The Valley of the Shadow of Death

by Kermit Alexander

  The testimony of Ida and Lisa angered Burns on two other counts.

  The first concerned the advice of his attorneys: “My punk ass lawyer said I am not going to beat this case by saying I was not in that van. He said the only way I will beat this case is by saying I was in that van or if C. Dove or Fee say you was not in the van.”

  On his displeasure with his lawyers, he continues, “Now my lawyer are triping they are telling me that the jury is going to celieve those bitches So they want me to say I was in the van and did not know Nothing. But I’m not going to do that cecause they are going to ask me who was in their with you and that’s like snitching which I never would do.”

  A second theme regarding Ida and Lisa’s testimony is Burns’s disbelief that his “homies” on the street had done nothing to prevent “those bitches” from coming to court.

  “And rest of are SoCall homies they aint shit cuzz Nobody did Shit for us just let us go to prison nigas with those checks. Five years from now we would see forgotten by most of are so call homies they did not even try to stop those bitches from coming to court on me.”

  The lack of support by the homies on the street is made clear because “[t]hose bitches did not even move out of the hood.”

  This passage shows the desperation. The romantic dream of being a modern-day highwayman or bandit has come to an end. The code of the street is breaking down. Homies snitch to save their hides. No one comes to the rescue.

  Burns continues: “Now the homies out there on the streets do not give a fuck about us. They just going to watch us hang. Now who is going to take care of us? We are just going to be three homies that fade away in darkness.”

  Burns laments that he would be all alone in prison, stating, “I might go crazy and kill everybody in sight and probly wine up dead my self I can’t see how you are taking this so well cecause I am realy swetting this right now an is real scared.” He continues: “I don’t know what to do cecause I do not have know female that I could get marrie two,” and, “My mother is not going to talk to me no less take care of me, ain’t got no bitch.”

  Now Burns feels the only hope the three have is if one is set free: “When one could see out their making sure the other two is well tookin care of. We can not help each other out by seeing in jail—am serious two of us should set the one free. If you want to cefore all three of us get sent up for the crime.”

  Burns then says to Cox: “I wish their was a way to Set you free you get the job done. I love you homie and would die for you. I know you love me homie those white folks are trying to kill us. Now think about all this we can Not let this fucking DA. Get all three of us.”

  After expressing his love for Cox and fear of the DA getting them, he bemoans what this whole affair was doing to the families of Burns and Cox: “Now forget about the homies for a minute and think about are familys and what they are going threw. It is killing them to even think their sons were involve in something like this.”

  Next, Burns reflects on the bleakness of his situation. “Sometimes I feel like taking my own life but then I don’t because I’m scared of hell.”

  Burns then makes his pitch to Cox to testify that Burns was not in the van: “I’m asking you this cecause I’m the only one that might have a Slim chance.” He continues by analyzing the evidence and indicating to Cox how he can help Burns beat his case: “All we have to do is think Now nobody has seen me at all nor my fingerprints in the house nor James is not saying I new nothing about It. Now here were you come in at by saying Lisa and Ida were involve and I was not in the van. That’s the only way you could spring me is by testifying I was not in that van at all and they got to Release me.”

  Burns tells Cox that if he is released the witnesses will be taken care of and unable to testify against Cox: “They got to Release me and I’m going to get out and show you how a real homeboy do it those bitches family going to suffer for all this and that’s on mom’s. When you come back on appeal I make sure know witness shows up.”

  Finally, Burns assures Cox he will not receive the death penalty because he was not the mastermind in the crime: “You won’t get the gas cecause you did not plan it you was doing what you were order.”

  Other gang members need to be consulted and a strategy worked out: “Now I’m going to talk to C.Dove. Please Show Pochie and Mumbles and Keith Rat and tell me what they think.”

  After expressing his hopes that someone will save him from his fate, Burns concludes the kite, exposing his two conflicting sides.

  “Love you Homie,” he writes to Cox, followed by “don’t See that I’m Just Scard.” Burns then signs the letter “Horse. RSC [Rolling Sixties Crips]. Notorious W/S [West Side] Rollin Sixties. Rich an Rollin Mafia Style.”

  The two sides present a different kind of case, one that takes place inside the young man’s head: Horse v. Horace.

  The fantasy life of Horse: a street soldier with a gang moniker, a warrior fighting to protect his turf. He belongs to something meaningful, he is a reputable member of the notorious Rolling Sixties, gangsters who control Hyde Park, brothers bonded in blood, sworn to secrecy till their dying day. He speaks in coded tongue, flashes underworld hand signs, and flies the blue flag. He plots escape and revenge, scheming to bring the world of the streets crashing into the courtroom to win his freedom. He is feared, respected, acknowledged. He is a Rolling Sixties Crip, rich and rolling, mafia-style.

  The reality of Horace Edwin Burns: He is a scared nineteen-year-old kid recently arrested within his mother’s home, where he still lived. He is unemployed, uneducated, and functionally illiterate. His father left him, and his adoptive family, the black street gang, is disorganized, without any inclination or ability to break him out and secure his freedom. His circumscribed world of a few blocks of Hyde Park has collapsed upon him. Horace is alone and abandoned. According to the street code, he is a snitch, giving up his gang in open court. To society he is simply another cowardly, boasting thug. He is neither rich nor rolling. On the morning of the killing he was unable to conjure two dollars for gas. He now fears that the only one who ever genuinely cared for him, his mother, will finally cut the cord with her murderous spawn. He is caught in the teeth of the law, his future options life without the possibility of parole or the gas. Upon death he fears he will be sent to Hell.

  23

  NOTHIN’ ABOUT NOTHIN’

  WHEN THE TWO women came to court to testify in April 1985, Ida Moore was in her late thirties, Delisa Brown her early twenties. Both bore the scars of crack’s charms.

  Certainly not ideal witnesses: drug addled, uncouth, and with unclean hands.

  This was unsurprising, to be expected.

  The district attorney’s old adage: When the play is cast in Hell, don’t expect the actors to be angels.

  * * *

  It is sometime before 6 a.m. on August 31, 1984. Moore and Brown are awake. They are in Moore’s house on Third Avenue and Sixty-Fifth in Hyde Park.

  The two have stayed up all night partying, smoking crack, while Moore’s husband, Leon, worked the night shift.

  It is still dark outside, and Moore’s children, ages twelve and fifteen, are asleep. Stanley Cheatam, “Cheater,” is crashed out on the couch.

  At some point Darren Charles Williams (C-Dub) and Horse enter the front room. C-Dub speaks with Brown and then goes into the kitchen to make a phone call. C-Dub then returns to the front room, hands Horse his car keys, and tells him to go get someone.

  Moore knew C-Dub as a dope dealer. She was afraid of him. He was “pretty crazy.”

  C-Dub then asks Ida to take him in her van to pick up some money from a girl. The van is a maroon 1975 Chevy.

  Moore agrees, but says she needs money for gas, because the van is empty. C-Dub says he will pay her once they arrive at the girl’s house.

  About ten minutes after being sent out, Horse returns with Fee. This is the first time Moore has met Fee. He wears his hair in French braids.

  Upon Fee’s arrival, C-Dub says,
“Let’s go.”

  They leave Moore’s house. It is now light outside.

  Moore gets in the driver’s seat, Brown gets in the front passenger seat, and C-Dub, Horse, and Fee climb in the back. They sit together on the “built-in bedlike seat” about ten feet behind the front seats.

  Moore has not seen any of the men carrying anything.

  Moore drives north on Third Avenue and stops at Burns’s house. He says he will get some gas money from his brother. Burns gets out and returns a couple of minutes later, stating that his brother did not have any money.

  Moore does not look at Burns upon his return to the van, and does not notice if he has anything in his hands.

  Moore then says she will use her own two dollars to buy gas.

  She drives her van to the corner of Slauson and Western, pulls into the Shell station, gets out of the van, and pumps two dollars’ worth.

  Upon her return she sees a big gun in the back of the van.

  As she pulls out of the gas station, C-Dub comes forward from the rear of the van, kneels between the two front seats, and tells Moore to drive east on Slauson. From Slauson he directs her to West Fifty-Ninth Street.

  As they slow on West Fifty-Ninth, Brown sees C-Dub looking at some writing on a torn piece of a paper bag. He then reads out an address, peers out the window, and says, “There it is.”

  C-Dub tells Moore to stop the van about thirty feet down the street from the house, and keep it running.

  Other than C-Dub’s directions, there is no conversation.

  As the van slows to a stop, C-Dub says, “We are going to go in there, kick in the door, and scare them up, and shoot them up.” Fee and Horse remain silent.

  Moore then hears someone in the back say they are going to kill everyone in the house.

  The sliding door on the passenger side opens. C-Dub and Fee get out. C-Dub tells Horse to stay in the van.

  The motor is running. Horse sits on a pillow behind the driver’s seat. Moore and Brown remain seated in the front. The sliding door is open.

  Fee holds a long gun wrapped in a blue coat. C-Dub pulls an automatic pistol from his waistband.

  Fee and C-Dub walk down the street toward the house. C-Dub walks first and Fee follows.

  Upon seeing the two men with the guns, Moore asks Horse, “What they gonna do?”

  Horse replies, “They just going to shoot it up.”

  Minutes after the two leave the van, shots ring out.

  A couple of minutes after the gunshots, C-Dub runs to the van. He still holds the pistol.

  “Let’s go,” he says.

  “Aren’t you going to wait for your friend?” Brown asks.

  C-Dub does not respond.

  After another minute or two, Fee returns. He still holds the long gun, but no longer the jacket in which the gun was wrapped.

  After Fee gets in the van, he slides the door shut. He and C-Dub tell Moore to drive.

  * * *

  Burns’s jailhouse kite forced the defense to do something they never intended—to put Burns on the stand. So damning was the letter, it left them no choice. They would do their best to spin Burns’s words into something they were not.

  On the stand, Burns, dressed in street clothes, came across as angry and aggressive, and according to his own attorneys, with an off-putting attitude of “Why am I here?”

  Burns denied any knowledge of plans to kill, and stressed his fear of the older C-Dub, that he simply did what C-Dub said without any understanding of a larger goal, and without giving it any thought. Additionally Burns attempted to explain away the incriminating aspects of his letter, stating that he had not sought a violent breakout, or elimination of witnesses, but had merely wanted his homies to come and visit him in county jail.

  Through his testimony, Burns shed more light upon the secret world of the black street gangs, continuing to make statements viewed under the gang code as snitching.

  On direct examination, his trial counsel threw him softballs, while on cross-examination, the prosecutor hammered at inconsistencies as well as his past crimes.

  Burns testified that in August 1984 he hung out at Tenth Avenue and Sixty-Third Street, about eight blocks from his house.

  On Tenth Avenue he was “gangbanging, rolling dice and socializin’ . . . and drinking beer.” At about three in the morning on August 31, Burns went to bed after a night of drinking. Sometime around 6 a.m., CW woke him up, told him to go to Ida Moore’s house around the corner.

  Upon arriving, CW told Burns to drive CW’s Fiat and pick up Fee. Burns got Fee at his house on Seventy-Seventh and Crenshaw and they returned to Moore’s house. According to Burns, CW said he was going to his girlfriend’s house to pick up some money and asked Burns, “Why don’t you ride with us?”

  From this point, Burns’s narrative corresponded with that of Moore and Brown, with the addition of Burns’s repeated comments as to how frightened he was.

  Burns confirmed he could obtain only fifty cents for gas, that CW gave the directions, told Burns to stay in the van, and carried a pistol.

  Burns testified that upon arrival at West Fifty-Ninth Street, “I was surprised. I said, ‘What you doing?’ ” CW answered, “We’re going to scare the people up.” Fee “didn’t say nothing.”

  At this point Fee and CW disappeared. Burns “was scared.”

  Burns said he thought CW was going to kill his girlfriend.

  Shortly thereafter Burns heard eight or nine shots, making him so nervous that he was shaking as he sat inside the van.

  CW then returned to the van and sat on the bed in the rear. CW looked scared.

  Burns then heard a second round of shots. At this point CW, from the rear of the van, said, “Let’s go. Bone out.”

  Fee then returned, threw the rifle on the bed, and closed the door. Fee did not look scared.

  CW again said, “Bone out.”

  CW directed Moore to Vermont and Gage.

  Burns at this point “was so scared and was so in shock, you know, I just didn’t say nothin’.”

  Burns said he then took a bus home, got a forty-ounce beer and “took it to the head,” and then went to sleep. He then went to his mother’s workplace, a nursery school six blocks from his house. He asked her for twenty dollars, and he went over to Tenth Avenue and gambled with the money she gave him.

  Burns said he felt taken advantage of by Fee and C-Dove. Between June and August 1984 Burns said he and Fee were together every day hanging out, “date difference girls . . . go to the beaches . . . go to outings on Friday and Saturday nights like to a skating rink, to the A.M./P.M., to the street races.”

  Burns did not know CW well. He was older, “was like the leader of the Rolling Sixties; and he really, if you don’t do what he say, you’re in real trouble.” CW “called the gang meetings and the shots out there on the streets.” Burns received numerous threats from CW after he learned that Burns had flown the kite.

  Burns concluded with a string of denials. He never boasted about the crime. All the witnesses were liars. He and Fee were friends, but did not engage in gangbanging activities. He did not pick up the pistol and rifle from his house. The kite was simply his way of stating he had nothing to do with the crime. He never received any money in connection with the crime. He planned to sue the city of Los Angeles for false arrest and false imprisonment.

  * * *

  When asked about the Rolling Sixties on cross-examination, Burns described it as “a group of individuals in one neighborhood fighting. Really, it’s like a war. It’s like a small country war.”

  Burns further stated that the gang engaged in robberies, dope dealing, and shootings, but he denied participating in any of these activities. He had been a member for two to three years, but engaged only in gang fights.

  As to his membership Burns stated: “It’s just like—it’s just like I was to socialize with one of them for my protection. I got to get along with the people in my hood. You hear what I’m saying? So I hang out with them.
”

  In trying to defuse the intercepted letter, Burns testified, “The real fact was it was only one person that can go, and that was the person that was completely innocent, and that was me.”

  He said he wanted the letter shown to others because “Fee he don’t think at all, you know. He don’t—his mind don’t register. He just take the demands and follow through with them. He ain’t—he ain’t very bright is what I’m sayin’ and there were older people, probably bright, and they know how to deal with the situation.”

  As to the reason for the crime, Burns testified, “As far as I know, I don’t know nothin’ about no money or nothin’ about no real motive.” He would continue, “There’s nothin’ about no hit, nothin’ about no pay. Nothin’ about nothin’.”

  The prosecutor concluded his cross-examination:

  “In your letter to Fee, Mr. Burns, is there anything in there that you could point out to us in relation to any remorse in relation to the killing of these four people?”

  Burns: “I don’t understand.”

  Norris: “Remorse, being sorry?”

  Burns: “What did you say? No, sir.”

  24

  KILL THEM ALL

  THE PROSECUTOR’S CLOSING argument was filled with emotion, recalling the four victims who would never again awaken.

  Norris stated that the intent to kill everyone in the house had already been formed in the “death van” on the ride over. He termed the killing the “Fifty-Ninth Street Massacre,” arguing that “Nazi storm troopers have done no worse.”

  The van was needed, Norris argued, because it was a “hit vehicle,” easy to get in and out of, unlike CW’s little Fiat. He stressed the horror of the cold-blooded executions and linked them to Burns’s role in the case. He quoted Lisa Brown’s testimony: one of the men in the back of the van said, “We’re going to kill everyone in the house.”

  Norris pounded on the callousness of the killers, Burns’s statement to Cassandra Haynes that the dead children were just “what happens.” Further, Burns boasted of the crime, his role, his involvement in the retaliatory hit team.