Anthony "AJ" Jones
Born and raised in the mean streets of Baltimore, a
city famous for its culture of drugs and murder, Anthony
“AJ” Jones embarked on a reign of terror that the
city had never seen before and has never seen since. In
the violent world of Bodymore’s inner city drug gangs,
at the young age of 18, Anthony Jones reigned king.
Holding court in East Baltimore’s gritty neighborhoods
and holding fast to his thuglife ideals of “get mine or be
mine.”
The most feared drug dealer and gangster in Charm
City, AJ allegedly ordered murders from his prison cell.
He was a boss in every sense of the word, from the
streets of his hood to the federal penitentiaries. His
reputation of being willing to kill anyone who stood in
his way was demonstrated by the fact that AJ reputedly
had his own brother killed because he believed that he
was snitching on him. AJ played the game the way it
was supposed to be played, as long generations of BMore
hustlers had before him, but with his own vicious
twist. He will forever be remembered in B-More as the
legend that he is.
Part 5- The Beef
AJ was locking shit down but not everyone bowed
down. Dudes were still willing to get theirs, AJ’s reputation
or not. AJ was still flesh and blood, no matter
how menacing he was. Elway Williams was an East
Baltimore dealer with a $15,000 a day heroin ring that
prosecutors said competed against Jones. Instead of
sharing the market, AJ and Elway decided to battle it
out, turning East Baltimore into a killing zone. The
beef which started out as a death for death retribution
type-thing, quickly spiraled out of control, turning into
a murderous web between the warring drug organizations,
where victory or death became the only options.
“You had love from both sides,” Sweat says. “But that
shit turned into a snowball flip. The beef started over
some foolishness. Both Anthony and Elway had egos.
Anthony was quiet, but vicious and Elway thought he
was Al Capone. He was a Bumpy Johnson wanna-be
type nigga. And he didn’t think Anthony had it in him,
but he found out.” Elway would lock horns with AJ in
a battle to the death. May the victor win all the spoils
and be crowned the king of East Baltimore.
“It was always a twist to that.” Sweat says. “Who
was gonna be the king of East Baltimore? They was
playing for keeps. They was going back and forth. It
was some jealous type shit. They were trying to get
each other.” And in this environment of fear and
suspicion, bravedo and one-upmanship, retribution
and death were swift. “The streets make you. They
say who the boss is. Both Elway and Ant’s ego’s were
bigger than their pride.” Sweat concludes. Assistant United
States Attorney Christine Manuelian said that the Jones
and Williams groups frequently battled on city streets.
“There are a number of murders that have been allegedly
linked to both organizations,” she said. In East
Baltimore the bullets were flying. It wasn’t Beirut, but
it was close. The deadly dance was played out with
Mac 10’s, minu Uzi’s and sawed off shotguns.
Describing the duel of drug kingpins that created a
climate of kill or be killed, AJ’s rival, the heroin dealer
Elway testified that he was in a race against time to
assassinate his nemesis who was allegedly intent on
killing him. “He was out to assassinate all of us. We
had to fix the problem and the problem was Anthony
Jones. We had to continue to search to assassinate him.
It was either they kill us or we kill them.” Elway testified
after becoming a prosecution snitch. He testified
that no show of strength- he frequently had armed
bodyguards protecting him- seemed to be able to ward
off Jones’ attempts to assassinate him. AJ was on a
mission. And he was trying to win at all costs. It was like
50 Cent said, get rich or die trying.
“It was all dudes from East Baltimore,” Kid says of
the beef. It started in early 95 when Baby Dan and AJ
formed an alliance against Elway. AJ killed Elway’s
partner and his former running mate Anthony Green
first. On October 3, 1995, AJ was shot in the arm.
“The second time he was shot was when Elway put the
hit on him.” Kid says. And Sweat goes into more detail,
“Anthony told me, he said he came out some house and
somebody tried to assassinate him. His man was there
with the car to pick him up and when the shots started
busting off and Anthony got hit, he jumped on the back
of the car to get away. While he was in John Hopkins
Hospital they got his man Little Net. This was the
breaking point. Elway was the one he was beefing with
and the whole thing with this was when Tupac killed
Little Net for Elway and didn’t get AJ too, he basically
signed his own death warrant.”
Raymund “Tupac” Harrison admitted to the killing
on October 5th, 1995 of Deshane “Little Net” Carter,
Jones’ right hand man, who was gunned down on East
Madison Street. Tupac said it was done to avenge the
slaying earlier that year of Anthony Green, Elway’s
partner. Harrison said during his guilty plea that Little
Net was thought by Elway to have been the trigger man
in the Green killing. After AJ was shot up and Little
Net killed, Elway was profiling like he was the king of
East Baltimore. “He was at 32nd Street Plaza, when
we got over there, Elway’s sitting at the bar. He tells
the bartender all drinks on me. I noticed he was
celebrating because they killed shorty. I was wondering
what was running through Anthony’s mind. When Elway
left, his sky blue 735 BMW pulled up front of the club.
Tupac opened the door for him like he was a don.”
Sweat says. But Elway slept on AJ, who recovered,
planned and had his revenge six months later.
AJ coerced three teenage members of Elway’s crew
to cross their boss and kill him so that AJ wouldn’t kill
them. On February 26, 1996, the double cross went
down. The three dudes opened fire on Elway and his
bodyguard while they were sitting in the car with him.
From the back seat they put a bullet in the bodyguard’s
head and then started firing on Elway who was in a car
adjacent to them on a dark portion of Wilcox and Biddle
Streets in East Baltimore. Derrick Rivers, the bodyguard
was fatally shot in the back of the head. Elway said
the three men were Alan “Wali” Chapman, Warren
“Red Dog” Hill and Mark “Keedy” Coles. He said they
turned against him in favor of AJ. “I could smell
the gunfire,” Elway said remembering how he jumped
out of the car wounded and ran into the cold night
down the dimly lit street. “I heard footsteps behind me
and six, seven, eight gunshots. I was hit two or three
times in the chest and back.” Elway ran to a home on
nearby Valley Street, knocked on the door and collapsed
after a woman let him inside. He spent nearly three
weeks recuperating at a medical center where Jones
was alleged to have made the next attempt to get
him.
“This what they did,” Sweat says. “That’s how they
brought them down. Double crossing. Anthony told
me when the dudes came to make the deal, ‘You want
to make it right? You want to kill Elway?’ He was gonna
use them to kill Elway and then kill them. He was
on the double cross. You got to like his style. He was
vicious. Much love to that nigga. I almost got caught
up in that bullshit. When Elway got to beefin’ with
Anthony, Elway got in a bind, he was fucked up. I
gave him a couple of bricks. I didn’t want to get in the
mix. He called me, we breaking shit down at the stash,
he was like where you at? The day he called me he was
with those little kids, the ones who shot him. I never
got with them, that was the day the double cross was
in. They pumped three or four bullets through the window
to kill him. I could have been caught up in that
foolishness. We lost a lot of good people. It was going
both ways. You didn’t know who was who. People
were taking money for hits.”
And AJ took it a step further. He wanted Elway dead,
so he turned to his corrupt cop to kidnap Elway from
his hospital bed. AJ offered the cop 5 grand for info on
Elway’s whereabouts and offered 10 grand to the cop
to arrest Elway and turn him over to his crew. He even
attempted to get one of his crew to sneak into the hospital
with a hypodermic needle full of Drano to inject into
Elway’s veins. AJ was gangster for real. Court papers
filed in U.S. District Court accused AJ of conspiring
to have his rival, Elway Williams, kidnapped from
his hospital bed by having him falsely arrested and
turned over to Mr. Jones. But the cop didn’t do it and
Elway, 29, was arrested and charged with selling
heroin. At a later bail hearing U.S. Magistrate Paul M.
Rosenburg said about Mr. Jones, “One can only assume
that the kidnapping was for the purpose of an execution
or to inflict substantial harm to the individual.”
And before it was all over, AJ probably regretted that
the hospital bed kidnap move didn’t go down, because
Elway would turn into a snitch and the star witness
against him
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