He Paid Penalty, Now His Goal Is to Assist Others

The night of July 24, 1975, found 18-year-old Maurice Duckett and three of his friends in need of a little extra cash. So they loaded up the van with two handguns and a shotgun and drove from South-Central Los Angeles to Santa Monica to make something of a withdrawal.

The plan was to bump into some rich people, get the cash and go, just like always. But this time, something went haywire.

When police arrived at 19th Street in Santa Monica around midnight, they found Gloria Witte, 57, dead, having taken two shots in the back, one from a handgun and one from a shotgun, at extremely close range, the reports said.

When word made the streets six weeks later that Maurice Duckett had been booked for murder, people in the neighborhood didn’t buy it. Maurice Duckett, the Crenshaw High School jock? The basketball and football star? Second-team-All-City “Mo” Duckett?

“It shocked all L.A.,” Duckett says today. “I had the goody-goody image. Star jock.”

This morning, 10 years after they buried Gloria Witte, seven years after he was convicted of second-degree murder, four years after walking out of Soledad prison, Maurice Duckett, star jock, is back in the Crenshaw gym.

Today he celebrates his part in Crenshaw High School’s Division I state basketball championship, earned Saturday night in Oakland. Duckett is a volunteer assistant coach for “The Shaw,” preaching defense, the full-court press and staying in school, in no particular order.

And why not? Who better to teach the art of good defense, or “locking a guy up” as Duckett puts it, than Duckett? In his day, Mo Duckett could lock a guy up like nobody’s business. He could score, too, and he was even better at football. In fact, everybody thought Mo was on his way to a free college ride and then catch you in the pros. But something went haywire.

The colleges all thought Maurice was a hell of an athlete, too, but . . . “they said my grade-point average wasn’t high enough,” Duckett recalls. “Here I’d been taking chemistry and geometry and French because everybody said you had to have that and I was drowning. . . . I was mad at the whole world.”

With his scholarship eighty-sixed, Duckett took to hanging around the streets, hustling, gambling and shooting dice in the neighborhood, mugging people for cash to keep the good times rolling.

“On that particular night, I remember this guy came with us, this crazy guy, Reggie. Reggie was the one guy you knew you didn’t want along, but he came with us, anyway. He said we should be going where the money was, not just be robbing people next door. So that night, we went to where the money was.”

Wearing masks, they surprised two couples getting out of a car in front of a nice house and ordered one of the couples, the Wittes, to lie down. Maurice says he went with the other couple and started conducting a transaction behind a 38-caliber revolver.

“But these people started resisting,” he says. “Next thing I heard was a ‘Boom!’ I didn’t know who was shooting whom. I thought the cops were shooting at us. I just remember thinking, ‘Lord, if you get me out of this one, you don’t ever need to worry about me again. I’m yours.’

“When we got back in the van, I didn’t understand why Reggie had done it, I said, ‘Why? Why did you, Reggie?’ ”

Reggie was tried as a juvenile and was sent to a detention center. Duckett was tried as an adult and served four years, eight months, but he swears he didn’t kill Gloria Witte.

“When I heard that woman died, that a human life was lost just ‘cause some kids were foolin’ around, it hurt. You can’t imagine the hurt. It just tore me up. Some guys it didn’t bother, but it did me, because I just wasn’t that type of person. But I’d turned myself into it. I’d turned myself into that type of person. I’ll carry that burden with me always.”

Duckett works at a convenience store in his old neighborhood, but he hopes someday to earn a living as a coach. Two years ago, Crenshaw Coach Willie West agreed to give Duckett a chance coaching the Crenshaw defense. Why not? West hadn’t let him down yet. He’d coached Duckett as a player from 1973-1975, provided character references for Mo during his sentencing, and kept in touch at Soledad.

“He’s served his time,” says West. “He’s not trying to hide what he’s done. He told the kids about himself the first day.”

West says not many of the parents know Duckett’s past and he doesn’t care. “He does a great job,” West says.

Seems to. The Crenshaw press was the most claustrophobic in the state this year and it may have made the difference in Crenshaw winning the title.

And with Mo around, the Crenshaw players may have won more than a trophy.

“I try to show ‘em the love,” Duckett says. “I tell them to stay in school and I try to offer them the time to help them. I warn them what obstacles are ahead, what they’re about to bump up against. I want them to be able to say, ‘Whoa, now, Mo told me about this, maybe I ought to back up before it’s too late.’ ”

As for Mo, he’s not doing much backing up these days, just going forward.

Thanks to people like Willie West, it wasn’t too late for Mo, either.