Speaker 1: Meaning a light man like this man letting butterfly flapping
Speaker 1: his wan big down in the forest.
Speaker 2: Man, it gonna cause the tree fold, letting five thousand
Speaker 2: miles away. Man, nobody seen.
Speaker 1: It, nobody else. You don't need to know.
Speaker 2: Man, you followed another story and.
Speaker 1: You got back in like that. That's win. Man go
Speaker 1: black and dag on the panea man, Man, you don't
Speaker 1: don't better Manny.
Speaker 2: All right, Thomas, welcome back to the Jay Burden Show.
Speaker 1: How you doing man hovering on? Well? Thanks for hosting me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Man, I really enjoyed our last episode, uh, digging
Speaker 2: into the Zebra murders for all the reasons I laid
Speaker 2: out last time. But we've been talking a little bit
Speaker 2: about where we're gonna keep going from here over the
Speaker 2: same case, and uh, I'm really excited to hear your
Speaker 2: thoughts on it. So without further ado all, I'll hand
Speaker 2: you to Flora. Thomas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, buddy. And it's a grim subject matter,
Speaker 1: so I want the sub should bear that in mind.
Speaker 1: I don't dwell in. It grewsome details, but some of
Speaker 1: them are materially relevant because this was a really horrible case,
Speaker 1: you know, And uh, I mean that goes without saying,
Speaker 1: but the brutality of it was part of a wider
Speaker 1: tactical paradigm. And like we were talking about poor One Live,
Speaker 1: this needs to be understood as essentially a political program
Speaker 1: on the part of ni and I view the Death
Speaker 1: Angels as not being purely schismatic. I mean, don't get
Speaker 1: me wrong. I think there was a spontaneous aspect to
Speaker 1: them developing this incredibly violent direct action tendency. But I
Speaker 1: think the rank and file leadership of ni knew what
Speaker 1: was going on, and they exploited that to tactical effect
Speaker 1: or attempted, do you know. And there's too much People
Speaker 1: have a tendency to suggest that there's not any sort
Speaker 1: of sophistication the Black revolutionary activity, and that's not true
Speaker 1: because there is, okay, at least within bounded parameters. And
Speaker 1: it became clear, I believe, reading between the lines, or
Speaker 1: it becomes clear the core of what became the Death Angels.
Speaker 1: There were men who'd done time together in San Quentin
Speaker 1: and that Cadres referred to as the San Quentin Mosque,
Speaker 1: and that wasn't accidental, you know. And uh, the loft
Speaker 1: of the Black Self Help moving company where the Death
Speaker 1: Angels held their meetings, which became their headquarters. There were
Speaker 1: a number of U n O Y ministers who would
Speaker 1: address their cadre meetings who were not from that San
Speaker 1: Quentin milew and who didn't have criminal background, you know,
Speaker 1: and that wasn't accidental, you know. Like I said, I
Speaker 1: I kind of look at this in sort of as
Speaker 1: as a rough analogy, sort of like the relationship with
Speaker 1: the shankle butchers to the rank and file UVF very
Speaker 1: very much the use of serial murder as a as
Speaker 1: a as a tension strategy and as a terroristic method,
Speaker 1: you know, and there was a there, there was a
Speaker 1: wider strategic objective of evental y than than simply to
Speaker 1: lash out and kill white people. There was a method
Speaker 1: to that. And you've also got to think about what
Speaker 1: was going on in the era, you know, and the
Speaker 1: San Francisco was kind of up for grabs politically, unlike
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, you know, and that's why that's why California
Speaker 1: took center stage so much in the sixties and seventies,
Speaker 1: you know that it really was there. There was a
Speaker 1: massive influx of capital, There's a huge movement of people,
Speaker 1: you know, after the Second World war there, media infrastructure
Speaker 1: was being built up there exponentially, which was changing everything.
Speaker 1: So NY had a sense that they could capture San Francisco.
Speaker 1: You know, it turned it into a black run city,
Speaker 1: and uh that kind of become the new mecca in
Speaker 1: lieu of Chicago, because Chicago is always a black stronghold.
Speaker 1: But uh, Chicago's very locked down and Chicago was very
Speaker 1: much an old school city, you know. So I mean
Speaker 1: black black power base. They're well robust. It's always going
Speaker 1: to be limited within certain parameters, especially back then, you know.
Speaker 1: So the the idea was that these high incident felons
Speaker 1: from San Quentin who are habituated to racial violence, because
Speaker 1: San Quentin back then was like a powder kid, you know,
Speaker 1: the Aryan Brotherhood came out of San Quentin, and I
Speaker 1: mean the Arian brother today. I've never been to the penitentiary,
Speaker 1: thank god. The comrades you have, especially dudes on time
Speaker 1: on the West Coast. The way they've explained it to
Speaker 1: me is that the Arian Brotherhood now is is a
Speaker 1: is just a gang bang and they sling dope. But
Speaker 1: back then they formed as a as a defensive cadre
Speaker 1: because when the California system was integrated by force, you know,
Speaker 1: white for the minority, and they were getting whacked on site.
Speaker 1: So the Arian Brotherhood took the strongest white cons and
Speaker 1: if you wanted to get branded, you you basically had
Speaker 1: to waste a black person. You know. It was blood
Speaker 1: and blood out. Okay. So these black guys in who'd
Speaker 1: been doing time there, they were used to this kind
Speaker 1: of three way race war with the Spanish and with
Speaker 1: the whites, you know, so presumably that you know, they
Speaker 1: were sort of perfect for forming the core of a
Speaker 1: of a race war cadre on the street. You know.
Speaker 1: So you've got to put yourself in the epoch as
Speaker 1: to understanding the tactical mindset of these people, you know,
Speaker 1: and that's important, you know, like we've talked about before,
Speaker 1: despite the sort of narrative of the contrary and media,
Speaker 1: the California is not this liberal state on the street
Speaker 1: where everybody mixes freely. I lementitary Caagua, which is known
Speaker 1: for you know, segregation and things. And I find there
Speaker 1: to be a palpable tension in California between the races.
Speaker 1: You know that it's it was very much ground zero
Speaker 1: for these things. And like I said, also it was
Speaker 1: it was summed up for grabs. What unraveled with the
Speaker 1: zebra killings. I'm not being flipping about this, but one
Speaker 1: of the things that undermined and ultimately did in this
Speaker 1: sort of intended terroristic model of political action, a lot
Speaker 1: of these guys were there were just psychos, or they
Speaker 1: were in it because they were killed freaks, or they
Speaker 1: were finding ways to profit, you know, basically by murdering
Speaker 1: and robbing people and then telling the higher ups that
Speaker 1: you know, it was these people were fair targets. And
Speaker 1: to be clear too, it was a big prohibition that death.
Speaker 1: Angel's rape was absolutely prohibited, as was theft, you know,
Speaker 1: under presumably under pain of execution. But these guys started
Speaker 1: doing things, you know, they started uh spontaneously, is for
Speaker 1: raping women. They started whacking people who weren't even white
Speaker 1: and then robbing them and saying like, oh, it's distance.
Speaker 1: I thought he was a white man, you know. And
Speaker 1: we'll get into that, but you know, and I there
Speaker 1: there is an internal logic too, if you're trying to
Speaker 1: form a direct action cadre of of of looking to prisoners,
Speaker 1: you know, because there are people behind the wall who
Speaker 1: don't belong there, and they're are political reasons, you know,
Speaker 1: like the area nations used to do that. Obviously they'd
Speaker 1: exclude you know, anybody who was doing that for sex
Speaker 1: offenses was obviously categorically precluded. But the you know that
Speaker 1: that that's a dangerous proposition in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: because a lot of people are in prison you know,
Speaker 1: actually do belong there. I mean, like I I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't think kind of tentiaries aren't a good solution
Speaker 1: to these things. But the point is a lot of
Speaker 1: these people actually are with the period be and you know,
Speaker 1: the in conditions of peace or I mean in additions
Speaker 1: short of war, this becomes a problem, you know, whether
Speaker 1: they're nations ran into that, the loyalists like the uv
Speaker 1: F and the u d A ran into that sort
Speaker 1: of the provos on the Fanian side, particularly the Irish
Speaker 1: National Liberation Army and the i p O like that
Speaker 1: was real problem for them because they were they were
Speaker 1: feared on the Belfast Street, but they also were a
Speaker 1: bunch of a bunch of kill freak bandits, you know,
Speaker 1: and that that's you know, but what else you know, again,
Speaker 1: in conditions other than warfare, what what is your litmus test?
Speaker 1: And what how do you evaluate somebody's performance and then
Speaker 1: in those capacities, you know, you're you're limited in how
Speaker 1: you can and how you can code for those things. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that that was part of it.
Speaker 1: And also there's certain uh, there's there, you know, and
Speaker 1: being totally objective, I don't I don't think reasonable people
Speaker 1: would suggest otherwise when I say there's certain pathologies in
Speaker 1: in the black community, especially up north, that that lends
Speaker 1: itself to discipline problems. To be delicate about it, you know,
Speaker 1: and the mentioned material I think was not the best
Speaker 1: you know, uh and uh balls in the absence of brains,
Speaker 1: door simplify it always leads to bad outcomes. But bringing
Speaker 1: it back, uh, I think we I think we concluded
Speaker 1: last time sort of getting into the timeline of because
Speaker 1: there was two phases of the zebra killings from autumn
Speaker 1: to from October to December seventy three, and then they
Speaker 1: they jumped off again in January to about March is
Speaker 1: seventy four. But the first zebra killing, the first attributed
Speaker 1: to the Death Angels as part of this campaign. It
Speaker 1: was on October twentieth, nineteen seventy three. It was an
Speaker 1: attack on a married couple Richard and Keita hag h
Speaker 1: Ague like the Hague. They lived on Chestnut Street in
Speaker 1: the three hundred block, which was a you know, a
Speaker 1: prosperous area. You know. Richard and Keita were on after
Speaker 1: dinner walk through their neighborhood. Richard Haig was thirty. He
Speaker 1: was some kind of engineering type who was working out
Speaker 1: of a San Francisco office of a of a Utah
Speaker 1: mining concern. And his wife was a journalist. You know,
Speaker 1: they were I think he was thirty and she was
Speaker 1: twenty seven or twenty eight, you know, uh, very solid
Speaker 1: citizen types. You know. They're walking on Chestnut Street literally,
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of blocks from their home, and
Speaker 1: uh they get accosted by uh three black men, two
Speaker 1: on one side of the sidewalk, a third on the
Speaker 1: other side, and then their wheel man who was driving
Speaker 1: a panel van, which uh they uh that that was
Speaker 1: employed in a lot of these a lot of these murders.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 1: It kind of became this mobile slaughterhouse. They were accosted.
Speaker 1: You know, they said something like this is a robbery.
Speaker 1: Because Richard survived with horrible injuries. You know, one of
Speaker 1: the men drew a gun, you know, uh As Keida
Speaker 1: tried to run the man who had the gun trained
Speaker 1: her husband said come back up here, I'll kill him,
Speaker 1: you know. And again at this point they thought that
Speaker 1: they were just gonna be you know, robbed or whatever.
Speaker 1: They got ordered into the back of the van, you know.
Speaker 1: Minutes later they were tied up and restrained with twine
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, the subjected to a brutal pistol
Speaker 1: whipping and beating. They ended up driving to this rail
Speaker 1: yard near the Central Basin. Richard and Keta were unloaded.
Speaker 1: Keito was uh chopped with a machete on the neck
Speaker 1: so severely that she was almost decapitated, and blessedly she
Speaker 1: apparently she died almost instantly. Richard was beaten and hacked
Speaker 1: with the machete, the same machete, but miraculously he survived.
Speaker 1: Discovered later, uh, there were polaroids taken of the victims
Speaker 1: where the faces of uh their attackers were clearly visible.
Speaker 1: And obviously this uh, this didn't make sense at versus
Speaker 1: the police, but then they realized what it, you know,
Speaker 1: was revealed what the death Angels were. Obviously they were
Speaker 1: doing what they had to do to get to get
Speaker 1: credit for the for the bodies they dropped. And Larry
Speaker 1: Craig Green he's the one who killed Keita Haig, and
Speaker 1: he was known for being a stone called killer who
Speaker 1: had just a pathological hatred of white people, you know.
Speaker 1: And when apparently on the ride to the to the
Speaker 1: murder site, he'd say it like the woman's mind because
Speaker 1: I'm getting my wings his rappi Uh. Jesse Lee Cooks
Speaker 1: he'd tried to get credit for the murder Richard to Haig.
Speaker 1: When it became clear that Haig survived, Cooks kind of
Speaker 1: became he he kind of begain viewed as a weak
Speaker 1: link by his comrades and the death of angels, you
Speaker 1: know who didn't deliver. It's like, okay, first of all,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's like, you know, it's like the
Speaker 1: rest of your rap. He's a killed women or children,
Speaker 1: you know, showing that they they got no fucking remorse.
Speaker 1: It's like you attacked a man. He didn't even do
Speaker 1: the job correct. And Cookes was kind of a loose canon. Anyway,
Speaker 1: he later caught it. He later caught charges because he'd
Speaker 1: spontaneously just raped this woman named Karen Linder and uh,
Speaker 1: like saying all kinds of crazy stuff to were like
Speaker 1: he assaulted her and like held her hostage for a
Speaker 1: couple of hours, like typical like shit bag rapo stuff,
Speaker 1: and then uh before he let her go, I mean,
Speaker 1: thank god, even kill her. But he inexplicitly let her go,
Speaker 1: and apparently he said to her like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I know that, like I forced myself on you, but
Speaker 1: you know we had a really good time. Like I
Speaker 1: think maybe I'll call you and we can go out sometime,
Speaker 1: you know, like just a total I mean, nothing funny
Speaker 1: about this, but you know he was he was a
Speaker 1: weak link. And uh after he raped for that woman,
Speaker 1: he'd uh he'd blasted uh a cod pulling into the
Speaker 1: college parking lot, uh, like the UFC Extension campus. I
Speaker 1: think I'll get into the specifics in a minute, assuming
Speaker 1: I took notes on it. But he like blasted her
Speaker 1: and broad daylight get picked up immediately, and then you know,
Speaker 1: he he gets made for coming this rape as well.
Speaker 1: So I mean, he he was a perfect example of,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, the kind of weak links that develop
Speaker 1: when you know, you build a cadre out of people
Speaker 1: you know from the prison system. But but this, this
Speaker 1: this wasn't just a one off like the death Angels. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: dozens of photographs and murder victims were discovered, you know,
Speaker 1: and uh like uh like, like I said, this is downplayed,
Speaker 1: but in the seminal book on the subject by a
Speaker 1: guy named Clark, the books just called zebra, you know it.
Speaker 1: Uh there there is reason to believe there were as
Speaker 1: many as seventy or eighty victims statewide, if not as
Speaker 1: many as one hundred and thirty, which is pretty horrifying.
Speaker 1: But ultimately, uh, Richard Haig, uh he uh, he was
Speaker 1: able to make his way back to the back to
Speaker 1: the road, and ultimately a couple, John Badenberg and his
Speaker 1: wife Beverly, they're driving westbound on twenty fifth Street, and uh,
Speaker 1: they found Haig staring on the street, you know, covering
Speaker 1: blood with the you know, his neck mutilated. It was
Speaker 1: miraculous that he survived, and you know what, he would
Speaker 1: have became clear that he hadn't been robbed or anything.
Speaker 1: And when he relayed, he didn't suffer any substantial brain damage,
Speaker 1: which is also miraculous. When he relayed what his attackers
Speaker 1: were saying to each other, the police started to develop
Speaker 1: a picture of what what had happened, and you know this,
Speaker 1: This is sort of when the local government, city government
Speaker 1: went into you know, full censorious mode, fearing as they did,
Speaker 1: that this would result in a general race wars, as
Speaker 1: was the intention of the Death Angels and the NI
Speaker 1: and one of the ways that this CODR was able
Speaker 1: to carry on the way that it did, and also
Speaker 1: anecdotally suggesting that there was deeper coordination and collusion between
Speaker 1: the above board above Ground n Y and the Death Angels.
Speaker 1: After these murders were carried out, including the murder of
Speaker 1: Keta Haig, there was another number of there's a number
Speaker 1: of above Ground NY congregants who lived in the Hunter's
Speaker 1: Point section of the bay, including uh, this one woman
Speaker 1: that uh one of the Death Angels is briefly married
Speaker 1: do and uh they'd apparently use their house as something
Speaker 1: of a safe house. And after the after the attacks
Speaker 1: on Richard and Keita Hag, they sped over there. You know,
Speaker 1: the men showered and washed off, burned their clothes, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, presumably presumably these civilian contacts, I don't know,
Speaker 1: Y weren't availed two details about about these homicides, but
Speaker 1: you know, they also was clear that they were not
Speaker 1: to ask questions you know, fairly sophisticated stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: and this becomes even more sort of clear what the
Speaker 1: organizational mechanism was here, you know, decades before the original
Speaker 1: NY presence in in the Bay Area, it was mostly
Speaker 1: guys from Texas. Interestingly where and down in Texas. They
Speaker 1: really they were basically left alone. They weren't harassed by
Speaker 1: the authorities because whatever tensions that are in Texas, people
Speaker 1: who Texas is fairly tolerant of people who have unusual
Speaker 1: religious ideas, so long as they're not you know, it's
Speaker 1: as long as they're not not not disturbing others.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: That's one of the reasons why the branch Davidians at
Speaker 1: a home there, you know. And it was it wasn't
Speaker 1: local UH police who who came after them, you know,
Speaker 1: it was cowboy ATFU n FBI men who we're looking
Speaker 1: for a raison detra to justify their domestic UH terrorism
Speaker 1: enforcement budget. But uh, you know, point being, they but
Speaker 1: there wasn't a lot of potential down there either, you know,
Speaker 1: especially because black black political power rather than in a
Speaker 1: very ghetto wise capacity. He was a non starter. So
Speaker 1: a lot of these initially these that NI sent these
Speaker 1: they called them the young Turks. They sent these guys
Speaker 1: to the Bay area, you know, who set up the
Speaker 1: first NI mosque there and who then many of whom
Speaker 1: became sort of the conduit between NI leadership and the
Speaker 1: Death Angels, one of whom was one of whom was
Speaker 1: uh and his is basically criminal tendencies that he he
Speaker 1: couldn't see too a shoe, you know, led to the
Speaker 1: police tying together would have otherwise been an apparently unrelated
Speaker 1: uh set of discreet incidents. But so that shows as
Speaker 1: how cold these guys were too. Larry Green, who when uh,
Speaker 1: he he was the guy who he was one of
Speaker 1: the he was one of the four who was UH
Speaker 1: president when the Haiggs were hacked and when when Keita
Speaker 1: Haig was killed, she had uh some sort of ornate
Speaker 1: ring on it was a gold ring with that thing
Speaker 1: an emerald or a sapphire embedded in it, and uh
Speaker 1: one of the Death Angels apparently gave it to his fiance,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, just as like a gift, you know,
Speaker 1: which is really fucking ghoulish, you know, not not just
Speaker 1: taking a trophy, but uh from a murder victim, then
Speaker 1: you know, giving it to your girlfriend. I don't know
Speaker 1: that that really stuck out to me. But uh, the uh,
Speaker 1: the first sort of break, as it were, the first
Speaker 1: indication that there was some sort of organizational pattern to
Speaker 1: what was underway. October thirtieth was ten days ninety seventy three.
Speaker 1: It was ten days after the the the attack on
Speaker 1: the Higgs. The Oricia, California Extension campus. It was only
Speaker 1: a block apparently from where Jesse League Cooks lived, you know,
Speaker 1: and he's the guy who botched the murder of Richard
Speaker 1: Haig and thus didn't get his wings. So he developed
Speaker 1: that bright idea that you know, there's this there's this
Speaker 1: large double gate that would allow students in and out
Speaker 1: of the campus, you know, when they presented an ID
Speaker 1: or whatever. So cook says he'd walk by. You know,
Speaker 1: he decided he could he could blast a white person,
Speaker 1: you know, and when they were stopped at the gate
Speaker 1: and then uh, you know, make it make a quick getaway.
Speaker 1: But of course, uh, you know, the the Extension campus
Speaker 1: was only they didn't have a night program, so you'd
Speaker 1: be doing this in in in light a day, which
Speaker 1: is exactly what he did. A lady named Francis Rose,
Speaker 1: you know, who was an older student. I think she
Speaker 1: was about thirty. You know, she was just going about
Speaker 1: her life's business, you know, and as she's parked at
Speaker 1: the entrance the Extension Campus parking lot, you know, Cooks
Speaker 1: ran up and shot her in the face four times,
Speaker 1: and me almost immediately, uh, you know, an APB goes out,
Speaker 1: you know for a black man like you know, five
Speaker 1: nine or whatever in an army jacket. Cooks had had
Speaker 1: ditched his army jacket and he'd thrown the piece somewhere,
Speaker 1: I think in a dumpster. But as he's uh making
Speaker 1: his way back to his back to the apartment, trying
Speaker 1: to look uh unassuming, to their credit, a couple of
Speaker 1: police got like a hunch about him. And sometimes police
Speaker 1: hunches are more than just a fishing expedition, you know,
Speaker 1: and they they picked him up, and uh, you know, eventually,
Speaker 1: uh we're able to piece together the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: he was the shooter, and ultimately again he got he
Speaker 1: got id'ed as uh the man who attacked uh Karen
Speaker 1: uh Linder, and they were able to ultimately they were
Speaker 1: able to ultimately piece together what was underway based upon
Speaker 1: a pattern of association. And then you know, a state's
Speaker 1: evidence was ultimately forthcoming from uh Anthony Harre, who got
Speaker 1: full immunity and claimed that despite being present for multiple murders,
Speaker 1: he never pulled the trigger cut anybody's throat, which I
Speaker 1: don't believe. But you know, California became notorious during this period,
Speaker 1: not just for what was viewed as affording excessive protections
Speaker 1: to criminal defend and under auspices of Fourth Amendment privacy
Speaker 1: and the sanctity they were in, but also cutting deals
Speaker 1: with people who had, you know, really horrible culpability, and
Speaker 1: that was viewed as a gross injustice. And that's that's
Speaker 1: where a lot of these movies like The Star Chamber
Speaker 1: and Death Wish and stuff come from. And I don't
Speaker 1: want to go into some sort of polemical rant, but
Speaker 1: I know you still find like maggots types like drop
Speaker 1: this kind of NASA today, like we're gonna get tough
Speaker 1: on crime, like basically since the since the Burger Court era.
Speaker 1: You're like completely fucked. You'll end up in court like
Speaker 1: on a on a felony charge. But uh, there's this
Speaker 1: own narrative of a you know, the course being soft
Speaker 1: on on unforceable felonies. They came out of this era,
Speaker 1: And of course Hankley, you know who shot Reagan, uh
Speaker 1: him prevailing on an insanity defense really kind of fed
Speaker 1: the flames of that narrative. And of course now it's
Speaker 1: literally impossible to prevail on an insanity defense. And to
Speaker 1: be clear, if you're prevailing an insanity defense, you're you're
Speaker 1: basically you're basically looking not like life of up parole
Speaker 1: in a mental hospital. I mean, I that that doesn't
Speaker 1: sound fun to me. I mean, in fact, you California now,
Speaker 1: I I'm trying to think the name the institution a taskadero,
Speaker 1: a Taskadero hospital. You know how in California there, if
Speaker 1: you're if you're a determined to be a mentally disordered
Speaker 1: sex defender, even after you serve your custodial sentence, you'll
Speaker 1: be placed in a testcadaro basically indefinitely unless or until
Speaker 1: you can demonstrate to you know, a medical examiner that
Speaker 1: you're you're no longer a danger. So you're it's basically
Speaker 1: the fact a life's sentence in many cases, you know
Speaker 1: it's not. I'm not saying you just feel bad for
Speaker 1: these people, but I do push back when people claim, oh,
Speaker 1: an insanity defense, you can just say you're crazy. It's like, look, man,
Speaker 1: you do not want to be in a state mental hospital,
Speaker 1: but criminally insane, you really don't. I've seen in Illinois,
Speaker 1: our version of that is is Elgin. It's not it's
Speaker 1: not reserved for sex offenders. It's for criminally insane people.
Speaker 1: And uh, I'm not gonna say it's worse in Cook
Speaker 1: County jail, because nowhere's worse to come County jail. But
Speaker 1: it's like imagine Cook County jail, but also like guys
Speaker 1: shuffling around like like openly masturbating and stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's not really a place want to spend, uh, you
Speaker 1: want to spend decades. But moving on what uh and something?
Speaker 1: Anthony Harris, who you know again, he ultimately he ultimately
Speaker 1: turned state seven and it's and he was one of
Speaker 1: the he was one of the first. He was one
Speaker 1: of the first witnesses just to be put in witness
Speaker 1: protection as we know it now you know, which Uh,
Speaker 1: it became a Department of Justice imperative and a and
Speaker 1: a well funded program. And I'm and this obviously was
Speaker 1: at the the state level, but that that's an interesting
Speaker 1: sort of a bit of triviute to this case. But
Speaker 1: one of the things that Harris uh testified to. He said,
Speaker 1: at his first meeting in uh the loft, or one
Speaker 1: of his first meetings at the loft at the at
Speaker 1: the moving company, you know, it was uh. He said
Speaker 1: that uh An n Oy liaison was there and he
Speaker 1: straight up asked him, you know, would you he says,
Speaker 1: not tell me you would you be would it be
Speaker 1: easier for you to personally kill a white child or
Speaker 1: a white woman? Harris said, He replied, I don't know.
Speaker 1: He was asked, then you know, a white woman or
Speaker 1: a white man, and again he said I don't know.
Speaker 1: He said that this uh he said that the n
Speaker 1: OI minister then said to him, well, I shall tell you, brother,
Speaker 1: it takes a far better man to kill a child
Speaker 1: than a woman, quote, and a better man to kill
Speaker 1: a woman than a man. And he says, anytime you
Speaker 1: think of he says, anytime you hesitate, it's to murder
Speaker 1: a white person. He said, think about the fact that
Speaker 1: you know, the white man used to cut black babies
Speaker 1: out of their mother's wombs and feed them to their livestock,
Speaker 1: you know, very obviously trying to stir up this kind
Speaker 1: of fervor in the minds of these guys, virtually all
Speaker 1: of whom again had been radicalized in San Quentin, and
Speaker 1: sort of provide them with a, you know, a rationale
Speaker 1: for extreme violence, and also provide them with a sort
Speaker 1: of moral alibi that would, you know, to carry through
Speaker 1: with things that they would otherwise find morally and physiologically revolting.
Speaker 1: You know, I mean, even even men with a diminished conscience,
Speaker 1: you know, would tend to bulk at the murder of
Speaker 1: a woman or a child. And that's why this case
Speaker 1: is so disturbing, and most significantly what Harris said. He said,
Speaker 1: at the end of the evening, he was shown, uh, snapshots,
Speaker 1: Polaroid snapshots, you know, on polaroid cameras were new then,
Speaker 1: at least the ones available in the public for the
Speaker 1: youngsters on deck who don't know you'd ste'd snap a
Speaker 1: polaroid picture and immediately then negative would pop out, and
Speaker 1: in those days you have to tear the remove the
Speaker 1: negative from the positive, and then you'd be left with, like,
Speaker 1: you know, a snapshot you just took. Like later by
Speaker 1: the eighties and early nineties, just just like one piece
Speaker 1: photo popped out and it would take a minute to
Speaker 1: develop and you'd shake it because it came out wet.
Speaker 1: But uh, there was dozens of polaroid snapshots of what
Speaker 1: were appeared to be at least actual executions of of
Speaker 1: white victims. And Harris said there were so many that
Speaker 1: he couldn't count them at a glance. He said there
Speaker 1: were He said there were dozens of them. And he
Speaker 1: was told by this UH minister liaison that it's its
Speaker 1: best decapitate your victims, because he said, then there's no
Speaker 1: doubt that you know, you're entitled to credit for a
Speaker 1: for a kill. Now, a man who's essential to the
Speaker 1: death Angels was a guy named J. C. Simon. He
Speaker 1: was convicted of of multiple murders and and and died
Speaker 1: a while doing live without parole. But Simon, he was
Speaker 1: one of the guys from Houston who became one of
Speaker 1: the young Turks and he was instrumental in sort of
Speaker 1: radicalizing this cadre. And he was assigned to Harris when
Speaker 1: Harris got out of prison. And you know, to be clear,
Speaker 1: when Harris got out of prison, he reports to his
Speaker 1: halfway house, which to this day is you know, pro
Speaker 1: lice can't live wherever they want. And within an hour
Speaker 1: of arriving at this halfway house, Harris said he got
Speaker 1: visited by an NY member who told him, look, we've
Speaker 1: got an above board job for you which run by
Speaker 1: our people. That's how we ended up at the self
Speaker 1: out moving company, because that's the job he was assigned to.
Speaker 1: And the NI was a registered you know, they registered
Speaker 1: the IRS as a religious organization, So there's limitations to
Speaker 1: what the state could do in terms of objecting to
Speaker 1: a pro lea being employed there. They can't discriminate cupaciously
Speaker 1: against some religious institutions but not others. So in other words,
Speaker 1: if if people go work for you know, a Salvation
Speaker 1: Army run company, you'd also have to let them work
Speaker 1: for the NY. You know, this was you know again,
Speaker 1: this speaks with a certain sophistication tactically of what of
Speaker 1: what these people were up on. You know that I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people, along with their kind of
Speaker 1: conceptual biases, don't really acknowledged. But the problem with J. C.
Speaker 1: Simon is that he started uh playing very fast and
Speaker 1: loose with with his conduct on the street, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to enrich himself, you know, became very much a
Speaker 1: gangster first and a partisan second. I'll get one to
Speaker 1: what I mean by that in a moment. But Simon
Speaker 1: explained to Harris this way what the mission of the
Speaker 1: Young Turks was. You know, he said, San Francisco has
Speaker 1: become the first n O Y run city in the country,
Speaker 1: not just black run, but n O I run. You know,
Speaker 1: they had a master plan for the gradual acquisition of
Speaker 1: various businesses and you know, in a in at least
Speaker 1: the nominally in above board way. But there there'd have
Speaker 1: to be an attrition model imposed to get the whites
Speaker 1: and the ethnics out, you know, and that's where the
Speaker 1: Death Angels came in, in part because incident to the
Speaker 1: incident to the the race war and the ethnic cleansing
Speaker 1: of the whites. You know, if you can turn San
Speaker 1: Francisco into a into a into a Belfast, a race
Speaker 1: war version of Belfast, you know, not only uh, not
Speaker 1: only can you cleanse your racial enemy, but you know, again,
Speaker 1: like the property values that were nothing in a war zone,
Speaker 1: you know you can you can, you can grab up
Speaker 1: whatever you want and then when the dust settles, you know,
Speaker 1: you you own the capital base of the city, which
Speaker 1: you can then rebuild because there's you know, nobody but
Speaker 1: your own people, Uh, not just populating in the city center,
Speaker 1: but you know, on on the city council and controlling
Speaker 1: the the mayor's office. And you know, then the people
Speaker 1: you got to approach if if you want to be
Speaker 1: availed to, you know, any kind of license or anything.
Speaker 1: You know. So, I mean, it's it's good. It was
Speaker 1: gonna take a decade or two decades to realize, but
Speaker 1: it was a sound plan, you know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: mean sound in the bounty rationality of it. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying it sound for wilding blacks to attack us, obviously,
Speaker 1: but Uh, the problem with Simon was one of the
Speaker 1: things that Harris uh Tern state seven and is on
Speaker 1: him four was the murder of a guy named Salim Ericott.
Speaker 1: Salim Ericott was a Jordanian immigrant and he ran a
Speaker 1: grocery store on Larkin Street. And uh, Simon had gone
Speaker 1: in there just sort of on a lark some weeks
Speaker 1: back to buy an apple and a coffee, and uh,
Speaker 1: it was early in the morning, so he noticed that
Speaker 1: Ericot was counting up the till before he put it
Speaker 1: in the safe, and uh, there was an extraordinarily large
Speaker 1: amount of money there. So Simon got the idea that
Speaker 1: he was gonna rob Ericot and he takes Anthony with
Speaker 1: he takes Harris with him, and he puts it to him. Uh.
Speaker 1: He picks up Harris at the halfway house and he says, uh, hey,
Speaker 1: you got a piece, and Harris says like, yeah, don't
Speaker 1: you have your own. He's like, well, I had to
Speaker 1: lend it out to somebody, so I need your peace
Speaker 1: and uh. Harris realizes the way this is going, but
Speaker 1: he also knows that Simon is a superior in the
Speaker 1: n Y and he also knows that these guys are
Speaker 1: stone called killers, so he hands over his weapon. Simon
Speaker 1: goes to uh Ericot's grocery store and he walks in
Speaker 1: and Ericot's counting the till like he was the other week.
Speaker 1: But then Ericott settles his death for it because he
Speaker 1: says to Simon, he's like, oh, do you want your apple?
Speaker 1: Because he remembered him, you know. And uh so eric
Speaker 1: Coot uh draws down on him, you know, takes him
Speaker 1: in the bag and says, I gotta tie you up,
Speaker 1: you know, say you don't try and follow me. Ericott
Speaker 1: h cooperates. Simon then shoots him in the head, killing
Speaker 1: him instantly. Robs the till, you know, it tells Harris, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, drive drive, you know, and then we got
Speaker 1: to get rid of your piece. So Harris is like,
Speaker 1: why why why did you do that guy? So Simon's like, oh,
Speaker 1: well he was he was a white man, you know.
Speaker 1: So we're we're you know, we were we were carrying
Speaker 1: on the work and the Death Angels and uh so
Speaker 1: then when Harris says like, well, what about the what
Speaker 1: what what about the the till that you just rob,
Speaker 1: He's like, oh, that's that's for our war chest, you know,
Speaker 1: and uh, don't you're not to speak of this, you know, Souse.
Speaker 1: It was clear what was going on here, you know,
Speaker 1: with a lot of this stuff. And that's why, uh
Speaker 1: it took a minute to connect uh the Aracott murder
Speaker 1: as well, because it's you know, why are uh why
Speaker 1: are why why some why some Arab immigrant getting whacked?
Speaker 1: But it became you know, like I said, it wasn't
Speaker 1: just uh, it wasn't just a nominal rationale. I mean,
Speaker 1: race war was the raisin debt for these people, and
Speaker 1: they had a they had a genocidal ascility to whites,
Speaker 1: but they also anybody, I mean, and it was it
Speaker 1: was open to season anybody who wasn't black, you know,
Speaker 1: So I'm getting at And there's always uh, when uh,
Speaker 1: when it becomes permissible to murder people and it becomes normalized,
Speaker 1: you're there, there's always gonna be people who who just
Speaker 1: employ it for the most banal of reasons, literally to
Speaker 1: put you know, money in their pocket. I uh. I
Speaker 1: tried to rather drive that point home to people who
Speaker 1: like like these uh boogie types who watch so much
Speaker 1: TV and they think like the Mafia is awesome or something.
Speaker 1: It's like and more other than not, it's it's guys
Speaker 1: just like whacking people for like a fucking relatively paltry
Speaker 1: paid eight man Like you know, you shouldn't. You shouldn't
Speaker 1: glorify that kind of thing. I you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: wrong and like outlook coded like first laps and all is.
Speaker 1: But there's there's nothing cool about murdering human beings for money.
Speaker 1: You know that there's reasons to kill people, like, don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong, like that's not one of them. But
Speaker 1: you know, Harris, if you believe uh he's a credible witness,
Speaker 1: and I think he basically was, you know, it's clear
Speaker 1: that this is one of the things that it isn't
Speaker 1: a fact. He was obviously shook by, you know, the
Speaker 1: the idea of murdering women and kids. You know, he
Speaker 1: realized that this was not really a job in any
Speaker 1: meaningful sense. And uh, according to him, that was when
Speaker 1: uh he really had the first thoughts of turning the
Speaker 1: state's evidence against UH, who there tofore had been you know,
Speaker 1: his comrades. And he uh, he claimed that there was
Speaker 1: a a lot of people who were situated harristed, you know,
Speaker 1: within the black middle class of San Francisco, who had
Speaker 1: more than an inkling of what was underway. Like when
Speaker 1: when Harris first got his job on parole with uh
Speaker 1: the self help moving company. You know, he said he
Speaker 1: was approached by this guy he'd been a boxer but
Speaker 1: apparently was employed, uh as a high school pe teacher,
Speaker 1: and he was like an ny guy with some standing,
Speaker 1: and so he said, he bonded with this guy over
Speaker 1: you know, boxing. He's like, yeah, I know you're in
Speaker 1: the martial arts and stuff. We should work out sometime.
Speaker 1: So Harris said, he starts working out with this guy,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know he uh he asked him where
Speaker 1: he lived, and when Harro's noticed that he lived in
Speaker 1: a prenominantly white hood. You know. Harris is like, what's
Speaker 1: up with that? And he's like, oh, well, you know,
Speaker 1: he's like, uh, the ny is my religion, but it's
Speaker 1: not my politics.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: He's like, he said, I leave politics to you bad
Speaker 1: ass death angels. It's like, well, that's interesting. You know,
Speaker 1: this guy's like mister and middle class, you know, like
Speaker 1: I fuck with white people and you know, I work
Speaker 1: for the system, but I'm also aware that, you know,
Speaker 1: your cadres a bunch of homicidal mediacs, you know. And
Speaker 1: again it's little things like that that Harris said that
Speaker 1: he'd have nothing to gain by making that up. You know,
Speaker 1: If anything, it made him look worse, not better. And
Speaker 1: it provides a context to some of this stuff I think,
Speaker 1: you know, And like I said, you've got to understand
Speaker 1: the epoch, and you got to understand the way California is,
Speaker 1: Like I don't. And this isn't just me like sticking
Speaker 1: up from my local. Like there's black people who do
Speaker 1: like really savage, awful shit here and I got no
Speaker 1: illusion about that. But something like that, even in the
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, like wouldn't have happened here, you know,
Speaker 1: but people were just on a race war footing then,
Speaker 1: and not just in California. But I'm saying like it
Speaker 1: reached a sort of depraved zenith there, you know, And
Speaker 1: that's one of the reasons why, uh, I think, uh,
Speaker 1: that's one of the reasons why this kind of a
Speaker 1: radicalism within the establishment, you know, like at Berkeley and stuff.
Speaker 1: That that's why that became so normalized, you know, because
Speaker 1: it at the end of the day, the estelishman has
Speaker 1: to take its cues from the body politic otherwise there
Speaker 1: is not gonna be a lingua franca in conceptual terms.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's always true, and that's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why, you know, and again I don't want
Speaker 1: to tangentialize this. That's the reasons why the current administration
Speaker 1: is having real problems now because they they've abandoned that tendency.
Speaker 1: But you know, I so this if this stuff seems
Speaker 1: totally like like we've got to take away from this
Speaker 1: whole situation, it doesn't tell you generally about the state
Speaker 1: of UH race relations at the time, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: even really tell you like what the tenor was of
Speaker 1: of UH. You know, the the racial divide between white
Speaker 1: and black, even under conditions of general hostility, it was
Speaker 1: a sort of self contained thing, you know, and that uh,
Speaker 1: that that's important to account for. But at the same
Speaker 1: time too, it is illustrative people who think race war
Speaker 1: can't happen here. It absolutely can and it has. You know,
Speaker 1: America is big enough, and localism reigns, and often this
Speaker 1: is becoming more pronounced that you can't speak of one
Speaker 1: single circumstance on the ground or whites and blacks are
Speaker 1: gonna smash together under a conditions of a you know,
Speaker 1: periodic or intermittent hostility resulting in in in in warfare.
Speaker 1: But you know it, uh, it does need to be contextualized,
Speaker 1: you know. And I don't uh, I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: think that you know, the like in my lifetime, the
Speaker 1: last time relations between whites and blacks are really really
Speaker 1: bad was the early nineties and when I was like
Speaker 1: a teenager and a young person. And thankfully that's not
Speaker 1: the way things are now. That doesn't mean it can't
Speaker 1: that can't emerge. And but the kind of like diet
Speaker 1: would be different, you know, like I uh, it's more
Speaker 1: complicated now owing to the owing to the number of
Speaker 1: people from the global South who like flooded our borders
Speaker 1: and just like other stuff, you know. And uh I
Speaker 1: uh I maintain you know, like why like like heritage
Speaker 1: Americans and black folks. I don't ever think we're gonna
Speaker 1: have like a warm and fuzzy relationship like in in
Speaker 1: at scale. But uh, you know, we've lived among each
Speaker 1: other for five hundred years. It's the norm. And the
Speaker 1: norm isn't for us to be like engaged in some
Speaker 1: ongoing race war, you know, so I and left to
Speaker 1: their own devices, us and blacks are fine. I mean,
Speaker 1: like I you know it, and the I mean the
Speaker 1: problem these problems are are ultimately approximately derivative from the
Speaker 1: social engineering regime. It's you know, but I mean the
Speaker 1: race relations are complicated, man, you know, like uh we
Speaker 1: did fight of kind of ongoing race war against the
Speaker 1: planes Indianas that never stopped. But there was also there's
Speaker 1: also like this mutual respect there and odd sort of
Speaker 1: cultural exchanges and things. But yeah, we can, uh we
Speaker 1: keep going with this subject matter if you want to
Speaker 1: get into the trial of the for defendants who ultimately
Speaker 1: went down for it, or we can pivot to a
Speaker 1: different subject matter depends what you and the subs want
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would be be interested in just one more
Speaker 2: episode on this case because there's a couple of things. One,
Speaker 2: this is not the point I originally wanted to bring up.
Speaker 2: But you know, when we're talking about the kind of
Speaker 2: you know, as as inflammatory as the sounds, the kind
Speaker 2: of like historic American race wars, obviously, you have the
Speaker 2: kind of scalp Dance era stuff, which is a great book.
Speaker 2: I lent it to a friend of mine and it's
Speaker 2: it's one of the funniest reactions I've ever gotten to
Speaker 2: lending someone a book, which is I he came over
Speaker 2: to my house a day or two after I lent
Speaker 2: it to him. He's like, man, this is insane. I
Speaker 2: can't believe this is real. I'm like, yeah, I know,
Speaker 2: especially because it's all first hand accounts. But then again, right,
Speaker 2: you have the war in the Pacific, which had sort
Speaker 2: of similar a similar tone to it, Right, it was
Speaker 2: very much this kind Yeah, exactly right. You start to
Speaker 2: see a you know, kind of those sort of you know,
Speaker 2: motifs coming back up again. But the reason I want
Speaker 2: to keep going with the trial, and you know, I
Speaker 2: think this is important while we're mentioning this is that
Speaker 2: you know, both the trial and investigation were heavily stage
Speaker 2: managed because everyone everyone was aware of the fact that
Speaker 2: this could be a spark to provoke wider tensions. So obviously,
Speaker 2: you know, during the investigation, before the you know, the
Speaker 2: defendants had been caught, there was a huge negative reaction
Speaker 2: to you know, stopping frisk policies. Very interesting, you know,
Speaker 2: series of reactions to this, even from within the kind
Speaker 2: of like you know, black activist class. If you're up
Speaker 2: for it, Thomas, I'd love to do another episode. I
Speaker 2: this stuff is fascinating.
Speaker 1: Oh no, one hundred percent. Yeah, And I've got I
Speaker 1: got a huge amount of material on the on the trial.
Speaker 1: I've just got to go through it and organize it
Speaker 1: in a meaningful way. And yeah, no again, like I said,
Speaker 1: forgive me, I'm I'm I'm feeling kind of fatigued day
Speaker 1: because I wasn't feeling all over the weekend. But yeah,
Speaker 1: well we'll get into that man in coming days whenever
Speaker 1: you want. And yeah, more than happy to stick with it.
Speaker 1: I just didn't want to make any I don't want
Speaker 1: to be presumptuous on our topical orientation.
Speaker 2: Oh not at all, man, It's been a ton of fun.
Speaker 2: So people can find you obviously on your sub stack.
Speaker 2: I know your new book is going to come out soon.
Speaker 2: It's not yet, but people, I'll be the first person
Speaker 2: to let people know where they can find it. Is
Speaker 2: your YouTube channel still up or do that get taken down? Oh?
Speaker 1: No, it's still up, man. Cool.
Speaker 2: YouTube is such an absolutely awful platform to work. That's
Speaker 2: the only reason I ask, because it is possible.
Speaker 1: They knew some guys, some dude who just sells like
Speaker 1: Chicago land history stuff like not at all political. They
Speaker 1: took his channel down for I guess copyright stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's uh no, that's why I mirror on Rumble,
Speaker 1: So I give it does go down pretty much im
Speaker 1: in the it's a long process because it just takes
Speaker 1: a minute to upload stuff. But I'm mirroring everything on
Speaker 1: YouTube on a Rumble, So if YouTube goes down the
Speaker 1: Rumble site it's gonna be the mirror. But yeah, I uh,
Speaker 1: I set up a Twitter account. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I'm gonna fuck with it or not. But because at
Speaker 1: some point Sue in the book is gonna drop, you
Speaker 1: would finally use it to like plug the book I
Speaker 1: was thinking about. But I'll shout that out later when
Speaker 1: I decide what I want to do with it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you can find my website. Yeah, you can find me
Speaker 1: on a substack was the best place, you know. You
Speaker 1: can find me on YouTube, and yeah, thanks again for
Speaker 1: hosting me.
Speaker 2: Mean, well, sure thing. I'll be sure everything. I'll make
Speaker 2: sure everything is linked as far as my stuff, Jay
Speaker 2: Burdens Show, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, anywhere you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 2: It's what I do. You want to support me, you
Speaker 2: want to support the content, Throw me like five bucks
Speaker 2: a month, Patreon, substack, gum Road, get all the episodes
Speaker 2: a few days early. No ads again, Thomas, it was
Speaker 2: great catching up with you man. This was really fascinating. Anybody,
Speaker 2: everyone at home, keep your head up. Good night,