In the early hours of May 23, 2005, 24-year-old Anthony Fat Tone Watkins and his friend, 22-year-old Jermaine Cowboy Akins were found shot to death at a construction site on the outskirts of Las Vegas. A security guard discovered Watkins inside a car and Akins on the ground outside; both had been shot multiple times with an assault-style rifle. Authorities described the killings as connected to a violent rap feud that stretched from the Midwest to the West Coast and believed the slayings were retaliation for the November 2004 murder of Bay Area rapper Andre Mac Dre Hicks.

Investigators focused on San Francisco rapper and promoter Andre Mac Minister Dow and his associate Jason Corleone Mathis after surveillance captured the victims leaving the MGM Grand with Dow shortly before the estimated time of death. A white Pontiac Sunfire seen fleeing the scene was later found burned in Vallejo and linked to Mathis’s girlfriend, Lee Danae Laursen, who was believed to have witnessed the killings. Mathis was arrested in August 2005 and reportedly confessed; Dow was captured after a nationwide manhunt. Two days after Dow and Mathis were indicted in the Las Vegas murders, Laursen was found shot to death in Fairfield.

Were there people in Las Vegas or the rap community who saw Watkins or Akins with Dow or Mathis in the days before May 23, 2005?