Sounds to me like Peeler could be an associate of Corn Pop, and we all know that Corn Pop was a bad dude.
The murderous saga of Russell Peeler
By Daniel Tepfer
Russell Peeler Jr. listens to testimony Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2013 in Bridgeport Superior Court in Bridgeport, Conn. during his murder trial for the 1998 shooting death of Rudolph Snead Jr. Peeler has already been convicted and sentenced to death for ordering the murder of Karen Clarke and her eight-year-old son, Leroy "B.J." Brown Jr., in their Bridgeport, Conn. home in 1999.
BRIDGEPORT -- Russell Peeler Jr. swaggered around Bridgeport in the late 1990s like a B-movie mobster out of the 1930s, only instead of a Tommy gun under his arm, he carried a Glock 23 tucked in his waistband.
His actions -- including ordering the executions of 8-year-old Leroy "B.J." Brown and his mother, Karen Clarke -- are responsible for the longest series of criminal trials in state history, stretching from 1999 to the present day. At most, he faces the death penalty, at least life in prison.
Last week, a state Superior Court jury heard testimony about how Peeler, 41, dealt with a former partner, Rudolph Snead Jr., who shorted him on the profits of their drug operation.
It's alleged that first he fired at Snead in 1997 on an Interstate 95 entrance ramp, and then on May 29, 1998, riddled Snead's body with bullets in a Boston Avenue barbershop. The state rested its case Friday.
Cop's son gone bad
Ironically, while growing up, Peeler and his younger brother, Adrian, were constantly encouraged to be law-abiding by their mother, Sheila, a devoted city police officer.
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But once Peeler got to Central High School, something changed. In later interviews, his teachers and administrators there said they were not surprised how Peeler turned out, recalling him as a troublemaker who instigated disturbances with other students.
Though a borderline student academically, Peeler graduated, and at the urging of his mother, enrolled at Housatonic Community College in the criminal justice program. But Peeler was more interested in breaking the law rather than upholding it.
In the late 1980s, Peeler began an alliance with the Bush Mob, one of the most feared drug gangs in the city, cementing his bond with them by taking as his girlfriend the daughter of one of the gang's leaders, Angelina Keene Bush. He was 18, she was 14.
On June 19, 1990, Angelina, who was 15, gave birth to her first child with Peeler, a daughter, Russhell. After the birth of his daughter, Peeler dropped out of college, and there is no record of how he supported his new family.
In early December 1993, Sheila Peeler was dying of stomach cancer. On her deathbed, she called her two sons to her side and asked them to promise to use her life insurance money to further their college educations. Russell refused.
Instead, he used the insurance money to seed his own drug ring.
The child killers
Adrian, two years younger than his brother, is the polar opposite.
Where Russell Peeler is short, brooding and dark skinned, his brother is tall, athletic and light skinned. Outgoing and popular in high school, he enjoyed fast cars and faster women, and always seemed to have a bevy of both.
By all accounts, it was Adrian who supplied the muscle for his brother's drug operation, and later all Peeler's associates testified they were friends of Adrian, not Russell.
But Russell Peeler apparently had the brains for business, and he set up a well-organized drug operation out of an apartment building on Benham Avenue employing teams of street dealers who turned their proceeds over to block supervisors, who in turn handed the money to men designated as money collectors.
Young women with no criminal records were hired to pick up raw cocaine in New York City. Adrian then supervised the processing of the cocaine into crack and its packaging.
When things got too hot on Benham Avenue, Peeler moved the operation to a house on Iranistan Avenue.
`Dissed' and death
But, despite his business acumen, Peeler was not much for employee relations. His fallout with Snead, and Snead's blatant disrespect, were embarrassing him in front of his troops. Under pressure, he took matters into his own hands.
According to trial testimony, it was Peeler who fired at Snead on the I-95 ramp while Snead was driving with his 7-year-old son, Tyree, and 7-year-old B.J. Brown in the back seat of the car.
When the shooting only aggravated Snead further, prompting him to go to police, with B.J. being interviewed as a witness, Peeler found himself in a worse situation with his own subordinates.
So police and witnesses said Peeler threw a jeans jacket over his head, went into the barbershop and shot Snead dead.
That now left only B.J. to tie him to the drive-by shooting.
Sitting around the table with his family over Christmas dinner in 1998, Peeler strongly suggested to Angelina that she take the three kids and go out of town for a while.
He told her he was going to start killing witnesses.
Mom's wrong decision
Karen Clarke was a good, churchgoing woman who held a steady job in the office of the local U-Haul franchise. B.J. was her world.
After her son was nearly a casualty in the drive-by shooting, she brought him to the Police Department, where the boy positively identified Peeler as the shooter.
The little boy now an important witness in the case, police offered Clarke protection, but she waved it off, saying she could take care of herself, a fatal decision.
As a precaution, she and her son moved from their apartment on Garfield Avenue to a duplex on Earl Avenue. What they didn't know at the time was that they had moved right across the street from a house Peeler had been using to "cook" the raw coke into crack.
When Peeler found out where Clarke and B.J. had gone, his associates later testified, he asked them to kill the boy.
He couldn't do it himself because he was wearing an electronic monitoring anklet as a result of the earlier arrests, and couldn't leave his Chopsey Hill Road home. Only Adrian agreed to do it -- unhappily, according to testimony during prior trials.
In the early evening of Jan. 7, 1999, Clarke and her son had just gotten home from shopping when there was a knock on the door.
Police and witnesses said Adrian Peeler burst in, gun blazing. Clark was found lying face up on the floor of her son's room, the telephone inches from her outstretched hand. Her son was in the hall, a bullet wound to the back of his head.
Waiting for justice
Based mainly on the testimony of associates, Russell Peeler was convicted of ordering the executions and sentenced to death.
Although prosecutors had an eyewitness to the crime, Adrian was only found guilty by a Waterbury jury of conspiracy to commit murder, and is serving a 25-year prison term.
Imprisonment hasn't done much for Peeler's attitude.
Placed in a cell next to an emotionally troubled young man, prison officials said Peeler tried to convince the man to commit suicide.
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