New evidence leads to arrest of 8 former Panthers in ’70s police killing

Kim Curtis

SAN FRANCISCO — They’d long since exchanged the radical idealism of their youth for comparatively quiet lives as janitors, job counselors and Little League coaches. They’d become husbands, fathers and grandfathers.

But memories of a violent era in American history came rushing back last week when eight men with ties to the Black Panther Party were arrested in the 1971 killing of a San Francisco police officer.

A fingerprint on a cigarette lighter, shotgun shells and an informant helped lead to the arrests, according to court papers released last Thursday. Some of the evidence was recovered using forensic techniques that didn’t exist 30 years ago, according to the document, which was used to obtain an arrest warrant in the case.

Prosecutors say members of the Black Liberation Army, a violent offshoot of the Panthers, stormed the lobby of a police station that August night, killing Sgt. John V. Young by firing a shotgun through the speaking hole in a glass partition. A civilian clerk was hit in the arm as she ducked for cover behind a file cabinet.

According to prosecutors, Francisco Torres, Herman Bell and Henry Watson Jones staged the attack. Former Oklahoma City residents John Bowman, Richard Brown and Harold Taylor were the lookouts. Ray Michael Boudreaux and Ronald Bridgeforth were the getaway drivers.

Anthony Bottom was supposed to be part of the attack team, but he was arrested the night before after attempting to fire a machine gun at a police sergeant, prosecutors say.

Bowman died of liver cancer in December, and it is believed Bridgeforth fled the country.

The seven others were arrested Jan. 23 on charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. An eighth, Richard O’Neal, was charged, only with conspiracy.

On the night of the shotgun siege, police recovered items including: a ballpoint pen, a key, a cigarette lighter, shotgun shells and buckshot. Advances in the recovery of fingerprints helped a forensic investigator in 2003 match the prints on the lighter to Torres, according to the affidavit used to obtain his arrest warrant. Torres’ lawyer did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

It isn’t the first time their names were tied to Young’s death, but six of the eight men managed to live relatively normal lives in the ensuing 36 years.

Taylor, now 58, moved to Florida where he worked as a utility lineman and lived with his daughter and girlfriend.

Boudreaux, 64, and Jones, 71, moved to Altadena, north of Pasadena, where they live within a mile of each other and remain friends. Boudreaux is an electrician for Los Angeles County and Jones is a real estate appraiser.

Torres, 58, moved to Queens, N.Y., where he’s lived in the same house for 27 years, according to his lawyer, Michael Warren, who called this prosecution “ridiculous” and “without any merit whatsoever.” He said his client is a married “family man” with two sons and is active in his community and coaches Little League. He said Torres served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam and was disabled by Agent Orange.

Richard Brown, 65, and Richard O’Neal, 57, stayed in San Francisco. Brown worked for nearly 20 years as a job counselor and developer at a community center and O’Neal worked as a custodian for the city.

Bell, 59, and Bottom, 55, were the two exceptions. Both are serving life sentences for killing two New York City police officers during the same violent spree that claimed Young, according to authorities. But both men earned college degrees in prison, and a warden has credited Bottom with helping to prevent riots. Bell, a former scholarship athlete, coaches inmate football teams. Both maintain they were framed by the FBI.

Prior to the revelation of the new evidence, lawyers for some of the former BLA members said the case’s reopening was really about revenge. The case was reopened twice before — in 1999 and 2005 — but several members called to testify at grand jury hearings refused to testify both times.

Two years after the killing, Taylor and Bowman were arrested in New Orleans. A judge dismissed the charges in 1976 because of allegations the men had been tortured by police officers during an interrogation. The duo became anti-torture advocates and vowed not to testify before a grand jury until the officers they accused of beating them were brought to justice.

Two defense lawyers said last week they believe the new charges are retaliation for the former Panthers’ public statements about the torture they say they endured.

“The government was embarrassed” when earlier attempts to indict the men fell through,” said Warren, Torres’ lawyer.

Taylor appeared briefly in court last Wednesday via a video link from a Panama City, Fla. jail, where he’s being held without bail. He said he would fight extradition to California.

Jones’ lawyer, John Philipsborn, said he looks forward to defending his client.

Boudreaux’s lawyer, Michael Burt, said his client is innocent. “He didn’t murder anybody,” he said.

Brown’s longtime friend, the Rev. Amos Brown, called him a “decent human being,” who’s been active in his community. The reverend said he visited Richard Brown in jail and that Brown declared his innocence.

The affidavit also said that in 2004, an FBI investigator matched five of the 15 shotgun shells recovered from the crime scene to spent shells recovered from a shotgun found at Bell’s New Orleans home in 1973. Police lost the shotgun in the years after it was recovered.

An unidentified informant, who was provided with immunity from prosecution and financial help for housing relocation, identified the men responsible for the attack in 2005, the affidavit said. The informant also told investigators that Bell criticized Torres for “dropping some item at the scene.” Police also said that Bottom confessed to police in 1971 that he organized the police station attack.

Associated Press writers Marcus Wohlsen in San Francisco, Tom Hays in New York City, Melissa Nelson in Pensacola, Fla. and AP researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed to this report.

(Associated Press)