Who can you trust?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/01/12/MNGROGM4QB1.DTL
By any measure, condemned inmate Clarence Ray Allen has lived a double
life, confounding the people who have known him as a kind man and
those who have experienced his cruelty.
The former warehouse manager served as a church deacon, raised two
boys and became a successful business owner in Fresno. But in his 40s,
he embarked on a violent crime spree with a gang of misfits. One thing
led to another, including murder -- and then, three additional
murders.
Allen is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday at
San Quentin State Prison, one day after his 76th birthday. If
executed, he will be among the oldest prisoners ever put to death in
the United States.
Police, prosecutors, judges and the families of Allen's victims
describe him as a criminal mastermind, a vicious, unrepentant killer
who relied on others to do his dirty work. He was convicted of
orchestrating a triple homicide in 1980 at a Fresno market from his
cell at Folsom Prison, where he was already serving a life sentence
for murder. One of the people Allen ordered killed had testified
against him in a previous trial.
Allen's friends and family say he's a sentimental, kind-hearted soul
who provided shelter and jobs to those in need, donated uniforms to
the Little League and supported 4-H Club youth activities. They say
that before Allen was imprisoned in 1977, he was a considerate boss, a
devoted father and someone who picked up restaurant tabs and purchased
furniture sets for his friends.
From his early days, however, there was another thread to Allen -- one
that showed itself in acts of petty thievery as a young adult and grew
into something darker in middle age.
"He presented himself as a typical, successful businessman, but on the
side he had a group of young people who were doing robberies," said
Jerry Jones, a former chief deputy district attorney for Fresno County
who prosecuted two of Allen's accomplices.
"He was kind of a charismatic fellow, bright enough that he was able
to walk between both of these worlds," Jones said. "He was a
controlling guy, a scary guy. ... They did as he told them."
Ray Allen, as he was known to his family, was born at home in January
1930 in Blair, Okla., the youngest of five children. The family, with
ancestral roots to the Choctow tribe, lived a marginal existence off
the land.
Allen began picking cotton when he was 11 or 12, then moved with his
family in the early 1940s to south Texas, where he finished his
schooling in the seventh or eighth grade, before resettling in the San
Joaquin Valley.
At 17, Allen married Helen Sevier, whom he had met a year earlier
while working in the fields. She recalled at a 1997 court hearing
that, even though picking cotton was "good money," he would steal from
other laborers' cars.
While saving to buy a house, the young couple lived in what Sevier
described as "a little chicken coop" near Pixley (Tulare County). They
had two boys, and Sevier testified that Allen was a responsible
husband and parent. She said he had been "saved" and "was called to
preach" at a church. He didn't smoke or drink, and he urged others to
attend services.
In the mid-1950s, Allen began working for Sunland Olive Co. He rose to
warehouse manager but in 1962 was convicted of conspiring with several
employees to steal olives. Sunland officials estimated that the ring
stole as many as 3,000 cases of olives and sold them to vegetable
stands in the Central Valley. Allen was jailed for a year on the
county honor farm.
After his release, the Allens divorced, and Ray Allen took custody of
the couple's two sons. The youngest, Roger, recalled how his father
worked in the late 1960s at a steel plant in Fresno County during the
day and as a security guard at night. Allen used his guard's keys to a
Fresno country club to sneak into the kitchen with his son and eat,
Roger Allen said.
Allen started his own security firm in 1968, and the business soon
prospered as ranchers struggling with the United Farm Workers union
hired the outfit to guard their operations. At its height, the firm
employed 60 workers and owned two planes. Allen had his own plane, a
ranch and show horses, including an Appaloosa mare that he purchased
for his second wife, Darlene.
His friends from those days said they couldn't reconcile the Allen
they knew with the man who later would put out contracts for murders.
Chris Sund recalled at the 1997 court hearing how she and her husband,
Richard, had befriended Allen through horse shows. She said Allen
"wrote poetry about everything," including a poem commemorating the
Sunds' 40th wedding anniversary, which Allen printed in calligraphy
and framed as a gift for them.
Sund also said that when her husband was ill and needed donations of
blood, Allen "was the first one there."
Connie Seidel testified that her husband, Larry Turner, had worked as
a security guard for several years for Allen's company. Allen hosted
barbecues for the families of his employees, loaned her husband money
and paid for their child's day care so Seidel could work for the
security firm as a receptionist, she said.
Seidel said her boss "always made sure the families had proper time
together."
One of Allen's five grandchildren, Paula Allen of Fresno, said
Wednesday that "he never forgot holidays. He was always there at my
soccer games. Here I am, 36 years old, and he's never forgotten my
birthday."
No one has explained what prompted Allen's transformation from
successful business owner and family man to the vengeful leader of a
criminal gang. The "typical pattern is for somebody to be involved in
violent activity in their youth, and then, as they get older, for this
pattern to abate," said Dr. Craig Haney, a social psychologist who
testified at Allen's evidentiary hearing in 1997. "In Mr. Allen's
case, it's turned on its head."
Authorities eventually linked Allen to eight armed robberies of homes
or businesses from 1974 to 1977 in the Central Valley. He used the
same security firm he had built up as a legitimate business to gather
information for accomplices to carry out at least two of the heists,
prosecutors said.
To those accomplices, Allen bragged that he was a Mafia hit man who
had blown two people in half with a shotgun in Nevada, prosecutors
said. In the early 1970s, he posed for a photo in dark sunglasses
while holding an automatic weapon.
"He styled himself as sort of this romantic criminal figure. ... He
was just a criminal," said Jim Ardaiz, who prosecuted Allen in the
1970s and now is a state appellate judge.
"He had a gang of hangers-on," Ardaiz said. "They were followers. They
were easily manipulated petty criminals. He terrified the people
around him. ... They were scared to death of the man."
Allen didn't just write poetry for wedding anniversaries. One he
worked up in 1977 began:
"Ray and his sons are known as the Allen Gang/ Sometimes you have
often read/ how we rob and steal/ and for those who squeal/ are
usually found dying or dead."
Allen's journey to Death Row began in June 1974, when he decided to
burglarize a grocery store east of Fresno called Fran's Market. He had
known the owners, Ray and Frances Schletewitz , for more than a
decade. Using an alarm key lifted from the pocket of the
Schletewitzes' son Bryon during a pool party, Allen and two employees
in his security guard firm broke into the market late at night and
removed a safe containing $500 in cash and $10,000 in money orders.
Roger Allen and four others cashed the stolen money orders in Southern
California.
One of the accomplices, 17-year-old Mary Sue Kitts, was Roger Allen's
live-in girlfriend. Kitts had misgivings about the burglary and told
the younger Schletewitz what had happened.
When Allen found out, he ordered his associate Lee Furrow to kill her
-- and told Furrow that unless he complied, he would be killed as
well, prosecutors said.
Kitts was strangled and dumped into the Friant-Kern Canal, Allen later
admitted to police. Her body, weighted down with stepping stones, was
never recovered.
Allen was arrested in March 1977 when a robbery at the Visalia Kmart
store went awry, resulting in the shooting of an employee. Authorities
eventually linked him to the 1974 killing, and Allen was convicted and
sentenced to life in prison. Furrow pleaded guilty to second-degree
murder.
Allen's imprisonment did not stop him from seeking revenge.
At age 50, prosecutors say, Allen hatched a plan to silence the
witnesses who had testified against him -- to retaliate against them
and prevent their testimony at a retrial if he won his appeal. Allen
recruited Billy Ray Hamilton, a soon-to-be paroled fellow inmate at
Folsom.
On the evening of Sept. 5, 1980, just before closing time, Hamilton
and his girlfriend Connie Barbo entered Fran's Market. The two drew
their weapons and herded the employees to the back of the store, where
Hamilton methodically killed Bryon Schletewitz, 27, Josephine Rocha,
17, and Douglas White, 18, with a sawed-off shotgun. Schletewitz had
testified against Allen; the two teenagers were store employees who
had nothing to do with the earlier case.
Rocha, a high school senior, had hoped to become a teacher and raise a
family. Schletewitz was known as a witty, good-natured boss. White, a
former member of the Clovis High School choir, was attending community
college and planned to study architecture and law.
Hamilton also fired a shot from just 3 feet away at teenager Joe Rios,
who had hidden in a rest room. Rios managed to raise his arm and take
the blast in his elbow. He survived and later identified Hamilton and
Barbo.
"It was a horrible crime scene," said Ardaiz, who was among the first
law enforcement officials called to Fran's Market. "As a prosecutor,
I've probably been to over 100 murder scenes. Three young people had
just been executed at close range with a shotgun. ... There was a lot
of blood, pools of blood.
"These were just kids. All the officers at the scene were very
shaken."
Hamilton was arrested days later when he tried to rob a liquor store
in Modesto. Police said he was carrying a hit list of people who had
testified against Allen at the Kitts trial, including Schletewitz.
Hamilton was convicted and sentenced to death; Barbo was sentenced to
life in prison.
Allen was charged with three counts of murder and with conspiring to
kill seven witnesses. His eldest son, Kenneth, who supplied the
weapons and transportation for Hamilton and Barbo, testified against
him in exchange for a sentence of life without parole. Ray Allen was
convicted and sentenced to death.
Allen has spent 23 years on Death Row and has outlived three previous
execution dates. In recent years, however, his health has
deteriorated. He cannot walk and uses a wheelchair. An advanced case
of diabetes has left him legally blind. He is hard of hearing and
frail of voice and suffered a heart attack Sept. 2.
On the prison yard, he wears sunglasses bequeathed to him by condemned
inmate Stephen Wayne Anderson, who was executed in 2002. The dark
lenses "protect his almost sightless eyes from the light," Allen's
lawyer, Michael Satris, wrote in a petition to Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger seeking clemency.
Retired Justice Joseph Grodin, who wrote the state Supreme Court's
1986 opinion that affirmed Allen's death sentence, asked
Schwarzenegger in a Dec. 23 letter to spare the prisoner's life. The
governor is still considering the request.
Grodin said Allen's declining health appears to have been hastened by
substandard medical care at San Quentin, and he said his execution
would not serve "any legitimate societal interest."
State Attorney General Bill Lockyer insists that Allen's death
sentence be carried out.
"Allen was 50 years old when he orchestrated the Fran's Market
murders," Deputy Attorney General Ward Campbell said in a brief.
"There was nothing impulsive about his actions. The fact that he now
faces execution as a senior citizen is his responsibility."
Allen's lawyers say there is a "lingering question of his innocence,''
arguing that the bulk of evidence against him came from informants who
were given favorable treatment by prosecutors.
Last January, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco
upheld Allen's death sentence, ruling that evidence of his guilt was
"overwhelming." It also noted that he had expressed no remorse.
Both the state Supreme Court and the federal appeals court said
Allen's trial lawyer had erred in putting only one witness on the
stand during the penalty phase to testify about the good things he had
done in life. Both courts, however, concluded that even if a parade of
witnesses had told of Allen's redeeming qualities, it wouldn't have
made a difference to jurors.
Ardaiz recalled a conversation outside Fran's Market on the night of
the triple murder in 1980 when he and a district attorney's
investigator shared their concern that Allen might have ordered the
killings.
"Most people are not capable of making that cold a decision," the
former prosecutor said. "It was chilling."
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Yang
a.a. #28
AthD (h.c.) conferred by the regents of the LCL
a.a. pastor #-273.15, the most frigid church of Celcius nee Kelvin
EAC Econometric Forecast and Sorcery Division
Proudly plonked by Lani Girl and Crazyalec (aka aka Yang's little poltregeist *****)
The Bush 'balanced' budget: 2 trillion and worsening
The Bush 'economic' policy: 12.5 million FEWER jobs than Clinton and counting
The Bush Iraq lie: -2214 GIs, one friend's co-worker's son and mounting
Having Bush ***** up my country: Worthless
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Contact duke's priest and ask
him why duke is such a racist:
http://www.stpatrickbr.org/
Father Gerard "Jerry" Martin
stpatrickbr<AT>bellsouth<DOT>net
Saint Patrick Catholic Church
12424 Brogdon Lane
Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70816
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