The Angels of Death | The Racially-Motivated Murders of 1970s San Francisco
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It was October 20th, 1973. Richard and Keita Haig were out for an after-dinner stroll through the Telegraph Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. They'd been married for seven years. He was a mining engineer. She worked as a reporter in the city. They were madly in love, walking hand in hand as they watched the sunset over the hills of San Francisco.

It was the last sunset they'd ever share. Up ahead, two young black men were lounging on opposite sides of the sidewalk. Keita's grip on her husband's hand tightened. She knew they'd have to walk between them. Time slowed as they crossed the threshold. Just as they were about to emerge on the other side, one of the men grabbed Richard's arm and said, "Don't move. You're coming with us."

A third man, unseen until now, pushed off a fence and leveled a pistol at Richard and Keeta. "No, no, no!" she screamed, her voice breaking. Fighter flight kicked in, and Keeta pushed past the young black men. "Get on back here, woman, or I'll kill him," she heard one of them say. She froze and looked back to see the gun pressed into Richard's chest. Her and her husband's eyes met. "They already have us," he said. "Let's cooperate. They won't hurt us."

Later that night, a professor and his wife were driving through the area when they spotted a man staggering out of the shadows. Dim yellow street lights brought him into view. They assumed he was just another drunk, but then they noticed that his hands were bound, and he was bleeding. The professor called to him and was horrified when the man spun around. It was Richard Haig. His clothes were torn and covered in blood.

His hands were tied with rope. His face was hideously mutilated, as if he jumped headfirst into a buzzsaw. Miraculously, Richard Haig survived the first of many violent attacks in 1970s San Francisco. They called themselves the Death Angels. They were Manuel Moore, Larry Green, Jesse Cooks, and J.C. Simon. They were young men in their mid to late 20s who belonged to the Nation of Islam, also known as the Black Muslims.

True crime author Clark Howard describes the movement as a sect that believes white people are an inferior race created by an evil scientist named Yaacoub. By killing these blue-eyed devils, members of the Nation of Islam would be guaranteed passage into heaven. Between October 1973 and April 1974, the death angels killed at least 15 people and injured eight others for no other reason than the color of their skin.

But they weren't some roaming band of thugs you could spot from a mile away. They were well-dressed and well-groomed. They seemingly fit into polite society until one of them had a .32 caliber pistol pressed into your chest. There were so many crimes that the San Francisco PD dedicated the Z-Band on their radios to talk exclusively about the murders.

The call sign, plus the crime's racial nature, is why they're known as the Zebra Murders. Yet, despite descending to the level of domestic terrorism, it's a crime spree many don't know about. People walking around the city today could be unknowingly stepping on the sun-baked bloodstains of death angel victims. If you ask them about the Zebra Murders, they'll likely think it involves the San Francisco Zoo.

But for six months in the mid-1970s, the streets of San Francisco were a bloodbath. It began with the mauling of Richard Haig and the murder of his wife, Kida. And it didn't stop until one of the angels finally flipped and turned on his brothers in Allah. Part 1: The Radical West In the 1970s, most people associated San Francisco with two words: hippies and radicals.

The city's tolerance level attracted the downtrodden and socially marginalized. Rock music flourished, LGBTQ folks felt safe, and the counterculture was in full swing. Despite being a progressive city, racial tensions were still incredibly high. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had recently declared the Black Panther Party a dangerous threat to national security.

While most Black Panthers valued peace and community outreach over violence, others believed they should take a more militaristic approach. They broke off to start the Black Liberation Army, and were responsible for several bombings around the US and the random murders of white people and police officers. Of those BLA members, the Death Angels of San Francisco took the message of liberation to the extreme.

In the spring of 1973, Anthony Harris was an inmate at San Quentin Prison. He was in the second year of his second stint behind bars. This time, he was locked up for burglary. The first time, he served 30 months for assault and battery on a police officer. He had just walked out of a black Muslims meeting in the jailhouse when a thick-necked black man with a clean-shaven skull and small eyes approached him.

His name was Jesse Cooks, and he was in the last year of a seven-year sentence for armed robbery. Cooks knew Anthony's backstory. He was a judo expert who was fighting with his brother when an officer tried to break them up. Anthony, almost instinctively, turned on the officer and took him down. He was arrested, tried, and sentenced between six months and seven years. Jesse Cooks wanted Anthony to teach him. He wanted to learn how to kill a man with one punch to the heart.

He wanted to know how to sneak up on someone and snap their neck. He took Anthony's arm and led him to a private area to talk. He told him about the Death Angels, a new sect born out of the BLA and the Nation of Islam. It was the job of a Death Angel to off white chumps. Jesse Cooks wanted in, but the Death Angels only accepted members who knew how to kill efficiently. Lessons from Anthony "Judo" Harris should get the job done. And so, the lessons began.

They continued until both men were out of prison and inside a Nation of Islam meeting, where they met Manuel Moore, Larry Green, and J.C. Simon. They listened as a bombastic speaker described 400 years of persecution at the hands of the grafted white devil. "What do we do about our enemy?" the speaker asked the crowd. "Well," he continued, "why does Muhammad murder the devil?" "Because the white devil cannot be reformed," the speaker suggested. "They must be killed."

That's when he posed a quota for everyone in the room. "Each Muslim is required to kill four devils," he said. As a reward for meeting their quota, they'd be given a pin to wear on the lapel of their coat. The pin was like a golden ticket to the holy city. The room erupted in hate-filled chants. "Kill the grafted snake! Kill the evil wights! Kill the blue-eyed devil! Kill, kill, kill!" With that, the death angels had their mission.

Harris, Green, Cooks, Moore, and Simon wanted their wings more than anything. They quickly learned that not all dead bodies were treated equally. To earn their death angel wings, a member would have to kill nine white men, five white women, or four white children. Upon meeting their quota, new members had their picture taken and pinned to the wall of their respective headquarters. Then, a senior member would draw black wings sprouting from their neck.

According to Clark Howard, author of "Zebra," the true account of 179 days of terror in San Francisco, 15 accredited death angels were operating in California in the mid 1970s. Assuming they all met their quotas, that meant as many as 270 people were dead.

By 1973, the California Attorney General's Office knew about 45 murders between major cities like San Francisco, Oakland, San Diego, and Los Angeles. All of the victims were white, and all known suspects were associated with the Nation of Islam and the BLA movement. That's why some historians believe the Zebra murders were responsible for more than the 15 victims police knew about.

In 2005, criminology professor Anthony Wach of Boise State University suggested that the death angels of San Francisco may have killed more people in the early to mid-1970s than all the other serial killers operating during that period combined. Keita Haig and the 14 victims who followed were simply the tip of the iceberg.

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Go to selectquote.com slash crimehub today to get started. That's selectquote.com slash crimehub. Part two, the spree begins. Richard Haig couldn't remember much of the attack. The only clues offered were the brutal wounds he suffered. Doctors at San Francisco General stitched him back together as best they could, while police tried to determine what kind of weapon could have made such brutal cuts. Machete was the only thing that made sense.

Other officers searched the area where Richard was found bleeding. They soon found a pool of fresh blood where Richard had collapsed on the road. From there, they followed bloodstains and patches of hair back to the railroad tracks. That's where they found Keita. She'd been hacked to death. Her head was nearly severed from her torso. The major arteries in her neck were lacerated, as was her spinal cord. Police knew they were looking for three young black men thanks to Richard's description.

He recalled being dragged into a white van, but then one of them cracked him over the head with a blunt object, knocking him out cold. His description of the men matched that of an attempted kidnapping in the same area. Before the death angels attacked Richard and Keita, they tried kidnapping and killing two young kids, ages 11 and 15, from a birthday party.

According to the kids, they were outside on the porch when a young black man, later identified as Jesse Cooks, approached them and asked for directions. Two more approached, likely Larry Green and Anthony Harris. Then, Cooks drew a gun and aimed it at the kids, ordering them to get inside a white van. The older of the two kids wisely yelled, "Cops!" which distracted the death angels long enough for the kids to run away.

Flustered, the death angels hopped back in their van and sped off. Had things gone according to plan, they would have killed those two children that day. Instead, their attention fell on Richard and Keita Haig later that night. Days after the Haig attack, Jesse Cooks found himself outside of a black self-help center where Green, Simon, and Moore all worked. It was around 8:30 PM when he spotted Ellen Linder stepping off an arriving bus.

She was 27 years old with a slim figure and a pretty face. Restless and bored, Jesse decided to follow her. He fell in behind her as she walked by the self-help center. Ellen noticed him trailing as she turned onto her street. Her pace quickened, as did Jesse's. Soon, Ellen realized she was alone on her street. If she screamed, nobody would hear her. She sped up. She made it to her building and bounded up the steps to the outside door.

She fumbled for her keys, unlocked the door and stepped inside. But just as it was about to close behind her, Jesse reached in and grabbed her bare wrist. The next thing she felt was an ice-cold gun barrel pressed against her neck. "You best be quiet or I'll kill you," Jesse said. At that moment, Ellen decided that death was the worst thing that could happen to her. Whatever this man wanted, she'd do it. Jesse led Ellen to an empty parking lot and raped her at gunpoint.

When they were interrupted, Jesse ushered her two blocks away and raped her again. During the attack, he told her all about the death angel's plans. "The streets of San Francisco will run red with blood before it's over," he said. He ejaculated and then threatened to kill Ellen if she called the police. When he vanished, she ran to the nearest phone and dialed 911. Ten days later, Jesse struck again. This time, he planned on killing the first woman he saw.

At the time, he lived near the University of California Extension campus off Laguna Street. Whenever he felt lonely or down about life, Jesse would walk over to campus and blend into the shrubs and bushes by the front gate. He'd watch people drive in and out for night classes. Sometimes, he'd find himself wishing he were smart enough to attend college. Maybe he could have, had the white devil not thrown him in jail.

on October 29th, 1973. Jesse was particularly angry and still riding high after the murder of Keita Haig and the rape of Ellen Linder. He hid in the shrubs and watched car after car enter the campus parking lot. He wanted to add another notch in his belt. Then, 28-year-old Frances Rose pulled in. She had short auburn hair and drove a gold Mustang with a black vinyl top. A sticker in the rear window read, "Carolina."

The very thought of it filled Jesse with rage. Carolina was in the South, and the South was awfully cruel to black folks like him. He put a hand out and stopped Rose's car. She rolled down her passenger window, only to hear Jesse say, "Gimme a ride!" His tone sounded more like an order than a question. In a flash, Jesse ripped open the passenger door and jumped inside. He drew his pistol and fired into Rose's neck and chest until she was undoubtedly dead.

Jesse fled into the night. Moments later, a campus security guard who heard the echo of gunfire found Rose slumped over in her driver's seat, blood all over the inside of her Mustang. Across the street from campus, a woman looking out her second floor window had seen Jesse running away. While the image was fresh, she rushed downstairs and repeated the description until the police arrived. The shooter was a muscular black male in his mid-twenties,

He stood between 5'9 and 5'10 and wore a blue knit cap with light trousers and an olive army jacket. Not long after, police spotted Jesse in the area. He was tired and sweating, as if he'd been running. They stopped and patted him down, quickly finding the murder weapon in his waistband. The Death Angels were a revolving door of hopeful members. When one was killed or arrested, another was there to take his place.

a 35-year-old ex-con named Leroy Docter stepped in to fill Jesse Cooks' shoes. Leroy dressed nicely for a man looking to earn his death angel wings. In his mind, a tailored suit would disarm his victims long enough to shoot them at close range. He put his plan into motion on November 9th, 1973, but ultimately picked the wrong victim. Robert Stechman was a 26-year-old clerk for Pacific Gas and Electric.

Newspapers at the time described him as a 285-pound former athlete with a bone-crushing grip. He was working in the stockyard on Army Street around 8 p.m. when Leroy Docter approached in his suit. Leroy asked Robert for directions, thanked him, and then pretended to leave. Robert went back to his business, not thinking anything of it. Robert finished work for the evening and was startled to find Leroy waiting for him in the street.

Like a lunging snake, Leroy pushed Robert into a fence and stuck a pistol in his mouth. Robert watched as Leroy looked both ways to ensure the coast was clear. He knew the man was going to shoot, so Robert quickly ducked away as the gun fired. A bullet grazed his neck, but adrenaline kept him from feeling the pain. The shock, however, caused Robert to stumble and fall several feet away. He rolled over and Leroy was right on top of him.

He pressed the pistol into Robert's stomach, ready to kill him. "It was an old revolver," Robert told reporters after the attack. "The kind that can't fire if the cylinder doesn't turn." Leroy kept pulling the trigger, but Robert's gorilla grip kept the cylinder from spinning. He swung the gun away, causing it to fly across the yard. Both men scrambled to their feet and raced for the gun. Robert got there first. He grabbed it, spun, and shot until the gun stopped firing.

At first, nothing happened, and Robert wondered if the bullets inside were blanks. Then, he remembered his bleeding neck and the pain that was slowly setting in. Suddenly, Leroy pitched over, gripping his belly. He fled, and Robert went to the police. Officers later found Leroy under a railroad trestle with bullet wounds in his arm, shoulder, and stomach. He survived and was ultimately sentenced to nine and a half years to life in prison.

Robert Stechman joined an exclusive club that day. He, Richard Haig, and six others were the only ones to encounter the death angels and live to tell the tale. Dozens, perhaps even hundreds more, were not so lucky.

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Salim Hassan Erekat was a 53-year-old Jordanian immigrant. He opened Erekat's grocery store on Larkin Street in 1960 and worked the front counter every day since. Salim and his wife had four children between 13 and 21. The whole family worked at the grocery store,

Salim dreamed of passing his business along to his eldest son one day. Sadly, that dream came true earlier than expected. It was November 25th, 1973, a rainy Sunday in San Francisco. Salim was alone in the shop when JC Simon entered wearing a long raincoat and holding a briefcase. Salim knew JC. He looked like Muhammad Ali.

He always bought exactly one apple, and he greeted Salim with "As-salamu alaykum" whenever he entered the store. "Did you come for your apple today?" Salim joked as JC entered. "Not exactly," he said. JC pulled a gun from the case and ordered Salim to the back of the store. Salim pointed to a bag of money, assuming JC was there to rob him. He wasn't. JC forced Salim into a tiny bathroom and tied his hands with a necktie.

Then, he wrapped a thick piece of cloth around the barrel of his gun to silence the shots. He pressed it behind Salim's right ear and killed him execution style, thus ending the grocer's life and the immigrant's American dream, as Clark Howard writes. He was the only non-white killed by the death angels between 1973 and 1974. Yet when Anthony Harris asked JC, "What the hell happened in there?"

JC responded with, I finished a white devil. Paul Dancic's American dream ended the first time he shot up heroin. The 26-year-old was looking for a fix on December 11th. He stepped into a phone booth in the projects and fished around his pocket for a phone number and a dime. Hey, you. He heard behind him.

When Dancik turned, he saw Manuel Moore with an automatic pistol. He fired three slugs into Paul's chest and watched as Paul stumbled from the phone booth and collapsed on the ground. When police arrived, they found scattered shell casings belonging to a .32 caliber gun, similar to those found inside Salim Erekat's store.

On the opposite end of the socio-economic spectrum, future San Francisco Mayor Arthur Agnos was at a meeting in the predominantly black Potrero Hill neighborhood on December 13th, 1973. He was there to discuss plans to build a government-funded healthcare clinic. When the meeting ended, Agnos stopped outside to chat with two women. None of them noticed the black Cadillac slowing down and stopping on the nearby curb.

JC Simon stepped out and walked up behind Agnos. He shot the future mayor twice in the back, but the politician didn't fall. Instead, Agnos turned to face his attacker. The two stood frozen, staring at each other. Then, JC spun and sprinted to the Cadillac, which peeled out and sped away. And still, Agnos didn't fall, despite the bullets tearing into his lung, spleen, and kidneys.

Witnesses quickly grabbed him and brought him into a nearby home. An ambulance arrived in the nick of time and saved Agnos' life. Police later found .32 caliber shell casings near the crime scene. Undeterred by the attack, Agnos returned to the same meeting place after he recovered to discuss the healthcare center further. This time, however, he was flanked by four police officers and four burly black security guards.

JC and Manuel Moore were supposed to kill Agnos and the two women he was talking to that afternoon. Instead, they walked away without any new points toward their Death Angel membership. So, that night, they stalked the area near Oak Street, looking for another victim. Meanwhile, 31-year-old Marietta D. Giralamo was waiting for her boyfriend to come home so the two could go out together.

When 9 o'clock rolled around, she decided to don her overcoat and look for him. Maybe he was sitting at one of the nearby bars. She turned onto a lively street lined with bars and boutiques. As she walked, Manuel crossed the street behind her and forced her into a barbershop doorway. Her head banged on the glass as Manuel fired twice into her chest. The force spun her around. Her face pressed into the glass, and Manuel fired once more into her back.

She slid down the door in a puddle of her own blood as Manuel ran into the night. Several strangers saw the shooting and ran to help Marietta. An ambulance whisked her away, but she died en route to the hospital. Back at the crime scene, detectives bagged and tagged three more .32-caliber shell casings. Between December 13th and Christmas Day, five more bodies fell at the hands of the San Francisco death angels.

On December 20th, 81-year-old Ilario Bertuccio was shot four times while walking home from work. He was a janitor at a 7-Up bottling company in the high-crime Bayview district. Every night after work, he'd walk home with a complimentary soda and a brown paper bag. His friends and family had been begging him to retire for years, but the old man knew he'd be terribly bored. Working gave him something to do.

He was humming an Italian folk song when Manuel Moore walked up and shot him point blank in the chest and shoulder. Bertuccio was dead by the time his glass soda fell and shattered. Two hours later, 21-year-old Therese DiMartini had just returned home from a Christmas party. She was parking her car when JC Simon ambushed and shot her several times. She began screaming so loudly that JC ran off in fear.

She willed herself to her knees and was blinded by the headlights of an approaching Cadillac. She assumed it was her attacker trying to run her over. With her waning strength, she rolled herself under her car and watched as the Caddy screamed by. Onlookers called 911. Thankfully, the ambulance arrived in time to save DeMartini's life. Police followed her to the hospital, where one officer heard something fall from her body as paramedics loaded her onto a stretcher.

It was a .32 caliber round that had fallen from one of her three bullet wounds. On December 22nd, 19-year-old Neil Moynihan was shot three times while walking near the Civic Center. He'd just gone Christmas shopping and was carrying a teddy bear for his little sister. Larry Green shot him in the face, neck, and heart. Neil was dead before he hit the sidewalk. Larry ran from the scene, dipping in and out of side alleys he knew like the back of his hand.

He wound up on Gough Street, where he spotted a heavyset woman named Mildred Hosler. The 65-year-old was shot four times at point-blank range and died on the spot. Finally, on Christmas Eve, the dismembered body of John Doe #169 washed up on Ocean Beach. He'd been cut to pieces with surgical precision. He was wrapped in plastic and stuffed in a cardboard box. His head, feet, and hands were missing.

According to Clark Howard, the death angels took turns hacking off his limbs, starting with his fingers and toes, until he was disassembled like a hog in a butcher's shop. It had been 64 days since the fateful Nation of Islam meeting when the death angels accepted their mission to kill the white devils. Twelve victims had fallen since then. The worst was yet to come. Part 4: Bloody Monday

The late 1973 shooting spree baffled police. Some victims were robbed, others were raped, but all were attacked with a 32 caliber weapon. The attack were a city dweller's worst nightmare. The random violence meant every person on the street, especially every person of color, was a suspect. The killers were black, the victims were white. There was no sugarcoating it.

After Christmas, police chief Donald Scott announced that the Z frequency on all police radios was reserved for any communications related to the murders. The black and white nature of the crime, plus the Z frequency, led newspapers to call the killings the Zebra Murders. But just when the killings earned their forever nickname, they seemingly stopped altogether. Nobody was killed after Christmas Eve. Perhaps the death angels were on winter break.

Their break ended on January 28th, 1974, the bloodiest day in the "Death Angel" saga. "Bloody Monday," as it's come to be called, involved five complete strangers with no ties to one another. Four of them didn't live to see Tuesday,

Tana Smith lived alone in a tiny apartment on California Street. The 32-year-old had recently lost weight and was excited to show off her new trim figure. Vincent Wolin lived 50 blocks away on Scott Street. The 68-year-old Coast Guard veteran lived in a small boarding house with six other men. He liked making cabinets, shooting pool, and playing dominoes in his golden years. January 28th happened to be his 69th birthday.

Two miles from Vincent lived 87-year-old John Bambach. He was a toothless old man with wispy white hair and unusual strength for his age. The punk kids who lived in his lower-class neighborhood knew not to bother him. Jane Holly valued her independence above all else. The 45-year-old was one of 14 kids born to Depression-era parents. She knew how hard this world could be and wouldn't let it beat her.

Finally, Roxanne McMillan was a 23-year-old wife and brand new mother. She and her husband had just moved to San Francisco. January 28th was move-in day at their new apartment. For the death angels, the night began at the Winterland Auditorium, where they watched the second bout between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier build as Super Fight 2. They believed in their corrupted hearts that Allah would guide Ali to victory.

They were riding exceptionally high when Ali won by decision after 12 rounds. The Angels hopped in their dark Cadillac and began prowling the streets of San Francisco. That's when they spotted Tana Smith walking gleefully down the sidewalk. She was on her way home after buying some fabric. She wanted to sew some new clothes to show off her new, trimmed body.

Without warning, JC Simon stepped up behind her and shot Tana twice in the back. She died on her way to the hospital. In the Cadillac, Simon raised the 32 and asked, "Who's next?" Manuel Moore grabbed the gun and immediately aimed at Vincent Wolin, who was walking home after stopping three times for donuts and coffee. It was his birthday after all.

The caddy stopped, Moore jumped out and shot Vincent twice in the back. He was alive when paramedics showed up, but didn't survive his trip to the hospital. Until then, Anthony Harris hadn't killed anybody. The other death angels were beginning to question his loyalty. They egged him on, pushing him to pop his murder cherry. That's when they drove by old man John Bambick, who was rummaging through a city trash can for junk.

Anthony thought Bambik would be an easy first kill. He walked up behind and shot him twice in the back, but instead of falling, Bambik spun around to face his attacker. The abnormally strong old man lunged and wrapped his hands around Anthony's neck. Several witnesses watched the two struggle. Finally, blood loss caused Bambik to weaken and let go of Anthony. He dropped and died in the street, surrounded by trash and clutter.

The death angels were roughly four miles south of the John Bambach murder when they spotted their next victim. Jane Holly was the only white woman inside the Lightning Coin laundrette. She enjoyed a grape soda and shared a newspaper with a kind black man sitting beside her. Her dryer buzzed and Jane stood to remove her clothes. Just as she opened the dryer door, Manuel Moore stepped up behind her and shot her twice in the back.

Her blood smeared on the stainless steel machine as she slumped over. Meanwhile, Manuel bolted out the front door after everyone inside had gotten a clear look at his face. Before Jane hit the ground, the black man she shared the paper with rushed over and caught her. He eased her down and then called the police. Jane died in the hospital later that night. The death angel spotted their final victim, Roxanne McMillan, while she was moving a box of kitchen towels from her car to her new apartment.

As she walked up the steps, JC Simon approached her and said pleasantly, "Hi there." Roxanne spun and, almost gleefully, responded, "Hi." Then, JC leveled his .32 and shot her twice. He fled when Roxanne's husband heard the shots and ran outside. She survived the shooting, but was wheelchair-bound for the rest of her life until she died in 2022.

According to the San Francisco Police Department, the January 28th shooting spree was the most violent night since the late 1920s. Fear gripped the city. Anxieties ran high when the police begged the public for help. They had no leads other than the 32 caliber shell casings found at each crime scene. Despite there being multiple witnesses to each murder, their descriptions didn't yield much. The words, "Slender young black man" cast too wide a net.

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part five april showers just as before the murders suddenly stopped this time for three anxious months police had a feeling that a nation of islam mosque known as muhammad's temple number 26 doubled as a meeting house for the death angels they began running surveillance in february which forced the angels into hiding march came and went and it seemed as though the killers had left town

Then, like a blooming spring flower, they emerged from the underground, ready to hunt again. Tom Rainwater and Linda Story were Salvation Army cadets. They were 19 and 21 respectively, and were on their way to grab a bite on April 1st, 1974. Larry Green walked up behind them, but instead of shooting them in the back like the other victims, he decided to run ahead and spin around. He wanted to look these white devils in the eyes when he shot them.

He wanted Tom and Linda to see Allah in his. Larry raised the gun and fired as Tom and Linda turned to flee. Both were shot twice in the back and collapsed on the sidewalk. Tom died and Linda survived the attack. This time, two cops on patrol heard the gunshots and arrived 15 seconds later. Had Larry Green run in the opposite direction, he would have fallen right into their arms.

Two weeks later, on Easter Sunday, 15-year-old Terry White and 18-year-old Ward Anderson were standing on opposite sides of Hayes Street, waiting for the bus. Manuel Moore walked up behind Ward, looked both ways, and then shot him in the back. The bullets tore through Ward's kidney and liver as he collapsed. The gunshots drew Terry's eyes from across the street. Before he knew what was happening, he saw Manuel running with a gun pointed toward him.

Manuel fired twice. The first bullet struck below the teenager's ribcage, the second hit his left arm. Both teenagers reeled on the sidewalk as Manuel ran away. Thankfully, EMTs arrived in time and both boys survived the shooting. On April 16, 1974, the death angels claimed their final victim. 23-year-old Nelson Shields had spent the winter as a fry cook in Aspen, Colorado.

When ski season ended, he relocated to San Francisco and moved into a friend's apartment. He'd only been in town for two weeks and knew little of the zebra murders. He spent the afternoon playing lacrosse with a friend and then followed that friend to another apartment on Vernon Street. He planned on buying a rug that his buddy was getting rid of. Nelson made room in the trunk while his friend walked inside the apartment building.

As he rummaged around the cargo bed of a Vegas station wagon, J.C. Simon walked up behind him and fired three times. The bullets ripped through Nelson's back and exited out of his chest. He died almost instantly, clutching a lacrosse stick in his arms. It was his first and last trip to San Francisco. For the rest of America, news of the zebra murders made them second-guess any travel plans themselves.

The whole city felt pain, be it from bullet wounds, lost loved ones, or slow business. Part 6: Operation Zebra San Francisco has always been a heavy tourist city. But in 1974, the streets were barren. People huddled near bus stops, and nobody dared walk alone at night. The only venues that did well were restaurants and movie theaters with valet parking.

Meanwhile, frustrated police officers combed the streets in unmarked cars. Operation Zebra had been in full swing since the murders on January 28th, and still, they had nothing to show for it. The Nelson Shields murder was the final straw. On April 19th, 1974, the SFPD instituted a stop-and-question policy. Over 150 officers were deployed with composite sketches of the zebra killers.

Anybody who remotely fit the description was stopped. Police took their name, phone number, address, and social security number and kept them on file at the Hall of Justice.

Among the first people stopped was Robert Brooks, a 23-year-old security guard who had nothing to do with the Death Angels, the Nation of Islam, or the BLA. "I think Mayor Eliotto is persecuting the black community for the acts of a few crazy dudes," Brooks told reporters after he was detained. The Black Panthers described Operation Zebra as "vicious and racist." Others, like Nation of Islam associate Jesse Bird, called it "unproductive."

Some groups believed Operation Zebra was a deeper conspiracy to commit a race war and get black males to submit to FBI classification and identification. In the end, Operation Zebra only lasted until April 25th. In that time, over 500 young black men were questioned. None produced any effective leads. Thankfully, the SFPD had another trick up its sleeve.

They offered a $30,000 reward for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of the death angels. To put that in perspective, that's just under $200,000 in today's money. Anthony Harris was struggling to support his wife and baby. $30,000 would change their lives, despite it likely landing Anthony in prison for the rest of his. He called the police from a payphone in Oakland.

Two officers met him in an old bank parking lot, where he told them about the death angels. At first, the officers didn't believe him. Everything he said could have easily been gleaned from newspapers and TV reports. Then, he mentioned three kids they had tried to kidnap shortly after murdering Keita Haig. Jackpot, the officers thought. That information was never released to the public.

The only people who knew about the attempted kidnappings were the police and the death angels. In the early morning hours of May 1st, 1974, more than 100 SFPD officers carried out simultaneous search warrants on all the death angels Anthony mentioned. Among them were J.C. Simon, Manuel Moore, Larry Green, and four other men who were later released due to a lack of evidence.

By then, Leroy Docter had already been convicted and sentenced for attacking Robert Stechman, and Jesse Cooks was serving a life sentence for the murder of Francis Rose. Upon arresting the others, Mayor Alioto was upfront with the people of San Francisco. It was the first time they were openly referred to as the "Death Angels."

In a prepared statement, he described them as a reverse Ku Klux Klan dedicated to the murder and mutilation of whites and dissident blacks. This episode is brought to you by Pluto TV.

Part 7. The Trials of Death

The death angels may have been in police custody, but that didn't ease public sentiment. Revelations during a grand jury hearing only made things worse. Anthony Harris revealed that police had stopped and questioned the four-quart death angel seven times between 1973 and 1974. The most egregious near miss likely cost Keita Haig her life.

According to a 1974 article in the Sacramento Bee that covered Anthony's testimony, Keita managed to escape the death angels as they tried to control her husband. She began running but stopped suddenly in her tracks. Richard meant everything to her, and she wouldn't let him go so easily. Keita snuck back toward the van and let the air out of one of the tires. This, of course, got her kidnapped alongside her husband.

However, it caused a long enough delay for officers Bruce Maravich and Ben McAllister to drive around the corner. Something about these young black men standing outside a white van drew their attention. The officers pulled up, but Jesse Cooks, ever the charmer, told the cops that he and his friends were just changing a flat tire. Meanwhile, in the cargo bed, Keita and Richard Haig were bound and gagged and begging for their lives.

Howard writes that Officer Marovitch thought about it for a moment. These men didn't look like criminals. They were well-dressed and well-groomed, as all the death angels were. "Okay," Marovitch said. He nodded to McAllister, and they drove away. On Halloween 1973, police stopped Larry Green while he was driving the same white van. They let him go without any further questions.

On December 22nd, two hours before Neil Moynihan was killed outside the Civic Center, JC Simon and Manuel Moore interfered with the traffic stop but were not sighted. Finally, on January 28th, 1974, moments before Bloody Monday kicked off, police stopped JC Simon for defective brake lights and a cracked windshield. The officer let him go with a warning, despite JC's multiple run-ins with police in recent weeks.

On May 9th, 1974, Green, Moore, and Simon pleaded innocent regarding the zebra murders. Their trial would become the longest in California history. It lasted a full year and six days from its start on March 3rd, 1975 to its conclusion on March 9th, 1976. Lawyers appointed by the Nation of Islam immediately attacked Anthony Harris' credibility.

They claimed he acted alone and was framing the alleged death angels. Their attacks fell on deaf ears. Anthony proved to be the star of the death angels trial. He testified for 12 days, nine of which were spent under brutal cross-examination. He waived his Fifth Amendment rights and routinely implicated himself in 10 of the death angel attacks.

Despite the trial's record-setting length, the jury only needed 18 hours to find all of the defendants guilty of murder and kidnapping, among other capital crimes. On March 29th, 1976, Jesse Cooks, Larry Green, Manuel Moore, and J.C. Simon were all sentenced to life in prison. They would have been sentenced to death had the US Supreme Court not deemed the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972.

a decision that was reversed in July of that year. On March 12th, 2015, J.C. Simon died in San Quentin State Prison from unknown causes. Manuel Moore lived to be 75 until he died in November of 2017. Jesse Cooks passed away in 2021. As of 2025, Larry Green is the last surviving death angel. He maintains his innocence after all these years, but regrets believing that white people were the devil.

He's been denied parole 16 times in a row. Anthony Harris was granted complete immunity from prosecution for testifying against his fellow death angels. He likely went into the witness protection program, as there isn't anything available regarding his current situation. He'd be 79 years old if he's still alive in 2025. Unlike other mass murderers, the death angel killing spree has mostly faded into distant memory.

There are no movies, tell-all documentaries, or Netflix TV adaptations. They're almost a myth in the American true crime genre. They were like the ghosts that came and went, never to be seen or heard of again. They were swift, methodical, unforgiving, and merciless. They were, truly, the angels of death.

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