Deshawn Morgan was immersed in Chicago’s West Side gang culture before he was even out of grade school, dealing drugs at age 12 and rising in the ranks of the Mafia Insane Vice Lords.
Along the way, Morgan told a federal jury last week, he befriended key players in the complex hierarchy of gang factions in the city’s Austin and West Lawndale neighborhoods. His testimony provided a rare glimpse at the kind of gang conflicts that often drive Chicago violence.
He earned respect by hewing to a strict street code against snitches. He got shot and shot others, was charged with murder in his 20s only to beat the case at trial, and later ordered the slaying of a friend he believed was cooperating with law enforcement.
But Morgan said he was never really interested in being a kingpin, the man at the top with all the heat and pressure that went with it. A self-described “master manipulator,” he testified Thursday that he was much more comfortable being the “guy behind the guy,” as one lawyer put it, making moves for himself, not because of any particular gang allegiance.
Morgan, now 40, told his harrowing life story at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, where two of his longtime associates in the Wicked Town gang, Donald Lee, 40, and Torance Benson, 30, are on trial on racketeering conspiracy charges.
Prosecutors alleged the gang, a faction of the Traveling Vice Lords, was responsible for a string of murders, attempted murders, robberies, assaults and drug trafficking stretching back more than 20 years.
Morgan, who pleaded guilty to racketeering in July, was a crucial witness for prosecutors trying to tie several acts of violence to Wicked Town, including the brutal, execution-style slayings of Donald Holmes Jr. and Diane Taylor in a car on West Arthington Street in 2018.
Attorneys for Lee and Benson, meanwhile, have painted Morgan as an opportunistic liar and sociopath who is willing to do or say anything to benefit himself, even if means hurting or killing others.
At one point during cross-examination Thursday, attorney Lisa Wood, asked Morgan, “You don’t care about hurting other people, do you?”
“No, ma’am,” Morgan replied, before qualifying that by saying it wasn’t his “goal” to bring physical harm to others.
“So, you do care?” Wood shot back.
“Yes, ma’am,” Morgan said.
Morgan admitted in a plea agreement with prosecutors that he was directly involved in three murders, two attempted murders, drug trafficking and a vicious assault on a fellow jail detainee last year.
He had faced mandatory life in prison if convicted. But in exchange for his testimony, prosecutors have said they will recommend a sentence of 25 to 35 years behind bars.
Morgan, an avid gambler, was shooting dice in the early morning hours of Feb. 1, 2018, when he received a text message from a gang associate, Darius Murphy. The message, which was shown to the jury Thursday, included a screenshot of an overnight breaking news story from the Chicago Tribune about the double murder on Arthington Street.
Morgan said he later spoke briefly on the phone with Murphy, but said he hung up because he didn’t want to talk about murders when authorities might be listening.
The next day, Morgan testified, he met in person with Murphy, who described in detail how he’d lured Holmes to a meeting outside his apartment, how Holmes had unexpectedly shown up with Taylor driving the car, and how he’d fired bullets into each of their heads just seconds after jumping into the back seat.
“He told me he killed ‘em,” Morgan told the jury. “He told me (Holmes) had a girl with him, and he killed her too.”
The shooting had been put into motion by Morgan, who weeks earlier had grown suspicious that Holmes, his longtime friend and drug-trafficking associate, had been cooperating with law enforcement, Morgan testified.
He said his suspicions were heightened after he was pulled over by police in November 2017. Later, after he introduced Holmes to a high-ranking Wicked Town member Marquel Russell, police promptly raided Russell’s house.
“I’d sent him to get some drugs from (Russell), and right after that, (his) house got raided,” Morgan testified.
Prosecutors have said Morgan’s hunch was wrong. Although Holmes had previously worked as a cooperating source for law enforcement, at the time of the murders he was actually was under a court-approved wiretap as part of a separate federal investigation.
But Holmes was marked for death anyway, Morgan said. He devised a plan to have Murphy lure Holmes to a meeting under the guise that he was going to give him a gun and cash that Morgan owed him, according to Morgan. Murphy then enlisted a second person, Demond Brown, to help him do the job
Jurors on Thursday watched video surveillance footage from a nearby hot dog stand showing Holmes, 29, and Taylor, 31, arriving at the meeting place in a dark-colored Jeep Cherokee.
A figure could be seen approaching the passenger side and getting in the vehicle before it takes off and then suddenly stops. The person then jumps out and runs into an apartment building, where prosecutors say Murphy was living.
The jury was also shown graphic crime scene photos depicting the aftermath of the shooting. Holmes’ body was still seated in the front passenger side of the Jeep. Resting on Holmes’ shoulder was the body of Taylor, her wig cap exposed and blood pooling on the mat in front of her feet. Both had been shot in the head multiple times, according to testimony.
Months later, Murphy and Brown were in Cook County Jail on unrelated charges when they were recorded by a friend who was secretly cooperating with police, prosecutors alleged. In the recordings, 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!”
Morgan testified Thursday that Lee was upset with him when he heard about the slayings — but not because the deaths weren’t justified.
““He said it was a dumb idea to have them do it in front of (Murphy’s) house,” Morgan said.
Morgan said he paid Brown and Murphy for the hit with cash and a gun, and also gave Murphy some new shoes because his had blood all over them.
The day after the slayings, Brown purchased a used Buick LeSabre for $900 in cash and drove to Minneapolis, where he traded the 9 mm handgun used in the murders for a different firearm, according to prosecutors. The murder weapon was recovered in February 2018 when a different man was arrested by police in Milwaukee with the gun in his possession.
In the recordings made by a cooperator in the county jail, Brown allegedly said he believed Morgan still owed him money since they ended up having to kill two people instead of just one.
“It was never supposed to have went how it went,” Brown said in one conversation in September 2018, according to court records.
The next month, the gang member again recorded Murphy in jail talking about his role in the killings. He said he didn’t know Holmes “from a can of paint” and said the hit was all Morgan’s idea.
After his arrest in 2021, Lee was asked by an agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives whether he believed Holmes deserved what he got.
“Yes, you know why? Because Don Don signed up on the dotted line,” Lee replied in the video-recorded interview. “These streets ain’t giving pardons. ... He ratted. So yes, sir, I do believe that.”
Murphy and Brown both pleaded guilty to racketeering earlier this year, admitting in plea agreements that they each participated in at least seven murders between 2014 and 2018, including the slayings of Holmes and Taylor.
Both Murphy and Brown said they were “blessed in” to Wicked Town in their early teens and helped the gang traffic heroin and cocaine around its base in the 500 block of North Leamington Avenue, according to their plea agreements.
Morgan, meanwhile, told the jury that he never actually joined Wicked Town, though he’d been friends with Lee and other longtime members for years and often did business with them. He testified that some of the younger members of the gang, including Benson, had a penchant for shooting people during armed robberies without provocation.
“They basically started shooting everybody they robbed. There really wasn’t no reason for it,” Morgan said.
Morgan also linked Lee to the December 2002 slaying of Ernest “Pee Wee” Moore, a shooting that prosecutors alleged was a crucial step in Lee’s ascension to the top of the Wicked Town gang.
Morgan said Moore’s father was a longtime friend of his and Lee’s. Shortly after the shooting, Lee confided in Morgan that he felt “uneasy” being around the father, according to Morgan’s testimony.
Morgan also recalled another conversation he had with Lee about the murder of John “Forehead” Johnson, the then-leader of a rival gang faction who prosecutors alleged was killed by Lee in June 2003, solidifying his control over Wicked Town.
During a trip to the Gurnee Mills mall, Lee was excited to tell Morgan that he’d killed Johnson with a gun that had come from Johnson’s gang.
“He killed Forehead with his own gun,” Morgan told the jury. “He was just laughing and joking about it.”
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