Arrest made in slaying of rapper

Jen Lawson

Monday, Aug. 29, 2005 | 9:25 a.m.

Three months after a Kansas City, Mo., rapper was gunned down in southwestern Las Vegas, Metro Police have arrested a 25-year-old man who said he committed the murder out of revenge.

Jason Mathis said he believed Anthony "Fat Tone" Watkins killed a San Francisco Bay Area rapper, Andre "Mac Dre" Hicks, in Kansas City in November 2004.

Mathis was booked Thursday into the Clark County Detention Center on two counts of murder. He is also accused of killing Watkins' friend, Jermaine Akins.

"According to Mathis, the motive for the killings was revenge," his arrest report says.

A security guard patrolling the Southern Highlands area in the far southwest part of the valley, discovered the victims shot to death about 2 a.m. May 23 on a cul-de-sac lined with partially-built homes.

Watkins, 24, was inside a blue 1992 Toyota Tercel, and Akins, 23, was on the ground outside the car, police said. Both had been shot multiple times in the head, torso and back with an assault-type rifle.

A person living in the area told police he heard a noise outside and spotted a white Pontiac Sunfire speeding away from the scene.

According to police, a day after the murders police received an anonymous message saying he had seen the victim's Toyota and a white Pontiac parked at a house less than a half-mile away from the murder scene. The tipster said he believed drug activity was occurring at the house.

Detectives obtained a warrant to search the house and found photos of Mathis, who lived there, posing with an AK-47 rifle. They also discovered that Mathis had bought ammunition at a Las Vegas gun store nine days before the killings, according to the police report.

On May 25, two days after the killings, the Pontiac was found burned in Vallejo, Calif.

Mathis was arrested July 12 in San Francisco for domestic violence involving the mother of his child.

She allegedly told police Mathis confessed to killing Watkins and Akins and that the getaway car, the Pontiac, was burned the next day. The details of the Pontiac being burned had never been made public, police noted.

According to the woman, Andre "Mac Minister" Dow was with Mathis when the murders occurred. Dow has not been arrested.

The Pitch, an alternative weekly newspaper in Kansas City, reported last month that Dow, whom Watkins believed had connections in the hip-hop world, promised to arrange a meeting with Snoop Dogg in Las Vegas.

Watkins told his family and friends before he died that he won thousands of dollars playing craps at the MGM Grand, the hotel where his idol Tupac Shakur had attended a boxing match the night he was killed in 1996, the paper reported.

Hotel surveillance from the MGM Grand shows the victims and Dow leaving a room and then walking to the parking garage shortly before midnight, according to the police report. About 80 minutes later, Watkins and Akins were killed.