Craig Petties
Craig Petties is an American convicted drug trafficker best known for the criminal empire he led in Memphis, Tennessee, from the mid-1990s to 2008, and for his connections to the Mexican drug cartel. The organization's prosecution was later described as the largest drug case in Memphis federal court history. Petties was sentenced to life in prison in 2013 at the age of 36.
Early life
Craig Petties was born in 1976 to Ever Jean Petties in Memphis, Tennessee, growing up with his sister at 263 West Dison Avenue in the impoverished Riverside neighborhood. The family lived in a tiny brick home his mother bought for US$17,000. His half-brother Paul Beauregard was born 32 days after Petties in South Memphis and shared the same father—whose identity is unpublished. Petties' mother made a little over US$15,000 annually serving as a foster parent and working in some capacity for the board of education in the Shelby County school system.The area was a well-known haven for drug dealers, and Petties began selling small amounts of drugs in the late 1980s when the crack cocaine epidemic was spreading to the Southeastern United States. He was given the nickname Lil' C because of his short stature.
Petties was first arrested in 1992 at age 15 during his first year at Carver High School. He was caught possessing a sawed-off shotgun which he purchased to intimidate individuals who had stolen his coat. He accidentally discharged the gun inside his home, and was the person who called police to explain himself. Petties dropped out of school by age 16 and was arrested three more times, twice for selling crack during the summer of 1993 and once during the winter for attempted murder. He and some cohorts had approached a rival named Eric Cole and started shooting, with Cole surviving after being shot in the back. Authorities recommended trying Petties as an adult, a crime that is punishable by a sentence of up to 20 years, but the adult court declined and sent the case back to juvenile court.
In October of that year between the second and third arrests, psychologist Robert Parr evaluated Petties. He described the young man as polite, standing only tall, weighing, and having a low verbal IQ of 77. Petties eventually stopped growing at. Dr. Parr identified negativism, rebelliousness, a lack of impulse control, and resentment of authority.
Adulthood
By 1995, Petties was 18 and making decent money dealing drugs. An acquaintance known to Petties and his cousin Antonio Allen had become the top dealer in South Memphis. That man was arrested in March 1995 and his Chevrolet Lumina was impounded with US$500,000 cash hidden in a secret compartment. The jailed dealer called Allen and offered him a cut if he could retrieve the money before law enforcement found it. Allen, known as "Big Wayne", was too heavy to climb a ladder over a fence, so he recruited the smaller Petties to complete the mission. Petties recovered the cache, the group double-crossed the car's owner by keeping the money, and they split it among friends with Petties keeping US$50,000 for himself. Petties bought a Cadillac and gave some money to his mother to have an aging tree removed from their property.Petties invested the remainder of the money by purchasing large quantities of drugs to jumpstart his illegal business and then reinvested the profits buying more drugs. He quickly outsold all other local dealers and ascended to the leadership of the Memphis branch of the Gangster Disciples. Petties grew the criminal enterprise into one of the largest and most violent drug trafficking rings in the history of West Tennessee, if not the largest. Around this time, Petties met cousins Clinton and Martin Lewis, two men who became his most loyal cohorts. Clinton, nicknamed "Goldie", was 18 at the time while Martin, nicknamed "M", was 20.
Petties was arrested as an adult for the first time at age 21 in 1998 after pleading guilty to burglarizing boxcars in Memphis rail yards. As evidence of his success, Petties was only 22 when he bought a house in the middle-class suburb of Hickory Hill during the summer of 1999 for US$185,000, quickly paying off the entire debt. He purchased a Bentley for US$339,000, a Mercedes-Benz for US$112,000, and property in Las Vegas.
Expanding beyond Tennessee
At 23, Petties bought of marijuana and of cocaine through middlemen with direct connections to Mexico. Large amounts of cash from the drug sales were stored on various premises in West Tennessee, eventually funneled back to Texas and Mexico. By 2000, the trafficking operation had grown significantly. Petties coordinated efforts with cocaine and marijuana traffickers to prepare and package the drugs in at least eight states including Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, and Texas. After this success, Petties was introduced to drug lord Edgar Valdez Villareal in Corpus Christi, Texas, a high-ranking leader in Mexico's Beltrán-Leyva Cartel. The connection was cited in law enforcement circles as the first time a black American was accepted by any Mexican cartel. With this more powerful association, Petties grew his organization much larger and became a multimillionaire in his mid-20s.The majority of marijuana and cocaine smuggled from Mexico to Memphis by any organization typically arrived in hidden compartments on tractor-trailers via interstates I-55 and I-40. Shipments of drugs varied from, but one shipment totaled with a street value of US$50 million. Some drug packages were even mailed via FedEx.
Petties was reportedly making the group millions of dollars every week. The organization also supplied millions of dollars in cocaine to the Black Mafia Family drug ring founded in Detroit. Domination of the Memphis drug trade was furthered by intimidation as Petties and his cohorts killed at least six people.
Fugitive status
On April 4, 2001, Petties' girlfriend Latosha Booker called police after fighting in the home of an acquaintance. When officers arrived, they smelled and searched the home, discovering three duffel bags of marijuana totaling. Petties and others in the home were arrested and his bond was set at US$250,000, an amount Petties easily paid. Charges were eventually dropped for unknown reasons.During the summer of 2002 in the Memphis suburb of Bartlett, officers discovered of cocaine with a street value of nearly US$1 million hidden in the attic of a home linked to the organization. That discovery led to an indictment of Petties by the federal government in November. Special agents for the DEA correctly surmised that Petties and his associates had become the predominant suppliers of marijuana and cocaine in Memphis.
In response to the indictment, Petties fled to Mexico. Each time Mexican authorities closed in on Petties, corrupt officials tipped him off, including one such warning from an employee of the U.S. Embassy in Mexico, causing Petties to move to a different city. He eventually settled in the Mexican state of Querétaro a few hours north of Mexico City, buying a home in the upscale Milenio III subdivision of Santiago de Querétaro, Mexico.
In August 2004, he was added to the U.S. Marshals 15 Most Wanted Fugitives list and featured on the television series America's Most Wanted. But it wasn't until 2007 that authorities knew Petties was hiding south of the border. In Mexico, Petties was protected by the Mexican cartel where he had a private driver, a personal chef, a maid, a nanny, a personal trainer, and armed guards. From there, he was still able to orchestrate homicides back in the United States and organize the illegal transportation of over a ton of marijuana and hundreds of kilos of cocaine from Mexico back into Tennessee and other states. The Lewis cousins ran operations in the United States on behalf of Petties, traveling to Mexico, arranging deliveries, purchasing stash houses, and protecting Petties' mother.