By Jeff Burbank It was the first week of January 1973. Frank Matthews and his young girlfriend had just spent the holidays in Las Vegas and were about to board a flight to Los Angeles. In the previous several years, Matthews had made many trips to Las Vegas, carrying suitcases full of cash to be secretly laundered at casinos for a fee of 15 to 18 percent. This time, federal drug enforcement agents were waiting and placed him and the woman under arrest at McCarran International Airport. Two weeks before, U.S. prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York, had issued an arrest warrant for Matthews, the top black drug kingpin in America whose heroin and cocaine trafficking gang of mostly African-American dealers extended to 21 states on the Eastern Seaboard. He was charged with trying to sell about 40 pounds of cocaine in Miami from April to September 1972, a small fraction of the drugs he’d pushed since 1968. The feds believed Matthews had millions in currency stashed away in safety deposit boxes
The alleged killer of former drug lord Alberto “Alpo” Martinez was arrested and charged in the Oct. 31 Harlem hit, police said Sunday night.
A 55yr old man driving a red Dodge RAM 2500 pickup truck was pronounced dead at Harlem Hospital after he was shot multiple times on Frederick Douglass Boulevard at West 151st Street in Manhattan on Sunday October 31, 2021. 0820. The Victim then drove for several blocks before crashing into several parked vehicles on Frederick Douglass Boulevard at West 147th Street, just across from the NYPD Police Service Area 6. (Theodore Parisienne) (Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News)
Shakeem Parker, 27, of W. 149th St.,who was already in custody on Rikers Island for a previous gun case, was charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon, police said.
“Detectives gathered information that he was the shooter,” a police spokesman said.
Aside from the November gun possession case, Parker has prior arrests for burglary, robbery and drug possession, police said.
Martinez, 55, was behind the wheel of a Dodge Ram on Frederick Douglass Blvd. near W. 152nd St. when several gunshots exploded through his driver’s side window just after 3:20 a.m., police told the Daily News at the time.
In the early morning ambush, police found Martinez gasping for air in the truck, shot six times in his arm and once in his chest, sources told The News. He also had a graze wound on the left side of his chin.
The druglord turned federal witness was portrayed by the rapper Cam’ron in the 2002 film, “Paid in Full.” Mekhi Phifer played a character based on Rich Porter, 24, Martinez’s business partner and best friend who Martinez notoriously shot to death in 1990. Jay-Z was among the movie’s producers.
Alberto “Alpo” Martinez (Handout)
Martinez was a controversial figure on the streets of Harlem after he testified against underlings in his murderous drug-trafficking ring to avoid a life sentence — including his enforcer, Wayne Perry, who took a life sentence reportedly to avoid the death penalty in 1994.
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