Prosecutor calls Hobos leaders 'All-Star team' of killing
Jason MeisnerContact Reporter
Chicago Tribune
As the trial got underway Wednesday for six reputed leaders of the Hobos street gang, a federal prosecutor detailed the allegations of killings, torture and robberies as images of crime scenes flashed on a large screen for jurors.
During his 90-minute opening statement, Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Otlewski held up assault rifles and other weaponry he said the gang used to reign supreme in the South Side drug trade.
"For nearly a decade, the Hobos' ruthlessness and violence struck fear in the hearts of people living on the South Side of Chicago," Otlewski told jurors. "They arrogantly believed that they were above the law."
But the lawyer for Gregory Chester, the gang's alleged leader, said the prosecution case is built on lies "bought and paid for" by criminals looking for a way out of their own messes and overzealous police seeking to further their careers.
"People who should be doing life for murder are going to get sweetheart deals," the attorney, Beau Brindley, said in his opening remarks. "It doesn't matter (to prosecutors), as long as they say the magic words ... Gregory Chester did it!"
Lawyers for the other five defendants were scheduled to speak to the jury in the afternoon. Each of the six faces up to life in prison if convicted.
Otlewski said the Hobos were no ordinary street gang, robbing and stealing at will, terrorizing rivals and killing or attempting to kill anyone who dared cooperate against them.
"This case is not about a group of misguided youth, of teens hanging out on a street corner. Not for one minute," Otlewski said. "You will see what happens when the worst of the worst of Chicago gangs gets together. … This was an All-Star team."
Jurors were shown photos of the bullet-riddled bodies of two leaders of the Black Disciples who were ambushed and killed in September 2007 after they left a funeral home. One of the victims, Antonio Bluitt, still had a cigar hanging from his mouth.
Other images included a photo of Bobby Simmons, a former NBA basketball player from Chicago, smiling while wearing a $200,000 white gold necklace. Prosecutors alleged that two Hobos snatched the jewelry from Simmons' neck at gunpoint outside a River North nightclub in 2006. During a high-speed chase, shots were fired at Simmons' car.
Otlewski also detailed the April 2013 slaying of Keith Daniels, who had been cooperating with law enforcement against the gang and just days before his killing testified before a grand jury. Daniels, who was moved to Dolton for his safety, had just returned home from a Sunday dinner at his grandparents' home when defendant Paris Poe stepped out from behind some shrubs and opened fire, barely missing Daniels' girlfriend and two young children in the back seat, according to Otlewski.
Daniels bailed out of the car, but one of the shots went through his side and pierced his heart, the prosecutor said. As Daniels lay on the ground gasping his last breaths, the killer walked over and finished the job, the prosecutor said.
"He stood over Daniels' body and he shot over and over," said Otlewski, pausing to turn toward Poe seated at the defense table. "Then he walked calmly, coolly, professionally around the car, got into a waiting vehicle and sped off."
The trial comes at a time of increased concern about violence in Chicago. Homicides and shootings — many of them gang-related — are up close to 50 percent over a year earlier to levels unseen in two decades.
Prosecutors allege that the Hobos represented a new breed of gang that was made up of members from various gangs who once were rivals. Many of the Hobos started in the now-demolished Robert Taylor and Ida B. Wells public housing complexes from factions of the Gangster Disciples and the Black Disciples street gangs, according to prosecutors.
But Brindley said in his opening statement that while Chester made some money selling drugs and gambling at casinos, he was never part of any violent criminal organization.
Brindley said Chester was a "guy with money on the street" who caught the attention of Chicago police detectives who decided "one way or another they were going to get him."
Brindley also mocked the government's "Norman Rockwell" portrayal of Daniels as an innocent person simply returning home from a family dinner at his grandmother's.
"Keith Daniels was a criminal who did a lot of talking about a lot of people and there are a lot of folks who would have wanted him dead," Brindley said.
Not since the El Rukn trials two decades ago has so much violence been alleged against a single gang. Heavy security has been put in place at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in downtown Chicago for the trial, which is expected to last three months or more.
A metal detector was set up outside U.S. District Judge John Tharp's 14th-floor courtroom, where lawyers and the judge spent five days interviewing potential jurors who were identified only by number.
The U.S. Marshals Service had warned of threats made against witnesses and asked that the defendants' legs remain shackled during the trial, but Tharp ruled against it because of the "very real" possibility it would prejudice jurors.
Instead, the courtroom has been set up with long tables draped with black skirting that blocks views of the legs of those seated. That way, the judge said, if he has to order shackles at some point during the trial, the jury will not notice any difference.
The origin of the Hobos' name is uncertain, although it's possibly a reference to the loss of their homes after the public housing complexes were razed. Jurors are expected to hear evidence that members called each other Hobo during conversations, got tattoos identifying themselves as Hobos, used a unique hand sign and took lavish trips together.
Chester, the lead defendant, was considered the head of the Hobos because of his connections to drug suppliers, authorities said. His nickname, "Bowlegs," stemmed from a birth defect, but he ruled with an iron fist.
While the gang's criminal activity dates to at least 2004, the killings alleged in the indictment took place between 2006 and 2013. Among the casualties were the two gang rivals who had just attended a friend's funeral, a semipro basketball player who was slain in a case of mistaken identity, an innocent bystander from Los Angeles visiting relatives and an elderly woman killed in a car crash as police chased a fleeing Hobos member.
But the focus of the trial will be the killings of witnesses and informants. The first slaying involved drug dealer Wilbert "Big Shorty" Moore, who was gunned down in January 2006 in front of a barbershop in the Bronzeville neighborhood because of his cooperation with authorities, prosecutors allege. Poe is accused of firing at Moore from a car at 43rd Street and Cottage Grove Avenue after being tipped off that Moore would be there.
The most recent slaying was that of Daniels, a key witness in a drug-trafficking case against Chester who had been relocated by authorities to south suburban Dolton for his safety. When the 27-year-old father pulled into his driveway with his wife and her two young children in April 2013, a gunman walked up and opened fire through the windshield, according to court records.
Daniels tried to run but was quickly cut down by more than two dozen bullets as the children, ages 6 and 4, screamed in the back seat. After the assailant jumped into a waiting SUV and sped off, Daniels' wife called 911 to report her husband had just been shot.
"I know who it was," she said, repeating the name three times: "Poleroski. Poleroski. Poleroski."
Federal prosecutors say Poleroski was the street name for Poe, who they alleged had cut off a court-ordered electronic monitoring device from his ankle and killed Daniels to keep him from testifying.
The first witness for the prosecution is expected to be Nicholas Roti, the former chief of the organized crime bureau for the Chicago Police Department. Roti, who is expected to take the stand Thursday, will testify as an expert about Chicago street gangs.
Defense attorneys have asked the judge for leeway to cross-examine Roti over his work at the controversial police facility at Homan Square. They also want to ask about allegations in a whistleblower lawsuit that he blackballed two Chicago police officers because of undercover work that led to the arrest of corrupt police Sgt. Ronald Watts.
