February 10, 2021 – Long incarcerated Chicago gangland legend Larry (The Chief) Hoover passed messages in a dictionary to his Gangster Disciples street boss, according to federal prosecutors. U.S. Attorneys in the Windy City are looking to block Hoover’s bid for release.

Hoover founded the Gangster Disciples street gang on Chicago’s Southside in the late 1960s. He’s been in prison since 1973. The FBI and DEA believe he still runs the 30,000-strong GD Nation from his cell in the 23-hour lockdown Supermax facility in Florence, Colorado.

For the past several months, Hoover has been seeking relief from a life prison sentence under the First Step Act, federal legislation enacted three years ago to provide sentence reduction opportunities for non-violent offenders. Three of Hoover’s top lieutenants from the 1990s were let out of the fed joint in the past year and a half on First Step Act filings (“Too Short” Edwards, “Crusher” Jackson and “King” Yates).

If Hoover is granted First Step Act status, he would be placed back in the custody of the Illinois Department of Corrections, where he would need to be paroled from his murder conviction (1973 slaying of William “Pookie” Young), in order to taste freedom again. In 1996, Hoover was convicted by the feds in Operation Headache, a racketeering and drug case arising from his shot-calling in GD affairs from his prison cell in “Downstate” Vienna, Illinois.

According to court filings in Hoover’s current fight for release, Hoover communicated with “board member” and “street boss,” Anthony (Crazy Tony) Dobbins during a stay at the same federal correctional facility in 2015 via an elaborate code using a pocket dictionary as the decoder. Crazy Tony Dobbins was indicted last month for racketeering and murder.

Dobbins, 53, was tapped as a GD board member and new Illinois street boss by Hoover through messenger at a 2014 Labor Day picnic in Chicago, per Dobbins’ January indictment. The indictment shows Dobbins bragging on FBI wiretaps of becoming the first GD from East St. Louis, Illinois, to rise to a national shot-calling post. GD Nation encompasses more than a dozen U.S. states, with home base always being in Illinois.

A transcript of intercepted “dictionary communication” between Dobbins and Hoover was made public this week in filings related to the Hoover case.

“Chief, this code is very important,” Dobbins wrote Hoover. “Remember, only we know this code. We can communicate in plain sight. I am ready to handle your business.”

Dobbins murdered fellow GD board member and territory boss Earnest (Smokey) Wilson in 2018 in a power struggle, according to prosecutors. The 65-year old Wilson served as Hoover’s Northside Chicago boss for decades, ruling over what once was the Cabrini-Green housing projects.