They were the nation's ultimate street gang, creating an empire of murder and muscle that raked in millions. They were feared, they were dreaded, they were invincible. Until now.
After 25 years, police say the El Rukns finally are where they want them - off the streets and behind bars. Nine leaders were sentenced in recent weeks, the latest of 52 members to fall in a domino-like collapse of a notorious gang often compared to Capone and the Mafia."That gang is history in Chicago," said Police Gang Crimes Commander Robert Dart. "The El Rukn nation is, in fact, decimated. No question. Will they rise back up? I just don't think so."
This isn't the first El Rukn obituary. The gang, a nefarious force since the '60s under various names and guises, has died and been resurrected more times than Jason of "Friday the 13th." But this burial looks final.
Most of the leaders, including chieftain Jeff Fort, are in prison, largely because of other El Rukns who turned against them. The survivors, police say, lack the savvy or skills to run their lucrative drug dealing trade.
A major contributor to the gang's demise was a six-year probe that culminated in the 1989 federal indictment of 65 El Rukns on charges including murder, drug violations and racketeering. Five were acquitted or freed; eight others are fugitives or await trial.
"It was simply the total weight of the attack that finally crushed them," Dart said. "These trials added that extra ounce."
The gang is so weakened it has gone from predator to prey.
"It is extremely dangerous for a person to be an El Rukn on the streets," Dart said. "Because of that, you don't see them out there."
"People remember what they did to `my brother, my cousin, my friend.' Before, you couldn't do anything," he added. "Their power was absolute. Now it's perceived to be watered down. It's payback time in many cases."
The exploits and evolution of the El Rukns are fodder for fiction. In the '60s, they were the Blackstone Rangers, darlings of the left, recipients of federal funds and associates of mainstream politicians; a few even wangled invitations to President Nixon's inaugural.
They became the Black P Stone Nation, an amalgamation of gangs with a ruling body called the Main 21, a membership estimated at 15,000 and a slogan - "Stones Run It" - that inspired fear wherever it was scrawled.
After Fort's release from prison in the mid-'70s, the El Rukns were formed, named after the cornerstone of the Kaaba, a sacred shrine in Mecca. They claimed to be a religious group; authorities said that was a diversion to obscure illicit activity.
In the '80s, investigators called the El Rukns the nation's ultimate street gang and drugs were their financial lifeblood: they sold everything from codeine-based cough syrup to heroin and their $50,000-$100,000-a-week business included a sophisticated cocaine processing and distribution network.
The gang was so flush with cash, according to trial testimony, it stashed millions in pipes, sewers and basement holes in its headquarters, a former South Side theater converted into a mosque-like temple. The building was leveled a few years ago.
The El Rukns also bought dozens of buildings, operated a restaurant, formed a security guard business and established a political arm.
"They're really very, very bright people," said William Hogan, an assistant U.S. attorney. "Had they been channeled into legitimate activities, they had the potential to be equally successful."
They were insular, living together in gang-owned buildings, intermarrying and making crime a family activity. "The concept of this organization as a nation," Hogan said, "is a valid one."
Gang members traveled, too, rubbing shoulders with the famous and infamous. They asked Sammy Davis Jr. for a loan, discussed liaisons with organized crime and talked terrorism with Libya.
Five members, including Fort - a sixth pleaded guilty and a seventh is a fugitive - were convicted in 1987 of conspiring to obtain money from the Libyan government by offering to commit terrorist acts in the United States.
"If you take 100 people, sophisticated criminals, and give them huge amounts of money, an unlimited amount of time and heavy weaponry and allow them to meet on a daily basis and plan crimes and have dozens of willing and ruthless people at your beck and call, you can create incredible havoc," Hogan said. "And that's what they did."
Police estimate El Rukns have been responsible for hundreds of murders.
Key to their survival was their paramilitary hierarchy of generals, officers, ambassadors and soldiers, each with discrete functions.
"The Rukns really weren't a street gang by the '80s," said Theodore Poulos, an assistant U.S. attorney. "They were organized crime. I don't think there was a group of people anywhere in the country that was as highly organized and tightly structured . . . (and able) to commit the wide variety of crimes."
"They, in a sense, invented this corporate structure," said Irving Spergel, a gangs expert and University of Chicago professor. "It's an organized structure in a disorganized community."
In the '80s, there were about 400 El Rukns, all devoted to one man - Fort.
"He's a very, very charismatic individual," Hogan said. "He is a very compelling personality who inspired a great deal of loyalty and maintained that loyalty through absolute fear."
A fourth-grade dropout, Fort maintained his iron-fisted control even from behind prison walls: He was given daily accountings of every cent, from huge drug profits to $10 grocery bills and the cost of shoes and tuition for his children - for private school.
The beginning of the end for the El Rukns came in 1985, when a high-ranking leader became the first member to cooperate with authorities. Based on his information, the government began wiretapping Fort's prison calls and later, phones at the headquarters.
It gathered 3,500 hours of conversation but it was in a code - Fort feared eavesdropping - that combined street talk, Arabic and Swahili.
El Rukns who turned government witnesses helped authorities decipher the secret language. They explained, for example, cornmeal meant millionaire and brewery was one word for cocaine. Breaking the code also gave authorities an insider's look at the multimillion-dollar drug network.
Eight El Rukns cooperated with authorities, mostly to lessen their own sentences, but also, in part, as retribution.
Sixteen members pleaded guilty, but the full scope of the El Rukns' power has been unveiled in seven trials since 1991. They've been shown to be shrewd entrepreneurs, legal and political fixers and ruthless dictators - even with their own families.
According to testimony:
- Businessman Noah Robinson hooked the gang up with cocaine and heroin suppliers, helped them form a security guard business and inherited what prosecutors called his own "private army of gangsters."
Robinson, half-brother of Jesse Jackson, was convicted of hiring El Rukns to kill a former employee and to try to kill two others. His partnership with the gang was lucrative; one $16,000 heroin investment brought him $330,000.
- A Cook County judge returned a $10,000 bribe to fix an El Rukn murder case after he suspected the FBI was on to it. Fort demanded the money back after hemistakenly believed the wrong case was fixed.
The judge has been indicted. The attorney has pleaded guilty.
- In an effort to legitimize themselves, a former El Rukn general formed a political group, Young Grassroots Independent Voters, to contribute to and campaign for candidates.
- An imprisoned Fort, in a telephone hookup to El Rukn headquarters, ordered his teenage son beaten when he tried to form his own gang. The boy was being held at the headquarters; when the men hesitated, Fort shouted, "I can't hear nothing," and they complied.
The gang members took photos of the boy's bloody face.
Though the testimony of other El Rukns helped crush the gang, federal authorities say racketeering laws also were crucial because they allowed them to pursue the gang as a group. State prosecutors could only charge them as individuals.
By one estimate, some 200 members have been prosecuted in state and federal court since the '70s.
Still, authorities won't dismiss them entirely.
Fort's son, Antonio, was recently convicted of narcotics violations and police say vestiges of the group still deal drugs.
But police say the elements that created the omnipotent El Rukns are gone.
"Hopefully, they'll never be duplicated again," Dart said. "Hopefully they'll never come together. It was a unique time in Chicago."