Albert Owens: The Murder, Trial, and Execution of Tookie Williams

Albert Lewis Owens was a 26-year-old convenience store clerk shot and killed during an early-morning robbery at a Whittier, California, 7-Eleven on February 28, 1979. The murder of Albert Owens, along with three more killings less than two weeks later, sent Stanley “Tookie” Williams, co-founder of the Crips street gang, to death row and eventually to the execution chamber at San Quentin in December 2005.

Who Albert Owens Was

Owens grew up partly in the Midwest and partly in Pomona, California. He served in the U.S. Army before settling in Southern California.¹ He was slim, five-foot-nine, with red hair, freckles, and blue eyes.²

By early 1979 he was rebuilding after a divorce and the loss of custody of his two young daughters, Rebecca and Andrea. He lived alone in a small room, worked the graveyard shift at a 7-Eleven on Whittier Boulevard, and was saving money to try to regain custody. He had recently traveled to Missouri to visit the girls.¹³

What Happened at the 7-Eleven

Around 4 a.m. on February 28, 1979, Owens was sweeping the parking lot of the 7-Eleven at 10437 Whittier Boulevard when Williams and three associates pulled in. The group had already attempted two other robberies that night, and prosecutors said they had smoked PCP-laced cigarettes before arriving.⁴⁵

Two men entered the store. Owens followed them in. Williams came in behind him, told him to keep quiet and keep walking, and marched him into a back storage room. He ordered Owens to lie face down and shot him twice in the back at close range with a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun. One of Williams’ companions took about $120 from the register. A customer later found the body.¹⁴²

Testimony at trial described what Williams said afterward. He told accomplices he killed Owens because he “did not want to leave any witnesses,” and he mocked the sounds Owens made as he died, imitating them and laughing.⁶

The Motel Killings Days Later

On March 11, 1979, less than two weeks after Owens was killed, Williams forced his way into the office of the Brookhaven Motel on South Vermont Street in Los Angeles around 5 a.m. He shot and killed three members of an immigrant family from Taiwan: the motel’s owner, Yen-I Yang, 76; his wife, Tsai-Shai Yang, 63; and their daughter, Yee-Chen Lin, 43, who was visiting from Taiwan. He took roughly $50. The victims’ son, Robert Yang, woke to the gunfire and called police.⁷⁸

A firearms expert later testified that a shotgun shell casing from the motel could only have been fired from a weapon Williams had purchased in 1974.⁶

How Williams Was Convicted

Williams was tried in Los Angeles Superior Court for all four murders. The case for the Owens killing rested on witness testimony from the men who had been with him. Alfred “Blackie” Coward received immunity in exchange for testifying that he saw Williams take Owens into the back room and heard the shotgun blasts.⁹ Tony Sims, tried separately, was convicted of first-degree murder for his role in the robbery and sentenced to life in prison; he testified that he saw Williams take Owens into the storage room and shoot him, and that he had participated out of fear Williams would kill him if he refused.¹⁰

For the motel killings, prosecutors relied on confessions Williams had made to acquaintances James and Esther Garrett and to Samuel Coleman, along with the ballistics evidence and testimony from jailhouse informant George Oglesby.⁶ The defense attacked Oglesby’s credibility, calling him a “jailhouse rat.”

The jury, made up of ten white jurors, one Latino juror, and one Filipino-American juror, convicted Williams of four counts of first-degree murder and robbery, with special circumstances of felony murder and multiple murder.¹¹¹²⁶¹³

What the Murder Did to the Owens Family

Rebecca and Andrea Owens were eight and five when their father was killed. They were given one day to grieve. Their mother’s next husband forbade them from speaking about Albert, and they were not permitted to attend his funeral.⁷

Rebecca grew up believing her father’s killer had already been executed. She learned Williams was still alive only when the state attorney general’s office contacted her around 2001. Finding out he had also been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize shook her badly. “I lost it,” she told reporters. She became a public opponent of clemency, organized a boycott of the 2004 television film Redemption, and said she planned to be at San Quentin for the execution. Andrea said she had no clear memories of her father, only “a shadow of a man.”¹⁷

Albert’s father, Charles Owens, stayed involved in the case until his own death in 1995. Before he died, he asked his wife, Lora, to promise she would not forget about Albert.³ Lora, Albert’s stepmother, became the family’s most visible public advocate, writing to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to urge him to deny clemency and later traveling to San Quentin to witness the execution. She told ABC’s Good Morning America afterward that she believed it was “a just punishment long overdue.”¹⁴

The family was not of one mind. Albert’s brother, Wayne Owens, opposed the death penalty in general and said he would have supported clemency if Williams agreed to a binding promise never to seek parole. He was frustrated that both sides of the debate distorted his position, with supporters of execution calling him a coward and opponents accusing him of exploiting his brother’s death.¹¹⁵ Linda Owens, Albert’s ex-wife, released a statement distancing herself from Lora’s public advocacy, saying her former stepmother-in-law had never been close to Albert and should not be speaking for the family.¹⁶

Clemency and Execution

By late 2005, Williams had spent more than twenty years on death row at San Quentin. Supporters pointed to a transformation there: nine anti-gang children’s books, a memoir, five Nobel Peace Prize nominations, and a 1993 role in helping broker a truce between the Crips and the Bloods.¹⁷ Jamie Foxx, Snoop Dogg, Jesse Jackson, Joan Baez, and Sister Helen Prejean all pressed for mercy.¹⁸

Prosecutors and the Owens and Yang families argued that Williams’ refusal to admit guilt undercut any claim of redemption. On December 8, 2005, Governor Schwarzenegger denied clemency, saying he could find no justification for sparing Williams’ life and that without “an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption.”¹⁸

After the U.S. Supreme Court and a federal appeals court declined to intervene, Williams was executed by lethal injection at San Quentin at 12:35 a.m. on December 13, 2005. He was the twelfth person executed in California since the state reinstated capital punishment in 1977.⁴¹⁸ The execution team spent about twelve minutes searching for a usable vein. At one point Williams lifted his head and asked, “Still can’t find it?”¹⁹ Around a thousand protesters gathered outside the prison. The feared unrest in Los Angeles neighborhoods did not follow.²⁰

1
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2
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3
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4
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5
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7
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8
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9
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12
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14
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15
NPR. Brother of Victim Discusses Tookie Williams
16
ABC News. Owens Family Reacts to Execution
17
ABC News. Tookie Williams Clemency Arguments
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NPR. Crips Co-Founder Williams Put to Death
19
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NPR. The Execution of Stanley Tookie Williams