Eddie Mathis, The Godfather. Michael Fray Salters. DC or nothing!

Mathis, who more than a decade ago was described by another prosecutor in court as “the godfather” of Washington’s drug trade, has been in front of judges before. Compared with most of the city’s accused dope dealers, he is, at age 44, a senior citizen. The hazards of the occupation tend to catch up quickly with those who practice it, often leaving them dead or locked up as young adults.
The story of Eddie Mathis, as law enforcement authorities and court records tell it, is that of a career criminal.
His arrest this month in the heroin case was only the latest entry in a criminal record that dates to the early 1970s, when he was convicted of attempted robbery in one case, then robbery in another.
In one of those cases, according to court records, Mathis was found guilty of robbing a woman of $30 on a bus. He pushed the victim into an accomplice, who then grabbed the woman’s money. An alert bus driver, witnessing the crime in his rearview mirror, locked the bus doors and summoned police.
The old court records, which are incomplete, do not specify his punishment for that conviction.
But he was free in 1976. That year, he picked up his third felony conviction, for assaulting a police officer with a dangerous weapon. According to court records, Mathis fired two shots at the officer’s patrol car.
By 1980, according to law enforcement authorities and allegations made in court filings at the time, Mathis was leading a group that controlled the biggest share of the District’s heroin trade, selling the drug in the area of Ninth and U streets NW and bringing in as much as a half-million dollars a month — nearly $1 million a month in today’s dollars.
But in 1981, Mathis suffered a setback in the form of a first-degree murder charge when police accused him in the Sept. 25 slaying of Marx Roscoe “Moxie” Jackson. Earlier, in front of four women, Jackson had threatened to kill Mathis, according to investigators. Mathis allegedly warned Jackson that if he was going to do it, he had better “do it now,” while he had the chance.
Jackson backed down. And three weeks later he was dead, shot four times in the head as he sat in a car at Ninth and U streets.
A jury convicted Mathis, but the D.C. Court of Appeals later reversed the guilty verdict because in his closing argument, the prosecutor had referred to Mathis as “the godfather” of drugs in the District, a statement that the appellate panel found prejudicial. At his new trial, he was acquitted, then released from prison. By then it was 1988, and Mathis had been behind bars for 6 1/2 years.
Back on the street, he had a falling out with some members of the alleged heroin distribution group, resulting in a bloody feud in far Southeast Washington, according to law enforcement authorities and allegations made in court filings at the time. In 1989 and 1990 in a 20-block area where factions of the splintered group allegedly were fighting for control, more than 20 people were killed and dozens were wounded. At the time, D.C. police blamed the alleged feud for the wave of violence.

In 1990, Mathis was back in court after he and three other men were arrested by police during a traffic stop. According to a police affidavit filed in court, all were armed with automatic weapons and were wearing bullet-resistant vests. Police at the time alleged that the four men had planned to fight rivals in the heroin turf war in Southeast Washington.

On Aug. 21, Maurice T. Lee, 33, of Suitland, was arrested when he showed up — allegedly on Mathis’s instructions — to pick up 250 grams of heroin from a seller who turned out to be an undercover agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration, a prosecutor said in court Wednesday. Lee was arrested, but Mathis was nowhere to be found. The DEA obtained a warrant for his arrest.

Mathis hid out for 2 1/2 months, Blier said. But according to a court affidavit, he spoke by phone with an undercover agent to arrange yet another deal, in which Mathis allegedly was to receive five kilograms of cocaine.

On Nov. 5, the day after that phone conversation, the agent met with Mathis’s brother Walter, 50, of Suitland, at Landover Mall, according to a DEA affidavit filed in court. Walter Mathis allegedly tried to persuade the agent to go to another location to meet his brother, but the agent refused. So, soon after, Eddie Mathis allegedly showed up at the mall.

And there, for at least the sixth time in his 44 years, he was arrested. It was his first time in handcuffs for an alleged drug crime. Walter Mathis also was arrested and charged with cocaine distribution.

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