Books by Clark Howard Novels The Arm A Movement Toward Eden The Doomsday Squad The Killings Mark the Sparrow The Hunters The Wardens Nonfiction Six Against the Rock Zebra To Joe Buffer Fellow Marine, fellow writer, and friend, who was the catalyst for this one Contents Foreword 9 Author' s Note 16 PART ONE: The 179 Days Day One 19 Day Four 46 Day Eleven 59 Day Thirty-seven 69 Day Fifty-three 89 Day Fifty-five 113 Day Sixty-two 129 Day Sixty-four 147 Day Sixty-five 164 Day One Hundred One 182 Day One Hundred Sixty-four 227 Day One Hundred Seventy-seven 294 Day One Hundred Seventy-nine 314 PART TWO: Aftermath to Terror The Confession 337 The Arrests 368 The Gun 373 The Indictment 383 The Final Link 391 The Trial 395 Afterword: Six Years Later 402 Foreword In any lengthy work of nonfiction, there are bound to be areas where the facts are not entirely certain-and this book is no excep­ tion. Rarely do two people see an event the same way, particularly if that event is sudden, violent, and frightening. A writer is fortu­ nate when he can interview a dozen people regarding a single oc­ currence and through them develop a consensus of what actually took place. Even then, in the writing of it, he is going to displease some of the people, some of the time. This book is a reconstruction-as accurate as the author can make it~f a series of particularly terrible crimes perpetrated on randomly selected victims in San Francisco during a 179-day peri­ od late in 1973 and early in 1974. All of the victims were white, all of their assailants were black. For reasons which the reader will later learn, the events became known as the "Zebra" crimes. In order to reconstruct these crimes with all possible accuracy, the author has availed himself of the contents of reams of available written material, and the recollections of dozens of persons con­ nected both directly and indirectly with the case. The written mate­ rial, which frequently seemed endless but, surprisingly, was rarely contradictory, included the following: 9 Clark Howard Incident Reports made by San Francisco police officers on each crime committed Police investigation reports made by homicide detectives assigned to each case Crime laboratory and ballistics reports relevant to each case Newspaper accounts of the effects of the cases on the San Francisco citizenry and its government A 609-page transcript of six taped sessions of a confession made by an informer who participated in the crimes The testimony in the subsequent trial of four men named by that in­ former as the Zebra crimes perpetrators Complete criminal and prison records from two states and the feder­ al system on three of the five men involved (the other two had no pri­ or criminal records) Personal case notes kept by the homicide inspector in charge of the case And a miscellany of personal notes, letters, and other written materi­ al from a variety of sources The people interviewed include: The available victims who would agree to discuss the case Relatives and friends of the victims who did not survive Police officers assigned to the investigation, including the personal cooperation over a fourteen-month period of the homicide inspector, now retired, who headed the Zebra investigation Extensive personal interviews at Folsom Prison with two of the men convicted of the crimes Interviews with relatives and friends of the convicted men and the informer who identified them Telephone interviews with the informer himself, who has been relo­ cated with a new identity And lastly, interviews with anonymous and confidential sources who 10 ZEBRA responded to the following classified advertisement in the San Fran­ cisco Chronicle and Examiner newspapers: ZEBRA. Published author of 12 books wishes to contact any­ one having previously unpublished information about the men convicted of the Zebra killings. Particularly interested in any­ one who attended a loft meeting. Anonymity, confidentiality, absolutely guaranteed. Communicate anonymously, on cas­ sette, or any way you choose. Contact Boxholder, P.O. Box 5306, Garside Station, Las Vegas, Nevada 89102. Factual information was obtained from all these sources, infor­ mation that could be cross-checked and verified with other infor­ mation from other sources. Analysis and correlation of all this in­ formation produced a surprising degree of unanimity. This is not to say that the sources interviewed were never in conflict. The con­ victed men's stories were naturally at variance with the story told by the informer. With rare exceptions, however, the informer's story proved far more credible-and, more often than not, was supported by circumstantial evidence. That story was accepted by the police, by the prosecutors, and-most important-by the twelve men and women who found the accused men guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It has, consequently, been given great weight in the story which follows. But there were still voids. At times the informer and/or other witnesses who were prepared to speak openly were not present. For example, all but one of the men went off alone and committed a solitary crime. In a few cases, the victim survived to give tes­ timony, or a witness was nearby. In other cases, only the solitary killer can be certain of the exact sequence of events. And even when a witness was available, his testimony was limited by what he happened to observe and what he could recall of that observation. And no matter how excellent his memory of observed fact, no wit­ ness can tell what was in the killers' mind-or in the victim's. It would have been possible, of course, just to recount the un­ questionable, observable facts and say no more. But that would have been irresponsible writing. The important question is not the who, when, or where of the Zebra murders; the important question is why they occurred at all. To answer that question I had to do two II Clark Howard . things: attempt to fill in the gaps in the observed events, and probe as much as possible the killers' minds. Of course, only the killers themselves know for sure what was in their minds, or what they did when no witness was present. Every­ one else, including myself, must proceed from what we know of their other actions, their background and habits, and what they lat­ er said (including, on a couple of lucky occasions, a slip of the tongue when being interviewed). Armed with all of this, we can then ·try to set down in logical order the most likely version of events. And with all the extrinsic facts available, the margin for er­ ror in that endeavor, and the conclusions it produced, have been substantially reduced. The story which follows is as close to the truth as anyone is ever likely to get. All of the named characters are real people, except two: the person known as Vandyke, who is a composite of several men who conducted unauthorized and illegal secret meetings of Muslim followers; and the character of Willie Fields, from whom the secret laws and other documents of the former Nation of Islam were obtained. Names and identifying characteristics have been changed only where indicated, and for the reasons given. Follow­ ing the story, an Afterword-"Six Years Later"-has been includ­ ed to bring the reader up to date on the principal persons involved. Because the persons who committed the Zebra crimes professed to believe that their deity, Allah, was moving them to do so, and that their acts were for the good of the Black Muslim or Nation of Islam religion, the following, for those unfamiliar with the sect, is a brief history of that religion taken from various Muslim and non­ Muslim sources. The Black Muslims are an independent socioreligious movement made up almost entirely of blacks in the United States. The move­ ment was founded by one Wali Farad, an orthodox Muslim be­ lieved to have been born in Mecca around 1877. Farad, or Wallace Fard, as he is also called, migrated to the United States and in 1931 established his first mosque in Detroit. A year later, he founded a second temple in Chicago. 12 ZEBRA Pard's early followers were Negro migrants from the South. Pard preached to them that he was the incarnation of Allah and promised that if they believed in him, their race would someday overcome the white slavemasters and that they would be restored to a position of supremacy among the world's peoples. Pard was succeeded as leader by one of his lieutenants, Elijah Muhammad, in 1934. Muhammad became known as the Messen­ ger. He had been born Elijah Poole on October 7, 1897, in Sanders­ ville, Georgia. He grew up in nearby Macon, attending public schools, and remained in the state of Georgia until he was twenty­ five years old. He was the seventh of thirteen children. During his young manhood he worked for the Southern Railroad Company and the Cherokee Brick Company. In 1923 he married Clara Evans and migrated to Detroit. It was there that he alleged to have met God in the person of Wallace Fard, who, using the name Master Pard Muhammad, was preaching to blacks in the Detroit ghetto. Elijah Poole was impressed enough with Pard that day to ask to become a follower. Pard gave him the name Elijah Karriem and ac­ cepted him as a student minister. Later, because Poole reportedly was the humblest of his disciples, Fard selected Poole as his Su­ preme Minister.