Amanda Blackburn case: Murder suspects have gang ties
Back in 2009, they called themselves the FAM Gang.
It was a gang comprising at least a dozen teens living on the city's North and Northwest sides. Police noted at the time that one of the ways to enter the gang – the initials stood for Forever After Money, but it also referred to FAMily Untouchable — was to rob someone.
Two of its members back then? A then-14-year-old kid named Jalen “Lil Watt” Watson and a teenager named Diano “D-Loc” Gordon, who was 17 years old and had the words "FAM GANG" tattooed on his forearms.
On Monday, Watson, now 21, was charged in the murder of Amanda Blackburn, who was killed, police say, during the third stop of a robbery spree on the Northside Nov. 10.
Gordon, now 24, who police say was an accomplice, was recently arrested on a parole violation after being questioned in the Blackburn killing.
A third man, Larry Taylor, 18, also was charged with murder and is the person police say shot and killed Blackburn.
Court documents also link members of the FAM Gang to two high-profile and especially brutal home invasions carried out on the Northside in 2013.
Could the robbery spree that culminated in Blackburn's murder also be a gang crime, perhaps even an initiation?
When asked Monday, Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department spokesman Sgt. Kendale Adams emphatically said no.
"Gangs are fluid," Adams said. "There was no known gang activity connected to this particular crime."
It is not known whether Taylor had any ties to the "FAM Gang," though court records show that Watson and Gordon were members as recently as 2011.
The best information about the FAM Gang comes from those records filed in a 2011 burglary case against Watson. Documents mention two more gang members, Michael Pugh and Demetre Brown, who were recently sentenced to hundreds of years in prison for their roles in the 2013 Northside home invasions.
There were several ways to be initiated into the gang, IMPD Officer Matthew Thomas wrote. One of them was to commit a burglary.
Watson burglarized a unit at the Wind Drift Apartments near 38th Street and I-465 in July 2011. He was arrested later that day, wearing an L.A. Dodgers cap that was among the items the victim had reported stolen.
In October 2012, Watson was sentenced to six years in prison for the burglary with two years on probation. The judge also ordered another four years of prison time to be suspended.
"I learned my lesson and just want to finish school," Watson wrote in a letter pleading for leniency that was received by Marion Superior Court on Dec. 27, 2012.
Watson was released in 2013, but he violated probation and went back to prison to serve some of his suspended sentence in 2014, Indiana Department of Correction records show.
Watson was released again from the DOC in August.
In 2010, Gordon was convicted of burglary and aiding in residential entry and sentenced to three years in prison.
In 2012, he was convicted of escape and sentenced to two more years in prison, DOC records show.
Less is known about Taylor. Juvenile record were not available; his only charge as an adult is an open public indecency case.
In one mention in the court documents filed to support the Blackburn murder case, investigators said someone referred to Taylor as "family," but it was unclear whether that was a reference to the "FAM Gang."
Noting Taylor's age, IMPD Chief Rick Hite suggested Monday that the older men — Watson and Gordon — may have had an influence.
“These are his mentors. Look at the mentoring," Hite said. "It’s about association. It’s about the environment, and the people they choose to hang around with...
"We talk about those things. This is why, because an 18-year-old man should not be walking around with a handgun thinking about killing someone."
Call Star reporter Jill Disis at (317) 444-6137. Follow her on Twitter: @jdisis
Call Star reporter Vic Ryckaert at (317) 444-2701. Follow him on Twitter: @vicryc
