North Lawndale, Chicago. September 29th, 2000. A man is found in an alley near South Komensky Avenue. 39 separate points of injury. One close-range gunshot wound to the head. He had been taken from a corner as corner less than 2 hours before. The people who planned this expected $50,000 for him. The money was never collected.
The call was never made. A fellow Vice Lord had sold his location. He was described in court as a five-star prince of the Vice Lords, the chief of the Conservative Vice Lords in North Lawndale in the territory people called Holy City. He held it through intelligence, through discipline, and through something that everyone who knew him described the same way in the same words years after his death.
His word was law, not the kind of phrase that gets used loosely in memorials. The actual operational condition of a specific street for a specific stretch of years. People on 16th Street knew what he permitted and what he punished. They knew what it cost to cross that line. Most of them knew better than to try. On September 29th, 2000, someone tested it anyway.
And someone else, someone inside his own organization known only by a street name, decided to help them do it. That is where this story begins. With the law and with the person who decided it didn’t apply to them. His name was Albert Mahone. The people who knew him called him Pierre. Before he was Chief Pierre, he was Albert Mahone. The record does not give us much about his early life, where he grew up, what he was like before any of this.
The public record only meets him when he is already in charge, already the chief, already the name people used when they talked about Holy City. That absence is not a failure of research. The system does not document a man until he is large enough to threaten something. That Pierre has no documented childhood is itself a statement about who gets documented and who doesn’t.
What the record does give us is the street. 40 years before Pierre, 16th Street meant something else. The Vice Lords formed in the late 1950s in a state reformatory among teenagers who had nothing. When they came out, they landed in North Lawndale. By the late ’60s, the older members tried to turn that street into something incorporated, took grant money, opened a youth center called Teen Town at 3700 West 16th Street.
It collapsed inside a decade. By 1974, CVL Inc. was gone. What it left behind was the street. And by 2000, that street was Pierre’s. The CVL had built a new internal structure in the ’80s and ’90s. Islamic titles, Islamic hierarchy. Headquarters became Holy City. Leaders became five-star princes. Pierre was both. Per the court record, per Xavier Cox’s own statement given the day after Pierre’s murder, he was a five-star prince of the Vice Lords with over 25,000 people under his control.
That came from a man who had just participated in his killing. The adversaries’ own accounting. His witnesses were the people who lived under him. At trial, LeRon Tate called him the chief of the Vice Lords. Napoleon Smith called him the head of their gang. Those are courtroom words calibrated for a judge.
The texture comes from elsewhere. Michael Parker, old school CVL, wrote in a memorial post years after Pierre’s death, “Pierre is one of the smartest leader I have ever seen. He lead the biggest CVL in the Holy City as a young man for years and to keep them black gangsters off 16th Street took pure toughest and intelligent and he was gangster from the word go.
” The word that keeps appearing in those posts is not feared, it is smart. That word matters. Power built on fear alone is fragile. It requires constant violence and the moment the violence stops, it collapses. Power built on predictability is different. People knew what Pierre allowed on 16th Street. They knew what he punished.
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That knowledge, not just the enforcement, but the certainty that enforcement would come, is what made Holy City function as a system rather than just a turf. Pierre had made himself the one constant in a neighborhood where almost nothing else was. Law is not just violence. Law is predictability.
The corner he held at 16th and Hamlin was described by cops as an extremely hot spot to buy dope and there’s much money to be made. Pierre held it against the new breeds who had moved into blocks adjacent to Holy City in 1992 and had been pressing against Vice Lord territory ever since. What that required was not just muscle. It required that every person who thought about crossing the line already knew what would happen if they did.
Consistent, quiet, certain. The order Pierre maintained was built inside the drug economy. He could protect the corner because the corner made money. He could keep rivals off because everyone understood the cost of testing him. He was the man who held things together and the thing holding them together was the same economy that was hollowing the neighborhood out.
Pierre was not responsible for that contradiction. He was born into it. He built his authority inside it and he was very, very good at it. North Lawndale in 2000 had a median age of 25.9. Nearly half its residents, 41 and 1/2%, were under 19 years old. Pierre at 38 was genuinely one of the elders, not a figurehead, the actual governor and authority for a significant portion of the people who lived there.
The court record confirms it. And on the morning of September 29th, 2000, a man named Leonard Kidd gave him a reason to demonstrate it one more time. On the morning of September 29th, 2000, Pierre confronted a man named Leonard Kidd about a drug corner. That is where the chain begins with a corner, just a corner.
Leonard Kidd, street name Bam, had been selling PCP on Vice Lord turf since August of 2000, approximately 2 months. The drug was phencyclidine, sold on the West Side as wet or dipper cigarettes soaked in the liquid bought and sold in small quantities on corners that were by every account generating real money.
The corner at issue was in Holy City, Pierre’s territory, and Kidd had been working it for 8 weeks without permission and without consequence. At 10:30 in the morning, Pierre went to that corner and told Kid he could no longer sell there, a PCP corner. That is what started this. Against a man with 25,000 people under his control, the chief of the Conservative Vice Lords in that part of North Lawndale, a single corner belonging to a single New Breeds member who had been pushing into Vice Lord turf for 2 months.
The disproportion is not incidental. It is the point. Because what Pierre was responding to was not the corner. He was responding to what the corner meant. The New Breeds and the CVL had been in conflict for years. The same North Lawndale streets, the same abandoned blocks, two organizations pressing against each other’s lines.
Fontaine Lewis, the man who would organize what came next, was the senior New Breeds authority in the area. Per the court record, he controlled the south and west sides of Chicago for the New Breed gang. When Kid set up on that Vice Lord corner, he was not operating alone. He was operating inside a pressure that had been building for a long time.
Pierre could not ignore it. Not because he was reckless, because ignoring it would have meant something. Authority built on predictability cannot selectively enforce itself. If Pierre let one corner slide, the message was not Pierre is being reasonable. The message was Pierre can be tested.
And the moment that message traveled through the networks of people who watched every move on 16th Street, everything Pierre had built would start to soften. The confrontation at 10:30 in the morning was not a decision Pierre made. It was the his position required of him. The law of the corner demanded a response. He went after the confrontation Kid called Fontaine Lewis, and that afternoon Pierre went back.
The record does not explain why. 4 hours elapsed between the confrontation at 10:30 and Pierre’s arrival at 16th and Hamlin at 2:20. 4 hours in which the court record makes clear Kid had already spoken to Lewis. Lewis had already begun making calls. The plan was already being assembled. Whether Pierre knew any of this is not in the record.
Whether someone warned him, whether he felt the day differently after the confrontation, whether he had any reason to believe that a PCP corner dispute had escalated into something else entirely, none of that is documented. What is documented is that he went back to 16th and Hamlin at 2:20 in the afternoon. That matters. Not because it was a mistake, we don’t get to call it that from here decades later with the full record in front of us.
It matters because it tells us something about how Pierre understood his own position. The man who held Holy City did not hold it by going home when the morning got complicated. He held it by being present, by being visible, by making his presence on that corner the default fact of the neighborhood, the thing that people organized their understanding of 16th Street around.
Men like Pierre do not hold corners by avoiding them. Sometime in the hours after that morning confrontation, Kid made a call. The record does not give us the exact time. It gives us the result Fontaine Lewis answered. And Fontaine Lewis had a plan. At noon on September 29th, Fontaine Lewis pulled up in a white Riviera.
He told Xavier Cox to follow him. About a dozen other cars followed. Lewis drove to a house, went inside, and came back with guns. He distributed them to Cox to approximately seven other men. Then he drove to a vacant lot. And at the vacant lot, he explained the plan. The plan was $50,000. Pierre Mahone, the chief of Holy City, the five-star prince of the Vice Lords, the man who had confronted Lennard Kidd at 10:30 that morning, would be taken from his corner at 16th and Hamlin that afternoon. His organization would be
contacted. They would pay $50,000 for him. Lewis would receive $15,000. Kidd, who had started all of this with a PCP corner, would receive $5,000. The other men, Cox and the rest, would split what remained. Cox estimated his own cut at somewhere between $500 and $800. The figure differs across appellate records.
And the insider, the person inside Pierre’s own organization who had agreed to provide his location, would receive $25,000. Half the ransom. The highest individual payout in the entire plan went to the person inside Pierre’s world. The person Pierre had no reason to suspect. $25,000. That was the price.
Take a moment with that arithmetic. Fontaine Lewis organized this. He distributed the weapons, mobilized the vehicles, explained the plan, and would go on to walk Pierre into an alley and fire. For that, he would receive $15,000. Lennard Kidd, the man whose corner dispute triggered everything, would receive $5,000. Xavier Cox, present that afternoon, raising a gun, told others to act a few hundred.
And the person who handed Pierre to all of them, the person who told them exactly where he would be, and when the person whose knowledge of Pierre’s movements made the entire operation possible, $25,000. That person was a fellow Vice Lord known by the street name Little Mike. The 2012 appellate opinion records it plainly, Little Mike agreed to tip off the New Breeds to Pierre’s whereabouts in exchange for a portion of the ransom.
He came to the vacant lot that afternoon and told the New Breeds where Pierre would be and when. He was among the first to approach Pierre at the corner because Pierre knew him. His full legal name does not appear in the publicly available appellate records. No charge against him appears in the appellate records reviewed.
That is the detail worth sitting with. Every other person in this story has a name on a charging document. Fontaine Lewis, Lenard Kidd, Xavier Cox, Little Mike has a street name in a 2012 appellate opinion and nothing else. The person who reached inside Pierre’s own organization and handed him to his enemies for $25,000 remains in any meaningful legal sense unaccountable.
Think about what Little Mike had to know. Not just Pierre’s general whereabouts, anyone on 16th Street might have known that. He had to know the right location at the right time that Pierre would return to 16th and Hamlin. That specific afternoon after the morning confrontation with Kidd had already changed the temperature of the day.
That kind of knowledge comes from being close, from being trusted, from being inside the organization at a level where Pierre’s movements were known in advance. Pierre knew Little Mike. The 2012 opinion notes [clears throat] it specifically Pierre knew him. That was the point and that person weighed all of that against a number, $25,000.
We don’t know if the insider felt anything about it. The record doesn’t say. What the record says is that the money was promised and that the location was given. And that by the time Pierre drove back to 16th and Hamlin at 2:20 that afternoon, 15 to 20 men were already there and seven or eight vehicles with guns and baseball bats waiting for him.
He didn’t know. The record does not say what he knew. It only tells us he went. At 2:20 in the afternoon, seven or eight vehicles pulled around Pierre’s car at the corner of 16th and Hamlin and boxed him in. This was the corner Pierre had held for years, the same block, the same intersection where his authority had always been the organizing factor of the neighborhood, where people knew who he was and what it meant to be there with his permission or without it.
On every other day, the corner was his. On September 29th at 2:20 in the afternoon, it wasn’t. One vehicle pulled in front, the others surrounded him on the sides and behind. 15 to 20 men got out. They were carrying guns and baseball bats. Larone Tate and Napoleon Smith, CVL members who were there that afternoon, watched it happen.
Brandy Harrison, watching from her living room window across the street, watched it happen. A man named Rudolfo Escalante, who had no connection to any of this and happened to be standing on 16th Street that afternoon, watched it happen. The corner did not protect Pierre, the law of the corner did not protect him.
Everyone there watched and the record tells us what they saw and none of them could stop it. Leonard Kidd struck Pierre across the head with a pistol. Xavier Cox raised his gun and told the others to get him. Per Cox’s own statement, Kidd hit the victim in the head with a bat and Lewis hit him in the head with the butt of his gun.
Others joined in. Pierre was beaten with bats and guns by men who had been assembled and armed at noon and driven to this corner and told exactly where he would be. Then Pierre was shot in both legs. The bullet entered his right calf, exited, entered his left calf. Brandy Harrison, watching from her window, saw a man shoot Pierre in the leg.
Pierre fell. Then they lifted him shot in both legs, beaten across the head, and threw him into the back seat of a Chevy Suburban. The Suburban drove away. Rodolfo Escalante saw it go. He was standing on 16th Street at approximately 2:30 in the afternoon when a Suburban drove past moving door open and a black man was hanging out of the doorway screaming, “Help me! Help me!” A passenger inside the Suburban was trying to pull him back.
Escalante watched the vehicle pass. Later that same day, walking in the neighborhood, he saw what he recognized as the same man dead in an alley. Inside the Suburban, Lenard Kidd would later testify about what he saw. Lewis already had a gun on Pierre when Kidd arrived through a vacant lot. Pierre tried to escape.
Kidd pulled him back. The Suburban pulled into an alley near South Komensky Avenue. Lewis walked Pierre 12 or 13 steps away from the vehicle. Kid heard a shot. Pierre dropped. Later that night, Lewis told Cox what happened. He said he shot Pierre in the head because Pierre would not sit still in the Suburban. That was the explanation.
The man who had organized 15 to 20 people across seven or eight vehicles, who had retrieved guns from inside a house and distributed them, who had driven to a vacant lot at noon and laid out the plan, that man pulled the trigger over a matter of composure. The plan had not required a dead man. The $50,000 required a live one. But Pierre, shot in both legs, beaten across the head, thrown into the back of a vehicle by a coordinated group who had been waiting specifically for him, Pierre still would not sit still.
The ransom was never collected. No payment was ever made. The $50,000 that the insider had been promised, half of that Lewis would have received 15,000 of that, Kid would have received 5,000 of that, Cox had been told he might see a few hundred of, none of it was ever paid. Pierre was dead within two hours of being taken from his corner.
His body was found in an alley near South Komensky Avenue. 39 separate points of injury. One close-range gunshot wound to the head. The same man Rudolfo Escalante had seen screaming from the door of a moving Suburban less than two hours before. The same man whose corner this was. The same man whose word had been law.
Three weeks after Pierre was found in that alley, Chicago police arrested Lenard Kidd. Kidd was 27 years old. Then on December 22nd, police arrested Xavier Cox. Cox was 27 or 28 at the time. He had a high school diploma and electrician’s degree from Concordia College. He had been a New Breed’s member for roughly 2 years in the mid-90s, then left.
On December 23rd, he sat down with Assistant State’s Attorney Irene McNamara and gave a handwritten statement. He described the noon meeting with Lewis, the white Riviera, the guns retrieved from the house, the plan at the vacant lot, the distribution, 15,000 to Lewis, 5,000 to Kidd, 25,000 to the Vice Lord insider, and a few hundred estimated to Cox.
The statement placed Cox at 16th and Hamlin. It placed him raising a gun and telling others to act. It placed him present for the beating, present when Pierre was shot in the legs, present when Pierre was thrown into the Suburban. Xavier Cox entered official custody on December 25th, 2000, Christmas Day.
The state’s theory at trial was felony murder via the accountability doctrine. Cox had not pulled the trigger, the state conceded this explicitly. In closing argument, the prosecutor said plainly, “There is no proof that defendant actually committed the actual murder.” The theory was simpler and broader than that.
Cox participated in the aggravated kidnapping. When Lewis killed Pierre during the kidnapping, Cox became legally responsible for the murder. Not because he intended it, because he was there. On January 30th, 2006, Cox was sentenced. 21 years for felony murder, 20 years consecutive for a firearm enhancement. The judge found that Cox personally discharged the firearm during the offense.
10 years concurrent for aggravated kidnapping, 41 years total. At sentencing, Cox spoke. He said, “At the time the thing was going on, I was forced to. I didn’t know what was going on. So, I I got shot in the process. I’m sorry about what happened. Just I didn’t know what was going to happen.” His projected discharge date is December 25th, 2044.
Christmas Day, the symmetry is not a metaphor. It is an accident of calendar math. Nobody planned it. It happened the way institutional arithmetic does, without intention, without meaning. He will be approximately 72 years old. In 2018, the accounting shifted. Derrick Brown, one of the eyewitnesses who had testified against Cox at trial, filed a recantation affidavit.
Brown said he had been pressured by police and by his gang to implicate Cox. What he actually saw, he said, was different. Cox arrived at the scene saying, “What are y’all doing?” And then Brown stated Cox wrapped his arms around Pierre as if trying to shield him. That year, Lenard Kidd, convicted of the same crime himself, a participant in what happened on September 29th, filed his own affidavit. Kidd wrote, “Mr.
Xavier Cox is innocent of any crimes connected with the events of September 29, 2000. Mr. Cox shielded Pierre and was shot in doing so.” In August of 2024, the Illinois Appellate Court ruled on Cox’s second post-conviction petition and affirmed the denial. The court found the recantations insufficient.
The legal framework of felony murder via accountability the court held does not require proof of intent to kill. Cox was present. Cox participated in the kidnapping. When Lewis killed Pierre during it, Cox became responsible. The recantations did not change the legal theory. They changed at most the moral weight of what happened.
And moral weight is not a legal standard. As of 2024, Xavier Cox remains at Centralia Correctional Center. And then there is the question of Fontaine Lewis. Lewis organized the kidnapping. He retrieved the guns and distributed them. He walked Pierre 12 or 13 steps into an alley and fired. Per Cox’s own signed statement, Lewis told him that night he had shot Pierre because Pierre would not sit still in the Suburban.
The man Cox’s own signed statement names as the person who pulled the trigger, the senior New Breeds authority described in that same record as controlling the south and west sides of Chicago for the New Breed gang, has no clear public appellate disposition in the Cox records. In the publicly available appellate opinions from Xavier Cox’s case, no conviction, plea, or sentence for Fontaine Lewis appears.
That is what the accounting produced. Cox at 41 years, scheduled for discharge on Christmas day 2044. The insider known in the 2012 appellate opinion only as Little Mike, with no charge appearing in the records, reviewed present only as a street name, and the man who pulled the trigger, no disposition in the publicly available Cox appellate record.
Pierre Mahone was 38 years old. An old graffiti tag on the Lathrop projects, his name, someone put it there. Someone keeps putting it there. Years after Pierre was killed, people still posted about him. They called him Funky P the Chief. They called him one of the most beloved Conservative Vice Lords leaders.
They wrote long live because that is what you write when someone is gone and the absence still has weight. He was 38 years old when he died. The chief of the Conservative Vice Lords, described in court as a five-star prince with over 25,000 people under his control. The man who had held Holy City through discipline and intelligence for years through a period when everything around it was coming apart.
And somewhere inside that organization, among the people Pierre had governed, the people who knew where he would be and when one person made a different calculation. That person was promised $25,000. His word was law until one person inside his organization decided it wasn’t. That person has only a street name and a 2012 court opinion.
No charges against the individual appear in the appellate records reviewed. And the record is all we have.
Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction created for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
