The Valley of the Shadow of Death Read online

  * * *

  In the summer of 1965, getting ready for my third season in the league, I reported to training camp with the 49ers in Northern California. But on August 11, I was horrified when tragedy struck the streets of Watts. What started out as a seemingly routine traffic stop of a twenty-year-old black man named Marquette Frye exploded into urban warfare.

  Knowing the neighborhood, I feared something like this could happen. There was much grief in Watts. Jobs shrank, housing declined, police brutality rose. But tragically, what began as community protest flared into out-of-control vandalism. Gang members and criminals trashed stores and burned buildings, acts of self-destruction that simply ruined things for everyone left behind.

  Most alarming to me, my family lived in the heart of the combat zone, across the street from Will Rogers Park. Frantically, I tried to get through on the phone, over and over, but with no luck. There was no service in the neighborhood.

  Back in training camp, I watched the disaster unfold on TV. I saw national guardsmen trade gunfire with snipers on surrounding roofs. I saw familiar buildings go up in flames. I wanted to fly down, rush in, and drag my family out. But no one was allowed in. The neighborhood was barricaded, sealed off. Smoke and flames filled the screen. Unable to do anything but sit and watch made me want to scream, or put my fist through the set.

  More calls. Still no word. I slammed down the receiver.

  * * *

  As night falls and the flames gut Watts, a scene plays out that will impact my family years later.

  A seventeen-year-old black female, named Sondra Lee Holt, sits on her bed in her mother’s home. Her back is against the wall and her legs are bent at the knees.

  She has not slept for two days. The riots, the noise, the thrill, the fear, the drugs, have all kept her awake.

  Now, as she often does, she stares before her at a crack in the wall opposite her bed. It looks like a spider, and sometimes she thinks she sees it move. Other times she is sure of it. Sometimes it gets inside her head, pushing up against her eyes, causing her great pain.

  Outside, glass breaks, voices are raised; someone yells, “Burn, baby, burn!”

  Inside, through her closed door, she hears a man’s voice. “Come here,” he says. Her mother laughs in response: too loud, drunken, exaggerated.

  Sondra hears a crash, and bodies falling to the floor. Hysterical laughter, then giggling and pawing.

  It will all be fun until it isn’t, until he starts to hit her. It doesn’t matter who he is. It always ends up the same.

  Sondra darts her eyes to her door, to make sure it is locked. It is always bad when he comes in. That’s what makes her hate.

  Focusing on the door makes the spider go away, but not the pain. Every sound is amplified: fire engines, voices, footsteps, slamming doors, and breaking glass. All too damned loud.

  She wants to scream, to hit people, to hurt herself.

  She reaches for the bottle on the floor, takes two long swigs of whiskey, then returns to her position against the wall. She cradles the bottle under her right arm.

  As she leans back she feels her belly move. There has been more of that lately. For a minute it breaks the bad thoughts, hints at something nice.

  She takes another long drink.

  Her mind stops raging and she rubs her swollen belly from top to bottom, up then down.

  She is six months pregnant. Six months ago she met the father-to-be at a party. Now he’s in jail, but he will be out soon. She quit school after learning she was soon to be a mother.

  Calm thoughts, she now tells herself, she must have calm thoughts. Everything will change with the baby’s birth. All will be new and better. Finally, something to call her own, something over which she will have control.

  One more drink, and a little more control over her thoughts.

  She had heard people say you should talk to your baby, even before it is born. Say nice things and then the baby will be born with nice thoughts.

  “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay,” she says, soothing her restless unborn.

  She hopes the baby hears her voice, and not the noise.

  Inside the house, her mother’s man bangs on the door. Her mother is screaming.

  Outside: sirens, bullhorns, rage.

  She squeezes a pillow over her head to quell the pain.

  “It’s okay, baby,” she chants, as she rocks back and forth.

  * * *

  Finally, the following day, I heard from my mother. The family was safe; distraught and shaken up, but safe. But everyone knew the neighborhood would never be the same. The riots caused more than $40 million in damages. Thirty-four people died. More than a thousand were injured, another four thousand arrested. Our street had a new nickname, “Charcoal Alley.”

  For weeks following, the papers were filled with ominous warnings. The McCone Commission, established by Governor Pat Brown to assess the causes of the disturbance, decried a deep sickness infecting the community, spoke of dashed expectations, frustration, and disillusionment, of illiterate, unemployable youth who quit school to take to the streets. Working as a probation officer in San Francisco in the off-season, I was all too familiar with such problems. I knew the dire predictions to be true. I vowed to move my family out of Watts.

  At the time, my career was peaking. I led the team in interceptions. I would soon make All-Pro. I could afford to move them. It was my duty. And when Madee told me that she and my father were separating, the need to move turned urgent. The thought of her living as a single mother in the tinderbox of Watts made me shudder. But Madee, set in her ways and stubborn, resisted the idea. She was attached to her neighbors, church, community, and routine. It would take a near-perfect scenario to convince her to leave these behind.

  In 1967, two years after the Watts Riots, I finally succeeded. I rented a house belonging to the wife of a former UCLA teammate. It had been her family home growing up. It was a clean one-floor bungalow on a quiet palm-lined street. The neighborhood was residential, largely white, and with an address of 126 West Fifty-Ninth Street, it was a few houses west of Main, the dividing line between East and West L.A.

  This carried great symbolic weight.

  This meant that the Alexander family had arrived.

  They could now say they lived on the “West Side.”

  When my brother Gordon first set foot in the house, he was overcome.

  He got down on his hands and knees and kissed the floor.

  5

  MAMA, GO GET ’EM

  SEVENTEEN YEARS AFTER my brother Gordon kissed the floor and blessed our good fate, Madee stood in the kitchen and reached for her coffee.

  It was a little before eight.

  Why was I so late, she wondered. And why didn’t I answer as she called my name. And come to think of it, why had I acted so strangely when she last saw me, the day before yesterday. After my visit she had walked me to my car and kissed me goodbye. She then took a seat on her front porch. And for some reason I just kept driving around the block and returning to say goodbye, again and again.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she had yelled to me as I peered at her out of my car window.

  “I don’t know,” I had answered, smiling uneasily, then repeated, “I don’t know.”

  She just shook her head and smiled.

  And I did it again and again, just kept driving around the block. It was like the car was on autopilot, stuck on a track. Something would not allow me to leave.

  After my sixth or seventh pass, I broke free and drove away.

  She blew me a kiss goodbye.

  Finally, I headed home.

  Now the footsteps that had fallen through the house came to a stop, just a few feet from where Madee stood in her small kitchen. She replaced her half-finished cup of coffee on the counter. She turned to her left and stared into the hallway.

  * * *

  In the back bedroom of the house, my brother Neal and nephew Ivan slept soundly through the early morning hours.

/>   Neal, age thirty-three, was on disability and working through some psychologically tough times. He had returned to the family home in an effort to restore some order and stability to his life. He enrolled in a local community college, where he became obsessed with learning, no matter the subject, with the pursuit itself giving his life a new purpose. At one point he said, “Algebra saved my life.”

  Due to his intensive studies, we began calling him “Dr. Neal.”

  Madee was so inspired she decided to realize one of her dreams. Finally free after thirty years of childrearing, she earned her high school GED.

  Ivan, fourteen years old, was, like his eight-year-old little brother, Damon, visiting his grandmother for the last weekend of summer. Ivan loved playing football with the family, and like his relatives had been caught up in the Olympics.

  For Ivan, a sports-obsessed youngster in a sports-obsessed family, it didn’t get much better than this. Finish out the last week of summer hanging out with his All-Pro uncle, take in the Olympic afterglow, and talk sports in L.A.’s golden age: the Rams went to the Super Bowl in 1980, the Dodgers won the World Series in 1981, the “Showtime” Lakers won the NBA championship in 1980 and 1982, and Uncle Kermit’s UCLA Bruins had just crushed their opponents in two straight Rose Bowls.

  * * *

  Just after eight o’clock on the morning of August 31, Ivan is torn from sleep by the sound of gunshots and breaking glass.

  He hears bullets crashing through walls and a woman’s screams.

  Ivan sees his uncle Neal jump out of bed and run from the room. In the hallway stands a black man with a long gun. Someone screams Neal’s name. Then more gunshots.

  Ivan rushes into the bedroom closet and shuts the door.

  His mind cannot grapple with what takes place. He keeps asking himself if this is real or just a dream. If it is a dream, he cannot break free.

  From the darkness he hears wrestling and thumping, the sounds of a struggle. He fears they will find him.

  He then hears footsteps running through the house. Again he cringes, pictures the closet door suddenly thrown open.

  He hears the sound of the back door opening and shutting. More hurried footsteps. Again, the back door opens and shuts. Footsteps recede outside the house.

  Then silence.

  Ivan waits. And waits.

  Continued silence.

  Slowly he cracks the door.

  A sliver of light jabs into the pitch of the closet.

  His eyes adjust as he peers through the opening.

  * * *

  The telephone rang for the third time before I came to. I was asleep in my Hollywood home, about ten miles from Madee’s.

  I looked at the clock. It was almost 8:30 a.m. I had overslept.

  I had little doubt who was calling. It would be Madee trying to figure out what happened. Why was I so late? What was I doing?

  Oh boy, I thought as I shook the sleep from my eyes. She was really going to let me hear it now. Partly in jest, but with an underlying note of gravity, she would let me know that I had dropped the ball, let her down.

  It was ironic, because I was especially excited about meeting with her that day. I had some good news I had been looking forward to telling her. But the anticipation of sharing a triumph with the one person who would most appreciate it left me unable to sleep. I often found that Madee’s reaction to my good news was better than the good news itself. It was always so inspiring to talk with her. I couldn’t wait. And due to my excitement I had gone to bed late and then overslept.

  On Thursday, the day before, I had been hired to be the play-by-play color analyst for UCLA football. I was back in the game. It felt like a kind of homecoming. I withheld the news from Madee so that I could tell her in person. She had supported my football career from the start, and had been so excited when I went to UCLA and then when I returned from San Francisco in 1970 to play for the hometown Rams. Now she would be thrilled that I was back with my old alma mater.

  For me it was another dream, another moment of arrival, as a long-term gnawing fear could be put to rest. It started as just a glint, but was turning into the full glow of a plan. I wasn’t going to be just another retired athlete who faded away. For as soon as one even considered retiring, all of the limitless possibilities of the field were replaced by the realities of life after football. You were great in the arena, now what can you do? Hope dims as retirement looms. The fear of the athlete, where the peak comes so young: All-American by twenty, All-Pro by thirty, forgotten by forty. But now I felt I might find a direction, post-NFL.

  As I reached for the phone, I readied myself to go on offense. I would preempt her questions with a quick apology, and the announcement that I had some news for her, that I was dressing as we spoke, that I was on my way out the door, and I would be there in minutes.

  “Hello. Madee, I’m so sorry,” I prepared to say, as I picked up the phone mid-ring.

  But before I could finish “Hello,” I was interrupted.

  “Kermit,” my brother Neal struggled to say, sounding like he was panting. It was hard to hear him. He sounded like a child unable to catch his breath through the tears.

  My first thought was that poor Neal was having another episode. What a shame, I thought. Lately he seemed to be doing so much better.

  “Kermit,” Neal’s voice cracked, “why did they do that?”

  Now fully awakened by a family member’s trauma, I went into problem-solving mode. First goal, help Neal settle down, subdue his demons.

  “What did they do?” I asked in my calmest, it-will-be-all-right voice.

  More panting, shallow breaths.

  “Why would they mess up Mom like that?”

  * * *

  As I drive the ten miles to my mother’s house every ounce of my steeled self-control is on trial. I’m aggravated by the plodding rush-hour traffic. The time approaches 9 a.m. This will take forever.

  My mind screams: Why hadn’t I been there? How could I have let this happen? I fear I’m going to lose it.

  From the Hollywood Freeway I merge onto the Harbor Freeway. Stop-and-go, then bumper-to-bumper. Moments of acceleration, and I punch the car forward. False hope, false starts, the maddening ebb and flow of the Southern California freeway. The traffic again stalls out, grinding to a halt.

  But it couldn’t be real. None of this is real. Not real, I keep telling myself. Who would hurt Madee? Why would anyone hurt her? She is beloved. She is known as the nicest lady in the neighborhood. She is a community treasure. No, this is not really happening, I reassure myself, and once I arrive at the house I will learn what a cruel hoax has been played. Please, God, clear up this mess and let things be right.

  I turn off the Harbor Freeway at the Slauson Avenue exit. I drive through the old neighborhood. The mirage has already faded. The streets so recently resurrected by Olympic gold now revert to form: a landscape bleak and indifferent, where brother wastes brother with no second thoughts.

  Searching for anything upon which to anchor hope, I replay the night of the Watts Riots. I sat there, watching the smoke and flames, the chaos in the streets. My family was at its epicenter. The neighborhood burned, I couldn’t get through. But they did. They made it, and they would again. They must.

  I brace myself for the turn onto West Fifty-Ninth Street, ready to see the house known for nearly twenty years as the “Alexander House.”

  Please, I pray, just give me the normal and familiar: children playing, bicycles spinning, neighbors gossiping.

  The heart pounds.

  I turn onto West Fifty-Ninth.

  The heart breaks.

  A mass of emergency vehicles blocks the street. Yellow police tape cordons off the front yard. Hundreds of strangers gawk. I instantly feel that the family home no longer belongs to us, already overtaken by tragedy and spectacle.

  On the sidewalk in front of me several neighbors are crying. I hear one talking to a police officer. I catch the tail end of her sentence: “They were very nice p
eople.”

  Another neighbor: “She never did anything to anybody.”

  A third: “I don’t know who her enemy would be. She is a lovely person and has lived here for about fifteen years. I don’t understand it. I just can’t believe they’d do it to Mrs. Alexander.”

  From the back of an ambulance a gurney is removed and rolled toward the house.

  A neighbor across the street collapses onto her lawn screaming.

  I see my family huddled in anguish.

  My sister Joan is hysterical, trying to rush into the house as two officers restrain her.

  The sun continues to arc over the horizon. Tall, still palms cast long distorted shadows.

  Convulsing, Joan shrieks at the officers:

  “My mother’s in there. Tell me what happened!”

  Nearby, a girl hangs on her mother to keep from collapsing. She wails, “They’re not dead, Mama, they’re not dead. Mama, go get ’em. They’re not dead.”

  6

  OUR FAMILY ISN’T LIKE THAT

  THE ROBBERY AND Homicide Division of the Los Angeles Police Department is responsible, on a citywide basis, for investigating homicides involving serial killers, “arson as a manner of death,” “intense media coverage or high profile,” and “multiple victims (generally three or more) in one incident.”

  Located in the Parker Center, or Police Administration Building, in downtown Los Angeles, the RHD, which was established in 1969, had taken part in numerous high-profile investigations since its inception. These included the Manson family murders of 1969, the shootout with the radical Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974, the Bob’s Big Boy massacre of 1980, as well as several serial killer cases of the late 1970s and early 1980s: the Skid Row Stabber, Hillside Strangler, Sunset Strip Killer, and Freeway Killer.