Federal authorities announce sweeping conspiracy case against Chicago street gang involving 19 slayings

CHICAGO — Federal authorities announced sweeping racketeering conspiracy charges Monday against members of a West Side street gang faction believed to have been responsible for nearly 20 slayings and other shootings going back two decades.

The charges outlined in a 43-page superseding indictment allege that members of the “Wicked Town” faction of the Traveling Vice Lords engaged in 19 murders, 19 attempted murders, as well as several armed robberies and assaults dating back to at least July 2000, according to a statement from U.S. Attorney John Lausch.

Authorities said the gang operated mostly in Chicago's Austin community, where they stored illegal firearms and narcotics in trap houses. Law enforcement authorities seized close to 50 firearms and several kilograms of cocaine, heroin and crack, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.

Among the slayings tied to the gang was the July 2015 shooting of Malcom Willie, 21, during a pickup basketball game in Hubbard Park, according to the indictment. Also charged were the execution-style slayings of a suspected police informant and his girlfriend in 2018.

Thirteen members of the gang were named in the indictment, including three named leaders of the criminal conspiracy: Donald Lee, 39, DeShawn Morgan, 39, and Marquel Russell, 44.

All of the defendants are already in custody and will be arraigned at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse on later dates. The most serious counts call for mandatory life in prison if convicted, and prosecutors could also decide to seek the death penalty.

The charges mark the latest in a growing list of conspiracy cases brought by federal authorities who have used the racketeering statute to hold Chicago’s street gangs accountable for gun violence. Over the past two years, homicides in the city have spiked to alarming highs, as the entire country has faced an uptick in shootings.

The indictment was announced just as the racketeering case against Labar “Bro Man” Spann, the reputed leader of another West Side gang, the Four Corner Hustlers, is about to go to a jury in the same courthouse. Authorities allege Spann oversaw a similarly violent enterprise that resulted in slayings and robberies that terrorized Chicago neighborhoods.

In 2018, federal authorities used the RICO statute to charge four reputed members of the Goonie Boss faction of the Gangster Disciples for using killings and shootings not to advance a drug enterprise but to boost their social media brand and promote themselves.

The indictment against the Wicked Town faction contained similar allegations.

Although Chicago’s once-massive street gangs are now believed to be fractured and less structured, the Wicked Town members nonetheless aligned themselves “through a series of rituals and oaths” and “blessed in” members, the indictment stated.

The enterprise was promoted on social media sites, including Facebook, according to the indictment.

“Wicked Town members regularly promoted their violent enterprise on social media, posting comments, photos and videos to proclaim membership in the gang, taunt rival gang members and boast about murders and other acts of violence,” it reads.

The investigation first became public two years ago when Morgan and two other alleged Wicked Town gang members, Demond Brown, 28, and Darius Murphy, 21, were charged in a criminal complaint with conspiracy to commit murder for hire in a plot that led to the execution-style slayings of Donald Holmes Jr. and his girlfriend, Diane Taylor.

Those charges, which have now been rolled into the superseding indictment, alleged Morgan hired Brown and Murphy to kill Holmes in late 2017 after growing suspicious that Holmes, a fellow member of the Vice Lords, was cooperating with law enforcement.

Brown and Murphy lured Holmes, 29, to a meeting in the 4700 block of West Arthington Street in January 2018 under the guise that they were going to give him a gun and cash that Morgan owed him, the charges alleged.

After Holmes arrived with his girlfriend, Taylor, 31, Murphy got into the back seat of their Jeep Cherokee and shot each of them multiple times in the back of the head, according to the complaint.

Months later, a senior member of the gang who was facing his own federal charges agreed to cooperate with law enforcement and secretly record conversations with Brown and Murphy in Cook County Jail, according to the complaint. The two, in custody on unrelated charges, admitted to their roles in the slayings, the charges said.

In the recordings, made in September and October 2018, Murphy allegedly described in detail how Holmes had tried to take the gun and cash from him through the open passenger side window, but he insisted on getting in the car.

“I say, ‘Naw, man.’ I get in the back seat. ... Pow! Pow!” Murphy was quoted as saying. “His (expletive) tried to bail out, I grabbed her by the back of her wig. I said, ‘Where you going?’ Pow! Pow!”

Less than five hours after the slayings, Brown texted Morgan a screen shot of the Chicago Tribune’s breaking news story on the shooting, according to the complaint, which contained an image of the text.

Morgan, Brown and Murphy had previously pleaded not guilty to the charges and were awaiting trial.

The indictment unsealed Monday also included the July 15, 2015, slaying of Willie, which was the subject of a lengthy profile by the Tribune. Lee and another alleged member of the gang, Victor Turner, were charged with murder in furtherance of racketeering conspiracy.

According to the Tribune story, Willie had taken a break from the game and was on the phone with his pregnant girlfriend when someone on a bicycle rode by, pulled out a gun and started shooting. As others in the park scattered, Willie dropped to the ground. His friends tried administering CPR, but Willie died after being placed in an ambulance.

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