For four years, a blockbuster case has been unfolding inside a northwest Indiana courthouse, ripping the leather and chrome off one of America’s most violent biker gangs.
The Sin City Deciples had thousands of members across the country, some connected to political figures and cops, prosecutors say — including a Gary police chaplain who admitted killing the son of a former Gary police chief.
Kenneth “Angel” McGhee, the club’s shot-caller for decades, was convicted of racketeering charges in 2023 in one of two criminal cases targeting 22 club members for murder, extortion, drug dealing and rape in Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.
McGhee, 76, is now locked up in Leavenworth, Kansas. Other club members also have gone to prison. More await trial or sentencing.
McGhee was greedy, according to prosecutors, who say he siphoned dues from members across the country to keep for himself. Besides his expensive Harley-Davidson motorcycles, he drove two Bentleys. And agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives seized $300,000 in cash from his Merrillville, Indiana, home in a 2021 raid.
Prosecutors say McGhee was ruthless, ordering beatings and shootings of friends and foes alike.
“I will tell you that every gang case is different, Judge,” Assistant U.S. Attorney David Nozick said during a 2021 court hearing in Hammond. “Some are more focused on drug dealing, some on pure violence. This case is somewhat unusual in that it is sort of like a pyramid scheme or Ponzi scheme, with Mr. McGhee at the very, very top.
“He is, in short, the most culpable member of this gang, and this gang is one of the most violent biker gangs in the country,” Nozick said, according to a transcript.
The Sin City Deciples gang was founded by McGhee’s brother in 1966 as an African American motorcycle club. But McGhee was in charge almost from the start. In a documentary film, he explained the incorrect spelling of Deciples, saying he didn’t want to use “Disciples” out of respect for the Bible.
His ego was huge, prosecutors say. When his home was raided by ATF agents in 2021, they found a picture of him seated at the table in a replica of Leonardo da Vinci’s religious painting “The Last Supper.”
The Sin City Deciples consider themselves a “1-percenter” club. Motorcycle clubs across the country, including the Hells Angels and the Chicago-based Outlaws Motorcycle Club, use the 1% tag to set themselves apart from the 99% of clubs that are law-abiding.
These days, 1% clubs aren’t in the news like they were decades ago, but occasional violence and court cases still bring them back into the public eye at times. Three years ago, the Chicago Sun-Times reported on a shooting at a Southwest Side bar and trouble brewing between the Outlaws and Mongols. In 2011, high-ranking Outlaws member Mark Polchan was sentenced to prison for his involvement in the bombing of a business in Berwyn.
Threat to police chief sparks Sin City Deciples probe
The federal investigation into the Sin City Deciples began in 2018. That was after ATF agents were alerted that one of the club’s members threatened the chief of a police department in a small northwest Indiana town, New Chicago, because his motorcycle got towed.
During the investigation, political figures and law enforcement officials, including a Gary mayor, were spotted at the club’s events, an ATF agent later testified. The agent didn’t name the mayor. Two mayors have held office in Gary during the course of the investigation.
According to a federal witness, McGhee told his club members that police officers were on the gang’s payroll and that they didn’t have to worry about law enforcement interfering with their criminal activities.
In 2021, 16 reputed members of the Sin City Deciples, including McGhee and his inner circle, were indicted on racketeering charges. In 2023, a second RICO indictment named six more club members, most who had moved into leadership positions after McGhee was arrested, prosecutors say.
They say McGhee had worked to pump up the club’s membership, integrating the mostly Black club with white and Hispanic members.
The gang’s bylaws say members must ride Harley-Davidsons. So McGhee formed an offshoot called Sin City Titans — men who ride Japanese motorcycles. McGhee also formed Sin City Angels, women who ride with the gang but aren’t official members. And he aggressively recruited “support clubs” who hung out with the gang. They weren’t members, either, but still had to pay dues.
At McGhee’s trial in 2023, an ATF agent estimated that the club had about 2,000 members and chapters in almost every state.
When members violated rules or did something that angered him, McGhee would have them beaten or shot, prosecutors say. Each member was required to come to a yearly pig roast and to McGhee’s birthday party. He’d remind members that the gang wasn’t a democracy but a “dictatorship.”
Plea for leniency: ‘I put on Toys for Tots’
Last year, McGhee was sentenced to 30 years in prison. He had begged the judge for mercy, saying he attended college, had been a probation officer and special education teacher and did charitable work.
“I put on Toys for Tots. I give back-to-school programs for kids. I give them clothes. We give them uniforms, book bags. Every year, we give a hundred bikes away to kids. If you find it in your heart, Judge, to give me another chance, I would be a much better person,” McGhee said, according to a transcript of his sentencing.
Unmoved, prosecutor Michael Toth replied: “Respectfully, what we just heard was the unrepentant words of a lifelong criminal who used a motorcycle club for his own personal financial gain.”
To hammer home how dangerous McGhee was, Toth pointed to testimony from a woman who said he’d forced her to have sex with him at gunpoint for years.
Another member, Bernard “Pastor” Smith, has admitted he was a Gary police chaplain and that he killed two men, including the son of a former Gary police chief. Smith was once president of the club’s Gary chapter and a national board member, according to prosecutors.
“He is the chaplain for the Gary police department and sometimes passes police-related information to Sin City,” Nozick said during a 2021 hearing, noting that a police uniform marked “chaplain” was found in Smith’s home.
In 2023, Smith admitted in court that he was guilty of the charges he faced. During that hearing, Smith said he dealt drugs, extorted money from other biker clubs and killed two people, including Rodney Boone, son of the late Charles Boone, who in the 1970s was Gary’s first Black police chief.
Smith told the judge that Rodney Boone wanted to join the Deciples but got into an argument with a member in 2003 at the gang’s clubhouse in Gary. Later that day, Boone fired a shotgun at a vehicle Smith was riding in, and Smith returned fire, killing him, Smith said in court.
Smith also admitted that he fatally shot Erik Walker during a fight in Gary in 1995 after Walker cocked his gun and unsuccessfully tried to fire at Smith, according to a transcript of the hearing.
But Smith withdrew his guilty plea last year and now faces trial. He couldn’t be reached for comment.
Another gang associate, Ronnie Major, was convicted of paying a club member $10,000 to kill a witness, Jocelyn Blair, in 2010 at the Coney Island restaurant in Gary to keep her from testifying against him in a case in which he was charged with attempted murder. Prosecutors say Major has a tattoo of a woman in a grave and told a witness she represents Blair. Major is set to be sentenced June 30.
“Obviously, gang murders are bad, and drug murders are bad, but killing a witness, that’s exactly what we’re worried about,” Nozick said at a hearing for Major.
Two Chicago-area men, Romairal Allen and Torrey Carter, are members who started a special unit in the club called the Misfits, whose mission was to travel with McGhee and protect him from rivals out to get him, prosecutors say. Allen was president of the gang’s Chicago chapter and became the leader of the national organization after the 2021 indictment, according to prosecutors.
ATF agents raided Allen’s home in 2023 and found a bag of crack cocaine and also ammunition, which he legally shouldn’t have had because he’s a felon, according to prosecutors, who say he was a crack dealer. They also raided Carter’s home in Dolton, where agents say they found guns — which he also was barred, as a felon, from owning.
Jose Armistead, a member of the gang’s Kalamazoo, Michigan, chapter, was second-in-command of the national organization after the 2021 indictment, prosecutors say. Armistead is accused of threatening witnesses who were going to testify against McGhee and others.
In phone conversations, Armistead told McGhee that he was trying to “keep things together” and was going to make 1,000 T-shirts to sell to raise money to help pay for McGhee’s legal defense, prosecutors say.
Allen, Armistead and Carter face trial starting Oct. 14 with three other reputed Deciples.
Lawyers for Major and for Carter wouldn’t comment. Lawyers for Allen and Armistead didn’t respond to requests for comment.