Family, Friends Gather for Funeral of Ex-Drug Kingpin Rayful Edmond III

The Rev. Willie Wilson, pastor emeritus of Union Temple Baptist Church in Southeast Washington, described Edmond as a “beautiful” and “brilliant brother.”
15:35 JST, January 22, 2025
To those gathered at Clinton Baptist Church in suburban Maryland on Tuesday he was “Ray” – a brother, father, uncle and beloved friend whose sudden death last month cut short his dreams of counseling troubled youth.
To others, he had been Rayful Edmond III, a notorious drug kingpin whose name invoked the brutal crack cocaine epidemic that reshaped the District in the 1980s.
He died within a year of his planned release from prison, when he hoped to return to Washington and deploy his signature charisma to counsel youth against drugs, preventing the kind of violence authorities once accused him of sowing.
This was the man celebrated and remembered for nearly two hours on Tuesday, immaculate in repose as he was in life, wearing a French-cuffed shirt, dress gloves, silver cufflinks and was flanked by oversize portraits and loved ones who stood sentinel around his casket.
“Are you perfect? No. Was he perfect? No. We all made mistakes and still make mistakes. But we aren’t here to talk about his mistakes,” said District native Tom Johnson as he was leaving the service. “We are here to pay respect to a man who was loved and respected. And that’s what we should be talking about.”
Edmond, 60, died from what authorities said then appeared to be a medical emergency near a Bureau of Prisons-monitored home in Cape Coral, Florida, where he had been finishing out his prison term. There was no sign of trauma to his body, authorities said. A spokeswoman for Fort Myers, Florida, medical examiner said autopsy results were pending.
As he took the pulpit in a line of speakers Tuesday, the Rev. Willie Wilson, pastor emeritus of Union Temple Baptist Church in Southeast Washington, described Edmond as a “beautiful” and “brilliant brother” who represented “millions of young Black men who were not given the opportunity to be all that God created him to be.”
Wilson, the only speaker to mention illegal drugs as they spoke during the service, criticized the federal government, blaming the FBI and CIA for shipping crack cocaine into predominantly Black or low-income neighborhoods. He called Edmond a “victim” of the federal government and that the government used Edmond “to destroy the Black community.”
Edmond was convicted of federal drug-trafficking charges in D.C. and sentenced in 1990, as the architect of a sprawling operation that smuggled as much as 1,700 pounds of cocaine into the city each month in the latter part of the 1980s, authorities said. They estimated that Edmond raked in more than a $1 million a week in those years. The city’s crack epidemic and mass exodus by many homeowners who fled the city to Maryland and Virginia had been attributed largely to Edmond’s drug dealing.
Initially sentenced to life in prison with no eligibility for parole, he became a government informant during his decades of incarceration against other drug dealers, providing an “unparalleled magnitude … of cooperation,” a judge wrote in 2021 in significantly reducing his sentence. Edmond was never convicted of any violent crime, despite D.C. police allegations that he had ordered killings, which allowed federal prosecutors and judges to sign off on his reduced sentence.
Once in prison, Wilson said, Edmond wanted to help fix the community that he helped destroy, at one point negotiating a peace truce between two violent gangs in Southeast Washington.
Wilson told the audience how in 1992 he assembled gang leaders from the Benning Heights neighborhood in Southeast Washington to his church to address the rise in homicides in the neighborhood. Edmond then called into the church one Sunday morning and encouraged the gang members to stop the killing. Wilson said there were no homicides in that neighborhood for the next 11 years because Edmond told the gang leaders to lay down their guns.
He told him he had found God, Wilson said, and dreamed of building on this work upon his return.
“When he got put in the halfway house, he called me and told me he wanted to come back. He said, ‘I think I can be of some good and help make a difference in the city. I’m coming home and I think I can do something about the violence there,’ ” Wilson said.
One of Edmond’s attorneys, Jason Downs, who obtained Edmond’s first prison reduction, said Edmond had “a clear plan about what he was going to do with his life when he got release.”
“He wanted to use his story as a warning, a plea, as an example to young people that there are consequences to your actions. He wanted to use his voice, his influence, his stature in the community to make sure that young people did not make the same mistakes that he made,” Downs said as audience members shouted “Amen” and “That’s right.”
Edmond publicly apologized to the people of D.C. in 2019 for the wave of violence and addiction he helped fuel. “I am sorry for everybody I hurt, for everybody I disappointed,” he said at a court hearing. “If I ever get the opportunity, I will do my best and whatever it takes to make up for all of my crimes.”
Nearly 300 people streamed by his gray-blue casket Tuesday before the service began, while his family, including nine siblings, his two sons, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, sat in the pews. Edmond’s mother, Constance Perry, was managing health issues that prevented her from coming, one of his sisters said.
In speech after speech, he was remembered not for his complex legacy but for his dedication and support for those he cared about, which won him friends and followers – a range of connections on full display at the church.
Rolls-Royces and Ferraris were parked along side GMCs and Hondas as Prince George’s County police watched from six squad cars and one unmarked vehicle, which the department said were there for traffic control. Inside, there were business suits, full-and mid-length mink coats, men in name-tagged Metro uniforms and several Washington Commanders fans wearing emblazoned sweaters and scarves.
Washington native David Mays, who founded Source Magazine and Hip Hop Weekly, described Edmond as “a man of great intelligence, wisdom, vision and confidence who had great love for his family and for his community.”
Author, motivational speaker and District native BJ Paige said he and Edmond spoke daily, by FaceTime each morning. Just days before Edmond died, Paige said Edmond told him he wanted to work as a motivational speaker as well.
“Me and Ray had deep conversations. He said to me, ‘I see you traveling the country changing lives. I can’t wait to join you and get out there and tell the young’uns, my story so they won’t do it that way. I can’t wait to come home’,” Paige recalled. ‘We gonna to change lives together’.”
"News Services" POPULAR ARTICLE
-
Executives at Japan’s Fuji TV and Parent Firm Resign over a Sex Scandal Linked to a Former Star
-
Japan’s Nikkei Stock Logs Worst Day in 4 Months on US Tariff Worries; Automakers Slump (UPDATE 2)
-
Japan’s Nikkei Stock Falls over 1% as Chip-Related Shares Track Nasdaq Lower (UPDATE 1)
-
Japan’s Nikkei Stock Average Ends Lower as Strong Yen Hurts Appetite (Update 1)
-
Japan’s Nikkei Stock down Nearly 1% as Tech Shares Stumble (UPDATE 1)
JN ACCESS RANKING