Suits, Criminal Inquiry Ensnare Compton First Lady

Compelled by a judge’s order, Mayor Walter R. Tucker appeared in a Pasadena courtroom last December and was questioned about his personal finances because a loan he had co-signed for his wife was $15,000 in arrears.

It was the first time the mayor had been called to answer for such a debt--but not the first time his wife Martha had been taken to court for owing money. In 1986 alone, $49,320 in judgments and more than $1.5 million in lawsuits were filed against her, as an individual or as president of a real estate firm that the mayor owned.

In January, when the mayor persuaded his City Council colleagues to grant him an unprecedented $36,000 raise--boosting his salary for part-time service from $14,400 to $50,400 a year--he justified it by arguing that he is overworked as the city’s most prominent public official.

But last week he declined to discuss whether the financial claims against his wife and firm were also a factor in his request.

“Since this is a legal matter like you say,” the 62-year-old Tucker told a reporter, “I’m not going to say anything. . . . I’m just going to pray for you, and me, too.”

For two decades, the Tuckers have been among this city’s leading citizens, active in politics, cultural affairs and the business community.

Antiques, Furs, Furniture

On a 1983 loan application, he reported drawing $125,000 annually as a dentist, and she reported earning $84,000 per year as president of the real estate firm, Mattco Financial Inc. They set the value of their Compton house at $350,000, claimed $150,000 in “antiques, furs (and) furniture,” plus thousands of dollars in stocks, insurance and savings that considerably exceeded their liabilities.

However, judging from civil and criminal records in several Los Angeles County courts, the first family’s fortunes have recently taken a turn for the worse:

On Jan. 13, Tucker’s wife and sister-in-law, Barbara Hall, were arrested on suspicion of defrauding a wheelchair-bound Long Beach man out of $45,000. They are each charged with two felony counts of grand theft and five felony counts of forging documents in transactions at Mattco. If convicted, they face up to seven years in state prison. They will be arraigned on Feb. 20.

In 1986, at least five lawsuits were filed against Tucker’s wife based on other business dealings at Mattco. And in a sixth suit, a finance company promoted through the National Assn. for Female Executives accused her of defaulting on a $25,000, 18% interest loan. She obtained the money in 1983, agreeing to repay it over the maximum term of 60 months. When the suit was filed, she had returned only $9,944.

The mayor was also named in that case because he co-signed the note. A judgment for $15,725 was obtained by the finance company. But some of that debt was apparently paid after the mayor and his wife were ordered to the Pasadena court as the first step in a process that could have resulted in seizure of some of their assets to make good on the money owed.

Attorney Walter R. Tucker III, one of the family’s four grown children, is defending his mother in several legal cases. But he has had troubles of his own. Last summer, a bank obtained an $8,921 judgment after claiming that he defaulted on a Gold MasterCard promoted through the Georgetown University Alumni Assn. (The lawyer obtained a degree from Georgetown in 1981.)

Just as the bank began to garnish some of the wages he earned as a third-year prosecutor with the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, the younger Tucker was fired for allegedly lying to a judge about evidence in a narcotics case and falsifying records in an attempted cover-up.

‘Prosecutorial Misconduct’

In a Dec. 19 dismissal notice, Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Gilbert Garcetti declared that Tucker’s actions constituted “prosecutorial misconduct” and “demonstrate a lack of integrity clearly incompatible with the responsibilities entrusted to a prosecutor. . . . “ Lawyers say that Tucker’s alleged conduct didn’t affect the outcome of the narcotics case.

Attorney Tucker, who has appealed his dismissal to the county Civil Service Commission, did not return telephone calls seeking his comment last week. Because he is at odds with his former employer while also representing his mother in the criminal case, the district attorney stepped aside and got the state attorney general to conduct the prosecution against Martha Tucker and her sister, Barbara Hall.

Telephone calls seeking comment from Martha Tucker and her sister Barbara Hall, who worked at Mattco, also went unreturned.

A 51-year-old native of Gary, Ind., Martha Tucker attended Fisk University in Nashville, and California State University, Los Angeles majoring in English and drama. She married her husband in 1955, the same year he graduated from the dental school at Meharry Medical College, across the street from Fisk.

She authored a novel entitled “Jive Town” in 1976, about an urban backwater that struggled against decay and despair while its leaders siphoned off a stream of federal dollars meant for the poor.

Takes Aim at News Coverage

Mrs. Tucker founded The New Image Committee to boost civic morale among residents who often complained that Compton receives disproportionate servings of news that casts them in a bad light. And at a women’s conference at Compton Community College last fall, she lectured on ways that women can improve their financial positions. Apart from her real estate dealings, Martha Tucker has also sold beauty products through a firm known as LaGlamour Cosmetics.

What part the mayor has played in his wife’s business ventures remains unclear. There is no indication that he took an active part in managing the real estate firm, although his most recent Statement of Economic Interest on file at City Hall declares that he has “full ownership” of Mattco, which he valued at “over $100,000.” He also owns less than 10% of LaGlamour Cosmetics, according to the form.

Tucker’s most recent campaign financing statements also show that he paid his lawyer son $1,800 for “professional management and consulting services” in February, 1986. And last December, the mayor gave his son an interest-free loan of $3,528 in campaign funds. In January, the mayor forgave the loan.

In one of the pending fraud suits, a Los Angeles woman claims to have lost her house to foreclosure in 1985 because Mattco failed to obtain a second mortgage as allegedly promised by the mayor’s wife.

Another case accuses her of cheating a couple out of $30,000 in 1982 by allegedly investing in two Los Angeles parcels and a pair of Georgia mobile-home parks. The suit claims that she promised them 20% annual interest, the return of their principal at the end of three years, plus an additional 200% profit. Yet “not so much as one dollar” was actually paid to the investors, according to the suit. Damages sought in that case alone amount to $834,000.

‘Started Missing Payments’

A suit filed by retired anesthesiologist Mary H. McCoo charges that she was defrauded out of $125,000 when she sold the mayor’s wife a 10-unit apartment complex near Baldwin Hills in 1982. In a recent interview, McCoo said that after she agreed to hold a second mortgage in the sale, Martha Tucker “started missing payments.” For a while, McCoo added, “I went along with it because (the Tuckers) were friends.”

In a July 18, 1983, letter that McCoo made available to The Times, Martha Tucker wrote to explain: “I am dropping this note to you because I have become involved in a project that is bigger than life. It is a project that will generate millions of net dollars by Dec. 31, 1983. You will see it in the L.A. Times and other national press. . . . “I am trying desperately to meet a requirement deadline on this project, needing both a sense of peace and extra money,” the mayor’s wife continued. “Therefore, I am asking you a favor. The money that I owe you, and which is now payable, would greatly enhance the ease with which I put this project out in the market.”

After signing the letter, Martha Tucker wrote: “P.S. Believe me, you won’t be sorry.”

McCoo also claims that she has received nothing in return for $40,000 given to the mayor’s wife to be invested in LaGlamour and the two Georgia mobile-home parks.

Invests Proceeds of Settlement

The criminal case against Martha Tucker and her sister stems from a suit filed in 1985 by Long Beach resident Danny Ray Moore, a 48-year-old retired auto mechanic who was permanently paralyzed from the waist down after being shotgunned during a 1978 argument with a neighbor. Moore won a $1.25-million settlement from the City of Los Angeles when a jury ruled that police had failed to protect him as promised.

Moore’s sister, Mary Stewart, was an employee of Mattco and introduced him to Martha Tucker.

In the summer of 1985, Moore gave Mattco $45,000 as a deposit and down payment toward the purchase of a 16-unit apartment building at 5863 Crenshaw Blvd., Los Angeles the suit states. For some reason, the deal failed to go through. But when Moore went to the escrow company to retrieve his money, he was told that it was no longer on deposit.

During a recent interview, Moore said that when he confronted Martha Tucker with that news, she told him the money had been invested for a short time in a Michigan entity called the Bell-Heins Trust. That fall, he received a letter from the trust, stating that his money would be returned “no later than Nov. 18, 1985.” (The address on the letter was a postal route box in Bangor, Mich. On her 1983 application for the $25,000 finance company loan, Martha Tucker listed the same address for her mother, Lola Bell.)

Unaware of Offer

When Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies investigated, the building owners said they had never been aware of any proposed sale to Moore. And deputies say that someone allegedly forged Moore’s signature on some of the escrow documents.

Shortly after he filed suit, Moore received a letter from Martha Tucker:

“I know this may sound like a strange request, but I have been led by God to make it,” the mayor’s wife wrote.

“For the last year, I have been ill and unable to follow up on all of my business. Danny, I have been led to ask you to drop your case and sign a settlement to pay you the money by December 1986 even if the investment does not pay off. . . . “

“Danny, I don’t have the strength to go to court,” the letter continued. “I don’t have the money. If you get a judgment, I don’t have anything now that you can collect on. . . .

“As God forgives us,” Martha Tucker concluded, “forgive me.”