Inmate Stanley "Tookie" Williams' changes don't sway some

LOS ANGELES — Gene Hetzel is aware death-row inmate Stanley "Tookie" Williams has written books and been the subject of a movie. Hetzel even heard talk of a Nobel Prize nomination some years ago. And he knows influential people are lobbying to win him clemency.

But for Hetzel, these details are eclipsed by older, clearer memories he links to Williams: the smell of garlic hovering on a cold morning over three people crumpled in a motel living room, their bodies blown apart by gunfire.

Williams, a founding member of the violent Crips gang, was convicted of these 1979 murders and one other, and is scheduled to be executed Dec. 13. He has said he changed his outlook in prison, though he has maintained he didn't commit the murders.

But Hetzel, 65, a retired homicide detective who investigated Williams, says he will never be convinced — not by Williams' claims of innocence, not by his professed change of heart.

Hetzel belongs to the skeptics — victims' loved ones and police officers, mostly — who recall a time before the world had heard of Tookie Williams. They remember how little was said, over the years, of Albert Lewis Owens, a night clerk at a 7-Eleven, and the Yangs, who ran a motel in Los Angeles. It hardly made the papers.

Williams, now 51, was convicted of killing four people in two robberies in 1979. The first crime took place Feb. 28, when Owens, a father of two working the night shift at a 7-Eleven, was shotgunned twice in the back at close range.

The second crime occurred 11 days later, after robbers crashed through the office door of the Brookhaven Motel, court documents said. Shot were Yen-I Yang, 65, a motel owner; his wife, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, 62; and daughter Yu-Chen Lin, 42, according to county records.

Lora Owens, stepmother of Albert Owens, says she is outraged that Williams' story of redemption (he was the subject of a television movie of that name) has eclipsed the story of Albert, a son and father who served in the Army.

Albert was slim, 5-foot-9, with red hair, freckles and blue eyes, Lora Owens said. He was outgoing: "[He] liked to do anything that was physical, anything manly," she said.

He married and had two daughters. The marriage ended in divorce. At 26, Owens, unsteadied by the breakup, "was trying to figure things out," Lora Owens said.

He had always had a practical, willing attitude about work, and he took a job as a night clerk at 7-Eleven. Owens laughed off his stepmother's worries. "I need the money," she recalled him saying.

It was 4 a.m. when the four robbers came in.

One took Albert into a storeroom and made him kneel or lie down, according to police accounts and court documents. He was shot twice in the back at close range with a 12-gauge shotgun.

Afterward, an accomplice of Williams turned informant said Williams bragged that he "blew some white guy away, shot him in the back, for $63," according to court documents.

When the television movie got Albert's name wrong, calling him "Alvin," Lora Owens tracked down the producers and complained. They apologized and changed it, she said.

The triple-murder 11 days later had the same style as the Owens murder. Family members of the victims could not be reached for comment. But others who were there say they won't forget it.

Chilling murders

Sgt. David Longshore, a Los Angeles County Sheriff's detective, knew the name "Barefoot Tookie" Williams at the time, in the loose way that police track local gangsters thought to be shot-callers and shooters in the areas where they work.

The neighborhood was notorious for crime. Sometimes, Longshore parked there to wait for crimes to happen.

On this night, he got to the motel and found a swarm of emergency workers in the family's tiny living space adjoining the motel office.

The father lay on the couch. The mother and daughter were on the floor. "They were crumpled together, as if cowering," Longshore recalled. Twelve-gauge shotgun blasts, fired at close range, had ripped large holes in the victims' bodies. Yu-Chen Lin had been shot in the face. Yen-I and Tsai-Shai Yang were shot twice in their torsos. Mother and daughter were still alive. They died shortly after at hospitals.

Hetzel, the sheriff's homicide detective who arrived shortly after, remembered noting the victims were of strikingly small stature. The room smelled of their cooking, a garlicky scent grotesquely at odds with the scene, he recalled.

The furniture was in disorder. Hetzel began looking for shell casings and realized the killers had pushed the chairs aside to collect them so they wouldn't be used as evidence.

"To execute them, then have the calmness to collect the empty shell casings," said Hetzel, now retired, and living out of state. "It just chills me."

One casing had been left behind. Investigators found it, Hetzel said. He said it was later connected to the murder weapon, a sawed-off shotgun.

Williams was arrested some time later at a traffic stop, said Sheriff's Lt. Dave Furmanski. When Hetzel later interviewed Williams, the Crip gang member was cool and businesslike, taking control of the interview, telling investigators nothing, requesting cookies and coffee.

Hetzel was struck by Williams' calm demeanor and massive size. He remembered the victims' bodies. "He had got those little people terrified," he recalled thinking. "Then ... he had to execute them. He had control of the situation. He had the money. Why?"

A voice against violence

Williams' advocates do not contest the horror of the crimes, but rather, the validity of the case against Williams.

"No one is disputing there [are] four tragic deaths there. It is very, very sad ... There is enormous sympathy here," said Verna Wefald, one of Williams' attorneys. But, she said, "the evidence against Mr. Williams is essentially weak and was coming from witnesses with sordid backgrounds who have incentive to lie to save themselves."

Since he was convicted, Wefald and others note, Williams has written anti-gang children's books and has become a voice against gang violence.

All three officers, however, said Williams' redemption story is just like many claims of religious epiphanies they've heard from prisoners over the years.

"People are too gullible," Longshore said. "Everyone wants a happy ending."