9: Batman On The West Side

Hi, this is Frank Maine, just a quick heads up before we begin. This episode contains the sounds of a real life shooting and a lot of profanity, including frequent use of the N-word. It's been over four years since Stadius Hemenes was gang banging on the west side of Chicago. We wanted to see if anyone out there remembered him. We're on a stretch of Chicago Avenue that's been fought over by some powerful gangs. We just call it the Avenue. We drove up to some guys hanging out on the corner. They thought my producer and I were cops. We're journalists. Radio. We're doing something. Do you know TJ? You ever hear of TJ? TJ. We got real. These guys belong to a local gang, and they remember TJ well. They're talking about the young men from the neighborhood who flipped to TJ's gang, getting Simon City Royals tattoos on their faces. Ask what would happen nowadays if these guys on the corner ran into those kids that flipped to the royals. If you come by here with the aura on your face now, what would that do? We're going to beat his ass. Yeah, they still try to talk to you about that, but we're going to beat his ass until he does that. They don't dare to be known. They don't dare. They don't dare. They don't dare. That's why they ain't around. I'm on the bitch. They stink. They stink. They stink. The money going. You know how I go. I asked these guys how they would some TJ up. A weak man of childish ass tea. Fuck TJ. The city of Chicago shulled out $25 million to fatty cementes. Granted, after the lawyer's got paid, he took home about half of that. Once TJ had the money in his pocket, the new multi-millionaire could have done anything he wanted. He was generous. Giving away thousands of dollars to homeless people and buying gifts for his family. But he also chose to buy a fleet of expensive cars, build up his crew, and flip kids, and rival territory on the west side of Chicago, kicking off a violent gang war. Some men just want to watch the world burn. From WBZ Chicago, I'm Frank Maine, and this is Motive. Batman on the west side. I wanted to retrace TJ's steps in a poor, predominantly African-American neighborhood where he spent several years. This is a place where he could have done some good things with his money. Instead he created chaos. I'm about four miles west of downtown, near the intersection of home and avenue, and Chicago Avenue. As a crime reporter, I used to be out here a lot. Sometimes every night, I talked to gang members at war with each other. I rode around with homicide detectives. There's an old Sears warehouse nearby where the police store seized narcotics, guns, and money. It's where the police hold press conferences after big drug raids. Gangs sell drugs out in the open around here with a steady supply of customers thanks to the nearby Eisenhower Expressway. People of all races, colors, creeds, ages, jump off the highway to get their hair when fix, and when he's open-air drug markets, which we'll see right over there. And that is the neighborhood where TJ was operating. I spotted police officers sitting in his parked car on a blocked nearby. If you go by and talk to him, it's a fixed post. The officer says he's on a fixed post, meaning there's a cop just sitting in a squad car in this block every single day. I asked the officer what he thinks of me approaching some guys down the street. If we went down there, they talked to us, they're not going to jump us, are they? I doubt it. I don't know if we're going to be armed right there. Yeah. All right. Well, we made a bomb down there. Thanks for talking to us. What the fuck did this all took off? Where'd they go? The guys on the corner disappeared. I'm guessing it's because they saw me talking to the cop. I drive a couple of blocks over. What up? How you doing? I'm good. Good. You guys have a second to talk? You good? We enjoying it's night weather. We're doing a story on that guy, TJ Jimenez, remember him? What about it? I heard about it. You want to talk about it? We're trying to get somebody to talk about it. I noticed a man parked in a car nearby. I think he was waiting for me to leave so he could score some drugs. I bet that's why these guys didn't want to talk to me. The three two multiple shots fired somewhere in the vicinity of Huron and home at like 10-15 shots, what's going on? The next morning on that same corner, two men got out of a car and shot 30 rounds at four people. 11-0-21 at the bottom five shooting. Two 19-year-olds were killed. The those who know from what we're from and who don't come up under the same side of the circumstances, you will never ever understand. You know what I'm saying? You will never ever understand. You might remember this guy from the first episode. His name is Reese. He asked that I not use his last name. Reese was a gang member in the Westside for a long time. He's out of that life now, but it's left a lot of scars. I got shot in my head. I shot in my leg, ear, arm, ear, arm, ear, and then my back, right up. It hurts. And I'm not just talking about physically, I mean mentally, emotionally, psychologically. He said my soul don't fight. Do you feel like you're lucky to have made your 30s? I didn't expect to make it so I was 21. This area is historically seen a lot of shootings, but Reese says that what TJ and his crew did around here set it on fire. They're still public enemy number one. To this day? To this day. Yeah, because people don't forget what you did. You came over here and kicked off an entire war. Once people realized that they were trying to make a take over, now you got guys coming in armies and battalions going against them, they went up against everybody, all gangs on all four sides of them, you know what I'm saying? We drove around some more looking for guys who might be able to talk about TJ. Some of them made it clear they wanted nothing to do with us. We asked one guy, he said, "Oh yeah, Cubs fan, right?" I took that to mean TJ was just a white dude from the wrong part of town. A friend of his shouted, "You got what you need, move on." Then we found these guys. They tried to take from home into St. Louis, Chicago Avenue, but they knocked from around here. We from around here. Yeah. They had some 17-year-olds. They had now. They were some 17-year-olds. This is C-dog, T-Money, Smitty, and Willie T. Willie T's the guy doing most of the talking. They're four young African-American guys who work on the avenue. They're in a gang called the Traveling Bicellords, or Travelers, for short. We Travelers. We TVL. All right. These TVL's look at the Simon City Royals as a white gang. They saw TJ as a white guy who pitted black people against each other for his own amusement, and it really pissed them off. Simon City Roy, that's like the cook-up's clan, man. I know this respect, man. I think I don't like black people. People in Chicago are territorial, just like the gangs. What neighborhood you're from matters. Now, the Simon City Royals are from the north side. TJ grew up on the north side, so how did he end up gang-banging on the west side? Well, it all started with a girl. I know that girl's name, but I'd rather not say it in case of some sort of retaliation. So I'm going to bleep it out. Did you hear it? The way he got involved in the neighborhood is he. He was with a girl named [bleep] Oh, no, what a mess. That's what I'm going to go. She's still around. No, she can't even come around. What can she come around? What you mean? 'Cause she brought us boys in the neighborhood. That's the young lady I was talking about. Man, it was a beautiful young lady. Reese again. She is some kin to the Rockwell boys. She's related to him. So this is how TJ got to the west side and met his future crew. TJ's new girlfriend is related to a group of guys who Reese calls the Rockwell boys. That refers to where these guys were originally from. Rockwell Gardens, a large public housing complex that was torn down by the city. Reese says these young transplants, the Rockwell boys, were violent. Ashley. lost a friend from one of those little young guys. And I was sitting in my car when it happened. And my guy, he smacked them. They walked right up and they shot him. It shot him right in his face, knocked his head off. And that's when I got a chance to see all of them together. There was a family, a young boy. Through his new girlfriend, TJ and his millions enter the scene. And the outsider to the neighborhood clicked up with these other outsiders. When he started dating him, they started coming around a lot more. By him having all that money, they pretty much got close. This group of young men were in the traveling by-slords. But after meeting TJ, that changed. Some of them stayed TVLs. And some of them actually flipped royals. That's a no-no, you get that's found upon. You part of one organization, you state of organization, or you detach yourself from it all together. That's a no-no. I can't emphasize this enough. Flipping from one gang to another is almost unheard of in Chicago. But that's what happened when TJ came along. Then TJ and his new recruits announced themselves to the world on social media. And it happened so fast because now you got YouTube and Instagram and Facebook. And the whole world gets a chance to know who these people are. Gangs in Chicago use YouTube and social media channels to taunt rivals and promote themselves. Just the year after TJ was awarded the money, he's appearing in videos on Facebook and YouTube. And he's got a new alter ego. Yeah, y'all know who this is. Nigga is Batman. Nigga, the person who live, you all might as time see well. Nigga, we fork on the hustler killer. TJ is calling himself Batman. You can't kill a nigga. Cobra killer. Keen, Killer Stone, Killer. Everything killer. Nigga, we rose. Nigga, find out why I am bitch. Cut that shit. The videos are mostly of Batman driving around the Westside, absolutely blasting the base with some younger guys in the backseat. Got more fucking little bitch. TJ uploaded his YouTube videos under the name Bruce Wayne. In TJ's mind, he probably thought he was like Bruce Wayne. The multimillionaire with expensive toys is driving around Gotham at night as Batman. Please say TJ would hang out with his crew members at a strip mall on Friday nights. Gatherings were called paydays. TJ'd shower the guys with new shoes, clothes, and drinks. The police heard that TJ paid thousands of dollars to those young guys to flip and even tattoo their faces with royals emblems. They also heard that TJ's new crew is passing out cash to kids at a Westside high school. The royals in Sydney, I was supposedly scrawled on the money. Batman bitch. It's my more fucking hood now bitch. Gangs on the Westside will tell you they're mostly interested in selling drugs and making money. But the police say TJ didn't care about any of that. All he wanted to do was gang bang, meaning going to war with rival gangs. - So our bitch, we all need it. - What the fuck is that? - Whose motherfuckin hood is this? Out with guns. - Reese again. - He was in the front of the glory. He wasn't in the front of the truck. He's 20 something million dollars. What could you do with 20 something million dollars, man? Instead, you came out and started hatred. Wars. - We just, we just try to feed off family, man. - We just try to feed off family, man. We got kids, you know. - Besides the fact that TJ was enlisting guys from their gang, the TVL's on the corner didn't like this white guy coming into their neighborhood and treating it like his own personal playground. And why even do it? He doesn't need money. He's not making money. He doesn't have to be there. It created a lot of resentment. - Yeah, when he came around, it's through here, but that's when this shit really started escalating. If you like to do some group of guys that you brainwashed that much, why not take the ass of your neighborhood? Don't come to have them scum of douchey over here. - And they neighborhood. - They neighborhood. - There's a scene. - So, motherfuckers feel disrespected and that's how all that shit escalated there. See them? - With all that tension simmering on Chicago Avenue, TJ's crew found another way to promote themselves. - Music. Reese again. - The new music scene played a big part in the two. By the time it really, the scene really started, the young guys really started getting into making music on the west out of Chicago, is around the time. TJ came around. - This is Lucas Need, Burson, Gimla, Paz. Knockers, NSL, Cun, Cree, Onus, AS. - This is one of the young rappers who clicked up a TJ in the Royals. Here he is on a YouTube channel called Chicago Street Idol. - And I have with me today, O'Skein O, AKA The Dund. So, tell me, why should people vote for you? - Because, I'm O'Skein O, The Dund. Plus, I'm off to Avenue. Fuck with me. - Right here, I'm sound like Chicago. - The Royals are here. - Sound like the Royals are here. - O'Skein O, his real name is Owen Spears. Flip to the Simon City Royals and created this anthem for the gang. - Junior Gazena, they're like, "Wait, wait!" - What the fuck else could we say? - Wait, wait up! - You come to that bitch with it! - That's enough! - We come to that bitch with it, get it out of here! - Come down to this bitch with it, flip! - We come to that bitch with it, rock! - This is a video of dozens of young men and women in a club shouting the lyrics to Skeno's Royals anthem. - We come to that bitch with it! - Come to that bitch with it, get it out of here! - Reece says all of this only increased the appeal of the Royals. - They're doing something that every other young guy out here is trying to get in a made-of-hapen overnight. It gets their message out. - We live, we live, we live, we live, we live! - TJ uploaded this video from the club on his Bruce Wayne YouTube channel. It included a credit to something called "Blue Crown Entertainment" and a parent Royals reference. I don't know for sure if TJ spent any money on studio sessions, but it seems he thought of himself as sort of a hip-hop mogul. - It doesn't even make you stop me. I want this shit. It's a fucking movie. TJ just said, "It's a fucking movement." TJ seemed to love his new anthem. In this video, he's driving around with the song "Blaring on the Speakers." - I love bitch! - It's new yet, Albany and School nigga. - TJ is in his old Northside neighborhood. You're the intersection of Albany and School. That's where the Royals were based when he was growing up. It's also a couple blocks from where the honey baked ham was, where Eric Moro was killed. TJ appears to be by himself in his car. This video was uploaded on October 7th, 2014. Just three weeks later, the rapper who made this Royals anthem, Asquino, was shot and killed. No one has been charged with the murder, but my source of city was shot by the vice-lords to warn TJ and his crew to get out of the neighborhood. Owen Asquino's Spears was 22 years old. - And the D's are there. Why? Nicely. - TJ's mom, Vicki, said her son called her out of the blue and asked her how to send flowers to the funeral home. - For one night only, Count Orlock's shadow gains his sonic counterpart with a live score of Noce Faratou from Circuit de U and Alan Sparhawk. That's October 17th at the Studebaker Theater. Tickets at wbez.org/events. - TJ wasn't exceptionally close to too many people. And we've always been close. I mean, they've always looked at him like my little brother, and I got none but love for TJ. - Donnie Ballard is TJ's brother-in-law, and he was one of the closest people to TJ during this period when TJ was creating havoc with millions of dollars on the west side. Donnie has some things to say. - Somebody needs to speak up for him. Somebody needs to speak the truth. And that's the only reason I'm going as soon as he was because someone needs to speak up on TJ's behalf. - So here's Donnie's version of how TJ got to the west side. - Well, TJ was, you know, seeing this girl on the west side, and this group of guys obviously, they're seeing TJ come through on a regular basis. And he's either in a Lamborghini Mercilago or a Lamborghini spider, or a Bentley, or a big Hummer truck with sounds. You obviously, if you're from the west side, you know, it's poverty-driven. You're going to take quick notice to something like that. So they actually approached TJ. - That's pretty similar to the version we heard from our west sideers, like Reese and the traveling vise lords. But Donnie's emphasis is that this whole thing wasn't TJ's idea. They came to him. - So TJ told them, look, you guys don't gang bang like we gang bang. We gang bang. That you guys don't get down like we do. And they pretty much told them, look, look, look down with you, whatever it takes, whatever we gotta do. Let's do it. - But you know, people, The word on the street and from the police was that TJ was directly paying people to flip. Here I'm talking to the traveling vise lords again. It's the biggest sin you could commit as a gang member, flipping for money. That's what the police said TJ was doing. That's what I wrote in my articles for the Chicago sun times. Donnie says it's not true. Another main issue I really wanted to clear up for everybody is TJ never, ever paid not one person to flip 100 percent false. I've ever paid one person to do anything they didn't want to do. Donnie says these guys decided to flip on their own just because they liked hanging around TJ. Then they got showered with money and gifts. That's a pretty subtle distinction from a direct payment. But if you believe what Donnie says, it absolves TJ of committing one of the cardinal gang sins. The Chicago police department really started to watch TJ in 2014. The police kept getting reports of shots being fired on the west side from one of TJ's vehicles. A green Hummer, nicknamed the tank. But no one was hit. Can you kill a cypher, kill a cobble, kill a bitch, raw love, no love, bitch. Then on a warm 4th of July weekend TJ went from being a curiosity to a public enemy. A 22-year-old was shot and paralyzed. The police had intel that TJ's crew was to blame. The violence kept escalating. The police say TJ's west side crew killed a rival gang member that September. That set off a war. We went from 166 shootings in 2013 to over 213 shootings in 2014. Bob Tracy was in charge of crime strategy for the Chicago police department. Here he is talking about that west side police district. If you look at the murders in the 11th district from 2013 to 2014, they went from 35 to 51, almost over 40 percent increased. Tracy attributes a lot of this to TJ. He was a big factor. Not all of it, but a good part of it. And those are years when we had historic lowest citywide. My own reporting showed that at least 19 people were shot. Four of them killed in the long battle between TJ's crew and the rivals on the west side. When one west side rail got arrested with an illegal handgun, he complained to the cops, everybody's trying to kill me because I'm a royal, I got to protect myself. He later went to federal prison for having an illegal AK-47. Another royal got busted for robbing a west side convenience store on the avenue with a submachine gun. Yet another member of TJ's crew got locked up for a triple shooting. That guy's prison photo shows a royals tattoo on his face. All of this rise in violence on the west side is because of this guy because he got a bunch of money. It's easy for CPD to say that. And it's very easy for people to believe that. Let's know what happened. Donnie Ballard. I'm sure TJ didn't say, "Hey, here's just gone, go and kill this guy." No. He just meant to have a person. Donnie admits that there was a conflict between TJ's crew and the west side gangs. But he says the neighborhood violence would have happened with or without his brother in law. No. Come on. Let's be honest. There was a lot of animosity on the west side because of what happened most definitely. There's a lot of it to do with dumb flipping. It was very possible. But people are shot and killed every single day in the city of Chicago. But can they directly link it back to TJ? People are saying, "Oh, it's TJ's fault. TJ brought guns to the west side. That's laughable." Nevertheless, the police thought TJ was behind all those shootings. And that meant TJ had a lot more interaction with law enforcement. And were they harassing him, do you think? Oh my God. One particular person in the whole city, that normal. Former chief of crime strategy, Bob Tracy, said the Chicago Police Department was interviewing victims, sticking out TJ's associates, and stopping TJ's vehicles, looking for guns and drugs. We pulled every plan that we had to try to see if we can slow this down. So what was the plan? Intelligence reports to our officers. And of course, he was going to have to obey the traffic laws. He's bringing a lot of tensions himself. And in certain times, we would make sure that we do vehicle stops on him if there was a traffic infraction. We left no stone unturned because of the type of violence that was happening that we knew he was involved in. So we kept the pressure on, and I think he knew it. It's perfectly understandable that the cops would want to investigate a multi-millionaire calling himself Batman, cruising around with dangerous associates. But TJ had a long history with the police, going back to his childhood murder conviction. So he saw the cops coming and went, "Oh, you guys again." "You're in a lot of hatred for CPG because they did so." There's a series of videos that TJ uploaded. They're entitled "Simon City Royals vs. Chicago Police." They show this petty cat and mouse game between TJ and police officers. Six months after the gang war started. "Say cheese!" In one video, TJ is filming several cops who are conducting a search of four young men with their hands on a squad car. One of the cops turns toward TJ and starts waving. The officer doesn't respond. Instead, he does a little dance for the camera, mockingly. "Hey, hey, don't do that. I'm going to put a doll in your thumb." "You know, I was locked up a long time, don't be shaking your ass in front of me." In another video, TJ films a couple of cops through the front door of his house. They're warning him that he's making too much noise. I get why TJ was hostile towards the police, but he also seemed to be hostile towards his money. He certainly loves spending it, but he also treated it like it was something to get rid of. I couldn't confirm this, but Donnie told me a story that connects TJ's feelings about the police and the money. Donnie says TJ made a substantial donation to a police fund, $100,000. When the fund found out who it was from, they sent the money back. TJ got a call from his bank, saying, "The money that was donated was found to be corrupt, that he could come and pick up his money." TJ supposedly went to his downtown bank to pick up the cash. "Yeah, they're in a duffel bag." TJ called his crew and carried that duffel bag, filled with $100,000 to a swanky downtown hotel. He took a party at the hotel and said, "All this money is going to be his first out tonight. It's not my money." Wow. The Royals Hotel Suite was fully stocked with booze and drugs. Stippers? An amount of money that would have meant a lot for a police fund thrown back in his face and blown on one epic night. According to Donnie, TJ didn't care about the rest of his millions, either. TJ didn't believe there was his money. He's made the comment numerous times to save my money. This is the state's money. This is the CPD's money. To try to cover up something that they did to me, it was wrong. He felt there was blood money. Donnie says he tried to convince TJ to take his money and start a new, beautiful life somewhere else. "You're sitting in the back seat of my car. I almost hit him, talked into it, or let's move away, T. You know, let's get out of here, man. There ain't none here for any of us, man. There's a move away from here and have a great life, man." I was like, "You know what, Donnie, you're right, man. You're right." Donnie and TJ got back home, but the thought of leaving went away. "And I approached him about it like, gee, I thought we were going to leave, man." He's like, "You know what, Donnie, this is my seat. I was born the last year. I'm not going to let nobody run me out of here." "I'm not going to let them run me out of my city." When you say them, "I have a police department, CPD." When is this guy going to slip up? Former Chief of Crime Strategy for CPD, Bob Tracy. At what point is this guy going to make a mistake? Because it wasn't like he was trying to stay under the radar. He wanted people to know what he was doing. If I can sum him up, he did a really good job till he didn't. I think the more he did it and the more he got away with, I think that made him think he was invincible. That's a word that I think he started to feel invincible. Whenever he finally went through all the money within a couple of weeks before he caught this new case, he said, "Ah, you know what, finally it's gone." He was actually relieved that the money was gone. "So bitch, so bitch!" Vicki Himenez, TJ's mother, was in the hospital, when she first saw the video of her son shooting Earl Castile from her Mercedes. Vicki was watching the news on TV with a group of nurses. "Next thing I know, my son is under TV. That's my kid, and I tried to stay strong, I don't want to cry in front of everybody." The nurses all left the room, except for one. "But then I broke down, because it was just a tool of us. She hugged me, and why she was hugging me, she said, "We're on this prayer," and so on. And I kept saying, "Please God don't let this guy die, please God don't let this guy die." I don't even know if this guy did anything to him. I'm just glad that he didn't die, because that would kill me to know that I have a son who's a murderer. And why in the world, after everything you've been through, then to videotape, or is your brains? Motive is a production of WBZ Chicago based on original reporting from the Chicago Suntimes. I'm Frank Maine, the producer is Colin McNulty, the executive producer is Kevin Dawson, our engineer is Shelley Stephens, special thanks to listeners whose financial support of WBZ made this podcast possible.