Defense lawyer Brian Steel wasted little time Friday resuming his withering cross-examination of Kasey “OTF Jam” Hester on the fifth day of rapper Lil Durk’s murder-for-hire trial in Los Angeles.
“Going home, that’s your mission?” Steel asked after confronting Hester with a seemingly damaging jail call with his wife.
“Me, trying to go home? Yes,” Hester replied.
In the jail call from May 2023 played in court Friday, Hester was heard telling his wife to “trust” him. He had just been arrested riding in a car with a gun while on parole after serving 12 years on an attempted murder conviction. While in custody, he slipped a note to a guard that read, “I know about murders. I don’t want to talk on camera. I know a lot.” Jurors saw the note in court during the start of Hester’s testimony and learned that by May 18, 2023, Hester had signed the cooperation agreement with federal officials that landed him on the witness stand in Los Angeles.
Under questioning by prosecutors, Hester testified that Lil Durk, born Durk Banks, placed a bounty on rival rapper Quando Rondo‘s head after a 2020 confrontation in Atlanta that ended with the fatal shooting of Durk’s close friend and musical protégé King Von.
Hester said that after his release from prison, he began spending time with Durk and members of his Only The Family collective. He eventually received a call from an associate telling him to board a flight without even packing a bag, he testified. Hester claimed he could hear Banks’ voice in the background of another call with the associate.
Hester told jurors that he ended up in Southern California with a group of men tasked with finding and killing Quando Rondo. Hester acknowledged that he was one of three gunmen who opened fire on Quando Rondo’s vehicle at a gas station near the Beverly Center on Aug. 19, 2022, killing Quando Rondo’s cousin, Saviay’a Robinson, known as Lul Pab. Quando Rondo, born Tyquian Bowman, survived.
Hester testified Thursday that he wanted to back out of the shooting but believed doing so could get him killed.
“You don’t get in the way of somebody killing somebody. Like, that is not what we do. Like, where I’m from, it is not what you do. That will get you killed,” he told jurors. “So I’m just trying to just go with the flow and let it be what it’s going to be.”
During Hester’s cross-examination by Steel on Friday, jurors heard portions of his first recorded interview with federal investigators. The May 24, 2023 interview came after Hester had already spoken with officials several times without being recorded.
In the recording, Hester said he had “never” spoken with Banks about King Von’s death before traveling to California. He also said he had “never had a conversation” with Durk about “putting money” on Quando Rondo’s head before he landed at the airport in San Diego and ended up with the group of alleged hitmen. When an investigator asked him directly if he knew anything about a bounty on Quando Rondo, Hester replied, “I don’t know. I really can’t say.”
About two hours later, investigators returned to the subject and asked what Hester knew about the size of any purported bounty. “It was never a number,” he said. “But Durk let it be known, ‘If you get him, you’re gonna be straight.’”
Steel pressed Hester to explain why his answers appeared to “dramatically change” over the course of the hours-long interview and why his testimony this week went further still. On the witness stand, Hester told jurors that before the shooting, he was at a studio in Atlanta when Banks personally addressed a group and said anyone who killed Quando Rondo would be “straight.” Hester also testified that the amount discussed was “a million dollars or half a million dollars.”
Wearing a white T-shirt and light-colored pants while in the custody of U.S. marshals after pleading guilty in the case, Hester said that when investigators first asked about a bounty, he thought they were asking whether Banks had personally offered him money in a one-on-one conversation. He said he later clarified that an offer had been made in a “group situation.” Hester also maintained that he had told investigators about the Atlanta studio meeting, but that they apparently failed to include it in their notes.
The government’s case against Banks relies heavily on cooperating witnesses. In addition to Hester, two other men have pleaded guilty and agreed to testify. Prosecutors identified them in opening statements as Keith Jones, whom prosecutors identified as another of the shooters, and Kavon “OTF Vonnie” Grant, a close friend of King Von who later worked for Banks and who obtained the ski masks, hotel rooms, guns, and vehicles for the 2022 shooting.
As he cross-examined Hester Friday, Steel showed jurors a series of messages Hester exchanged with a woman who allegedly was acting as his go-between to communicate with Hester when the men were in custody last year. Steel suggested the two men were trying to “collude” and get their stories straight. Hester claimed he never discussed the case with Grant and either way, he’d already given his statement to prosecutors.
Hester testified that after Robinson was killed, Grant set fire to the stolen car used by the shooters in an effort to destroy evidence. He said he later decided to cooperate because the killing had been “weighing” on him.
Steel then confronted Hester with a series of recorded jail calls in which he appeared to discuss the benefits of cooperating. In one call with the now-deceased mother of his young son, Hester said, “I’m gonna walk away … As long as the motherfuckers getting what they want. It’s bigger than me.”
In the call with his wife on May 5, 2023, Hester said, “These people, they’re saying they’ll help me, they’ll do whatever.” He then urged her to have faith he would be home soon.
“I’m gonna (do) whatever it takes to make sure I don’t do no time,” he said. “Just trust me … Watch me go hard (for) my family.”
Hester defended the calls by saying these were the mothers of his children, and he was trying to soften the impact of his arrest. “I’m not going to give the full truth,” he said. “I’m trying to make them have some hope.”
Steel then took issue with Hester’s alleged treatment of his family members, accusing him of being “abusive” toward his own mother during jail calls. “Abusive is putting your hands on somebody,” Hester replied.
Steel next questioned Hester about a recent social media post that falsely suggested he was out of custody and staying at his sister’s house. The post, Steel said, included the taunt “Come see me” and gave his sister’s address, potentially putting her at risk because Hester’s cooperation with the government could mark him as a “rat” or a “snitch.” Steel noted that the sister, who is on dialysis, had children in the home.
Hester acknowledged responsibility for the post. “I wasn’t thinking right,” he said.
He testified that after the mother of his son died, the boy ended up in the sister’s care, and she cut off Hester’s communication with the child. He admitted it made him angry. He said he orchestrated the post “to scare her.”
“I was in my feelings,” Hester said. “It was me being mad at not being able to talk to my son.” Hester dismissed the post as just “words.”
“Your words can get innocent people wrongly convicted,” Steel replied. “Do you realize that?”
Banks, 33, has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy, stalking resulting in death, and murder for hire. His defense lawyer Marissa Goldberg told jurors in her opening statement that Hester started cooperating with authorities shortly after he was arrested in May 2023 “because he was desperate.” She said he “couldn’t go back to jail another day in his life” and “became a massive cooperator.”
According to Goldberg, Grant was the one who organized the August 2022 shooting plot. She said Grant was extremely “tight” with King Von, was with him in Atlanta the night he was killed, and became consumed with a desire for revenge. Her Grammy-winning client, by contrast, “channeled” his anger and frustration into “his artwork,” she said.
“Mr. Banks had nothing to do with it,” Goldberg said. She argued prosecutors have no evidence the “All My Life” rapper paid anyone for the shooting. “This is a murder-for-hire allegation where nobody gets paid,” she said.
