Monday, July 29, 1996

Michael Irvin bodyguard defends his role in exposing alleged plot to kill grocer, other controversies
By Gayle Reaves and Steve McGonigle
The Dallas Morning News
(July 29, 1996)

DALLAS (KRT) - For weeks, television viewers watched David Wells cross their screens as the burly, bearded former boxing coach escorted Dallas Cowboys star Michael Irvin through the courthouse.

Wells was a bit player then, but he's about to become the center of his own courtroom drama. In a corkscrew case, prosecutors are seeking to indict him while also using him as their key witness in a murder-for-hire plot.

Wells - medal-winning volunteer, bodyguard, private investigator - won his starring role last fall when two businessmen allegedly asked him to arrange their friend's murder for $10,000.

Instead, Wells went to the FBI. Six times after that, he returned to a convenience store in the Oak Cliff section, wearing a recorder to tape the purported plot to kill Nabil "Michael" Aziz.

Wells, 34, said his agreement to help law enforcement has put his life in danger. It also may have put his livelihood at risk.

The murder-for-hire case, along with his bodyguard work during Irvin's recent cocaine possession trial, put the spotlight on a man known by lawyers around the courthouse as an effective investigator.

Wells said he has come to know Irvin and many other sports celebrities around the country as a bodyguard and through his security work at charity sports events.

On Wednesday, prosecutors referred four misdemeanor complaints against him to a grand jury, alleging that he has been operating as a private investigator without a valid state license.

First Assistant District Attorney Norman Kinne cited state records, records, which show Wells was last licensed in 1992, as the basis for the complaints. Each carries a penalty of up to a year in jail.

Wells said in an interview that he was not aware until recently that he was unlicensed. He blamed the investigative firm for which he said he worked for never notifying him of the problem.

"In terms of everything a person can do to make sure their license is in compliance, he did," said his attorney, Anthony Lyons.

The criminal complaints regarding Wells' licensing status are the latest turn in an already twisted tale of murder schemes and divided loyalties.

The man who allegedly approached Wells about committing murder was Oak Cliff grocer Abdel Rahim. Rahim, who police say is the head of a Dallas crime family, was then free on bond on a charge of paying teen-age gang members to kill longtime family acquaintance Ahmad Hassan.

At the time of the alleged solicitation, Wells was helping Rahim's attorney prepare a defense in the Hassan murder.

Wells was still working for Rahim when he returned to Rahim's store wearing a hidden tape recorder supplied by the FBI.

Wells' behavior "violates every precept of attorney-client confidentiality," said Frank Jackson, Rahim's attorney in the Aziz case.

Other controversies have also touched Wells. Among them:

-Several attorneys for whom he has worked believe he is a former Dallas police officer. He is not. From 1985 to 1991, Wells worked as a community liaison with the Police Department, wearing the uniform but not the badge or gun of a sworn peace officer.

Wells said he has never told people he was a police officer. He acknowledges that "they get confused about that."

-Wells has earned respect from many people involved in boxing for his work on youth boxing programs. But four years ago, he was banned for life from participating in amateur boxing because of allegations that included misuse of money and equipment.

Wells contends that the allegations stem from envy, misunderstandings or innocent mistakes.
"You can do a thousand good things in the world, and if you do one thing wrong or two things wrong, people don't look at the good that you've done; they all look at the bad," he said.

The FBI and Dallas police say they believe that Wells' decision to tape the suspected plotters saved Aziz's life. Defense attorneys for the defendants contend that Wells entrapped their clients.

Rahim, 38, was convicted in June of the Hassan murder and sentenced to life in prison. He has pleaded not guilty to soliciting Aziz's murder, as has his co-defendant, Ahmed El-Hallaq, 48. Their cases are set for separate trials in August.

Jackson would not permit Rahim to be interviewed.

El-Hallaq, a banker turned flea market trader, told "The Dallas Morning News" in January that he believes Aziz stole a truckload of Similac baby formula from him in April, 1995.

But, he said, "I never, never in my mind think to kill Nabil Aziz or anybody in the United States ... I'm a nice, peaceful guy."

That is not the picture painted by El-Hallaq's and Rahim's words on the tapes Wells made for the FBI. "The Dallas Morning News" obtained the transcribed tapes from court records.

Rahim and El-Hallaq repeatedly give Wells contradictory instructions, but murder is plainly discussed.

On the first tape, recorded on Nov. 3, 1995, Rahim tells Wells the best place to "catch" Aziz and says he will pay the investigator $10,000 for the job.

It is Wells who first asks whether the idea is to harm Aziz.

"No, no," Rahim replies. He tells Wells to tie up Aziz and take him to a storage building. Then he suggests taking Aziz to El-Hallaq, who would "take care of him."

On the second recording, made four days later, El-Hallaq tells the investigator, "You ... (expletive) him and get $10,000 and that's it."

"You want me to kill him?" Wells asks.

"That's it," El-Hallaq replies.

The tapes include talk about disposing of Aziz's body.

"You put it underground," El-Hallaq says. Later, he suggests, "Throw him somewhere."
"Listen, put him in a garbage can," Rahim says on another tape.

Rahim tells his investigator that El-Hallaq wants to see the corpse or a newspaper story about the death before he will pay.

"You don't have to hide him, just throw him in the freeway," the grocer says.

Then on a Nov. 13 tape, El-Hallaq tells Wells, "I need him alive ... because my people will get our money" for the missing formula only if Aziz lives.

A few seconds later, El-Hallaq denies backing off. "I don't change my mind," he says.

Wells repeatedly tells the two men the decision is up to them, although at times he seems to lobby for the killing. "My deal is, go with the first plan," Wells says at one point.

In one of the last conversations taped, El-Hallaq refers to a second murder plot. "There is another guy," he says to Wells. "It's two of them who are stealing from me, not just one."

"You want the other guy done, too?" Wells asks.

"Oh, yeah," El-Hallaq says.

Wells has testified that he approached an FBI agent he knew and agreed to make the tapes after seeking advice from friends. He said he did not inform Ed Mason, the attorney who hired him to work on the Hassan case, because "I didn't know who I could trust at that time."

Mason learned of his investigator's work with police after Rahim was arrested Nov. 18 on a charge of solicitation of capital murder.

"I hired David because I thought he was competent. He came highly recommended," Mason said. "He was an ex-Dallas police officer, he was physically big enough not to be intimidated.
"Until all this other happened, David did a good job."

Jackson argued that the solicitation charge should be dismissed because of Wells' dual role. State District Judge John Creuzot denied the request this month.

Wells grew up in West Dallas and said he played basketball at Sunset High School and the former Bishop College. In 1985, at age 23, he was awarded the Gold Congressional Medal for his community volunteer work.

That same year, he joined the Dallas Police Department. In 1990, he started his own boxing gym, Reach for The Stars. Two years after that, he applied to become a licensed private investigator.

Curtis Cokes, a former world welterweight boxing champion from Dallas, has known Wells for a decade or more. He complimented his courage and community work.

"He broke up some fights at my rec center where guns were involved," Cokes said.

Levi Williams, manager of the police department's Office of Community Affairs, said Wells was a good public service officer. "You give him a job to do, and he'll go do the job," Williams said. "He might end up doing some things way beyond the job duties."

Wells was fired in April 1990 after being charged with misdemeanor theft of a pair of $55 boxing gloves from the Dallas Police Athletic League. Wells took the gloves to Reach for the Stars, a competing boxing club. He was convicted and sentenced to six months' probation. Records show the conviction was set aside two years later.

Wells said the gloves were part of the equipment he had taken to the police youth league.
The boxing glove theft and six allegations in other cases led in 1992 to Wells' firing from "Reach for the Stars" and a lifetime ban from amateur boxing by USA Boxing, the sport's national governing body.

The boxing glove theft also follows Wells professionally. For four years, the conviction kept him from holding a license as a private investigator, according to Ken Nicolas, the board's spokesman.
Wells was registered with the board in July 1992, but was fired by the company he was working with before background investigations were completed, Nicolas said.

Wells said the licensing controversy and his actions in the Rahim case have cost him potential clients as an investigator.

"I did what I thought was right," he said of the secret taping. "You might get a pat on the back today and get shot tomorrow. But you can't please everybody."

(c) 1996, Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Knight-Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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