The Zebra Killings
Between October 1973 and April 1974, a series of seemingly random murders terrorized San Francisco. The perpetrators — members of a Black Muslim offshoot group called the Death Angels — targeted white victims in what investigators eventually concluded was a systematic campaign of racially motivated killing. At least fifteen people were killed and eight wounded in San Francisco alone; some investigators believed the same network was responsible for additional killings across California, potentially bringing the death toll to over seventy. The killings became known as the Zebra Murders after the special police radio frequency dedicated to the investigation.
San Francisco police implemented a controversial stop-and-question program targeting young Black men throughout the city in early 1974, authorized by Mayor Joseph Alioto after public pressure demanded action. The program — stopping thousands of men based solely on race and height profile — was condemned by civil liberties organizations as unconstitutional racial profiling and was ultimately halted after legal challenges. It produced no arrests and considerable community anger.
The break came from inside: a member of the Death Angels named Anthony Cornelius Harris agreed to cooperate with authorities in exchange for immunity from prosecution. His testimony identified the killers and provided the operational details of the murders. In May 1974, police arrested seven men; four — Manuel Moore, J.C. Simon, Larry Green, and Jessie Lee Cooks — were eventually convicted of first-degree murder after a sixteen-month trial, one of the longest in California history to that point. All four received life sentences.
The Zebra Murders profoundly affected San Francisco's racial dynamics in the mid-1970s, exposing fault lines between the Black community and city government and testing the limits of how law enforcement could respond to racially motivated serial violence. The case received limited national coverage at the time, partly because it involved white victims of Black perpetrators — a racial dynamic that made it uncomfortable for the media environment of the era. It was documented in detail in Clark Howard's 1979 book "Zebra."