Former Bad Boy MC G. Dep admitted this week to fatally shooting a man nearly 20 years ago.
The New York Post reports that on Wednesday, the 36-year-old rapper, born Trevell Coleman, walked into the 25th precinct in Harlem and confessed to killing a man way back in 1993. “I shot and killed someone 17 years ago,” he reportedly told an officer at the precinct. 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, just 18 years old at the time, was planning to rob Henkel, but when he resisted, shot him three times in the chest with a .40-caliber hand gun. He then fled from the crime scene and threw the gun into the East River. Henkel was pronounced dead at St. Luke’s hospital.
The crime took place in the 23rd precinct, so investigators from that station house were contacted. William Dunn, a detective at the 23rd precinct, reportedly reviewed the case, which had gone cold, and found that the rapper’s story went hand-in-hand with what was on file. G. Dep was charged with murder for the 1993 shooting, and is being held without bail. A police source, in an attempt to explain why Dep would suddenly confess to the crime, said “It was just eating away at him.” “My client is presumed innocent, and the case is going to grand jury,” said G-Dep’s lawyer, 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, he’s racked up 25 arrests for crimes ranging from drugs to burglary to grand larceny.