Nine Years After John's Murder

In America justice has evolved from a concept to be held aloft as an ideal enforced by the divine to a kind of mechanism to enforce laws and punish the guilty while protecting the innocent. It is by no means a complete or by a perfect evolution. It is a bureaucratic institution that is as prone to flaws and prejudices as are the people who grind the gears and make it happen. It bears the scars and fallibilities of all of us. A flawed monument to our collective desire for order, it is as has been pointed out before not the best there is, but is rather the best we have right now.

True to its mechanical nature it is in constant need of upkeep and oversight, but most of all what it needs is a kind of indignation of and revulsion towards violence, hatred, murder, and all of the things that create pain and disharmony in society.

But what happens when people stop caring? What happens when those who have been charged with task to protect and serve fail to do just that?

I can tell you. You have a case like that of John Gilbride. Of course, John Gilbride is not a “case”. He is or rather he was a man. The story of what happened to him has been exhaustively told on this blog and in other places. There is no point in my retelling the story again here. If you care to know you will find out what happened you will read this blog and do your own research. I encourage you to do it.

For me, what happened to John is not now so much a cautionary tale of what can happen to you when you involve yourself and your children in an authoritarian enterprise, but is instead something only slightly more tragic. It is a tale of what happens when people stop caring or more likely never cared in the first place.

When I heard the news on September 28th that John Gilbride had been murdered the night before there were two thoughts that screamed out loudly to me. The first of which was that MOVE was responsible. My friends and the people I cared about had murdered another human being. This terrible truth reverberated through my body left me momentarily stunned. The next thought was equally troubling to me. I knew that the police would be coming. I could see it now just as vividly as I could now. I saw the black clad SWAT officers pushing their way into MOVE houses with concussion grenades, armed to the teeth and ready for anything. It would be swift and it would be violent. Anyone who dared to get in their way would be dispatched without hesitation. I simply knew this was going to be the case. I knew this because I was certain that if I knew that MOVE was responsible for John’s death that the authorities knew it as well. I also knew that the first forty eight hours of any police investigation was the most crucial. If no arrest is made within that critical time period the chances of an arrest drop precipitously. Trails go cold quickly. They would come. They had to.

However, as nervous nights turned into fearful days I sat and held vigil with my MOVE comrades and to my complete shock nothing happened. The complete lack of any kind of response on the part of the police was more shocking to me than the murder had been. I had been feeding on a steady of diet of MOVE propaganda for the past several years of my life. And if there ever were a bogey man in the weird and convoluted world of MOVE it was the police officer. The cops were the main instrument of the “system’s” oppression apparatuses. Cops were unfeeling “motherfuckers” who did the bidding of their corporate masters. Jack booted thugs who were all too happy to kick babies out of mothers’ stomachs and drop bombs on people. That they were not kicking in all of our doors, kicking ass and taking names was absolutely unthinkable to those of us who supported MOVE.

There were a few people who seemed genuinely unafraid of a police assault and these were the people whom I would have thought would have been the most fearful. The leaders of MOVE did not seem to be that concerned at all about an imminent invasion. Of course they paid lip service to the fear and talked the talk of paranoid revolutionaries whose time had come. But the reality was slightly different. The barricades that they had erected to protect themselves were made from pine planks and not railroad ties. There were no weapons to be seen. No bull horned threats to kill any cops who would dare to try to force their way into the houses that John Africa had paid for in blood. There was none of that kind of talk to be found. Nothing that was really meaningful anyways. MOVE was always spouting off rhetoric, but I had been around long enough to know when they were serious and when they were on a media manipulation trip and when the cult was deadly serious.

To this day I can’t say for sure how it was that the leadership of MOVE knew not to be too worried. I could speculate, but I don’t think that will do anyone any good. There has been enough of that kind of thing to go around.

What I do know is that MOVE was right to not be particularly fearful of the police. To be sure, the police did come around asking questions. Slowly and cautiously they stumbled forth like a half of a drunk rousted out of a languorous stupor. They came with all kinds of imprecise talk and a complete lack of understanding about the criminal entity that was MOVE. MOVE members and supporters had been told what to say and how to roadblock the baffled cops. Based upon everything I heard the police interrogations went practically nowhere. In the interest of full disclosure I spent hours with the police doing the best I could do to help them. I offered leads and ideas and recounted in as much detail as I could muster my time in MOVE and the ruthless campaign that we waged against John prior to his murder. I did what I could. To this day I know that there are people who think I held back or didn’t give all that I could. They are wrong. I gave all that I could but I was going to no more lie against MOVE anymore than I would lie for them. The police did not turn me against MOVE. I had been turned by MOVE’s own actions. I had become disgusted and so disenchanted with MOVE’s murderous nature and child abusive tendencies that by the time I talked to the police I was willing to tell them all that I knew. I wanted those in MOVE who were responsible for John’s murder to be brought to justice. I really believed that this would happen. Sad to say, but I don’t know that this will ever occur.

I am writing these words not out of obligation, but rather out of a kind of fear. I am afraid that nine years after John’s murder nobody outside of his still grieving family cares about what happened. I want to be wrong and I want desperately for someone to prove me wrong. But I don’t see it happening.

If justice is more than a concept if it really is to be an apparatus and an instrument for good than it needs people of good intentions to work its gears and maintain a direction towards setting things right. But what history shows is that occasionally for some and more often than not for the poor the wheels of justice grind to a halt and along with it hope.

I do believe that there is more to justice than that of our temporal and materialistic conceptions. There is a more cosmic aspect to it. John Gilbrides suffering ended when his heart stopped beating. The suffering of his killers just began. They will hopefully be forever looking over their shoulders. I hope they quake with fear when unexpected visitors knock on their door or when police cars pull up behind them in traffic. I hope that their dreams are haunted by John’s un-avenged apparition. If John’s killer or killers are not complete sociopaths than I am sure they are suffering for what they have done. But for me I do not hold such faith in a cosmic order to completely surrender my desire for justice that is more tangible. Something we all can see and all can feel.

Most of all I want John’s son Zack to know what happened to his father. The truth of it. Not the lies that he has been told by his “mother” and the rest of her MOVE minions since he is old enough to remember. The boy who was lost to the cult is growing into a man needs to know the truth in order for him to be set free.

MOVE Again Avoids Gilbride Murder

(It was last month that Philadelphia Inquirer reporter wrote a scathing article on MOVE’s continuing madness and now a month later MOVE has decided to “respond”. To be sure, it is not much of a response; it is essentially a long-winded ad hominem attack on a reporter who has meticulously covered issues surrounding MOVE and Mumia for the last several years.

Ramona Africa asserts that Kinney is attempting to bring MOVE down through “blatant lies”, but in her entire statement she does not bother to repudiate one of these alleged “lies”. I guess Ramona wants us to take her word for it.
It is no coincidence that Ramona does not mention the name John Gilbride once in her rambling statement. This is no accident. MOVE has been doing its best to keep John’s name from coming across anyone’s lips and they mostly managed to do that in the month of May. The notable exception is when producers from the T.V. show “America’s Most Wanted” showed up unexpectedly at MOVE’s program commemorating their destruction of Osage Avenue. The producers showed up and made the mistake of asking about John Gilbride and according to witnesses were summarily cursed out. One of the “AMW” producers was black and he got a taste of what MOVE did to their African-American neighbors as he was called a “nigger” by Pam Africa.

As usual with MOVE statements, you learn more about them than you do the target of their attacks. This attack on Monica Yant Kinney is paranoid, devoid of facts, and serves to divert from the pertinent issues through rhetoric that is designed to obscure reality and keep people from thinking.

That is what MOVE is about at this point. Whatever vision of MOVE that John Africa had has died. That vision was corrupted and perverted long ago by those who marketed his “revolution” for their own self-aggrandizement and personal gain at the expense of those who bought the lies. MOVE is run now by sick old women who can’t muster the courage to acknowledge that the “belief” that was supposed to liberate them has brought them a level of suffering that will only increase as they age, as the lies pile up, and the reality that John Africa chose fire and death over a life with them finally comes into focus.


MOVE ON MONICA YANT KINNEY (PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER COLUMNIST)

Kinney is a delusional misfit who is on a futile mission to bring down JOHN AFRICA’S MOVE Organization. She is foolishly attempting to do what the entire U.S. government, with all of its resources, could not do. She is attempting to bring MOVE down through blatant lies that are designed to discredit MOVE but we of MOVE have a thirty-five year history as our credentials. What does Kinney have, access to a newspaper column. The only thing that Kinney can do is what the government tried to do for years in the early days of MOVE, misuse media outlets to spread ridiculous lies about MOVE in a feeble attempt to discredit MOVE and turn people against us. It didn’t work in the early days of MOVE when we would have been more vulnerable to such lies because people didn’t know us so well then, and it certainly ain’t working now when our consistently strong honest example is set, world-wide. All Monica Yant Kinney has in her arsenal is words, lies, but a thousand lies can’t stand up to the truth, can’t stand up to the strong clean righteous example set by JOHN AFRICA’S MOVE Organization. MOVE was here long before kinney and we will be here when she’s long gone. JOHN AFRICA’S MOVE Organization has our consistent righteous example in our arsenal and there’s nothing more powerful than that. To quote The Coordinator, JOHN AFRICA, quote-THE POWER OF TRUTH IS FINAL-end quote. Kinney can spread all the vicious lies she wants to about us but she can’t unset our example nor can she dispute the wisdom of JOHN AFRICA. Better and more so-called powerful people than her have tried, and tried with more vicious lies, tried by beating us up, beating pregnant MOVE women into miscarriage, killing our babies,unjustly jailing us, bombing us & burning MOVE men, women, babies and animals alive, but we are still here, still fighting this rotten system. All of these serious issues surrounding MOVE and Kinney talks about me wearing new sneakers. What does something as insignificant as sneakers have to do with justice or the vicious crimes committed against MOVE? Kinney says MOVE is fading out but where is the example of it. If we’re fading out, why is she still talking about us and how does she explain the world-wide support we have, the letters of support we get from all over the world, the world-wide respect we have? Madam Daniela Mitterrand, the former first lady of France, came to our home, ate with us and talked with our children who she was very impressed with; we have been received by members of the British Parliament, The European Parliament as well as Belgium and German dignitaries. Can Kinney claim the same. Furthermore, How does she explain why people from all over the world want to know how we’re able to stay strong and loyal, healthy and clear-visioned about our direction despite all that the government has attacked us with. Kinney thinks she’s qualified to interpret MOVE, and interpret us based on other organizations she may be familiar with but she found out that she’s wrong. Kinney knows that our brother Delbert Africa has always been known as a spokesperson for MOVE, always been known to speak to the media, always been known for giving clear sharp information to members of the media, and that his daughter was murdered in the May 13th bombing but she didn’t ask Delbert for an interview about the bombing, she went to our brother Chuck Africa. MOVE knows that any MOVE member is qualified to put out strong clear information but Kinney and other media people don’t interpret things that way. They see certain people as spokespersons and that’s how Delbert has always been seen. If she simply wanted information, why bypass Delbert a known spokesman or me as the sole adult survivor of the bombing who is known as a MOVE spokesperson and Minister of Communication for our family. She tried her sneaky tricks but she didn’t get what she was looking for because MOVE ain’t like other organizations that she’s familiar with, you can’t play MOVE people against each other. Kinney can play these impotent games all she wants but it won’t get her anywhere with MOVE people. She can lie on MOVE all she wants but it won’t change who we are and what we are and it won’t nullify the example that people all over the world see in MOVE. This is why, people world-wide, ask MOVE for advice on health, on how to raise their children, on how to take care of their animals, etc., and not Monica Yant Kinney. As was said earlier, Kinney only has words but MOVE has over thirty-five years of example as our credentials.


RAMONA AFRICA FOR THE MOVE ORGANIZATION

MOVE Philosophy Lives On In Survivor

(I have been a fan of Brian Hickeys writing for years and I was very happy to hear that he wanted to interview me for this piece he was writing on MOVE. Please check out his website at brianphickey.com)

MOVE Philosophy Lives On In Survivor
(From Philly Metro)

Last Tuesday, I left my house with a BlackBerry, digital camcorder and iPod. The irony? For the 25th anniversary of Ramona and Birdie Africa being the lone survivors at 6221 Osage Ave., I was heading downtown to discuss the tenets of MOVE, specifically their anti-technology platform, with Ramona.

From any perspective, May 13, 1985 remains complex and troublingly incendiary. But, I wasn’t going to let that anti-technology reality get lost amid a deluge of blame-assigning stories re-chronicling how Mayor Wilson Goode dropped a bomb, police officers’ bullets sentenced some of Ramona’s “family” to death by flame and torched homes were so shoddily rebuilt that fissures are still tangible today. While the items in my pockets betrayed the sentiment, I agreed that many people are more consumed by electronic trinkets than concern for their fellow man. That philosophy feels prophetic today.

“We had, have, a strong belief in life, not technology, and that’s in direct conflict with a system that doesn’t care about life at all,” she said. “Their god is money. That’s all they care about. Our work now is to encourage people who were conditioned by the system to come back to valuing life. That’s why they felt threatened enough to try to exterminate MOVE. They always dismissed us as crazies because they have no defense against the principles of John Africa.”

The intense hour-long conversation veered from nameless enemies, terrorism, cancer and asthma being caused by greed-governed polluters and a manipulated media to cop-killing crime scenes being demolished within hours of death (she says to keep the MOVE 9 in prison since ’78) and the need for revolution. Is it crazy to see traces of MOVE in the Tea Party movement? I think not.

All of this isn’t to say that Ramona can spurn technology: “We’ll use any means available, whatever it takes to spread our message.” She just doesn’t respect its unchecked omnipresence; she says it’s emblematic of why she’s leery about a nation’s uncertain future.

“It’s gotten frustrating that people won’t rise up and take a stand. There are people out there (including cops) who want to do good things, but it doesn’t take long to figure out that they’re not allowed to,” says Ramona, who held a press conference today yesterday at Friends Center. “We just won’t let the system force beliefs on us and they’re not going to stop until the people make them stop.”

One former MOVE member still working for change

Former MOVE member Tony Allen now calls himself “a cult-buster” dedicated to keeping the memory of slain MOVE-ite John Gilbride alive and drawing attention to the “dangerous sect” via antimove.blogspot.com. He talks to Metro about his MOVE life and afterlife.

What was the “good” MOVE life like?
There was a strong familial aspect, hugs, encouragement, kindness,
people concerned about your problems. What MOVE tried to be was a
replacement traditional family.

And “bad” MOVE life?
The whole thing was to break bonds with society and replace it with
bonds to them. The ideal they held up was you’re completely dependent
upon the group. There’s nothing on the outside at all; the only truth
is the truth of (founder) John Africa, anything else is a falsity.
They break you down and build you back up in their image of what a
person should be for the group’s benefit, not the individual’s.
It was a means to an end, though. The leaders of the group now
embrace, in totality, the lifestyle they claim to abhor.

Why did you leave?
I got involved through the Mumia issue. In the mid-90s,
minute-by-minute, day-by-day, I became enmeshed in that life. You
don’t look at it as different … but one day you just wake up said say,
‘I have some wacked out ideas’ so you step back and look at it.
I was moving away from them for some time, but the big issue was when
John Gilbride was killed. (The MOVE member/ ex-husband of Alberta
Africa with whom he was in a nasty custody battle, was slain
execution-style outside his Maple Shade, NJ apartment in 2002. The
case remains unsolved). From the moment I heard that, I knew things
were bad, and the only thing that made sense was that it was MOVE.
That was hard to deal with.

I was subtle (in distancing myself), got in touch with a reporter (and
shared my story publicly in 2004). There were some thinly-veiled
threats, “You never know who’s going to get it next.” But every time,
I put it out publicly. I had their whole email list.

What will you be thinking about on May 13, 2010?
The kids that died. That’s so tragic. They weren’t MOVE members, just
little kids who became victims. What the neighbors went through. How
sick people in MOVE were to think what they were doing was right. It’s
an amazing waste of human potential; there are some smart people, but
they’re just wasting away. What a complete waste.

Rant About Daily News Coverage

(Mike Africa at MOVE Headquarters days before John Gilbride's murder)

After reading the meticulous coverage by the Philadelphia Daily News of the “25 Anniversary of MOVE”, I was struck by the fact that there was not one mention, one blurb, nothing to remind readers of the murder of John Gilbride that occurred on Sept 27th, 2002.

Osage Avenue is pretty far from Maple Shade New Jersey, but it isn’t that far.

With the ashes of Osage Avenue buried beneath shoddy, poorly constructed replicas of the 60 homes that were burnt down on May, 13 a quarter of a century ago, “The Daily News” casts a glance backwards. I commend them for doing so. However the fact that they ignored the ongoing tragedy that is the still “unsolved” murder of John Gilbride and the abuse of children in MOVE’s midst is cause for concern.

I kind of expected as much.

While I have yet to talk to a journalist yet who did not candidly admit to me that MOVE at least made it seem like they had executed John in front of his apartment building eight years ago, very few have seen fit to try and tackle the issue head on. And it is not that I totally blame them either. Dealing with MOVE under the best of circumstances is potentially unpleasant work and besides you aren’t going to get much in the way of truth out of them anyways. You will get the same “anti-technology” game that the more articulate members of the group have been running on people since MOVE was spawned out of the damaged mind of John Africa and the collapse of 60’s radicalism.

MOVE must be drinking up all of the attention that they are getting. Granted it could be considered “negative” attention, but what the fuck, isn’t that the kind of attention that MOVE has been getting since its inception? There is not a group on the face of the earth that sucks up negativity like MOVE does. That kind of thing coarses through veins and keeps hearts hardened I suppose. After all, it is not like anyone is out there really asking Ramona Africa hard questions. I am not counting on anyone asking why child-rape is acceptable, encouraged, and indeed forced on girls in MOVE as young as 11-12 years old in the group. I would like to hope that someone would ask someone in MOVE why those same girls are not afforded any semblance of a proper education, but after all, those questions are hardly pertinent to the “Anniversary of the Bombing”. It is probably more appropriate to ask me what kind of appliances MOVE members have in their house. Maybe next year the Daily News could try and find out what Ramona Africa has on her motherfin I-Pod. Perhaps “The Roof is on Fire”?


With the ashes of Osage Avenue buried beneath shoddy, poorly constructed replicas of the 60 homes that were burnt down on May, 13 a quarter of a century ago, members of the media cast a glance backwards and rightfully so. They should be commended for really digging deep and telling the truth about the things that MOVE subjected people to on Osage Avenue, the Police and firefighters on Powelton, and numerous other people whose lives have been damaged by MOVE over the years. I sincerely think that the Daily News did a good job on those things.

However, when I think of MOVE I do not just think of the violence and pain of the distant past, but also the injustices that continue. The un-avenged apparitions of John Gilbride and whomever else MOVE buried or tossed in rivers once those people were of no use to “John Africa’s Revolution” need a voice.

Don’t count on the media to be that voice.

Send a letter to the Philadelphia Daily News to remind them what happened to John Gilbride at

views@phillynews.com

Fight Back Against MOVE!

It is not surprising that MOVE is once again using the upcoming anniversary of the calamity that they instigated on Osage Avenue to serve their own ends.

Their bringing of “murder charges” against the City Of Philadelphia is ironic in light of the still “unsolved” murder of John Gilbride.

I would hope that the District Attorney’s office does look at MOVE with some fresh eyes. Perhaps they will notice that the cult has been abusing children since it’s inception and has been involved in the rape of young girls that are raised in the group since the 1990’s.

None of what MOVE is doing is at all surprising. What does continue to baffle me is that reputable institutions are still giving MOVE the time of day and allowing the cult to use it’s facilities.

The African American Museum in Philadelphia is a beautiful and inspiring place where the contributions of African-Americans are displayed. However, by allowing MOVE to come in and show their propaganda films, the museum is making a mistake.

There is nothing wrong with remembering and commemorating the events of May 13, 1985, but allowing MOVE to come in and give a one-sided presentation is the wrong way to go about it. People like to think of May 13th as something that occurred between MOVE and the Philadelphia police, but this was only the final battle in a long war. The people who bore the brunt of MOVE’s abuse were the neighbors who had the misfortune of living near the cult. Does the African-American museum intend to tell this story of how blacks in a working class neighborhood were victimized and terrorized by a violent and cruel sect? Sadly, it will not. The race of the perpetrators apparently mitigates the suffering of the victims in some people’s eyes.

I would encourage people to contact the African American Museum and let them know how you feel about them supporting MOVE. Especially considering that the Museum received a three million dollar grant back in 2007. Your tax money going to facilitate MOVE.

The Rotunda in Philadelphia is also sponsoring a “play” with MOVE children. This is disgusting in light of the abuse that is meted out to children in MOVE.

Please take a few minutes and express your opinion.

African American Museum in Philadelphia.
701 Arch Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Phone: (215) 574-0380
Fax: (215) 574-3110
Email: info@aampmuseum.org

The Rotunda
4014 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
215-573-3234
Email: information@therotunda.org

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.