"New Insights" To Delay Jamal Documentary

(Pic of Tigre Hill)

(From Philly.com)

Filmmaker Tigre Hill says he has uncovered "rare new insight" concerning the 1981 killing of Police Officer Daniel Faulkner and the subsequent conviction of death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal, and so he will delay the premiere of his documentary The Barrel of a Gun till February.

As reported so far, the film makes the case that Abu-Jamal is guilty.

Hill had planned to debut the film on Dec. 9, the 28th anniversary of Faulkner's death.

Through his spokeswoman, he says that "due to information that must be incorporated into the documentary," on that date he'll release a second trailer, "focusing less on political thesis and debate and more on the tragedy of lost life."

He is incorporating the new info into the documentary.

In a phone interview, Hill said his point of view has not changed because of the new information, which he declined to identify.

The Mumia Maverick

(Jamal being transported from hospital)

(From Philly.com)

By Amy S. Rosenberg

Inquirer Staff Writer


Tigre Hill has only released the trailer to his film, The Barrel of a Gun, but already Mumia Inc. has begun mobilizing against him.

At 57th and Christian Streets, over an offering of rice and beans and salad prepared by her grandchildren, Pam Africa labels Hill an attack dog, the second coming of Wilson Goode, and says his film will be a racist "hit piece" against Mumia Abu-Jamal.

In Germany, writer and academic Michael Schiffman spent 5,600 words aimed at debunking the 3 1/2-minute trailer in a piece that circulated widely online. Schiffman wrote that the case made in Hill's film, at least as indicated by the trailer, "will be built on sand."

On death row, meanwhile, former radio newsman Mumia Abu-Jamal, 55, is as close as he's ever been to a final judgment on his original death sentence for the 1981 killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. The U.S. Supreme Court in April rejected a last appeal for a new trial. A petition by the Philadelphia district attorney demanding reinstatement of Abu-Jamal's death penalty, which was thrown out by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, is pending.

But over convenience-store coffee, sitting in the backyard of his childhood home in Wynnefield where he still lives and where his film is being edited in a room upstairs, Hill is taking it all in stride in his trademark Ben Roethlisberger jersey.

He's laid-back, naturally friendly, and comfortable in taking on the sacred cows of black political, cultural and social-justice power structures, and he's knocking down a few assumptions himself as an African American with a love of George W. Bush and a Philly kid who roots for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He's a stocky guy who grew up playing ice hockey and admits to a fondness for the Carpenters (but also John Coltrane). At 41, he's still single (but involved with fitness expert Allegra Feamster). His first film, never released due to legal issues, was a drama about castration.

You might say Tigre Hill has made a career - and maybe even a personal life - out of "not what you were expecting."

His last film, The Shame of a City, started as a chronicle of the 2003 Katz-Street mayoral election, but ended up a stinging indictment of a Democratic Party and black political establishment that were depicted as cynically exploiting racial politics to turn the discovery of an FBI bug in Mayor John Street's office into a windfall of support - among voters and out-of-town bigshots - for Street.

His Mumia thesis is provocative: that placed in the context of prior acts by the Black Panthers, the history of political revolutionaries, various influences on Abu-Jamal's thinking, police killings in other cities that eerily presage Faulkner's, statements and actions Jamal had made before that night, the idea that Abu-Jamal may have set out to deliberately kill a police officer becomes chillingly plausible.

The trial included testimony from four witnesses at the scene, 13th and Locust Streets, where Abu-Jamal was found sitting on the curb, his gun nearby and a bullet from Faulkner's gun lodged in Abu-Jamal's chest.

"I have not come out as saying Mumia is guilty, but you can see where it's going," Hill says. "I'm not afraid of these people. There are African Americans who believe what I do, but are hesitant to say. I don't want to make it racial, even though it is racial."

After Shame, which Inquirer film critic Carrie Rickey called a "scrappy exposé" and a "civic Rorschach test," Hill turned to what is arguably the über-global story from Philadelphia: Mumia.

Hill said he felt drawn to the story of Mumia - who has become a potent symbol for anti-death-penalty activists - in part because of similar themes from Shame: race, manipulation of public opinion, and a breathtaking bandwagon mentality by big names eager to exploit a case they knew little about.

Hill, a graduate of Archbishop Carroll High School and Temple who says his cinematic idols run more toward Stanley Kubrick and Irving Thalberg than Spike Lee or Michael Moore, says people assumed that as a black man from Philadelphia, he would be pro-Mumia.

It took time to persuade both sides to talk to him, from Pam Africa to Daniel Faulkner's widow, Maureen Faulkner, to prosecutor Joe McGill (Hollywood was willing). But Tigre Hill, pronounced TEE-gray, is nothing if not a highly competent schmoozer - this is a guy who got 30 actors and local celebrities to appear in his low-budget castration fantasy, Casanova's Demise.

The Mumia story appealed to him as a great narrative, he says, not because it placed him in a familiar role as a black man debunking prevailing black and left-wing thinking.

"I really don't see that role," said Hill, the son of a Marine-turned-defense contractor from Pittsburgh (hence, the Steeler obsession) and a teacher mother, whose college texts from the '40s line the walls of his home, which he inherited after her death. "I look for real stories."

It was at the Pen and Pencil Club, a journalist hangout in Philadelphia, that a buddy introduced him to Bill Colarulo, now a police chief inspector, across the bar. Colarulo told a riveting story of seeing Faulkner in the hospital that night. "He'd only been a cop on the beat, a rookie out at night, and a cop was brought in shot in the head. It just traumatized him. He said, 'You could tell he was dead, there's a certain gurgling.' "

Always intrigued by the case, Hill was hooked. He says he understands the impulse to defend Abu-Jamal, to see him as a victim of larger forces, especially viewed through the lens of police brutality. "You see the way his story has been manipulated," he said. "People take him on as a hero like Che Guevara and other freedom fighters."

Hill says his goal was not so much to take the story out of its global gauze wrap and expose it as a straightforward Philadelphia homicide, but to place it in its larger context.

Hill believes Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther and MOVE supporter, was influenced by prior violence by those groups against police. The film cites tactics used by the Chicago 7 and Panther activists Bobby Seale and Huey Newton to address police brutality - in part by provoking violent encounters.

"I believe Mumia and his brother [William Cooke] had it out for cops in the area," Hill said. "You're talking about 13th and Locust, a seedy area. [Cooke is] driving down the street in a beat-up car, tag hanging; it's no shock that he gets stopped. He starts a scuffle with the officer. Mumia comes running across the street. Why was he there? That's the million-dollar question."

William Cooke has never spoken publicly about the Faulkner killing. Hill said he had located Cooke in North Philadelphia but decided against pursuing an interview.

Joseph McGill, the trial prosecutor who has been vilified globally, says he welcomes Hill's analysis. McGill never established a motive, but believes the encounter between Faulkner and Mumia was set up as a political or revolutionary act.

"That's why I am very anxious to see this film," said McGill. "I was aware at the time of Jamal's affiliation with MOVE, aware of Bobby Seale Chicago 7 tactics. I was not aware of the really in-depth history regarding all of the movements."

"I have confidence in Tigre's analysis and his really authentic research," he said. "I've often stated that the further you get from Philadelphia, the less clear the entire case becomes."

Hill's critics say the title - from a Mao Tse-Tung quote, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun," that Abu-Jamal cited in a newspaper interview - is misleading. Abu-Jamal has said it was a commentary on police and government action against black and oppressed people, not a personal philosophy.

Schiffman, the German author, argues that Hill uncritically adopts theories of Maureen Faulkner and Inquirer columnist Michael Smerconish in their book, and says the title of the film perpetuates the notion that Jamal used the Mao quote as a statement of his own strategic plan. Schiffman calls that a "deliberate and toxic lie which, it appears now, will be the core thesis of an equally mendacious and toxic film."

Hill enlisted the help of JFK conspiracy debunker Gerald Posner and was funded by Philadelphia GOP bigwig Kevin Kelley and two partners. Among those interviewed are Ed Asner, Mike Farrell, Danny Glover, Pam Africa (after a lot of coaxing, they met at the Sofitel hotel), Gov. Rendell, anti-death penalty Sister Helen Prejean, Smerconish, the people of Saint-Denis, France, who named a street after Mumia, and Maureen Faulkner.

Hill did not speak with Abu-Jamal. He was interviewing Abu-Jamal's lawyer when Abu-Jamal called, and Hill has footage of the attorney, Robert Bryan from San Francisco, apparently being reamed out for suggesting that he get on the phone with Hill.. Also appearing is district attorney candidate Seth Williams, who says he would seek death if justices ordered a new hearing. Pam Africa has called Williams, who is black, and Hill the "Wilson Goode and Leo Brooks" of the Mumia case, referring to the black mayor and his managing director during the Osage Avenue MOVE catastrophe.

Buoyed by the reaction to the trailer, both positive and negative, Hill hopes to ready the film for a Philadelphia premiere on Dec. 9, the 28th anniversary of the killing.

Pro-Mumia activists will go to Washington on Nov. 12 to ask U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to review the case.

The U.S. Supreme Court, meanwhile, has yet to respond to the petition to reinstate the death sentence. The justices, though, have heard a capital case from Ohio that involves the same legal issue - instructions to the jury about mitigating circumstances - that is a key focus in Abu-Jamal's appeal.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Contact staff writer Amy S. Rosenberg at 215-854-2691

MOVE Child Abuse Revisited

(Ramona Africa)


The recent controversy over Roman Polanski’s arrest in Sweden based on a crime he admitted to committing several decades ago brought me back to thinking about MOVE’s crimes against children. For those of you who have steered well clear of the Polanski debacle, he is the famous film director who gave a thirteen year old girl booze and a qualude, and than proceeded to rape and sodomize her. After things went south for Polanski in a court of law, he decided the best thing to do was to leave the country to live in a kind self-imposed exile where he could be revered for both his artistry and for thumbing his nose at American jurisprudence. Polanski is facing deportation back to this country, something that the revered film-maker wants desperately to avoid.

Polanski is not without his defenders. Immediately after his arrest, his Hollywood friends jumped to his defense, appearing on television and signing petitions demanding that Polanski be allowed to go free. Soon after, however, a backlash against this kind of Hollywood exceptionalism arose from people who were not so comfortable with the rape of a child by someone who happened to be able to make a decent film or two. Those who would defend Polanski cling tenaciously to the idea that the girl he victimized and who is now a woman has offered him forgiveness and wants the matter go away, however as columnist Christopher Hitchens pointed out in a recent column “strictly speaking it's of no more relevance than if she had said the same thing at the time. The law prosecutes those who violate children, and it does so partly on behalf of children who haven't been violated yet. We take an individual instance, whoever the individuals happen to be, and we use it for precedent. And we do not know how lucky we are to be able to do so.”

We are certainly lucky, but children in MOVE are not so lucky. This is because they have the misfortune of not only being born in a cruel and authoritarian sect that has girls as young as 11-12 years old being raped with the intention of them being impregnated, but also to have this victimization compounded by the fact that the city of Philadelphia will do nothing about it. Philadelphia’s unspoken, but well understood “hands off” policy towards the cult that was started after the 1985 “incident” with MOVE has the unintended consequence of enabling the abuse of children.

However, before I get too far ahead of myself I want to make it clear that my allegations of MOVE’s abuse of children stems not only from my own experience, but also stems by MOVE’s own admission of the crime. Back in 2006, Ramona Africa made the mistake of spelling out MOVE’s policy regarding the impregnation of young girls in an email, where she admits without hesitation that "Women in MOVE do marry and have babies at what this american society might now consider to be a young age but we follow the coordination of Mother Nature who coordinates it such that she determines when a woman is ready for marriage and babies, which is when a woman has her monthly period, then she is ready to have babies and be married. It's just that simple."

One should read the above statement carefully in order to understand the full implications of what is being said. Notice that Ramona uses the phrase “when a woman has her monthly period” Say what? Little girls are not “women” when their periods start; they are still little girls, who are on the path to becoming women. The distinction should be clear to anyone with an ounce of decency and who remains off of the sex offender registry. That Ramona Africa and company find acceptable the idea that little girls are under the “coordination” of some kind of mythical force that decides that it is ok for them to be raped is indicative of a savage backwardness. From my view, MOVE is no better than the child-rapist who stalks playgrounds for victims or the creep in his mom’s basement plodding through the internet trying to hook up with barely teenage girls. In fact, MOVE is worse for the simple fact that they have institutionalized this barbarism and have attempted to use their crude theology as a means of justifying it. They are worse because not only do they force young girls to become pregnant and “married”, but because they also deprive these same girls of any semblance of a meaningful education. This enforced intellectual deprivation allows for the sexual domination of children, which gives rise to a “Stockholm” type syndrome where the girls in this situation will defend to death their position in MOVE. And more than that, they will more than willingly subject their own children to this very same level of abuse. What began as the abuse of individuals turns into a crime that transcends generations with an ever expanding circle of victimization.

Cultural relativists have a point in that different cultures maintain different values and should therefore be afforded a degree of latitude, however when it comes to children, we are supposed to live in a society that does not tolerate sexual abuse. Yet, in MOVE’s case it is allowed. And let it not be said that I have not done my part in spreading the word against this. I write this blog, but I also went to the authorities with the information that I have obtained and was brushed aside. I went to the mainstream media and was similarly ignored. And don’t get me started on the so-called “alternative” media outlets. None of them dare offer any criticism of MOVE on any level, lest they be labeled as “reactionaries”.

It is good for people to not want a man who raped a young girl thirty years ago to avoid punishment. Is it also not a good thing to stop the institutional rape of children that goes on today?

"Different Way" Of Looking At Mumia

(Pic of Tigre Hill)
(From Philadelphia Metro

Tigre Hill’s has been working on his Mumia Abu-Jamal documentary, “Barrel of a Gun,” for more than two years. He hopes to release his take on the murder of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner on Dec. 9, the 28th anniversary of his death.

Why will people still care enough about Mumia to want to see the film?

I made the film because the films I saw before I didn’t think they did a great job of telling the story. The “Barrel of a Gun is a very comprehensive look at what happened that night. It also goes into why he’s become an international celebrity.

Why has this story kept our attention and interest 28 years later?

Any time that you have a talent for writing and for speaking and you’re able to get your voice out there and people pick up that voice, that’s a great advantage over your average person. He’s been able to get his voice out there and people have taken up his cause. That is a great advantage to him. Also, outside of the United States there is a perception of justice in this country that he’s a symbol for people to tag on to.

What do you think the reaction will be?

I’m sure it will be very passionate on both sides. I think it’s a different way of looking at the story in Europe — and we plan to go there — as far as the way they’ve seen the case. The story tells a different side ... because you see more of the victims, you see more of Maureen Faulkner in this film, you see more of what she’s had to go through, whereas in other films you haven’t seen that.

The Mumia Narrative

(Pic Of Billy Cook's car)
The release of the trailer for Tigre Hill’s upcoming film about the murder of Police Officer Daniel Faulkner by Mumia Abu-Jamal has elicited fearful reactions by Jamal supporters. Two pro-Mumia articles have recently been released that attack the soon-to-be released documentary, this despite the fact that nobody has seen the final product.

One article, written by Anton Mestin, is so poorly constructed and argued that it is its own best argument against itself and the Mumia cause Mestin hopes to defend. It also contains the kind of allegation that is typical of the Jamal cause in that it assumes what should have to be proven when Mestin asserts that “Now Smerconish paid a filmmaker, Tigre Hill to produce a new vicious attack on reality. They will publish a film about Mumia Abu-Jamal and Daniel Faulkner in December 2009." Mestin offers no clues as to where he heard this allegation and makes the declarative statement as if no evidence is needed for it. For their part, the people behind the creation of “The Barrel of a Gun” stated on the film’s Facebook page that Smerconish “has at no time contributed any money to any aspect of this film or its marketing”. I would only add that if Mestin had any proof that Tigre Hill’s film was being funded by Smerconish that he owes it to everyone to explain where he received his information from and back his claims up with facts.

The other article attacking Hill’s film was written, or to be more precise, mostly cut and pasted by long-time Jamal apologist and conspiracy theorist Michael Schiffman. I have dealt with Schiffman on previous occasions and have exhaustively debunked his pro-Mumia propaganda on my blog. There is no need for me to re-visit and re-debunk Schiffman’s completely absurd and frankly laughable ideas about the murder that his friend Mumia committed. What I find interesting is just how frankly insulting to the intellect Schiffman can be. For example, he spends an extraordinary amount of time informing his readers that the man who prosecuted Jamal’s case is simply making things up and putting forth a generally impossible narrative of events concerning Officer Faulkner’s murder.

The fact remains that the prosecution case has withstood perhaps more scrutiny than perhaps 90% of all contested court cases in this country and it has stood up. Are there pockets of unanswered questions in the prosecutions case? Clearly the answer is yes. I don’t think that there is anyone who would deny that. However, the burden placed upon the prosecution is to prove “guilt beyond a reasonable doubt” and not necessarily to have a picture perfect reconstruction of the crime committed. It is their job to try and I think Jamal’s prosecutors did a good job in explaining what happened to Officer Faulkner (clearly the jurors agreed as well). Where the prosecution has remained consistent and impervious to serious scrutiny, Jamal’s defense, in it’s multitude of incarnations has shown itself to be lacking in not only scruples, but also in any kind of factual coherence. What Jamal’s varied defense teams have been short of in the truth department they have more than made up for in the realm of fanatical delusions. The defense team has concocted and contrived some of the most inane and absurd ideas ever that have ever been heard inside a courtroom. From phantom helicopters that do not exist, to dead men talking, to dead prostitutes rising from the grave to be seen in a Camden crack hose, the defense teams have had no shortage of clearly deranged theories to put forward in the service of Mumia. It goes without saying that the need for the defense to contrive so many scurriulous theories is because Jamal himself has never offered any explanation that comes close to being a coherent counter to that of the prosecution. That being the case, I find it particularly humorous that Schiffman would so shamelessly and without even a second thought, so aggressively go after Jamal’s prosecution. Especially considering the fact that Schiffman’s own ideas are so backwards, so clearly false, so ridiculous, and useless that Jamal’s current crop of lawyers won’t even embrace them, which says a lot.

It should be said however, that at the end of the day, Schiffman and company have no interest in the facts of the case, they simply want to “free Mumia” because he is first of all a political comrade, secondly Jamal still has some value as a marketing device, and finally because Schiffman’s world view demands a narrative that fits into the parameters that he is comfortable with. For Jamal’s few remaining supporters, it is this final factor that is most compelling and is the driving force. There was a time when there were large groups of people who very sincerely believed in Jamal’s actual innocence, but those days are over. This turn of events came about thanks to the availability of trial transcripts and the diligence of people who took the time examine just what it was that Jamal’s supporters were saying and directly challenging them with facts. There is little chance that someone devoid of a political agenda could look at both sides of the debate and conclude that Mumia is anything but a guilty man. Something that is more likely is that someone with far-left views will choose to ignore facts not favorable to their agenda and make ill-conceived assumptions based not on cold, hard, facts, but by a slavish devotion to ideological considerations. This is why Mumia still has any support at all. If Mumia had been an underemployed man of any color, with no history with MOVE or especially the Black Panthers and the same kind of evidence was presented against him, nobody would dare take up his cause. For the current crop of Jamal supporters it is about politics, while for those of us who advocate justice for Daniel Faulkner it is about justice.

In an article discussing the Jamal phenomena, Christian Peheim, (who also very effectively debunked Schiffman’s pro-Jamal drivel) drives home the point that politics is the driving factor in the Jamal cause with frank elegance:

“Courts in the United States do not care about political pressure by supporters of Abu-Jamal. Demonstrations in the streets will never change a decision based on the merits of an argument. French delegations visiting the mayor of Philadelphia will never achieve anything. By the way, if they want to achieve anything they would have to meet District Attorney Lynne Abraham and convince her. (They wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell.)

Political pressure could influence politicians only. Before the death sentence has been vacated, Abu-Jamal’s chances to receive clemency would have been increased by showing remorse. By putting the head in the sand and supporting his unbelievable claims of innocence his supporter have helped to forever destroy his chances to receive clemency. They did not help Abu-Jamal but abused him for their own purposes. No reasonable politician would ever grant clemency to a remorseless cop killer. If the death sentence will ever be re-instated and executed these supporters will partially be responsible for his death.

Actually, I think this scenario doesn’t seem to be very likely. After the decision of the Third Circuit Court Abu-Jamal’s fate seems to be rather clear. Most likely he will stay behind bars for the rest of his life, where he belongs.

Also in future his supporters will use him. He still can be useful as a shared topic for various left-wing groups and as a basis to collect donations. Who knows where all the money went which has been collected in his name?”

So, for the Jamal supporters it all rests on politics and the desperate need to create a narrative that conforms not to facts, but the political sensibilities of people that the narrative needs to be marketed to. This is why in Schiffman’s article; he goes far out of his way to mention the 1968 murder of Fred Hampton as a mechanism and as an aid to show a conspiracy to kill Mumia. In doing this, Schiffman is setting up a straw man argument. There is no correlation between the two cases to be found. Fred Hampton was a high ranking member of the Black Panther Party when he was gunned down. Through his charisma and adept leadership the Party was making inroads and had the potential to if not be a threat to Chicago’s political leadership, at least a threat to the Police that gunned him down. Mumia, on the other hand, had been out of the Panthers for several years, was no longer viable as a journalist, was on a downward trajectory in her personal life, and was absolutely no threat to any political order. Perhaps it was the recognition of his own failures and impotence that Jamal made the choice to put into action his now infamous quote from Chairman Mao that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”. The murder of Officer Faulkner and the incarceration of Mumia rising not out of a fear of Jamal being a “threat” to the “system”, but rising out of Jamal’s own searing failures, professional, political, and personal. Jamal was the arbiter of his own demise, nobody needed to help him.

For Jamal supporters, the myth of his innocence necessitates new and even more elaborate theories as old ones are subsequently and completely discredited in the face of facts. There is a kind of infinite regress going on since Jamal’s first trial when the lies of that time failed obtain result, those lies turned into others, and still other lies arose as time and court dates came and went as did the amount of support. There is no reason for us to expect that pattern to change anytime soon.

More On The Murder Of John Gilbride

Pic of Gary Wonderlin from his Century 21 website

The recent article by Jason Stark in the Philadelphia Daily News brought up some great points and should raise more suspicions of MOVE members and supporters regarding the murder of John Gilbride.

For the first time in several years, Alberta Africa gave an interview and clearly wanted to give the appearance that she was being quite candid. Unfortunately for the truth, Alberta, offered only more obscurations and self-serving quotes that to outsiders were probably more puzzling than anything else.

Early on in the article, Alberta is quoted as saying that John is still alive. She claims that “Maybe he went off the deep end or something and is hiding somewhere. He seemed like he was deeply involved in the government,".

On the face of it, Alberta’s claim is at best deluded. At worst, it is the attempt by a deeply cynical person who knows quite well that John is dead, knows that he was murdered, and who knows exactly who did the killing, because it was Alberta herself who ordered John to be killed.

It is important to also that this story of John being alive and “hiding somewhere” has not always been Alberta’s story. In a 2003 article in the Philadelphia City Paper, Alberta is quoted as saying the following about John’s murder:

“I deserve to know what happened to him, who killed him and why, but more importantly, my son deserves to know what really happened to his father”

However, the day after John was murdered, Alberta was fairly clear on who was had murdered John:

"I've experienced a lot of hurt and pain at the hands of this government and I'm pretty sure they're the ones who did this," Alberta Africa said. "To me, that sounds like Special Forces."

It is important to note that Alberta has changed her story as to what she thinks happened to John on several occasions. One constant theme in all of her flip-flopping is that MOVE members and supporters had nothing at all to do with John’s murder. Another thing to consider is that there is absolutely no indication that MOVE has put any effort at all in either finding the person that they “believe” killed John. The group goes out of it’s way not to mention his name and did it’s best to stymie the efforts of Police investigators looking into John’s killing. I can remember that before I was questioned by the Police, I was brought into to speak with high-level MOVE members who instructed me on how best to say nothing to the cops while making it seem like I was telling them everything I knew. This is hardly the behavior of a group that dedicated towards “truth” and which has the resources to spread their messages far and wide. MOVE’s silence and reluctance to discuss John Gilbride speaks volumes to the group’s true intentions.

For the sake of argument though, let us assume that John was still alive and had gone into hiding. What would be the point of that? Clearly, he had fought for custody of his son. I think that much is beyond argument. So, if he was in hiding and not be able to see his son, does that negate all that he had fought so hard for? If he were alive, would he not let his family know? I have spent a fair amount of time personally with the Gilbride and it is quite clear that not only do they believe that he is dead, but they know that he is dead. There is simply no rational explanation why John would have faked his death and Alberta’s explanation that he has been off “hiding somewhere” for seven years is mind-blowing and insulting to anyone who can rub two brain cells together.

The second part to Alberta’s statement is the assertion that John “seemed” like he was “deeply involved with the government”. The only evidence that Alberta has offered that John was somehow involved with the “government” lay only in the fact that he opposed MOVE in general and her specifically. By labeling John as a government agent, Alberta was able to change the dynamic of what should have been a custody dispute into a conflict between the system and MOVE. In doing so, she was able to garner support from the network of MOVE supporters from around the world as well as to exploit those around MOVE who had been trained by the group to believe every word that Alberta spoke. It is important to remember that while Alberta was accusing John of being a government agent, she was also accusing him of conspiring to instigate another “May 13th”. Prior to John’s murder, Alberta had built up John to be the ultimate Judas figure that had turned against her and wanted to harm the child that they had together. In the days and weeks before John’s death the whole focus of everything did and said had to do with demonizing and destroying John. In sticking to her allegation, Alberta continues this defamation.

Alberta also claims, in the face of all evidence, that "we are not murderers,". The history of MOVE says otherwise. Eight MOVE members are currently incarcerated for murder. Mumia, a MOVE supporter, is in jail for the rest of his life for murdering a cop. MOVE members in general have been accused of and imprisoned for literally hundreds of violent episodes. People sometimes forget that Alberta herself served seven years in jail for crimes she committed while in MOVE. So, while one cannot say that Alberta is a “murderer” per se, one can say, with complete accuracy, that she associates with murderers, considers murderers her family members, and has demonstrated that she is willing to commit crimes in the name of MOVE.

Captain Fisher of the Philadelphia Police Department Civil Affairs division has often been quoted expressing his doubts as to MOVE’s ability to murder John Gilbride. However, it is important to note that Fisher’s job description with regards to MOVE is to keep the peace between the City and the cult. Ever since 1985, the City of Philadelphia has had a policy of avoidance and appeasement with regards to MOVE. Captain Fisher has the duty of being the luckless individual who has to keep the peace with MOVE, and his job would be much more difficult if he were to go on record and say anything other than he believes that MOVE couldn’t have killed John. As disconcerting as it is, one must remember that it is not the Philly PD’s job to find John’s killer, it is the job of the Burlington County Prosecutors Office to do that. So, whatever comes out of the mouths of people like Captain Fisher, must be taken with a grain of salt.

The police who are actually charged with investigating the murder of John have, according to my sources, rejected the idea that John was killed by the “mob”, as has been insinuated by Capt. Fisher and others. What must be immediately understood was that it was not Capt. Fisher, but MOVE that started the whole “mob hit” rumor. Fisher actually piggy-backed what MOVE said and added his credibility to MOVE’s inane theory. As people have pointed out, the mob does not kill people who owe them money for the simple reason that dead people can’t pay them anything. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, there was never any proof that John had any contact with any mafia types ever!

The idea that a “professional” would have had to do the “hit” is also somewhat absurd. You do not have to be some kind of trained assassin to hide out and shoot somebody when they get home from work. But you do need to be absolutely committed to the idea that the person you are going to kill “deserves” it. You need to have people around you to give you an alibi. You need the resources to do the crime and there has to be the “what’s in it for me factor”. At the time of John’s death the group was painting him as a veritable force of evil, committed to not only destroying Alberta, his own son, and MOVE as a whole. MOVE had spent years molding people like Gary Wonderlin into non-thinking fanatics who were wholly devoted to their cause and especially to MOVE’s leaders like Alberta. The group had plenty of money from the cult’s lawsuit against the City of Philadelphia and the group’s leadership had plenty of time to sit around and figure out a way to kill John Gilbride and than figure out how to get away with it. In essence, MOVE had the motive, means, and opportunity to murder John Gilbride.

Towards the end of the article Alberta wants people to believe that the tears she cried for John in 2002 were real. The only thing I will say about that is that I was around Alberta many times before John died and after John died. I never saw her cry about anything or anyone until she was in front of the media the night she was interviewed by the news media about John’s death. After that night I never saw her shed a tear again. She certainly was not crying at her wedding to MOVE supporter Gary Wonderlin, the same wedding where she emphatically declared that “we beat the system” in front of dozens of people.

There are other issues that were raised in this article. Many of which revolve around the man that Alberta married after John was killed, Gary Wonderlin. Alberta claims that the marriage has to do with “stability”. From my vantage point, it has nothing to do with “stability” and everything in the world to do with a payoff for a job well done.

(Please read the following article I wrote in 2005 about Gary Wonderlin)


Who is Gary Wonderlin?

Chances are, unless you have been around MOVE a good bit, you haven't a clue.

And MOVE's leaders like it that way.

Wonderlin, a middle aged, white haired, white man is not the image that is brought forth when you think of MOVE. And that is one of the reasons that Wonderlin is so valuable to the group.

Wonderlin, is also married to Alberta Africa, MOVE's unacknowledged leader and serves as father figure to her young son. The boy's real fathers name was John Gilbride. The same John Gilbride that was gunned down while in a custody dispute with Alberta and MOVE in back in 2002.

Just a couple of months after Gilbride's death, Gary Wonderlin got a big promotion within the tiny world of MOVE. He married the queen of MOVE herself, Alberta Africa.

This was quite a step up for Wonderlin to say the least. He had been a MOVE supporter for over twenty years, yet his mannerisms were strange and eccentric and there were even muted whisperings about his sexuality (not a good thing at all in MOVE). Gary was a freak amidst a collection of freaks, but his loyalty to MOVE and especially to MOVE leader, Alberta Africa was never something that was in question.

It was known around the Organization if some sly, dirty work needed to be done, that Gary would be the one to do it. Whether handing out libelous flyers about MOVE's opponents or calling reporters with cryptic threats, no task was to underhanded for Wonderlin to take on. Especially if it was at the behest of Alberta or her shrill and Nazi-esque, clone Sue Africa.

What was clear to me while I was in MOVE was that Gary was fiercely protective of Alberta and her son. To say that he loved her and the child would not be an overstatement at all. Obsession would be also be a word I could use without sounding hyperbolic to describe Wonderlins unhealthy affinity for all things Alberta.

It is a known fact that most violent crimes are committed out of "passion". It is often only a deep up swelling of emotion that drives one towards extreme and cruel and seemingly pointless barbarity. It is also a fact that it is these kinds of crimes are committed by those that we least "expect" it from. It is not likely that the killers of John Gilbride wore dread locks and smelled of garlic.

Hypothetically speaking, of course, what would it take to drive a mild-mannered, middle class, man of good legal standing, to commit a terrible and violent act?

Perhaps nothing more than the most basic of human emotions, love.

A misdirected and warped love of course. A love of a manipulative and evil woman who would be cynical enough to exploit such a base human emotion. A love of a group, a group that had long ago replaced the biological family with that of a generic one, a faux family, that oozed and dripped plagiarized emotion. Love for a child, a child that was supposedly in grave danger. A child that an evil government was bent on destroying through the means of an evil agent. A child who would grow up to lead the revolt against all that was wrong and to set things right. A child who had to be protected at any and all cost.

Sounds silly?

It is.

But this is this is a partial description of the mythological world that MOVE inhabits and when such dangerous perceptions exists, even more dangerous realities await anyone within MOVE's orbit.

MOVE's world is one where it would be perfectly acceptable to lay and wait and stalk a human being and than shoot them apart just as long as it is being done to "protect" MOVE. So long as the leaders of the cult have deemed it necessary. So long as the person or persons doing the deed have been sufficiently indoctrinated into ways of group think and of course if there is a payoff of some kind.

MOVE members tried desperately to kill police officers in 1978 and unfortunatly they completed their, John Africa, appointed, task. In 1981 Mumia sought to do the same and again met with success. In 1985, police officers lives were spared through a mix of body armor and luck. MOVE members are killers and no one should expect them to be anything else. We should, however, expect them to change their tactics every once in a while.

It is known now that after John Gilbride was killed, Gary Wonderlin got a big payoff. He married the widow of John Africa. He gets to help raise the child that John Gilbride should have had a chance to love and care for. He moved from his small, rat infested, dump of a home, to Alberta's upper middle class home in Cherry Hill. He got it all, and we all know that in the real world, and even in MOVE's convoluted one, nobody gets anything for free.

The question begs to be asked, and I have to wonder aloud, just what did Gary do to deserve his big promotion?

I do know one thing for sure and that is that Gary Wonderlin knows what he did to get his big bump up in the MOVE world. Maybe he can come out and share his big "secret" with the rest of us.

Slaying of ex-MOVEr still roils feelings 7 years later

By JASON NARK
Philadelphia Daily News

narkj@phillynews.com 856-779-3231

The execution-style murder of former MOVE member John Gilbride Jr. in Maple Shade, N.J., has resulted in seven years of theories, accusations and harsh words between his father and his former wife.

The two have never seen eye-to-eye, even before John was shot to death in his car on Sept. 27, 2002.

The murder remains unsolved, but Gilbride's father, Jack, believes that MOVE, the organization his son followed and later fled, has blood on its hands.

Faced with those accusations, MOVE matriarch Alberta Africa, now known as Alberta Wonderlin, continues to claim that her former husband is alive, forgoing any contact with the son he was fighting for in court for a life of seclusion, courtesy of the U.S. government.

"Maybe he went off the deep end or something and is hiding somewhere. He seemed like he was deeply involved in the government," she said recently, standing behind the door of the Cherry Hill home she once shared with Gilbride and their son, Zackary.

Jack Gilbride, 70, said it's hard to believe that Alberta still makes that claim to reporters, particularly since he identified his son's body, attended his funeral, and buried his cremated remains.

"I could only wish," he said during a recent phone conversation from his home in Virginia. "She knows more than anyone else that it isn't true."

Investigators at the Burlington County Prosecutor's Office have made no arrests in the case and the office declined to be interviewed for this story.

"It is still an open investigation and we continue to put forth our best effort toward solving Mr. Gilbride's murder," spokesman Joel Bewley said in a statement.

When asked to comment on Alberta Africa's theory, Bewley said, "John Gilbride was found shot inside his car. He was pronounced dead at the scene."

Gilbride, a baggage supervisor for U.S. Airways, was found dead inside his Ford Crown Victoria at 12:08 a.m. outside the Ryan's Run apartment complex in Maple Shade, authorities said.

The killer, they said, fired multiple bullets into Gilbride's head and chest at close range from an automatic weapon, then disappeared into the tangle of highways adjacent to the complex, leaving Gilbride's personal belongings.

"He's coming home from work late at night, going to his apartment, and they were there at that perfect time. Somebody had to know his schedule," Jack Gilbride said. "The purpose was to take his life, nothing else."

Later that afternoon, John Gilbride was scheduled to have his first unsupervised visit with his son, an action Alberta and other MOVE members had threatened to stop, Jack Gilbride claims.

"John told me he felt his life was at risk. He knew he was taking a big gamble," he said.

Before she married John Gilbride, Alberta Africa was the widow of John Africa, founder and leader of the controversial radical group MOVE. John Africa and 10 other MOVE members died in May 1985, when Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on their Osage Avenue home after a standoff and shoot-out.

Given the group's turbulent history, Alberta said police would have arrested MOVE members by now for John Gilbride's death if they had evidence.

"We are not murderers," she said.

John Gilbride first mingled with MOVE as a student at Temple University in the late 1980s, his father said, and later joined the organization and married Alberta against his family's wishes.

John Gilbride filed for divorce in 1999 and engaged in years of heated court battles over custody of their son.

The timing of the murder and the custody dispute is more than a coincidence, Jack Gilbride says, and he claims investigators have searched into his son's background for other motives and found nothing.

The theories presented by MOVE members themselves, namely that John's death was part of a murky government plot, have been easy for him to dismiss.

"That stuff is so far-stretched," he said.

In past interviews with newspapers, however, Philadelphia Police Capt. William Fisher, commander of the Civil Affairs Unit, has stated that John Gilbride's murder seemed like a textbook mob hit.

Jack Gilbride said Fisher, who suggested that his son had a gambling problem and other enemies, did a disservice to the investigation and was simply trying to ease the department's relationship with MOVE.

"He's just doing his job to protect the city of Philadelphia," he said.

Fisher, reached by the Daily News, said he could understand Jack Gilbride's pain, but still doubts that MOVE was involved.

"He wants to think that MOVE did it because that solves his problem," Fisher said. "I'm a parent too, and it's an emotional thing."

A gunman, particularly a professional one, could have known of John Gilbride's problems with MOVE, and could have timed the murder to cast blame on the group, Fisher said.

If MOVE was involved, Fisher said, they would not have outsourced the job to someone outside their organization.

But former MOVE supporter Tony Allen, who runs an anti-MOVE blog, said MOVE would never have put someone in their closest family circles at risk by killing Gilbride.

He believes that MOVE would have given that task to a supporter.

"My hope is that there's people in and about MOVE whose consciences will eat away at them," Allen said.

Burlington County Prosecutor Robert Bernardi, in a past interview with the Inquirer, mentioned that MOVE members had been questioned in the investigation, but he did not comment on motives.

Jack Gilbride said he speaks with investigators there about every three weeks but acknowledged "they get tired of telling me there's nothing new.

"They have looked at everything, and the one thing that hasn't been dismissed, the only thing that hasn't been resolved, is the custody issue," he said.

The hard truth, Jack Gilbride claims, is that his son's death resolved the custody issue for MOVE.

Zackary Gilbride, the little fair-haired boy at the center of the custody issue in 2002, is now a "big boy" of 13, his mother said.

Alberta Wonderlin said the former child model is a happy home-schooled teen, active in swimming and fencing.

"He has a life," she said. "I don't keep him locked up in here."

But Wonderlin admitted that her son has unresolved feelings about his father, and they resurface occasionally.

"We were looking at some baby pictures and we found a picture of his dad, and he just fell into me," she said. "He's a big boy, but he was in tears."

Alberta says the tears she cried for John were real in 2002 and she still feels his absence today.

"I'm still hurt about this. I do what I have to do to get by, but don't think we aren't hurt," she said."

Wonderlin said she remarried after John's death, not out of love, but to give her son a stable home.

Jack Gilbride said his life has been anything but stable since his son's death. His wife, Fran, died of cancer two years after his son was killed, and he speaks to Zack only once every three to six months.

Wishing his son were still alive is pointless, Gilbride said, so he focuses on resolving the case and hoping that the truth and time will someday bring Zack back into his life.

"That's really my last hope," he said. "He's been raised by MOVE his whole life. I hope when he gets older, he'll ask questions. I want him to know that his father fought for him."

Anyone with information about the death of John Gilbride can contact the Burlington County Prosecutor's Office at 609-265- 7113.