Once, Nicky Barnes ruled the neighborhood of Harlem like the Godfather and he did
it wearing gold sport suits and riding the flashiest cars. Today on Nutty History let’s
explore the story of one of the biggest drug traffickers in the history of the US
and how he ended up filling grocery bags at a Walmart store at the end of his days.
Nicky was born Leroy Nicholas Barnes on October 15th, 1933 in the neighborhood
of Harlem in New York. Nicky was a bright and promising student but abuse from his alcoholic
father drove him away from school and made him run away from home. To survive on his own,
Nicky Barnes turned to drug dealing at an early age. He could not resist the temptations of heroin
and became addicted himself while running with a street gang. This began Nicky’s on-and-off romance
with prison. In 1950, Nicky was arrested for possession of a hypodermic needle.
They did that back then. He was later arrested for possession of burglary tools and then for
breaking into cars, which earned him a three-year sentence at the Manhattan House of Corrections.
In between all this, he got sent to rehab in Lexington, Kentucky,
and he said he never used drugs again. After being released in 1954 Nicky promptly returned to
his life of dealing on the streets. But it was not much longer that he was nabbed by the police again
on a drug charge in 1959 and he got five years at Green Haven State Prison. While incarcerated,
Nicky Barnes befriended known mob figure Matty Madonna, a heroin dealer for the Lucchese crime
family who became Nicky’s first official teacher in the drug trade. Reportedly, the two got
together and shared information regarding their trade and Madonna asked Nicky to work for him.
Nicky got to work immediately after being released in 1962. He recruited an estimated total of 50
people for his new Madonna-backed drug operation and according to the New York Times became one
of the biggest distributors of narcotics in Harlem as well as the Bronx. And he achieved
all that in the small span of just three years. However, the success was short-lived, Nicky knew
how to get on top but not how to stay there. His dream of building his own drug empire was
thwarted when cops found out about a huge cargo and arrested him in possession of drugs worth
more than five hundred thousand dollars. In his autobiography, Nicky later claimed that the arrest
was a setup. In 1966, the court reached its verdict and they punished Nicky with a sentence
of 15 to 20 years. Nicky were landed back at Green Haven State Prison. Surprise, Surprise!
Nicky’s return to prison was not much different from his first visit. In fact,
if his first term in prison was his bachelor's in drug trading, this term proved to be his master’s.
There was a new professor available in prison this time to teach Nicky how to scale his drug business
and his name was "Crazy" Joe Gallo, a member of the Colombo crime family.
Yeah, we are talking about La Cosa Nostra. Gallo wanted to have a greater presence in the Harlem
drug market but did not have any personnel to deal in the predominantly African-American areas. But
thanks to the American Correctional System, he got the right guy for the job. Is anybody else getting
Carlos Lehder-George Jung vibes? If you don’t know George Jung's story of a prison-made drug traffic
partnership, check out the description below for the link to it after watching this video.
Nicky explained to Joe Gallo how things work back in Harlem and in return, Gallo tutored
Nicky about how to run a successful drug trade organization like a pro. After Gallo’s release,
the Colombo Crime Family provided a lawyer for Nicky Barnes to challenge his conviction.
Thanks to Gallo’s efforts, Nicky Barnes had his conviction over turned on a technicality in 1971.
Meanwhile, Nicky converted to Islam during this term and also studied law journals.
Nicky returned to New York and it was time for him to become a professional.
When he made it back to New York City, Nicky began to assemble his personnel and began cutting and
packaging heroin. Working for the mafioso under Gallo and Madonna, Nicky created his own council
to govern and regulate the drug trade in Harlem and he called it ‘the council’. The Council was
no different than Cosa Nostra or as they liked to call it in The Godfather movies, the commission.
The council was structured just like Five Families of the Mafia but it was composed of
African American drug dealers of Harlem. The seven men who led this alliance were responsible for
administrating and regulating the heroin trade, handling local gang disputes, and maintaining
peace in the community. The seven leaders of the Council were Nicky Barnes, Guy Fisher,
Thomas “Gaps” Foreman, Joseph “Jazz” Hayden, Frank James, Ishmael Muhammad, and Wallace Rice.
Nicky, however, maintained veto power over the group's decisions. Like La Cosa Nostra,
The Council too had a code created by Nicky. "Treat your brother as you treat yourself." During
the 1970s, Nicky was at its peak. He lived a high life full of sex, alcohol, drugs, and nightclubs.
His cars they were flashy, and his collection included the best of Mercedes and Maseratis.
His thick glasses, posh custom-made suits, and suave demeanor could give you a false
impression of a Wall Street Trader, but Nicky was rolling on narcotics money.
Law enforcement would follow him everywhere and Nicky did have a laugh
leading them on wild goose chases. Nicky’s flamboyant lifestyle and stylish dress attire
were the reason why he became the subject of The Times Magazine’s cover story and he got the cover.
The title of Mr. Untouchable for Nicky Barnes was coined by the Times Magazine in 1977.
And it was just for a reason. Nicky confronted the law many times during the year 1974. The
Council had some misplacement of funds, and one of The Council’s members, Guy Fisher’s girlfriend,
and her brother, they were to blame. His name was Clifford Haynes and cops found him dead
in March in the South Bronx. Now soon, Nicky was arrested but it was hard to keep him detained as
appeals for bail kept pouring in, despite the judiciary system denying four of them including
one from a reverend of a church. The police had named then 41-year-old Nicky among the country's
leading narcotics dealers. However, when a former gambling figure brought a hundred thousand dollars
for the bail, the judiciary system buckled. Yet, that was not the end of the story. In December,
Nicky was pulled over by the police. The officers on the scene discovered more than $130,000 in
cash in his car. Police claimed that Nicky tried to bribe them but Nicky accused them of lying.
In the end, Nicky was found not guilty in the bribery case in 1975 and more importantly he
managed to be acquitted in the murder case. Nicky got into legal trouble once again in October 1976
when he was charged with illegal possession of weapons after the cops found guns in his car
while pulling him and his associates over. But Nicky managed to keep his distance from
the long arms of the law as the charges failed to stick. However, his luck, it was about to run out.
Nicky’s criminal enterprise wasn’t just stunningly profitable, but it was also highly deadly.
He ran a tight, murderous ship and it gave him supreme confidence solidified by his nickname,
“Mr. Untouchable.” He simply felt that he could not be caught. Evidence against
him was routinely “lost.” Witnesses regularly “forgot” what they had seen, who they had seen,
and couldn’t be sure enough to testify. Others simply went missing before they could testify.
That is why when the 1977 issue of The New York Times Magazine came out,
the government saw it as a challenge from Nicky Barnes himself. At the height of his power,
Nicky’s hubris became a growing concern for the authorities and even President Jimmy
Carter noticed it. President Jimmy Carter had just been sworn into office in 1977. He was not happy
with Nicky’s pompous disrespect and he ordered the drug lord to be prosecuted as harshly as
the law allowed. The Justice Department obliged and Nicky Barnes was soon arrested under the
charges of narcotics conspiracy. Barnes and his co-conspirators went on trial in September 1977.
The DA claimed that the defendants had been selling roughly $1 million worth of heroin
a month from a Harlem garage. Thanks to an extensive undercover operation,
the attorney had enough evidence to get a favorable verdict. After a two-month trial,
Nicky Barnes and 10 of his co-defendants were found guilty. Only Guy Fisher was acquitted.
After Nicky’s imprisonment, his wife and his girlfriends assumed the top positions in his
drug empire along with Guy Fisher. Nicky trusted Fisher with keeping his wife and interests safe
but by 1982, Nicky knew that was a huge mistake. His former cronies, girlfriends,
and wife collectively squandered the trade network Nicky had created over the years. He also found
out that his wife was having an affair with Guy Fisher. Full of vengeance, Nicky took the only
option he could to get back at them. He shook hands with his enemies, the police. Nicky Barnes
chose the witness protection program over being loyal to those who betrayed him. He testified
against them in federal trials and scores of his wayward former associates were convicted.
Even his wife, Thelma Grant pleaded guilty to federal drug charges and she got 10 years in
prison. Now at this time Nicky’s daughters were only 10 and 8 years old, and with both parents in
prison, they had to be placed in foster care. The Council, which was the core of Nicky’s operation,
dissolved in 1983 thanks to his testimony against members who were not in prison yet.
As a reward for his help to shut down The Council’s operations, Nicky was released
from prison in 1998, but for his own safety he was kept under a witness protection program. According
to Nicky, the man who came out of prison wasn’t Nicky Barnes at all, Nicky Barnes stayed behind
in prison and he was now a new person who has nothing to do with drugs anymore. Thanks to the
witness protection program, not only did Nicky Barnes get a new life and identity, his daughters
too had to change their names as Nicky’s enemies could target them to force him to come out.
Nicky published his autobiography, Mr. Untouchable in 2007 which was co-written
with Tom Folsom. A shell of his former self, Nicky Barnes was a limping and balding old man in 2007.
Self-aware, Nicky Barnes confessed in an interview that the flamboyant drug lord called Nicky Barnes
was part of an extinct breed whose lifestyle and value system does not work in modern times. At the
dusk of his life, he had no complaints except Denzel Washington’s movie American Gangster,
he thought it should have been made about him instead of Frank Lucas. Nicky Barnes,
died an old man in 2012, but nobody found out about it for a long time because of him
being in the witness protection program. The drug trade made him a millionaire,
but it had a drastic effect on African American neighborhoods. Nicky managed to cast himself as
a sort of Robin Hood in Harlem through charity stunts and developing real estate. So, what do
you think, do you agree with Nicky about American Gangster or does his story deserve its own movie?
Tell us in the comments and don’t forget to like the video. And thanks for watching Nutty History.