by Mario Quadracci
Photo Illustration by Darrow, Stanaszak photo by Dan Bishop
On a bitter morningin January, I watched Joel Rhodes enter Judge Thomas Donegan’s courtroom for sentencing. Rhodes wore a standard-issue orange jail jumpsuit, with only his gold-rimmed glasses differentiating him from all the other felons paraded before the judge. But there was something else, a distinctive way Rhodes carried himself: Slumped in the defendant’s chair, he managed to project an air of subtle defiance, as though the proceedings were merely an inconvenience for him. As though he could coolly wait out these loftily out-of-touch authorities until the real truth about Joel Rhodes finally dawned on the whole world.
To law enforcement authorities, Rhodes was a monster who ran the city’s most violent gang, the Ghetto Boys. The North Side Milwaukee gang had been linked to murders, extortion, armed robberies, arson, drug trafficking and assaults.
To Rhodes, the cops had it all wrong: He was guilty of small-time crimes, sure, but he wasn’t the one committing – or directing – all the violence. In fact, he claimed to be a kind of gangland ombudsman, often hired as a negotiator to prevent murders and violence.
It was a wily detective named Gerald Stanaszak who became convinced Rhodes was a gang kingpin, and became obsessed with taking him down. What ensued was a high-stakes game of cat and mouse, as the unrelenting detective targeted an enterprising criminal who seemed to almost welcome the challenge. Stanaszak was certain Rhodes was too cunning to be caught committing major crimes. His best chance was to turn the gang against Rhodes.
Stanaszak’s ally was Milwaukee’s implacable assistant district attorney, Bruce Becker, who took the case as personally as the cop did. Together, they offered reduced sentences to several horribly violent Ghetto Boys in return for testimony against Rhodes.
The patient, ingenious way Stanaszak went after gang members and ensnared Rhodes has since become a national model for investigations of criminal conspiracies. Stanaszak, now retired from Milwaukee’s police department, travels constantly to teach local and federal officers how to conduct and construct similar cases.
But Rhodes, too, is telling his side of the story. Locked up since 2002 with nearly a 50-year aggregated sentence, which could be reduced after a retrial for one other charge, Rhodes has written two books about his life, including one that has been purchased by a number of university libraries. The enterprising inmate has also started a production company and made hundreds of legal motions to clear his name. He insists he’s been railroaded and that those who continue to testify against him – his former Ghetto Boy cronies – are lying to save their own skins.
His January date in Donegan’s courtroom was for sentencing on a strong-arm robbery conviction from seven years ago. Becker has continued to dig up old cases on Rhodes. The prosecutor says he’s doing this to protect the public in case Rhodes’ appeal of a kidnapping charge, the major offense for which he was convicted, is successful. Otherwise, Rhodes could be back on the streets in a few years. And if that happens?
To Rhodes, this would finally prove he was the victim of a police witch hunt. To Stanaszak, the release of Rhodes would undo a nationally notable investigation and have dire consequences locally. “Bodies will start piling up,” he grimly predicts.
It became officialin a basement in 1987. Lawrence Versey, at 13 one of the older kids in the circle of friends, recited an oath, and one by one, 10 others repeated the pledge of loyalty to their newly formed gang. They took their name from the gibe of an old man on the block: “Y’all are just a bunch of ghetto boys.” The Ghetto Boys, the perfect name, they agreed.
There were other gangs on the nearby streets – Gangster Disciples and Vice Lords, both run by leaders in Chicago – but the Ghetto Boys didn’t want to bow to some out-of-town thugs. They wanted something fundamentally different, based on love and friendship. There’d be no leaders. It would be a family and they’d have each other’s backs no matter what. It’d be “F**k the rest, Ghetto Boys the best.” It’d be “If they kill one of ours we, kill a village of theirs.”
Joel Rhodes was barely 11 and wasn’t there when the boys took their vows. But he wanted badly to join the gang; he idolized its members.
Rhodes had no relationship with his father. His mother, Sandra Rhodes, was the victim of a rape and Joel was the result. Sandra had five more children through four different men. The men in her life often beat her, sometimes using weapons. Joel would try to intervene but would end up bloodied himself. Bruised and sore, he remembers seething in anger and disgust, hearing his mother and her abuser having sex hours later.
Despite the abuse, Sandra was able to provide for her family. She was a drug dealer who made enough money to maintain multiple residences. But she ultimately fell victim to her own product and began selling her body to finance her cocaine addiction.
Rhodes’ juvenile records illustrate his attempts to prove himself as a Ghetto Boy, beginning in 1987 with a burglary for which he was sentenced to nine months probation. The arrests piled up: for obstruction of an officer, recklessly endangering safety, battery, possession of a dangerous weapon by a child, sexual assault, armed robbery, carjacking. Rhodes was in and out of juvenile institutions. By the time he was 17, his juvenile records piled so high, they had to be housed in a banker’s box.
At age 16, Rhodes was ordered by the courts to undergo a psychological evaluation. The doctor found Rhodes had an intellectually deficient IQ of 66 and was “a victim of neurological impairment” who feared most individuals except those “safe” people he knew well.
Like the Ghetto Boys. When things got bad at home, Rhodes would stay at one of their houses. They loved him. They’d die for him, and he for them.
The Ghetto Boys started out stealing bicycles for laughs, but soon progressed to felonies. Rhodes says he was 13 when he witnessed his first murder. He and two Ghetto Boys were riding with a girl heading from a party to a liquor store. En route, the girl accidentally hit a parked car and knocked off its side-view mirror. Four adolescent boys burst out of the parked car to assess the damage. Rhodes urged the girl to drive away, but the other two Ghetto Boys, Yoshida “Squeak” Hall and Thomas “Po” Hall, jumped out. The exchange escalated as the four older boys demanded payment.
Squeak got struck in the head as he moved to stop one of the older boys from pulling the girl from the car. Rhodes tried to help his friend but got kicked in the face and fell back into the car. Po also started fighting with one of the rivals. Then Squeak pulled a gun from under his shirt and shot the boy closest to him – two rounds to the back of the head.
Without hesitation, Squeak then proceeded to kill two of the others. The last boy, the one who had kicked Rhodes in the face, ran to a nearby house and was pounding frantically on the door. Squeak walked up behind him and shot him dead. Rhodes couldn’t believe it. “You didn’t have to kill him,” he said to Squeak.
Squeak told Rhodes they had to do something or they might have been killed themselves. Once he shot one, he had to finish the job or they’d be identified. Rhodes was upset, but he worshiped Squeak, who was four years his senior. They bought what they needed from the liquor store and went to the party acting as if nothing had happened.
As murder became easy for some of the GBs, their power grew. They won respect through terror. By the early 1990s, the GBs had close to 30 members, with dozens more literally killing for the chance to join. In the eyes of the originals, though, no one but those present in that basement in 1987 could ever be a true Ghetto Boy. A fact Rhodes would later use to disassociate himself from the group.
As their influence grew, even the Chicago-affiliated gangs started thinking twice about crossing the GBs. They maintained military-grade weapons. They kept sentinels on porches with assault rifles and bulletproof jackets to protect themselves. They took what they wanted from whomever they wanted, and few dared come forward as witnesses against them.
But law enforcement began to take notice. Soon a pattern developed. The group’s ostensible leader would be investigated, linked to a murder and taken off the streets. Then a new leader would arise. Norman Rhodes (no relation to Joel), Thomas Hall and Jerry Versey, all alleged Ghetto Boys leaders, were all arrested on homicide charges.
Then a curious thing happened. The cycle stopped when, according to cops, Joel Rhodes took the reins from Jerry Versey. The others were almost careless, with a brazen attitude that made it almost easy to arrest them. Not Joel Rhodes. It would take much more effort and a maverick style of policing to bring him down.
He was ScaryJerry. The nickname came from a New Year’s Day incident in 1984. Police officer Gerald Stanaszak was almost finished with his 11:30 p.m.-to-7:30 a.m. shift, an unremarkable night dealing with New Year’s Eve drunks, when dispatch sent him to an auto theft on the South Side.
En route to the scene, Stanaszak noticed two men fighting outside a bar at Third and National. It looked serious. Stanaszak parked his squad car and approached the dominant man from behind. “Settle down,” yelled Stanaszak. Startled, the man spun around with a gun in his hand. Stanaszak went for his own gun, but his long jacket was covering it.
Defenseless, Stanaszak dove behind a parked car. The suspect turned back toward the fallen man he was fighting with, shot him, then took off running. Stanaszak caught him and tackled him from behind. After a struggle, Stanaszak got the shooter’s hands behind his back and laid on top of him until backup arrived.
Stanaszak was awarded the highest citation for bravery, prompting a Milwaukee Journal story. “I’ve never been so scared in my life,” he was quoted. From then on he became known in the department as “Scary Jerry.”
The moniker meant to bust his rookie chops gradually took on another meaning as Stanaszak’s reputation for toughness grew. Stanaszak joined the vice squad in 1986 and quickly found the work suited him. He had an unflinching poker face in harm’s way and the guts to walk up to any drug house in the city and buy dope. Lots of cops risk street buys, but few dare to infiltrate drug houses. “When that door closes behind you, you’re on your own,” Stanaszak says.
Stanaszak had hundreds of successful drug buys as a vice cop. He lived for the job and was often atop the annual list for overtime hours. His superiors sometimes questioned his methods: He refused to carry a gun and was a maverick with a self-confessed attitude problem who didn’t take crap from anyone, no matter their rank. But the brass couldn’t argue with the results. Stanaszak’s breakneck work ethic helped send many people to prison. If Scary Jerry was on your case, it was bad news.
At our first meeting, I had a beer with Stanaszak next to his pride and joy, a fishing boat docked at McKinley Marina. In this setting, he was anything but scary, more of an archetypal every-guy: even-keeled, decent sense of humor, of average height and weight, going bald over a round Polish face. He speaks with a hint of nasal vowels that evokes blue-collar Milwaukee.
But beyond the first impression, I began to see clues to his unique style. For starters, whether he’s talking about an old investigation or a hunting trip from 20 years ago, his recall of detail is astounding.
Then add the way his eyes look at you. Stanaszak has lost seven friends on the job, seen more guns and bodies than he can remember and had his life threatened several times. The years have honed a sharp edge to his glance.
In the late 1990s, Stanaszak stopped doing drug buys and began learning how to put long-term investigations together. He worked with the FBI and federal drug enforcement officials and soaked up everything he could about constructing money laundering, fraud and conspiracy cases.
In 2000, Stanaszak was transferred under the command of a federally funded initiative targeting areas with major drug trafficking problems. The group – which includes prosecutors, local law enforcement officers, and federal agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives – is known as High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas. Stanaszak was assigned to its North Side Gang Task Force.
To get started, Stanaszak asked homicide cops and others to name the city’s most violent gang. The answer was unanimous: the Ghetto Boys. They were involved in drug sales, intimidation, home invasions and theft, leaving a trail of bodies in their wake. Stanaszak vowed to his fellow investigators that he would take them down. “Next year or the year after,” he pledged, “they will no longer exist.”
Stanaszak learned everything he could about the group. He identified their assets, including legitimate businesses: stores, a car wash, a transportation company. He pored through old police reports, interviewed informants, debriefed cops assigned to the North Side. He learned that a Ghetto Boys leader, a convicted killer named Jerry Versey, had recently been arrested with 110 grams of cocaine and was being held at the Milwaukee County Jail.
Stanaszak contacted the jail requesting recordings of Versey’s phone conversations (all calls are taped). Knowing criminals are typically careful on jail phones, Stanaszak wasn’t expecting much. But true to their reputation, the Ghetto Boys were brazen. “Our jaws dropped when we played the first call,” says Stanaszak.
That call gave him more intel on the gang than any other source he’d encountered. It was a discussion between Versey and a man Stanaszak was beginning to hear a lot about, Joel “Dolo” Rhodes.
On the recording, Dolo and “JV” (Versey’s street name) talked about an illegal after-hours club the Ghetto Boys ran on Fond du Lac Avenue. They discussed the roles other Ghetto Boys should play at the club, which gave Stanaszak insight into how the group functioned.
Stanaszak learned a ton from the jail phone calls, but ever the detective, he also discovered an anomaly in how the phone company was billing the county. The mistake was costing the county hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, says Stanaszak. Local media began covering the billing issue, which alerted the Ghetto Boys their calls were monitored. The phones dried up. “My Polish luck coming through on that one,” says Stanaszak.
Having had such success at the county jail (where most inmates await trial), Stanaszak turned his attention to prisons where Ghetto Boys were serving sentences. All new prisoners are asked about their gang affiliations during processing to prevent gang-related violence inside. Most gang members are honest when answering. They don’t want to share a cell block with sworn enemies.
This provided good intelligence on who’s who in the gangs. Stanaszak also learned every prison has a Security Threat Group coordinator that collects intelligence on gangs. In Milwaukee and many other cities, police had never used the prisons for intelligence. It was a mother lode of information.
Not only did these prison officials have insight into the dynamics of gangs like the Ghetto Boys, but they confiscated GB letters ordering witness intimidation, violence and drug transactions. And, like the jails, prisons recorded all phone calls.
Once JV’s parole was revoked and he was thrown back into prison, he went right back to conducting business over the phone with Joel Rhodes. “Rhodes was looking to Versey for advice on how to run things,” Stanaszak observes. “It was the new leader looking to the old for wisdom.”
Stanaszak became convinced Joel Rhodes was a man he wanted. Informants told the cop Rhodes was highly respected on the streets, and his style of living showed he was pulling in more money than other gang members.
What was perplexing about Rhodes, though, was that unlike most other Ghetto Boys, he’d managed to avoid any felony charges since becoming an adult almost a decade before. He’d been arrested a few times, but other than a misdemeanor concealed weapons charge, he’d always beaten the charges. Rhodes had gone from one of the most troubled teens the Wisconsin juvenile corrections system had ever seen to a felony-free 27-year-old. Stanaszak was sure Rhodes was the criminal mastermind of the Ghetto Boys. But where was the proof?
It wasn’t long after Stanaszak started investigating the Ghetto Boys that its members learned the name “Scary Jerry.” He made sure of it. He introduced himself that way when he pulled members over on traffic violations, showed up at their meetings with parole officers and approached them on the streets.
He became the GBs’ boogie man, popping up on them with unnerving frequency. “I’m going to arrest you soon,” or “I’m getting close,” or “You’re going away for life,” he would needle them.
He took gang members aside to tell them he knew exactly what they had done. It wasn’t always true, but it planted paranoia and could get them talking: “That wasn’t me, that was so and so,” they might say. He had gang members checking under their beds at night. “He was freaking us out,” says former Ghetto Boy Kendrick Jones.
Stanaszak also enlisted the help of several District 7 cops in the GBs’ area. He gave them a list of suspects, their aliases, vehicles and known addresses, and told them to call him day or night with information. It started paying off. It began to seem to gang members that Scary Jerry was everywhere.
But Joel Rhodes was less fazed. Stanaszak learned quickly that the diagnosis of “intellectual impairment” was way off the mark. Rhodes is exceptionally smart. “His attitude toward me was, ‘Yeah, you’re a little more experienced than the cops I’m used to, but I’m still going to beat you,’ ” says Stanaszak.
While past Ghetto Boys like Norman Rhodes and Jerry Versey had earned a leadership position through violence, Stanaszak believed Rhodes had done it with brains. He was the planner, the accountant, the manipulator, but he kept his hands clean. “Rhodes thought of himself as a mafia boss and had the power to order others to do his dirty work,” says Stanaszak.
Rhodes never personally killed anyone, Stanaszak says. He just gave the orders.
“I wasn’t there when he said it, but I know [Rhodes] had dudes killed,” says Jones, who grew up with Rhodes.
According to Jones and Stanaszak, Rhodes ordered at least two hits that were carried out. The first was in July 1999 on a longtime acquaintance of Rhodes’ named Jonathan Brookshire, who shot Rhodes in the leg during an argument. Rhodes allegedly ordered Ghetto Boy Brandon Beamon to kill him, and the order was executed.
The other hit allegedly occurred in April 2001 after a man named Harry Powell unwittingly tried to carjack Rhodes. As soon as Powell realized it was Rhodes, he ran off. But the insult was unforgivable, says Stanaszak. Jeremy Morris told police that Rhodes made him kill Powell, but ultimately changed his story after being visited by two Ghetto Boys while in jail.
As he searched for ways to nab Rhodes, Stanaszak kept his eye on the after-hours club he learned about from taped jail calls. The building had been deemed uninhabitable by the city. So Stanaszak went before Judge Jeff Wagner with a request for an “anticipatory building code violation search warrant.” After Wagner stopped laughing at how clever the idea was, he issued it. It was classic Stanaszak.
At around 2 a.m. on Feb. 3, 2001, Stanaszak brought a Milwaukee building inspector (and the SWAT team) to the club. As soon as people entered the building, his search warrant activated. Officers found drugs and guns inside.
At 6:15 a.m., officers left the scene having completed their investigation. At 10:50 a.m., a three-alarm fire was called into the fire department. Stanaszak watched the building he’d just raided burn to the ground on TV. Informants later told Stanaszak that Rhodes ordered several Ghetto Boys to torch the building. They said Rhodes figured the building’s owner had sold him out to the cops and he burnt the building as payback.
About two months after the fire, the Ghetto Boys attempted a major robbery. One of Rhodes’ girlfriends worked for an armored truck company and was allegedly feeding him information on the routines and protocols of drivers. The Ghetto Boys planned to hit an armored truck while it was refilling an ATM on Brown Deer Road.
Because the potential score was so large ($100,000), Rhodes decided to handle it personally, says Stanaszak. He armed himself and hopped in a car with Jones. Two other Ghetto Boys followed in Rhodes’ Dodge Intrepid and a Ghetto Boy named Charles Bishop drove a stolen van. On the way to the crime, however, Bishop collided with another car, sending it crashing into Rhodes’ Intrepid. Bishop bailed out of the wrecked van and jumped into the car with Rhodes and Jones. They sped away knowing police would soon be on scene.
Rhodes was furious with Bishop and felt his carelessness deserved punishment. The Ghetto Boys called this “Rec.” Rec was meted out when members did things that jeopardized the group with rival gangs or cops. It usually meant a beating from several members. In this case, Rhodes shot Bishop in the foot.
The robbery was a rare situation, one in which Rhodes not only participated, but armed himself. More commonly, Rhodes made sure he had a shooter with him while conducting business or even in social settings, says Stanaszak.
In August of 2001, officers were called to 34th and Center to investigate a black male found on the street naked and bleeding. Charnell Hicks, the victim, told officers he was robbed, beaten and shot in the foot by suspects unknown to him.
A few months later, Stanaszak got a phone call from an officer at one of the prisons. While spot-checking an older recording of a telephone call made by Jerry Versey, the officer came upon dialog that suggested a possible murder. On the recording, Rhodes tried to tell JV about someone that got away while they were detaining him. As Versey repeatedly misunderstood the coded conversation, Rhodes finally got frustrated and all but spelled out the crime.
Stanaszak immediately went back to police reports from the time of the call and found the one involving Hicks. Stanaszak then questioned Hicks, who gave the same line about not knowing his assailants, but eventually came clean. The Ghetto Boys had tied him up at their car wash, stripped him naked, beaten him with a baseball bat and burned him with cigarettes to try and coerce the location of some dope and cash.
Finally, they put a motorcycle helmet on him backwards so he couldn’t see. That’s when Rhodes allegedly beat Hicks with the bat and then shot him in the foot. The GBs tasked Bishop to guard Hicks while they left for a while, but Bishop fell asleep and Hicks was able to escape.
Stanaszak’s case took a major turn when he and partner Deneen McClinton got two of the most powerful Ghetto Boys to flip and testify against others. The first, Lavelle Walker, was ensnared by a drug investigation. McClinton bought dope from Walker and his mother several times. With both him and his mom facing major time, Walker agreed to play ball. He was granted immunity for any crimes (except homicide and sex crimes) he wished to reveal. “I couldn’t get him to keep his mouth shut long enough to keep up with my notes on everything he was telling me,” says Stanaszak.
The second to flip was Kendrick Jones, Rhodes’ right-hand man, who cracked under pressure from Scary Jerry. Stanaszak convinced Jones he could put him away for the rest of his life. Jones made a deal, offering information on dozens of crimes.
One involved “Car Thief Kim,” as North Side criminal Kim Johnson was known. He had a reputation for swiping big-ticket items in sophisticated ways. In March 2002, word got around that Johnson had made a big hit, grabbing hundreds of thousands of dollars in mink stoles from a store on 78th and Fond du Lac.
Like a mafia boss, Rhodes expected all North Side criminals to pay a tax on their scores, says Stanaszak. “It was protection money,” says Jones. “Joel would convince people he would stop us [Ghetto Boys] from shaking them down, but they had to show love [money].” Johnson failed to pay.
After Rhodes tried locating Johnson for days, word reached him that Johnson was attending a hairstyling show at a South Side hotel. Rhodes assembled his troops and headed there.
The Ghetto Boys found Johnson in a ballroom. They led him down a hallway and backed him up against a wall. “Strip him,” ordered Rhodes. The others proceeded to rob Johnson of his jewelry, money, glasses and mink stole.
What Rhodes didn’t know was that Johnson had become an informant for the FBI. Johnson called special agent Matt Gibson, and Gibson and Stanaszak soon taped a series of phone calls in which Rhodes demanded $3,000 from Johnson to buy back his stolen possessions. It was classic Joel Rhodes, says Stanaszak. Rhodes claimed to be protecting Johnson and threatened to let his “niggas off their leash” unless he was paid by Johnson.
Stanaszak and Gibson provided Johnson with $3,000 to get his stuff back. Rhodes sent Ghetto Boy D’Juan Turner to handle the transaction. Stanaszak filmed the entire thing.
Stanaszak’s case against Rhodes was becoming airtight. When he heard the GBs were about to reattempt the ATM truck robbery, he decided to act. Not knowing exactly when and where the robbery was planned, Stanaszak got a search warrant for Rhodes’ apartment to prevent it from happening. “We found one or two firearms, ski masks and other items that were going to be used,” says Stanaszak.
In March 2002, a federal indictment was issued naming several Ghetto Boys for kidnapping, armed robbery, homicide, drug trafficking and firearms violations. Joel Rhodes was arrested while attempting to pick up Ghetto Boy Tavares White from prison. More than 40 people were arrested in connection with the case. Eight GBs were indicted.
Stanaszak had constructed a solid conspiracy case under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), a 1970 law designed to prosecute the mafia. He had documented the required proof: The GBs were a gang that had structure and a code of conduct, with members who acted criminally to advance the group’s goals. Rhodes and the Ghetto Boys could face the federal death penalty.
I didn’t knowwhat to expect when I first met Joel Rhodes at Columbia Correctional Institution in PortageWis. I’d heard plenty from Stanaszak, who saw him as a sociopathic menace to society.
But Rhodes’ slightly fictionalized biography, Victim of the Ghetto,suggested there was far more to him. Even if the moments of vulnerability, altruism and ethical soul-searching depicted in the book are untrue, his description of such things suggested imaginative depths to his character. It took guts for someone locked up in a place that preys on weakness to describe scenes of crying himself to sleep at night in his cell or getting moved by slow music.
My first letter to Rhodes expressed a desire to get to know him and portray him fairly. “There’s no such thing as fair … you are a journalist, the news is whatever you feel it is,” he wrote back. The History Channel’s “Gangland” series had recently done a segment on Rhodes that falsely portrayed him as a Gangster Disciple member.
I persisted. After our initial mailings, we talked on the phone and he guardedly agreed to a face-to-face meeting. I sensed the interview would be a chess match.
As I waited for him in a small prison conference room, I arranged the chairs so he’d be sitting across a table. But when Rhodes entered, he picked up the chair I’d set up for him and moved it around the table so he sat right next to and directly facing me. I’ve been told Rhodes studies the Sun Tzu classic, The Art of War, and applies its strategies. The move seemed premeditated to intimidate me.
I stood to introduce myself. His huge hand swallowed mine but offered a surprisingly loose grip. At 6-foot-1, 222 pounds, Rhodes is an imposing presence. His face can suggest a tough mask, belying his thoughtfulness. His voice, sonorous and low, seems to be generated by some internal subwoofer and is felt as much as heard.
At first, my questions were met with brief and elusive answers. But when the discussion turned to Rhodes’ main thesis in Victim of the Ghetto, that time eventually reveals the truth about people, he became animated, his delivery turning almost evangelical as he applied that theory to the character called “Israel Rhodes.”
Israel is obviously Joel – and he comes off far more sympathetically than in court records and police reports. Victim of the Ghettooffers a detailed account of the Ghetto Boys’ history disguised with aliases and a mixed-up timeline, and was distributed by Precioustymes Entertainment in 2006. Rhodes won’t discuss sales numbers. “Everything in that book is true,” says Stanaszak, referring to all the crimes it describes.
By cross-checking case records and interviews against the book, I was able to deduce most of the main characters disguised in the story. One GB is actually given three different names (and a fictitious death) to protect him from prosecution for the dozen-plus murders attributed to him in the book.
Through the book, the families of several murder victims learned for the first time how their loved ones actually died. The mothers of Rhodes’ babies also learned about each other and the truth about his involvement in crimes. “I didn’t recognize the man in that book,” says Tab (real name withheld by request), a mother to three of Rhodes’ children. Rhodes won’t discuss how many children he has.
Victim of the Ghettoportrays a man torn between two identities: the business owner, father and deeply religious man versus the guy who can’t abandon the “brothers” he grew up with despite their negative
influence. “I wanted to be a businessman and live for God, but the other side of me wanted to roll with the flow,” he writes.
Combining the book and real-life accounts, the story of Rhodes’ unique style emerges. His big chance to prove himself came at age 14. GBs Thomas and Yoshida Hall needed a driver on a robbery. Unable to find anyone else, they allowed Rhodes to do it. The plan was to wait for a guy they knew to leave an East Side bar and then “snatch him up.” Rumor was he was carrying a lot of cash.
Rhodes thought the plan was stupid. They were in a stolen van and a long way from the ghetto with potential witnesses around. He suggested they wait for the guy in the bushes outside his home, then rush him as he opened his door. The alternate plan went perfectly. They scored stereo equipment, jewelry, $4,100 and dope. Not only had Rhodes earned respect, but he got $800 to help his family and $300 worth of cocaine.
Rhodes gave his mom money for bills and food and asked her to help him get started as a drug dealer with the dope he scored. His mom sent him out to get a pager. While he was gone she found the dope and used it all.
Rhodes eventually got on his feet as a small-time dealer. His dealing was short-lived, however; Rhodes was charged and faced a 180-year sentence for a crime he didn’t commit. He made a deal with God promising to never sell drugs again if he would get him out of trouble. The next week, the charges were dropped.
“It’s true,” says Jones, “he never really sold drugs. He hated them.” While law enforcement believes Rhodes was involved in major drug trafficking, they have very little evidence of it. After watching both his mother and brother, Lassando Rhodes, get addicted, Joel learned to despise dope. He enjoyed ripping off drug dealers for money.
Rhodes tried several times to help his brother get off dope, even paying for treatment. For a while it seemed to be working, then Lassando disappeared and rumors surfaced he was using heroin. Trying to find “Sando,” Rhodes and the GBs started hitting drug houses and threatening to kill the dealers if they served Lassando.
Stanaszak documented an incident in September 2001 when a man named Deatralle Gray, a friend of Lassando’s, was allegedly hit over the head with a gun by Joel Rhodes, then kidnapped and taken to the Ghetto Boys car wash. The GBs accused Gray of getting Sando addicted to drugs. He was released after he agreed to help locate Sando.
After his brother finally turned up, Rhodes planned to stop Sando’s drug use once and for all by crippling him. “I’d rather see you in a wheelchair than worry about you using dope,” Rhodes told Sando. Rhodes was on his way to the car wash with his brother to shoot him in the legs when they got pulled over by cops.
Rhodes refers to Stanaszak as “Detective Dickhead” in the book and says Stanaszak was having him pulled over four or five times a week. But this encounter with cops may have been beneficial: Rhodes never did shoot Sando.
Rhodes concocted countless ways to steal from dealers, and his Ghetto Boys friends would do it and give Rhodes a cut of the earnings. “I wasn’t no leader, I just had the best ideas,” he says. Victim of the Ghettois filled with stories of these hits. “That stuff’s all true,” says Jones.
Rhodes also began making money by settling disputes. He got the idea after a man threatened by a thug asked Rhodes for help and then paid him for helping settle the argument. After that, Rhodes began looking for disputes. People started calling him “PA,” Power of Attorney.
“I stopped so much drama from happening, I’m the reason the murder rate was down, not the cops,” says Rhodes. His girlfriend Tab says she witnessed Rhodes settle several such incidents. “He was a problem solver; people would come to him when they needed help,” she says.
“My M.O. was I would never kill anybody over no amount of money,” Rhodes says. The same couldn’t be said for many other Ghetto Boys. Rhodes writes about several unsolved murders while fudging dates, places and names slightly – as becomes clear when the stories are matched to police reports.
Rhodes writes and talks about Ghetto Boy Lavelle Walker, who was beaten up at a bar by a man named Jimmy Bell. Days later, Walker ambushed Bell outside a bar and shot him in front of several witnesses. That same night, Walker slept with Bell’s sister and used her as an alibi for the murder. Then Walker started dating the mother of Bell’s children. He used to laugh about how he had killed Bell and was now “laying with his baby momma and beating on his kids,” says Rhodes.
Rhodes’ book also details how GB associate Donnell Carter murdered a man named Ricky Blackmore. Blackmore took money from Carter’s house and bought a car with it. Carter murdered Blackmore in that new car, pulling Blackmore’s gun from his waistband and unloading on him.
Most of the murders Rhodes describes haven’t been prosecuted. But Rhodes has.
“Niggas in my circle were out there robbing and killing everyone on the planet,” Rhodes charges. “I ain’t going to lie, I was doin’ shit, but I never killed anyone and I never ordered anyone killed. I robbed a whole lot of drug dealers and put the money into honest businesses.”
Stanaszak did, in fact, identify several legit businesses associated with Rhodes. Letters sent to judges on Rhodes’ behalf from upstanding members of the community describe several incidents when Rhodes provided honest work to former criminals.
Sitting in his cell after his arrest and reading the charges against him, Rhodes began sobbing. “God could have told me the Ghetto Boys were going to turn on me and I wouldn’t have believed him,” says Rhodes. But there it was, betrayal written in thousands of words.
More and more Ghetto Boys turned on him to save themselves. Taking their cue from Stanaszak, Rhodes was deemed the “leader of the gang and very dangerous” by prosecutors. Any information GBs could provide on Rhodes was considered valuable. “I did what I had to do for me,” says Jones, “but I never said Dolo was the leader ’cause he wasn’t. But they weren’t gonna hear that.”
Milwaukee Countyassistant district attorney Bruce Becker is a lifer. Some lawyers get a start in the DA’s office, then go on to private practice. Becker has worked for decades in the same job, first in Kenosha, then in Milwaukee, prosecuting criminal after criminal.
“He’s not a casual guy,” says his former boss, retired district attorney E. Michael McCann. “He’s intense. He won’t back down.”
Becker seems stoic in the courtroom, even during flashes of levity. His voice is tinny, barely more than a drone even when emphasizing his points. But there’s a passion behind the professionalism.
“He doesn’t let things go,” says McCann. “He takes cases personally, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing,” says defense attorney Bridget Boyle.
Becker clearly shared Stanaszak’s view of Joel Rhodes, and together they arranged enticing deals with other thugs to get him.
They couldn’t charge the Ghetto Boys under RICO. “The U.S. attorneys working the case [William Lipscomb and Carol Craft] don’t believe in the death penalty, so they wouldn’t do it,” says Stanaszak.
This meant his carefully crafted conspiracy case had to be disassembled and each Ghetto Boy tried separately. Although most of the indicted GBs cooperated with authorities, a few remained loyal to Rhodes. A prison letter, written by gang member Thomas Hall to a newly released Norman Rhodes, was intercepted by law enforcement. The letter instructed Norman to intimidate witnesses against Rhodes.
Stanaszak also learned Norman had ordered a hit on key witness Kendrick Jones. In another display of his ingenuity, Stanaszak got Norm thrown back in jail by getting him to admit he had met with known Ghetto Boy Lorenzo Hill. Associating with known gang members is a parole violation.
Rhodes was charged in state court with the kidnappings of Charnell Hicks and Deatralle Gray. The second charge was dropped, however, after Gray changed his testimony at trial. “Rhodes bribed him,” Stanaszak claims.
Rhodes was found guilty of kidnapping Hicks and sentenced to 50 years imprisonment on Dec. 13, 2002. Satisfied with the sentence, Becker dropped Rhodes’ arson charge. Rhodes appealed the verdict, however, and the case was overturned in 2006 due to a jury selection error made by Becker. In response, Becker reissued the arson charge against Rhodes in October 2006.
Meanwhile, in late 2005, Rhodes had been found guilty in federal court of two counts of “using a telephone to facilitate a conspiracy to distribute controlled substances.” He received an 84-month consecutive prison sentence.
In April 2007, Rhodes elected to defend himself while being retried for the Hicks kidnapping. As the trial proceeded, one of Hicks’ fellow inmates made a statement saying he was given $500 by Rhodes’ “people” to “rough up” Hicks in order to intimidate him into changing his testimony.
Having difficulty defending himself, Rhodes asked for counsel late in the trial. Judge William Sosnay denied his request. Rhodes was found guilty of the kidnapping and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
To get Rhodes, Stanaszak says the prosecution had to dismiss dozens of charges against other people. Some were for crimes more severe than anything they had on Rhodes. Lavelle Walker was a key witness. Even though four separate GBs provided statements saying Walker killed Jimmy Bell (including eyewitness accounts), and Walker himself admitted committing dozens of felonies, he was never charged with any crimes and now lives in the federal witness protection program.
“They let him get away with murder because they knew he wouldn’t cooperate against me if he thought he was never getting out,” Rhodes contends.
Bell’s mother learned the truth about her son’s murder from reading Rhodes’ book. She confronted law enforcement officials, but was told that there wasn’t enough evidence to charge Walker.
There was also evidence against Donnell Carter in regards to the Ricky Blackmore murder, and against D’Juan Turner for allegedly killing someone named Nakia Coleman. But neither were charged. Both cooperated against Rhodes. (Stanaszak defends this as part of the effort to nail Rhodes; Becker refused repeated requests for an interview.)
The blowback from some of these deals is already being felt. GBs Tavares White and Charles Bishop admitted to several felonies that could have earned each a life sentence. Both were released from custody after testifying against Rhodes. In 2006, the men robbed two elderly women at gunpoint. Both were convicted, but given light sentences: White received a mere two-year prison sentence and Bishop got three years.
Star witness Kendrick Jones was also offered immunity for numerous crimes he admitted committing. Jones pleaded guilty to the arson of the after-hours club, but was released with time served upon sentencing in 2004. Even Judge John Franke balked at the leniency being shown to Jones. “What did he do, find Jimmy Hoffa’s body for us?” he asked Becker.
In 2007, Jones and another man robbed the American Council of the Blind’s retail store in West Allis. Jones faced up to 50 years behind bars. He got three.
Out of 16 people charged in relation to Stanaszak’s Ghetto Boys case, only four received sentences of more than 10 years and nine (all cooperators) were given less than five years in prison.
One juror in Rhodes’ second trial for the Hicks kidnapping later wrote a letter to presiding Judge Sosnay, expressing “apprehension” at finding Rhodes guilty. “I also feel that the District Attorney [Becker] and that the Detective [Stanaszak] had personal reasons to try him … the Detective harassed the defendant and had a personal vendetta against him.” The juror also contended the Ghetto Boys who testified against Rhodes were lying to shorten their sentences.
Citing the likeliness of the kidnapping verdict being overturned on appeal due to Rhodes’ defending himself and not being allowed counsel upon request, Becker began digging for more crimes to charge Rhodes with. His goal, he later told a judge, was to “ensure that Mr. Rhodes stays behind bars for as long as we can do it.”
In February 2008, Becker charged Rhodes with robbing “Car Thief Kim” Johnson. Rhodes was also still facing the arson charge.
While Becker cited public safety as the primary reason for bringing both charges, Rhodes’ court-appointed attorney, Richard Voss, argued before Judge Donegan in 2007 that the revived arson case was prompted by “vindictiveness.”
Becker was forced to take the stand. Voss introduced a letter to Mayor Tom Barrett from a family member of a Ghetto Boy murder victim accusing Becker of allowing more serious criminals to go free in order to gain their testimony against Rhodes. “So isn’t there a point, Mr. Becker, that this is personal between you and Mr. Rhodes?” asked Voss. Donegan, however, denied Rhodes’ motion to dismiss the arson case due to prosecutorial vindictiveness.
And so, in January, Rhodes sat in the defendant’s chair, awaiting his sentence for robbing Kim Johnson. He had pleaded guilty in exchange for permanently dismissing the arson charge. As Donegan revealed his sentence – 100 months in prison concurrent to any other state time – Rhodes blithely extended his legs under the table and lodged his head loosely against his right shoulder. One more gesture of casual protest?
Rhodes expects a decision on his appeal of the Hicks kidnapping in October. Meanwhile, his story of a Victim of the Ghettocontinues to circulate. Writing it, Rhodes says, was therapeutic. The death he’d seen on the streets haunted him, and pouring his life out on paper brought some peace. That and his faith in God saved him from a nervous breakdown. Now, he has nothing to do but file more legal motions and wait for the world to realize the real truth about him. It could be a long wait.
Associate editor-turned-freelancer Mario Quadracci can be reached at letters@milwaukeemagazine.com.
Joel Rhodes sent a letter from prison responding to the comments (below) from readers.
