WASHINGTON ( DC News Now ) — Decades after he fueled the crack epidemic in Washington, D.C., notorious former drug kingpin Rayful Edmond III died Tuesday in federal custody while at a residential reentry facility in Miami.
After being locked up since April 1989, he was moved from federal prison to community confinement, with a release date of November 2025.
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William H. “Billy” Murphy Jr., Edmond’s trial lawyer, hasn’t been in contact with his former client since the aftermath of the trial.
“My reaction was, probably like everybody else’s in the sense that he had been, a notorious figure in D.C. and, it was shocking to hear the news because he had been out for a while,” Murphy said. “So I didn’t I didn’t suspect foul play. I just wondered what caused his sudden death.”
The Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed Edmond’s death but didn’t say how he died. According to the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s Office, they didn’t have a record of Edmond, saying they typically don’t have a record of people who die of natural causes.