I could not take the torment of not knowing any longer. I could not stand the impotence of being a victim, asked to sit quietly on the sidelines, helpless, waiting for someone else to do something. With the police stymied, my family disintegrating, and my guilt overwhelming, I had to take control. At that point I had little faith in the police. If they were keeping an eye on me, how hard were they really trying to solve the case? Further, in the mid-eighties, LAPD’s standing in the black community was not good, with few trusting their commitment to protect and serve.
In the wake of tragedy, I retained my faith, but it was wounded. I still believed in God, but I didn’t trust him. To ground myself, I repeated a favorite mantra, from Ignatius of Loyola: “Pray as if everything depended upon God, and work as if everything depended on man.” For me, faith rested upon action, and only those prayers that were acted upon came true. So I went to work. Armed and disguised with an alter ego, I began to personally scour the streets of South Central in search of the killers.
The South Central neighborhoods I patrolled varied from one to the other: Inglewood, Florence, Hyde Park, Chesterfield Square, Vermont Square, Vermont-Slauson, Central-Alameda. Some spots looked nice, others run-down. Tall palms lined residential streets. Weed-filled lots bordered well-tended lawns. There were homes with barred windows and doors, some simple, like a cell, others decorative and ornate. Many homes remained bar-free. But that would soon change. The main thoroughfares—Slauson, Western, Crenshaw—were filled with small businesses. The skyline stayed low, no large-scale projects, tenements, or high-rises in the neighborhoods.
But as I trawled the streets, I felt one thing for certain: this was a region in decline. The dirt, the litter, the graffiti, the peeling paint and shuttered doors, all spoke of a place whose best days had passed. Despite the Olympic interlude, time was leaving South Central behind.
South Central, which got its name from the southern portion of Central Avenue, was once the heart of black social and cultural life in Los Angeles. However, since the 1960s the neighborhood had suffered a slew of troubles. While problems connected with housing and employment existed for decades, the descent took off after the Watts Riots. Whites and well-off blacks began fleeing the area, moving to the north and west.
In the late 1960s and 1970s the problems were exacerbated by a mass exodus of industry from South Central. Firms manufacturing goods for aircraft, aerospace, and electronics had already begun to relocate to the suburbs as early as 1963, two years prior to Watts. Then between 1970 and 1982 a wave of plant closures devastated industry and changed the face of the region. The corporations leaving South Central included Chrysler, B. F. Goodrich, Uniroyal, U.S. Steel, Ford, Firestone, Goodyear, Bethlehem Steel, and General Motors. And even after the job crisis deepened, blacks continued migrating to Southern California in record numbers. In the 1960s alone the black population of Los Angeles increased by over 50 percent.
This industrial abandonment of South Central changed the relationship between blacks and work. With the disappearance of the industrial union jobs went the prospect of a steady, well-paying position, with benefits and a comfortable retirement. It also marked the start of a trend where blacks without higher education were forced into low-paying service-sector jobs. For many black men this scenario caused a crisis, a sense that they were less able to support their families than in the past, and therefore less of a man. I knew the scenario well. My father worked at the Uniroyal plant prior to its closing.
For disillusioned young men, a sense developed that playing by the rules was a pointless waste of time, leading to a “what’s the point” mentality. Crime rates rose sharply in the 1960s and 1970s, causing more businesses and middle-class citizens to flee, leaving behind only the most disadvantaged.
The crime and gang warfare that plagued the area would eventually stigmatize it to the point that the mere words “South Central” conjured images of an urban war zone overrun by street terrorists. To counter this negative view, later in 2003 the Los Angeles City Council would vote to officially change the name of the region from “South Central Los Angeles” to “South Los Angeles.”
Now, as I entered the area by night, for the first time under my new guise, I sought to get behind the wall of silence, to get some answers.
Despite being a decade removed from my NFL playing days, at about six feet tall and two hundred pounds of muscle I still cut an imposing figure. Further, for anyone in the neighborhood it would have been obvious by my look, and the way I carried myself, that I was strapped, or armed.
The longer the case went unsolved, the more certain members of my family seized on me as the cause. That during my worst hour, my loved ones felt that I brought this upon them summoned up a murderous rage. That I was blamed for mafia ties or cocaine dealing, while the real killers roamed the streets, made me vow to find them and kill them if needed.
Like a modern-day Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s fictional private eye, I delved into the underside of Los Angeles. Lost in a kind of black noir, I found myself in the city’s underworld, questioning liquor store owners, bookies, streetwalkers, pimps, drunks, vagrants, and gangsters. Some I begged, others I bribed, while still others I straight-up threatened. I even leaked information through the grapevine that there was a $25,000 reward.
Due to my time as a probation officer in San Francisco I had learned how to interrogate criminals, developing a keen ability to tell truth from lie. Additionally, during off-seasons, I spent more than five years as an Army reservist, and was well trained in the use of firearms.
As I questioned people, some were sure I was a cop and offered me leads on other cases, if I would just call off the heat on them. I assured them I sought information only on this one case. Others thought I looked familiar, and swore they had seen me before. I assured them they hadn’t. Some, watching my temper flare, thought me only crazed, another casualty of the streets, and gave me space. Out of fear and anger I had become hypervigilant, hypersensitive to sounds, noises, sudden movements, any sense of danger. Quickly I turned on people, yelled at them, drew my weapon, accused them of lying to me.
Many thought of me as a kind of vigilante, seeking to hunt down the killers of an innocent family, and thanked me for my work. The year 1984 marked a kind of high point of the “fed-up citizen,” as seen by New York City’s embrace of its subway vigilante, Bernhard Goetz, who shot four unarmed black teenagers on a downtown train before disappearing into the darkened tunnel. A jury acquitted him of all shooting charges. Thus, for frightened citizens of South Central, fed up with living in fear of gangsters and hoodlums, a strong, angry, heavily armed black man was just what they were looking for, a kind of guardian angel, avenger of community victims.
When a possible lead developed I would follow it, only to be disappointed. Just like the police, I received endless bad tips and false leads, based upon vague and fleeting rumors. Everyone knew of the case, but no one seemed to quite get it. No one could make sense of it.
Sometimes, out of sheer frustration I would draw a gun and demand information, or grab someone and roughly pin them against a wall or over a parked car. This produced only cowering and more useless speculation. I repeatedly heard muddled accounts that the murders were said to be some type of retaliation. I also heard rumors that the killers had meant to hit Fifty-Ninth Place, a street well known for drug sales. But I could never turn the street gossip into a promising lead.
I felt that my life was over. I was at that dangerous nihilistic stage where I simply didn’t care about anything other than revenge. I really didn’t care if anyone killed me. I swore that I would never be captured and sent to prison. As I plied my way deep into gang territories I almost dared them to shoot me. I was prepared to die a “suicide by gang,” forcing them to kill me, rather than be taken and imprisoned, sent to another hell, devoid of control.
In the weeks following the murders, I continued to check the papers daily for anything new on the case. On September 13, the Los Angeles Sentinel repo
rted the detectives working the case stated: “Nothing new has developed yet.” “We’re getting telephone calls but nothing has panned out.”
* * *
When exhaustion and depression overtook me, I usually crashed in cheap local motels. On other occasions, late at night, I climbed the walls of the Holy Cross Cemetery and slept among the graves.
I would sit down in the surrounding grass and relive the past weeks. The parts of my personality I liked least now dominated; the out-of-control, angry and vengeful Kermit could not stop raging until some kind of closure was reached. As I stared at the four graves the throbbing in my brain was unbearable.
Half awake, conversations, accusations, images, voices looped through my mind, obsessive and circular.
Conversations with Madee at that kitchen table, on that front porch flashed before me. We talked about the neighborhood. The neighborhood—the same one over which my brother Gordon had fallen to his knees in joy—had changed. It got worse every year. Another Watts could happen at any time, we both agreed. The same tensions were building, over the same set of problems: lack of jobs, opportunities, resources, a racist and brutal LAPD. Only this time, armies of angry young men roamed the streets heavily armed. It would be worse this time, much worse, more violence, more destruction.
We reminded her, all of us did, we talked about it, how the sound of gunshots was more common, and how she had to force the children and grandchildren to “get down.” They would all remain crouched below the windows. Then the police helicopter, the “ghetto bird,” would circle above, the blades pounding the night sky, the spotlight irradiating the neighborhood, bringing a kind of militant reassurance to the streets below.
But as in Watts years before, Madee was in no hurry. She was about to turn sixty and was set in her ways. Her routine was fixed and revolved around her neighborhood. And while I understood she was her own person and made her own decisions, in light of what happened it was clear I had failed.
Voices on the street echoed my doubts: Why couldn’t the All-Pro get his old mom out of the old hood? And family members mumbled under their breath, why hadn’t I shown up on that particular morning, like I always did? This added to the suspicions that I knew something I wasn’t letting on.
And as answers failed to materialize and doubts multiplied, I sometimes wondered if it was possible that somehow, something I had done had in fact brought this down. I was the only public figure. Could a past act have so antagonized someone to commit quadruple murder? Always be responsible, prepared, I had preached. If you want to ensure that you can be dominant for four quarters, be ready to play eight, I liked to say. Keep as much under your own control as possible, I told people. So what had I failed to control? What had I done, or failed to do, that brought this on? What was there hidden in the past that I was missing? A word, an object, a memory, something I wasn’t seeing?
As I sat in the cemetery on a warm California night, I relived my life frame by frame—from Mount Carmel, to UCLA, to the 49ers, Rams, and Eagles, to my post-NFL life as a broadcaster, businessman, and volunteer—searching for any incidents, any clues that could possibly trace the motive for the murders back to me. I dredged up past romantic disillusions, family disputes, business disagreements, trying to imagine any sequence that could have led to this outcome.
It certainly was unpleasant, digging up all my failings and wrongdoings, but it didn’t get me anywhere. I found no clues. Nothing fit together. Nothing added up to four counts of home invasion homicide. Nothing equaled children shot in their sleep.
Surely I had made enemies over the years, I had pissed a lot of people off, no doubt; but such incidents centered on football and my aggressive play on the field, and my relentless support of the NFL rank and file as president of the NFL Players Association.
I had exchanged words with many an owner, coach, and player, notably George “Papa Bear” Halas of the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers head coach Vince Lombardi. And most famously, in 1968, I had blown out Gale Sayers’s knee, ending his season. Actual footage of the play was used in the TV movie Brian’s Song, the story of Brian Piccolo’s fight with cancer and his friendship with Gale Sayers. The footage graphically shows me, number 39, diving through a hole in the line and injuring Sayers. For months I received hate mail and death threats, and was decried as dirty by Bears fans. But I had carried Sayers off the field, visited him in the locker room after the game, and apologized, and Sayers himself later said the hit was clean. And besides, these were incidents on the field almost twenty years ago. It was ridiculous, as worthless as my family’s late-night speculations. Surely the ghosts of Halas and Lombardi hadn’t somehow returned to take out my family in revenge for some distant football infraction.
But I just kept digging for anyone I had wronged, upset, antagonized. Nothing. But it did serve to drive my depression deeper, load up more guilt. Keep thinking, keep on thinking about everyone you have wronged, hurt, let down, displeased.
Outside the cemetery’s walls Los Angeles continued on as always. It was the weekend. Before me in the distance, the lights poured from downtown. People ate, drank, clinked glasses, and went on dates.
When I looked at myself I wondered if I had lost it, cracked up. The sociable athlete from the big family, always surrounded by brothers, sisters, friends, and fans, now sat alone in a graveyard in the middle of the night, cradling guns and pretending to be someone else. Was it really me, after all, who needed to go to the hospital?
As sleep began to muddle my thoughts I just couldn’t put it out of my mind that I must somehow be to blame. I did not feel the crime had distant origins—in Jamaican drug lords, or Colombian cartels. I felt it was local and personal.
But what was I missing? I feared the source of it all would somehow lead back to me, like a riddle from a Greek tragedy. I knew not what I did and that would end up being my sin, and my undoing. I imagined myself out on the streets hopelessly looking for the real killer, and somehow ultimately discovering that in some way I was looking for myself. The fake Kermit with no name and a disguise was actually tracking the real Kermit. My God, I should check myself into the hospital.
The twisted sequences became all-too-confusing and unpleasant and I jerked from my sleep, my heavy head falling toward my lap as I remained seated upright in the grass. I knew I had no hope of banishing the thoughts; the more exhausted I became, the more truth they took on. It was somehow my doing. It must be. I did it. My own family and the police sure seemed to think so.
Another cycle of guilt and beatings: What if I hadn’t overslept? I would have been there. I would have killed them, or at least died trying. What if?
As I again stared at the graves, more dark thoughts pounced. It wasn’t just the four deceased victims, but the two survivors. Neal, who had shown such potential, as an athlete, as a student, but who always battled inner demons, on disability, trying to recover at our mom’s house, was put over the edge by the tragedy. Even years after the event he would say, “Every time I have to talk about it I see it all again.”
And what plagued me devastated Ivan. If I felt derelict in upholding the family creed, Ivan couldn’t face himself. “I wasn’t responsible, Uncle Kermit,” he said repeatedly. “I wasn’t responsible.” No matter how we stressed that hiding in the closet saved his life, that had he not, there would have been five victims, not four, Ivan beat himself up. Like survivors of any tragedy, he couldn’t understand why he lived and others died. “Why did they kill them?” he asked. “They didn’t do anything.”
Near dawn, my head became heavy then fell to the side. Finally I gave in, stretched out on the grass, and fell asleep.
13
THE MAYOR WANTS TO SEE YOU
AS SUMMER TURNED to fall, and the Santa Ana winds blew the hot desert air off the Mojave and into the Los Angeles basin, the cause of the murders remained a mystery. Weeks had now passed, and a sense of dread infected South Central.
Despite all the conflicting rumors, most residents continued to
believe that the killers were local and therefore still within.
No longer were doors left unlocked. Bars began appearing on more doors and windows. Neighbor peered at neighbor with suspicion. Community time was curtailed.
In an effort to understand the tragedy, longtime Angelenos began dredging up the city’s most notorious crimes for purposes of comparison. Most commonly they invoked the Manson family murders. Los Angeles County District Attorney Ira Reiner would do so explicitly, emphasizing “the degree of monstrosity” found in both cases.
In the August 1969 killings, armed invaders slaughtered innocents within their Benedict Canyon home. Celebrity was also an issue in the Manson murders, as the actress and wife of director Roman Polanski, Sharon Tate, was one of the five killed. The night following the Tate killings, another couple, the LaBiancas, were tied up and murdered in their Los Angeles home. The motive was elusive and for months the crimes remained unsolved. Finally, the case was broken and the bizarre motive unwound as the prosecution showed that the seven murders were part of cult leader Charles Manson’s plans to ignite a race war and eventually rule the world.
In our case, like the Manson murders, the crime was highly atypical, with detectives stymied: a home invasion homicide in which blameless victims were killed at close range. As detectives in the Manson investigation suspected that the controversial director Polanski was the source of the hit, here they continued to question whether the known personality lay at the heart of this case.
Likewise, others referenced another notorious murder case that had just recently made its way back into the news. On August 24, 1984, Louisiana-born author Truman Capote died in Los Angeles of an overdose of pills, in the home of his friend Joanne Carson, ex-wife of Johnny Carson. Capote’s death, occurring the same week as the Alexander family murders, raised discussions of the similarities to the crime portrayed in his 1965 “nonfiction novel,” In Cold Blood.
The Valley of the Shadow of Death Page 9