The “Zebra killers” were on a rampage–one that showed no signs of ending.
On November 25, 1973, Salem Erakat, a grocer, was found shot in the back of the head in his mom-and-pop market, which lay across the street from the San Francisco Federal Building.
On December 11, a San Francisco resident named Paul Dancik was fatally shot three times as he used a public telephone.
On December 13, Arthur Agnos, a former administrative aide to San Francisco Assemblyman Leo T. McCarthy, was shot and wounded while standing on a street corner, talking to two friends.
He would survive and later serve as Mayor of San Francisco from 1988 to 1992.
Art Agnos
Nancy Pelosi, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
On Christmas Eve, Larry Craig Green and J.C. Simon asked Anthony Harris to help them take some packages to a nearby beach.
“When I unloaded the truck, I recall getting a lot of blood on my hands,” Harris later testified as a witness for the prosecution. He asked Simon and Green what was in the packages.
“They said, it was probably a dog or a cat,” said Harris. Later, he learned that the package had held a human body. But he never learned whose.
Harris helped to dispose of similar packages “about 40-some times.”
Harris was taken along by the “Zebra” killers on several shootings. Later, Harris reasoned: “I guess they thought that, sooner or later, I would join their little clique.”
One night, Harris, J.C. Simon and Manuel Moore parked their black Cadillac near an apartment complex. Simon and Moore got out, leaving Harris in the vehicle.
“The next thing I knew,” said Harris, “I heard a gunshot. Manuel started running from the same area that the gunshot came from.”
Moore and Simon jumped into the car. As the vehicle sped off, Harris saw “what appeared to be a body” lying on the sidewalk.
On another occasion, Harris asked his comrades what had happened after he heard shots ring out.
“Just watch television or listen to the radio, and you’ll see what happened,” one of them said.
Harris learned from the news later on that “somebody had been shot and killed.”
Between killings, Harris and his friends attended regular meetings at the Black Self-Help, the Muslim-owned furniture-moving company in San Francisco.
At some of these meetings, as many as 40 to 50 or more Muslims were present.
Members of the Nation of Islam
“They were talking about killing people,” Harris later testified. Films were shown “of the Watts riots [in 1965] and different riots taking place throughout the past, black people being beaten down by the police and shot.”
The meetings’ participants were asked, “Could we allow this to continue? They said the only way to stop it was to act and be vicious…like the police department.
“That you had to…be able to go out and just deliberately take a baby and smash his head against the wall and kill him and, if you have to, even drink the blood to show how vicious you are.
“And they showed us a large number of pictures” on a bulletin board “of a lot of bald-headed men with little white wings on their necks, and identified each guy as being members of the Death Angels.”
Harris was told that “if I wanted to be a member of the Death Angels, that I’d have to go out and kill people to get some wings.”
Not only was the wearing of a pair of white wings a symbol of belonging to the Death Angels, so was a shaved head.
Only certified members of the Death Angels could enter Muslim temples with shaved heads. Anyone else who entered such a temple with a shaved head “can be killed or put out of the temple for coming in like that.”
“[The Death Angels] is supposed to be a pretty high branch of the Nation of Islam, supposed to be 2,000 people inside it,” Harris later testified.
“And every time you kill a person, you’re supposed to have somebody witness your killing the person for verification when you go back to Chicago,” the national headquarters for the Nation of Islam.
Chicago Headquarters of the Nation of Islam
It was there, said Harris, that the photographs or eyewitnesses had to appear before the prospective Death Angel could receive his winged badge of membership.
“And after you get to killing people,” the Death Angels “give you a pair of wings to put on your neck, and they take a picture,” testified Harris.
“They say you kill four children, you automatically become a captain, or a lieutenant. If you kill five or six women, you become a lieutenant. Or kill nine men, the number of completion, and they give you a rank.”
Extra status was attached to Death Angels who mutilated the bodies of their victims.
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WHEN BLACKS SLAUGHTERED WHITES: PART THREE (OF FIVE)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 17, 2024 at 12:11 amThe “Zebra killers” were on a rampage–one that showed no signs of ending.
On November 25, 1973, Salem Erakat, a grocer, was found shot in the back of the head in his mom-and-pop market, which lay across the street from the San Francisco Federal Building.
On December 11, a San Francisco resident named Paul Dancik was fatally shot three times as he used a public telephone.
On December 13, Arthur Agnos, a former administrative aide to San Francisco Assemblyman Leo T. McCarthy, was shot and wounded while standing on a street corner, talking to two friends.
He would survive and later serve as Mayor of San Francisco from 1988 to 1992.
Art Agnos
Nancy Pelosi, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
On Christmas Eve, Larry Craig Green and J.C. Simon asked Anthony Harris to help them take some packages to a nearby beach.
“When I unloaded the truck, I recall getting a lot of blood on my hands,” Harris later testified as a witness for the prosecution. He asked Simon and Green what was in the packages.
“They said, it was probably a dog or a cat,” said Harris. Later, he learned that the package had held a human body. But he never learned whose.
Harris helped to dispose of similar packages “about 40-some times.”
Harris was taken along by the “Zebra” killers on several shootings. Later, Harris reasoned: “I guess they thought that, sooner or later, I would join their little clique.”
One night, Harris, J.C. Simon and Manuel Moore parked their black Cadillac near an apartment complex. Simon and Moore got out, leaving Harris in the vehicle.
“The next thing I knew,” said Harris, “I heard a gunshot. Manuel started running from the same area that the gunshot came from.”
Moore and Simon jumped into the car. As the vehicle sped off, Harris saw “what appeared to be a body” lying on the sidewalk.
On another occasion, Harris asked his comrades what had happened after he heard shots ring out.
“Just watch television or listen to the radio, and you’ll see what happened,” one of them said.
Harris learned from the news later on that “somebody had been shot and killed.”
Between killings, Harris and his friends attended regular meetings at the Black Self-Help, the Muslim-owned furniture-moving company in San Francisco.
At some of these meetings, as many as 40 to 50 or more Muslims were present.
Members of the Nation of Islam
“They were talking about killing people,” Harris later testified. Films were shown “of the Watts riots [in 1965] and different riots taking place throughout the past, black people being beaten down by the police and shot.”
The meetings’ participants were asked, “Could we allow this to continue? They said the only way to stop it was to act and be vicious…like the police department.
“That you had to…be able to go out and just deliberately take a baby and smash his head against the wall and kill him and, if you have to, even drink the blood to show how vicious you are.
“And they showed us a large number of pictures” on a bulletin board “of a lot of bald-headed men with little white wings on their necks, and identified each guy as being members of the Death Angels.”
Harris was told that “if I wanted to be a member of the Death Angels, that I’d have to go out and kill people to get some wings.”
Not only was the wearing of a pair of white wings a symbol of belonging to the Death Angels, so was a shaved head.
Only certified members of the Death Angels could enter Muslim temples with shaved heads. Anyone else who entered such a temple with a shaved head “can be killed or put out of the temple for coming in like that.”
“[The Death Angels] is supposed to be a pretty high branch of the Nation of Islam, supposed to be 2,000 people inside it,” Harris later testified.
“And every time you kill a person, you’re supposed to have somebody witness your killing the person for verification when you go back to Chicago,” the national headquarters for the Nation of Islam.
Chicago Headquarters of the Nation of Islam
It was there, said Harris, that the photographs or eyewitnesses had to appear before the prospective Death Angel could receive his winged badge of membership.
“And after you get to killing people,” the Death Angels “give you a pair of wings to put on your neck, and they take a picture,” testified Harris.
“They say you kill four children, you automatically become a captain, or a lieutenant. If you kill five or six women, you become a lieutenant. Or kill nine men, the number of completion, and they give you a rank.”
Extra status was attached to Death Angels who mutilated the bodies of their victims.
“If you cut their heads off, and cut the legs and arms off and cut them open wide with a lot of blood, it’s supposed to symbolize you’re very vicious and that you could be well trusted.
“The killing was so, if they see you do it, they know for a fact you’re not a police officer and you’re not involved” as an informer,” testified Harris.
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