Wife of Compton Mayor Is Sentenced

Martha Tucker, wife of Compton Mayor Walter R. Tucker, was sentenced Thursday to six years’ probation for swindling 10 people in real estate deals. She was spared what might have been “a very long stretch” in prison, the judge said, because she agreed to repay investors, who said they lost a total of $300,000.

She promised to pay the $300,000 in restitution, plus interest, at the rate of at least $100 per month to each victim. She faced up to six years in prison and fines of up to $10,000 for three counts of grand theft.

No Contest Plea

Tucker, 52, pleaded no contest last month to three counts involving eight real estate investors. She entered the same plea Thursday to an amended complaint listing two more victims.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Gordon Ringer said Tucker might have faced “a very long stretch in state prison.” He said he decided not to put her behind bars so that Tucker might repay her victims. “If she’s in, she can’t be paying them back,” Ringer said.

Under an agreement reached in Municipal Court last month, prosecutors promised not to argue for jail time in return for Tucker’s promise to pay restitution.

Deputy State Atty. Gen. Sharon R. Wooden said prosecutors took into account Tucker’s age, her lack of a criminal record and her willingness to pay restitution in reaching the agreement.

“The most important thing was that she was willing to pay the money back,” Wooden said. “If she wasn’t, obviously the outcome could have been very different.”

As the judge read her sentence, Tucker stood quietly next to her son, Walter Tucker III, a former deputy district attorney who represented her in the case.

After the sentencing, Tucker insisted that she is innocent and had “nothing to say” about the charges against her. She added that she is eager to begin work on a book telling her side of the story.

As part of the swindle, Wooden said, Tucker solicited investors as limited partners in two mobile home parks in Georgia through a company called First Southeastern Properties, in which Tucker was a general partner.

“In 1984, she sold them and didn’t notify any of the limited partners, nor did any of the limited partners authorize the sale,” Wooden said. “None of the proceeds from the sale were distributed to any of the limited partners.”

Henry Talbert, one of Tucker’s victims, said after the sentencing that he knew he had been swindled in deals with Tucker when “certain returns that I anticipated never materialized.”

Surprised by Plan

Talbert, a former regional director of the National Urban League, said he was surprised and pleased with the restitution plan. “I had just assumed that I would be out in the cold, frankly,” he said. “I’m happy that things worked out the way they did, and I hope the best for her and her family.”

Tucker’s sister, Barbara Hall, is serving a year of probation after her no-contest plea last month to a misdemeanor theft count stemming from one of the real estate frauds.