5 minute read
THE RISE AND FALL OF THE FIRST ROCK STAR
from Playboy 2010 03
by peter
WHO WAS RIAN THAL--A NICE MIDDLE-CLASS JEWISH GIRL FROM THE SUBURBS WHO WORKED AS A HIP-HOP PARTY PROMOTER? OR A NATURAL-BORN HUSTLER WHO OPERATED WITH SIGNIFICANT POWER IN THE DRUG UNDERWORLD? BRIDGET JONES’S DIARY MEETS THE WIRE ON THE MEAN STREETS OF PHILADELPHIA
He was a criminal from the ghettos of North Philadelphia, a bear of a man with a reputation for allegedly ripping off other drug dealers, a person whose childhood nickname, Pooh, was enough to strike fear in the heart of rivals. A real gangster this one: He’d been shot on the street before and had done hard time for drug trafficking.
She was a nice Jewish girl from the Philadelphia suburbs, a 34-year-old eye-catching blonde hip-hop socialite with a big mouth and the smile of a pageant queen, who threw high-profi le parties that attracted celebrities such as Donald Trump, Carmen Electra and the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb. She was even on fi rst-name terms with Mayor Michael Nutter.
And together—according to the testimony of another man who will soon be involved—Will Hook and Rian Thal planned a robbery. If all went as planned, the job would net them a half-million-dollar payday, the score of a lifetime.
Though it’s hard to know for sure, the plot might have been hatched one June night at Hook’s home in Strawberry Mansion, a bleak neighborhood where graffi tied walls memorialize the names of dead drug dealers and where it’s as easy to buy crack as it is to buy a carton of
BY FRANK OWEN
hip-hop party promoter rian thal was so well-known in philadelphia that she was on first-name terms with the mayor. here she is with (from top) eagles quarterback Donovan mcNabb, eagles running back Brian Westbrook, actor Frankie Faison from the Wire and Carmen electra. milk. A party was going on. It must have seemed odd to see a young, attractive blonde woman amid the mass of black hip-hop hangers-on and drug kin. But then, everyone knew Rian Thal. She was Philly club-scene royalty, and she went where she pleased.
The idea seemed bulletproof. Thal knew a major drug dealer who was coming into town looking to buy a substantial amount of cocaine. He was driving a tractor trailer and intended to purchase the drugs and then transport them to Detroit, where there was an ongoing cocaine drought. Thal had persuaded the dealer to stay at her place in a trendy apartment complex called the Piazza at Schmidts in the gentrified neighborhood of Northern Liberties. All Thal had to do was lure him out of the apartment and Hook would sneak in and steal the money and the drugs.
It was what Hook liked to call a sweat beat, an easy takedown, a simple rip-andrun. What could possibly go wrong?
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There was nothing about the circumstances of Thal’s upbringing that could predict what she would later become. She grew up in a leafy townhouse community called Lafayette Hill, only a 25-minute drive from the city but a world away from the gritty glamour of the Philly club scene. It’s the sort of place where the loudest sounds you hear are dogs barking and children playing in the street. Her father worked as a butcher at a Pathmark supermarket. Her mother was a homemaker. She celebrated Yom Kippur and Passover at the local country club, though she was far from rich. Not that she wanted for anything. Her parents adored her and showered her with everything their limited means allowed.
While she was in high school Thal earned the pet name Joan Rivers because of her distinctive raspy voice that filled a room and didn’t seem to fit her little body. She was so proud of the nickname she had it emblazoned on the back of a football jersey.
“She was a real yenta, loud and obnoxious,” says Jade Connelly, who met Thal in fifth grade and later attended Plymouth Whitemarsh High School with her.
Thal’s mother, Sandy, had another name for her—B.R., Bad Rian—because she stayed out late and often incurred her parents’ displeasure.
Thal’s high spirits made her unsuitable for academic pursuits. “She wasn’t going to get into Harvard, that’s for sure,” quips Connelly. But she had other talents, namely her gregariousness, her ability to mix and mingle with all sorts of people without judging them. People liked Thal. She had an infectious personality. And Thal liked people, so a job in the hospitality industry seemed the perfect career choice. Growing up as she did in the 1980s and 1990s, when hip-hop crystallized into a moneyed subculture glorified incessantly on television and in magazines, the lure of Philadelphia’s scene drew her in.
As a kid she saw local boys DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince rocket to stardom, but the real neighborhood hip-hop scene was a lot more rough. Philly’s hiphop world has intersected with the drug world going back to Schoolly D in the 1980s. There was the famous case of RAM Squad, a rap crew that grew up in the notorious Richard Allen housing projects; it produced a number of underground hits, including “Sex, Money and Drugs,” before one of its members pleaded guilty (continued on page 111)
right, From top Will hook, a.k.a. pooh, the 40-yearold dealer who attempted to steal half a million dollars’ worth of coke from the apartment of rian thal (blonde, far left); Katoya Jones, who lived on the second floor in thal’s building; Donnell murchison, who claims thal was in on the job the whole time. BeloW Surveillance video shows (1) murchison inside the building, waiting for his fellow gunmen to arrive, (2) the others entering, (3) thal heading to her apartment, and (4) a quick exit following a heist gone very wrong. 1
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