Diddy was known then as “Puffy” and “Puff Daddy.“
Born Trevell Coleman, the 36-year-old rapper shocked officers when he walked into the 25th precinct in Harlem and single-handedly helped them solve a nearly two decade-old crime when he told them he robbed, shot and killed a man back in 1993.
“I shot and killed someone 17 years ago,” Coleman reportedly told an officer at the precinct, according to the New York Post.
According to the Post report, Dep told police that he was riding a bike when he approached his victim, 32-year-old John Henkel, on Park Avenue and East 114th Street near the James Weldon Johnson housing projects. Dep, who was 18 at the time, was planning to rob Henkel. But Henkel resisted Dep’s demands, so Dep shot him three times in the chest with a .40-caliber handgun. He then fled from the crime scene and threw the gun into the East River. Henkel was pronounced dead at St. Luke’s hospital.
Since the crime took place in the 23rd precinct, investigators there were alerted. William Dunn, a 23rd precinct detective, reportedly reviewed the case, which had gone cold long ago and found that the rapper’s story was consistent with what was on file.
G. Dep was subsequently charged with murder for the 1993 shooting, and is being held without bail. When asked why Dep would suddenly confess to the crime after 17 years, a police insider told the Post that the senseless crime “was just eating away at him.”
Dep‘s lawyer, however, provided the perfunctory response: “My client is presumed innocent, and the case is going to the grand jury,” said attorney Michael Alperstein.
G. Dep came to hip-hop’s attention in 1998 with a guest appearance on “The Mall,” from Gang Starr’s Moment of Truth LP. He signed to Diddy’s Bad Boy Records the same year, and released his debut LP, Child of the Ghetto, in 2001. Despite two well-regarded singles, “Let’s Get It” and “Special Delivery,” the album was heavily bootlegged and failed to move many units. He later split with Bad Boy Records, and in 2004 dropped a mixtape, The Deputy: The Sheriff Is Back in Town Volume 1.
But since 2003, Dep has racked up 25 arrests for crimes ranging from drugs to burglary to grand larceny. –terry shropshire
