High-ranking Sin City operative gets over 24 years for ordering witness killed in Gary
Meredith Colias-Pete, Post-Tribune (Merrillville, Ind.) October 16, 2025
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/high-ranking-sin-city-operative-190400426.html
Nearly 15 years after Jocelyn “Pie Face” Blair was brazenly gunned down inside a busy Gary diner, the man federal prosecutors said ordered her death was sentenced.
Ronnie “Black” Major, 55, of Gary, was sentenced Thursday to 292 months in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Indiana – just over 24 years in prison. Afterwards, he would serve three years on supervised release.
He faced 30 years to life in prison.
U.S. District Judge Philip Simon sealed the nearly 45-minute hearing, meaning reporters were barred from the courtroom. Records show Assistant U.S. Attorneys David Nozick, with co-counsel Michael Toth filing sealed motions and documents Monday, which presumably were discussed in court.
Blair, 31, was an eyewitness to a 2008 shooting in Gary for which Ronnie Major was later convicted of battery in Lake County court. She was shot to death early on Dec. 19, 2010, at Coney Island Restaurant in Gary.
Major was charged in December 2016 in county court in connection with Blair’s death. He was released initially in July 2019 after Lake County prosecutors took too long to bring him to trial.
Federal prosecutors indicted him in October 2021 in U.S. District Court in Hammond as part of a 15-man racketeering and drug conspiracy for Sin City Deciples, a reputed Gary motorcycle gang.
The 57-page superseding indictment read like a television drama, weaving a tale of influence, obedience, intimidation, an internal power struggle, drugs, guns and murder spanning multiple states and including local, regional and national chapters of the Sin City Deciples.
The club’s leadership ran the group with an iron fist, enforcing a strict code of respect and obedience, where offenders could be disciplined with beatings and death, according to court documents. The documents outline how the Sin City Deciples would intimidate other motorcycle clubs into become their support clubs, extorting dues and support.
Major pleaded guilty in May 2024 in Blair’s death to conspiracy to participate in racketeering activity and murder. Court documents indicate he served as the group’s vice president at one point.
His lawyer Donald Schmid declined comment by email after the hearing.
In court filings, Schmid wrote Major stopped “actively participating” in Sin City by 2011. The lawyer asked for a low-end sentence — 292 months — citing his client’s plea deal, rehabilitation efforts in prison, age, “lack of recent criminal activity,” health and “reduced recidivism risk.”
Federal judges can sentence defendants under the minimum guidelines. Schmid added that Nozick and Toth asked for a “low-end” sentence for Major, who would be nearly 80 when released.
Court records state that after Major reportedly put out a hit on Blair, the trio had planned to get Blair at the Sin City Disciples Club at Eighth Avenue and Virginia Street and take her to a hotel where his brother-in-law Antoine Gates wanted Major’s nephew Jamell Brooks Jr. to kill her.
But after leaving the Sin City Disciples Club, Michael Rivera went in a car with Blair, while Gates and Brooks rode in another car, to Coney Island on Broadway, court records show. Gates went inside, and Brooks said he heard seven or eight shots, according to court documents.
Gates returned to the car and said he shot Blair in the head and had “accidentally” shot Rivera in the thigh, court records state.
According to court documents, Major reportedly gave Gates “10 stacks,” or $10,000, for Blair’s homicide, a jail informant testified at Major’s bail hearing. Major also reportedly told the informant that “they can’t charge me with murder, but they can charge me with conspiracy to commit murder,” documents said.
Gates was sentenced to 25 years in Blair’s death in July — after he spent 13 years in Lake County Jail awaiting trial. Brooks, the alleged getaway driver, got seven years in June.
Three Sin City defendants still need to choose if they will go to trial or sign a plea deal. A handful of others, including Rivera, are awaiting sentencing.
Major’s wife Sheaurice Major had her murder case dismissed in November.
The case stemmed from the killing of a 72-year-old man outside his Portage home. Major was initially charged on the same counts in 2012 in the slaying of Carl Griffith Sr., but after a key witness in the case was murdered, the state dismissed the charges against her in March 2017 without prejudice.
His son, Laron Major, is also facing an unrelated murder case in Lake County for allegedly robbing and killing a drug dealer.
Post-Tribune archives contributed.