Compton : Tucker Case Delayed Again

Legal proceedings were delayed again this week in the real estate fraud case against Martha Tucker, Compton Mayor Walter R. Tucker’s wife. A preliminary hearing set for Wednesday was continued until June 22 because Mrs. Tucker is ill, Deputy Atty. Gen. Sharon Wooden said.

It is the third time this year that the hearing has been put off due to illness on the part of Mrs. Tucker, who presented a doctor’s statement to verify it, Wooden said.

Mrs. Tucker and her sister, Barbara Hall, were charged in January, 1987, of defrauding a wheelchair-bound Long Beach man out of $45,000 in a real estate deal. A proposed plea bargain in that case was scuttled last summer when nine new charges were filed against Mrs. Tucker, accusing her of taking $117,500 from investors in Georgia mobile home parks.

Mrs. Tucker operated Mattco Financial Inc., a business the mayor owned. At least five lawsuits have been filed against Mrs. Tucker in connection with other business at Mattco.

The state attorney general is prosecuting the case because the Tuckers’ son, Walter III, is acting as his mother’s attorney. The younger Tucker was fired from the Los Angeles County district attorney’s staff for allegedly lying to a judge about evidence in a narcotics case and for trying to falsify records in order to cover up his lie.