Kacey “OTF Jam” Hester took the stand on Wednesday in Lil Durk’s murder-for-hire trial, becoming the first cooperating witness to testify as the government opened its first week of evidence. Prosecutors used the moment to push the case that Durk Banks set retaliation in motion after King Von’s death.
The testimony landed in a week already filled with texts, video and music evidence. The trial began Monday, Aug. 24, in Los Angeles federal court, and by Tuesday jurors had seen surveillance video from an In-N-Out Burger restaurant and messages Durk sent after King Von was killed, including lines about going all out, not letting it slide and becoming “a different animal.” On Wednesday, prosecutors added an unreleased 2021 video for Redman that shows Durk reading about King Von’s death and then shooting a man the government says looked like Quando Rondo.
That matters because prosecutors say the shooting at a Los Angeles gas station in 2022 was not random violence but the planned retaliation for King Von’s 2020 killing. Their account says Durk, still consumed with revenge, arranged for OTF associates to travel from Chicago to Los Angeles to track, stalk, hunt and kill Rondo while he waited for updates in a nearby rental house. The state’s case also reaches beyond Durk himself: David “Browneyez” Lindsey and Deandre “OTF Dede” Wilson are on trial too.
Defense lawyer Marissa Goldberg is trying to cut that story apart. She says Durk had nothing to do with the shooting and that there is no evidence he paid for a hit on Rondo. She points instead to Kavon “Vonnie” Grant as the real mastermind. That clash gives Hester’s testimony its weight, because cooperating witnesses can fill gaps in a conspiracy case — or expose them.
Hester, a Chicago gang member and former Only the Family crew member, is now part of the prosecution’s next phase. Brian Steel also pressed an FBI agent with the line, “You know that Durk is a musical artist, a poet, true?” a reminder that the defense is already trying to recast the same words and images the government is using as proof of motive. The question now is not whether the first week brought evidence. It did. The question is whether the witnesses who follow Hester can connect those texts, that video and that anger to an actual order to kill.
