Crimes, Killers, Cults and Beer: A True Crime Podcast · Dark Pass Productions

147 Clarence 'Preacher' Heatley, aka The Black Hand of Death

·1 hr 41 min·2 clips

A six-foot-seven crime boss known as the Black Hand of Death.

Bill gets the show title out first. Kevin Carlton is back, the History Goon announcement finally lands, and the opening drifts through dates, Patreon timing, congratulations, and heavier housekeeping before the case takes over. Then Heatley shows up, and the mood gets mean fast. The excerpt paints Preacher Heatley as someone law enforcement could not pin down even though he was not exactly hiding from the world. That is the nasty trick. Bodies were believed to lead back to his crew, but fear kept witnesses quiet and kept descriptions from becoming anything useful. Nobody wanted that kind of attention. The host says Heatley could lurk in the shadows, then cuts against it with the image of him out in public in a purple suit with an entourage. Subtle, he was not. By 1989, the timeline has him active for six years, extorting drug dealers, leaning on business owners, and carrying a lethal reputation. The money is the part that starts to explain the pressure. Heatley is described as a multimillionaire who keeps his crew paid, which the conversation turns into a bleak joke about job security and raises. Then Rich Porter throws off the math. Porter is younger, richer, and moving bricks of cocaine to other dealers instead of working the street-level trade. Heatley sees the gap. The ugly part is that Porter is already paying him protection money, and Heatley still decides Porter's bigger earnings are a problem. Money and bruised ego do the driving. The segment makes Heatley feel less like a hidden mastermind than a dangerous public secret everyone has learned not to name. The close slips back into the show's usual mess: missed releases, getting back to recording, the familiar friend-or-enemy signoff, and a note that the next recorded episode comes before the unfortunate events mentioned earlier.

As heard by us

A lively true-crime episode about fear, money, and a feared crew boss who was hard to pin down.

The episode presents Clarence "Preacher" Heatley as a crew boss who was hard to pin down, even in plain sight, and it follows his rise alongside the money he was pulling in.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a rough, funny true-crime story about fear, cash, and a dangerous rivalry playing out in plain sight.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Crimes, Killers, Cults and Beer: A True Crime Podcast