By Dan Murphy
Like many New Yorker’s, I’m hooked on the story of Alpo Martinez, the drug kingpin of Harlem in the 1980’s, who got busted, ratted out many of his friends and drug business partners to get a sentence of 35 years instead of death. Alpo was released in 2015, went into witness protection in Maine, but couldn’t stay away from the streets of the Big City.
Alpo Martinez died on Haloween night 2021, while in his car at 3am, as a hail of bullets rattled his truck. According to the NYPD, Alpo was trying to drive away as the shots rang out and was tossing drugs out of his car, which points to the fact that he had returned to his old business of selling drugs.
But the real question about Alpo is, how did he survive to the age of 55 after killing so many in Harlem, including his partner and best friend Rich Porter almost 40 years ago? And then after ratting so many out, he returned to Harlem and took a final bow as if he were still a Drug Kingpin.
We received no answers from a recent story about Alpo in the New York Times, titled, He Was in Witness Protection in Maine. But His Harlem Life Kept Calling, by Ali Watkins. The story focused on his life in witness protection in Lewiston Maine under the alias Abraham Rodriguez.
Starting in 2015, Alpo or Abraham, was given a new life in a small town. He got a job, made some friends, but could never get his prior life out of his mind, and his heart. He would return frequently to Harlem, making the 8 hour trip frequently on the weekends.
But then in 2021, Alpo packed up a U-Haul and left his apartment and friends in Maine, and returned to New York City for good. He wasn’t long for Alpo-Harlem Part 2, only a few months, but some of his old friends, acquaintances and partners in the drug biz back in the day have been speculating about what Alpo was doing at the very end of his life.
These insights, which can be found on YouTube, seem to give much more insight that the NY Times story. The best set of interviews comes from VLADTV and his interviews of Azie Faison. Azie was partners with Alpo and Rich Porter, and the three have been forever immortalized in the movie Paid in Full, made in 2002, when Alpo was already in jail for 10 years.
At the end of the movie, Alpo kills Rich Porter, as he did in real life. And it is that killing that many in Harlem have never forgot. Alpo has tried to explain the killing over the years by claiming that Rich was overcharging him for some cocaine and that after he caught Rich in the lie he shot him and buried his body in Orchard Beach, The Bronx.
Upon his return to Harlem in 2021, Alpo was seen and heard in serveral video interviews. He seemed to be enjoying the limelight, and one of the photos circulating has Alpo in a Louis Vuitton matching hat and vest. He wasn’t hiding the fact that he was back in town at the end of his life.
The one video that some believe got Alpo killed was with Troy Reed, YouTube Channel The Beat 139. During the video Reed asked Alpo to retrace the steps he took in killing Rich Porter. The re-enactment left some believing that Alpo was taunting Harlem with the death of his close friend 35 years later.
Some YouTube comments about the Troy Reed interview include, “This dude was so wild the way he describe the murder with such disregard always amazed me, this dude lived the life he lived to the max and killed anyone in his way… But at the end of the day he got what he deserved this is the new ending to paid in full,” said Gene M.
“I feel for the Porter family to keep having this tragedy relived over and over again has to hurt,” Seun Van Konings
“The fact that he was walking and riding around basically confessing or bragging about I can’t tell that he killed someone who he called a friend also who he claimed to love in cold blood because of money/jealousy and threw his body in the woods like a animal is really heartless,”Leona Whitnee Cushion
“Where’s Rich’s family? My family would never let him live to talk about killing me,” weezee pipes–
The heat got so bad on Troy Reed that he ended up posting a video apologizing to the Porter family for the video getting posted and leaked.
Anyone with an interest in Alpo and why it took so long for him to get killed, has to watch the Azie interviews on VLADTV. In more than 2 hours of interviews, the only surviving member of the Paid in Full trio left goes through the entire history of him, Alpo and Rich.
Azie believes that in the final days of his life, “Alpo had a death wish,” and was ready to die. That is why he was seen and heard all around Harlem the last two months of his life. Maybe he was running out of money, or maybe he knew that someone was looking to gun him down.
Azie also tells VLADTV that he does not believe that Rich Porter’s family was responsible for Alpo’s death last halloween because “that’s who the police would be looking at first.” Three months after Alpo’s death, there has still not been any arrests made in his killing. If someone from the Porter family did it, they would have been locked up by now. But that doesn’t mean that the Porter family can be happy that Alpo is dead, they just didn’t do it.
The word on the street is that Alpo was back to his old sexual antics, and was having an sexual relationship with someone else’s girlfriend. Other say that Alpo was selling drugs again and some other dealer didn’t want the competition.
Adam22 said something interesting on VLADTV. “you can only move recklessly for so long before that will catch up to you. Even if you are the worst snich in the world, the number of people who will actually kill you is small, and the number of times you put yourself into a situaton where you could be killed is small. But if you are out there enough times, exposing yourself, eventually you are going to run into someone who is going to take care of you.”
I have subscribed to VLDATV, so should you.
