1976, Venice Beach, California, the golden age of iron. Every morning, the California sun rose over Muscle Beach like a spotlight on a stage. Bodybuilders glistened with oil and ambition. Men chased physical perfection under palm trees, believing their bodies could carry them to the American dream.
Among them, a young Austrian immigrant who’d arrived with nothing but a gym bag and an accent. Arnold Schwarzenegger, not yet 30, already a six-time Mr. Olympia, Hollywood, was calling. And on one of those sundrrenched mornings outside Gold’s Gym on the Venice boardwalk, Schwarzenegger noticed another young man. Hard to miss him.
This one was black, built like a tank, 300 lb of carved muscle, arms measuring 19 in around. Schwarzenegger stopped, complimented the stranger on his physique, said his biceps were as big as thighs. The stranger smiled, took pride in that, would remember it for 30 years. His name was Stanley Williams.
They called him Tukie. At that moment, both men were building empires. One through movies and magazines, the other through blood and territory. One would become governor of California. The other would become the most notorious gang leader in American history. And three decades later, their paths would cross again, not on a beach, but in a death chamber.
The man who once admired Tukie’s arms would be the one to decide if those arms would be strapped to a gurnie. If those veins would carry the poison that stopped his heart. This is the story of Stanley Tuki Williams, co-founder of the Crips, convicted killer of four, Nobel Peace Prize nominee, children’s book author, and the walking question no one could answer.
Can a man be redeemed if he never admits his sins? The answer died with him on December 13th, 2005, 35 minutes after midnight. But the question that lives forever, December 29th, 1953, New Orleans, Louisiana, a 17-year-old girl gives birth to a son, names him Stanley Tuki Williams III. The father gone before the boy could walk.
6 years later, mother and child board a Greyhound bus. Destination, Los Angeles, the promised land. They settle in South Central. And young Tuki would later describe that neighborhood with words that cut a shiny red apple rotting away at the core. On the surface, treeline streets, working families.
But beneath it, a world the boy would discover the moment he stepped outside. His first day in the neighborhood ended in a fight. And that fight taught him everything he needed to know about survival in South Central. Be bigger, be tougher, be stronger, or be a victim. Tuki chose violence.
By age six, he was wandering the streets alone. By 12, he was in and out of juvenile detention. Lock High School expelled him. Fremont High expelled him. Washington Prep expelled him. Every institution that tried to contain him failed. But while the schools couldn’t hold him, the iron could.
Tukie discovered weightlifting and he attacked it with the same fury he brought to the streets. 300 lb of muscle of 50-in chest, 22-in arms. He became a monster engineered for intimidation. And here’s where the story turns strange. 1979 while running one of the most violent gangs in Los Angeles, Tuki walked onto the set of the Gong Show, the cheesy talent competition on NBC.
He performed a bodybuilding routine, flexed and posed, danced with bikini clad women, the judges gave him second place. America watched a gang leader on national television and had no idea what they were looking at. But it gets darker. During these same years, Tukie held a job, a real one.
He worked as a counselor for atrisisk youth in South Central. The man recruiting kids into the crypts by night was lecturing them about making good choices by day. Tuki would later say he was sleepwalking through life. I felt that was my reason to exist. The crypts would define his existence from the moment he built them to the moment they killed him.
But he didn’t build them alone. There was another architect, the one history forgot. His name was Raymond Washington. August 14th, 1953, Los Angeles, California, 4 months before Tukie was born in New Orleans, another boy entered the world 2,000 m away. Raymond Lee Washington, youngest of four sons, raised on East 76th Street in South Central.
Raymon’s parents split when he was two. His mother raised him alone. And like Tuki, the streets raised him faster. But Raymond was different. He worshiped the Black Panthers, admired their discipline, their unity. He wanted to build something like that. A brotherhood. Protection for black youth in a neighborhood where protection didn’t exist.
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1969, Raymond was 15 years old. He tried to join a local gang called the Avenues. They rejected him. Said he was too young, so Raymond built his own. Called them the Baby Avenues. A crew of teenagers. Fists and loyalty. No guns. Raymond hated guns, believed real men fought with their hands.
The baby avenues evolved, changed their name to the Avenue cribs. Young ones like babies and cribs. Street slang slurred the word cribs became crips. But Raymond’s crew was small, limited to the east side. He needed muscle, needed reach. And then he heard about a young bull terrorizing the west side.
A giant who fought older gangsters without fear. Tookie 1971. Raymond approached him with a proposition. When they met, both men noticed the same thing. They dressed identical. Leather jackets, starch Levvis’s jeans. They were mirrors of each other. Different sides of the same city, same struggle. Raymond proposed a confederation.
Unite the east side and westside crews under one banner. One name, one army. Tukie agreed. And just like that, the Crips were born. 30 members at first, a small tribe, but they spread like a virus. Raymond’s vision was specific. The Crips would protect black neighborhoods, fight with fists, no guns.
You shouldn’t partake and purchase these weapons. His soldiers ignored him, including Tuki. By 1975, firearms were flooding South Central. Gang wars that once ended with bloody knuckles now ended with body bags. By 1978, the Crips had 45 sets and 20,000 members. They controlled the distribution of PCP, marijuana, and amphetamines.
They were no longer a brotherhood. They were an industry. 1974, Raymond caught a robbery charge, sent to prison. When he got out in 76, he barely recognized what he’d built. August 9th, 1979, 10:00 at night. Raymond stood on the corner of East 64th Street. A car rolled up, filled with men he knew, crips. They opened fire.
Raymon was hit by shotgun fire, died at Morningside Hospital, 25 years old. His murder was never solved, but everyone knew the Crips killed their own creator. And Tuki, when Raymond died, Tuki was already on a different path. A path that would end four lives and eventually his own. February 28th, 1979, 6 months before Raymond would be gunned down, Tuki Williams proved just how far the Crips had already fallen. 400 a.m.
Pico Rivera, California. Tuki and three accompllices cruise the streets. They’ve been smoking PCP. Their judgment destroyed, their inhibitions gone. They’re looking for a place to rob. They find a 7-Eleven on Whittier Boulevard. A 26-year-old clerk is working the graveyard shift.
His name is Albert Lewis Owens. Albert was new to California, recently discharged from the army, recently divorced. His ex-wife kept custody of their two daughters, Rebecca, 8 years old, and Andrea, five. He left Missouri hoping for a fresh start. He found a job at 7-Eleven. Minimum wage, night shifts.
It wasn’t much, but it was honest. Tuki approached him with a 12- gauge sawoff shotgun, walked him inside, through the store into the back storage room, made him lie face down. Albert pleaded for his life. Tukie fired twice. According to witness testimony, Tukie showed no remorse afterward, laughing as he returned to his accompllices.
Total take from the register, $120. 11 days later, March 11th, 1979, South Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, the Brook Haven Motel, Yini Yang, 76 years old, and his wife, Sai Shai Yang, 63, owned the place. They lived there with their daughter, Yi Chen Lin, 43, a family of Taiwanese immigrants. They’d built something from nothing.
Tuki kicked in the door to their private office. What happened next took less than 2 minutes. Yennai Sai Shai Yi Chin shot at pointblank range. None survived. According to prosecutors, Tuki used a racial slur to describe the victims. Three human beings reduced to a joke.
Total take from the motel approximately $100. Four people dead, $220 stolen, $55 per life. The evidence was circumstantial but damning. Shell casings matched his shotgun. His accompllices traded testimony for immunity. The jury, 10 whites, one Latino, one Filipino American. Guilty, four counts of first-degree murder.
Sentence, death. Tuki maintained his innocence from the moment of his arrest until the moment the needle entered his arm. 26 years of denial. 2001, 22 years after the murders, a phone rings in Missouri. Rebecca Owens answers. She’s 30 years old now, a mother herself. Her 7-year-old son has red hair and freckles.
Looks just like his grandfather. The grandfather, Rebecca, barely remembers. On the other end of the line, a representative from the California Attorney General’s office. They’re calling with news. The man convicted of killing her father is about to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Rebecca freezes.
For 22 years, she believed her father’s killer had already been executed. That’s what she’d been told as a child. That justice had been served. That it was over. It was a lie. What I had been told growing up was not the case. She would later say Rebecca was eight when Albert Owens died. Her sister Andrea was five.
Their mother, Linda, remarried quickly. The new stepfather wanted them to call him dad. Wanted them to forget the real one. They weren’t allowed to talk about Albert. Weren’t allowed to grieve. Weren’t even allowed to attend his funeral. The man who murdered their father became famous.
The man who was murdered became a footnote. But not everyone in the Owens family agreed on what justice looked like. Laura Owens, Albert’s stepmother, became the loudest voice demanding Tuki’s death. Spent the final year of his life doing interview after interview, flying to California, telling anyone who would listen about the red-haired boy with sparkling eyes who moved west for a fresh start.
When celebrities lined up to save Tuki, Laura had something to say. I think the celebrities are just abusing their popularity. To them, it’s a script. To me, it’s life. But Wayne Owens, Albert’s brother, saw it differently. He didn’t support the death penalty. He followed the case for nearly a quarter century.
Watched Tookie’s transformation from a distance. If Williams would sign a contract saying he would drop his attempts at parole, I would support clemency. A middle ground. Life without parole. Let the man keep writing his books. Keep broker in peace. No one took him up on it. He fit no one’s narrative.
So they ignored him. The Yang family said almost nothing. Robert Yang, the son who heard the gunshots that killed his parents and sister, testified at trial and then retreated from public view. Three lives reduced to silence. On the night of December 12th, 2005, Laura Owens sat in the witness room at San Quentin.
She watched the man who murdered her stepson lie on a gurnie. Afterward, reporters asked how she felt. Her answer surprised everyone. Even a man like Tukie Williams deserved to have someone who loves him. And then quieter, it’s not quite over. April 20th, 1981, Stanley Tukie Williams arrives at San Quinton, Death Row, 9 ft x 4t, a cage for life.
He is 27 years old. And for the next seven years, he gives the prison system hell. Guards, inmates, anyone in his path. He assaults officers, orders attacks on prisoners. Prison officials document almost a dozen violent incidents. 1988, they’ve had enough. Tuki is sent to solitary confinement.
23 hours a day, 1 hour outside alone. This is meant to break him. It does something else. 6 and 1/2 years in isolation. No gang, no crew, no one to perform for, just Tookie and the silence. He starts reading the Bible, philosophy, black history, Malcolm X, books he never touched on the streets.
Later, he would describe what happened as a 720° turnaround, not a 180, a complete rotation, and then another, a man spinning so far from who he was that he couldn’t see his old self anymore. 1993 Barbara Beckno visits journalist author. She’s researching gang violence. She expects a monster. What she finds is something harder to categorize.
Tuki tells her he wants to write a children’s book. Wants to warn kids about the life he chose. Bigell agrees to help. 1996. The first book drops. Gangs and Wanting to Belong. Part of an eightbook series. Over 50,000 copies sold to schools and libraries. 1997, Tuki releases a public apology, not for the murders.
He still denies those, but for creating the crypts. I am no longer part of the problem. Thanks to the almighty, I am no longer sleepwalking through life. 2001, a Swiss Parliament member nominates him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Five nominations total, four more for literature. 2004 Jamie Fox stars in redemption the Stan Tuki Williams story.
That same year, Tukie brokers his most significant achievement. 200 Crypts and Bloods sign a truce in Newark, New Jersey, and President George W. Bush sends Tuki a letter commending him for demonstrating the outstanding character of America. A sitting president praising a man on death row.
But the question lingered, if he was truly transformed, why wouldn’t he admit to the murders? Tuki’s answer. Many people expect me to apologize for crimes I didn’t commit just to save my life. Of course, I want to live, but not by having to lie. 2004 Newark, New Jersey. 2500 miles from South Central.
A different city, a different coast. The same war, Crips and Bloods had migrated east decades earlier. Carried the colors and the codes across state lines like a franchise. By the early 2000s, Newark was drowning in gang violence. The first four months of 2004, 34 gang related murders. Bodies dropping every week.
Mothers burying sons, sons burying brothers. The cycle Tuki Williams started in Los Angeles was now grinding through New Jersey. Then something unexpected happened. A group of gang members, Crips and Bloods, watched a movie together, the Jamie Fox film, Redemption, the story of Tukie’s transformation from gang founder to peace advocate.
They didn’t see a snitch. They didn’t see a sellout. They saw one of their own, the co-founder, telling them to stop. And they listened. Someone reached out to San Quentin, got a message to Tukie. We want to try. We want to end this. Tell us how. From his 9×4 cell, Tukie sent them his protocol for peace.
The framework he developed over years of thinking about the problem he created. A step-by-step process for enemies to sit across from each other to negotiate to find a way forward that didn’t end in bloodshed. May 2004, 200 gang members, Crips and Bloods, gathered in Newark. They signed a truce, not a temporary ceasefire, not a pause, a commitment.
And then something happened that no one predicted. The killing stopped. After the treaty was signed, gang related murders plummeted. The streets that had seen 34 bodies in 4 months went quiet. A Newick police officer confirmed it. The truce was real. The signitories credited Tuki, a man locked in a cage in California, had stopped the war in New Jersey.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors took notice, passed a resolution citing the Newark truce as evidence of Tukie’s impact. Tukie supporters pointed to this as undeniable proof. The man saved lives, not in theory, real lives, measurable lives. His critics had a different calculation.
You saved 10 lives, 20, 50. How many did the crips take? How many are still dying today because of what you built in 1971? Does the math work? Does redemption have an equation? The Newark truce proved Tukie could change the world from behind bars. It didn’t prove he was innocent. And for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, that distinction was everything.
October 11th, 2005. The United States Supreme Court delivers its final word. Appeal denied. 24 years of motions. 24 years of arguments. 24 years of lawyers fighting to keep him alive. All of it ends with two words. Appeal denied. 13 days later, a Los Angeles Superior Court sets the execution date.
December 13th, 2005, 1 minute after midnight, Judge William Pounders refuses to delay even a single week. Smiles as he delivers the ruling. Tuki has 50 days to live and then Hollywood arrives. Jamie Fox, fresh off his Oscar win for Ray, Snoop Dogg, former [ __ ] himself, Danny Glover, Shaun Penn, Joan Bayz, Jesse Jackson visits Tuki twice in his final days. The NAACP issues statements.
50,000 people signed petitions. On the other side, the Los Angeles District Attorney, Victim’s Rights Groups, and Laura Owens giving interview after interview, reminding America that four people are still dead. KFI radio launches a segment called Tukie Must Die.
Host John and Ken Erit daily until the execution. December 8th, 2005, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger holds a private clemency hearing. 30 minutes for the defense, 30 minutes for the prosecution, and there it is. The paradox that defined Tuki’s final years. He apologized for creating the Crips publicly, formally, but he never apologized for the murders because he said he didn’t commit them.
December 12th, the governor releases his decision. Five pages. The key passage. Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption, no admission, no mercy. Jesse Jackson delivers the news personally. Tookie smiles as if he expected it all along. He has less than 12 hours to live.
December 12th, 2005, 6:00 p.m. Tuki Williams is strip searched for the final time. They give him clean clothes, jeans, a blue work shirt. They hand him a bundle of letters, messages from supporters around the world. He refuses his last meal. Earlier that day, he changed his mind about witnesses.
Now he asks five supporters to be there including Barbara Becknel. Outside San Quentin, the crowd swells 1,00 to 2500. Joan Bayz takes a small plywood stage, sings Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. Midnight approaches. 39 witnesses file into the viewing room. 17 journalists, five supporters. At least five members of the victim’s families.
Laura Owens is there, face like stone. 1200 a.m. December 13th. The curtains open. Tuki Williams lies on a green padded gurnie, strapped down, arms extended, and then the complication. A medical technician begins searching for a vein in his muscular left arm. She struggles. Minutes pass.
Sweat pools on her forehead. Tukie lifts his head. You doing that right? 12 minutes pass. An eternity in that room. Still can’t find it. Finally, at 12:16 a.m., the IV is inserted. 12:20 a.m. The first drug enters his veins. Sodium pentathol. 12:21 a.m. The second drug, Panteronium bromide. The third, potassium chloride.
Then stillness. He’s flatlined. 12:35 a.m. Stanley Tuki Williams is dead. His supporters walked toward the door, then spin around, three voices screaming, “The state of California just killed an innocent man.” The first outburst during a California execution since 1992. Across the room, Laura Owens bursts into tears. 35 minutes.
That’s how long it took California to kill Stanley Tukie Williams. December 20th, 2005, one week after the execution, Bethl AM church, 1500 seats, every single one filled. Jesse Jackson speaks. Louis Farrakhan speaks. Jamie Fox speaks. Snoop Dogg reads a poem. Outside in the parking lot, dozens of men in blue.
Crips from across Los Angeles. Flashing hand signs. A reporter approaches one 33 years old goes by Kilawatt III. What was Tookie to you? That’s my role model, man. That’s the CEO of the Crips. The man who spent his final years trying to destroy the gang was still their king. June 25th, 2006, Barbara Begnell travels to South Africa to Suto, a place where Crips copycat gangs had formed.
She scatters Tukie’s ashes into a lake at Dookoza Park. Even in death, he was trying to undo what he built. Beckno never stopped fighting. She ran for governor in 2006, released a documentary, still publishes academic papers. She never proved his innocence, but she never gave up, but she never stopped trying.
And then there’s the crulest epilogue of all, Stanley Williams IV. Little Tukie, the son. He grew up while his father sat on death row, read the children’s books, heard the message, and joined the Crips. Anyway, Little Tookie caught a murder charge. Second degree, shot a 20-year-old woman.
He was 18 at the time. 2019, Governor Gavin Newsome denies his parole. The ultimate failure of Tukie’s redemption. He couldn’t save his own child. That same year, Newsome signs a moratorum on executions. Tuki was the 12th person executed since California reinstated capital punishment, second to last by lethal injection.
After him, the killing stopped? What is redemption? Who deserves it? Can it exist without confession? Does saving a hundred lives balance taking four? Can a man be two things at once, monster and messenger? The answers died with Tukie dissolved in a lake in Suto, but the questions remain. They always will.
Somewhere in Los Angeles, a child picks up a book. Gangs and wanting to belong. Reads the words of a dead man who spent his final years trying to tear down what he built. Somewhere else, another child throws up a sea, joins a set. Both legacies survive. Both are true. And 50 years after two men met on Venice Beach, no one can say which legacy one.
