From October 20, 1973 to April 20, 1974, San Francisco was rocked by a series of random, brutal attacks against whites. The assailant was at first thought to be a lone black gunman.
The toll finally reached 16 murders, five woundings, one rape, and the attempted kidnapping of three children.
The rampage, however, was not limited to San Francisco. Throughout California–from Bakersfield to San Diego–at least 93 other whites were murdered, according to later police investigations.
To end the San Francisco slaughter, teams of police decoys roamed the streets, posing as hitchhikers, a favorite target of the supposed lone gunman.
To prevent ham radio operators from honing in on their operation, the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD)used a special high-frequency “zebra” radio band.
When the use of this became known, the slaughters were dubbed “the Zebra case” by the media. Most people assumed the term referred to black-on-white crime.
But the killer failed to blunder into any of these ambushes.
On April 20, 1974, then-Mayor Joseph Alioto–desperate to end the slaughter–authorized a massive, city-wide dragnet.
Over 600 young black males were stopped and questioned by police who were armed with only a vague description of the killer, as given by surviving victims. Some blacks were stopped so many times they were given special ID cards to prevent future stops.
Civil libertarians and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) protested vigorously. The NAACP filed a complaint with U.S. District Judge Alfonso J. Zirpoli in San Francisco.
Just six days after the dragnets began, Zirpoli declared the stops illegal.
In San Francisco, the tourist trade fell off. Many whites stopped going outside after dark. Some whites began talking about forming vigilante committees and spreading similar terror among blacks.
Then, on April 22, 1974, a break finally came in the case.
Anthony Cornelius Harris, a tall, thin, handsome member of the Nation of Islam–otherwise known as the Black Muslims–came forward as a police witness.
At 28, he was a fifth-dan kung-fu expert who always dressed well and spoke softly. He also had firsthand knowledge of the “Zebra murders.”
Anthony Harris
Tne killings, said Harris, weren’t the work of a crazed loner. They were being carried out by a group of militant Black Muslims who made use of elaborate security precautions.
Harris’ intimate knowledge of the killers stemmed from their having been among his closest friends for over six months.
According to Harris, the killers had repeatedly tried to enlist him as an accomplice. But Harris–so he later claimed–could not bring himself to commit cold-blooded murder. This led his friends to suspect that Harris might be a police informer or agent.
Harris began fearing for his life. He also wanted the $30,000 reward being offered for the capture of the still-supposed lone gunman.
On May 1, 1974, police–acting on Harris’ information–arrested seven suspects.
Chief Assistant District Attorney W.H. Guibbini asked for high bail for three of the suspects after their indictment. Presiding Superior Court Judge Clayton V. Horn raised it to $300,000 each.
The accused killers remained in jail before and during their trial.
Four of these were tried and convicted. On March 29, 1976, they were sentenced to prison for life.
They were Larry Craig Green, 22; Manuel Moore, 29; Jessie Lee Cooks, 29; and J.C. Simon, 29. They appealed their convictions to the California Supreme Court–which affirmed them.
Jessie Cooks, Manuel Moore, J.C. Simon and Larry Craig Green
During his testimony as a prosecution witness, Harris was guarded constantly by San Francisco police.
When the SFPD’s resources began to be strained, Harris was placed on the Witness Security Program, operated by the U.S. Marshals Service for the Justice Department.
Also known as WITSEC, it offers protection, relocation and new identities to those who testify against organized crime groups.
Harris was eventually given a new name and relocated to a series of different states. He received a portion of the $30,000 reward he was seeking. Then he vanished altogether.
What follows is an inside account of the “Zebra” death cult, as depicted through the grand jury testimony of the star witness against the killers: Anthony C. Harris.
* * * * *
Born in Long Beach, California, in 1946, Anthony Cornelius Harris got as far as the sixth grade. He clashed often with police and, on January 3, 1969, he was convicted for assaulting a policeman.
He was released from prison in May, 1970, when he won a reversal of his sentence at the California Supreme Court.
But he was once again arrested and convicted, in 1971, of second-degree burglary in Los Angeles. For this, he drew a sentence at San Quentin prison.
And he also met two of the future “Zebra” killers: Manuel Moore and Jessie Lee Cooks.
Cooks had been convicted of robbery; Moore had been sent to prison for burglary. Both wanted Harris, a fifth-dan kung-fu expert, to teach them the martial arts.
According to Harris, Cooks wanted to learn kung-fu so he could kill whites “because they had castrated and killed our ancestors and stomped our babies’ heads in.”
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ALLAH’S DEATH ANGELS: PART TWO (OF FIVE)
In Bureaucracy, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on June 12, 2014 at 12:15 amWhile an inmate at San Quentin prison, Anthony C. Harris became a devout member of the Nation of Islam.
At that time, the spiritual leader of the Nation was Elijah Muhammad, who preached a gospel of black separatism and superiority. Muhammad taught that whites were literally the incarnation of evil, a race of “blue-eyed devils.”
Elijah Muhammed
To test the worthiness of His Chosen Black People, proclaimed Muhammad, Allah had allowed their 400-year persecution by these “bleached-out, grafted snakes.”
But that great testing period would soon come to its end. Then would follow the literal, heaven-sent destruction of all whites. At the conclusion of this divine slaughter, Allah would create a paradise earth for His Chosen Black People.
It was also in San Quentin that Harris met two other inmates who would radically change his life: Manuel Moore and Jessie Lee Cooks.
Both men asked Harris–a fifth-dan kung-fu expert–to teach them the martial art–so they could kill whites.
Harris agreed to supply the lessons.
The three men had a conversation in the temporary Muslim temple in the prison–about “killing people and cutting their heads off–just white people,” Harris later testified in court.
After Harris was paroled on October 15, 1973, he drifted into San Francisco. There he made a new friend–Larry Craig Green, who helped him into a job at the Black Self-Help, a Muslim-owned, furniture-moving company in the city.
Yet another new friend he made there was J.C. Simon.
Soon he was reunited with Jessie Cooks, who had been paroled in July. The release of Manuel Moore followed in November–as did his own arrival in San Francisco.
In September or October, 1973, Harris and 12 to 13 other Muslims–including Simon, Cooks and Green–met at J.C. Simon’s San Francisco apartment.
“They asked me,” Harris later testified, “was I able to kill anyone? Did I have my mind together? They wanted me to work in the [Muslim] temple” as a kung-fu instructor.
At a second meeting at Simon’s apartment, a large, velvet-lined case was prominently displayed. In it were two machetes, three pistols–a snubnose .38 revolver, a .357 Magnum and an automatic–and a shotgun.
“They asked me, how did I feel about white people? Did I feel they were my enemy? Was my mind together enough to destroy my enemy?
“And I just told them, ‘I don’t know what you mean by destroying my enemy.'” Harris told the other Muslims that he had no enemies.
“They wanted me to go out and kill some people, to show them I could be trusted among them. They told me I would have to make some kind of move sooner or later.”
Once again, Harris found himself under cross-examination: was he ready to take his first step towards joining the elite of Allah, the Death Angels? Was he willing to assist his brethren in destroying the blue-eyed white devils?
To drive the point home, the Muslims showed Harris photographs of his brother, stepbrother, mother, sister and fiancee.
“They told me I knew too much about the organization, and something could happen” to Harris himself and his family unless he joined the group of future killers.
Still, Harris refused to commit himself to the coming plot to slaughter whites.
So his companions decided to enlist him in their cause in one dramatic–and lethal–move.
On the night of October 20, 1973, Americans were glued to their TV sets. President Richard Nixon had just fired Special Watergate Prosecutor Archibald Cox and disbanded the Watergate Special Prosecutor’s office.
On that same evening, Harris stood at a bus stop, waiting to be taken home from his job at the Black Self-Help, when a panel truck driven by Larry Green pulled up in the bus zone.
Next to Green, in the passenger’s seat, sat Jessie Lee Cooks. Both men offered Harris a ride home, and he accepted.
The truck drove around for awhile, then parked in the shadows near Powell and Chestnut Streets, in a residential neighborhood.
A few minutes later, the three Muslims spotted a young–and white–married couple, Richard and Quite Hague, strolling nearby.
Hague, 30, worked as a mining engineer for the San Francisco office of Utah International. Quita, 28, was a reporter for the Industrial City Press, in South San Francisco. The previous month they had celebrated their seventh wedding anniversary.
Cooks stopped the Hagues, asking for directions. Then he shoved a pistol into the back of Richard Hague and forced the couple into the rear of the panel truck.
The Hagues were bound, beaten and driven to a remote spot in the San Francisco industrial district. There they were yanked from the van. Larry Green seized a machete and, with one stroke, nearly decapitated Quita Hague.
“He got blood all over him,” Harris would later testify.
“Larry came over with the knife and said something about, ‘You ought to have seen all the blood gush out of her neck.'”
Green handed the machete to Cooks, who slashed Richard Hague about the face and back of the head. Left for dead, Hague would eventually recover–and testify against his wife’s killers.
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