![]() But never let the money be more important than the people.'" "Larry was the guy in the beginning who told me, 'A lot of money is gonna cross your hands. "It was just so unthinkable," says Dale Degroat. Word of the shootings ricocheted around Dayton, with pastors somberly reporting the news during Sunday services. My mom was watching TV, and she was like, 'I can understand how all those boys' mothers feel.' That killed me." "A week before was Columbine, and I think there was some type of military conflict. "We went to my sister's house, and we wouldn't let nobody come in for a week. "My brothers and I rode around and tried to collect our thoughts," says Lester of the days following the murder-suicide. The bullet, a coroner later confirmed, came from the same. When officers arrived at the 2100 block of Harvard Boulevard, they found Larry Troutman in the driver's seat, dead from a self-inflicted shot to the head. Minutes later, dispatchers got a call: A black Lincoln had slammed into a tree less than a mile away. Witnesses said he'd been shot as he tried to get out of the passenger seat of a black sedan. 357 Smith & Wesson revolver in his torso, two in the front and two in the back. Police found Roger Troutman at about 20 minutes past 7 that April morning in 1999, in the alley behind Roger Tee Enterprises, the family's Salem Avenue recording studio. ![]() Lester Troutman ran out into the street, dropped to his knees, and cried. It was not the way Roger's remarkable life was supposed to end. His murder, and the unthinkable way it went down, was unforeseeable, unfathomable, inexplicable. Roger Troutman had been a funk visionary, the man who'd popularized the vocoder talkbox as an instrument and one of the most frequently sampled artists in the history of hip hop - particularly in the influential strain known as West Coast funk. And the shooting reverberated far beyond the Troutman family, far beyond Dayton city limits. Then Larry turned the gun on himself, leaving the first family of Ohio funk stunned and grieving. ![]() Larry Troutman had shot his superstar baby brother, had put four bullets filled with love and hate into Roger's torso in an alley behind the family's recording studio in Dayton, Ohio. But not even their own family saw this coming. ![]() Tensions had been mounting between Larry and Roger - over money, over the family business, over Roger's career as a solo artist and Larry's role as his manager. That's where memory gets hazy for Lester, where he loses all understanding of time and space. His oldest brother was dead, and his thoughts immediately turned to his best friend and other brother. Lester's next question was both inevitable and horrifying. It was singer Shirley Murdock, a longtime friend of Zapp, the seminal '80s funk band Lester had formed with his brothers more than two decades earlier. Before he could check them, the phone rang. It was Ap- a Sunday - and Troutman already had 25 voice-mail messages. Lester Troutman knew something was wrong the minute he turned on his cell that morning. By my boy P-Frank Williams (click to visit his site ) ![]()
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