* * *
On Tuesday, November 4, 1986, Californians went to the polls. Incumbent governor George Deukmejian—unlike the nail-biter of 1982—won an easy rematch against Mayor Tom Bradley. Deukmejian ran a tough-on-crime law-and-order campaign in which he declared himself “the leading advocate for crime victims in our state.” Deukmejian also aligned himself with other popular issues involving crime and punishment in California.
At the time, the death penalty experienced record-high approval in the state, with 85 percent of those polled expressing support. Deukmejian promised voters that if they reelected him and ousted three liberal justices opposing capital punishment, he would appoint judges reflecting the public will.
By a large margin voters gave the governor his wish. Chief Justice Rose Bird was removed from office. Appointed chief by Governor Jerry Brown in 1977, Bird became a lightning rod over her opposition to the death penalty. In what came to be known as Bird’s “box score”—with sixty-one reversal votes in the sixty-one capital cases that crossed her desk—the chief justice failed to uphold a single death sentence. Also removed from the bench were Brown appointees Joseph R. Grodin and Cruz Reynoso, both of whom routinely voted with Bird in reversing capital convictions. Grodin was voted out by a margin of 57 to 43, Reynoso 60 to 40, and Bird an overwhelming 67 to 33. Before the November 4, 1986, election, no justice had been removed since the state constitution’s amendment in 1934.
From the start, the campaign for Bird’s ouster was hypercharged, with Deukmejian railing against her at nearly every campaign stop. Since her narrow escape on the 1978 ballot, conservatives eagerly sought her removal. Bird, on her part, highlighted her “backbone” and “integrity,” stressing an independent judiciary’s duty to cast votes in line with principles of justice when faced with mounting and hostile political pressure. Bird went after President Reagan’s attorney general, Edwin Meese III, calling him a right-wing “bully boy” who was out to get her. She castigated Governor Deukmejian, claiming that he was impatient for executions and wanted to turn the Supreme Court of California into a “house of death” for his own political gain.
But the face of the campaign became Marianne Frazier, the mother of a murdered twelve-year-old girl. In television commercials Frazier sat next to a framed picture of her daughter and asked voters to remove the justices who had overturned the killer’s death sentence. A political consultant active in the effort to remove the three liberal justices stated, “Too much attention has been paid to the needs of the criminals and not enough consideration has been given to the victims and the general public.”
Following the ouster, Governor Deukmejian elevated conservative justice Malcolm Lucas to chief, and appointed conservative associate justices to fill the slots vacated by Grodin and Reynoso. It was the first time since the Great Depression that a Republican governor had the opportunity to appoint a majority of the California Supreme Court. Death penalty supporters and law-and-order advocates felt they finally had the court to enforce their will.
* * *
One month after the election, on December 7, 1986, Tiequon Cox was returned to the Adjustment Center for a conspiracy to assault staff. After yelling obscenities and threats at the yard gunman, Cox instructed another inmate to start kicking prison staff in order to create a diversion. At that point Cox stated that the rest of the inmates on the yard should rush the security fence and overtake the correctional officers.
This incident foreshadowed one of the most infamous in San Quentin’s history.
32
AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY
DURING THE CAPITAL trial of Darren Charles Williams, “CW,” the prosecutor for the first time revealed the motive behind the killings.
While much of the testimony was familiar from the first two trials—Ida and Delisa placed CW as the shot caller, Lashawn Driver identified Cox and Williams as coming from the house—Williams’s statement to RHD detectives provided the linchpin for the prosecution.
On February 28, 1985, Detectives Crews and Miller followed Williams’s father as he picked up his son in Richmond, California. Williams was then arrested, taken into custody at the Richmond police station, and interrogated. The tape-recorded interview lasted fifty minutes.
It was played for the jury in open court.
Williams spoke in a low, soft voice.
He flew up to the Bay Area from Los Angeles. He borrowed the money for the flight from his mother. He was in the Bay Area at the time working with “disturbed kids and people.”
“I want to know who set you guys up, who you were supposed to hit,” Crews said. “You said you were telling me that this girl that’s crippled was shot at some business establishment. And she’s suing the owner of the business establishment.”
Williams hesitated, then said, “That’s what I heard. I think something like sixty thousand dollars to whoever did it.”
“Sixty thousand to—to shoot her? Did you ever see any of that money? You’re shaking your head.”
“I ain’t never seen none of it—”
Crews cut Williams off.
“Horse is going to take a deal and end up doing a few years in the joint. That little shitbird’s been sitting in county jail talking to everybody. He fuckin’ talked to Kee-Kee. Kee-Kee’s talked to us. He fuckin’ talked to a guy in there who’s doing federal time, getting ready to go to federal time. . . . He says, ‘Hey, I’ll go and testify that Horace Burns told me this.’ And what do you think that Horse is going to do? Horse didn’t do anything. Horse just sat in the van.”
“I didn’t do nothing,” Williams said. “I know I’m going to do some time. I know that.”
“Sure you’re going to do some fuckin’ time.”
“I wasn’t there.”
“You keep saying no, I wasn’t there, and what you’re doing is you’re stopping yourself from getting any possibility of a—a chance or to a deal. What I’m saying is we can talk to the DA and you assist us in this investigation, you won’t get the death penalty. The more you cooperate, the better it looks in his eyes when it comes time for sentencing. So the judge, you know, if he’s got a hard-on for you because four people were killed and two happened to be little kids, what’s he going to do. And this thing about being in jail at the time, that ain’t going to fuckin’ fly. We checked you every way loose before we went out and got the warrant. You weren’t in custody anywhere in this God’s country.”
“I was in jail. I got out that morning. I wasn’t there.”
“Okay, CW, okay, CW. Are you going to help me with trying to find this guy, you’ll give us the name?”
“I don’t know his name. I only know where they went to go get the stuff.”
“Okay, where is that?”
“On Gage and Vermont at the Vermont Club.”
* * *
From the jukebox, James Brown’s “Sex Machine” blasts.
“Get up. Get on up.”
Loud voices and a low ceiling of cigarette smoke hang over the club. Dice are slammed on the bar. The crack of pool balls cuts through the music.
“Get on up. Stay on the scene.”
Off the dance floor, in the shadows, the tables are full. Two men go over a horse racing form. Others slam a round of shots. A woman wiggles in a man’s lap, then inhales deeply. He wipes a bit of white powder from under her nose. He laughs. She giggles. Before the jukebox a mass of people dance.
“Like a sex machine. Get on up.”
A man weaves out onto the floor, carrying drinks, Johnnie Walker Red, Chivas Regal, Seagram’s VO.
It is close to midnight.
“The way I like it. Is the way it is.”
A young woman named Valarie Taylor is celebrating her twenty-first birthday. She dances, takes another drink, continues dancing.
“Right on. Right on. Get on up.”
And she dances some more.
The music pulses, the lights are dim. The pool balls crack. The dice slam. The voices grow louder, drunken, frantic, high.
Glasses clink. A man arrives at a table with a pitcher and fills four glasses. Cheers. The glasses clink. From the bar the dice slam.
“Get on up.”
The dance floor throbs.
Crack. Slam. Smoke. Yells.
Crash at the bar. Broken glass. A fight. Two men throw haymakers.
“Right on. Right on.” The music continues.
A pile of bodies writhes.
“Knife!” someone yells. “He’s got a knife!”
A thud and a crash, as a chair shatters. A table is overturned. Another chair flies into the pile.
No more pool, dice. No more laughter.
Yells, screams. Broken glass.
“Get on up.”
A deafening boom. A gunshot.
Screams, and a rush for the door.
“Shake your moneymaker. Shake your moneymaker.”
Amid broken furniture, broken glass, puddles of ashes and spilled drinks, a young lady lies on the floor, motionless.
“Shake your moneymaker.”
Smoke hangs above her. A lit cigarette lies at her side. It fizzles on the wet floor.
The bar empties. Outside screams, commotion, the sounds of people running.
The jukebox is cut.
The young woman lies still. She tries, but she can’t.
A couple crouches over her.
A woman sobs.
On the floor the blood begins to pool.
Again she tries, but cannot move her legs.
* * *
“You don’t know the guy’s name?”
“I didn’t have nothing to do with it. I didn’t have nothing to do with picking up the money.”
“How much did they get paid for it?”
“I think sixty thousand dollars.”
“Sixty thousand dollars? What did those—what did those two guys do with sixty thousand dollars?”
“I don’t know. I know Fee took and bought a new car around then.”
“We know you ran out right when the first shots went off. And you may have been on your way out or whatever before the first shots went off. I want to know.”
“See, just being there ain’t going to cause me to go to jail, is it?” Williams asked.
“I don’t know. You know, the DAs look at this, you know, a funny way. If you can prove to us that you changed your fuckin’ mind and you were on the way out of the fuckin’ house and wanted nothing to do with it before the second shots were fired, that’s a completely different ball game, you know.”
“See, I real—I don’t really know what, what—I think they were supposed to go in and get the girl and bring her out, and I don’t know what happened then.”
“Oh, by the way, you did hit the wrong house.”
“Yeah.”
“You were two houses away.”
“Well, see, I don’t know what it was about. They went in because, see, like back then I was on cocaine and I was going through a lot of changes. Fee and Horse was selling cocaine then and Ida and Lisa and me, you know, we were smoking pretty tough then.”
“Did you go into the house at all?”
“I didn’t—I didn’t even go into the house. I got up to the porch and turned around.”
“You’re saying you never went into the house.”
“See, as I know it—”
“It don’t really make any difference whether you went into the front porch or into the house because you didn’t pull the trigger is what I’m trying to tell you, Darren.”
“Yeah, but I just—I just can’t, you know, at night and stuff, I can’t even sleep, just—”
“Oh, I can imagine. I can imagine. I believe you. Suddenly I believe every word you’re telling me. That’s got to be one hell of a nightmare to wake up to every night.”
“Well, they talked about it on the way over there quite a bit about how much money they’d make and what they were going to do.”
“Well, see, the thing is, like I told you, you’re helping yourself. And the more information we get to get this Jack, it helps you a hell of a lot more, every goddamn word we can get to Jack on.”
* * *
Crews testified that while a background investigation was conducted on Jack and the Vermont Club, no one from LAPD ever talked to Jack.
Crews went to the Los Angeles Police Commission, because any establishment that sells liquor, has pool tables, jukeboxes, music, dancing, must be cleared.
He went to the Vermont Club, located at 6209 South Vermont, and checked back through the ownership records. In the 1970s, Jettie Young held the license, and it was called Jet’s Place.
In 1980, the location was purchased by a man named Ossie James Jackson, who held it through December 1984. Background records showed Jackson to have prior arrests for gambling, bookmaking, and various other vice-related matters. He was known as “Diamond Jack” and the owner of the Vermont Club. He lived at 6207 South Vermont, the apartment above the club.
Crews interviewed a young lady named Valarie Taylor who lived at 136 West Fifty-Ninth Street, two doors west of the Alexander house at 126 West Fifty-Ninth Street.
The prosecution put into evidence as Exhibit A a copy of the lawsuit that was filed by Valarie Taylor against Ossie Jackson and Jack’s Vermont Club on April 4, 1984, six months after she was shot and paralyzed in the club.
The complaint asked for general damages of $1 million, medical and related expenses in the amount of $30,000, and future medical and related expenses in the amount of $100,000. Finally, lost wages and lost earning capacity in the amount of $1 million, for a total of $2,130,000.
Included in the exhibit was an answer to the complaint, which in general terms denied the allegations. The answer was filed on September 5, 1984.
* * *
A used-car dealer, from El Monte, California, Cesar Rodriguez testified that on September 1, 1984, the day after the murders, CW came to his lot with his wife, Cheryl Howard. CW paid $1,500 in $100 bills for a Datsun 280Z. The $100 bills came from a big wad that CW pulled out.
Lisa Brown told the police that she heard that CW spent over $40,000, but now he was broke.
* * *
Williams’s defense stressed his crack cocaine addiction, and its effects on his personality.
Dr. William Vicary performed a psychiatric evaluation of Williams, who said he smoked half an ounce a day in 1984, and dealt the drug to support his habit.
During this time Williams lost about forty pounds, because cocaine, a stimulant, acts as an appetite suppressant.
Other effects included hyperactivity, anxiousness, irritability, and aggressiveness. Williams sometimes went several days in a row without sleep.
The doctor testified that “if you have been using it on a regular basis over a long period of time, it causes mental deterioration . . . significant impairments in your judgment, your impulse control, and your overall social functioning.”
Williams stated that he became “more and more socially isolated, more suspicious, more frightened of other people, even sometimes paranoid, thinking that people were following him.”
Williams said it was his heavy cocaine abuse that caused his erratic and uncharacteristic behavior.
* * *
Sterling Norris argued that Williams was guilty beyond premeditated murder; he was guilty of a “mass execution.”
Lisa Brown, Norris said, heard one of them say that “we are going to kill everyone in the house.”
“And CW and Fee came walking toward the Alexander house, and in a matter of minutes they walked away again,” and “four dead bodies were left. Get a first-grade pupil,” Norris said, and then “what was the intent?”
In emphasizing CW’s role, Norris continued with the Nazi analogy: “CW is Himmler, Goebbels, or Hitler himself, in relation to commandeering this operation. He arranged it, engineered it, of the Nazis he is wearing the commander’s hat. He puts Fee into Ida’s house, into the van, and into the Alexander house. He’s the
man, he summoned everybody.
“They are arranging this thing. And what do they need? They need the executioner. They need Fee. CW is the commander and Fee and Horace his foot soldiers.”
It was CW who set “this mission in motion.” “CW was the one anxiously moving about the van, hunched up front, looking at the piece of the torn brown paper bag with the address written on it. CW told Horse to stay in the van to keep the girls from driving away when they heard the shots.”
As to the motive:
“That morning none of the three had a cent, and then within twenty-four hours both were buying cars with cash, peeling the money off from large wads, and who knows how much additional money was there. CW had new clothes, and doled out money to Ida and Lisa.
“Can you imagine killing four people and then walking in and taking the money and counting out the dollars for how many for Ebora, how many for Dietra, how many for the two little kids? That was their blood money that they got for this execution.
“I will have to grant all three of them, they are the bottom part of humanity.”
And never, Norris said, did CW show any remorse. First, not there, then when confronted with the evidence, he was just in the van along for the ride. Then he said, “It could be Little CW, I mean it don’t have to be me.”
He kept lying and changing his story, trying to avoid culpability.
“Tiequon Cox would never have walked in that doorway . . . never would have executed Ebora, Dietra, Damon, and Damani. You can call Mr. Cox a rabid dog. Then what is the man that sets the rabid dog loose?”
* * *
Williams was defended by an African-American father-and-son team, H. Clay Jacke and Jacke Jr. Jacke Sr. was an experienced criminal defense attorney who practiced into his eighties. Junior would later be appointed a Superior Court judge in Compton by Governor Jerry Brown.
The two Jackes argued that CW was not “the brains” behind the crime. “The brains,” they argued, “walked out of this courtroom in an expensive suit the last time she testified.”
The Valley of the Shadow of Death Page 23