January 12, 2021 – The dramatic rise and fall of historic Latin Kings boss Rudy (King Kato) Rangel is still on peoples minds almost two decades later. Particularly, the feds and specifically Rangel’s fall, as in his June 4, 2003 slaying at the Nationwide Cutz barber shop in Chicago located in a converted trailer near the corner of Roosevelt and Sacramento on the Windy City’s Westside.
The Puerto Rican King Kato was one of, if not the, most notorious Hispanic crime lord in Chicago history, beloved by his men and given bi-coastal props, especially in the rap world where he maintained friendships with DMX and Fat Joe in New York and B-Real and the Cypress Hill crew out in California. DMX penned the song “A Yo Kato,” in Rangel’s honor following his killing.
Four Corner Hustlers gang boss LaBar (Bro Man) Spann will face charges in the King Kato hit for a second time this spring in a racketeering, drug and murder case out of federal court in Chicago. Spann beat the case in state court back in 2005.
Vice Lord gang members, Donnell (Squeaky) Simmons, Martise (Grim Reaper) Nunnery and Marcus (Lil’ Black) Ware, were found guilty. Simmons was the triggerman, gunning down 31-year old King Kato Rangel as he sat in the barber chair getting a haircut and watching the opening game of the 2003 NBA Finals between the San Antonio Spurs and the New Jersey Nets.
Federal prosecutors believe Spann hired Simmons on a Sinaloa Cartel-issued contract from Mexico for Rangel’s alleged stealing of 150 kilos of cocaine from cartel-supported dealers. Ware, who helped set up Rangel to be killed, claimed he thought he was just aiding in a robbery.
Early on in the investigation, it appeared Spann was trying to rob Rangel, a street rival of his, of a fancy Franck Muller designer watch worth more than $100,000. But later on, Squeaky Simmons told the FBI that Spann gave him the contract on the notion that the “lick” he was doing was related to a 150 kilo drug shipment that turned up empty and upset the Sinaloa people. Martise Nunnery middled between Spann and Simmons. Spann promised Simmons $30,000 payment for the hit. Lil’ Black Ware had a contact at the barber shop King Kato went to every week for a haircut and got the nod when he was in there on the evening of June 4, 2003.
Simmons told authorities that Spann gave him the gun used to murder King Kato and was in the car, a red-colored Ford Taurus, that drove him to the barber shop that night, ushering the executioner to his kill party. He’ll testify at Spann’s upcoming trial.
“Don’t miss, shorty. Come back when you’re done, we’ll be waiting for you,” said Simmons of his conversation with Bro Man before he assassinated Rangel in the barber’s chair alas New York Italian mafia don Albert (The Mad Hatter) Anastasia famously being bumped off getting a cut and a shave in the barber shop inside Manhattan’s Park Sheridan Hotel in the 1950s.
King Kato grew up on the city’s Southwest Side of Chicago. As a youngster, Rangel was friends with the Flores brothers (Pedro aka “Little Pete” & Margarito aka “Junior”). Hailing from the Little Village neighborhood, the Flores brothers rose to become the top American lieutenants of Narcos czar Joaquin (El Chapo) Guzman himself.
Rangel benefited from this relationship in his own rise up the ranks in the Latin Kings. After King Kato’s murder, his wife Valerie, began a romance with Junior Flores and disappeared with him and his brother into the Witness Protection Program when the Flores boys decided to testify against the devil in the flesh, El Chapo Guzman.
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