March 23, 2024 • 51 mins
Believe it or not, in 1985 the Philadelphia Police Department dropped a bomb from a helicopter onto a residential building in an African-American neighborhood. The fact that this story isn't more widely known says it all. Listen and learn about MOVE in this classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey everyone, it's Josh here and for this week's Select
I chosen our July twenty nineteen episode on the Move bombing.
It's a very disturbing, little known event in American history
when the Philadelphia Police Department dropped a firebomb onto a
row home where a radical group was hold up, about
half of whom were children. It ended, as anyone would expect,
(00:23):
in terrible tragedy. I hope you get a lot out
of this episode.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck.
There's Josh. You got to get used to this, Chuck.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
We will eventually.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
It's the new normal.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Yep, and this is stuff you should know.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
The uh, I can't believe it's happened. Edition one of many.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
One of many. Yeah, this sparked off a lot of
ideas too.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Oh yeah, yeah, how the Phillies work?
Speaker 3 (01:07):
No, what's up with the Philly fanatic?
Speaker 1 (01:10):
That's the green one? Right?
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Yeah, that's a great character. Sure, so.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Let's dispense with all that.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Okay, Yeah, thisre's gonna be a long one, so let's
just jump in.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Okay. So back in nineteen eighty five, in May, Philadelphia
Police Department became the first and to this point only
police department to drop a bomb on American soil. No
police department has ever bombed anything in the history of America.
But they did, and they happened to bomb a house
(01:44):
that was occupied at the time with thirteen people, seven
of which were children. And the people in this house
were members of an organization called Move Move all caps
but it's not an acronym, Nope. And they did the
because Move had made themselves quite a nuisance in the neighborhood,
(02:05):
to say the least. And there was basically by this
time in May nineteen eighty five, a bitter feud between
Move and the Philadelphia Police Department, and on May thirteenth,
it came to a fiery and tragic and it's a.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Nice setup, thank you. You should have music playing or something.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Hopefully Josh will do that, because God knows, Jerry's not
going to sunt anywhere. Anyone knows where she is.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
So you want to go back in time and talk
a little bit about Move and their origins, and then
go forward in time.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
I would like to.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Isn't that what you said?
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (02:42):
So Move is still around at the times.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Over the years, they've been called a cult, they've been
called a Black liberation movement.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Back to Earth, a terrorist group, animal rights group.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
There are all these things to a certain degree here
and there. Although the the leader won mister Vincent Leppard,
who everyone, by the way, if you hear say the
name so and so Africa, once you become a member
of move you take on the last name of Africa.
Which even though they weren't strictly a group for African Americans,
(03:15):
they had white people early on. They definitely kind of
got that rap a little bit more because of the
Black Power movement and the fact that the leader was black.
Changed his name to Africa and asked everyone else to
change their last name to Africa.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
But though not legally, I don't think.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
No no, but ultimately it was well, they wouldn't have
done it legally because that's part of the system, and
the system was one of the things they real against.
There were basically two prongs to John Africa's philosophy. One
was that basically all life is important and equally important. Yeah,
so there was a lot of animal rights stuff. There
was a lot of not eating meat. Ostensibly it was
(03:55):
there vegetarianism in there there was, although they weren't strict vegetarians, no,
but yes, but there was an animal rights and protection
in the sanctity of life. And then the second was
that the system, as they called it, was inherently flawed
because everything that was created by humans was flawed, and
(04:16):
therefore not only should not be used, but the whole
system should be taken down and replaced with a much
more natural, animalistic philosophy and way of life.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
So that includes electricity, that includes like cooking meat, like
these kids ate raw chicken, believe it or not.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Yeah, the kids who were raised in the movement, and
this is.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
This story would make a lot more sense if this
was on like some deserted island and someone was moving
there to start this utopian society on an island. This
is a very interesting story in that it happened in
a densely populated area of rowhouses in Westvilleladelphia.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Born and not where you would I can't not think
I hear West Philadelphia.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
I thought of it too. It's when you go back
and look at the footage. And by the way, there's
a great documentary called Let It Burn, Let the Fire Burn,
that you should pay for online.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
I did, that's good on Amazon Prime, and uh, well
I'm a Prime member, so so am I Okay?
Speaker 1 (05:27):
I still had to pay to rent it though, because
Amazon's part of the system.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
That's right. Uh where was that going?
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Uh? You were saying that it would make more sense
on a deserted island than I should in a densely
populated neighborhood Philadelphia.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
So when you're watching this documentary and there's so much footage,
it's crazy to see this house, this row house, set
up with you know, farm animals at times in the
front yard, heavily fenced.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
In, fortified like a fortress.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Yeah, sometimes people standing outside with guns. Even though we'll
see later these guns were later found out to be
not capable of firing bullets, which means, well, I guess
it's still a gun, but it means it's not a weapon.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
It's a club.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Yeah, sort of. But at the very least, it's just
it's an odd setting for this story.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
It isn't when you watch that documentary that house sticks
out like a sore thumb like this.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
They had Amish people probably an hour and a half
away from this, doing the same thing out in the
middle of the country.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Not the exact same thing, but you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
But you can't get a good cheese steak in Amish country.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Much less a good raw one.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
You can get good stick candy because they know what
they're doing with that stuff.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Nice furniture, butter Sure, what was.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
It rum Springer where they get to go crazy or
whatever and see if they want to live the Amish life?
Speaker 3 (06:45):
I think, yeah, I think that was it.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
That was a good one, good time ago.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
But anyway, it's a very interesting setting for the story.
It got caught up in or maybe unfairly pegged as
black liberation, like I said, but sort of because of
the time in which it happened, which was in the
in the seventies and early eighties when the Black Panther
Party was in power. There was a former Black Panther
(07:09):
that later would join the move movement.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Yes, but from all I saw in that documentary, that
person was interviewed and he makes it sound like rather
than bringing the Black Panther ideas to well.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
That's where he left.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Yeah, he he took our moves ideals rather than the
discarded the Black Panthers idea.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Yeah, I think he was disillusioned with the Black Panthers
because of the violence. And it should be pointed out
that that Africa's whole thing was was his whole thing
was non violence, but it wasn't like that was at
the forefront of like his everyday talkings, because they very
aggressively and very obscenely blasted their message through these loud
(07:48):
speakers attached to this row house, which was a real
problem in this neighborhood for everyone this you know, black neighborhood.
They didn't want them there either. No, that's don't drop
a bottom on them, right, which is what one of them,
being interviewed very clearly was like, we didn't want this
to happen, but you know, they were a threat to
our well being here in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yeah, and they were also deliberately provocative. They they purposefully
made a nuisance ode of themselves because part of Moves
philosophy was waking everybody else up and doing it in
a really aggressive, hostile.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Agitation threatening way.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Supposedly, some neighbors reported that they were directly threatened by
this group, which is a big problem too. I mean,
that's definitely a couple steps up from agitating or aggravating
people threatening them is different.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Sure, but at the very least, you know, imagine being
a neighbor who has lived in this house for twenty
years and all of a sudden there's this organization right
living there, and at three in the morning, it's just
blasting out, you know, these mfors that are in charge
or fin this and f and that, right, and like
I felt sorry for these citizens.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Oh yeah, you know, there's a lot of.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Empathy like to be dispersed among many parts of this story.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Yes, but the story also this basically, this story has
two types of people in it.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Villains and innocence.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah, just virtually there's a there's one hero that you
can point to, and he doesn't even appear in this article.
He was in the documentary, which we'll talk about him
for a minute later. But it's mostly.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
Just people.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
The adults acting badly and the children or the people
in the neighborhood who are innocent bystanders or pawns in
this whole thing.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Victims. Yeah, for sure, for.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Sure, Because when you're talking about like blaaring your philosophy
in a very hostile, foul mouthed way. If you see
the pictures of the house, like those loud speakers that
they have at like stock car races or whatever. Yeah,
that's what they had posted.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Out on the house. It wasn't just some guy with
a bullhorn oring like.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
That that walkie talkie thing that Homer Simpson had at
the yard sale out Now.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
You can hear this along the whole block, right in
every direction.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Yes, and if you were anywhere near them, if your
house was next door or even a couple of doors down,
you heard them night and day, and it was a
real problem.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, so we should back up a little bit and
give a little bit of the background here. Before the
nineteen eighties happened and they moved into the second house
on Osage Avenue sixty two twenty one, they lived at
a different house in the late seventies, and there was
a different mayor in Philadelphia at this time, Mayor Rizzo,
who was.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
A scumbag, tough talking like bag. Yeah he was a scumbag.
I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
I saw archival footage of the man and he was
sure strong man, scumbag.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Yeah, he was one of these guys, you know. And
we'll see what happened here was he was not in
charge anymore, but it was remnants from that attitude basically
that he laid down in the city, which is like.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
He was in charge in seventy eight though.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Oh yeah, yeah, I'm talking about the bombing. So in
seventy eight there was a standoff with the police. We
had talked about the guns earlier. It was later found
out that these guns weren't capable of firing. They didn't
know that at the time, but at the very least
the cops over acted or overreacted at the at the
(11:23):
declaration of Mayor Rizzo, and that was shooting. There was
an officer that was shot and killed and it was
just a really bad scene.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
So even just a little bit before that too, there
was a there was a confrontation between MOVE and the
Philadelphia police where one of the MOVE member's babies, like
a two month old died.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Yeah, you know, and the MOVE.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Members said the cops did this, Like this baby died
from this confrontation with the police, So like that kicks
that off. The police eventually raid the the MOVE house
in nineteen seventy eight and one of the officers get
shot and killed in this raid. And so you've got
some real bad blood brewing between these two groups.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Yeah, and during that raid, Delbert Africa, one of the
members was and that you can see footage of this.
It was all captured on camera, just beaten on the
street while laying on the sidewalk.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
By these cops while he was surrendering.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Yeah, So to say that there was bad blood is
sort of an understatement. Was you had on one side
a what you could at least define as a public
nuisance in this neighborhood. You had on this other side,
this zealous mayor who just wanted to get rid of them, period,
not like let's meet, let's talk, let's see if we
(12:48):
can all work together. They were one hundred thousand percent
at odds with one another.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
So the police officer that died, the Move side said,
we didn't shoot that guy. It was friendly fire that
got him, right. The Philadelphia Police Department didn't agree with
that story, and so on, like a personal level, like
not just an organizational level, but to a cop, the
(13:14):
cops hated Move and these people just continued on in
Philadelphia and actually stepped up there making themselves a public
nuisance because nine of their members were arrested for the
murder of that police officer and convicted. Yes, and sent
to jail for decades.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yeah, thirty two, one hundred years is what they're each
sentence for. We'll talk about what happened to them toward
the end.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
So just to kind of just paint this one last
stroke on this picture we're painting here, the cops had
a vendetta against MOVE because one of their own was
killed during the siege. And MOVE had a vendetta against
the cops because nine of their people were put in jail,
one of them was beaten, and a baby had died
(14:03):
on their side.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Okay, all right, let's take a break and we'll come
back right for this and talk more about what happened
in nineteen eighty five. All right, So whether or not
(14:41):
this was a cult is some people debate that. John
Africa is very much on record saying it's an organization.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Is that relevant? I don't think so. I don't either.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
I think it's just an attempt to discredit them.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Oh, to call them a cult. Huh yeah, I don't know.
I think it's all we're talking about though.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Oh yeah, yeah, I'm not like criticizing you or anything
like that. I'm just saying, like when people toss it around, like, oh,
they were a cult. Yeah, there were some like characteristics
that you could say, well, it's kind of cult like
or whatever.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Let's put it this way.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
If it was on a deserted island, then I think
people would have straight up called them a cult. The
fact that it was in a neighborhood in West Philadelphia
made it seem a lot less, so.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
I hear you.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
But if he was like, come here and live on
this island with me, then it would have straight up
been called a cult.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Let me rephrase what I was saying. I don't dispute
that they may have been a cult, but again it's that, well,
does that mean that they should have had a bomb
dropped on them?
Speaker 3 (15:39):
I don't think anyone thinks that. Okay.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
So, like I said, there were kids there that were
forced to eat raw fish, raw chicken. The adults could
cook their meat, which was there was definitely some double
standards going on there. Their rationale was that our bodies
are used to this, but we want to raise you
pure from the start, so you're only going to eat
(16:03):
raw foods.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
They had a lot of exceptions, not just that, like
the anti technology thing where they had like a wood
burning stove for heat and that was it, right, No,
they used candles instead of light bulbs, that kind of stuff.
But they also had phones and they drove cars. Right,
So there was a lot of weird exceptions in loopholes
and holes in general in John Africa's guidelines as he
(16:28):
called them.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Yeah. As for one of the more well the only
child that survived this experience, Birdie Africa, Michael Ward, he
said in nineteen ninety five, I'm still afraid of them.
Of moves, some of the things that went on there,
I can't get out of my head.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Bad things.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
I haven't told anyone except for my father, but I'll
tell you this. I didn't like being there. They said
it was a family, but a family isn't something where
you're forced to stay and you don't want to. And
his contention was that the kids were always trying to
get out of there and run away.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
They were just too little to know how too little,
and you know, naked, they were naked, they were malnourished.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
They were like the only toys they had they had
to hide because they weren't supposed to have them. Because
it's technology and human made.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
It was unsanitary.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Yeah, there was, you know, part of part of what
move was into is growing their own food, so they
would compost like in the alley behind the house or
on the roof or something like that. They had they
built an animal shelter in the alley. So there was
a lot of really uh like not okay conditions to
(17:36):
raise kids in let alone, like adults to live in
but raising children. It was there were some really bad
decisions and choices or bad outcomes from some of John
Africa's philosophy.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Yeah, it's weird because it's like at the heart of this,
it's this back to nature movement.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
You know, where I want them to be on a
deserted island, So by.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Not even a deserted island, like go out into like
there's there's countryside not too far outside of Philadelphia.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Weird. It is.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
It's very strange because on on one hand, I'm like, yeah,
this animal rights group and they're back to nature and
they're issuing the things of man, but they're doing it
in the most like aggressive, antagonistic way possible in the
middle of a city. It's like, I don't I didn't
know what to think about any of this, except obviously
you don't go in there and fire bomb the place.
It's like the one thing I was clear on you
(18:24):
don't start a war in the middle of a neighborhood, right,
It's true, which is what happened. Basically, the neighbors wanted
move out, They fire filed a bunch of complaints over
the years to get them shut down, and the city
didn't really know what to do at this point. At
this point there was a different mayor, Mayor Good. So
(18:47):
this was the first black mayor of Philadelphia.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Who actually was elected on this reform ticket, basically to
get rid of Rizzo, get rid of the corruption, the
racism that Rizzo had had and his administration had fostered
because he was police chief first and then became mayor
Rizzo and he basically after that nineteen seventy eight raid,
(19:11):
there's footage of him just basically hopped up and boasting
about how militarized the Chicago PD was now and how
like they could I think he actually said, we're ready
for war. Yeah, we could go down to Cuba and
take them if we wanted to right now, just really
like boasting about this, not like, oh man, you know
(19:32):
this was this is a tragedy or whatever, even however
you want to say it like he was boasting, like
come on, who's next kind of thing. And this was
the mayor at the time. So Wilson Good comes along
is like not that, We're going to take a different
tact here and try to promote more unity. Then he
was actually pretty successful in a lot of ways in
that respect as far as the city officials go. I
(19:56):
really kind of like Mayor Good because he took rispe
resonssibility for it. Yeah, even stuff he didn't do just
because he was the mayor, he put himself in as accountable.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
All right, So shall we fast forward? Yes, the stage
is set. We know what happened in the seventies. We
know the relationship between this neighborhood with this group, this
group with the city and the cops.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
And so.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
They decide that they are going to extract every person
from that house. That was the plan, as we are
going to remove the Move organization from the house on
Osage Avenue. In this article says they didn't have a plan.
That's not true. They had a plan that just was
not executed well and went really pair shaped really fast,
(20:45):
and then they didn't have a plan. But the original
plan was to they had built the Move organization that
built this pretty fortified bunker on top of their building.
As far as homemade bunkers go, not bad, which gave
them a supreme tactical ad. If you know anything about war,
you know, higher ground is always going to win out.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Sure, or if you're not always designed a castle or something,
you know.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Sure castle designers they know, or mongers.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Uh So, the idea was to create a diversion on
the roof, in which time police officers or swat and
everybody would would go inside and forcibly remove people by
any means necessary in mayor Goods words.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
But the first the first part of that was water
cannons and tear gas, you're right. And they were very
surprised when these water cannons that were just I think
they shot like a thousand gallons a second or some
crazy amount of water. They ha just left them on, yes,
two of them, yeah shoot like And they fully expected
to basically take most of this house down, yeah like
(21:50):
it was a brick row home, but they expected it
to take the non brick parts off, including that that
structure on top, that lookout. And they were very very
surprised when two things didn't happen. When that structureding come down,
despite the water cans being directed at it for hours
and the people not coming out, despite tear gas being
(22:13):
shot into the house. Right, And that is like you
said earlier, when their plan went went to the to
the birds, Yeah, toilet, Sure, went down the toilet, And
they said, well, what do we do now, Like our
whole plan doesn't work. I've got an idea. Let's start
shooting at the house instead.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
So what they didn't know this whole time was that
they were all hiding in a basement garage. So all
of this water raining down on the roof wasn't I don't,
Probably wasn't even getting to them. Probably not, Or maybe
it's it's not like they were up to their necks
and water in the basement and like drowning or anything
like that.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
No, but they later said that the tear gas was everywhere.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
Sure, but apparently it wasn't potent enough.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Yeah, maybe they just expired stuff and we should step
back one step, chuck. Before this raid actually started, they
went house to house to the neighbors and said, you guys,
oh yeah, yeah, grab all your clothes.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
It's huge.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
We need you gone for twenty four hours. Yeah, because
We're about to do what you guys have wanted us
to do for years. Yeah, we're gonna do it, So
you need to get out here. They towed trucks from
Osage Avenue.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
They towed every carp they had, the gas shut off,
the electricity shut off.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
It was a siege. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
They basically tried to just vacate the block. Yeah, and
they did. Yeah, and they did. I mean, I think
some people stayed when they shouldn't have. But it's like
with any evacuation. They got as many people out of
there as possible. Right, They're like, you'll be back in
your house tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Okay, So the whole block and like a couple of blocks,
a couple of streets on either side are cleared. Yeah,
the water's been used, it's not working. The tear gas
is not working. So supposedly the first shots came from
the house, right, but every bud all witnesses, cops, firefighters,
(24:02):
newspeople say that the first shots were automatic fire. It's
been conclusively proven that no one in the move house
had an automatic weapon. So if the first shots were automatic,
then that means the cops fired first, and that's what
people seem to believe. Is that the cops started this.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Yeah, and a lot of this documentary it's really compelling
because it's footage from the commission afterward, and you get
like the real deal testimony, first person testimony from all
the major players, including the police chief what.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Was his name, Gregory Sambor?
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Yeah, Sambor?
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Who was He identified it as automatic, like his sworn
testimony said it was automatic weapons, and they're like, well,
how do you know? And he was like, I know
what an automatic weapon sounds like, right, And.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
They're like, well, what move didn't have automatic weapons?
Speaker 3 (24:52):
You're like, oh, I don't know about that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
He's like, I don't know how to explain that then,
But they fired first, right, He just kind of stuck
to his guns, right every single time.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Yeah, he was a piece of work himself. He was
definitely in the cut from the same cloth as Mary Rizzo.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
I think. So.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Yeah, so they decided to start shooting at this point
because regardless of who shot first, it becomes like Vietnam
on the city block all of a sudden, and it's
not like, I mean, they cleared it out. But when
you see this news footage, I mean there's people everywhere
sure watching their news cameras and anchors everywhere on the
streets like, oh, like, we should get behind the car
(25:29):
now because it's raining bullets everywhere. Yeah, it's just freaky
to see this happening in like a city block in
the United States.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Yeah, the cop eighties. The cops later on estimated that
they fired about ten thousand rounds.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
They ran out of bullets. Yeah, they had to bring
in more because they.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Ran Yeah that this car pulls up there like a car,
a police car has just rushed into the scene, and
it's like from a movie.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
The trunk pops and it's just full of bullets.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Yeap, just for because they ran out of bullets. Yeah,
So they kept shooting at this house. And here's thing, like,
bear in mind, they're shooting ten thousand rounds of ammunition
at a house. It was occupied by three thirteen people,
seven of which are children. Everyone knows. Oh yeah, everyone
knows that there were seven children in that house.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Yeah, it's not like the cops were unaware.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
No, everyone knew that there were children in this house. Yeah,
it was part of it. It was part of the
concern of the neighbors that there were children being raised
in this house, and the cops acted on the information
from confidential informants who fully informed them that there were
children in this house. So that's step one. They fired
ten thousand rounds at a house where they knew that
(26:38):
there were seven children.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
All right, so nothing is changing, though they're still not
bringing people out of this house.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
I'll bet they were like, I can't believe this, and
the structure was still intact on top.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
I'm surprised they didn't think they were dead. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
I would have thought at some point they would have
been like, well, I'm sure we probably killed everyone.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Yeah, let's just go in there.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Uh yeah, I wonder, Yeah, I wonder, because if they
were all crowd crowded down in the basement garage, they
couldn't have been firing back after a certain point in time.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
Yeah, I'm not sure.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
I mean, they said part of the problem was the
tear gas, so they couldn't send cops in there because
it was flooded with tear gas. And then I think
they said the well, no, that said this comes later
the steam, So put a pin in the steam. So
at some point someone on the bomb squad apparently says
to the police chief or it gets to the police chief,
(27:30):
hey he was really, you know, the chief was really
worried about that bunker and that tactical advantage. So someone
from the bomb squad said, why don't we drop a
bomb on the roof and get rid of that bunker.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
An officer named William Klein suggested, and they said it, okay,
let's do that.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
Good idea. Kline.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
What do we need, think, a helicopter and a bomb. Yeah,
they're like, well we've got both.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
So even as late as that inquiry that they held,
they characterized it as a Tovax bomb, And Tovax is
a water based gily and this explosive that is used
I think in mining and demolition and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
But it can be purchased. Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
It later came out that in addition to the Tovax,
the bomb disposal guy made a bomb with C four
plastique explosives, which is not commercially available, which means that
we'll see later the Philadelphia Police Department should not have
had this stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
Yeah, I mean, we should just go ahead and say
how they got it? Why not?
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Well, I was trying to save it for with a
little flair for the dramatic, but you go ahead.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Well, the FBI gave it to him secretly.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Yeah, the FBI had been giving little bits of C
four here and there to police departments apparently, like the
blow doors off of stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
To train bomb sniffing dogs.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
Yeah, teach him how to use it.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
But then the FBI used that excuse for a little while,
then later came out and said no, we actually like
brought them a bunch of C four.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Like thirty blocks of C four in January, a few
months before this raid, the siege, but still during the
time when the like move people were being negotiated with
to leave on their own.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
Yeah, because that was happening this whole time.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
They would have community leaders on the bullhorn trying to
talk them into coming out. They did not have a
professional negotiator on the scene, which.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
That's a huge yeah, red flag.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
Yeah that they never meant for anyone to come out.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Yeah, but at any rate, they drop a bomb a
I think it was a they said, a four pound
bomb from a satchel with a forty five second fuse.
This is all on camera, like you literally in this
documentary see the helicopter fly over drop this satchel out
of it. Yeah, fly I love that you did a
(29:48):
running motion yeah, you know, in helicopter's run and they
flew out of there and kaboom, and West Philadelphia, a
bomb explodes on top of a building and a smallish
fire starts.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
This is it? What time that was there? Like five
that they dropped the bomb? Five to ten? I think,
all right?
Speaker 1 (30:09):
And the smallish fire took a couple of minutes for
it to become a parent that it had caught fire.
But supposedly there was gasoline in the what.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Are we calling that thing the bunker? The bunker.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Yeah, there's supposedly gasoline in the bunker. But I really
like the police dropped the bomb on a building that
they knew that people were in, seven of which were children, Okay,
And supposedly the reason that they did this was to
get rid of that bunker. Like that bunker. The police
chief did not like that bunker standing still and wanted
(30:46):
to get rid of it. The bomb didn't do anything
to the bunker. That was a strong bunker.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
It was the time, LI is important. So at five
twenty seven is when they dropped the bomb. At five
point forty five, someone asked the fire department if they
should turn on the you know, they've been delusing this
thing with water all day long until there's a fire,
and then they turn it off, which was you know,
it's not ironic because it was very purposeful, but it
(31:14):
definitely stings more. Yeah, So they said not to turn
them on by six o'clock. So this is thirty three
minutes later. Mayor Good is watching this on TV in
his office. He phones it in and says, you know,
let's put this fire out now.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
He ordered the fire to be put out.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Yeah, thirty three minutes later, And this is where it
gets a little hinky because this was given to police
Chief Sambor, and under testimony, Sambor says that he relayed
that to the fire chief.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
He said, he said that the fire chief was there.
He did not say he related to this.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Well.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Yeah, I mean he got very dodgy with how he
worded it. But the fire chief, basically, on testimony, that's
what he said, and he's like, I categorically denied that
I ever got an order to start those water cannons
or that.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
He was even aware that Good made that call a
phone call or called the order. So basically, the fire
chief said the buck stopped with Sambor, and Sambor the
police chief decided to let that fire burn.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
That's right, because he thought, not defending him, but he
thought the fire would then take down the bunker and
remove that advantage. Other people contend, and they ask him
in the deposition or in the hearing, no, you've kind
of really wanted to use the fire as a weapon.
He got real salty about that, he did. He said,
(32:39):
a fire can't be a weapon. Basically, he said no,
I said, what about flame throwers?
Speaker 1 (32:44):
He goes, I hadn't thought about flamethrowers.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
But still, all right, so this is six point thirty
flames are it is clearly out of hand.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
They waited way too long.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
That was the thing that got me was it was
obvious from what Sambor was saying, if the documentary is accurate,
from what Sambor was saying, that when he was saying, no,
we need to let the bunker burn, still by this time,
the entire top floor was a conflagration.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
Yeah. I mean, it's on the news, so that whole.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Thing doesn't hold water at all, and it would lend
support to the idea that he was using it as
a weapon to burn the people out.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
I'm sure he was.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
I'm sure he thought to your guests, didn't work maybe
this fire will work, okay and drive these people out
of there.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Okay, all right, should we take a break or should
we wait, Let's take a break. Okay, we'll take a
break and we'll tell you what happens next.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Okay, chuck. So for a little bit, the fire department
sprays some of the houses next to the move house,
but doesn't put the fire out or spray the fire
on the move house. So in the abandoned houses, they're
spraying down to try to contain the fire in the house.
(34:30):
The one house in this whole square block area where
they know people are, including seven children, they didn't spray.
Later on, they will defend this by saying, well, in
that nineteen seventy eight siege, move fired on the firefighters
and apparently shot and injured several firefighters, so that we
(34:50):
were worried for the firefighters to be picked off fighting
this fire in this siege as well. Ramona Africa, who
would be the one adult from move to s the siege,
would say, well, like you said earlier, they had these
they weren't scared to hit us with these water cannons.
The whole time there wasn't a fire, right, But then
there is a fire and now they're scared, we're going
(35:11):
to pick them off. That doesn't make any sense. It's
just be yes.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
And also I'm glad you brought that up because it
said to put a pin in the steam. This is
when the steam happened, because they're blowing water on this
fire now and it's creating all the steam that they
said didn't allow anyone to move in as well, okay,
because they couldn't see anything.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
It was no visibility.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Okay. So despite spraying down the houses around this fire, Yeah,
it got out of hand really fast, and it spread
very fast, and it moved very quickly, not just from
the move house, but onto the neighboring houses and then beyond.
And even these are fairly narrow streets that this neighborhood
was built on, and it jumped the street fairly quickly.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
It wasn't contained or deemed under control until eleven forty
one PM.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
So it's like more than six hours after it started.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
Yeah, this whole city block it just burning to the ground.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
It ended up being like a six alarm fire, which
depending on the city, is one hundred and twenty firefighters, chiefs,
ladder trucks. It's a big old fire.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Yeah, so you mentioned the nineteen seventy eight siege where
the officer was shot and killed and where the beating
of Delbert Africa went down. Important to remember that because
two of the officers that were involved in the beat
down of Delbert Africa were also on the scene today.
And they make a big point in this commission, like,
(36:33):
did you think about sending these guys in? There might
not be a good idea and they may have revenge
on their minds. And I can't remember what the answer was.
He's kind of like.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
He said, no, I didn't think of that, yeah, or yes,
I did, whatever it was. He was not like, yeah,
that was not a good idea, right, He stood by
whatever it was.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
Right.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
So this kind of sets up another story in tandem
that's going on right now, which is at a certain
point during this massive fire about seven, Yeah, they try
to get out from the basement.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
The move people tried to get out. They tried to.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Escape, that's right, They tried to get out the back door.
There's this At this point, the cops had moved into
the alleyway.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
There was no camera access.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
He couldn't see what happened, but from the testimony that
can't even hardly get through the testimony of that kid.
You know, they deposed him. He wasn't in front of
the Commissionertty Africa. Yeah, but Bertie Africa was like, what
do he look like ten or eleven years old when
they deposed him?
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Yeah, but he was actually like thirteen, was he?
Speaker 2 (37:35):
But this kid is retelling the story seems incredibly credible
and believable to me, right, Like, I fully believe that
he was telling the truth.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
Over the two cops who are supposed who may or
may not who may have actually fired on the people
trying to escape the house, right of the two. It's
way easier to believe that kid's testimony than these guys, right,
who were the ones who beat Delbert Africa in nineteen
seventy eight.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
Yeah, so that's what happened. They tried to leave.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
There was a kid named rad Africa that was I
think like thirteen or fourteen, and he was carrying out
a baby and he was one of the first ones
out and he goes back into the house and there's
that part of the documentary where the priest is talking
to the officers and he's like, because officers were saying
(38:21):
all we were saying was come out with.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
Your hands up.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Right.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
We didn't fire on anything. We didn't fire. We had
them out with your hands up. And this priest is like,
I'm trying to think of what would make a kid
holding a baby go back into a building engulfed in flames.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
And the cops are like, well, I don't.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Know, Yeah, you can't really put yourself in a move
person's feet, right, you can't really identify with them, And
that minister or whatever said, actually I was friends with
a lot of these people.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
They knew them on a human level. Right.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
The other thing that really kind of damns the two
cops who beat Delbert Africa's testimony is that there was
reports from a lot of witnesses, including like fire department
people from of gunfire in this alley around this time.
So the whole thing kind of adds up if you
(39:10):
take those testimon that the reports of witnesses that there
was gunfire in the back alley, with Birdie Africa and
Ramona Africa's testimony that around that same time people had
tried to escape, and then the testimony of the cops
themselves that the people had run back in the house,
it sounds a lot, like a reasonable person would conclude
(39:35):
that the cops who had beaten Delbert Africa in nineteen
seventy eight shot at the people from move in nineteen
eighty five who tried to escape the fire and force
them back into the burning house. Right, that's certainly what
it sounds like.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
They the cops said that the kid had or you
said he was a man, he was a kid, had
a rifle that he pointed at them. And I know
what a rifle looks like, because the kid who survived
Bertie said he had a monkey wrench in his hand
that he used to get the window open. And he
came out with a monkey wrench in that baby. And
the cop was like, until there's between a rifle and
(40:11):
a monkey wrench.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
And if you're sitting here like, hey, you lay off
the cops, just watch this documentary and then listen to
this part over again, because it's really it's a really
great documentary. It does a really good job of like
laying everything out. But the part of the I guess
the goodness of this documentary is that it's all archival
and it lets the people speak for themselves.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Oh yeah, it's just you basically kind of watch what
happened and listen to what people said about it, right,
you know, including the people and I mean in charge.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
And it's obviously I mean it's edited. It's not just
like here's this inquiry, here's my documentary. But I mean
it lets it pay out enough that you get a
really good clear picture of what happened in the testimony
that followed.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
So, I mean, that's kind of the end of that
story as it has happened. That you know, these Ramona
and Bertie were the only two to make it out
of that house alive.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
And that hero I mentioned earlier, cop Man, I wish
I could remember his name.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
I got his name.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
He he could not stop himself from running to Bertie
to help him.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
Yeah, James Officer, James Berghier.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
So bergheire ran to them. Despite some of his colleagues saying,
don't I think it's a trap. You're gonna get killed?
He said, I can't. I can't, Like I see this
kid right there, and I'm going to go rescue him.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
He thought of his kids, he said he did, and
he was.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
They even say like in the inquiry, like if there's
if there's any like silver silver lining or shining moment
to this whole horrible thing. It's what you did. And
he got kind of rousted out of the police department
within a year or two.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
Oh yeah, his his own police brethren turned on him.
They wrote racial epithets on his locker because he saved
this kid was diagnosed with PTSD and left the forest
two years later. And there's a great article I found
that I read the first third of right before we
had to record that of him, an interviewed with him.
(42:13):
I guess like five or six years Agoah that I
can't wait to go read and finish up.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
So let's finish up. Okay.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
So, so Bertie and Ramona were the only two move
members who survived. The other eleven died, including six children. Yeah,
in this house that was set on fire, and the
fire was set off by a bomb that the Philadelphia
Police Department dropped on the house. So obviously Philadelphie's gonna
cough up some money for this.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
Yeah, there were settlements. The parents of the dead children
settled for twenty five million dollars total. Michael Ward young Bertie,
he became Michael Ward. He changed his name. He got
one point seven million dollars Ramona Africa got half a
million dollars and the families of John Africa and his
(43:02):
nephew they couldn't reach a settlement, so they were awarded
one million by a jury. And then here's the kicker.
Police Chief Sambor and fire Chief Richmond were forced to
pay a dollar a week for eleven years to Ramona Africa.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
To keep in mind, yeah, five.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
Hundred and seventy two dollars.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
Which is a but it's a civil I mean, that's
a civil punishment basically saying we think you're like, you
might not be criminally responsible, but in this civil suit
we are saying it's basically like.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
How the symbolic payment or whatever.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Yeah, it's like how the court, the civil court ruled
against oj even though he had been found not guilty
of murder in the criminal the civil court still said, no,
you're responsible. We believe so we're going to get you
in this way. They did the same thing. And this
was despite the fact that Ramona Africa did seven years.
(43:54):
Like they didn't say, hey, we're really sorry we burned
this house. She would here's some money. They said, hey,
you're under arrest for inciting riots and conspiracy of something
or other and she did seven years. She didn't get
out early because the parole board said you have to
denounce MOVE and she refused to denounce MOVE, and she
(44:17):
did her full seven years, although now she is not
affiliated with MOVE any longer.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
As far as I know, Yeah, as far as the
original MOVE nine, who are the ones in prison for
the killing of the police officer? Two of them died
in prison. I think two are still in prison. The rest,
including just in February. February twelfth, Eddie Africa was paroled.
(44:42):
Delbert and Chuck Africa are still behind bars. I think
are the only two still behind bars. And as far
as Michael Ward aka Young Birdie Africa, he very sadly
died in twenty thirteen in a hot tub cruise ship
drowning due to.
Speaker 3 (45:02):
Intoxication. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
The Brevard County, Florida Medical Examiner ruled it an accidental
death from drowning in the hot tub from just being drunk.
I guess what a weird way to go after all
that weird life.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
Yeah, it's weird because during the deposition he was there
with his father and I'm like, where was his dad?
Speaker 1 (45:22):
His dad was looking for him?
Speaker 3 (45:23):
Well, his dad was.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
Out of the country in the military while he was
living in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
Right, but he had moved to suburban Philadelphia. Yeah, his
dad did and had been looking for Michael and had
no idea he was, you know, thirty minutes away in Philly.
Speaker 3 (45:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
So he lived the rest of his life with his dad,
and that's who he referenced earlier when he was like,
you know, the stuff that went on there, I'll only
tell my father, Right, super super tragic, And it's one
of these things I think like we should do a
little triumvirate of this in Ruby Ridge and Waco.
Speaker 3 (45:56):
Maybe I agreed, like three times where.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
There was a potentially problematic organization in the United States,
government just decided to fire bombit.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:05):
These are so sticky because you want to be like, oh,
these people are the victims, and you know, the government
really was a villain in this one. But you're like,
it's never that complex, and these stories really teach.
Speaker 3 (46:17):
You that that that's always that things.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
They are much more textured, yeah than that, they're much
more nuanced than that black and white. But even still,
you still don't drop You don't drop a bomb and
burn eleven people to death.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
Yeah, the city as far as that block went, they
paid eleven million dollars, which was by all accounts a
very inside deal with some developer who put up a
bunch of houses that were condemned in two thousand due
to shoddy construction. So somebody got rich again trying to
build these things. Did a terrible job. Twenty four families stayed.
(46:56):
They offered repairs and buyouts, and apparently most people took
the buyouts.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
Right.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
And if you do like the little Google Earth to
sixty two twenty one osage, it's uh still row houses
and on either side of that it looks like people
might be living there, right, but that building has like
you know, plywood up in the windows.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
Oh really, yeah, because I heard like starting in about
twenty fifteen they brought in a good developer and started
to redevelop it and then's starting to come back.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
Well, it's interesting that one address, though, is u is
boarded up, So I don't know if like no one
wants to live there.
Speaker 3 (47:31):
Or it could be an older Google image. Yeah those
are usually newer, right, I wonder well.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
I mean it could be older than twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
Although I looked at my house the other day and
it was it was the old house.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
The old house.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
Yeah, I was kind of like, oh, that's cute. It
looks crettier than I thought.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Oh, you got a good house. I gotta see your
new version. Yeah, you should a fancy version. I'm just
waiting for an invite come on over.
Speaker 3 (47:55):
Oh thanks, I can't uh.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
If you want to know more about the move bombing,
please please, we both beseech you go watch Let the
Fire Burn on Amazon Prime, on the internet, wherever you
can see it.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
Just see it. It's really really good. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
And we should point out too that no one involved
on the on the cops, in the political side suffered
any punishments.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
No, there was that inquiry, and no one was found
guilty of any wrongdoing except although this will put a
really good button on this multi racial panel inquiry panel
that held these hearings to a person with one dissenter,
said that we conclude had this not been a black
(48:44):
working class neighborhood, right, instead a white working class neighborhood,
the police never would have dropped that bomb.
Speaker 3 (48:50):
Of course they wouldn't have.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
Yeah, okay, it's time for listening to me.
Speaker 3 (48:56):
Who is the loan dissenter?
Speaker 1 (48:58):
I didn't see he's gotta be the guy with the glasses.
Speaker 3 (49:02):
It's always that guy.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
What am I going to call this perfect pitch follow up?
Hey guys, Back in two thousand and nine, my band
was recording an album and those one song that ends
with us all singing and holding out a single note.
The next song starts with us singing that same note.
Speaker 1 (49:17):
Oh that's cool.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
See what they did adding drums. Then the songs are
edited together to have them flow into each other.
Speaker 3 (49:23):
With no gap. Josh t is very interesting because he's
a musician. Jerry just be like, what meeting me? So?
Speaker 1 (49:29):
Huh? What'd you guys say?
Speaker 2 (49:32):
We had finished recording that first one, and I can
tell by the look on Josh's face he's like that
old trick packed our instruments away. Then we're about to
start the next one. We realized we need to hear
the first note so we could sing in the right
pitch instead of loading up the previous song. Our pianist said,
I have perfect pitch and belt it out the note,
which we all who don't have perfect pitch, trusted him
(49:52):
to be right and started recording from there. A little
did we know he doesn't have perfect pitch, but it's close.
When we edited the songs together and played them through
the notes. We're supposed to match her off by about
a half step. Now it sounds like a Jerry, very dissonant,
totally wrong.
Speaker 3 (50:09):
Oh, I just realized Jerry's going to hear this one.
She edits this episode. That's right. Just put a Wilhelm
scream in there, Jerry. We'll be all right.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
We are already out of the studio at that point,
so we ended up just releasing it and claiming the
dissonance was intentional.
Speaker 3 (50:21):
But we never let them off.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
The hook and with the old oh yeah, you got
perfect pitch, do you? Thanks so much for all the
hard work guys. I've learned so much, been endlessly entertained
for years. Signed, spanked and sent. That is from Kenny.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
Thank you Kenny. We appreciate that. That was a pretty
great email. I mean literally lol.
Speaker 3 (50:40):
I can only assume it's Kenny Rodgers.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
I also want to say this, we give Jerry a
hard time round here. It's stuff you should know, only
she's not here. Imagine Actually that's not true. We do well,
she's sitting right there too. I can't imagine stuff you
should know without her. Yeah, we love our Jerry and
she is perfect exactly the.
Speaker 3 (50:58):
Way she is. Called that a nice all right.
Speaker 1 (51:02):
Well, if you want to get in touch with us,
you can go on to stuff youshould Know dot com
and check out our social links, and you can also
send us an email to stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (51:15):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey everyone, it's Josh here and for this week's Select
I chosen our July twenty nineteen episode on the Move bombing.
It's a very disturbing, little known event in American history
when the Philadelphia Police Department dropped a firebomb onto a
row home where a radical group was hold up, about
half of whom were children. It ended, as anyone would expect,
(00:23):
in terrible tragedy. I hope you get a lot out
of this episode.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck.
There's Josh. You got to get used to this, Chuck.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
We will eventually.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
It's the new normal.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Yep, and this is stuff you should know.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
The uh, I can't believe it's happened. Edition one of many.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
One of many. Yeah, this sparked off a lot of
ideas too.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Oh yeah, yeah, how the Phillies work?
Speaker 3 (01:07):
No, what's up with the Philly fanatic?
Speaker 1 (01:10):
That's the green one? Right?
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Yeah, that's a great character. Sure, so.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Let's dispense with all that.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Okay, Yeah, thisre's gonna be a long one, so let's
just jump in.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Okay. So back in nineteen eighty five, in May, Philadelphia
Police Department became the first and to this point only
police department to drop a bomb on American soil. No
police department has ever bombed anything in the history of America.
But they did, and they happened to bomb a house
(01:44):
that was occupied at the time with thirteen people, seven
of which were children. And the people in this house
were members of an organization called Move Move all caps
but it's not an acronym, Nope. And they did the
because Move had made themselves quite a nuisance in the neighborhood,
(02:05):
to say the least. And there was basically by this
time in May nineteen eighty five, a bitter feud between
Move and the Philadelphia Police Department, and on May thirteenth,
it came to a fiery and tragic and it's a.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Nice setup, thank you. You should have music playing or something.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Hopefully Josh will do that, because God knows, Jerry's not
going to sunt anywhere. Anyone knows where she is.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
So you want to go back in time and talk
a little bit about Move and their origins, and then
go forward in time.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
I would like to.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Isn't that what you said?
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (02:42):
So Move is still around at the times.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Over the years, they've been called a cult, they've been
called a Black liberation movement.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Back to Earth, a terrorist group, animal rights group.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
There are all these things to a certain degree here
and there. Although the the leader won mister Vincent Leppard,
who everyone, by the way, if you hear say the
name so and so Africa, once you become a member
of move you take on the last name of Africa.
Which even though they weren't strictly a group for African Americans,
(03:15):
they had white people early on. They definitely kind of
got that rap a little bit more because of the
Black Power movement and the fact that the leader was black.
Changed his name to Africa and asked everyone else to
change their last name to Africa.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
But though not legally, I don't think.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
No no, but ultimately it was well, they wouldn't have
done it legally because that's part of the system, and
the system was one of the things they real against.
There were basically two prongs to John Africa's philosophy. One
was that basically all life is important and equally important. Yeah,
so there was a lot of animal rights stuff. There
was a lot of not eating meat. Ostensibly it was
(03:55):
there vegetarianism in there there was, although they weren't strict vegetarians, no,
but yes, but there was an animal rights and protection
in the sanctity of life. And then the second was
that the system, as they called it, was inherently flawed
because everything that was created by humans was flawed, and
(04:16):
therefore not only should not be used, but the whole
system should be taken down and replaced with a much
more natural, animalistic philosophy and way of life.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
So that includes electricity, that includes like cooking meat, like
these kids ate raw chicken, believe it or not.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Yeah, the kids who were raised in the movement, and
this is.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
This story would make a lot more sense if this
was on like some deserted island and someone was moving
there to start this utopian society on an island. This
is a very interesting story in that it happened in
a densely populated area of rowhouses in Westvilleladelphia.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Born and not where you would I can't not think
I hear West Philadelphia.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
I thought of it too. It's when you go back
and look at the footage. And by the way, there's
a great documentary called Let It Burn, Let the Fire Burn,
that you should pay for online.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
I did, that's good on Amazon Prime, and uh, well
I'm a Prime member, so so am I Okay?
Speaker 1 (05:27):
I still had to pay to rent it though, because
Amazon's part of the system.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
That's right. Uh where was that going?
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Uh? You were saying that it would make more sense
on a deserted island than I should in a densely
populated neighborhood Philadelphia.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
So when you're watching this documentary and there's so much footage,
it's crazy to see this house, this row house, set
up with you know, farm animals at times in the
front yard, heavily fenced.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
In, fortified like a fortress.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Yeah, sometimes people standing outside with guns. Even though we'll
see later these guns were later found out to be
not capable of firing bullets, which means, well, I guess
it's still a gun, but it means it's not a weapon.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
It's a club.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Yeah, sort of. But at the very least, it's just
it's an odd setting for this story.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
It isn't when you watch that documentary that house sticks
out like a sore thumb like this.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
They had Amish people probably an hour and a half
away from this, doing the same thing out in the
middle of the country.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Not the exact same thing, but you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
But you can't get a good cheese steak in Amish country.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Much less a good raw one.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
You can get good stick candy because they know what
they're doing with that stuff.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Nice furniture, butter Sure, what was.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
It rum Springer where they get to go crazy or
whatever and see if they want to live the Amish life?
Speaker 3 (06:45):
I think, yeah, I think that was it.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
That was a good one, good time ago.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
But anyway, it's a very interesting setting for the story.
It got caught up in or maybe unfairly pegged as
black liberation, like I said, but sort of because of
the time in which it happened, which was in the
in the seventies and early eighties when the Black Panther
Party was in power. There was a former Black Panther
(07:09):
that later would join the move movement.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Yes, but from all I saw in that documentary, that
person was interviewed and he makes it sound like rather
than bringing the Black Panther ideas to well.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
That's where he left.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Yeah, he he took our moves ideals rather than the
discarded the Black Panthers idea.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Yeah, I think he was disillusioned with the Black Panthers
because of the violence. And it should be pointed out
that that Africa's whole thing was was his whole thing
was non violence, but it wasn't like that was at
the forefront of like his everyday talkings, because they very
aggressively and very obscenely blasted their message through these loud
(07:48):
speakers attached to this row house, which was a real
problem in this neighborhood for everyone this you know, black neighborhood.
They didn't want them there either. No, that's don't drop
a bottom on them, right, which is what one of them,
being interviewed very clearly was like, we didn't want this
to happen, but you know, they were a threat to
our well being here in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yeah, and they were also deliberately provocative. They they purposefully
made a nuisance ode of themselves because part of Moves
philosophy was waking everybody else up and doing it in
a really aggressive, hostile.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Agitation threatening way.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Supposedly, some neighbors reported that they were directly threatened by
this group, which is a big problem too. I mean,
that's definitely a couple steps up from agitating or aggravating
people threatening them is different.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Sure, but at the very least, you know, imagine being
a neighbor who has lived in this house for twenty
years and all of a sudden there's this organization right
living there, and at three in the morning, it's just
blasting out, you know, these mfors that are in charge
or fin this and f and that, right, and like
I felt sorry for these citizens.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Oh yeah, you know, there's a lot of.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Empathy like to be dispersed among many parts of this story.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Yes, but the story also this basically, this story has
two types of people in it.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Villains and innocence.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah, just virtually there's a there's one hero that you
can point to, and he doesn't even appear in this article.
He was in the documentary, which we'll talk about him
for a minute later. But it's mostly.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
Just people.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
The adults acting badly and the children or the people
in the neighborhood who are innocent bystanders or pawns in
this whole thing.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Victims. Yeah, for sure, for.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Sure, Because when you're talking about like blaaring your philosophy
in a very hostile, foul mouthed way. If you see
the pictures of the house, like those loud speakers that
they have at like stock car races or whatever. Yeah,
that's what they had posted.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Out on the house. It wasn't just some guy with
a bullhorn oring like.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
That that walkie talkie thing that Homer Simpson had at
the yard sale out Now.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
You can hear this along the whole block, right in
every direction.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Yes, and if you were anywhere near them, if your
house was next door or even a couple of doors down,
you heard them night and day, and it was a
real problem.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, so we should back up a little bit and
give a little bit of the background here. Before the
nineteen eighties happened and they moved into the second house
on Osage Avenue sixty two twenty one, they lived at
a different house in the late seventies, and there was
a different mayor in Philadelphia at this time, Mayor Rizzo,
who was.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
A scumbag, tough talking like bag. Yeah he was a scumbag.
I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
I saw archival footage of the man and he was
sure strong man, scumbag.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Yeah, he was one of these guys, you know. And
we'll see what happened here was he was not in
charge anymore, but it was remnants from that attitude basically
that he laid down in the city, which is like.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
He was in charge in seventy eight though.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Oh yeah, yeah, I'm talking about the bombing. So in
seventy eight there was a standoff with the police. We
had talked about the guns earlier. It was later found
out that these guns weren't capable of firing. They didn't
know that at the time, but at the very least
the cops over acted or overreacted at the at the
(11:23):
declaration of Mayor Rizzo, and that was shooting. There was
an officer that was shot and killed and it was
just a really bad scene.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
So even just a little bit before that too, there
was a there was a confrontation between MOVE and the
Philadelphia police where one of the MOVE member's babies, like
a two month old died.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Yeah, you know, and the MOVE.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Members said the cops did this, Like this baby died
from this confrontation with the police, So like that kicks
that off. The police eventually raid the the MOVE house
in nineteen seventy eight and one of the officers get
shot and killed in this raid. And so you've got
some real bad blood brewing between these two groups.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Yeah, and during that raid, Delbert Africa, one of the
members was and that you can see footage of this.
It was all captured on camera, just beaten on the
street while laying on the sidewalk.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
By these cops while he was surrendering.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Yeah, So to say that there was bad blood is
sort of an understatement. Was you had on one side
a what you could at least define as a public
nuisance in this neighborhood. You had on this other side,
this zealous mayor who just wanted to get rid of them, period,
not like let's meet, let's talk, let's see if we
(12:48):
can all work together. They were one hundred thousand percent
at odds with one another.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
So the police officer that died, the Move side said,
we didn't shoot that guy. It was friendly fire that
got him, right. The Philadelphia Police Department didn't agree with
that story, and so on, like a personal level, like
not just an organizational level, but to a cop, the
(13:14):
cops hated Move and these people just continued on in
Philadelphia and actually stepped up there making themselves a public
nuisance because nine of their members were arrested for the
murder of that police officer and convicted. Yes, and sent
to jail for decades.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yeah, thirty two, one hundred years is what they're each
sentence for. We'll talk about what happened to them toward
the end.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
So just to kind of just paint this one last
stroke on this picture we're painting here, the cops had
a vendetta against MOVE because one of their own was
killed during the siege. And MOVE had a vendetta against
the cops because nine of their people were put in jail,
one of them was beaten, and a baby had died
(14:03):
on their side.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Okay, all right, let's take a break and we'll come
back right for this and talk more about what happened
in nineteen eighty five. All right, So whether or not
(14:41):
this was a cult is some people debate that. John
Africa is very much on record saying it's an organization.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Is that relevant? I don't think so. I don't either.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
I think it's just an attempt to discredit them.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Oh, to call them a cult. Huh yeah, I don't know.
I think it's all we're talking about though.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Oh yeah, yeah, I'm not like criticizing you or anything
like that. I'm just saying, like when people toss it around, like, oh,
they were a cult. Yeah, there were some like characteristics
that you could say, well, it's kind of cult like
or whatever.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Let's put it this way.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
If it was on a deserted island, then I think
people would have straight up called them a cult. The
fact that it was in a neighborhood in West Philadelphia
made it seem a lot less, so.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
I hear you.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
But if he was like, come here and live on
this island with me, then it would have straight up
been called a cult.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Let me rephrase what I was saying. I don't dispute
that they may have been a cult, but again it's that, well,
does that mean that they should have had a bomb
dropped on them?
Speaker 3 (15:39):
I don't think anyone thinks that. Okay.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
So, like I said, there were kids there that were
forced to eat raw fish, raw chicken. The adults could
cook their meat, which was there was definitely some double
standards going on there. Their rationale was that our bodies
are used to this, but we want to raise you
pure from the start, so you're only going to eat
(16:03):
raw foods.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
They had a lot of exceptions, not just that, like
the anti technology thing where they had like a wood
burning stove for heat and that was it, right, No,
they used candles instead of light bulbs, that kind of stuff.
But they also had phones and they drove cars. Right,
So there was a lot of weird exceptions in loopholes
and holes in general in John Africa's guidelines as he
(16:28):
called them.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Yeah. As for one of the more well the only
child that survived this experience, Birdie Africa, Michael Ward, he
said in nineteen ninety five, I'm still afraid of them.
Of moves, some of the things that went on there,
I can't get out of my head.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Bad things.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
I haven't told anyone except for my father, but I'll
tell you this. I didn't like being there. They said
it was a family, but a family isn't something where
you're forced to stay and you don't want to. And
his contention was that the kids were always trying to
get out of there and run away.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
They were just too little to know how too little,
and you know, naked, they were naked, they were malnourished.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
They were like the only toys they had they had
to hide because they weren't supposed to have them. Because
it's technology and human made.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
It was unsanitary.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Yeah, there was, you know, part of part of what
move was into is growing their own food, so they
would compost like in the alley behind the house or
on the roof or something like that. They had they
built an animal shelter in the alley. So there was
a lot of really uh like not okay conditions to
(17:36):
raise kids in let alone, like adults to live in
but raising children. It was there were some really bad
decisions and choices or bad outcomes from some of John
Africa's philosophy.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Yeah, it's weird because it's like at the heart of this,
it's this back to nature movement.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
You know, where I want them to be on a
deserted island, So by.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Not even a deserted island, like go out into like
there's there's countryside not too far outside of Philadelphia.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Weird. It is.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
It's very strange because on on one hand, I'm like, yeah,
this animal rights group and they're back to nature and
they're issuing the things of man, but they're doing it
in the most like aggressive, antagonistic way possible in the
middle of a city. It's like, I don't I didn't
know what to think about any of this, except obviously
you don't go in there and fire bomb the place.
It's like the one thing I was clear on you
(18:24):
don't start a war in the middle of a neighborhood, right,
It's true, which is what happened. Basically, the neighbors wanted
move out, They fire filed a bunch of complaints over
the years to get them shut down, and the city
didn't really know what to do at this point. At
this point there was a different mayor, Mayor Good. So
(18:47):
this was the first black mayor of Philadelphia.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Who actually was elected on this reform ticket, basically to
get rid of Rizzo, get rid of the corruption, the
racism that Rizzo had had and his administration had fostered
because he was police chief first and then became mayor
Rizzo and he basically after that nineteen seventy eight raid,
(19:11):
there's footage of him just basically hopped up and boasting
about how militarized the Chicago PD was now and how
like they could I think he actually said, we're ready
for war. Yeah, we could go down to Cuba and
take them if we wanted to right now, just really
like boasting about this, not like, oh man, you know
(19:32):
this was this is a tragedy or whatever, even however
you want to say it like he was boasting, like
come on, who's next kind of thing. And this was
the mayor at the time. So Wilson Good comes along
is like not that, We're going to take a different
tact here and try to promote more unity. Then he
was actually pretty successful in a lot of ways in
that respect as far as the city officials go. I
(19:56):
really kind of like Mayor Good because he took rispe
resonssibility for it. Yeah, even stuff he didn't do just
because he was the mayor, he put himself in as accountable.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
All right, So shall we fast forward? Yes, the stage
is set. We know what happened in the seventies. We
know the relationship between this neighborhood with this group, this
group with the city and the cops.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
And so.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
They decide that they are going to extract every person
from that house. That was the plan, as we are
going to remove the Move organization from the house on
Osage Avenue. In this article says they didn't have a plan.
That's not true. They had a plan that just was
not executed well and went really pair shaped really fast,
(20:45):
and then they didn't have a plan. But the original
plan was to they had built the Move organization that
built this pretty fortified bunker on top of their building.
As far as homemade bunkers go, not bad, which gave
them a supreme tactical ad. If you know anything about war,
you know, higher ground is always going to win out.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Sure, or if you're not always designed a castle or something,
you know.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Sure castle designers they know, or mongers.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Uh So, the idea was to create a diversion on
the roof, in which time police officers or swat and
everybody would would go inside and forcibly remove people by
any means necessary in mayor Goods words.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
But the first the first part of that was water
cannons and tear gas, you're right. And they were very
surprised when these water cannons that were just I think
they shot like a thousand gallons a second or some
crazy amount of water. They ha just left them on, yes,
two of them, yeah shoot like And they fully expected
to basically take most of this house down, yeah like
(21:50):
it was a brick row home, but they expected it
to take the non brick parts off, including that that
structure on top, that lookout. And they were very very
surprised when two things didn't happen. When that structureding come down,
despite the water cans being directed at it for hours
and the people not coming out, despite tear gas being
(22:13):
shot into the house. Right, And that is like you
said earlier, when their plan went went to the to
the birds, Yeah, toilet, Sure, went down the toilet, And
they said, well, what do we do now, Like our
whole plan doesn't work. I've got an idea. Let's start
shooting at the house instead.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
So what they didn't know this whole time was that
they were all hiding in a basement garage. So all
of this water raining down on the roof wasn't I don't,
Probably wasn't even getting to them. Probably not, Or maybe
it's it's not like they were up to their necks
and water in the basement and like drowning or anything
like that.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
No, but they later said that the tear gas was everywhere.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
Sure, but apparently it wasn't potent enough.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Yeah, maybe they just expired stuff and we should step
back one step, chuck. Before this raid actually started, they
went house to house to the neighbors and said, you guys,
oh yeah, yeah, grab all your clothes.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
It's huge.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
We need you gone for twenty four hours. Yeah, because
We're about to do what you guys have wanted us
to do for years. Yeah, we're gonna do it, So
you need to get out here. They towed trucks from
Osage Avenue.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
They towed every carp they had, the gas shut off,
the electricity shut off.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
It was a siege. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
They basically tried to just vacate the block. Yeah, and
they did. Yeah, and they did. I mean, I think
some people stayed when they shouldn't have. But it's like
with any evacuation. They got as many people out of
there as possible. Right, They're like, you'll be back in
your house tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Okay, So the whole block and like a couple of blocks,
a couple of streets on either side are cleared. Yeah,
the water's been used, it's not working. The tear gas
is not working. So supposedly the first shots came from
the house, right, but every bud all witnesses, cops, firefighters,
(24:02):
newspeople say that the first shots were automatic fire. It's
been conclusively proven that no one in the move house
had an automatic weapon. So if the first shots were automatic,
then that means the cops fired first, and that's what
people seem to believe. Is that the cops started this.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Yeah, and a lot of this documentary it's really compelling
because it's footage from the commission afterward, and you get
like the real deal testimony, first person testimony from all
the major players, including the police chief what.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Was his name, Gregory Sambor?
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Yeah, Sambor?
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Who was He identified it as automatic, like his sworn
testimony said it was automatic weapons, and they're like, well,
how do you know? And he was like, I know
what an automatic weapon sounds like, right, And.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
They're like, well, what move didn't have automatic weapons?
Speaker 3 (24:52):
You're like, oh, I don't know about that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
He's like, I don't know how to explain that then,
But they fired first, right, He just kind of stuck
to his guns, right every single time.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Yeah, he was a piece of work himself. He was
definitely in the cut from the same cloth as Mary Rizzo.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
I think. So.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Yeah, so they decided to start shooting at this point
because regardless of who shot first, it becomes like Vietnam
on the city block all of a sudden, and it's
not like, I mean, they cleared it out. But when
you see this news footage, I mean there's people everywhere
sure watching their news cameras and anchors everywhere on the
streets like, oh, like, we should get behind the car
(25:29):
now because it's raining bullets everywhere. Yeah, it's just freaky
to see this happening in like a city block in
the United States.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Yeah, the cop eighties. The cops later on estimated that
they fired about ten thousand rounds.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
They ran out of bullets. Yeah, they had to bring
in more because they.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Ran Yeah that this car pulls up there like a car,
a police car has just rushed into the scene, and
it's like from a movie.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
The trunk pops and it's just full of bullets.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Yeap, just for because they ran out of bullets. Yeah,
So they kept shooting at this house. And here's thing, like,
bear in mind, they're shooting ten thousand rounds of ammunition
at a house. It was occupied by three thirteen people,
seven of which are children. Everyone knows. Oh yeah, everyone
knows that there were seven children in that house.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Yeah, it's not like the cops were unaware.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
No, everyone knew that there were children in this house. Yeah,
it was part of it. It was part of the
concern of the neighbors that there were children being raised
in this house, and the cops acted on the information
from confidential informants who fully informed them that there were
children in this house. So that's step one. They fired
ten thousand rounds at a house where they knew that
(26:38):
there were seven children.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
All right, so nothing is changing, though they're still not
bringing people out of this house.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
I'll bet they were like, I can't believe this, and
the structure was still intact on top.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
I'm surprised they didn't think they were dead. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
I would have thought at some point they would have
been like, well, I'm sure we probably killed everyone.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Yeah, let's just go in there.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Uh yeah, I wonder, Yeah, I wonder, because if they
were all crowd crowded down in the basement garage, they
couldn't have been firing back after a certain point in time.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
Yeah, I'm not sure.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
I mean, they said part of the problem was the
tear gas, so they couldn't send cops in there because
it was flooded with tear gas. And then I think
they said the well, no, that said this comes later
the steam, So put a pin in the steam. So
at some point someone on the bomb squad apparently says
to the police chief or it gets to the police chief,
(27:30):
hey he was really, you know, the chief was really
worried about that bunker and that tactical advantage. So someone
from the bomb squad said, why don't we drop a
bomb on the roof and get rid of that bunker.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
An officer named William Klein suggested, and they said it, okay,
let's do that.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
Good idea. Kline.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
What do we need, think, a helicopter and a bomb. Yeah,
they're like, well we've got both.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
So even as late as that inquiry that they held,
they characterized it as a Tovax bomb, And Tovax is
a water based gily and this explosive that is used
I think in mining and demolition and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
But it can be purchased. Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
It later came out that in addition to the Tovax,
the bomb disposal guy made a bomb with C four
plastique explosives, which is not commercially available, which means that
we'll see later the Philadelphia Police Department should not have
had this stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
Yeah, I mean, we should just go ahead and say
how they got it? Why not?
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Well, I was trying to save it for with a
little flair for the dramatic, but you go ahead.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Well, the FBI gave it to him secretly.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Yeah, the FBI had been giving little bits of C
four here and there to police departments apparently, like the
blow doors off of stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
To train bomb sniffing dogs.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
Yeah, teach him how to use it.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
But then the FBI used that excuse for a little while,
then later came out and said no, we actually like
brought them a bunch of C four.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Like thirty blocks of C four in January, a few
months before this raid, the siege, but still during the
time when the like move people were being negotiated with
to leave on their own.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
Yeah, because that was happening this whole time.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
They would have community leaders on the bullhorn trying to
talk them into coming out. They did not have a
professional negotiator on the scene, which.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
That's a huge yeah, red flag.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
Yeah that they never meant for anyone to come out.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Yeah, but at any rate, they drop a bomb a
I think it was a they said, a four pound
bomb from a satchel with a forty five second fuse.
This is all on camera, like you literally in this
documentary see the helicopter fly over drop this satchel out
of it. Yeah, fly I love that you did a
(29:48):
running motion yeah, you know, in helicopter's run and they
flew out of there and kaboom, and West Philadelphia, a
bomb explodes on top of a building and a smallish
fire starts.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
This is it? What time that was there? Like five
that they dropped the bomb? Five to ten? I think,
all right?
Speaker 1 (30:09):
And the smallish fire took a couple of minutes for
it to become a parent that it had caught fire.
But supposedly there was gasoline in the what.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Are we calling that thing the bunker? The bunker.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Yeah, there's supposedly gasoline in the bunker. But I really
like the police dropped the bomb on a building that
they knew that people were in, seven of which were children, Okay,
And supposedly the reason that they did this was to
get rid of that bunker. Like that bunker. The police
chief did not like that bunker standing still and wanted
(30:46):
to get rid of it. The bomb didn't do anything
to the bunker. That was a strong bunker.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
It was the time, LI is important. So at five
twenty seven is when they dropped the bomb. At five
point forty five, someone asked the fire department if they
should turn on the you know, they've been delusing this
thing with water all day long until there's a fire,
and then they turn it off, which was you know,
it's not ironic because it was very purposeful, but it
(31:14):
definitely stings more. Yeah, So they said not to turn
them on by six o'clock. So this is thirty three
minutes later. Mayor Good is watching this on TV in
his office. He phones it in and says, you know,
let's put this fire out now.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
He ordered the fire to be put out.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Yeah, thirty three minutes later, And this is where it
gets a little hinky because this was given to police
Chief Sambor, and under testimony, Sambor says that he relayed
that to the fire chief.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
He said, he said that the fire chief was there.
He did not say he related to this.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Well.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Yeah, I mean he got very dodgy with how he
worded it. But the fire chief, basically, on testimony, that's
what he said, and he's like, I categorically denied that
I ever got an order to start those water cannons
or that.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
He was even aware that Good made that call a
phone call or called the order. So basically, the fire
chief said the buck stopped with Sambor, and Sambor the
police chief decided to let that fire burn.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
That's right, because he thought, not defending him, but he
thought the fire would then take down the bunker and
remove that advantage. Other people contend, and they ask him
in the deposition or in the hearing, no, you've kind
of really wanted to use the fire as a weapon.
He got real salty about that, he did. He said,
(32:39):
a fire can't be a weapon. Basically, he said no,
I said, what about flame throwers?
Speaker 1 (32:44):
He goes, I hadn't thought about flamethrowers.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
But still, all right, so this is six point thirty
flames are it is clearly out of hand.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
They waited way too long.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
That was the thing that got me was it was
obvious from what Sambor was saying, if the documentary is accurate,
from what Sambor was saying, that when he was saying, no,
we need to let the bunker burn, still by this time,
the entire top floor was a conflagration.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
Yeah. I mean, it's on the news, so that whole.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Thing doesn't hold water at all, and it would lend
support to the idea that he was using it as
a weapon to burn the people out.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
I'm sure he was.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
I'm sure he thought to your guests, didn't work maybe
this fire will work, okay and drive these people out
of there.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Okay, all right, should we take a break or should
we wait, Let's take a break. Okay, we'll take a
break and we'll tell you what happens next.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Okay, chuck. So for a little bit, the fire department
sprays some of the houses next to the move house,
but doesn't put the fire out or spray the fire
on the move house. So in the abandoned houses, they're
spraying down to try to contain the fire in the house.
(34:30):
The one house in this whole square block area where
they know people are, including seven children, they didn't spray.
Later on, they will defend this by saying, well, in
that nineteen seventy eight siege, move fired on the firefighters
and apparently shot and injured several firefighters, so that we
(34:50):
were worried for the firefighters to be picked off fighting
this fire in this siege as well. Ramona Africa, who
would be the one adult from move to s the siege,
would say, well, like you said earlier, they had these
they weren't scared to hit us with these water cannons.
The whole time there wasn't a fire, right, But then
there is a fire and now they're scared, we're going
(35:11):
to pick them off. That doesn't make any sense. It's
just be yes.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
And also I'm glad you brought that up because it
said to put a pin in the steam. This is
when the steam happened, because they're blowing water on this
fire now and it's creating all the steam that they
said didn't allow anyone to move in as well, okay,
because they couldn't see anything.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
It was no visibility.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Okay. So despite spraying down the houses around this fire, Yeah,
it got out of hand really fast, and it spread
very fast, and it moved very quickly, not just from
the move house, but onto the neighboring houses and then beyond.
And even these are fairly narrow streets that this neighborhood
was built on, and it jumped the street fairly quickly.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
It wasn't contained or deemed under control until eleven forty
one PM.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
So it's like more than six hours after it started.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
Yeah, this whole city block it just burning to the ground.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
It ended up being like a six alarm fire, which
depending on the city, is one hundred and twenty firefighters, chiefs,
ladder trucks. It's a big old fire.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Yeah, so you mentioned the nineteen seventy eight siege where
the officer was shot and killed and where the beating
of Delbert Africa went down. Important to remember that because
two of the officers that were involved in the beat
down of Delbert Africa were also on the scene today.
And they make a big point in this commission, like,
(36:33):
did you think about sending these guys in? There might
not be a good idea and they may have revenge
on their minds. And I can't remember what the answer was.
He's kind of like.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
He said, no, I didn't think of that, yeah, or yes,
I did, whatever it was. He was not like, yeah,
that was not a good idea, right, He stood by
whatever it was.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
Right.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
So this kind of sets up another story in tandem
that's going on right now, which is at a certain
point during this massive fire about seven, Yeah, they try
to get out from the basement.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
The move people tried to get out. They tried to.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Escape, that's right, They tried to get out the back door.
There's this At this point, the cops had moved into
the alleyway.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
There was no camera access.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
He couldn't see what happened, but from the testimony that
can't even hardly get through the testimony of that kid.
You know, they deposed him. He wasn't in front of
the Commissionertty Africa. Yeah, but Bertie Africa was like, what
do he look like ten or eleven years old when
they deposed him?
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Yeah, but he was actually like thirteen, was he?
Speaker 2 (37:35):
But this kid is retelling the story seems incredibly credible
and believable to me, right, Like, I fully believe that
he was telling the truth.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
Over the two cops who are supposed who may or
may not who may have actually fired on the people
trying to escape the house, right of the two. It's
way easier to believe that kid's testimony than these guys, right,
who were the ones who beat Delbert Africa in nineteen
seventy eight.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
Yeah, so that's what happened. They tried to leave.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
There was a kid named rad Africa that was I
think like thirteen or fourteen, and he was carrying out
a baby and he was one of the first ones
out and he goes back into the house and there's
that part of the documentary where the priest is talking
to the officers and he's like, because officers were saying
(38:21):
all we were saying was come out with.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
Your hands up.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Right.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
We didn't fire on anything. We didn't fire. We had
them out with your hands up. And this priest is like,
I'm trying to think of what would make a kid
holding a baby go back into a building engulfed in flames.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
And the cops are like, well, I don't.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Know, Yeah, you can't really put yourself in a move
person's feet, right, you can't really identify with them, And
that minister or whatever said, actually I was friends with
a lot of these people.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
They knew them on a human level. Right.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
The other thing that really kind of damns the two
cops who beat Delbert Africa's testimony is that there was
reports from a lot of witnesses, including like fire department
people from of gunfire in this alley around this time.
So the whole thing kind of adds up if you
(39:10):
take those testimon that the reports of witnesses that there
was gunfire in the back alley, with Birdie Africa and
Ramona Africa's testimony that around that same time people had
tried to escape, and then the testimony of the cops
themselves that the people had run back in the house,
it sounds a lot, like a reasonable person would conclude
(39:35):
that the cops who had beaten Delbert Africa in nineteen
seventy eight shot at the people from move in nineteen
eighty five who tried to escape the fire and force
them back into the burning house. Right, that's certainly what
it sounds like.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
They the cops said that the kid had or you
said he was a man, he was a kid, had
a rifle that he pointed at them. And I know
what a rifle looks like, because the kid who survived
Bertie said he had a monkey wrench in his hand
that he used to get the window open. And he
came out with a monkey wrench in that baby. And
the cop was like, until there's between a rifle and
(40:11):
a monkey wrench.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
And if you're sitting here like, hey, you lay off
the cops, just watch this documentary and then listen to
this part over again, because it's really it's a really
great documentary. It does a really good job of like
laying everything out. But the part of the I guess
the goodness of this documentary is that it's all archival
and it lets the people speak for themselves.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Oh yeah, it's just you basically kind of watch what
happened and listen to what people said about it, right,
you know, including the people and I mean in charge.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
And it's obviously I mean it's edited. It's not just
like here's this inquiry, here's my documentary. But I mean
it lets it pay out enough that you get a
really good clear picture of what happened in the testimony
that followed.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
So, I mean, that's kind of the end of that
story as it has happened. That you know, these Ramona
and Bertie were the only two to make it out
of that house alive.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
And that hero I mentioned earlier, cop Man, I wish
I could remember his name.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
I got his name.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
He he could not stop himself from running to Bertie
to help him.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
Yeah, James Officer, James Berghier.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
So bergheire ran to them. Despite some of his colleagues saying,
don't I think it's a trap. You're gonna get killed?
He said, I can't. I can't, Like I see this
kid right there, and I'm going to go rescue him.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
He thought of his kids, he said he did, and
he was.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
They even say like in the inquiry, like if there's
if there's any like silver silver lining or shining moment
to this whole horrible thing. It's what you did. And
he got kind of rousted out of the police department
within a year or two.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
Oh yeah, his his own police brethren turned on him.
They wrote racial epithets on his locker because he saved
this kid was diagnosed with PTSD and left the forest
two years later. And there's a great article I found
that I read the first third of right before we
had to record that of him, an interviewed with him.
(42:13):
I guess like five or six years Agoah that I
can't wait to go read and finish up.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
So let's finish up. Okay.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
So, so Bertie and Ramona were the only two move
members who survived. The other eleven died, including six children. Yeah,
in this house that was set on fire, and the
fire was set off by a bomb that the Philadelphia
Police Department dropped on the house. So obviously Philadelphie's gonna
cough up some money for this.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
Yeah, there were settlements. The parents of the dead children
settled for twenty five million dollars total. Michael Ward young Bertie,
he became Michael Ward. He changed his name. He got
one point seven million dollars Ramona Africa got half a
million dollars and the families of John Africa and his
(43:02):
nephew they couldn't reach a settlement, so they were awarded
one million by a jury. And then here's the kicker.
Police Chief Sambor and fire Chief Richmond were forced to
pay a dollar a week for eleven years to Ramona Africa.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
To keep in mind, yeah, five.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
Hundred and seventy two dollars.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
Which is a but it's a civil I mean, that's
a civil punishment basically saying we think you're like, you
might not be criminally responsible, but in this civil suit
we are saying it's basically like.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
How the symbolic payment or whatever.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Yeah, it's like how the court, the civil court ruled
against oj even though he had been found not guilty
of murder in the criminal the civil court still said, no,
you're responsible. We believe so we're going to get you
in this way. They did the same thing. And this
was despite the fact that Ramona Africa did seven years.
(43:54):
Like they didn't say, hey, we're really sorry we burned
this house. She would here's some money. They said, hey,
you're under arrest for inciting riots and conspiracy of something
or other and she did seven years. She didn't get
out early because the parole board said you have to
denounce MOVE and she refused to denounce MOVE, and she
(44:17):
did her full seven years, although now she is not
affiliated with MOVE any longer.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
As far as I know, Yeah, as far as the
original MOVE nine, who are the ones in prison for
the killing of the police officer? Two of them died
in prison. I think two are still in prison. The rest,
including just in February. February twelfth, Eddie Africa was paroled.
(44:42):
Delbert and Chuck Africa are still behind bars. I think
are the only two still behind bars. And as far
as Michael Ward aka Young Birdie Africa, he very sadly
died in twenty thirteen in a hot tub cruise ship
drowning due to.
Speaker 3 (45:02):
Intoxication. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
The Brevard County, Florida Medical Examiner ruled it an accidental
death from drowning in the hot tub from just being drunk.
I guess what a weird way to go after all
that weird life.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
Yeah, it's weird because during the deposition he was there
with his father and I'm like, where was his dad?
Speaker 1 (45:22):
His dad was looking for him?
Speaker 3 (45:23):
Well, his dad was.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
Out of the country in the military while he was
living in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
Right, but he had moved to suburban Philadelphia. Yeah, his
dad did and had been looking for Michael and had
no idea he was, you know, thirty minutes away in Philly.
Speaker 3 (45:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
So he lived the rest of his life with his dad,
and that's who he referenced earlier when he was like,
you know, the stuff that went on there, I'll only
tell my father, Right, super super tragic, And it's one
of these things I think like we should do a
little triumvirate of this in Ruby Ridge and Waco.
Speaker 3 (45:56):
Maybe I agreed, like three times where.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
There was a potentially problematic organization in the United States,
government just decided to fire bombit.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:05):
These are so sticky because you want to be like, oh,
these people are the victims, and you know, the government
really was a villain in this one. But you're like,
it's never that complex, and these stories really teach.
Speaker 3 (46:17):
You that that that's always that things.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
They are much more textured, yeah than that, they're much
more nuanced than that black and white. But even still,
you still don't drop You don't drop a bomb and
burn eleven people to death.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
Yeah, the city as far as that block went, they
paid eleven million dollars, which was by all accounts a
very inside deal with some developer who put up a
bunch of houses that were condemned in two thousand due
to shoddy construction. So somebody got rich again trying to
build these things. Did a terrible job. Twenty four families stayed.
(46:56):
They offered repairs and buyouts, and apparently most people took
the buyouts.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
Right.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
And if you do like the little Google Earth to
sixty two twenty one osage, it's uh still row houses
and on either side of that it looks like people
might be living there, right, but that building has like
you know, plywood up in the windows.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
Oh really, yeah, because I heard like starting in about
twenty fifteen they brought in a good developer and started
to redevelop it and then's starting to come back.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
Well, it's interesting that one address, though, is u is
boarded up, So I don't know if like no one
wants to live there.
Speaker 3 (47:31):
Or it could be an older Google image. Yeah those
are usually newer, right, I wonder well.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
I mean it could be older than twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
Although I looked at my house the other day and
it was it was the old house.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
The old house.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
Yeah, I was kind of like, oh, that's cute. It
looks crettier than I thought.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Oh, you got a good house. I gotta see your
new version. Yeah, you should a fancy version. I'm just
waiting for an invite come on over.
Speaker 3 (47:55):
Oh thanks, I can't uh.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
If you want to know more about the move bombing,
please please, we both beseech you go watch Let the
Fire Burn on Amazon Prime, on the internet, wherever you
can see it.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
Just see it. It's really really good. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
And we should point out too that no one involved
on the on the cops, in the political side suffered
any punishments.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
No, there was that inquiry, and no one was found
guilty of any wrongdoing except although this will put a
really good button on this multi racial panel inquiry panel
that held these hearings to a person with one dissenter,
said that we conclude had this not been a black
(48:44):
working class neighborhood, right, instead a white working class neighborhood,
the police never would have dropped that bomb.
Speaker 3 (48:50):
Of course they wouldn't have.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
Yeah, okay, it's time for listening to me.
Speaker 3 (48:56):
Who is the loan dissenter?
Speaker 1 (48:58):
I didn't see he's gotta be the guy with the glasses.
Speaker 3 (49:02):
It's always that guy.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
What am I going to call this perfect pitch follow up?
Hey guys, Back in two thousand and nine, my band
was recording an album and those one song that ends
with us all singing and holding out a single note.
The next song starts with us singing that same note.
Speaker 1 (49:17):
Oh that's cool.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
See what they did adding drums. Then the songs are
edited together to have them flow into each other.
Speaker 3 (49:23):
With no gap. Josh t is very interesting because he's
a musician. Jerry just be like, what meeting me? So?
Speaker 1 (49:29):
Huh? What'd you guys say?
Speaker 2 (49:32):
We had finished recording that first one, and I can
tell by the look on Josh's face he's like that
old trick packed our instruments away. Then we're about to
start the next one. We realized we need to hear
the first note so we could sing in the right
pitch instead of loading up the previous song. Our pianist said,
I have perfect pitch and belt it out the note,
which we all who don't have perfect pitch, trusted him
(49:52):
to be right and started recording from there. A little
did we know he doesn't have perfect pitch, but it's close.
When we edited the songs together and played them through
the notes. We're supposed to match her off by about
a half step. Now it sounds like a Jerry, very dissonant,
totally wrong.
Speaker 3 (50:09):
Oh, I just realized Jerry's going to hear this one.
She edits this episode. That's right. Just put a Wilhelm
scream in there, Jerry. We'll be all right.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
We are already out of the studio at that point,
so we ended up just releasing it and claiming the
dissonance was intentional.
Speaker 3 (50:21):
But we never let them off.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
The hook and with the old oh yeah, you got
perfect pitch, do you? Thanks so much for all the
hard work guys. I've learned so much, been endlessly entertained
for years. Signed, spanked and sent. That is from Kenny.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
Thank you Kenny. We appreciate that. That was a pretty
great email. I mean literally lol.
Speaker 3 (50:40):
I can only assume it's Kenny Rodgers.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
I also want to say this, we give Jerry a
hard time round here. It's stuff you should know, only
she's not here. Imagine Actually that's not true. We do well,
she's sitting right there too. I can't imagine stuff you
should know without her. Yeah, we love our Jerry and
she is perfect exactly the.
Speaker 3 (50:58):
Way she is. Called that a nice all right.
Speaker 1 (51:02):
Well, if you want to get in touch with us,
you can go on to stuff youshould Know dot com
and check out our social links, and you can also
send us an email to stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (51:15):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Josh Clark
Chuck Bryant
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