Kaboni Savage on tape: No witnesses, no crime

The logic was irrefutable, a simple but chilling explanation of how to undermine the justice system.

"Without the witnesses, you don't have no case," Philadelphia drug kingpin Kaboni Savage said in a prison conversation secretly recorded by the FBI. "No witness, no crime."

Savage, who is accused of ordering the deaths of at least seven people in a pattern of witness intimidation designed to protect his multimillion-dollar cocaine operation, is to be arraigned in U.S. District Court this week on murder, drug dealing, and conspiracy charges.

Built in part on nearly 100 conversations recorded on a listening device hidden in his prison cell at the Federal Detention Center on Arch Street, the pending prosecution could be billed as "Kaboni Savage in His Own Words."

The conversations were taped five years ago while Savage was awaiting trial on drug-trafficking charges. Convicted in 2005, he is serving a 30-year sentence in a maximum-security prison in Florence, Colo., but will be brought back to Philadelphia to face the new charges.

This time, the stakes are even higher.

This time, the indictment includes 12 murders.

This time, Savage and three codefendants face possible death sentences.

As a result, his words carry even more import.

"Their kids got to pay for making my kids cry," he said on one tape, referring to his desire to harm not only the witnesses lining up against him but also their children. "I want to smack one of their 4-year-old sons in the head with a bat."

"He's got a daughter down my way," he said while talking about another cooperator. "I gonna blow her little head off. She like 5."

In another conversation, he lashed out at the captain of the prison guards, promising: "He gonna die a miserable death, and I hope I'm there. . . . I'm gonna torture his ass. I'm gonna set him on fire. Alive. . . . Watch him jump around like James [expletive] Brown."

And in another tape, Savage vowed never to stop pursuing those he referred to as "rats."

"The fight don't stop till the casket drop," he said.

Savage's words took on added irony last week when authorities disclosed that his 9-year-old daughter, Ciara, was killed in York, Pa., the innocent victim of a gang-related shooting. She was shot in the back while playing with friends on a street where a gang member allegedly opened fire on rivals.

Savage, 34, was once a promising junior-welterweight boxer from North Philadelphia. But, authorities say, he decided he could make a better living dealing cocaine.

Described by acting U.S. Attorney Laurie Magid as the leader of "perhaps the most violent drug gang ever seen in the city of Philadelphia," he was charged last month in a 26-count indictment that picks up where his previous prosecution left off.

Authorities allege that he used violence and intimidation to control the sale of cocaine on several North Philadelphia drug corners and "ordered murders of rival . . . dealers, people he deemed to be disloyal . . . witnesses, potential witnesses, and family members of witnesses."

The most horrendous of the charges centers on an October 2004 firebombing that killed six people, including four children.

Savage was later heard on tape joking about the victims and their dog.

Transcripts of some of the tapes have already been made public. Others have been obtained by The Inquirer. Snippets of some conversations are also sprinkled through the 65-page indictment against Savage, Lamont Lewis, Robert Merritt, and Steven Northington.

Savage is accused of ordering or taking part in 11 of the 12 murders listed in the indictment. Deputy Police Commissioner Richard Ross described him as "pure evil" at a news conference last month announcing the indictment.

The Savage tapes seem to support that assessment. "I ain't got no regrets for nothing I did," Savage said at one point on the tapes while boasting about his wealth, power, and ability to buy whatever he wanted and go wherever he desired.

Recognizing that there were only two ways out of the drug underworld for real players - "either you dead or in jail" - Savage said he wouldn't change anything.

"You accept what you do, and you know . . . don't nobody get no . . . free ride. . . . But I'd do it all over again. . . . I ain't complaining about my lifestyle."

He also bragged that the "fruits of my labor" resulted in houses for his mother and wife and paid for his wife's and his sister's educations.

But on another tape, he offered a less-than-flattering description of women, whom he referred to as "bitches" and who he said should all be licensed to carry guns. "All my bitches, my little sister got a license to carry," he said. "My wife go and get hers in a minute. You gonna [be] with me, bitch . . . you gotta be my holster.

"You ain't have to worry about no shooting, babe. I'm gonna grab it and do what I gotta do, but . . . you gotta be my holster."

Savage is expected to plead not guilty at a hearing Friday. His lawyer, Christopher Warren, has argued that the new case is replete with double-jeopardy issues because so much of it echoes the 2005 prosecution.

The tapes are one example.

Many were played at the last trial to support witness-intimidation charges. There were no murder charges in that prosecution.

Savage, who testified, did not deny the statements. But he said that they had been a product of his anger and frustration, that he had been venting and never intended to carry anything further.

Authorities say otherwise.

The current indictment alleges that while in prison awaiting trial in 2004, Savage ordered two of his codefendants, Lewis and Merritt, to firebomb the home of Eugene Coleman's mother.

Coleman, a former associate and an admitted drug dealer, was cooperating with federal authorities and listed as a witness in the then-pending drug case. Early on Oct. 9, 2004, Marcella Coleman's house in the 3200 block of North Sixth Street was set on fire. She and five others, including four children ages 15 months to 15 years, died. The 15-month-old, Damir Jenkins, was Eugene Coleman's son.

A month later, on Nov 4, the prison-cell listening device picked up Savage joking about the funeral for the victims and the fact that Coleman had been allowed to attend the service.

"They shoulda, you know . . . took him . . . got him some barbecue sauce and poured it on them," Savage said as he and two other inmates laughed.

"Pour it on them burnt bitches," he said later, adding that he did not feel sorry for the death of the infant. "Shoulda died," he said. "Pop a rat. He woulda been a mouse."

The tape then recorded more laughter as Savage joked about the family dog, a pit bull, that also was killed.

"That pit bull that was in there, that was a rat in some pit bull's clothing."

Eugene Coleman testified against Savage in the 2005 drug case, but the firebombing was not mentioned to the jury.

Coleman is expected to testify again when Savage, Lewis, Merritt, and Northington go on trial, probably next year.

The current indictment also alleges that Savage ordered the March 1, 2004, murder of Tybius "Tib" Flowers, also a North Philadelphia boxer who was scheduled to testify against Savage in a murder trial in Common Pleas Court.

He was gunned down days before the trial started. Without his testimony, the district attorney's case fell apart. Savage was found not guilty.

"No witness, no crime."