The Story of Timothy McGhee – “Monster of Atwater Village”

McGhee’s descent into a life of crime was neither sudden nor surprising. He earned his first prison stay in 1994 (at the age of 18) for assaulting a police officer in San Bernardino County.

Truly, A Life of Crime

He received a four-year prison sentence for the assault and served three years of his sentence before being released in 1997. Later that year, McGhee was sent back to prison on a parole violation and was not released again until March 1999. True to form, McGhee was again returned to prison for a parole violation in February 2000, serving two months before being released.

By the summer of 2000, at only 26, McGhee had already spent a quarter of his life in prison. But police suspected that in what little time he spent outside of the California Department of Corrections, his crimes were not merely limited to parole violations.

Los Angeles Police detectives believe that during McGhee’s few months as a free man in 1997, he murdered a member of the rival Rascals gang — Ryan Martin — who was reportedly shot more than 25 times.

In October 1999, McGhee again became the focus of a homicide investigation, this time being linked to the murder of Dwayne Dupree, a bodyguard for rap artist Ricardo “Kurupt” Brown.

According to police reports, Dupree and others were gathered outside Echo Sounds Music Studio after a recording session when two gunmen approached and opened fire, killing Dupree and wounding two others. Although Dupree’s murder was originally thought to be the result of a dispute between rap artists, information eventually led detectives to suspect McGhee.