Reputed Four Corner Hustlers boss Labar “Bro Man” Spann spent years as a powerful figure in the upper echelon of Chicago’s underworld, a kingpin who used fear, violence and murder to control West Side narcotics markets.
But a federal judge said Monday that in the end, it was all for nothing.
“It was senseless,” U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin told Spann, looking directly at the defense table where the onetime gang leader, paralyzed from a 1999 shooting, sat confined to a wheelchair and staring straight ahead. “Lives devastated, neighborhoods destroyed. Why? You didn’t get rich. … It was just so you could be called ‘Bro Man’ and be boss to a bunch of losers.”
In the years since Spann was arrested, other gang leaders have taken over his old turf, Durkin said. The drug trade continues unabated. Three people were killed in broad daylight in Garfield Park just the other day, he said.
“You’ve simply been replaced by other murderers,” Durkin said. “You’re smart enough to know that it wasn’t worth it.”
Moments later, Durkin sentenced Spann to life in prison for his racketeering conviction involving four gangland murders, including the infamous contract killing of Latin Kings boss Rudy “Kato” Rangel. While the life term was mandated under federal law, the judge described it as richly deserved for a man who has lived a veritable lifetime of crime.
“I believe Mr. Spann is a dangerous man,” Durkin said. “He’s charismatic. People listened to him, they followed what he asked them to do. … He’ll never stop.”
Before the sentence was handed down, Spann gave a 15-minute lecture, largely aimed at the three federal prosecutors seated across the courtroom from him, accusing them of cutting deals to get associates to lie.
“I’ve been locked up for 10 years,” said Spann, 48, dressed in green jail clothes and alternately wagging a finger at the courtroom and pointing it emphatically into the defense table. “I’m not worried about the life sentence. I’m not worried about none of that because I know I ain’t did nothing.”
Spann insisted he had nothing to do with the Four Corner Hustlers, calling himself “my own man.” He also said he planned to appeal and set prosecutors “straight on everything you lied about in this courtroom.”
“Believe me, I’m gonna see you in a courtroom again,” Spann said at the end of his remarks. “Your lies are going to come back and bite you and haunt you. Mark my words.”
Later, when Durkin said it gave him “no pleasure” to issue the life sentence, Spann let out an audible scoff and called the judge a “liar” under his breath.
The sentencing wrapped up an 11-year legal saga at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse that began with Spann’s 2015 arrest on weapons charges after he went to a gun range with several associates.
He was later indicted on sweeping racketeering charges alleging he took over the reins of the West Side gang after he was shot and paralyzed in 1999, using murder to elevate the gang’s reputation for ruthlessness as well as his own street cred.
Key witnesses in the government’s case included Spann’s top henchmen, who cooperated with prosecutors in hopes for leniency. Among them was Sammie Booker, a Four Corner Hustlers hit man who began cooperating in 2012, who testified at trial about several of the murders as well as attempted murders, extortion, robbery and drug dealing.
Booker told the jury his deal with the U.S. attorney’s office called for them to recommend a prison sentence of 25 to 35 years. After Spann was convicted on all counts, however, it was revealed that then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Salib had assured Booker he’d recommend a sentence of just 25 years, without the potential higher range.
The alleged promise was revealed in post-trial filings in 2024, prompting Durkin to eventually rule that the conviction could not stand.
After another six-week trial, a different jury convicted Spann in December on the same charges of racketeering conspiracy, murder in aid of racketeering, and extortion. In addition to Rangel’s 2003 slaying, Spann was found responsible for the murders of Willie Woods, Max McDaniel and George King.
Booker did not testify in Spann’s retrial.
At sentencing Monday, Spann’s attorney, Steven Hunter, called out the government’s use of cooperators to secure Spann’s conviction, many of whom were serving far less time despite being the actual trigger pullers.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Vermylen, however, said Spann manipulated “generations of young men to follow him and do his bidding.”
He’s never held a job, she said, and has not been deterred from a life of crime despite lengthy stints in jail and the trauma of being shot and paralyzed — which “might cause some people to reflect and reconsider.”
“If anything, the defendant’s paralyzation marked the beginning his ascent to the head of the Four Corner Hustlers,” Vermylen said.
