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The Gang That Couldn't Dress Straight

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The next day the FBI discovered one of the GPS devices from Morris' cars in a Dumpster. They combed sewers looking for a second missing device but never found it.

Morris' wife, meanwhile, was packing the family's belongings, and the couple's son told friends they were rich and moving to Ohio. On December 9, the family left St. Louis for Columbus, Ohio, where Morris' wife has relatives.

To crack the case, one option remained: eavesdrop on Morris' and McAllister's phone lines.

Police listened in on the pair for two months, chronicling numerous conversations of doom and gloom -- especially when it came to money and love.

Morris was now commuting between St. Louis and Columbus, fretting about scaring up the funds to buy his wife a house in Ohio. Per usual, he was out of work, having been fired several months earlier from his job driving a garbage truck.

Police heard him beat himself up for spoiling his wife with fine dining and fancy accessories. He was shaking down friends to pay his gas bills and decided it was time to sell his Mercedes-Benz.

McAllister, too, was struggling, what with having to bring home food every night for his children and fiancée of eleven years, Tylisha Thomas. Thomas tended house, leaving McAllister to fend for his monthly child-support payments and debts totaling $40,000.

McAllister had a new towing business that he'd operated in fits and starts over the past decade. Yet by Christmas, his pockets were so empty that he couldn't afford his yearly gift, a handbag for Thomas. On December 26, McAllister was supposed to meet his girlfriend Ida Merkson for breakfast, but instead hit the street peddling five-dollar CDs with his nephew.

Ida Merkson -- that was a new name to authorities. They tapped her line at the end of December.

Merkson, they learned, met McAllister through her married boyfriend, David Greenwade, a career criminal with thirteen felony convictions on his rap sheet. Police were quite familiar with Greenwade; they were investigating him for participating in a drug conspiracy.

Attorneys say Greenwade learned of the drug probe and quit dealing. Hard up, having spent thousands of dollars trying to launch a record label with a local friend named Barry Ball, Greenwade knew of McAllister's ring and arranged to meet McAllister through a mutual contact. (Greenwade and Ball were indicted in the drug conspiracy earlier this year.)

As for Ida Merkson, food stamps weren't cutting it. Thirty-five years old, with five children to feed and a husband in federal prison, she owed nearly $8,000 to Nordstrom, not to mention the $9,000 her mother lent her. Merkson was so desperate she was preparing to switch her five-month-old daughter, Diamond, from costlier baby formula to 2-percent milk with iron drops.

Police heard friends call Merkson "a good gangster," but "screwed up" when it came to men. She blamed Greenwade, Diamond's father, for her financial troubles. "I'm tired of the motherfucker. Every time I see him I want to hurt him," Merkson told her sister, according to wiretaps.

Greenwade didn't know it, but Merkson and McAllister kept a standing Friday-night date and met at "little hideaways" during the week. By December, authorities say, Merkson wanted more than sex from McAllister. She wanted in on the criminal enterprise.

Ida Merkson rang McAllister a little after 10 a.m. on December 28 and complained that she had "been to work, damn near three to four times and nothing." Police listened intently to her cryptic remarks, fairly certain that Merkson was referring to an attempted bank robbery.

"That happens too, sometimes," McAllister replied. "For sure it do. Sometimes you gotta keep going. When the timing's right, it will be there."

Authorities believed Ida Merkson and David Greenwade cased a bank for several days beginning December 23 but had their efforts thwarted by customers showing up to use an ATM. What police heard next appeared to be McAllister advising Merkson to be patient and keep at it.

"Well, shit, it's good as gold," McAllister said. "Sometimes motherfucker I went at it, shit, eight or nine times before it was good."

"For real?" Merkson asked.

"Hell, yeah, because there's always something comin' up," McAllister replied. "You know what I'm saying. When I got there, bam! Motherfucker wants some scrilla that morning. Then another motherfucker over here cutting grass. Bam! Motherfucker sitting over here looking stupid. Shit like that. Just keep at them. Then one time you're going to go. Damn! Shit! It's a green light. Gotta be ready to move when it's time. Beauty of it is, it's not a dope-fiend move. You know what I'm saying?"

McAllister again boasted that his racket was foolproof, "not something a motherfucker just hopped up and said they were going to do and just ran up and did it. It's a real plan. That is the beauty of it all."

McAllister, meanwhile, was taking a break from his criminal endeavors and looking for other money-making schemes. Police heard him talk about attending a stock-market class with lawyers and doctors "that will teach you strategy to become a millionaire." They also listened to him muse about selling cars through a nonprofit.

Police even heard McAllister discuss what they believed was a $2 million check-writing scam that Merkson was helping him with. The project fell through in mid-January, though, and Merkson tried to convince McAllister to resume holding up banks.

"It's tight as booty here..... I'm back 'bout to drown," Merkson complained to him on January 11. "Your ass just need to come out of retirement."

McAllister was torn. The towing job stressed him out, what with calls coming in at all hours and the truck in constant need of repairs. Still, he feared "them goddamn people."

"Them people ain't studdin' your ass," Merkson goaded him.

Authorities believe the couple meant law enforcement.

Just five days later, on January 16, McAllister called Franklin Morris and announced, "Yeah, I was just hollerin' at you man, you dig, I was thinkin' about Monday, get up, going and checkin' out that property, man."

Then McAllister promptly called Merkson. "I'm outta retirement, baby."

Merkson laughed. "Where we going to work?"

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