Over the past two months, a federal jury has been immersed in a small section of Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, where prosecutors say a close-knit street gang named the Goonies acted as “urban hunters,” terrorizing residents and ruling its territory through an unrelenting wave of gun violence.
Jurors have watched killings play out on surveillance video. They’ve seen social media posts where Goonie members allegedly kept a tally of victims and “rejoiced” in the death of rivals. And they’ve heard testimony from a parade of cooperating witnesses who described each member’s alleged role in the organization, including one nicknamed “Steph Curry” for his long-distance accuracy — only with a pistol, not a basketball.
At the head of it all was Romeo “O Dog” Blackman, who joined the gang as a young teen and literally shot his way to the top, Assistant U.S. Attorney Maureen McCurry said in her closing argument Tuesday in the racketeering trial of Blackman and two alleged henchmen.
“The more (Blackman) shot, the more he was respected and feared,” McCurry said, adding that Blackman was directly tied to four slayings in the indictment. “He put in a lot of work to get where he had to go.”
Blackman and his co-defendants, Terrance “T” Smith and Jolicious “Jo Jo” Turman, are each charged with racketeering conspiracy as well as committing murder in furtherance of a racketeering conspiracy, which carries a mandatory life sentence upon conviction. In all, the indictment alleged the Goonies were responsible for 10 slayings and six attempted murders in an 18-month span from 2014 to 2016.
Defense attorneys are scheduled to begin their presentations Wednesday morning in U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey’s courtroom, where the trial began May 16.
Lawyers for the defendants urged jurors in opening statements not to let their feelings about gang violence get in the way of the facts, and warned that many of the government’s witnesses were cooperating in exchange for breaks in their own cases, with some being granted immunity despite their alleged involvement in much of the violence.
“This case is not a referendum on street gangs,” attorney Patrick Blegen, who represents Blackman, said in his opening statement. “The government has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the Goonies were a racketeering enterprise and that they committed these acts.”
Unlike more traditional street gangs that were highly organized and focused on protecting drug turf, the Goonies, a faction of the notorious Gangster Disciples, allegedly engaged in a shockingly petty cycle of violence with rivals, where shooting at “opps” was an almost daily routine and killings were bragged about on Facebook and other social media.
In her four-hour closing argument Tuesday, McCurry said the Goonie members acted like “urban hunters,” lying in wait for targets and terrorizing a neighborhood where “real people live” and work and go to the store.
The currency of the Goonies “was power and respect,” and that to achieve it they used most of the money earned through membership dues and drug sales to buy more guns, many through a straw purchasing pipeline that trafficked weapons purchased from gun stores in Kalamazoo, Michigan, McCurry said.
Through social media, undercover recordings and witness testimony, the jury heard how the Goonies obsessed over the “score” between them and their rivals, with each shooting of one of their own met with immediate and often indiscriminate retaliation.
McCurry said the Goonies even had a boastful phrase they used when the score was in their favor: “We up on the opps.”
The translation, she said, was simple: “We killed more of them than they killed of us.”
When it came to retaliation, McCurry said rival gang members weren’t the only target of the Goonies. When one of their own, Robert “Winnie” Vaughn, 28, was fatally shot in July 2016, Blackman issued an order that anyone caught by the gang outside was fair game, including “babies, mommas, fathers and dogs,” McCurry said.
“The gloves were off. Anything goes,” McCurry said. “They had to even the scoreboard… and make no mistake, Blackman was saying they could kill babies and innocent animals in revenge for Winnie’s death.”
Winnie’s younger brother, Alex Vaughn, was in Cook County Jail on a weapons charge when he got the news about his brother’s death. Vaughn testified last month he was grief stricken and soon made the decision to cooperate with authorities, who had already reached out to him in jail.
Later that year, Vaughn secretly recorded Turman talking about the alleged circumstances of Winnie’s killing, and the Goonies’ swift attempt at retaliation, when they were both being held on the same jail tier, according to his testimony.
On the muffled recording, which was played for the jury, Turman said rivals had “shot up” Winnie’s car because “somebody be making (expletive) up on Facebook,” according to a transcript in court records.
Turman said he and their fellow gang members went out early that morning to look for revenge.
“You know how we do,” Turman said on the recording. “You know how I roll … a mother (expletive) need to leave this earth.”
Shortly after 6 a.m., they encountered Kenneth Whitaker, 34, a security guard with three children and no gang ties, walking at 74th and Morgan streets, according to prosecutors and previous Tribune accounts.
Turman allegedly jumped out of the car and shot Whitaker twice in the head, execution-style. Jurors were shown crime scene photos of Whitaker’s body lying near the sidewalk outside of Stagg Elementary School on South Morgan Street.
In the conversation with Vaughn in Cook County Jail, Turman said they had driven “everywhere” looking for someone to shoot and “caught a mother (expletive) right there in front of Stagg,” according to the transcript.
“Who was it, one of the Moes?” Vaughn asked, referring to a rival gang.
“I don’t know, some mother (expletive),” Turman replied. “Whoever came out there.”
Asked by prosecutors what he took that to mean, Vaughn replied that Turman was saying they’d shot “basically whoever they caught walking.”
The Goonies allegedly came of age in the era of Facebook, and the trial has been singular for its focus on the gang’s social media activities.
Jurors were shown numerous Facebook profile pages and chats allegedly between members of the gang where they discussed mundane issues such as meetings and dues and also posted disturbing videos celebrating when someone was killed.
One of those videos played during closing arguments was posted after the fatal shooting of Davon “D-Money” Horace, 19, in January 2016. Prosecutors alleged Blackman shot and killed Horace in an attempt to kill a rival who was near him.
Despite the fact that Blackman missed his target, McCurry said, the Goonies posted a Facebook live video shortly after the shooting “rejoicing in the death of another human being.”
The video showed about a dozen members of the gang, some as young as 14, waving guns in front of the camera and dancing as they taunt the victim, chanting, “How the (expletive) did he get hit?” and “One in the head, no lie.”
Also highlighted by McCurry was the May 2016 slaying of Gerald Sias Jr., an innocent bystander shot while getting his hair cut in a popular neighborhood barbershop on a weekday afternoon.
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Vaughn testified that he, Blackman, and two other Goonie members were out that day to avenge the killing of one of their own. When they heard their target was at the shop, they pulled up and one of the younger Goonies ran inside and opened fire. When the gunman jumped back in the car, “He was like, ‘I got him! I got him!’ ” Vaughn testified.
Later, though, Blackman got a call on his phone and his face grew angry, Vaughn told the jury. “He was like, ‘You didn’t get him. You got someone else,’ ” Vaughn said.
Sias, 38, a father of five with no gang ties, died later at a nearby hospital.
Sias’ friend, who was wounded in the leg, testified he’s since had 56 surgeries as a result and believes his leg will still need to be amputated.
Shortly after Sias’ killing, a Facebook post on an account associated with the Goonies showed Sias’ photo with a crying laughing emoji over it.
“It was the Goonies taking credit for a body, adding another one to their scoreboard,” McCurry said.
