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Star Flack

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Soon after the divorce was finalized, he began seeing a woman in Los Angeles named Annette Metoyer. From the beginning Higgins sensed something was awry in David's relationship with the woman. Those thoughts crystallized when Metoyer began sending Higgins threatening e-mails. Even today Higgins says she doesn't know what sparked the e-mails. She was in no way jealous of Annette. In fact, she was happy David had found someone. Even so, the e-mails continued, with the warning to Higgins to "watch herself." Higgins soon grew frightened of the woman and sent the menacing missives to her mother.

"I said if anything ever happens to me, here's where to begin searching."

Little did Higgins -- or anyone -- know that it was Metoyer who should have feared for her life.

David's parents never suspected their son or his girlfriend were in harm's way. They weren't pleased that their son and Higgins had divorced but were glad he had again found love.

"David was happy in LA," recalls his mother, Madelon. "He mentioned once or twice that [Annette's] mother was difficult, but I didn't think much of it."

Apparently Annette's mother, who lived with the couple, was upset they were trying to move her out of the apartment they all shared, though that's speculation because she never lived to offer up a motive. After shooting her daughter in the chest and lodging seven bullets in David, Annette's mother turned the gun on herself.

Higgins was leaving a Make-A-Wish gala at the Chase Park Plaza when she got a call from the Los Angeles medical examiner.

At first she thought it was a joke. When the grim reality sank in, her first question was about Annette.

"She's been killed, too," came the reply. Amid the trauma Higgins felt a twinge of elation.

"I remember thinking, 'Good! That bitch!'"

In the Los Angeles Times, the story merited a news brief in the metro section, under the headline: "3 DIE IN SAN PEDRO MURDER-SUICIDE."

Authorities on Sunday identified a woman who police said fatally shot her daughter and a man believed to be the younger woman's boyfriend before turning the gun on herself Saturday in San Pedro.

Los Angeles Police Department spokesman Guillermo Campos said Carmen Foy, 70, shot and killed her daughter, Annette Metoyer, 43, and the unidentified 42-year-old man in the 1000 block of West 23rd Street.

Neighbors said they heard two series of shots come from the apartment.

Members of the LAPD special weapons and tactics unit forced open a door at the apartment after reports of gun shots.

Autopsies were to be performed this morning, officials said.

The next day Higgins delivered the news to Ian.

As the nine-year-old jumped up and down on her bed, she told him his father had died.

"Whose daddy died?" Ian asked.

"Your daddy."

It took a moment for the news to register. Then Ian began to scream.

The story of the dramatic rise of Nelly and the St. Lunatics is old news, but in the spring of 2001 it was still generating a good buzz, and Higgins thought maybe, just maybe, she could play off that success.

After David's murder she quit Make-A-Wish to spend more time with Ian. To make ends meet, she began doing freelance public-relations work from home. It was during a stint working for the National Kidney Foundation that Higgins saw an opportunity to break in with the St. Lunatics. Her idea was to get the group to put on a concert, proceeds from which would benefit the foundation.

The first call she made was to her friends Scott and Georgeanne Rosenblum, whose triplets are the same age as Ian. At the time Scott Rosenblum, an ace criminal-defense attorney, was representing St. Lunatic Lavell Webb, a.k.a. City Spud, on an appeal to a 2000 conviction for first-degree assault and armed criminal action. With a few phone calls, Rosenblum set up a meeting in his Clayton office with Higgins and Tony "T-Luv" Davis, manager of the St. Lunatics.

Davis agreed to help the foundation raise money, but instead of a concert he proposed a celebrity basketball game. He also found a few other stars in addition to Nelly and the St. Lunatics, including Rams players Marshall Faulk and London Fletcher as well as NBA stars Larry Hughes and Darius Miles. The event brought in a couple thousand dollars for the National Kidney Foundation and opened an entire world to Higgins. Old school met new school.

The meteoric rise of Nelly, and to a lesser degree the St. Lunatics, made St. Louis rap the new sound of hip-hop, and Universal looked to cash in on the craze nationwide. That meant lots of marketing dollars in big cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta -- but literally nothing in St. Louis.

"When we first went big, the music industry didn't even recognize St. Louis. People would be like, 'Where's that? Kentucky?'" Tony Davis recalls. "But for us, it was important that St. Louis be taken care of, and we didn't think [Universal] was going to do that to the extent we wanted it done."

In Higgins, Davis found someone he thought could be an effective liaison between St. Louis and the music-industry capitals of New York and LA. After all, Higgins had worked in both cities and knew a little something about the entertainment industry, albeit not in music. There was also an inexplicable quality about Higgins.

"She just had this vibe," Davis says. "You knew you could trust her."

Soon Higgins found herself in charge of planning listening parties and other events in St. Louis, handling media requests and defusing any and all rumors surrounding the St. Lunatics. As their recognition grew, so did Higgins'. Her name frequently found itself in papers and on television and radio alongside her clients'. She appeared regularly in Jerry Berger's dispatch, as the former Post-Dispatch columnist referred to her as "the star flack," and "the indispensable Jane Higgins."

Suddenly Higgins was seen as an important component to anyone trying to assemble the next hip-hop ride out of St. Louis. The hype was dizzying, even for this topnotch spin-meister.

"At the beginning I felt like such a fraud," Higgins admits. "I wasn't nearly as connected as people thought, but then we were all so new to the frenzy. Everyone was learning how to deal with it."

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