The Zebra Murders: Civil Rights, Racial Revolution, and San Francisco's Season of Horror - Part 2
In 1973, a black nationalist cult in San Francisco sought to eliminate the white race. Their reign of terror made them the most prolific murderers of the counterculture. What were the Zebra murders?
You should probably read Part 1 first.
Death and life. Karma and rebirth. The drowned Lord Rama rising from the Ganges to take his place in heaven. Jesus emerging three days after his crucifixion to reassume his Godhead. On February 26th, 1964, Allah’s newest son, Cassius Marcellus Clay, was also resurrected. One day after his eighth-round technical knockout of Sonny Liston—which, then and now, is one of the largest upsets in sporting history—he entered the Lethe and emerged anew as Muhammad Ali. Standing with Elijah Muhammad himself, he tore the Shroud of Turin from his body and announced himself as an ordained member of the Nation of Islam.
In an instant, Ali became the most controversial man in America. Martin Luther King bemoaned the loss of another prominent black figure to a segregationist cult. Liberal whites physically recoiled from this uncouth, bestial African proclaiming his absolute rejection of their vision and their values. But it was these very characteristics that also made him a beacon for the many who tired of lobbies, protests and political pressure—who sought not equality within the system, but independence from it altogether. To them, Ali was their rage calcified and made flesh. His fury gave voice to a generation of unvoiced frustrations, and as he rose from the holy waters to shake hands with Elijah Muhammad, those voices cheered him.
Two years later, Ali refused to be drafted. In possibly his most famous proclamation, he said "Man, I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong." And then, refocusing his objection, he followed with "No Viet Cong ever called me n****.” Furore erupted from all directions, flying with vehemence from politicians and public figures, dripping like summer sweat from furrowed brows hunched over morning newspapers. Most importantly for Ali, disapproval emanated from almost every one of the nation’s boxing cartels, which systematically retracted his license to participate in officially sanctioned fights. Ali once again was messiah and pariah.
One man in particular was deeply influenced by Ali. J. C. X. Simon, then still a faux family man in Houston, viewed Ali as an idol—one of the few black figures fighting the white establishment instead of appeasing it. For Simon, Ali’s martyrdom at the altar made him Black America’s foremost icon, and his eventual triumph over the government was resolute proof that Allah was God and God was black.
On January 28th, 1974, Simon, along with most of the other congregants of the Nation of Islam Mosque No. 26, queued outside of the Winterland auditorium. Muhammad Ali was scheduled to fight Joe Frazier that very evening. Joe Frazier was then boxing’s most-feared. A two-time heavyweight world champion, he had already beaten Ali three years prior. Simon was furious with Ali’s last defeat, which he viewed as a fix, and swore that Allah would intervene for Ali this time.
But as Simon shuffled into the auditorium, his mind drifted from the fight. Much more would have to be done. The words, told to him by the tall man with curling beard, reverberated through his psyche. Simon had always believed he was destined for more than the drudgery of his marginal existence. That belief drove him to the Nation of Islam, to San Francisco, to the Death Angels. That conviction drove him each night to prowl the streets without relent, to offer no quarter, to kill without compunction. Simon wanted to be a Death Angel. And more, Simon wanted to lead. The city they were seizing from the white man should be, in part, his own.
But now, despite his recent good works, he was told that he was not yet ready. That the white man still resisted, that the procession of the walking dead must be culled further. The Death Angels must expand. Leadership would come only when Allah’s vengeance was truly exacted, and he would be chosen only if he was the hand of that vengeance.
No, much more would have to be done, indeed.
The black Cadillac tore out of the parking lot in a screech of tire treads, bouncing tremulously over the steep driveway and onto Steiner. The three men inside sat in pensive exultation, their hearts pounding with the thrill of a victory. Ali had won and his triumph was absolute. Three years after his return from exile, Muhammad Ali once again held the Black Muslim banner aloft atop the highest peak—a sign of Allah’s continued favor, and the warmth with which He viewed their holy work.
But Anthony Harris, sitting once again in the backseat, almost instinctually leaning away from Moore and Simon ahead, wasn’t quite so convinced of Allah’s divine guidance. Indeed, listening to Moore’s bluster, Harris wondered if they’d been watching the same fight. Ali had won, yes, but the victory was hard-fought to the end. Frazier had pushed Ali in every round, winning four out of the twelve, and every round he lost, he lost closely. If Allah had intervened for Ali, then divine intervention was a slender reed—so slight that it seemed imperceptible. And then, a more insidious thought needled through Harris’ brain. Frazier and Ali were both black. Before Ali, Frazier was the torchbearer of Black pride. And though Ali called him a “white n*****,” Frazier was no grafted snake. He just wasn’t a Muslim.
And what was it to be a Muslim, anyways? Harris had joined the group after he left prison because he wanted direction. He had no family, no friends, no connections to fall back on, and he was afraid that if he returned to San Francisco without changing his situation, he would return to the same despondency that landed him in San Quentin the first time. And if there was one conviction Harris had, it was that he never wanted to return to prison.
For a time, it looked like it was working. In the months after prison, Anthony Harris had, for the first time in his life, a steady job which paid enough to let him rent a small apartment on Laguna St, a few people he considered unconditional friends whom he met at the Mosque every Sunday, and a girl who he didn’t have to pay: who was genuinely interested in him, who worried about him when he stayed out all night and made him dinner after long days at the moving company. His life started to feel routine, but good, and the thought of losing what he’d built and returning to the subsistence that had defined it before sent thick knots of regret bubbling across his chest.
As his thoughts veered dangerously towards heresy, Harris once again began to erect walls around his cerebrum, trying to redirect any impure notions before they burrowed too deeply into the grey matter. But this time, Harris couldn’t avoid the inescapable logic that followed. What was he doing with the Death Angels? The white devils he watched them kill had done nothing to him. He feared they’d return him to prison. He tired of Larry Green, whose fanatical religiosity made any real conversation impossible, and Manuel Moore, who blindly followed every arbitrary stricture he was told. And above all, he was terrified of J. C. X. Simon, who was without conscience or regulation, who killed with calculation, not passion, whose cloudy brown eyes concealed a gaping cavity where in others, the normal parts that form a human personality resided.
Harris didn’t say any of this. He couldn’t. But in that moment, Harris decided something had to change. He would have to leave the Muslims.
Simon, as he turned the Cadillac onto Divisadero, viewed Harris’ torpor with suspicion. This was a moment of celebration, where every true Black Muslim should cheer a great triumph over the grafted snakes, and Harris instead was brooding. His heart had always been weak, Simon thought. As they passed the cordoned-off doorway where Moore had shot Marietta Girolamo just a week before, Simon had a thought. Harris had to be tested. And once again, the words of the Apostle echoed through his mind. Much more would have to be done.
A few blocks on, Simon saw a lone white woman walking in the shade of a fluorescent streetlight, and stopped the car. Moore walked out and took the seat behind the steering wheel, while Simon slipped his gun from the glove compartment and into his jacket, and then strode towards the woman, shrinking from the light as he passed. Tana Smith was in a celebratory mood. Her plans that evening were to buy new fabric to start a new set of blouses and skirts, which would occupy the rest of her weekend. The new clothes were a new beginning for the thirty-two year old Smith, who had just gone through a difficult breakup and only just started to feel like she could breathe again. Simon raised the .32 behind her and shot her twice, extinguishing her hopes in a single flash of nitrate. He was serving a higher cause and she was a necessary casualty. Tana Smith died before she hit the ground.
Anthony Harris was horrified. He was only vaguely aware of the stop, and in the seconds that followed after he rose from his reverie, a life had been taken. As Moore and Simon exulted in the front seat, Harris felt sick. Ten minutes later, they stopped again. This time, Simon turned to Harris and said “It’s your turn, brother,” pointing to an old white man fishing in a garbage can. Simon pressed the gun into his hand and opened the door. Harris hesitated, seeking some possible way out, until Simon looked at him again. “Or is your heart too weak after all?”
Shaking with humiliation and fear, Harris walked out towards the man, who paid him no notice. The gun felt alien in his hand, and he raised it uncertainly. John Bambic looked at him, realized the reality of his situation, and then rushed at Harris, who fired. The old man was staggered, but kept running. Harris stood frozen in shock, and Bambic locked his hands around his throat and squeezed. Blood gushed from his abdomen, but his grip only tightened. John Bambic was 89 years old, and had lived his entire life in San Francisco. He was a child when America won the Spanish-American War, a teenager when the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake. He fought at Belleau Wood in 1917, saw the rise of Hitler, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the invasion of Normandy, the landing at Inchon, the Tet Offensive, the My Lai massacre, and the Watergate scandal. His final struggle with Harris was history’s recalcitrance emerging, just for a second, to strike against biological destiny. Bambic’s eyes widened, while Harris, paralyzed in shock, tore at the fingers around his neck, until finally the grip loosened. Bambic fell backwards, his limp body splaying across the sidewalk, while Harris stumbled forward, hacking phlegm as he collapsed into the backseat.
The faces that turned towards him wore masks of pity and disgust. “Don’t get so close to him next time.” “Why didn’t you shoot back?” “You were nearly taken out by a fucking fossil.” Harris stared at his hands, still clean, and saw the crazed eyes of Bambic staring back at him. The Cadillac stopped moving again, and this time, Harris resisted the urge to dissociate. He watched as Moore slammed the car door, ran to a pensioner walking down Scott Street, and shot him twice in the back. Vincent Wollin fell face-first onto the concrete, never even having the chance to see his assailant. He would die two hours later.
Jane Holly didn’t pay much attention when a black man walked into the laundromat. Her mind followed her clothes, tumbling opalescently in the dryer, and then, as she read a Chronicle article about the slow American withdrawal from Vietnam, to her son, a newly-minted Marine who had left on deployment a few months ago. She noticed that the new arrival at the laundromat didn’t have any clothes, and wondered why he was here. Then she saw his hands weren’t empty—the right hand had a gun. She stood up and leapt back in horror, too late, as Manuel Moore fired twice, hitting her in the neck and chest. The forty-five year old mother tumbled backwards, while the other patrons looked on, frozen in shock.
Four murders in two hours. Each time, police were minutes from the scene, and arrived just after the murderers fled. Twice, the killers passed an undercover patrol while stalking their victim. Every murder had at least one direct eyewitness, and each reported the same description: a black 1968 Cadillac with fins, three occupants, driven by a heavyset black man. The descriptions of the murderers were familiar by now: the lumbering black man, a younger, muscular, black man, and now, for the first time, a taller black man who had struggled with Bambic. All were in their late-twenties or early-thirties. And all of them were still at large. Despite the web of surveillance, patrols, and undercover detectives surrounding the one-square mile hunting ground, the Zebra murderers had escaped once again.
And they weren’t done. That night, as the Cadillac drove south, Simon saw Roxanne McMillan walking alone on Madrid Street in the Excelsior district. In a second, he pulled over and shot her twice before continuing his drive home. Through sheer luck, Roxanne lived: the only survivor of the night of four murders.
In February, Anthony Harris made one of the foremost decisions of his life: he moved to Oakland. He didn’t tell anyone about his move, least of all Simon, Moore, Green, or anyone else he knew from the Black Self-Help Moving Company, and he didn’t present himself to the Nation of Islam Mosque in Oakland. He registered his move with his parole officer but no one else, ignoring the NOI prohibition on voluntary interactions with the police, and found a job at a fish market by the docks. Harris rose each morning to prostrate himself before the rising sun, and then worked eight long hours descaling, gutting, and filleting halibut, returning home late in the evening reeking of ocean and rotting offal to see his newborn son. It was a hard life—certainly harder than the one he left behind, with its constant labor, with its loneliness—but Harris relished it. He worked hard, he slept early, he spoke of marriage to his girlfriend and he enjoyed the early trappings of fatherhood. For the first time since he left prison a year ago, he felt free.
Meanwhile, the city Harris left behind, already in the midst of prolonged hysteria, now took on a sickly pallor. The rainclouds of January faded into temperate midwinter, and the sun reemerged to shine golden rays over the top of the newly-finished Transamerica Pyramid, but San Francisco remained a diseased patient.
The mania that followed the earlier murders had been replaced with a profound existential horror. The cup of endurance hath runneth over. Blacks were revolting against the entire white edifice. Blacks were killing whites, randomly, haphazardly, with guns and machetes, for the perceived crime of existing. Black men were agents of chaos, armed by a psychotic black nationalist cult, intent on the death of all deemed complicit in their oppression.
For city residents, it appeared that the very fabric of American life was fraying. Peaceful protest had given way to racialized murder. The police, who patrolled every block, every evening, were powerless to stop them. Every week, Mayor Alioto announced new strategies, new leads, new patrols, and yet, every week, there were no arrests, no news, no answers.
The Zebra murderers, as they were now commonly known, had accumulated eighteen victims in three months, and another murder spree seemed imminent. The police knew it. The residents knew it. The hollowed out crowds that gathered in the Condor Club or the Mahubay knew it. And in this environment of paranoia, every black became suspect and every white, professed liberals all, shirked from their idealism when they passed a black man on the street, or when a black man walked into the restaurant they were seated at, or when a black man entered their usual laundromat. San Francisco, the home of the counterculture, which deemed itself a city beyond racial classification, now regressed to avoidance and mutual suspicion.
And then, the much awaited, much dreaded, killing spree didn’t arrive. Week after week, the Zebra murderers remained silent. The police, patrolling every street in the city’s center, never saw the prowling black Cadillac. The few lone whites walking on Gough or Haight after dark held their breaths for their entire journey, but they made it safely. San Francisco, it seemed, had been granted a stay of execution. The detectives chasing the nebulous murderers subconsciously hoped they’d died, or decided their revenge had been exacted and quit, and the seismic shocks shaking their city to its core had finally steadied. But when that thought percolated to the rational parts of their brain, they rejected it. Serial murderers never stop. They have to be stopped.
The police, since January, had been surveilling the Nation of Islam Mosque No. 26 on Geary, cataloguing entrants, periodic visitors, members and meetings. They saw a troupe of thirty or so black men arrive, at irregular intervals but approximately weekly, to the warehouse. In early February, the officers inside the unmarked police car idling outside, unknowingly, witnessed a particularly important meeting.
It was a smaller gathering than usual—only confirmed killers were invited, minus Anthony Harris, whose whereabouts remained unknown. The ten or so men, gathered from chapters across the Bay Area, took seats around the round table, and waited for one man in particular to speak. He stood and paused, as one does before speaking words expected to arouse a reaction, before saying, “We need to cool it for a while.” He stayed standing, expecting an outcry. But there was none. Everyone seemed to agree. Emboldened, the man continued: The police are out in force in San Francisco, Marin, and Oakland. One of us has already been arrested. We need to lay low until things calm down.
Manuel Moore broke the resulting silence, remarking that he didn’t want to go to prison, which was received warmly. It seemed like everyone understood: the police were everywhere and no one wanted to be caught. The grafted snakes would have to be left to conspire without intervention—for now.
J. C. X Simon, sitting in disgusted silence, chose this moment to speak. “What about those of us who almost have our Death Angel wings?” The group fell silent for a second, but their response was consistent in sentiment: It’s too dangerous. You’d endanger all of us for your vanity. Simon, unsupported, seethed but said nothing, and the meeting adjourned.
To most of the congregants of the Nation of Islam Mosque No. 26, Larry Green was an enigma. As one of the leaders in the race for Death Angel status, he garnered respect and awe—even the Fruit of Islam members that occasionally stopped by the temple on business knew his name—but as a person, he remained aloof from the rest. No Muslim was allowed to drink, but Green also self-imposed a ban on smoking. Rape and theft were officially prohibited, but casually tolerated; Green was one of the few that strictly followed and enforced both provisions. He interpreted NOI theology through his own personal frame of austerity and self-denial, with flashes of true religiosity, akin to an ascetic whose holy work was the eradication of the unholy.
But beneath this outer crust, deeper motives, pulsing currents through the magma shifting the tectonics above, frothed and percolated. One fact is apparent: Larry Green was half-white, and notably lighter than his brothers at the NOI. He was constantly aware how much of a physical resemblance there was between him and many of the white devils they targeted. His personal austerity may have stemmed from a desire to make his killings immaculate: acts of ritual penance that could purify his own tainted blood. Another likely fact is that Larry Green was gay. In the Zebra case file, there are snippets of the story of Green’s first murder, before he joined the NOI, where he killed an older gay man after propositioning him for sex. The NOI officially banned homosexuality, and most of his brothers would have found it abhorrent. Perhaps his repressed sexuality drove him further into fanaticism, as his blind loyalty silenced the unsettling questions that otherwise plagued him.
On April 1st, 1974, Green sat on a car fender, watching the cadets from the Salvation Army school on Geary stream past. His eyes focused on two in particular—Thomas Rainwater and Linda Story—who were holding hands and lagging behind the rest. He’d been watching them for several days, and today, his mind once again returned to its familiar grooves. He examined their skin, white and unblemished, and cursed his parents for leaving him divided between worlds. He looked at their uniforms, creased, adorned with badges, and secretly envied their easy, unforced loyalty.
As the sun dipped lower in the sky, turning a definitive orange, Larry Green leapt off the car fender and walked towards the couple, his right hand resting on the .32 in his inner pocket. He caught up to Thomas and Linda, passed them, and then turned around, raising the gun. Both of them, after a second of petrified terror, turned and ran. Green fired two shots at Thomas, hitting him in the lower back, and then fired two more at Linda. Linda collapsed and started screaming. Thomas, however, kept staggering forward. He was too far now to shoot. Green prayed to Allah and watched, silently, until finally, at long last, Thomas Rainwater collapsed. He then heard footsteps nearing him and took off in the opposite direction. In his preoccupation he didn’t realize that Linda Story had crawled to the edge of sidewalk, out of his line of sight. She would live.
Green, justifying his violation of the enforced hiatus to his brothers, claimed that Allah had moved him, and thus his work was beyond censure. Green didn’t mention that he’d been watching the Salvation Army school for weeks, counting the cadets as they marched past in formation, nor that when he thought of Thomas Rainwater, his mind wandered towards doors he didn’t dare open. His impurity need not pollute the pristine.
Meanwhile, the others in the room, all followers of Allah, may have contemplated something different. If God, despite his unknown form and his unknowable motives, could have His will could be so easily reinterpreted to justify human desires, then were any man’s actions within reproach?
Days later, as the sun slowly faded and the early spring evening ripened, the loft room in the Black Self-Help Moving Company slowly filled with people. The air crackled with nervous excitement. Larry Green’s most recent sting, inspired as it was by Allah himself, had met with no official reprisal from NOI leadership, and the expectation that the hiatus would now officially end was high. Feet drummed and twitched, eyes anxiously flitted toward watches or at the diminutive timepiece on the room’s far side. Conversations turned to taunts and recriminations—like peacocks preening during mating season—and tempers flared. But all fell silent at the sound of a heavy car door closing, and then the unmistakeable thumps of a walking stick on wooden stairs.
But as the newly-arrived man started to speak, their alacrity quickly diminished, turning to confusion. Stop the destruction of the grafted snakes? Convert the Black youth? Murmurs began to spread. Then the man’s speech became prescriptive. The Death Angels work was finished. All members would now return to their usual duties, as proselytizers, priests, and good, working men in service of the Mosque. There wouldn’t be any more stings or murders. Allah willed it, he said.
As the words sunk in, the mood turned hostile.
J. C. X. Simon clenched his fists beneath his chair, his face contorted in rage. He looked around and saw the same anger etched in the expressions around him, but he was at a loss for what to say. And then an idea came to him.
Rising from his seat, Simon began to speak. “What if Allah moves a man to destroy the grafted snake?” He put a hand on Larry Green’s shoulder. “Like this brother here, just a few days ago.” The speaker paused, visibly uncomfortable. “Allah doesn’t come to a man often,” said the speaker. Simon persisted. “But he has come to me, and others. Would it be right to kill if he came once again?” The speaker now realized that he had no retreat. He had stated Allah as his justification, which now opened his direct command to the ministrations of the motivated intellect. With great reluctance, he said, “That would be acceptable. But you must be sure that it truly is Allah moving you, however, and not false pride or vanity.”
The tension released. Simon, tasting victory, acclaimed “I have no false pride. And I’m never mistaken in what Allah moves me to do.” He walked out of the room, flanked by Moore. The speaker tried to continue, but his imperative now landed like a damp squib. The meeting adjourned shortly after.
The next evening, on April 14th, Terry Ward left an impromptu Easter party at around 8:30 and walked towards a bus stop on Fillmore. He took the first northbound bus, expecting to transfer at Hayes St for the westbound journey. Sitting in the corner, the teenager closed his eyes for a few minutes, slipping into a pleasant languor from the engine’s gentle hum. At the same time, Ward Anderson anxiously waited for his stop to arrive. He was heading south from the Marina, expecting to transfer at Hayes to head east, and he really wanted a cigarette. Smoking, however, was banned on the bus. He hoped he’d have time for one when he waited for his transfer.
Manuel Moore idly wandered downhill on Steiner, his hand clasped on the gun in his inside pocket, and waited for Allah’s voice. Simon’s words the day before had inspired him, and he knew Allah sought the destruction of the white devils, whatever the false prophet had said. In the evening fog, illuminated warmly from the glow of a window just behind, he could make out a few people at the bus stop on the corner. He walked toward them. As he passed, a man waiting for a bus stopped him and asked for a light. Moore’s heart leaped. This must be the sign. Taking a breath, he turned towards the man and shot him in the abdomen, the bullet tearing through his ribs and liver. Ward Anderson fell backwards, his surprised expression drooping into an unconscious stupor. Moore turned and ran across the street to the parallel bus stop and without pausing, fired twice at Terry White, who’d barely registered the sudden blasts before he collapsed himself. Moore then sprinted away, turning onto Fillmore towards Grove. And, somehow, despite the nine patrol cars in the square mile around the Hayes and Fillmore intersection, Moore was almost entirely unsighted. Within 5 minutes, the entire area was sealed, as police officers rushed into nearby warehouses, yards, and stores in pursuit, but it was too late. Moore was gone.
Both Anderson and White were immediately rushed to a hospital and underwent emergency surgery. Lying in parallel beds in the critical care section, they stubbornly clung to life, and then, as the next day passed, began to stabilize. Within a few more days, both would wake up, clouded with painkillers and wincing from every movement, however unintentional, but alive—definitely alive. Moore, following their recovery from the evening news, shook with anger, which gradually transmuted to fear. Had he misinterpreted Allah’s will? The two devils had lived, surely through His intervention. What then of the man who tried to defy His divine plan?
J. C. X. Simon, whose religiosity was a thin facade for personal ambition, had no similar qualms about misinterpreting the multiplicity of God’s will. On April 16th, two days after Moore’s failed sting, Simon was walking south on Vernon in Ingleside when he saw Nelson Shields hunched over, reorganizing the trunk of a hatchback. He felt his gun in his pocket, along with the familiar rush of adrenaline that preceded a kill. Simon smiled; the day had been a good one. He’d defended Manuel Moore at the evening meeting for his failed attacks, and earned respect from his brothers. What better way to end the evening than by earning his Death Angel status, once and for all? Simon raised his gun, pointed at Shields, who was still reorganizing the trunk, and fired thrice. Shields collapsed backwards, blood pouring from his back and pooling around his body, and slowly died on the asphalt. Simon turned and ran in the direction whence he came.
As Simon sprinted north, he heard sirens directly approaching him. The police had been patrolling en masse around every known previous Zebra attack, and Shields had been shot just blocks away from his attempted murder of Roxanne McMillian. This time, a police cruiser was just two blocks away when a neighbor reported the gunshots. Simon turned towards a house, sprinted towards the backyard, and hopped the fence. Running across the next yard, he jumped the fence again, but as he reached the next fence, he paused. A man was standing in the next yard, blocking his escape route entirely. New sirens began to approach from the other direction. In a panic, Simon crouched, hopped to the opposite yard, and then took cover amidst some shrubs. He realized, right then, that he needed to get rid of the gun: it was the crucial piece of evidence that eliminated any potential deniability. Panting hard, he slunk towards the nearest fence, and with his back pressed against it, tossed the gun directly overhead. He took the rustle of disturbed leaves as an indication that his disposal succeeded, and then ran straight back onto the sidewalk down the only street that wasn’t already crawling with cops. Police established a perimeter 10 blocks long around the murder location, but they were, once again, minutes too late.
Concluded in Part 3.