Blood for Blow
Hidden in a blue-collar neighborhood on Kansas City’s east side, Anthony Rios plotted the last drug deal of his life. It was a Friday evening, December 20, 2002. The rugged, pudgy-cheeked 28-year-old had spent most of the day selling pounds of cocaine and marijuana from the kitchen of a modest ranch-style home on Hardesty that he shared with his girlfriend of three years, Olivia Raya.
Thousands of dollars’ worth of drugs were stashed throughout the kitchen — in cabinets, grocery bags and a Diet Dr Pepper box. A Price Chopper sack with $20,000 inside was stored in the freezer. Also in the kitchen were all of the tools of his trade: a digital scale, plastic bags and a cutting agent to thin out his coke. His pockets bulged with a cell phone and a wad of cash — $1,890.
Rios had an alibi for family members wondering how he made his money. He told them that he rehabbed houses. But Rios had a history of dealing drugs. In February 1998, he pleaded guilty to felony possession of marijuana. A year later, in May, he pleaded guilty to felony distribution, delivery, manufacturing and producing of a controlled substance. In July 1999, Associate Circuit Judge Gregory Gillis sentenced Rios to 120 days in jail. The sentence was called “shock time” — the four months behind bars were meant to scare him out of dealing again.
Prison didn’t scare Rios straight. Nearly three years later, Rios was still hustling cocaine and marijuana.
Friday was an especially busy day for Rios, who was wearing Air Jordans and track pants. At 6:16 p.m., he collected $4,000 for 7 pounds of pot that he had fronted to Desi Arnau, the boyfriend of Raya’s youngest sister.
Rios also sold a kilogram of cocaine for $20,000 to a handsome, spiky-haired dealer and longtime friend named Paul Lupercio. Rios had been Lupercio’s coke source since 1999, selling him about a kilo a week.
While Rios worked in the kitchen, Raya wrote thank-you cards in the living room. Six days earlier, the doe-eyed 26-year-old had graduated from Rockhurst University with a degree in organizational communication.
Rockhurst was only a 10-minute drive from the house. While studying for her degree, Raya worked full time in the marketing department of Blue Cross Blue Shield.
When Raya saw Lupercio, she handed him a thank-you card:
Paul and Danielle.
Thanks for the gift. Sorry you guys came when it was over. Will have to go out another time to celebrate.
Olivia.
Lupercio wanted to take Raya up on her offer. He invited her and Rios to join him later that night at a new sports bar. The idea of trying something new excited Raya and Rios. Lupercio told them that he’d call later to work out the details.
Lupercio was running late for a party. He didn’t want the drugs on him in case police stopped him. Lupercio arranged to go back for his kilo on Saturday.
Before Lupercio left, Rios had a question for him. Rios was about to meet with a cocaine dealer named Dyshawn Johnson. Rios asked if Johnson and his brother, Bryant Burton, could be trusted.
“No,” Lupercio told Rios, “I would not trust them.”
Lupercio left, but his warning didn’t stop Rios from calling Johnson at 7:21 p.m. The call — like 11 others between Rios and Johnson that day — lasted less than a minute.
Raya placed her final phone call. She talked to her mother, Sylvia Raya.
Sylvia and her husband, Louis Raya, were at home making Christmas gifts for their daughters. Olivia’s younger sisters, Raquel and Sara Raya, had plans to meet Olivia for breakfast at 8 the next morning.
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“Don’t forget, we’re going shopping,” Olivia told her mother.
“Love you, and talk to you in the morning,” Sylvia told Olivia.
Within an hour of Rios’ call, Johnson — a tall, muscular man with sharply arched eyebrows — stood at Rios’ front door. He wasn’t alone. He’d brought along his revolver-toting partner, Michael Dale, who wore gloves and a skullcap over his close-shaved head.
Rios let Johnson and Dale, both 28, in the front door. A Mexican flag and crosses hung on the light-pink walls. Raya sat on the couch, next to a towering white Christmas tree. Rios led the men into the kitchen.
Minutes later, Dale whipped out the gun. Rios rushed him.
Dale fired.
Rios tried to block the shot with his hands. The bullet lodged between the thumb and index finger of his right hand, just below the cursive tattoo of his last name.
The wound slowed Rios.
Dale fired again.
The bullet struck Rios in the head and knocked him to the tile floor.
Dale stood above the bleeding Rios and fired a final shot into his skull.
Raya didn’t run. She didn’t fight. Maybe she thought Dale and Johnson would let her live if she didn’t react. Maybe she was resigned to her fate. Or maybe she didn’t want to live without Rios. She gripped a pen in her left hand and wrote a final thank-you card.
“Shoot the bitch!” Johnson screamed. “Shoot the bitch!”
Dale walked into the living room.
Raya hunched her shoulders and cowered in fear.
Dale pulled the trigger. The bullet pierced her outer right shoulder, exited through her collarbone and re-entered her neck, severing her carotid artery.
Dale and Johnson returned to the kitchen and found two and a half kilos of cocaine and cash in the freezer.
Before they left, Dale fired one last shot into the right side of Raya’s head.
While Raya was to be shopping with her mother and sisters Saturday morning, Rios was supposed to be eating breakfast with his next-door neighbors — his grandparents, Francisco and Lupe Rios.
Lupe Rios called her grandson at about 10 a.m. to let him know that the food was on the table, but he didn’t answer. She left a message on the couple’s answering machine.
By 7:45 p.m., Lupe and Francisco still hadn’t seen Rios. It was strange for neither him nor Raya to stop by for a visit. Lupe wondered aloud if the young couple was feuding.
“Why don’t you go down there and check to see if they’re there?” Lupe asked Francisco.
The elder Rios’ house was only a couple of feet away from their grandson’s; a fence linked the two properties.
Francisco noticed a light on. He walked to the back door and knocked, but no one answered. He checked the door. It was unlocked, so he walked in.
Francisco saw his grandson’s body lying in a pool of blood next to the refrigerator. In the living room, Raya’s body was slumped over on the couch. In her left hand was a pen. A bloody thank-you card sat on the couch cushion above her head.
Francisco called 911. The shock of seeing his grandson and his girlfriend dead was too much for him. He ran from the house crying and screaming.
“I lost it,” Francisco would testify later.
Lupe met him outside the house.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
Anthony and Olivia had been shot, he told her.
Lupe wanted to go inside the house.
“No, don’t go inside,” he pleaded with her.
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Officer Joshua Maxfield reached the scene at about 8 p.m.
Francisco flagged down Maxfield’s patrol car.
“My grandson’s been shot,” Francisco said.
“Are there any suspects in the house?” asked Maxfield, a stocky redhead with the Kansas City Police Department.
“No,” Francisco said.
Maxfield found no signs of a struggle or forced entry. The blood had dripped from the kitchen to the basement and pooled on the floor below. Blood stained the kitchen cabinets and floor. A blood-spattered grocery sack next to Rios’ head contained marijuana. Investigators found about $65,000 worth of marijuana and $20,000 worth of cocaine.
Though the house was filled with drugs, there was little evidence pointing to a killer. The murderers left no fingerprints or shell casings. There were no DNA traces from the murderers on the bodies. They didn’t find the murder weapon. A single hair that had been dyed was found on the body of Rios. But it offered no leads.The only substantial evidence was a partial bloody shoe print leading from the kitchen to the living room. The triangular pattern and dots would match the sole of Diesel-brand shoes.
Just days before Christmas, Raya’s and Rios’ homicides were widely reported in the media. Police reported no leads. Family members told reporters that they couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to kill the couple. “Raya’s relatives remembered her and Rios as friendly, giving people,” The Kansas City Star reported. Her sister Raquel told the paper that Raya was outgoing and would “always do anything for anybody.” Raya’s aunt, Patricia Rodriguez, described Rios as “a big man with a big heart,” according to the Star. “Anybody needed help, he was there…. He spoiled her, really spoiled her. Everybody loved him.”
“They were nice people, always doing what they could for people,” added Raya’s sister Sara. “They must have just opened their hearts to someone who took advantage of them.”
Dyshawn Johnson whipped through a 25-mph zone in his black 2002 Yukon Denali. It was February 12, 2003, and Johnson was cruising southbound on Iron Street in North Kansas City.
Officer Robert Masterson pulled Johnson over for speeding. Johnson’s license had been revoked. That was enough to take him into custody. A cursory search of the SUV found a plastic bag of marijuana and a receipt for a Southwest Airlines flight to Los Angeles. The departure date was December 21, the day after the slayings.
Johnson had $2,355 in his right pant pocket and $3,500 in his left shoe. He wore a $6,000 Cartier watch, a $4,500 ring, a $4,000 diamond earring and a $10,000 silver chain and cross.
In 1993, Johnson and his brother, Bryant Burton, moved to Kansas City from California to “hustle.” Johnson and Burton bought drugs in Los Angeles and mailed them to Kansas City. Their profit margins jumped in the Midwest. They could buy 9 ounces of cocaine for $3,500 in Los Angeles and turn it into $6,000 in Kansas City.
By 2001, Burton was also buying 2 or 3 kilos a month from Rios. The relationship was solid, Burton would later testify. They were “good friends.”
Johnson was building his own relationships. In 2002, Johnson cut a deal to hide his drugs with a woman he’d met at a club. Jonni Curry, a voluptuous, 35-year-old cocaine user, was having trouble paying her rent. Johnson offered to pay her rent in exchange for a place to store his drugs, money and guns. Curry agreed. She gave him a key to her house on Bell.
Johnson was stashing his drugs in an upstairs loft. He hid large sums of cash in her stove, which he also used to cook cocaine into crack. At the house, Johnson packaged drugs with plastic bags that Curry bought at Hobby Lobby.
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Curry helped Johnson in other ways. She testified that she exchanged smaller bills for $100s at several Commerce Bank branches.
The arrangement continued when Curry moved to an apartment on 38th Street. An outstanding bill with Missouri Gas and Energy kept her from getting the utilities hooked up. Johnson offered to pay the bill if he could store his drugs, money and guns at Curry’s place. She agreed again.
Johnson didn’t keep everything at Curry’s apartment. On the east side of the city, at 2415 East 75th Street, Johnson kept a magazine for a Glock handgun and several boxes of bullets. Investigators found the ammo as well as a marijuana pipe, a digital scale, unpaid Jackson County tax bills and three boxes of Diesel shoes when they searched the house on April 22, 2003. Investigators tested the shoes but found no traces of DNA from Raya or Rios.
After Masterson stopped Johnson for speeding, detectives with the Kansas City Police Department interviewed Johnson about the Raya-Rios slayings. Phone records showed that Rios’ final call was to Johnson. In a nearly 30-minute exchange, Johnson admitted knowing Rios and having been to Rios’ house. Johnson told detectives that he’d met Rios through a mutual friend. He also claimed to have heard about the killings through another drug dealer.
The detectives told Johnson that the last call Rios made was to him.
A lot of people end up dead after talking to me, Johnson told investigators.
Three years after the slayings of Rios and Raya, their pictures still appeared on billboards throughout Kansas City. The $10,000 reward for information about the case doubled to $20,000 as the years went by. The Rios and Raya families held vigils and passed out fliers to keep the search for the killers in the public eye.
The break in the case came July 1, 2005. Anthony Smith, a high school dropout and convicted felon, told detectives that Michael Dale, his friend for 18 years, was the triggerman in the slayings.
The dreadlocked and goateed Smith wanted to cut a deal. Serving a 94-month sentence for felony possession of a firearm, Smith wanted his sentence reduced. He also wanted to collect the $20,000 reward.
Smith told detectives that he went to Dale in August 2003 looking for work after he was released from prison. Work, in this case, meant selling drugs.
Dale was in business with 35-year-old convicted crack dealer Mitchell Powell.
Dale and Powell ran a crack house near 42nd Street and Campbell from 2002 to 2004, Powell would later testify. He claimed that he and Dale were at the house every day by 10 a.m. selling $10 and $20 rocks to the addicts who knocked on the front door. Dale bought cocaine, and Powell cooked the powder into rocks of crack, he claimed.
When Smith went to Dale in August 2003, Dale told him that murder was his new thing. He claimed credit for killing “the Mexicans.”
Dale would allegedly kill again on September 15, 2003. Jackson County prosecutors have accused Dale of unloading 40 rounds from an automatic weapon into 20-year-old Torrez E. Rodriguez. The case is still pending in state court.
Two years later, Smith agreed to get Dale to admit that he’d killed Raya and Rios. It was August 30, 2005, and a van carried Dale and a wired Smith from the Bates County Detention Center to the federal courthouse in Kansas City.
As the vehicle hummed toward the courthouse, Smith pressed Dale for information about the homicides over the course of an hour. Smith told Dale that his lawyer was pushing him for information.
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“I heard they found the gun in Troost Lake,” Smith said.
“They in the wrong neighborhood,” Dale scoffed. “They ain’t got no motherfucking gun…. It ain’t in Troost Lake, nigger.”
Dale didn’t say where he had stashed the gun. But he did tell Smith something that police already knew.
“I didn’t leave no shells in nowhere,” Dale told Smith.
Dale was calm throughout the conversation. But he seemed agitated when Smith told him that there was a buzz around his name among other inmates. Their old drug-dealing friends were talking about Dale being involved in the killings, Smith told him.
“They ain’t got nothing but niggers … snitching, cuz.” Dale said. “Hear me?”
“Right,” Smith agreed.
“Snitches gonna get theirs,” Dale warned.
Dale was confident that the police didn’t have anything linking him to the killings.
“I’m a ghost, blood,” Dale said. “I ain’t called this dude. They don’t know me. They can’t place me on these Mexicans’ phone.”
Police also didn’t have any fingerprints, Dale said. He explained that he wore gloves — or, as he called them, “burners.”
Rios didn’t even trip that you had gloves on? Smith asked.
No.
Did anyone hear shots? Smith asked.
No.
Dale also explained the reason that he had to kill Olivia Raya.
“Can’t leave witnesses alive,” he told Smith. “You have no one at the murder scene.”
“Right,” Smith said.
“When the bitch heard the noise — pop, pop — she played it off,” Dale said.
Dale excused his role as executioner. “That’s the way the game is played,” he said.
Smith suggested that Dale should have killed Dyshawn Johnson, too. “You should’ve knock that nigger, too.”
“You’re right. You’re right,” Dale said. “There’s still time for that.”
But Dale wasn’t concerned about getting caught.
“This is going to be real special,” Dale said. “We’re going to get back out of this.”
After an hour, and presumably back in a cell, Smith told Dale that he was going to play some chess.
“Relax,” Dale reassured him.
Smith could relax. In exchange for wearing the wire and testifying against Dale, Smith’s sentence would later be reduced from 94 months to 44 months.
Smith was released from federal prison on June 18, 2007. He also received a $20,000 reward.
Despite Dale’s bragging about his skill as a killer, the case against him and Johnson was shaky. Prosecutors had no physical evidence against them as the six-day trial began in late November 2007. The trial started on the cold Monday afternoon of November 26, nearly five years after Raya and Rios were shot.
Dale, 33, dressed in slacks and a cream-colored sweater printed with black triangles, mostly stared straight ahead and popped Altoids. He had pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine and unlawfully transporting firearms, in an unrelated case, in January 2006.
Johnson, 33, wore a black suit and tie. He periodically winked, nodded and smiled at his family, sitting behind him.
On the second day of the trial, the Rios and Raya families sobbed loudly as photos of their slain loved ones were projected on a screen. Senior U.S. District Judge Dean Whipple halted the proceedings. The judge matter-of-factly warned family members that if they couldn’t handle seeing the photos, they had to leave the courtroom.
Despite a lack of physical evidence, prosecutors did have the tape of Dale admitting to Smith that he had killed Rios and Raya. They also had Smith’s testimony supporting the tape. And they had Johnson’s own family testifying against him and Dale.
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Bryant Burton, Johnson’s 39-year-old brother, had cut a plea deal with prosecutors on October 19. Burton was originally indicted with Johnson and Dale on charges of conspiracy to distribute cocaine. Now awaiting sentencing in federal prison for distributing crack cocaine, Burton testified in hopes of shortening his time.
On the witness stand, Burton claimed that Dale and Johnson had both confessed to the murders. Burton, unshaven and defiant, testified that in the spring of 2004, Dale bragged about taking advantage of “the Mexicans.”
Burton recalled Dale telling him, “That’s how the game goes.”
Burton asked Johnson about the killings. Johnson told Burton that he took someone over to Rios’ house to make a deal.
“Motherfucker went crazy and started shooting,” Johnson told Burton.
“Why take someone over there?” Burton asked.
“You know how it goes,” Johnson told him. “That’s how the game goes.”
The defense portrayed Rios as a man with many enemies. Several people were bragging about having killed Rios and Raya. Defense attorneys called the government’s witnesses — a parade of shackled men in orange jumpsuits — snitches trying to jump on the bus out of prison by cutting deals for reduced sentences.
The jury returned the verdict at 3:48 p.m. December 3, finding Johnson and Dale guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy to distribute more than 5 kilograms of cocaine.
Dale and Johnson could face life in federal prison when they’re sentenced later this year.
After the trial, the families remained quiet. Sylvia Raya declined several requests for an interview. Rios’ father, Anthony Rios Sr., didn’t return phone messages left at his home in Texas. Neither did Rios’ grandfather, Francisco Rios.
In the years before the arrests of the killers, Sylvia Raya pleaded with the public for answers about her daughter’s murder. She offered reward money for clues. And she hounded police officers for information, just to know the case hadn’t gone cold.
Then, before everyone in a federal courtroom, Rios’ skeletons spilled out. If his drug dealing had been a secret, it no longer was. Rios’ father and grandparents listened as investigators detailed the pounds and pounds of marijuana and cocaine found in the house.
If Sylvia Raya didn’t know before that her daughter was living with a drug dealer, she knew now. Olivia Raya may not have been involved in her boyfriend’s business, but she knew what he was selling.
Maybe the families didn’t speak because there was nothing more to say. The silence that had protected Rios’ memory was shattered by the trial. Rios was neither a saint nor a martyr. He was another dead dope dealer.
