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"What happened on October 13, 1994, should not have happened in the United States of America," Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike McMahon

Who was Kim Marie Groves, and why was the U.S. Attorney's office so intent on convicting those accused of taking part in her murder? At the time she was shot to death in New Orleans's Lower Ninth Ward, she was a single mother of three children who worked as a part-time security guard at the Louisiana Superdome. When her death was reported in the Times-Picayune, New Orleans's daily newspaper, the story took up just three short paragraphs on the obit page. Murders, especially those that took place in the city's predominantly black housing projects and low-income neighborhoods, had become so commonplace in New Orleans at that time they rarely made news unless the victim was well known or was a tourist visiting the city. In police jargon, "black-on-black" murders were callously termed "garden variety."

However, two months later, when the full story of Groves' murder became public, it made front page headlines. Shock waves rumbled throughout the city and reverberated around the world, making headlines abroad. The man accused of orchestrating her killing was a decorated New Orleans police officer.

A decorated but thoroughly corrupt police officer in an American city had ordered a "hit" on an ordinary citizen; one who had reported him for police brutality only a day or two before she met her tragic end. The man hired to do the killing was a notorious drug kingpin with a long rap sheet that included other murder accusations. The third man standing accused of the murder took charge of dispensing with the murder weapon. Two other accomplices avoided murder charges in exchange for their testimony.

What emerged during the trial was the disclosure of the existence of an intricate network of police and drug dealers, working together to thwart the law and threatening to "take out" anyone who got in their way. Cops hanging out in sleazy bars with hardened criminals, conspiring to protect them from the laws they were sworn to uphold when they first donned their badges. Cops and criminals, buddy-buddy in illegal operations, moving crack cocaine onto the streets of New Orleans and into the city's low-income housing projects. Cops and criminals, killing without remorse and rejoicing over the deaths of their victims. Their story and the far-reaching ramifications of it follow.

http://www.crimelibrary.com/gangsters_outlaws/cops_others/len_davis/