Every time he brought someone in—a parolee who had violated, a man heading back to a cell—Rooney would take money out of his own pocket and put it into their commissary account. Rooney said, “Everyone deserves dignity, even the ones going back inside. ” He could order a killing the way most people order lunch, quietly, calmly, without raising his voice. After the parole officer, he ordered the murder of his childhood friend, and then his ex-girlfriend, the 20-year-old mother of his son.
His mother, his stepfather, his wife, and his sister were all arrested. Every single person close to this man was either buried or broken. In 2022, after 34 years in prison, the state of New York set him free. His stepfather, Amos Coleman, was a plumber, working people, honest people, the kind of family that got up before sunrise and came home after dark.
The neighborhood was filling up with black families from the south, all chasing the same promise, better schools, better jobs, better chances. But Jamaica, Queens in the 1970s was also filling up with something else. Lorenzo dropped out of school after the eighth grade. By the age of 13, he had his first arrest.
By 18, he had two robbery convictions and an 18-year prison sentence. That is what the system gave him. Fat Cat turned that deli into the headquarters of a $20 million a year operation. The family still controlled wholesale on the East Coast in the early 1980s.
Then he broke it down and sold it through a network of roughly 300 workers spread across the housing projects of Southeast Queens. He sold kilos at $50,000 each to mid-level dealers who broke them into 10 and $25 packs for the street. Silverman said he was soft-spoken, “But those guys are the most dangerous. He could say, ‘Kill him’ in a real soft voice.
” And there was something else about Fat Cat that nobody expected. He would not leave the house on Friday the 13th. If his wife accidentally swept his feet with a broom, he would make her spit on it. His wife said he was very attracted to the mirror and would even use her perfume, not caring if he smelled like a woman.
And there were bodies stacked up in Jamaica as a result. Mason was his closest associate, a friend from prison who served as both enforcer and independent operator. Pappy ran his own crew, the Bebos, but he had started as Fat Cat’s security guard and still did business with him. This was a family business in the most literal sense.
So were dozens of other mid-level operations across Southeast Queens, the Bronx, and Brooklyn. Fat Cat was not just a dealer, he was a wholesaler. He was the source. Most of them went upstairs to the apartments above the store.
The two officers who walked into the deli itself found Fat Cat at his desk in the back office, surrounded by file cabinets next to a birthday card that read, “World’s Greatest Daddy. ” But then his parole officer stepped in. Fat Cat was taken back into custody. And in the world Fat Cat lived in, that was a death sentence, not for Fat Cat, but for Rooney.
A boy who would grow up never knowing his father. A father who died because he did his job and because the man he supervised believed that obedience was owed upward, never downward. Fat Cat would later tell the parole board that he only wanted Rooney roughed up, that it was never supposed to be a killing. In Fat Cat’s world, that was two betrayals at once, theft and disloyalty.
Horsham did not. After the shooting, one of Fat Cat’s people picked up the child and dropped him off in the yard of Horsham’s mother. The woman who had worked in his deli, who had been arrested as part of his operation, who had stood by him through robberies and prison terms, she was done. Not the parole officer, not the childhood friend, the mother of his child.
In 1986, between the parole officer’s murder and the girlfriend’s murder, there was another body. They knew each other’s families. They had come up on the same streets. Then, Bolden made a mistake.
He robbed Fat Cat’s then girlfriend, Carolyn Tyson. Three bodies, all ordered from behind bars by a man who never pulled a trigger himself. The violence did not only flow outward. In May 1987, Fat Cat’s wife, Joanne, was kidnapped.
His enemies were willing to go after his family. Then, someone firebombed his mother’s house. They fired five shots into Edward Byrne’s head. The hit was not ordered by Fat Cat.
Mason ordered Byrne’s killing because another officer had disrespected him. The same logic, the same code, disrespect equals death. The NYPD created special anti-crack units in response. All of them were charged with participating in his operation.
Louise Coleman, the nurse’s aide from Birmingham, Alabama, who moved her family north for a better life, pleaded guilty to owning real estate used for drug trafficking. She went to prison because of her son. Fat Cat had now destroyed every relationship in his life. His parole officer dead, his childhood friend dead, his ex-girlfriend dead, his half-sister dead in a fire, his wife kidnapped then arrested, his mother arrested then disowned him.
The sentence was 25 years to life for the murders. The sentences ran concurrently. Fat Cat was never supposed to see daylight again. In exchange for his cooperation with authorities, he received a lighter sentence than prosecutors could have pushed for.
From his cell, he wrote a letter to the New York Daily News in 2010. For the 20-year-old mother who was shot while her son watched. April 2022, after 34 years in state prison, the New York State Parole Board voted to release Lorenzo “Fat Cat” Nichols. PBA President Patrick Lynch said, “This murderous drug lord and cop killer must not move even an inch closer to freedom.
Our hero, Police Officer Edward Byrne, sacrificed his life to rid our city of Nichols and his gang. ” Allen Rider said, “There is no reason why any of them should be released. Then, Rider said something quieter. A little boy who grew up without a father because a drug lord felt disrespected.
” In February 2023, a federal judge shaved 3 years off his 40-year sentence, ruling that time served before sentencing should have been counted. But he still was not free. He had a 10-year sentence waiting in Florida for a car theft and title fraud ring that he ran for prison. As of today, Lorenzo Fat Cat Nichols is still in the system, still fighting for full release, still writing letters about rehabilitation and regret.
And Brian Rooney’s son, Thomas, is still growing up without a father. The neighborhood that Fat Cat ruled is the same neighborhood that produced Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, who grew up hearing Fat Cat’s name like a ghost story. The same neighborhood that produced the Supreme Team. The same neighborhood where a book was written connecting all of them, Queens Reigns Supreme, Fat Cat 50 Cent and the Rise of the Hip Hop Hustler.
Fat Cat’s legacy is not power. It is not money. He does not know his father. Thomas Rooney grew up without a father because a drug lord from Alabama felt disrespected by a man who put his own money into inmates’ commissary accounts.
Myrtle Horsham’s son, TC, grew up without a mother because she took money from the wrong man and spent it on someone else. Isaac Bolden’s family buried a young man because he robbed the wrong person’s girlfriend.