A former Sin City Deciples president faces up to 20 years after a new guilty plea last week in federal court on a RICO charge.
Bernard Smith, 63, a.k.a. “Flirt” or “Preacher,” of Gary, formally admitted Friday his involvement in the notorious Gary motorcycle gang.
His sentencing hearing is April 17 before U.S. District Judge Phillip Simon.
His guilty plea, without a plea agreement, does not formally implicate him in two previously admitted murders and a drug conspiracy. However, the killings could factor into his prison sentence.
Federal prosecutors indicted him in October 2021 in U.S. District Court in Hammond as part of a 15-man racketeering and drug conspiracy for the Sin City Deciples.
The 57-page superseding indictment read like a television drama, weaving a tale of influence, obedience, intimidation, an internal power struggle, drugs, guns and murder spanning multiple states and including local, regional and national chapters of the Sin City Deciples.
Smith pleaded guilty in 2023 to the RICO charge, or Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, and a drug dealing count, but Simon granted his request to withdraw from the plea, rarely allowed, in May 2024.
In those documents, Smith admitted to committing a pair of decades-old killings, including Rodney Boone, the son of Gary’s first Black police chief, on Aug. 22, 2003.
Boone, 40, a resident of the Small Farms apartments near 25th Avenue and Grant Street, was killed after he argued with Smith, police said.
Boone was in front of his apartment when someone in a pickup drove near him and fired. Smith lived in the same complex.
Smith was arrested back in 2004 for Boone’s death, newspaper archives show.
Boone’s father was the first Black police chief of a major city, appointed to the city’s top spot in 1970 by then-Mayor Richard G. Hatcher. Charles Boone, 91, died in 2022 in Norfolk, Virginia.
In the prior plea, Smith also admitted to Erik Walker’s Feb. 23, 1995, death.
Both were at a Broadway Avenue restaurant when they argued and pulled guns on each other. Walker’s gun was cocked and he tried to fire an empty gun. Smith shot him dead.
In the bid to withdraw the prior plea, Smith’s former lawyer Sheldon Nagelberg made several arguments in court filings, including that both slayings happened years before the Sin City investigation started around 2009 and that federal jurisdiction shouldn’t apply to their deaths.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Toth refuted those arguments and said Smith’s culpability wasn’t questioned, saying he had “buyer’s remorse.”
Federal prosecutors dropped the drug count in December.
Lawyer Russell Brown is representing Smith.
Post-Tribune archives contributed.
mcolias@post-trib.com
