According to DNAinfo.com's Murray Weiss, the brazen and mysterious daytime assassination of Los Angeles law student Brandon Woodard was the result of a massive drug deal gone wrong.

Sources in law enforcement said the killers were part of a Queens drug crew that paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for a large cocaine shipment from Mexico via a Los Angeles gang. When the product failed to arrive from the West Coast, the Queens-based gang lured Woodard, who was reportedly acting as a middleman or courier, into midtown Manhattan, where he was shot and killed in broad daylight by a still at large gunman.

The Los Angeles guys thought they were tough, and could f—- with the boys from New York," one source told "On The Inside."

"They screwed with the wrong people," the source said.

Those same sources say the case has now grown beyond a simple murder investigation.

"It is really not a homicide investigation," one source said. "It has become a major narcotics case involving a big operation and substantial money, perhaps millions of dollars."

The DEA is providing intelligence and resources to the NYPD about drug trafficking here and on the West Coast, and into possible connection reaching to drug distributors out of the nation of Jamaica, sources said.

And, a week after they identified the getaway car's driver, the NYPD is now close to identifying the shooter.

Of course, even with hundreds of thousands of dollars of missing drugs, revenge, murder, coastal rivalry, and a rapidly expanding investigation, this case still pales in comparison to All My Children star Tonya Pinkins's bizarre original theory about the killing.

[via Daily Intel]