A 35-year-old alleged gang leader from the Near South Side went on trial Tuesday, accused of ordering the murder of a community policing volunteer who had disrupted the gang’s activities by routinely calling police, prosecutors said.
On trial is Nelson Torres, of the 3700 block of South Paulina Street.
Torres is charged with solicitation and conspiracy to commit murder for allegedly ordering a hit on Jean Cusulick , 50, last year.
The plan to murder Cusulick, a longtime member of the Deering District’s Community Action Policing Strategies program, never materialized, and Cusulick is expected to testify Wednesday.
Another alleged member of Torres’ gang, looking to solve his own criminal troubles, told police about the plan and became a government informant.
The informant, Michael Maddox, 23, a convicted felon who has been in the Cook County witness protection program for more than a year, testified Tuesday that he wore a concealed recording device to an April 23, 1999, gang meeting where he captured Torres and others on tape hatching a plan to murder Cusulick.
Maddox testified that he left the gang meeting with two guns, given to him by other gang members, to be used in the murder. He gave the guns to police, Maddox testified.
Judge Bertina Lampkin, who is presiding over the bench trial, is expected Wednesday to hear the tapes that Maddox recorded under the supervision of local law enforcement authorities.
It was not disclosed Tuesday whether Maddox was ordered to carry out the hit or to direct someone else to do so. It was also not clear whether Maddox had at one time been part of the plan.
In an opening statement to the judge, Cook County Assistant State’s Atty. Joseph Alesia described Torres as a “leader of a nation who settles his problems . . . by exterminating them.”
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At the time Torres was charged, he was the leader of the Latin Counts and controlled an area bounded by Ashland and Damen Avenues between 35th Street and Pershing Road, Alesia said.
In 1999, Torres’ “problem” was with CAPS and specifically with Cusulick, whose efforts at reducing gang crime in her community “really got at Nelson Torres,” Alesia said.
The tapes will show that Torres wanted Cusulick “exterminated,” said Alesia, who is prosecuting the case with partner Kevin Golden.
Not so, said defense attorney Gary Adair.
Adair says the tapes do not capture the very beginning of the conversation and are completely inconclusive about Torres’ participation in the scheme. “He did not want anybody shot,” Adair said.
Adair said the tapes fail to show that Torres is guilty of conspiracy to commit murder.
He said there is also no evidence that he asked anyone to murder Cusulick, which is what prosecutors have to show in order to prove the solicitation to commit murder charge.
“He takes it back . . . and says `I don’t want anybody shot’,” Adair said the tapes would show.