Prosecutors Allege Pre-Murder 'Drug Rip'

In a prelude to the robbery in Kirkland House that ended in Justin Cosby’s death, alleged gunman Jabrai Jordan Copney and his alleged accomplice Blayn Jiggetts are said to have stolen a large quantity of marijuana from two Yale undergraduates in 2008, according to court documents.

Copney allegedly told Jules E. Bolton, a 2009 Yale graduate, that he would pay $14,000 for three pounds of marijuana; instead, Copney robbed Bolton and his friend at gunpoint, taking the marijuana and their IDs, Bolton told investigators.

According to a memorandum filed by the Middlesex District Attorney’s office, Jiggetts said that the incident in New York served as a blueprint for the robbery in Kirkland’s J-entryway on May 18, 2009.

That day, Copney allegedly shot Cosby, a Cambridge Rindge and Latin graduate who did not attend Harvard, during what investigators have called a failed “drug rip.”

Chanequa N. Campbell, a Harvard senior at the time, and Jason Aquino, another alleged accomplice who plans to plead guilty to manslaughter Thursday for his role in the shooting, both told investigators that the robbery of the Yale students served as a model for the plan to rob Cosby.

Prosecutors described this alleged robbery in a memorandum that responds to a motion filed by Brittany J. Smith, who is being charged with misleading a grand jury. The motion filed by Smith asked prosecutors to drop charges against her due to a non-prosecution agreement.

In their memorandum, prosecutors say that the agreement with Smith should be nullified in part because she did not disclose that she was aware of the robbery of the two Yale students. Because of this, prosecutors say, she violated an agreement to cooperate with investigators, a claim that her defense attorney strongly disputes.

ANOTHER DRUG RIP

Bolton told an investigator in Sept. 2009 that he and Yale classmate Alexander T. King met with Copney in Brittany J. Smith’s Lowell House dorm room during the weekend of the Harvard-Yale football game in 2008, according to the memorandum.

Smith was Copney’s girlfriend at the time of the Kirkland shooting and has been charged as an accessory to the murder.

Campbell told investigators that she was friends with King before that 2008 meeting.

Bolton said that in Nov. 2008, Copney told Bolton that he planned to return to New York, where he, Jiggetts, and Aquino are from. According to the document, the two finalized the details of the drug deal and planned to meet at a Starbucks near Grand Central Station in New York City.

The District Attorney’s Office wrote that prior to their New York meeting, Copney told Bolton that he would give him $14,000 for three pounds of marijuana, according to court documents.

Bolton, prosecutors said, told investigators that it was an unusual deal for him because most of his past deals were smaller and were done in his dorm room at Yale with people he knew.

Copney was about 45 minutes late to their meeting, which Bolton told investigators unnerved both him and King.

When he arrived, Copney claimed that he had left some of the money at his home, according to court documents.

The three men then took a taxi to a Harlem apartment building. During the ride, Copney allegedly showed the Yale students $1,500 in cash and promised that he had the rest of the money in a cash box at his apartment.

When they arrived at the apartment Copney allegedly claimed that he did not have the key to the building and, according to the memorandum, said that he needed to call his friend, “Fat Boy,” whom Jiggetts later identified as himself.

Bolton told investigators that Jiggetts left him, Copney, and King. The three men went upstairs to an apartment.

Copney said he did not have the key to the apartment itself and left Bolton and King waiting outside the door.

Copney returned one minute later with Jiggetts, who had a pistol in his hand, according to court documents.

Bolton, prosecutors said in the memorandum, told investigators that Copney said something like, “Ya, this is what it is.”

Copney told Bolton to give him the bag of marijuana and also took Bolton’s driver’s license and King’s Yale University ID, the document said.

Bolton told Copney and Jiggetts that he did not have money to return home, so Jiggetts gave the two Yale men $50 to take a taxi home, according to the document.

Months after the robbery, in March 2009, Copney allegedly called Bolton at Yale and instructed him to withdraw $10,000 from his bank account and drop the money off at a location in New York City, according to the filing.

Bolton told Copney that he had stopped dealing drugs and would not pay the money. According to the memorandum, on the phone, Copney allegedly threatened Bolton by referencing several locations around Bolton’s dorm and later leaving a voice message saying, “If you like your life, you should drop off the money.”

KIRKLAND TRIAL

According to investigators, Smith did not initially disclose that she was aware of the robbery of the two Yale students. Only after later testimony did prosecutors learn that she knew of the robbery and had allegedly hidden some of the items stolen from the two students, according to the District Attorney’s filing.

In Campbell’s testimony of September 2009 described in court documents, she told investigators that she had told Smith that Copney had robbed the Yale students.

The IDs from the Yale robbery were discovered with the murder weapon from the Kirkland shooting under a bed in a Lowell House dorm room.

Smith told investigators that she placed the gun under her friend’s bed in Lowell.

Smith is accused of possessing the murder weapon and misleading the grand jury, in addition to other charges.

Campbell and Jiggetts appeared in court on Friday as prosecution witnesses against Smith. During their testimonies, both acknowledged that Jiggetts and Copney had stolen marijuana from the Yale students, according to The Boston Globe,

According to Copney’s lawyer John A. Amabile, Copney has been charged as an accessory to the robbery of the Yale students.

Amabile said that he does not think that the robbery is pertinent to the Kirkland shooting case and has asked that the judge dismiss the charge.

“Why is that relevant to whether [Copney] committed a murder six months later in the basement of a Harvard dorm?” Amabile said. “It will make the jury think [Copney] is a bad person.”

Salem Superior Court Judge John Lu—who Amabile said will preside over Copney’s upcoming trial—will review Amabile’s motions to dismiss the charges relating to the New York robbery or separate those charges into a different trial in Salem on Monday.

Both Bolton and King did not respond to phone calls yesterday afternoon.

—Xi Yu  and Julie M. Zauzmer contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Kerry M. Flynn can be reached at kflynn@college.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Hana N. Rouse can be reached at hrouse@college.harvard.edu.