WORDS MAY HURT, AFTER ALL GANGSTER'S RAP LYRICS ARE SEEN AS EVIDENCE.

Byline: TONY CASTRO

Staff Writer

If feeling oppressed, down in the dumps and sorry for yourself are the classic prerequisites for rap stardom, Timothy McGhee is in good company.

He hates cops. He thinks he's doomed to hell. And he can't understand how he got to where he is.

But McGhee is no ordinary aspiring rap artist.

He's accused of being a cold-blooded thrill killer: two murders, seven attempted murders, five shootings. That's what he is accused of, but some authorities think his victims actually number in the dozens.

If he's convicted and sentenced to death, prosecutors say, he can blame his own rap lyrics in part for sticking the lethal injection into his tattoo-covered arms.

An apparently autobiographical notebook -- filled with rap lyrics ranging from the psychotic to the delusional, with confessional references to murders and self-comparisons to Jesse James and "Nightmare on Elm Street" serial killer Freddy Krueger -- is possibly among the most damning evidence against McGhee.

"Look inside and you will see a soul that's sick with disease," McGhee writes in one lyric. "I am why you lock your doors. I am why your daughters are whores...

"Cause I'll be the Vato you be having in your dreams/ You wake up all shety and sweaty/ and then you realize that I'm worse than Fredy/ Cause you know we're crazy vatos that don't ---- around."

In a city of tens of thousands of gangbangers, where some, such as bestselling author and Crips gangster Monster Cody, are famous as well as infamous, most inspire contempt, at best. Few gangbangers ever strike true terror outside their myopic turf.

'He does it for kicks'

And then there is Timothy Joseph McGhee, 34.

A Latino homie with an Irish name, he goes by the street handles "Huero" and "Eskimo." His tattoos include an eagle eating a snake -- symbolic of the Mexican flag -- emblazoned on the back of his shaved head, a place that skin artists say is the most painful spot to be tattooed.

His spiral notebook of rap lyrics depicts McGhee as a 21st century American psychopath, devoid of conscience, who used the Atwater Village area as an urban killing field.

In the words of Andy Teague, the now-retired LAPD detective who tracked him, "It's his high, and he does it for kicks."

"Here I come last chance to run," McGhee writes in one set of lyrics. "Killer with a gun out to have some fun/ In my dreams I hear screams/ Pleasure I feel is so obscene."

McGhee, after all, is believed to have killed one young man -- 16-year-old Ryan "Huero" Gonzales in 2000 -- simply because he thought Atwater Village wasn't big enough for two people with the same nickname.

It is the kind of violent rampage for which McGhee came to be called in his neighborhood "the Monster of Atwater." Some cops even compared his murderous nature to that of Charles Manson.

And there are authorities who believe that the true number of his victims could be well more than two dozen. Until his capture in Arizona in 2003, he was also on the U.S. Marshal's Most Wanted Fugitive list.

It has taken four years to get McGhee to trial, with opening statements scheduled to begin today.

And you would think he is Manson in the way he strikes caution, to say the least, in the people surrounding him.

The prosecutor in the case declined to comment publicly on McGhee, referring inquiries back to case documents and his statements in court. Gang experts declined to go on the record about McGhee.

McGhee is not allowed visitors at Men's Central Jail, and his two attorneys did not return repeated calls requesting an interview with him or their own comment on the case.

Part of the reason is that McGhee allegedly kills witnesses -- and brags about it in his notebook:

"Witness protection won't work/ Realize your ratt ain't going to make it to the stand/ To identifie the man shootin up the ham/ Can't promise protection when you can't protect yourself/ Give it up, Mr. Pig, and place your badge on the shelf/ And write up the death certificate for the testimony/ One collect call with a name to my homie is all it takes to put your witness at stake/ Wants to dance like a bird, instead they get seared. So take it from the three monkies/ They can't hear, see or speak pushin up daisies."

Witnesses fearful

A witness whom McGhee is accused of killing is Christina Duran, who gave videotaped testimony of McGhee's role in the 2001 killing of Margie Mendoza, the girlfriend of a rival gang member.

Within 24 hours, according to court documents, on the night of Duran's 29th birthday party, McGhee "executed (her) with five contact wounds behind the ear."

Prosecutors have scored a victory in having Superior Court Judge Robert J. Perry allow the admission of Duran's videotaped testimony in his murder trial.

But court documents show the extent of McGhee's intimidation, as well as gang loyalty.

Witness after witness who initially linked McGhee to Duran's killing have either changed their testimony or claim to no longer recall incidents leading up to her death.

Most damning for McGhee, though, may be that Perry has also allowed into evidence McGhee's notebook of rap lyrics.

McGhee's defense team had argued that the notebook should not be admitted because it contained the notation in big letters, "Everything in this book is a work of fiction."

But Assistant District Attorney Hoon Chun successfully countered that McGhee's "autobiographical gang writings in the notebook are self-authenticating because they consistently identify the author as having characteristics unique to Defendant McGee" -- the tattoos, the nicknames, his gang affiliations, his Atwater roots, his physical description and being a fugitive from murder charges.

For prosecutors, the notebook of rap lyrics may be the smoking gun they needed against a suspect whom authorities have had difficulty linking with various killings because of the shadow of fear and intimidation they say McGhee poses over neighborhood residents and other gang members.

In the notebook, McGhee writes:

"Fi fi fo fum/ I smell the smoke of a magnum/ Be he alive or be he dead/ Be he the one I fill with lead/ Caught him trippin on Chevy Chase and Brunswick/ 44 Mag made his a-- drop quick/ Blood fertilizes sidewalk weeds/ I plant Mf----- like Johnny Appleseed."

Details in the lyrics, sources close to the investigation say, correspond to details in no fewer than three of the killings to which McGhee has been connected, including the slaying of Manuel Apodaca, 21, of Pomona, and the wounding of his pregnant girlfriend, Nina Guerrero, on June 11, 2001.

Toonerville ties

It is a wave of terror that, on the surface, seems incongruous in Atwater Village, which is heavily middle class and dotted with warehouses and $300,000 homes north of Los Feliz Boulevard between San Fernando Road and the Los Angeles River.

The Toonerville gang, which authorities say also has members in Glendale, Sunland and Tujunga, has been running roughshod in Atwater since the late 1950s -- using violence against rival gangs to maintain its control of the illegal drug market in the area.

"No one knows who will die/ When we let these bullets fly," McGhee writes in his notebook. "In the ville someone will/ When we shoot we shoot to kill/ I'm a Toonerville gangster coming out to play/ In Atwater Village Northeast L.A./ With a Glock on B block feeding um them rocks."

No gangbanger, authorities say, became more closely associated with Toonerville than McGhee, who has his gang's name tattooed across his back, even though he spent much of the 1990s either in jail or in prison.

In his notebook, McGhee boasts of being able to reach out from behind his prison bars, of his menacing hatred for the police, of a warped view that neighborhoods are armed camps of rival warfare. He writes, too, of worthlessness and self-loathing, of needing to be forgiven for his sins.

And, ultimately, McGhee also obsesses about a death wish.

"Now madness flows through me like drugs in my veins," he writes in one entry. "I put the pistol to my head with visions of painting this mirror red. Into this mirror/ I stare with distaste/ At this face of disgrace compelled to be erased/ Along with the human race."

tony.castro(at)dailynews.com

[phone]

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

(color) - Timothy Joseph McGhee