HIGHLAND PARK, Mich. — When investigators triangulated cellular data from the phones of three men who had been missing for two weeks after heading to a Detroit rap show, it led to an area near the Highland Park-Detroit border — and police immediately homed in on the sprawling, abandoned Palmer Park Estates apartment building, according to a police source familiar with the investigation.
Following an hourslong search through the three-story complex, which was occupied by several squatters, investigators found the bodies of rappers Armani Kelly and Dante Wicker and friend Montoya Givens in the basement, buried beneath old construction rubble, the source said. All three men had been shot, according to the source.
Police had requested the cellphone data of the three men — Kelly, 27, of Oscoda; Wicker, 31, of Melvindale; and Givens, 31, of Detroit — after they were reported missing on Jan. 21. But the cellphone companies didn't provide access to the data until Thursday, according to the police source, because of "exigent circumstances" involving an immediate known danger didn't exist.
Although investigators had suspected foul play after interviewing a 15-year-old boy last week who was arrested while driving Kelly's car, and later reviewing video that showed a man wearing gloves while he cleaned the car, those details didn't rise to the level of an exigent circumstance that would have allowed investigators to view the cellphone data earlier, the source said.
Michigan State Police 1st Lt. Mike Shaw confirmed Thursday that three bodies were found under mounds of debris inside the apartment complex. At 6 p.m. Thursday, he said the bodies hadn't yet been removed from the building. He didn't confirm the bodies belonged to the three missing men, although three Detroit police sources with knowledge of the investigation confirmed the bodies were those of Kelly, Wicker and Givens.
"It's supposed to be abandoned, but there are a lot of squatters in there," Shaw about the large complex near the corner of Log Cabin and McNichols.
Early Thursday evening, police had yellow crime scene tape draped across Log Cabin at McNichols, while parked outside were the Detroit Police Mobile Command Center and units from the Michigan State Police, which was leading the investigation, and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives.
Michigan State Police officers walk on West McNichols near an apartment building at West McNichols and Log Cabin in Detroit on the border of Highland Park on Feb. 2, 2023. Police sources said the bodies of an Oscoda rapper, Melvindale rapper and their friend from Detroit were found Thursday under debris inside the apartment building.
Kelly, a rapper from Oscoda who performed under the alias Marley Whoop, had been slated to perform at a Jan. 21 birthday party at Lounge 31 near Gratiot, but the show was canceled. Wicker, a rapper from Melvindale, was also scheduled to perform at the Lounge 31 party under the stage name B12, police said.
That night, Kelly told his fiancée the gig had been canceled over an equipment issue, so he planned to link up with others and possibly find open mic events. But texts, calls and Facebook messages went unanswered sometime after 7:30 p.m., according to Kelly's fiancée, Taylor Perrin.
Police said Kelly picked up Wicker and Givens on the way to the gig before it was canceled. The three men had been missing since.
Warren police last week arrested a 15-year-old boy driving Kelly's 2017 Chevrolet Equinox without a license plate. A Detroit police source involved in the multiagency investigation said the teenager told police that a man had told him to pick up the car on Schoolcraft on Detroit's west side.
Police looked in the boy's cellphone, and calls and texts led them to the man, who lives on Ashton on Detroit's northwest side. The man had an outstanding warrant involving alleged fraud, a source said. Police got a warrant to search the man's house Monday, and he was taken into custody for questioning, according to the source.
Warren Police Commissioner William Dwyer confirmed Thursday that a 15-year-old has been charged in connection with possessing Kelly’s vehicle. The youth was arrested last week at an apartment complex in Warren, Dwyer said.
“It’s significant the arrest was made,” Dwyer said.
The Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday night on charges involving the juvenile.
Another break in the case came after investigators pored over high-definition video from Project Green Light locations in Detroit and found a video of the man wearing gloves cleaning out Kelly's car, a source said.
On Thursday afternoon, Givens' mother, Cat Fogle, said police informed her about the find at about 4:30 p.m. "They told me they found the three bodies. ... I don't know what I'm going to do; how I'm going to bury him," Fogle told The Detroit News.
Detroit Police Department personnel, Michigan State Police and U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives agents are at West McNichols and Log Cabin near the Highland Park-Detroit border where three missing men have been found dead, according to police sources.
Kelly's mother, Lorrie Kemp, said police informed her three bodies were found, "but they didn't identify them."
Two days before he was last seen alive, Kelly posted a Facebook Live video in which he and two other men, all of them wearing masks, discussed various topics, including Kelly saying he planned to pick up "Jugg," Givens' nickname, for the Jan. 21 birthday party at Lounge 31.
"I'm gonna pick up Jugg," Kelly said. "That's my baby. I love Jugg, but I don't think he got the money to get in nowhere."
At one point in the video, one of the men displays his T-shirt with a logo touting the video game "Call of Duty: Vanguard."
"I'm playing real life," Kelly admonished the man. "You still playing shoot 'em up, bang-bang?"
The other man replied: "Real life, though. We're gonna touch the shoot 'em up bang-bang money, too."
Fogle, Givens' mother, said her son wasn't a rapper. "When he got out of prison in March, his younger brother entered the music game, and was producing and writing his own music," she said. "They talked about doing it together but he said, 'That's not really for me.'"
Fogle said her son knew Kelly from prison, as Kelly and Givens were incarcerated together in the Baraga Correctional Facility in the Upper Peninsula from August 2017 to March 2022, Michigan Department of Corrections spokesman Chris Gautz said.
Perrin said all three men had met in prison. In separate cases, Kelly and Wicker were convicted of armed robbery, while Givens was convicted of carjacking.
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