December 4, Revisited

The seven raid survivors testified during the summer, from June until September, most of it during lengthy cross-examination. Doc Satchel walked to the witness stand hunched over at the waist from his bullet wounds and resulting surgeries and stitches. Slight, with a boyish face, he had left his premed courses at the University of Illinois to join the Panthers and eventually headed up the medical clinics.

On the night of the raid, Doc had been asleep in the front bedroom when the police came to the front door. “I was awakened by what sounded like a knock on the door,” he testified. “I began to listen to become alert to what was going on, when I heard gunshots. They sounded as if they came from the front of the apartment.”

Doc tried to wake the others in the first bedroom, yelling for them to get down as more shots were fired. He was lying on the floor himself in the dark between two beds when he heard “a rapid succession of shots and noticed that I was hit several times, and I hollered in agony and I heard them [Verlina and Blair] holler in agony also. From the doorway a voice said, ‘We got ‘em, we got ‘em.’”

Doc testified that he yelled, “I’m shot, and I can’t move.” Then he heard, “If Black Panthers kill police, police will kill Black Panthers.” Doc was ordered to stand up and walk out. When he stumbled, the police told him “Get up, Nigger.” He dragged himself up and hobbled out. The police pushed everyone into the kitchen. One police officer told Doc, “You won’t be able to have kids now,” and the other officers laughed.

Doc was shot four times from knee to stomach. His colon was torn up and was partially removed. During his month-long stay in the hospital, he was handcuffed to his bed twenty-four hours a day.

“Would you show the jury the scar from your bullets wounds?” Montgomery asked. Doc raised his shirt to expose an eight-inch gray and scarlet scar running from his lower chest to his abdomen. It was crisscrossed with stitch marks. At Montgomery’s request, Doc pointed to the entry points of the two .45-caliber bullets that struck his stomach. The pain, the operations, and his lengthy rehabilitation had destroyed his former buoyancy.

Harold Bell, with his large muscular body, looked stiff and uncomfortable as he took the stand. He testified that he woke up in the living room to the police knock and ran to the back to wake up Fred. “I shook the chairman, I shook him twice, and he just looked up like he was sleeping, just raised his head up and opened his eyes and his head went back down.”

Unable to rouse the chairman, Harold crouched in the corner of the bedroom to avoid being shot. A police officer stuck a shotgun into the room, saw Harold, and pulled him out. Harold was pushed to the floor on his stomach, and his hands were cuffed behind him.

Harold testified that the police continued shooting from the kitchen until Truelock called out from the bedroom that there was a pregnant girl in there. During a pause, Truelock and Deborah came out from the bedroom. Harold heard a raider say, “That’s Fred Hampton.” He saw Gloves Davis in the kitchen, and he and another officer fired into Fred’s bedroom. After more shots, he heard a raider ask, “Is he dead?” Then Harold heard, “Bring him out,” followed by the thud of something hitting the floor. Harold later saw Fred lying in the dining room, blood dripping from his head.

Harold described the raid as similar to military operations he had witnessed in Vietnam because the raiders moved to a series of vantage points under covering fire, quickly gaining control of the apartment. There was no cross-examination.

In late summer, Louis Truelock, whose testimony was the most problematic of the plaintiffs, was due to testify. Not only did he have a substantial criminal record, he had made the sworn statement to my law partners claiming he’d fired a pump rifle at the police as he ran down the hallway to rouse Fred. This statement had been the focus of Hanrahan’s and the raiders’ criminal defense.

We had no choice but to call Truelock. If we didn’t, the defendants would. Even without his testimony, they could put his statement in as evidence of an admission.

Flint was going to be away during Truelock’s testimony. I had no one to watch my back. Montgomery only came to court occasionally now. Herbert Reid’s presence in the courtroom was becoming less frequent and he seldom spoke. Herb had signed on for a long trial, but we were in our ninth month with no end in sight. His energy waned.

When Truelock came to my office for his trial preparation, his clothes were disheveled, and it was clear he was living on the streets. His hair and beard had changed from salt- and-pepper to mostly white, and he looked haggard. Still I felt a bond from my first interview, and he trusted me.

“It ain’t gonna be fun,” I told him. “They’re going to grill you about the statement. You remember what that was like in Hanrahan’s trial.”

“Yeah, and Sears [the special prosecutor] didn’t try to protect me. He didn’t object to any of their questions.”

“Well, I’ll do my best to stop them,” I said,” but the judge doesn’t listen to me.”

“You know Jeff, I never picked up a gun. I told you that the first day. Later, when people were saying I was the snitch, I wanted it to look like I had done something to save Fred.”

I believed Truelock, because of what he told me originally and because there was no pump rifle, bullets, shell casings, or resulting bullet holes that matched a shot from the hallway.

“So keep it simple,” I said. “Just tell the jury what you told me when we first talked and what you said today about the statement. We can handle the truth.” He relaxed a little.

Truelock told me that it was primarily O’Neal who accused him of setting Fred up. Before that they had been friends, and O’Neal frequently bragged to him about burglaries and robberies he committed. When Fred saw O’Neal carrying a gun, he ordered him to stop and changed his role from bodyguard to errand runner. Truelock said O’Neal once pulled out a satchel full of explosives and told him they could use them to blow up an armory and get some guns. He had putty, blasting caps, and plastic bottles filled with some kind of liquid, which he said was an explosive.

In court Truelock testified that he woke to a knock followed by voices and then gunshots. He ran down the hall to wake Fred.

“Did you have anything in your hands?” I asked.

“No!” He said he couldn’t wake Fred up and after a lot of shooting, he called out that there was a “pregnant sister” in the room. After Deborah and he were pulled out and placed in the kitchen, he heard more gunshots and later saw Fred’s body lying on the door. He had to walk around it when he was led out the front. He was then taken to the Wood Street station.

“And what happened there?”

“Objection,” Coghlan intervened.

“Sustained,” Perry responded. The judge wasn’t about to let Truelock testify about his overhearing the Wood Street police say, “Rush is next.”

I asked Truelock if he ever told anyone from my office that he had fired at the police. He said he had. It was because some Panthers, particularly O’Neal, were labeling him an informant. Truelock then started to describe O’Neal’s provocative role in the party. The objections started flying from all the defendants’ lawyers that O’Neal’s illegal acts were “irrelevant.” Perry excused the jury and sustained their objections.

The next day I questioned Truelock outside the presence of the jury. “Panther Misdeeds Urged by FBI Spy” (the UPI headlines) went out all over the country and even made it to the Atlanta papers. The news stories contained Truelock’s description of O’Neal’s efforts to induce Panthers to commit burglaries and robberies and use explosives. Our jury never heard it.

One morning in September, when Truelock was scheduled to continue testifying, he wasn’t in court. Perry came out on the bench and asked where the witness was. I had to admit I didn’t know. Three phone calls later, I had no new information. I told the judge I had not been able to reach Truelock, perhaps he was sick. Could we recess for the day? Sensing blood, the defendants’ attorneys said if they were not allowed to finish cross-examination, his direct testimony should be stricken, his statement admitted, and the jury should be informed that he had refused to return. I begged for time. Judge Perry gave me until the next morning to produce Truelock or get proof he was dead or in a hospital somewhere.

It was 11:00 A.M. on a very hot day when I went out to find Truelock. PLO had no investigative staff. I drove out to the West Side to the last address I had for Truelock and climbed to the third floor and knocked.

A middle-aged woman in a housedress came to the door. “Does Louis Truelock live here?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” she said, “but he didn’t come home last night.”

“Do you know where I can find him? I’m his lawyer and he needs to come to court.”

“Sometimes he stays at his daughter’s house, but she ain’t got a phone.” The woman described the building where his daughter lived, several blocks away.

I was sweating as I entered the unlocked front door of a dilapidated three-story building. There was a strong urine smell in the stairway. This is the pits, I thought. Here I am trying to find my client, who was getting roasted on the witness stand, to coax him back. At the top of the stairs, I knocked on the apartment door. No answer. Then I heard some rustling noises inside. Another long wait. “Who’s there?” a woman’s voice finally asked.

“It’s Jeff Haas. I’m Louis Truelock’s lawyer. He needs to come to court.”

A few minutes later Truelock appeared, red-eyed and half awake but a welcome sight.

“Let’s go have some breakfast,” I suggested.

“Man, I can’t take their shit no more,” he said over scrambled eggs and toast at a nearby diner.

“You gotta hang in there, not only for you but for the Hamptons and Mrs. Clark.”

“You know I’m telling the truth, but the judge don’t want to hear it,” he said.

I explained that if he didn’t finish, they would argue from his statement that he fired at the police. “Only you can testify that the statement’s not true.”

“OK,” he said. “I’ll be there.”

“Do you want to stay with me tonight, or I can get you a motel room?”

“No, I’m straight.”

We agreed I’d pick him up at his daughter’s for court at eight the next morning.

I spent the rest of my day worrying whether Truelock would be there. But he was, and even wore a clean shirt. After breakfast I drove him to court. I mumbled something to Perry about Truelock having a bad headache. Perry admonished him to be on time. Truelock resumed testifying. He didn’t excel on cross, but he endured. We had just dodged a bullet.

When Jim Montgomery called Deborah to the witness stand, a hush descended on the courtroom. She was a large woman with a big Afro. She identified six-year-old Fred Hampton Jr., sitting with Iberia and Francis, as her and Fred’s son. She testified that he often asked about his father, whom Deborah spoke of with reverence, elongating the name “Fre-ed.” She fell in love with him the first time she saw him. They had moved into 2337 West Monroe in October, but Fred didn’t always sleep there because of security concerns. Sometimes he stayed at his parents’ house in Maywood. Fred never used drugs and only “once or twice” had she seen him with a beer. When Deborah found out she was pregnant, Fred wanted them to be together and raise their child. They talked about marriage.

On December 3, they went to bed after midnight. Fred called his parents but fell asleep on the phone. Deborah had to finish the conversation with Fred’s sister, Dee Dee. Deborah testified she woke up to gunfire. Harold was shaking Fred, trying to wake him. The bullets were coming so fast that “the mattress was shaking … Fred never really woke up. He just raised up slowly and put his head back down.” Deborah crawled on top of Fred to protect him. After someone in the room yelled, “We got a pregnant sister in here,” the police pulled her out and made her stand in the kitchen. Two police entered the bedroom.

“One of the policeman asked, ‘Is he still alive?’ I heard two shots, then ‘He’s good and dead now.’” Deborah broke down in tears several times. She had expected she and Fred would raise their child together, and Fred would support them. Deborah testified that she had no blood on her nightgown as she was pulled out of the bedroom and did not see blood on Fred at that point. Montgomery uncovered the mattress, which had been placed in front of the jury. The top third was covered with dried blood. Deborah broke down crying. She said the blood was not there or on Fred when she left the bedroom.