Long before Al Gore invented the internets, St. Petersburg had only one reputable news source: St.Petersrag. The forefather of the publication you are now reading, St.Petersrag covered all the news you could use, while also managing to offend and piss off most of the population. During particularly slow news weeks (like the one we are currently enjoying), it is fun to occasionally dip into the archives for interesting stories of yore. I present to you the incredibly awesome Mathis brothers.

Ronald Eugene “Romeo” Mathis mugs for the camera in the custody of an awesomely afro’d undercover cop while a bored-ass honkey looks on.

Samie Lee Mathis was a drug slinger in the midst of a $65,000 cocaine and Quaaludes deal at a 54th Avenue N motel off Interstate 275 in 1980. In the midst of the drug-deal-gone-wrong he shot St. Petersburg Police Officer Herbert Ray Sullivan twice in the chest, point blank, killing him. More details here on his perpetually denied parole. Interesting side note, Sullivan was the most recent of 12 St. Petersburg Police Officers killed in the line of duty, a pleasantly low number.

Samie’s brother, Ronald Eugene “Romeo” Mathis, was once one of Tampa Bay’s most powerful crack dealers. Romeo would have gone on to enjoy a much longer career had it not been for those “meddling kids.” Community activists and concerned citizens wrestled control of the Bartlett Park neighborhood from Mathis despite his having built an empire employing dozens of teens as drug runners and using violence and intimidation to scare residents into silence.

Despite the fact that Johnny Law eventually caught up with the Mathis brothers, you gotta respect their reign of awesomeness. This is the stuff that awesome super-reverbed-out western movies are made of, brothers dominating the little shanty town of St. Petersburg. We salute you Mathis brothers, may you enjoy the duration of your lives in prison.