Stanley Williams

Stanley Tookie Williams III, born December 29, 1953, and executed December 13, 2005, was an American gangster who co-founded and led the Crips in Los Angeles. In 1971, he and Raymond Washington formed an alliance that made the Crips the city’s first major African-American street gang. Throughout the 1970s, Williams acted as the de facto leader of the Crips and the dominant crime figure in South Los Angeles. His gang involvement ended in 1979 when he was arrested for murdering four people during two robberies. Convicted in 1981 and sentenced to death, he spent more than twenty years on death row before being executed by lethal injection in 2005. His highly publicized trial and the many appeals for clemency fueled debate over California’s death penalty.

Williams was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and christened Stanley Tookie Williams III, though he was usually called by his middle name, Tookie. His father left the family when Williams was one year old. In 1959, he moved with his mother, Louisiana Williams, to Los Angeles’ South Central area. Because his mother worked multiple jobs, Williams was a latchkey kid and often got into trouble on the streets. He recalled that as a child he earned money from “hustlers” who bet on anything—spitting, urinating, throwing rocks, cockfights, cricket fights, fish fights, and street fights between people aged six to fifty. Older hustlers would bet on children to fight. Williams said he was often paid a couple dollars after dogfights to care for injured dogs. As a teenager, he was sometimes paid to participate in street fights, earning a reputation as a vicious fighter on South Central’s West Side. This reputation, along with other factors that made him intimidating, led to his expulsion from George Washington Preparatory High School and rejection by several other South Central high schools. After the Crips formed, Williams was sent to Los Padrinos and then Central Juvenile Hall for the first time, charged with a robbery at Clifton’s restaurant, which he denied.

In the late 1960s, juvenile crime rose in South Central as older gangs disbanded to join the Black Power Movement, especially the Black Panther Party, which initially aimed to protect black people from police brutality and corruption in the Los Angeles Police Department. Increasingly violent youth gangs formed in their place, and Williams initially despised them as predatory. Because of his viciousness and willingness to fight older youths, he earned respect from many West Side gangsters. These gangs were small neighborhood cliques operating independently, with leadership determined informally rather than chosen. At age fifteen, Williams was invited into a small West Side clique after befriending a local teenager, Donald “Doc/Sweetback” Archie. He quickly earned the clique’s respect by beating up a member who insulted his mother. Williams became the unofficial leader of this clique as his violent reputation spread across South Central.

In 1969, at age fifteen, Williams was arrested in Inglewood for car theft and sent to Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey. While there, the facility’s gym coach introduced him to Olympic weightlifting, sparking an interest in bodybuilding. By his release in early 1971, at age seventeen, Williams was physically bigger and stronger. He recalled that when the review board asked what he planned to do after release, he replied, “being the leader of the biggest gang in the world.”

Shortly after his release, Raymond Washington approached Williams at Washington Preparatory High School. Washington had heard of Williams through a mutual friend, who told him about Williams’ toughness and willingness to fight members of larger gangs like the L.A. Brims and the Chain Gang. According to Williams, what struck him about Washington was that, besides being incredibly muscular, Washington and his cohort dressed similarly to Williams and his clique—leather jackets, starched Levi’s jeans, and suspenders. Washington, a prominent gangster from South Central’s East Side, proposed they use their influence in their respective regions to form the larger Crips street gang. The initial purpose was to eliminate all street gangs and create a “bull force” neighborhood watch in South Central. Williams said: “We started out—at least my intent was to, in a sense, address all of the so-called neighboring gangs in the area and to put, in a sense—I thought ‘I can cleanse the neighborhood of all these, you know, marauding gangs.’ But I was totally wrong. And eventually, we morphed into the monster we were addressing.” Williams stated he founded the Crips not to eliminate other gangs but to create a force powerful enough to protect local black people from racism, corruption, and police brutality. At the time of the Crips’ initial formation, there were only three sets: Washington’s East Side Crips (later East Coast Crips), Williams’ West Side Crips (later Eight Tray Gangster Crips), and the Compton Crips, led by a teenager named Mac Thomas. Williams formed the West Side Crips using his own influence, having befriended many clique leaders and street thugs on the West Side.