Larry Hoover

Larry Hoover was born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1950 and moved to Chicago's South Side as a child. At 13 he dropped out of school and joined a street gang. In 1969, Hoover and David Barksdale merged their respective factions — the Supreme Gangsters and the Black Disciples — into what became the Black Gangster Disciple Nation. After Barksdale's death in 1974, Hoover took sole control and, under the alias "King Larry," built the organization — by then known as the Gangster Disciples — into one of the most expansive street gangs in American history. Even after being convicted of murder in an Illinois state court in December 1973 — for ordering the execution of 19-year-old William "Pooky" Young, whom Hoover suspected of stealing from gang drug stash houses, and who was shot in the head six times and dumped in an alley in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood — Hoover continued to run the Gangster Disciples from prison. By the early 1990s, prosecutors alleged the organization had approximately 30,000 members across 35 states and generated roughly $100 million a year in drug revenue. Beginning in 1993, federal investigators gained court approval to place hidden transmitters inside visitor badges given to gang leaders who met with Hoover in person, allowing them to monitor what jailhouse phone calls could not. The resulting 17-year joint investigation by the FBI, ATF, DEA, and the Illinois Department of Corrections culminated in Hoover's federal indictment on August 22, 1995. On May 9, 1997, a federal jury found Hoover guilty on all 40 counts: narcotics conspiracy, continuing criminal enterprise, use of persons under the age of 18 to conduct drug transactions, distribution of cocaine, use of a firearm in the commission of a drug trafficking crime, extortion, and laundering of drug proceeds. The verdict covered criminal conduct Hoover had orchestrated entirely while already serving a state prison term for murder.