Reputed West Side gang leader and alleged lieutenant go on trial in federal court in Chicago in gang conspiracy linked to 19 murders.
Shortly after he was arrested in 2021 on racketeering conspiracy charges, reputed Wicked Town gang leader Donald Lee was asked by a federal agent about the execution-style slayings of a suspected police informant and his girlfriend a few years earlier.
Prosecutors alleged the gang that Lee and Benson were part of was a criminal enterprise responsible for a “devastating” amount of violence over nearly a 20-year period, including 19 murders as well as dozens of armed robberies and assaults dating back to at least July 2000. Attorneys for Lee and Benson, however, said the prosecution’s case is built largely on the testimony of other Wicked Town members who are cooperating with authorities in order to get a break in their own cases.
The trial comes as authorities continue to grapple with an alarmingly high number of shootings and homicides in the city, which are down slightly this year but still have given Chicago a national reputation for an out-of-control gun culture. The case against Lee and Benson has echoes of the racketeering trial of Labar “Bro Man” Spann, the reputed leader of another West Side gang, the Four Corner Hustlers, who was convicted in the same courthouse last year.
Arce said the founder of Wicked Town, Marquel Russell, 45, will testify that he abdicated control to Lee a few years later, after Lee shot and killed several people over a short span in the early 2000s, including John Johnson, who led a gang faction one street over from Wicked Town’s territory. In the recordings, made in September and October 2018, Murphy allegedly described in detail how he had lured Holmes to a purported drug deal and then insisted on getting into Holmes’ car.
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