived at his location.

The owner of the car was shocked when we showed up.

He was very standoffish.

He told us he was a truck driver.

So I began to ask him how somebody in his line of work could afford the Ford Mustang that was sitting outside his residence, as well as this Audi A7, which was a $74,000 car.

He then began to explain to us that he would buy the car and then would send the car to a rental business and the car would be paid off in about one year's time as people would rent the car and drive it all over.

So we began to ask questions to determine who he rented it to.

And he told us that he would rent the car to Global Elite and that he would have to have the person that handles all of that, the owner of the company, Manny Chapayev, give us a phone call at a later time.

Manny Chapaya would rent these luxury vehicles to individuals in the entertainment industry, the professional sports industry, and also individuals in the game, you know, drug dealers, individuals who had large amounts of cash.

I mean, you know, having the latest and greatest luxury vehicle is a part of the image.

And so Manny provided that image to many people here in the city of Atlanta.

Manny called me late that night, 30 minutes after midnight.

He said he had rented the car to the victim, Littlefat, and that he'd get me a contract and a driver's license the next day.

It was a very short conversation.

This guy is being very evasive.

He had no intent of staying on the phone for any length of time.

I got in touch with Detective Williams and said, hey,

something's not right about this.

There's more to this than just a killing that had taken place in a parking deck.

Suspicious of Chopayev's lack of cooperation, detectives continue their examination of the luxury car entrepreneur, while Melvin's devastated family decides he needs to be laid to rest where he was born.

Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

We wanted to go down to the funeral as we're doing the victimology, continuing studying Melvin Vernell.

we also want to show our respects to the family.

There was a lot of publicity on social media when the family announced that they were going to do the burial in Baton Rouge.

You had people from all over the United States of America, different groups saying, you know, we're going to come, we're going to represent.

A lot of folks in the hip-hop community responded, you know, expressing their condolences.

The overall response was just that, wow, he was so young and we hadn't heard everything that we were meant to hear from Lil Fatt.

But detectives learn that there seems to be one of Fat's fellow rappers from Baton Rouge that isn't so sorry that Lil Fat is gone.

Lil Boozy had been convicted of gun and drug charges and had an eight-year sentence to serve.

So he was in Angola State Prison.

Boozy was being called the Tupac of the South when he was coming up.

When folks look to people like Boosie, they're looking for authentic street rap.

I call it outlaw rap.

It's like stick up rap.

You know, lots of gun talk, but I think when folks think of Boozy, they think of somebody who's being like super authentic, who like is really reporting from the streets.

Lil Boozy came up through social media.

We began noticing people were making comments online that Lil Boozy was frustrated with Melvin Vernell.

They're out here doing shows and making money while he's stuck in prison where they should be giving some of that money back to his family, helping them out while he's in jail.

So I know there were some rumors about there being some disagreements between Lolfat and Boozy over the residuals.

So we're beginning to think, you got little Boozy who was accused of committing multiple murders.

I felt like he was wanting to make a point, trying to make a name for himself.

We looked into the little Boozy angle with the Baton Rouge Police Department and investigators from the district attorney's office.

They have a system down there where they have investigators that listen to all of the jail phone calls going in and out.

And

the morning after the murder, a young lady had called Lil Boozy and said, hey, I got some bad news.

Did you hear about Lil Fat?

And he said, no, what's up?

And she goes, he was gunned down last night.

And you can hear Lil Boozy start screaming and yelling and slamming the phone down, yelling, no, no, no.

He was very upset.

You could tell he was caught off guard by it.

We then went through all of Lil Boozy's phone calls.

There was absolutely no connection whatsoever.

Literally, we came out pretty much ruling out anything that had happened in Baton Rouge.

It is frustrating, but when you work a murder, you have to follow the evidence.

You can't pick and choose where you go.

You follow lady evidence, wherever she takes you, is wherever you go.

This tip came in, we investigated it, we cleared it, and we're moving on.

It is frustrating, though.

So

I went back home, and then it got really odd because the next day, a special agent with FBI Atlanta wanted to talk to me and possibly had information on our murder and that this stemmed from some drugs that had been stolen.

That's now lending a lot of credence to that idea that this was a hit.

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In June of 2012, detectives worked frantically to solve the case of Melvin Vernell III and obtain justice for his devastated young widow and children.

What stood out to me was when the nurse, she said that she tried her best to save him and she still could smell his cologne.

Like

that was like the one thing that stood out to me because she said that he was trying so hard, but it's just like he couldn't make it.

I just still remember that all the time.

Investigators have a unique trail of evidence to follow.

None so far has led to a name of Melvin's killer.

As detectives continue to chase every lead, they get a call from the Atlanta office of the FBI.

The FBI agent calls me and discloses that he had a confidential informant that had named specific suspects pertaining to our murder.

The agent told me that the source was a registered informant, had been deemed reliable and credible, specifically that he was very good.

and had provided them with some really good information in the past.

Detectives zero in on the two suspects given to them by the FBI's informant.

The suspects were Gary Bradford, aka El Dorado Red, and DeSensei White, a.k.a.

Grizz.

We began to research and we learned very quickly that El Dorado Red is part of the Bang Get Money Gang in Montgomery, Alabama.

Very violent, very, very involved in guns and distribution of marijuana and cocaine.

Eldorado Red is the shot caller or what they call the OG of the criminal street gang known as BGM.

He has a whole bunch of foot soldiers.

El Dorado Red's significant criminal history puts him a top investigator's suspect list.

But DeSensei White, aka Grizz, seems out of place in the middle of a murder investigation.

Grizz, who is DeSensei White, is from California.

He went to a private Catholic school, had a basketball scholarship.

He played basketball under a Bobby Knight.

He wants to move to Atlanta and try to get into the rap scene.

So he comes to Atlanta and the marijuana around the area, it's not good marijuana, it's too expensive.

He's connected to growers in California.

So he starts to run a very large operation and he will ultimately meet Gary Bradford at Eldorado Red when those two begin to network.

And basically at the end of the day, DeSensei White is supplying the entire city of Montgomery with their marijuana.

And the two of them are making hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Based on the new information, investigators submit warrants for phone records for Gary Bradford and DeSensei White.

What we're looking for is where they are the day before the murder, during the murder, things of that nature.

Once the records came in, we saw where they traveled down into the area of Northside Hospital.

an hour or two before the murder, and they're together.

They're there a couple hours before, but they're there

so this all began to start tying some loose ends together but it still didn't paint the big picture

el dorado red and disense grizz white are now lead suspects in the murder but detectives now need to determine why a california basketball star and known alabama drug dealer would want a rapper from atlanta dead

It was probably a few weeks in.

The 911 center had received a phone call from a confidential informant.

And his first name is Maurice.

Yes.

You're all the guy.

He's going by the name of your bottle.

He specifically named El Dorado Red and Maurice Connor to be involved in the shooting.

Gary Eldorado Red Bradford is already on investigators' list of suspects, but Maurice Connor is a new name for detectives.

We began to research Maurice Connor and learn that he was part of the banging money gang under El Dorado Red.

We're researching Maurice and we see where he received a speeding ticket June 6, 2012 in the afternoon.

on I-85 close to the Georgia border.

This is the day before the murder.

I called the trooper who pulled him over for speeding.

He told me that there's two occupants in the vehicle.

Maurice Connor is driving.

Passenger is DeAndre Washington.

Interestingly enough, when they were stopped, they were asked where they were going.

They both said that they were traveling to Atlanta to a funeral.

We had good witnesses at the hospital that gave good descriptions of one suspect being tall, one being short, and the short suspect was approximately 5'3 ⁇ , 5'4 ⁇ with a short afro.

The passenger is DeAndre Washington,

who's 5'4 ⁇ .

We're now following the shooters.

They're coming in town.

Maurice Connor's phone records places him at the scene of the murder.

I was shocked to learn and find out that this guy was the CI for the FBI.

He makes a phone call.

38 seconds after 911 was called, and he is inside the Northside Hospital.

He's inside the complex.

Investigators are swiftly moving in on multiple emerging suspects in the killing of Melvin Lofat Vernell III when one man, DeAndre Washington, comes to the forefront.

Detectives follow up on a traffic stop that took place the day before the murder, just over the border in Alabama.

Because of the traffic stop, we learn that the passenger is DeAndre Washington, who's 5'4 ⁇ and has a medium-sized afro.

Washington matches the exact description from witnesses at the scene.

and phone records help pin down his and associate Maurice Connor's whereabouts during the brutal execution.

We have them being in Atlanta at the time of the crime.

We have phone records that track the movements of both Washington and Connor traveling to Northside Hospital at the time of the crime.

Maurice Connor's phone records places him at the scene of the murder.

He makes a phone call, I believe, 38 seconds after 911 was called, and he is inside the Northside Hospital.

He's inside the complex.

Investigators tighten their grip on the four main suspects, but there remains a burning question left to be answered.

It's not adding up.

How did they know he was at the hospital?

His fiancé, Alnice Frazier, she told us Melvin Vernell, he had been with a realtor all day looking at houses.

Then he goes to Popeyes, then he goes to the hospital.

I mean, he'd been traveling all day.

How did they know he was there?

At this point, the investigation kind of hits a crossroads.

We had an FBI agent call and informed me their

registered informant, the person who specifically gave us the name of DeSensei White and Gary Bradford, was Manny Chopaya.

I was shocked to learn and find out that this guy was Biss CI for the FBI.

I couldn't believe it.

Investigators learn that Manny has been ratting out criminals in his orbit to the FBI for years.

Manny Chapaya kept the books for the Russian mob, and ultimately he turned government's evidence and became an FBI informant.

I wanted to interview Manny, but once I realized he was the confidential informant that the FBI was referring to, and the agent made it clear that he was hands-off.

You couldn't talk to him.

He was very, very protective.

very protective of Manny.

While Manny safeguards himself behind the FBI, Lil Fat's case continues to resonate throughout the grieving Atlanta hip-hop community, causing more leads to pour into the police.

I receive a phone call from a detective in Montgomery who says, we have a gentleman who has very intimate information about your murder and the shooter confessed elements of the crime to him.

I said, okay, sure, put me on the speakerphone.

And I said, what do you know?

And he said, El Dorado Red recruited Maurice, Connor and DeAndre Washington to kill Melvin Vernell.

I was okay.

Where did they kill him?

Northside Hospital in the Park and Deck at the Women's Center.

I said, okay.

What'd they shoot him with?

A Glock 357-SIG.

We never released that.

We'd never released that.

And at that time, I was, you know what?

I'm not having this conversation over the phone.

See you in three hours.

We drove out to Montgomery and we interviewed that gentleman for four hours.

He told me that DeAndre Washington confessed the entire murder to him.

DeAndre explained to him how he shot him, how they found him, and everything.

Not only does this new information pinpoint the shooter as DeAndre Washington, the informant helps Detective Williams place that last piece of the puzzle.

I then asked the informant, how did they know he was there?

He said, yeah, they had GPS trackers and some Russian guy that was renting the cars for them.

They tracked him.

Yeah, they tracked them the night before and they couldn't get them.

Boom, the Russian was helping them.

The Russian is the FBI's informant and car rental entrepreneur, Manny Chopayev.

Manny put trackers in his vehicles.

And so if someone rented a vehicle and didn't make the payment, Manny would be able to track the vehicle and get it back.

A task force is formed.

to go up to the impound lot and to seize the GPS trackers from the car.

So we go up to this beautiful $100,000 hottie and we get the GPS trackers out and they're from a company called iMetric.

We called them iMetric and they told us if you'll give us the serial numbers for the trackers then we can give you the username, the account, and what vehicles they have.

And they'll be able to show you the command to locate.

Investigators are given access to Manny's database and can see every time someone tries to locate Melvin's car.

So when you go into the iMetric website and you go to Manny's account, you get a list of every vehicle he's got.

And you literally go up and there's a little icon that says CML, Command to Locate.

You click it and it gives you latitude and longitude of where the vehicle is.

This really gets freaky the day of the murder.

You can see they're doing a command to locate every 20 or 30 minutes.

Somebody was literally hunting Melvin Vernell down like a dog.

You know, in order to prosecute the devil, you got to go to hell to get your witnesses.

A gentleman approaches him with a Glock with an extended magazine and says, give me the package in the bag.

There is this expectation to uphold this very image, even if it gets them in trouble.

In their investigation into the brutal murder of rap artist Melvin Vernell III, known by his hip-hop moniker as Little Fat, Sandy Springs detectives have followed leads and collected evidence, narrowing their focus to a group of four men.

As cell phone data and GPS locator evidence begin to expose how this crime was committed, the question of why continues to elude investigators.

You know, in order to prosecute the devil, you got to go to hell to get your witnesses, right?

And so in this case, we needed someone to provide inside information that would give a step-by-step roadmap as to to not just why it happened, but how it happened.

Investigators know their best chance is to focus on the weak link in the group.

I called DeSensei White in Redwood, California.

I said, hey, Grizz.

He said, yes, sir.

I said, I'm Detective J.T.

Williams of Sandy Springs Police.

How are you?

I said, I'd love to fly out there tonight.

I can be out there in seven, eight hours.

Sit down and get your side of the story.

You know, Sandy Springs?

Yeah, you know where Northside Hospital is?

Twitchy stated he had a lawyer and didn't want to talk.

I said, okay.

And I said, just one thing, don't say anything, but just listen.

Manny threw you under the bus.

He's told us everything, so I'll see you next month.

Police wait to see.

Will calling DeSensei White's bluff turn into the confession detectives so desperately hope for?

DeSensei White's lawyer ends up calling the district attorney's office.

It says they want to cut a deal.

We met on a Saturday.

DeSensei White had hired Bruce Harvey, very prominent lawyer.

Bruce Harvey actually approached me in front of the courthouse.

He said, listen, I just want to know why Calvin Johnson is not on the indictment.

Calvin's name had been brought up before, and as an associate who had been speaking with Red and Grizz, Calvin was living in the Metro Atlanta area at the time.

His full-time job was basically to traffic marijuana from Atlanta to Montgomery.

The couriers have nothing to do with the money.

Just simple bring a package, drop it off, and come back.

Within the next few days, we dig through the phone records and we actually now see Calvin Johnson, DeSensei White, and El Dorado Red all together.

Where one phone is, the other phone is.

We had done the homework, found him.

He was a basketball coach in the North Palo Alto area.

He has served with a material witness subpoena and has flown back to Atlanta, where he's offered a deal to testify.

Calvin becomes important because he explained to us how he was robbed at a BP gas station.

On that specific date, Calvin Johnson pulls up to the BP on Metropolitan Parkway, gets gas.

He had five bricks of marijuana.

And a gentleman approaches him with a Glock with an extended magazine

and says, give me the package in the back.

He says, I reached around back, gave them the package.

So the suspect took off running.

Calvin said he sees a tricked out Cadillac, black in color, speed off.

So Calvin calls DeSensei White and says, hey, I messed up.

And when they heard the Glock, the extended magazine, the black Cadillac, that was the current vehicle that Melvin Brunel was driving.

They started putting two and two together and realized it was Melvin Brunel.

that it hadn't stolen the marijuana and that they were going to get him for it.

They had to make a point.

But why would Low Fat risk the ire of DeSensei White for 10 pounds of marijuana?

So based on the money that these guys could be making, it's really hard to say why Lil Fat will want to do a robbery.

There is this expectation to portray this real lived-in street credibility.

I think for a lot of these artists, There is this expectation to uphold this very image, even if it gets them in trouble.

I wouldn't describe Lil Fat as a true gangster.

I mean, he was a young, talented kid that had a promising rap career in front of him.

He had a hit that was making some traction.

Unfortunately, Lil Fat, he had one foot in, one foot out.

He was leading two lives.

Then he just stole drugs from the wrong person.

As the four suspects' motives begin to crystallize, investigators are still puzzled by Manny Chopayev's involvement.

What does he have to gain by seeing Melvin Verneau dead?

That's a $64 million question, right?

What was Manny's intent by providing this information to Grizz and El Dorado Red?

I mean, it's not like Manny was dealing drugs or moving any product.

But there's no doubt that by allowing Red and Grizz to track Little Fat, that facilitated the murder of Little Fat.

Investigators struggle to understand why Manny would risk the FBI's protection as a government informant to help plot a rapper's assassination.

Then they look back at his criminal history.

for flipping all these cars, doing this car trickery, title fraud, Ven fraud, and was told if he gets caught doing the car thing again, he's going to jail.

He's getting a lot of time.

And then Melbourne Vernelle gets caught speeding.

He's renting one of Manny's cars.

They run the tag, vehicle comes up stolen.

So he goes to jail.

Well, Melvin Vernell's not going to plead guilty in court.

Melbourne's like, this is a rental car.

Why am I going to be charged with possessing a stolen vehicle?

Manny knew that if Melvin Vernell didn't plead guilty, he was going to expose his car ring.

That was very concerning to Manny that he was going to expose that he was back in the car business again.

So when DeSensei White and Eldorado Red approach Manny and say, hey, we got to find Melvin Vernell.

We got to handle business.

They said Manny was excited.

He's like, yeah, kill the kid.

I can't stand the little bastard.

Let's get rid of this kid and move on.

In Atlanta's quiet suburb of Sandy Springs, investigators have been unraveling the complicated murder case of a promising young musician, Melvin Little Fat Vernell III.

At the center, underworld auto hustler and FBI informant, Manny Chopayev.

Detectives discover that Melvin's court date for the stolen vehicle charge was only days away when he was ruthlessly murdered.

So now you have the murder, and a day after the the murder, the district attorney's office gets a phone call from Annie Chopayev's lawyer.

Hey, you can drop the case.

Melvin Reynolds murdered last night, so, you know, you can close out a stolen car case.

Thanks.

Bye, Click.

Very concerning.

Manny's attorney has given police the final nail in his client's coffin by revealing a motive.

No more Melvin, no more stolen car case.

Chopayev's own statements to the FBI also confirm he helped guide Melvin's killers to their prey.

So in May 2013, two months after the shooting, investigators are able to make their last arrest in the case.

And so we charge Manny Chapaya because Manny provided all the tracking information so that Grizz and Red could track Lil Fat.

With the pieces put together, It appears the murder of Lil Fat began when the rap star took his on-stage personality too far by robbing a drug courier.

Grizz and El Dorado Red go to Manny to track him down.

Manny's upset over the stolen car case.

The perfect storm was starting to evolve.

It becomes clear that the GPS tracking system supplied by Manny allowed Grizz and El Dorado Red to track Melvin's movements and give them the opportunity to break in and pillage Melvin's house in search of the stolen marijuana.

And the next next day, they pick up the track in the afternoon and ultimately leads them to Northside Hospital to the Women's Center.

El Rado Red calls Maurice Connor and calls DeAndre Washington and said, There's the car.

We know that Melvin Vernell goes upstairs, hangs out with his fiancée, they eat, and he's leaving to go work on some music.

When Maurice Connor and DeAndre Washington run up,

DeAndre puts six rounds through the back window.

Two years after the murder, in August of 2014, trials begin for three of the five suspects.

DeSensei White, also known as Grizz, became a cooperator for the state and actually testified at the trial of this case.

He got an eight-year sentence to probation.

In exchange for his truthful cooperation in this case, DeSensei White identified DeAndre Washington and Connor as the individuals who were at Northside Hospital and carried out the murder at Red's instruction.

After an arduous three-week trial, the jury finds Washington and Connor guilty of murder.

Eldorado Red is convicted of conspiracy to commit murder.

Manny Chopayev shields himself.

behind a legal technicality.

In this case, the court ruled that the communications between the FBI and Manny Chapaya couldn't be used to prosecute him.

So

while we had a lot of evidence against Manny, we couldn't use that evidence and ultimately his case got dismissed.

This job is all about honor, integrity, doing the right thing.

There has to be a voice for the victims.

This is definitely the most complicated case I've ever worked.

Every emotion that you could have was felt during this case.

Ultimately, at the end,

holding the family, sitting with them, holding hands when the sentences was coming out, just wiping away tears of joy that we were able to put these people behind bars where they belong.

They took someone away from me.

Melvin was like, he was really sweet and gentle and caring.

He was a really good father.

That just wanted to just rap.

Like, that's all he was trying to do.

You know, keep doing for his mom and take care of his, you know, his family.

So I just miss him.

I miss him around us.

And I miss being a family with him.

It's your man, Nick Cannon, and I'm here to bring you my new podcast, Nick Cannon at Night.

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