PART # 3 THE RISE AND FALL OF SOUTH PARK MEXICAN

This is the last part of this SPM article. This is a very sad tale of a rapper who I really enjoyed listening to. His image will never be the same. This story kind of reminds me of Tony Ayala Jr The boxer from San Antonio. He had a lot going for him and made some horrible decisions and was locked up for a longtime. Enjoy.

Coy's daughter Carley had invited the daughter of her parents' friends over to spend the night. The two girls and another young playmate had accompanied their mothers and other family members on a shopping trip and a seafood meal that Saturday afternoon, and neither Carley nor the soon-to-be victim, age 9, wanted the fun to end. Carley begged her friend's mother to let the girl spend the night. After some misgivings, she gave in. The mother testified that she had thought that Coy would spend the night out partying somewhere, as he did most nights. Her old friend Gina Acosta would look after the kids.

But Coy was there that night, jamming hard in his home studio. The girl testified that they could hear the music through the floors as they played upstairs. Soon, the music stopped. The girls were in Coy's marital bed channel-surfing when Coy, clad in boxer shorts and a T-shirt, joined them. He picked up the remote and dialed up Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They all lay in the dark taking in the gore, the girl later testified, when suddenly she felt Coy's hand caressing her.

Though alarmed, the girl said nothing. Both girls disliked the movie, so soon they switched activities. Coy took control again. At his insistence, the girls were soon cutting a rug to Destiny's Child Survivor. The party came to a halt around 11 p.m. when the third girl's mother came and picked up her daughter. Gina Acosta put Carley and her friend to bed. The two girls changed into nightclothes, popped a Scooby Doo movie into Carley's bedroom VCR and turned in. Carley was asleep almost immediately.

Her friend--who has documented minor sleep disorders--was not. As she watched various make-believe monsters get unmasked on video, a real one appeared in the doorway. He walked over to the bed, and reached over his sleeping daughter to her friend. She lay still, pretending to be asleep, hoping he would go away. He did not. There was no intercourse, but Coy's offense was worse than mere digital contact. It was all over in five minutes. Coy left the room. The girl lay in bed, and eventually picked herself up and took herself to the bathroom.

She wanted Gina Acosta to take her home then and there. A bleary Acosta told her she was tired; Carlos would do it. The terrified girl got in the car with him for the quick trip home. On that short drive, Coy told the girl not to tell anybody about what had happened. If she kept quiet, he said, he would give her money. Hell, he was soon going to open a dance studio, and hadn't he just told her how well she could dance? He was gonna make her a star.

That was the horrific tale the young girl told a packed courtroom. (Coincidentally, the court was full of field-tripping juniors from a Houston Catholic high school then reeling from a predatory priest scandal.) Her word was all the state had in this case---there was no physical evidence gathered from Coy's house or visible marks on the girls body.

Coy Denied it all. He said that it was nothing more than the actions of a woman scorned, acting through her daughter to exact revenge. He claimed he had seduced and dumped the girl's mother years ago, while the father (his close friend) was in prison. He had led the girl's mother to believe that he was going to take her and her daughter out of poverty, only to cruelly dismiss her later.

Former full-time (now part-time) Dope House publicist "Don Juan" Corzo says that this was well-known years before the arrest. "She was expecting him to go with him," he said in an August 2002 interview. "They had grown up together in the 'hood. Carlos grew up to be this big star--he grew out of getting drunk and selling drugs and stuff and straightened out when he started to be a rapper. At some point she expected Carlos to leave Gina and go and live with her and her daughter."

But such was not to be, according to Corzo and the Coy camp. "Carlos used to tell me that he would insult her. He would say, 'You know what, you're just a slut. I'm just sleeping around with you. You're nothing. I love my wife and my kids. I'm just having a good time and that's it."

The mother waited until the Odom case came to light to spring her trap. With the cooperation of the Harris County District Attorney's office, a clinical child psychologist and the Houston Police Department, she coached her daughter to tell the horrific tale. Later, Harris County law enforcement enticed the other girls to come forward, because they feared Coy's clout among his people and couldn't stand to see a brown man succeed on such defiant terms as the gangsta rapper had. That's Coy's story anyway, and he's still sticking to it. "This system is trying to stop this movement," he wrote in an open letter to his fans from the Harris County Jail in July. "But their efforts will crumble. They teamed up with a family I have known for almost 20 years. A family I thought were my friends. Together they tried to destroy a man's dream to help his people, but they only showed they fear they have of us."

On the stand, the mother dismissed the claim out of hand, and no hard evidence came to light supporting Coy's claims. Coy's defense attorney---Chip Lewis---tried a more artful tack. He gently picked at the young girl's testimony, made much of her documented sleep issues, introduced no little doubt that the girl might have been asleep and dreaming the whole awful experience. He even introduced four horror films the girl's parents had rented and had the jury spend a day watching them. After a day's deliberation, the jury sided with the girl.

They prosecution had been eagerly anticipating the punishment phase of the trial. They picked over Coy's interviews and lyrics for the standard gangstar rapper posturing, and portrayed Coy ass the callous, misogynist, cop-hating, drug dealing, violent thug all gangsta rappers pretend to be and some actually are.

Against Lewis' advice, Coy took the stand himself, and at first, a kinder, gentler rapper emerged. That was under direct examination. Under cross-examination, the image crumbled. Coy was an arrogant braggart. By his own admissions, he was a crack dealer who sold only the purest dope. He claimed to have single-handedly ended the gang problem in Houston---all those who credited the mayor and the Houston Police department were tooting on the wrong horn.

The punishment phase also featured a parade of girls who testified that Coy had sex with them in cheap motels or at Dope House. One, a 14-year-old, testified that Coy had sex with her in a motel while he watched a Cinemax soft-core porn movie. Coy---who admitted to sharing a motel room with her alone but denied that any sex occurred--was out of jail on bond awaiting trial on the molestation charges at the time.

Corzo says that he and Sylvia Coy had warned Coy against putting himself in such situations after the first charges came. Carlos paid them no mind. After all, he was always about "keeping it on the real." "me and Sylvia used to tell him, 'Hey, while this is going on, you need to be a saint," Corzo says. "You need to be a role-model father and husband. You need to be perfect." He would always say, I'm not gonna change my life 'cause that would be a lie.'

"I thought that was kinda stupid," Corzo added. "Cause look what happened, those minors came forward."

Coy's appetites would not be curbed. "He was still bringing those girls around Dope House and I could see that they were young---15,16. You could see they had that young look," Corzo says. "I used to say, 'If he's gonna mess around, if he's not gonna be the perfect husband, he at least needs to mess with girls who are 21 and up.' His response was 'I don't have to change my life because that would be a lie.' And I would be like, 'Okaaaay."

According to Corzo, Coy also erred badly in selecting a lawyer. Instead of seeking specific sex crime expertise, Coy chose to go for overall prestige. "They were referred to people who specialized in sex charges, but from what I hear from the people at the label, Carlos wanted to go with the most expensive guy," Corzo says. "They referred him to this guy who was gonna charge him about $50,000. He's an expert who has represented teachers who had been hit with sexual charges, and this guy had a good reputation. But they didn't want to go for him because he wasn't the most expensive."

Corzo believes that Coy is guilty only of having sex with the pubescent girls, but not his youngest victim. "To this day I feel pretty certain that what he was convicted for is not true," he says. "If he was convicted for sleeping with 15-year-olds, I would have said 'Hey, you deserve it, because you have.' And every rock and rap star has done that."

Corzo also thinks that more prepubescent victims would surely have come forward by now. He does allow for the possibility that Coy may have been extremely messed up on beer and weed that night. "I don't deny that hasn't crossed my mind in a very, very minimal way," he says. Maybe he was just really drunk and high, and she just..." Corzo's voice trails off. "It's very, very minimal," he says finally.

Corzo's former full-time gig was maybe one of the most thankless in the history of entertainment. Seldom has any star been accused of a crime as heinous as Coy's, and Corzo says that even under better circumstances that the artist was no ideal employer. Nevertheless, he is standing by him. "Something I haven't told a whole lot of people is this: The whole time I've known Carlos, since about '98, I've always felt that he has been sort of arrogant. While I worked at the label, several people have commented on that fact that he was arrogant or had a big head, while other people said he was humble or a down-to-earth guy. He's a different sort of down-to-earth guy. If he detected you to be not from the 'hood, he would be arrogant and rude. I perceived that attitude from him early on, and so we never really hit if off.

"People wonder why I defend him if he was such a jerk with me. I say that has nothing to do with it. It has to do with justice. A lot of people think I defend him because we were friends or because I worked with him. I never really liked the guy personally. He was arrogant. I just feel that he didn't do it."

So what now for Coy's empire? Most observers are predicting a dark future for Dope House Records. Carlos' brother Arthur Jr. and sister Sylvia are still trying to helm the label through the storm, through without their No. 1 artist most are predicting rough waters.

Californian Baby Beesh, the label's No. 2 act, is said to be gone after his third album for the label. Beesh is said to be unhappy with the treatment he has received from the Coy family, especially the preference shown recently for his labelmate Juan Gotti. "He's always felt that they've never given him the attention or the promotion that he deserves," Corzo says. "He says it's because he's from California, that he's not from the 'hood with Carlos."

Beesh is also said to feel slighted by the rest of Dope House because he is only half-Mexican. "His dad is American. His mom is Hispanic," Corzo says. "He's always had that little clash with some of the people at the label because he's not from the 'hood, because he's not 100% Mexican. He's told me all about it. He saw the promotion they gave to Juan Gotti on the website when they both had new albums out. Gotti got a helluva lot of promotion---he was all over the radio, they took him on tours, the tours were all over the website, they promoted him really, really hard.

"With Beesh, they put out his album and they promoted him, but not as much. Not even half as much. Even though Beesh had his songs on the radio here and in California, and Gotti's never done that , they still promoted Juan Gotti harder and stronger because he's a full-fledged Texican."

Former Southwest Wholesale project manager Greg Ellis says Beesh has already all but bolted from Dope House's stable. The same day his Dope House release On Tha Cool racked in Texas, the rapper also dropped Velvetism on the 40 Ounce label in California. "I don't see how they can make it without [Beesh]," Ellis says. "Guys like [Dope House rappers] Grimm and Juan Gotti have a lot of talent, but they can't see enough for them to go on."

Recent Soundscan numbers bear him out. The two albums that Dope House was hoping would be it's salvation----Gotti's No Sett Trippin' and On Tha Cool---together sold less than 7,000 albums by mid-August.

Coy's freestyle Reveille Park, released on Cinco de Mayo 2002, sold 17,000 copies, though only 3,600 of those were moved in his native Houston. By contrast, 21,000 copies of his last Universal project Time Is Money were sold in Houston, along with 12,000 copies of Never Change, which was released soon after his arrest.

"The won't see any of the money from Time is Money," say Ellis. Universal is still recouping their $500,000 advance. Ellis attributes Coy's eroding popularity in his hometown to the fact that Houstonians know the most about the case. As word gets around to the far-flung outposts of Coy's fan base like Wichita and Albuquerque about the exact nature of his crimes, Ellis thinks that sales will dwindle there too.

As sales for Dope House decline, their expense mount. Coy's legal bills are immense, and continue to grow. Until his August move from the Harris County jail to a Texas Department of Criminal Justice jail, Coy had also racked up thousands of dollars in phone bills from Harris County jail, as he attempted to run the label via speakerphone, "Carlos' Angels" styles, if you will. "Every time I was over there after the trial he was on the phone the whole time," says Houston hip-hop journalist Matt Sonzala. "That shit get pretty expensive."

TDCJ rules allow inmates in good standing only one monitored, five-minute phone call every 90 days, so now that option is gone. He's going to have to run his empire on paper now, and through instructions to the maximum of 10 people on his visitor's list.

Meanwhile, Coy is writing his memoirs, to be called Hustle Town. (He had envisioned a biopic by the same name, but the film project never came to fruition.) Corzo is worried that adult versions of the high school gangs who caused Coy so much grief back in his South Park days will again seek to victimize him. "I'm concerned about him being in [the penitentiary]. Since he was from the 'hood and was involved with drugs and crime in his younger years, I'm thinking those who are involved with Latin Kings or Texas Syndicate in there are gonna try to intimidate him into being part of these organizations. They may say if he doesn't accept their protection then he's gonna get hurt."

As is well know, inmates known to have victimized children rank somewhere around snitches in the prison hierarchy. A child molester has almost no chance in the general population, so Coy will most likely be held apart like Huey Meaux, another famed Houston music go-getter (who's release, incidentally, is imminent). Coy will be in administrative segregation, TDCJ's name for protective custody, in his cell for 23 hours a day. Barring a successful appeal, that is Coy's new reality. Regarding appeals, Harris County Assistant D.A. Denise Onckon says, "We tried a clean case. I don't recall any issues that should be sticking points on appeal...I think the rulings of the court were fair and erred on the side of caution in admitting evidence."

Corzo still believes in his former employer, with a vehemence that will shock many. "Many times when I go out I get in arguments with people who tell me that Carlos is a child molester and this is what I tell them," he says. "I say I would trust Carlos to baby-sit my 5-year-old daughter, but not my 15 year-old daughter."

Well that's it. I hope you enjoyed this article as much as I did. Now after reading this whole article what conclusion have you made? I want to know what he supposedly did with that 9-year-old girl. The article really doesn't specify what happened. Remember this was written back in 2002 so if you have any updated information on this case or know any inside information please share it with us. Thank you for visiting my blog. I'll keep it as up to date as possible for you guys.

Peace, Tony-C