The Valley of the Shadow of Death

by Kermit Alexander

  At this point Neal Alexander rushed the gunman from behind and jumped on his back. Neal is strong and athletic. The killer does not go down easily, suggesting he too is powerful, well built, perhaps an athlete himself. Neal wrestles him to the floor, knocking the rifle from his hands. The killer recovers the gun, gets to his feet, and smashes Neal in the face with the weapon. Neal runs out the back door and the killer follows, then, fearing detection, gives up his chase. He retreats to the idling van, where the other man, the darker-skinned individual, already awaits. The door closes and the getaway vehicle disappears to the east, speeding right onto Main.

  No words were ever said; they just came in shooting.

  The crime showed preplanning and conspiracy. At least three individuals were involved: the light-skinned shooter, the darker-skinned man seen walking down the driveway to the west of the Alexander house, and a getaway driver. The van was poised down the block, ready to tear out as soon as the killers returned.

  But the crime was interrupted and altered. Neal’s fight with the killer changed the course of events.

  The disruption likely produced more evidence. The struggle left the intruder no time to cover up, alter the scene, collect projectiles, or wipe down prints.

  A basic rule of investigation, known as Locard’s exchange principle, named after forensic pioneer Edmond Locard, “France’s Sherlock Holmes,” holds that anyone who enters a scene will leave something behind, and take something with them. The perpetrator could leave behind anything from hair and fibers to fingerprints, or clothing. They could take with them anything from stolen goods to the victim’s blood.

  By cutting the crime short and forcing greater contact with the scene—as the two wrestled around on the floor—Neal’s battle eliminated the chance for cover-up while increasing the opportunity for exchange. Neal’s acts may also have caused the killer to abandon caution, as he fled from the house with the rifle unconcealed, for all on the street to see.

  More important, had Neal not fought the shooter, all six inhabitants would likely be dead. The intruders entered with intent to kill all within.

  But what was the motive?

  The detectives were perplexed. There was no sign that the killers conducted any search for valuables. In fact the living room and dining room appeared untouched, left in the same order that family members reported their mother ensured: everything neat, starched linens, a set table. No drawers were opened, nothing overturned. With no sign of ransacking, financial gain did not appear a motivating factor.

  Further, the known facts did not suggest a crime implicating the victims in their demise: a grandmother, a young fiancée, sleeping children. It simply looked like a preplanned execution.

  9

  THE LOST LITTER

  AS THE POLICE struggled to find a motive, we did, too.

  Days had now passed since the murders. Cooped up in Daphine’s house, scared, and without answers, tensions began turning inward. We were passionate, emotional people, and every one of us struggled with our tempers. With each passing hour this grew ever harder.

  Desperate for answers, and any sense of control over our lives, family members entered into a kind of crazed speculation. With everyone anxious, angry, and underslept, the ability to focus and think straight broke down. Rumors, no matter how wild, were jumped on as possible explanations. When no explanations existed, we invented them.

  The killing was the work of organized crime. Someone in the family had run into trouble and this was revenge. A red Cadillac had been seen repeatedly cruising the neighborhood. An ancient grudge from the bayou had followed us cross-country—something dredged from deep within the swamps.

  Family members began mumbling about other family members. Anything even remotely shady from the past resurfaced as the potential cause.

  While the family had generally been close, and its members functional, we weren’t angels. We had our pasts.

  One of my sisters got involved with drugs and dated a series of less than upstanding citizens. Some suspected that one of these past relationships might have resurfaced. A bitter suitor, resentful, high, and out of his mind, would be just the type to commit such a senseless slaughter. Likewise, one of my brothers got into LSD while visiting the Bay Area during the Haight-Ashbury Summer of Love, 1967. Perhaps this explained it. Again, unsavory, unstable elements entering the Alexander family orbit had returned to derail it.

  Some also wondered if Madee had ever confronted any one of these bad influences. Never one to back down or hold her thoughts, maybe she tried to set straight someone who didn’t want straightening, put them off, induced some kind of drug rage.

  Or had Madee at some point called out a neighborhood wrongdoer, maybe scolding some young hoodlum or street vandal, who then returned to send a powerful message, make their name, prove how bad they were?

  Or it could have been any one of us—who unknowingly set someone off on the streets. With the prevalence of drugs, guns, and the hair-trigger touchiness of everyone these days about being “dissed,” or disrespected, any perceived slight would be grounds for violent reprisal.

  An incident involving Madee led to yet another theory. About a year prior to the murders, she had been near the Coliseum when a man grabbed her purse. She fought with him and held on tight. When she told us about it, we were horrified, telling her she was out of her mind risking her life like that. She said she could not bear to let go of all the family pictures she kept in her purse. Finally the robber overpowered her. He knocked her to the ground, badly bruised. He fled with the purse. It contained all of her personal information. Some now wondered could the thug who had access to that information have returned to rob her again.

  Or could it have anything to do with her relationship with Mayor Bradley, some questioned? We often talked policy with him. Was this politically motivated?

  All of these theories had holes. None added up.

  And as the family struggled to make sense of the tragedy, one theme returned repeatedly: Madee’s absence. Through all the large family’s struggles, she had always been there, the stabilizing force, holding things together, battling chaos with faith and grit. Without Madee, the family’s ability to navigate the crisis, to come to terms with the loss, was all the more impossible. She was the sun. For all of our lives, the eleven children revolved around her. With Madee gone, we began to break apart, spin out of control. My sister Daphine said that without Madee, we were lost, “like a litter of puppies that had just watched the mother dog get hit by a car.”

  Deepening the loss was the guilt. For years various members of the family had talked about the need to move her out of the neighborhood. Some had begged her. Some now claimed that others had not done enough. Still others countered that it was pointless—that she would not move until forced. As my sister Crystal said, “I knew she had no intention of moving when she told me, ‘I’ll only move when God tells me it’s time.’ ”

  As the agonizing stretched deeper into the night, and fatigue took its toll, another line of thought intruded. What about that unlocked door?

  Surely, some said, this was an inside job, someone whom she knew, who routinely visited. The anger grew at the trusted guest and betrayer. This in turn would circle back to further recriminations about allowing her to stay, allowing her to keep her doors unlocked, and allowing her to let the neighborhood into her home. And this was the worst thought of all, that the killer was known.

  No one could match the eyewitness descriptions with anyone we knew. But the descriptions were generic, and the number of people who came and went so great, that “a light-skinned guy and a dark-skinned guy” did little to narrow the hunt.

  Still others could not shake the premonitions. Daphine endlessly repeated her son Damon’s weird behavior leading up to the killing. Additionally, my sister Barbara said that Madee had made her uneasy when she said she hoped the kids would have a good time at an upcoming concert, and that if she did not see them again she hoped they’d remember her fondly. Given
her religious convictions, biblical analogies flourished; it was like Christ prophesying his impending betrayal. Others recalled her saying that just prior to her death, I had acted strangely, circling the block in my car, forever waving goodbye.

  Had she suspected someone would do her in? Did she sense it coming? Did she know something she didn’t let on?

  All of these forebodings again made the crime seem intimate, pointed to the presence of someone near to our lives.

  When these thoughts became too unbearable and exhausted themselves, the family, unwilling to go to bed without answers, ventured into the bizarre. It was not internal, they argued, it was distant, ancient, something long thought dead.

  It could be Klan related, some said. Like most blacks living in the South, our family had been harassed. But unlike most, we fought back. Coming from a small rural community, we knew who hid beneath the white sheets. And when the time was right, my relatives would find them, drag them deep into the swamps, and “disappear” them. And never another word was spoken. But maybe somehow, with years gone by, something had leaked. Or there were those problems with Kermit Sr., the issue that made him join the Marines and flee town, when local Kluxers found him too “uppity” and said they were going to “teach him his place.” But that made no sense, others answered; eyewitnesses said the killers were black. “Didn’t matter,” was the irrational response; somehow some Klan grudge lay behind this, and they had simply got blacks to kill blacks as revenge, perfect Klan justice.

  Murmurs also rippled beneath the surface about some form of voodoo hex. Though we were raised Catholic, from Louisiana to California hidden fears of spells and curses never died. I remembered how during storms, the mirrors were wrapped to avoid cracks and years of bad luck. When we got our hair cut, the clippings were carefully swept to avoid bewitchment. Even the Catholic priests weren’t immune to the hidden world of voodoo, and, when outside of formal church services, they indulged family members, invoking secret charms. Saints’ images, blood rituals, animal rites, all had meshed together, and from Haiti to Louisiana to California formed a part of our collective memory.

  Superstitions, ideas of karmic justice, the way of spirits, and ideas going back to African witches could still enter the family’s thoughts. Things didn’t just happen, people kept objecting; things happened only to people who had done something wrong. Somebody must have done something to somebody, and that’s why somebody did this to us. Coincidence and chance had no power to explain. Omens held answers.

  And while all of this conjecture may seem far-fetched, when a people have been the victims of centuries of very real conspiracies, sinister plots ring all too true. Our ancestors really were captured in slave fortresses and shipped across the Middle Passage. The Klan really did terrorize my relatives. Fire hoses, nightsticks, and police dogs really were unleashed, churches bombed, bodies buried. We’d witnessed it. Remote, far-flung, unlikely. Sure. But that didn’t make them any less believable, nor terrifying. Our folklore and mythology, based upon our all-too-real experience, are filled with tales of tricksters, hustlers and hijinks, collusions, cons, corruptions, plots and counterplots. When black folk hear about a conspiracy that involves oppression and violence, they’re at the very least going to give it a listen. And particularly at that moment, none of us cared about rational explanations. We simply craved answers, and the more emotional the better.

  After exhausting theories of bayou revenge—with origins before we were even born—the search for culprits returned to the immediate family. And as this uninformed speculation spun ever further out of control, I sensed an unpleasant trend developing. The feeling among some was that the tragedy must somehow trace back to me.

  After all, I was the public face of the family. I was the celebrity and public figure. I must therefore have something to do with it. As this train gained speed, my sisters began to question me.

  “Kermit, what have you done to us?” they asked.

  A theory centering on a murky “syndicate” began to circulate. According to this explanation, I had gotten myself involved in some shady business down in Texas.

  Like my father, I too had a great love for horses. After I retired, I got involved in several business ventures. One included buying Thoroughbred horses and breeding them in Oklahoma. When the business failed to meet my expectations, I withdrew.

  Now certain family members saw in this failed venture the missing link between me and the crime. Horse racing and its mafia connections held the clue. Besides, one of the breeders from Texas had been bragging that he “would kick Kermit’s ass.” I had burned the wrong people, and now they burned me back, sending me a message, mafia-style.

  No matter my protests, some in my family felt no other explanation made sense. Whether through horse breeding or some other means, I had attracted the wrong kind of attention, and now my family paid for it.

  The fact that I, as the leader of the family, had nothing to offer only made it more likely that I was to blame. Leaders are looked to for answers. When they fail to provide, confidence and trust decay, anger and resentment rise.

  At the time that the family most needed each other, the pressure, and the failure to find solace, began breaking us apart as we splintered into cannibalizing factions.

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Who were these people? In less than a week they’d become savage, a group I felt like I no longer knew. And then I started to do the same, wondering what secrets they held, what there was about them that I didn’t know.

  A common enemy unifies. But the enemy must exist, a face to hate, a dragon to slay. Here, whoever they were remained vague and unknown. And since we couldn’t lay low a phantom, we sabotaged ourselves.

  As we came apart I just wanted to scream. What would Madee think? As she looked down from Heaven she must have been ashamed. Her tragic death didn’t bring out the best in her brood, it didn’t rally them around her memory. It ate them up, brought out their worst.

  And when everyone was worn-out, the voices would die, and a taut stillness fill the room. Every detail was on punctuated alert. Each tick of the clock whacked, echoing off the walls. Outside, a passing car rattled the windows. Footsteps rebounded in the front entryway. The cars, the footsteps, the hot summer wind.

  The house was a cage. I had to get away.

  And then the voices would pick up again. The same questions hammered upon, the ongoing lack of answers. But no one could let it go, interrupting, yelling, sobbing, interrupting, fingers pointing, interrupting, blaming, voices, voices, voices. How I hated everyone’s voice. Silence to screams, more voices, that constant interrupting. There was nothing I hated more. And I did it, too.

  Though it was pointless and maddening, everyone somehow felt that if we pounded long enough, somehow we would find something. Something wasn’t as it seemed, something lay hidden beneath the surface, undiscovered. If we just yelled and screamed long enough, just maybe we’d uncover it. It was a desperate reach. We all knew it. But we were desperate. And somehow anything seemed better than surrendering to silence.

  10

  BLACK TOMMY, SWEET DADDY

  ON THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1984, Los Angeles Sentinel staff writer Chico C. Norwood wrote an article titled “Mystery Shrouds Alexander Murders”:

  Lieutenant Ron Lewis, of Los Angeles Police Department said, “The people at the residence, from what we know right now, can be ruled out as being into drug trafficking. We don’t have anything to indicate that there is any drug involvement at that residence at all.”

  However, he added at this point “we cannot eliminate anything as far as a possible motive.”

  With the aid of witnesses, LAPD artist Fernando Ponce was able to come up with a composite drawing of the two suspects.

  The first suspect is described as a male Black between 20 and 25 years of age, 5-10, weighing 190 pounds, dark complexion with a muscular build and short hair. He was last seen wearing a dark blue t-shirt and dark blue pants.

  The second suspe
ct is described as a male Black, with a light brown complexion, between the ages of 20 and 25, 5-9, weighing approximately 150 pounds. When last seen the suspect’s hair was braided and laid back in corn rows and he was wearing a red and tan horizontal striped shirt and beige pants.

  The suspects fled the scene in a very clean 1975 or 1976 brown or light maroon van with a sliding door on the passenger side, two doors and two windows in the back, with brown or tan curtains and a chrome luggage rack on the roof.

  Police detectives say copies of the composite drawings will be circulated throughout California, posted in stores, etc.

  Lt. Lewis says the department is hoping to generate some information from the dissemination of the composite. . . .

  The grisly murders occurred at approximately 8:15 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 31 at the Alexander home on W. 59th St. The suspects reportedly entered the home through a rear door.

  Killed in the incident were 58-year-old Ebora Alexander, whose body was found in the kitchen; 24-year-old Dietra Alexander, whose body was found in an outside bedroom; Damani Garner, 12, and eight-year-old Damon Bonner. All four victims were shot in the head.

  “I don’t have anything that would explain it,” said Kermit Alexander, an All-American halfback at UCLA and a 10 year veteran of the NFL.

  Police are seeking the public’s assistance in locating the killers. If you have any information concerning the slayings call detectives Bob Grogan, John Rockwood, David Crews or Lt. Ron Lewis.

  * * *

  The appeals to the public predictably summoned the usual outpouring of cranks, false confessions, and false accusations, as well as the cheats and dead ends of the well-intentioned. In high-profile cases, the problem police most often encounter is not a lack of leads, but an overload of worthless information.