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Police announced soon after the killing that Dow was one of three Bay Area figures they wanted to speak to. But Dow lawyered up; so far, he has refused to talk to Las Vegas detectives.
Tone's mother has taken over his career. "I am Fat Tone," she insists. She's been printing up more CDs and plans to release an album of previously unreleased music in October.
Wayne, meanwhile, has lost business.
No one from the Bay Area visits Kansas City anymore, he says.
Rashawn Long, the gang member and convicted murderer, laughs as he remembers dodging bullets fired at him by a young Anthony Watkins.
It was 1997, and the two young teenagers had got crosswise over a dice game. The argument escalated; finally, Long told Watkins he wouldn't have anything to do with the young rapper anymore.
Long remembers sitting on his grandmother's porch with a friend a few days later when a car drove past and someone inside opened fire. Long chuckles, saying he knew it was Watkins trying to act tough.
"He was running from me," Long says. "I was going to fuck him up."
Long portrays Fat Tone as a coward only tangentially involved in 51st Street gang affairs. But police sources tell the Pitch that Fat Tone's involvement was deeper than that -- particularly after Long was convicted of murder in 2001 and 51st Street's leader, Steven Wright, was arrested in 2003.
Fat Tone filled the void after Wright was in custody, police believe, consolidating his grip on the gang.
In the weeks since Fat Tone's death, the streets of Kansas City have seen a frightening rise in violent street crime: shootings, assaults and seemingly random attacks. One of the victims was an aunt of Fat Tone's, Jerry Watkins, who was killed just 18 days after Tone in a shooting at 1200 East Linwood.
Local media have recently begun reporting that some sort of tie might exist between Fat Tone's death and the rash of killings. The Kansas City Star has gone so far as to blame "gangs" for a new cycle of violence, as if there weren't particular figures or gangs that police believe are principally involved.
Next week, the Pitch presents a deeper look at how Steven Wright set the standard for violence in Kansas City's gangland that today rocks the city's core.
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