Former D.C. drug kingpin Rayful Edmond set to be released next year

Edmond, a symbol of the city’s 1980s crack epidemic, gained a sentence reduction by cooperating with authorities during his decades of imprisonment.

By Paul Duggan and Keith L. Alexander
August 1, 2024 at 7:19 p.m. EDT

Rayful Edmond III, the long-ago drug kingpin whose army of dealers and mountain of profits made him a symbol of the District’s murderous crack cocaine epidemic in the 1980s, has been moved from a federal penitentiary to “community confinement” and is set to be released late next year, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons said Thursday.

Edmond, 59, has been behind bars since his arrest in April 1989. Initially sentenced to life in prison with no eligibility for parole, he became a government informant during his decades of incarceration, providing an “unparalleled magnitude … of cooperation,” a judge wrote in 2021 in significantly reducing his sentence.

Now the city’s bygone “king of cocaine,” as he was dubbed, appears to be inching closer to freedom, with “a projected release date” of Nov. 8, 2025, the Bureau of Prisons said. … A lawyer for Edmond did not return calls seeking comment Thursday.

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By Paul Duggan
Paul Duggan is a staff writer covering crime and justice. Since joining The Washington Post in 1987, he has worked as a general assignment reporter, assignment editor and national correspondent. Twitter

By Keith L. Alexander
Keith L. Alexander covers crime and courts, specifically D.C. Superior Court cases, for The Washington Post. Alexander was part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that investigated fatal police shootings across the nation in 2015. Follow for updates @keithlalexander Twitter