By Dan Murphy
My interest in mobsters and drug dealers goes back to Dutch Schultz and Nicky Barnes. Dutch had a history in Yonkers, my news beat, while Nicky Barnes had an interaction with my dad while he was on the job with the NYPD. Both those stories are for another day because now I can’t enough of Alpo Martinez, thanks to my friend and journalistic colleague Dennis Richmond Jr., who posted about it here a few weeks ago.
Alberto “Alpo” Martinez was a legendary drug dealer from the 1980’s, known as the ‘Mayor of Harlem,’ who became the #1 Cocaine dealer in NYC and the crack king of Washington DC, before his arrest in 1991.
He was charged with 14 murders and drug trafficking, and to avoid dying in jail, Alpo testified agaisnt his former friends and other drug lords and got 35 years. He was out in 25 years in 2015.
The 2002 Movie “Paid in Full” features Alpo and his business colleagues. But by 2002, Alpo was in the middle of a 35-year sentence in the hardest jail to do time in the USA, the Supermax Prison in Colorado.
After serving his time, Alpo was released and given a new identity, (Abraham Rodriguez), in a new location, in Lewiston Maine, in 2015. But Abraham couldn’t shake off the legend of Alpo, and he soon began making trips back to the big city.
Alpo’s life came to an end on Halloween night 2021, when he was shot to death in his pickup truck at 330 in the morning at the corner of 147th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard. He was 55 years old.
The explanation of Alpo’s death in most of the major media, and from law enforcement, was that Alpo’s ratting out of his former colleagues, (he avoided the death penalty upon his arrest by testifying against his partners) and the killing of his partner in crime, Rich Porter, finally caught up to him, with someone taking revenge and decades later, settling the score.
Porter’s family are reported to be happy about Alpo’s death, and they claim it was in retribtion for Porter’s murder. But others believe that he was killed over a girl that he was sleeping with, and shot by her other boyfriend.
The other piece of the tidy narrative that the NYC media and law enforcement are pushing is that Alpo only recently returned to Harlem and NYC, and that he was killed soon after his return.
But a simple online search, or a few hours of diving down the rabbit hole of Alpo, can find YouTube videos from his former colleagues, drug dealing business partners, and guys with their ear on the street, show us videos of Alpo riding around the city in his motorcyle, giving a New Year’s 2021 greeting from a party, and other messages that show that while he may have kept his Maine address, had returned back to Harlem months, perhaps years ago.
Other’s claim that Alpo was dealing drugs again. One fact that lends credibility to that claim is when he was shot and speeding off, he threw out several bags of Heroin to avoid detection from the police. It didn’t matter because he died hours later at Harlem Hospital.
One YouTube video by Sub-O claims that Alpo was dealing big time again, while also shooting and killing some of his old adversaries over the past 2 years in NYC.
Some published reports claim that Alpo may have left witness protection in Maine, but the truth is that he definitely left Maine and Abraham Rodriguez, to return to Harlem as Alpo, for one more act.
One of Alpo’s friends in Maine spoke out that Alpo, or Abraham, was returning to New York City frequently but only recently moved back for good. While in Maine, Alpo had visitors from his children, and packed a U-Haul van with his belongings for good in October of 2021.
One final Alpo conspiracy theory is that Alpo faked his own death on Halloween. There was no photographs of him released to the public, and one reported states that it is assumed that he was cremated.
Alpo was working on his life story, which he hoped to turn into a movie. Reports have Alpo working with Yonkers own Mary J. Blige on a movie deal with Lionsgate pictures, who are building a $100 million movie studio in Yonkers. Blige and Misha Hylton helped Alpo get the movie deal. If he had lived, he probably would have shot it in the new Lionsgate Yonkers studio, set to open in 2023.
Check out Brian Glaze Gibbons on YouTube for more on Alpo, who was definitely not hiding in his final year. He was hanging out again in the Big Apple, 40 years after he served as the unelected “Mayor of Harlem’.
Send us your thoughts or stories on Alpo to news@yonkerstimes.com.
