In December 1993, the brothers' mother was dying of stomach cancer. On her deathbed, she asked them to use her insurance money for their college education. But instead, Russell Peeler used the money as a seed for his drug empire, the Connecticut Post reported in 2013.
By the late 1990s, Russell Peeler had a multi-level drug-dealing operation that he ran first out of an apartment on Benham Avenue, then from a house on Iranistan Avenue.
The enterprise used young women who had no criminal history to pick up cocaine in New York City. Adrian Peeler would supervise it being processed into crack cocaine and packaged, as well as serving as muscle.
The group had street dealers who would turn over their earnings to block supervisors, who in turn passed the money up to designated collectors.
At some point, Russell Peeler had a falling out with Rudolph Snead Jr., an associate, over proceeds from the drug-dealing enterprise.
On Sept. 2, 1997, Snead was driving on an Interstate 95 entrance ramp when Russell Peeler pulled up alongside him and opened fire. BJ and Snead's 7-year-old son both were in the car at the time of the shooting.
Snead was injured in the incident, but survived.
After the drive-by shooting, BJ's mother brought him to the police, where he identified Peeler as the shooter.
Russell Peeler's next attempt on Snead's life came the following spring. This time, he was successful. On May. 29, 1998, Peeler pulled a jacket over his head, walked into a barbershop on Boston Avenue and opened fire on Snead, who was in the back on the phone.
Russell Peeler was
convicted of Snead's killing in 2013.
During Christmas dinner in 1998, Russell Peeler suggested to the mother of his children that she take the three kids out of town. He was going to start killing witnesses, he told her.
After BJ's mother took him to the police, where he identified Peeler as the shooter in the 1997 drive-by, police offered her protection. But she refused, and instead moved to a duplex on Earl Avenue.
But coincidentally, that home was across the street from a house Russel Peeler used to cook crack.
He asked his associates to kill the mother and her son, something he couldn't do because he was wearing an ankle monitor and couldn't leave his home.
Adrian Peeler agreed to do it, unhappily, according to testimony.
On the evening of Jan. 7, 1999, Clarke and Brown had just gotten home from shopping when Adrian Peeler burst in after a knock at the door. Both mother and son were shot and killed.
nypost.com
