In the South Los Angeles streets where Stanley Tookie Williams once roamed, a few still speak admiringly of how the young co-founder of the Crips used to stroll down the avenues with one strap of his overalls undone to expose his bare 22-inch arms and 55-inch chest, just daring someone to take a shot at him.
Many others remember Williams, now on death row awaiting possible execution, as a 5-foot-10, 300-pound terror who channeled self-hate into violence against others: spitting in people's faces, stealing and robbing, exacerbating volatile mood swings with PCP, and murdering four people in 1979. That year, Los Angeles led the nation in gang-related homicides.
"I've lived in a war zone for 18 years, so I understand why some mothers advocate to kill Stanley," said Lita Herron, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles group Mothers on the March, created in 1988 after a 13-year-old girl was shot 15 times by Crips in a case of mistaken identity.
This tangle of memories and emotions in South L.A. has triggered conflicting reactions to the prospect of Williams' death penalty being carried out early Tuesday. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is considering a clemency petition that would commute the sentence to life in prison.
Friends and family think Williams has redeemed himself by writing books to steer children away from gang violence, and say he should not be blamed for the carnage that he and his peers unleashed.
"What hurts is that some people are trying to blame Stan for the 25 years of uncontrollable violence that happened after he went to prison," said Williams' ex-wife, Bonnie Williams Taylor. "That's not his fault any more than it was Al Capone's or Bonnie and Clyde's."
But Deborah Brown, a volunteer at the Weingarten YMCA Wellness Center south of downtown, doesn't buy it.
"He killed four people and started one of the worst gangs on the planet," she said, shaking her head. "I understand that some people are saying he changed in prison, but that won't bring those people back. Somebody's got to pay for that."
Retired Compton Police Department gang unit officer Rick Baker, who knew Williams, agreed.
"Anyone who could take credit for organizing a gang that killed 50 times more people than the Mafia -- how could you grant a guy like that clemency?" he said.
"That would be like making John Gotti governor of New York."
