Prosecutors may drop the most serious charge against a Harlem man who admitted to killing a motivational speaker in his car last July. Ex-con Kenneth Minor has claimed all along that he stabbed Jeffrey Locker to death only because Locker requested the service. The motive first sounded ludicrous, but one source in the DA's office tells the Post "it makes sense now" because "[Locker] was deeply in debt. The guy had bought like $18 million worth of life insurance. He was researching Jewish funerals and cemeteries." According to Minor, Locker drove to East Harlem and approached Minor at random, saying, "I want to do a Kevorkian." Minor's account of the actual deed is chilling:
I tried to choke him with the wire, but it was old and kept breaking. He told me to use the knife. He said to hold it against the steering wheel with the blade facing him. I did that, and he leaned forward into the knife three to four times while I held it...
He then told me to move the knife over to the other side where his heart is. I moved the knife over and he leaned forward into it a couple of more times. At that point, he was alive and breathing heavily. I got out of the car and threw the knife.
Cops later found Locker's mutilated body, strangled with seven stab wounds, slumped behind the wheel of his Dodge Magnum. And for all that, Minor insists he didn't even get any money. Locker told him he'd lost $400,000 in a "Ponzi scheme" and was ripped off by the first man he tried to hire for the "Kevorkian." According to court documents, Minor has testified, "He told me that he had no cash on him because he paid a guy on the West Side to kill him, but the guy beat him." It's a disturbing story, and proves once again that if you want a job done right, you've got to do it yourself.
Although prosecutors are now buying Minor's story, he's not off the hook. "Regardless of whether it's true or not, you don't get to kill someone just because they want you to,"the Post's source observes. Minor's lawyer wants the first-degree murder charge against his client to be downgraded to second-degree manslaughter.
