Executioner Vice Lords

The Executioner Vice Lords are perhaps one of the most violent factions of Vice Lords that existed.  Many Vice Lord factions have trails of violence over the years while running drug empires and killing without a second thought, but the Executioners lived up to their name and were perhaps the most vicious killers in the entire Almighty Vice Lord nation.

The story starts with Earl “Mongoose” Good who was born and raised on the mean streets of Chicago’s west side.  Good was born on June 4, 1947 and was one of 7 children but all his brothers and sisters did not live long lives and have since died including his mother Lucille Good.  Earl Good grew up rough as his father left him at the age of 3 and his mother could barely support her 7 children, however, after having her first 3 children with Earl’s father she continued to have 4 more children out of wedlock and all the fathers were not there for his brothers and sisters.  Lucille couldn’t hold a job because she had so many kids to support and the family was in extreme poverty trying to ration state funding.  Earl acted up in school and often ran away from school and from home until he was taken in the Chicago Parental School program in 1958 but he continued to run away.  Earl Good was then sent off to the Saint Charles reformatory in 1959, the same institution that birthed the Vice Lords.  It was perhaps in St. Charles that he first joined the Vice Lords or perhaps was originally in another gang.  By May 1960, he was too bad to be put in St. Charles and even tried to escape, he was then transferred to Illinois Industrial School for Boys in Sheridan right before his 13^th birthday; he stayed here until July of 1961 when he was released at 14 years old back to the streets.  In October of 1961, Good was arrested for trying to steal money from another boy in school and ended up back at St. Charles.  He was at St. Charles until April of 1962 but then sent back to Sheridan after he cut another boy with a razor blade; he would remain in Sheridan until February of 1963 then he was let back on the streets at age 15.  He wasn’t out long before he was back in later that year and he remained there until July 1964 when he was freshly 17 years old.

It was at this time in 1964 when the Vice Lords were dividing into factions that Earl Good wanted to establish his own branch of murder-for-hire elite Vice Lords out of East Garfield Park.  Earl Good got together with 14-year-old Edward “Big Spicey” Spicer to create this new branch and be sanctioned by the Vice Lord nation and the Conservative Vice Lords called the “Executioner Vice Lords.”  Earl Good’s violent behavior got him put back in prison in February of 1965 with charges of manslaughter after he violently stabbed a man to death during a heated argument and for the first time Good was going to actual prison.  Earl Good was locked up until July of 1975 while Edward Spicer was running the Executioners.

During the latter half of the 1960s Chicago police were first learning about the Executioners as they were pursing their murder for hire business.  Once such incident made the news in October of 1969 when two members of the Executioners murdered two men and beat another man for no reason outside of the Tea Box Lounge that was located at Ogden Ave and Trumbull.  The victims were asked if they were in a gang and when they said they were not they were still shot to death.  In the article the police described the Executioner Vice Lords as a group trying to establish a murder-for-hire business and a reputation to go with it.

On Christmas in the year 1969, the Executioners made the news again when they had a dispute with the Syndicate Black Souls.  Both gangs were sharing a building located at 117 N. Albany (Randolph and Albany) in East Garfield Park.  Both gangs were supposed to be cooking food and preparing it for needy children in the area for Christmas, but the Executioners decided to cook the food for themselves and this angered the Souls, this is when one of the Souls grabbed a shotgun and shot Executioner member Coolidge Gandy to death.  The article basically showed that this was a hangout for the Executioners in this building.

As Earl Good remained in prison the Executioner Vice Lords continued to flourish in the earlier 1970s.  Good was paroled in July of 1975 and hooked back up with Edward Spicer and the two men immediately began planning robberies in several areas including downstate in East St. Louis.

The first robbery was done on October 7, 1975 at 3910 South Calumet in the Douglas neighborhood.  The men were tipped off that a 73-year-old blind man kept lots of money in his home.  The men beat the man to death with a pistol and stole over $1,000 in cash.

The next robbery was on November 10, 1975 when the men robbed the Wonder Inn Tavern in the West Garfield Park neighborhood located at 330 North Pulaski (Pulaski and Carroll). The men stormed the tavern and demanded tavern owners line up against the wall and toss their wallets on the pool table so they could take their money.  The Schlitz Beer man came to make a delivery and the two men made him join the others so they could rob him.  The four men were led into a back room and then shot execution style but only two men died, the beer man called the police and identified Good and Spicer and now there was a warrant out for their arrests, but Good and Spicer fled far downstate to East St. Louis.

In East St. Louis on November 15, 1975, the men robbed the Leading Food Store and held everyone up at gunpoint.  During the robbery they shot one man to death in the back of the head execution style then shot the other in the temple, he survived long enough to call police.  The police showed up quickly and a gun battle started between Good, Spicer and the police.  During the shootout Officer Bruce Moore was severely shot but survived, Good and Spicer fled back to Chicago.

On December 3, 1975 Spicer and Good were arrested and sent to spend the rest of their lives in prison.  Spicer and Good left an impression on the Executioners as they remained on the streets, however, they were weakened by their leader’s incarcerations.  Executioners spread to northwest Indiana where most of their operations were carried out at least through the early 1990s.  I am not even sure if the Executioners had any operations in the city of Chicago after 1975, they may have gone extinct in Chicago by then.

Earl Good became a major prison advocate for the treatment of prisoners and worked with rival and allied gang members.  He was even featured in Carbondale area newspapers in early 1979 with his pictures in there.  Early Good then decided in January of 1982 that he no longer wanted to be a Vice Lord and was transferred out of Menard to get away from the gang population.  In the year 1992, he reportedly found a new light and stepped away from gangs entirely and trouble until he eventually ended up in minimum security prison and became a reformed prisoner.  Edward Spicer, on the other hand, flipped to a Conservative Vice Lord and achieved the high rank of 5-star Universal Elite.  I believe the Executioners are now extinct on the streets in all states.