Hamiton-Burr Duel

 

The Burr–Hamilton duel took place in Weehawken, New Jersey, between Aaron Burr, the third and current U.S. vice president at the time, and Alexander Hamilton, the first and former Secretary of the Treasury, at dawn on July 11, 1804. The duel was the culmination of a bitter rivalry that had developed over years between both men, who were high-profile politicians in the newly-established United States, founded following the victorious American Revolution and its associated Revolutionary War.

In the duel, Burr fatally shot Hamilton in the abdomen. Hamilton returned fire that misdirected into a tree branch above and behind Burr's head. Experiencing life-threatening bullet wounds, Hamilton was transported across the Hudson River for treatment in present-day Greenwich Village in New York City, where he died the following day, on July 12, 1804.

Hamilton's death permanently weakened the Federalist Party, founded by Hamilton in 1789 and one of the nation's major two parties at the time. It also effectively ended Burr's political career, who was vilified for shooting Hamilton.

Background

The Burr–Hamilton duel is one of the most famous personal conflicts in American history. It was a pistol duel that arose from long-standing personal bitterness that developed between the two men over several years. Tension rose with Hamilton's journalistic defamation of Burr's character during the 1804 New York gubernatorial race, in which Burr was a candidate.

The duel was fought at a time when the practice was being outlawed in the northern United States, and it had immense political ramifications. Burr survived the duel and was indicted for murder in both New York and New Jersey, though these charges later either were dismissed or resulted in acquittal. The harsh criticism and animosity directed toward Burr following the duel brought an end to his political career. The Federalist Party was already weakened by the defeat of John Adams in the presidential election of 1800 and was further weakened by Hamilton's death.

The duel was the final skirmish of a long conflict between Democratic-Republicans and Federalists. The conflict began in 1791 when Burr won a United States Senate seat from Philip Schuyler, Hamilton's father-in-law, who would have supported Federalist policies. Hamilton was the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury at the time. The Electoral College then deadlocked in the 1800 presidential election, during which Hamilton's maneuvering in the U.S. House of Representatives caused Thomas Jefferson to be named president and Burr vice president. At the time, the candidate who received the most votes was elected president while the candidate with the second most votes became vice president. There were only proto-political parties at the time, as was disdainfully noted in President George Washington's Farewell Address in 1796, and no shared tickets exist currently.

Hamilton's animosity toward Burr was severe and well-documented in personal letters to his friend and compatriot James McHenry. In a January 4, 1801 letter to McHenry, Hamilton wrote:

Nothing has given me so much chagrin as the Intelligence that the Federal party was thinking seriously of supporting Mr. Burr for president. I should consider the execution of the plan as devoting the country and signing their own death warrant. Mr. Burr will probably make stipulations, but he will laugh in his sleeve while he makes them and will break them the first moment it may serve his purpose.

Hamilton details the many charges that he has against Burr in a more extensive letter written shortly afterward, calling Burr a "profligate, a voluptuary in the extreme", accusing him of corruptly serving the interests of the Holland Land Company while a member of the legislature, criticizing his military commission, accusing him of resigning it under false pretenses, and other serious accusations.

As it became clear that Jefferson would drop Burr from his ticket in the 1804 presidential election, Burr chose to run for the governorship of New York instead. He was backed by members of the Federalist Party and was under the patronage of Tammany Hall in the 1804 New York gubernatorial election. Hamilton campaigned vigorously against Burr, causing him to lose the gubernatorial election to Morgan Lewis, a Clintonian Democratic-Republican who Hamilton had endorsed.

Both men had been involved in duels in the past. Hamilton had been involved in more than a dozen affairs of honor before his fatal encounter with Burr, including disputes with William Gordon (1779), Aedanus Burke (1790), John Francis Mercer (1792–1793), James Nicholson (1795), James Monroe (1797), Ebenezer Purdy, and George Clinton (1804). He also served as a second to John Laurens in a 1779 duel with General Charles Lee and to legal client John Auldjo in a 1787 duel with William Pierce. Hamilton also claimed that he had one previous honor dispute with Burr, while Burr stated that there were two.

Additionally, Hamilton's son Philip was killed in a November 23, 1801, duel with George I. Eacker, which was initiated after Philip and his friend Richard Price engaged in hooliganish behavior in Eacker's box at the Park Theatre in Manhattan. This was in response to a speech that Eacker had made on July 3, 1801, which was critical of Hamilton. Philip and his friend both challenged Eacker to duels when he called them "damned rascals". Price's duel, also in Weehawken, New Jersey, resulted in nothing more than four missed shots, and Hamilton advised his son to delope (throw away his shot). However, both Philip and Eacker stood shotless for a minute after the command "present", and then Philip leveled his pistol, causing Eacker to fire, mortally wounding Philip and sending his shot awry.

Election of 1800

Burr and Hamilton first came into public opposition during the 1800 United States presidential election. Burr and Thomas Jefferson both ran for president on the Democratic-Republican Party ticket against incumbent President John Adams and his vice presidential running mate Charles C. Pinckney of the Federalist Party. Electoral College rules at the time gave each elector two votes for president, and the candidate who received the second most votes became vice president.

The Democratic-Republican Party planned to have 72 of their 73 electors vote for both Jefferson and Burr, with the remaining elector voting only for Jefferson. The electors failed to execute this plan, so Burr and Jefferson were tied with 73 votes each. The Constitution stipulated that if two candidates with an Electoral College majority were tied, the election would be moved to the House of Representatives—which was controlled by the Federalists, at this point, many of whom were loath to vote for Jefferson. Although Hamilton had a long-standing rivalry with Jefferson stemming from their tenure as members of George Washington's cabinet, he regarded Burr as far more dangerous and used all his influence to ensure Jefferson's election. On the 36th ballot, the House of Representatives gave Jefferson the presidency, with Burr becoming vice president.

Charles Cooper's letter

Hamilton–Burr duel correspondences

This July 31, 1804 article in the Georgia Republican & State Intelligencer reviewed the extended contentious communications between Burr and Hamilton that culminated in the duel, which the newspaper criticized as a "barbarous custom".

On April 24, 1804, the Albany Register published a letter opposing Burr's gubernatorial candidacy which was originally sent from Charles D. Cooper to Hamilton's father-in-law, former senator Philip Schuyler. It made reference to a previous statement by Cooper: "General Hamilton and Judge Kent have declared in substance that they looked upon Mr. Burr to be a dangerous man and one who ought not to be trusted with the reins of government." Cooper went on to emphasize that he could describe in detail "a still more despicable opinion which General Hamilton has expressed of Mr. Burr" at a political dinner.

Burr responded in a letter delivered by William P. Van Ness which pointed particularly to the phrase "more despicable" and demanded "a prompt and unqualified acknowledgment or denial of the use of any expression which would warrant the assertion of Dr. Cooper." Hamilton's verbose reply on June 20, 1804, indicated that he could not be held responsible for Cooper's interpretation of his words (yet he did not fault that interpretation), concluding that he would "abide the consequences" should Burr remain unsatisfied. A recurring theme in their correspondence is that Burr seeks avowal or disavowal of anything that could justify Cooper's characterization, while Hamilton protests that there are no specifics.

Burr replied on June 21, 1804, also delivered by Van Ness, stating that "political opposition can never absolve gentlemen from the necessity of a rigid adherence to the laws of honor and the rules of decorum". Hamilton replied that he had "no other answer to give than that which has already been given". This letter was delivered to Nathaniel Pendleton on June 22 but did not reach Burr until June 25. The delay was due to a negotiation between Pendleton and Van Ness in which Pendleton submitted the following paper:

General Hamilton says he cannot imagine what Dr. Cooper may have alluded, unless it were to a conversation at Mr. Taylor's, in Albany, last winter (at which he and General Hamilton were present). General Hamilton cannot recollect distinctly the particulars of that conversation, to undertake to repeat them, without running the risk of varying or omitting what might be deemed important circumstances. The expressions are entirely forgotten, and the specific ideas imperfectly remembered; but to the best of his recollection, they consisted of comments on the political principles and views of Colonel Burr and the results that might be expected from them in the event of his election as Governor, without reference to any particular instance of past conduct or private character.

Eventually, Burr issued a formal challenge and Hamilton accepted. Many historians have considered the causes of the duel to be flimsy and have thus characterized Hamilton as "suicidal", Burr as "malicious and murderous", or both. Thomas Fleming offers the theory that Burr may have been attempting to recover his honor by challenging Hamilton, whom he considered to be the only gentleman among his detractors, in response to the slanderous attacks against his character published during the 1804 gubernatorial campaign.

Hamilton's reasons for not engaging in a duel included his roles as father and husband, putting his creditors at risk, and placing his family's welfare in jeopardy, but he felt that it would be impossible to avoid a duel because he had made attacks on Burr that he was unable to recant, and because of Burr's behavior before the duel. He attempted to reconcile his moral and religious reasons and the codes of honor and politics. Joanne Freeman speculates that Hamilton intended to accept the duel and throw away his shot to satisfy his moral and political codes.

Duel

In the early morning of July 11, 1804, Burr and Hamilton departed from Manhattan by separate boats and rowed across the Hudson River to a spot known as the Heights of Weehawken, New Jersey, a popular dueling ground below the towering cliffs of the Palisades. Dueling had been prohibited in both New York and New Jersey, but Hamilton and Burr agreed to go to Weehawken because New Jersey was not as aggressive as New York in prosecuting dueling participants. The same site was used for 18 known duels between 1700 and 1845, and it was not far from the site of the 1801 duel that resulted in the death of Hamilton's eldest son Philip Hamilton. They also took steps to give all witnesses plausible deniability in an attempt to shield themselves from prosecution. For example, the pistols were transported to the island in a portmanteau, enabling the rowers to say under oath that they had not seen any pistols. They also stood with their backs to the duelists.

Burr, William Peter Van Ness (his second), Matthew L. Davis, another man often identified as John Swarthout, and the rowers all reached the site at 6:30 a.m., whereupon Swarthout and Van Ness started to clear the underbrush from the dueling ground. Hamilton, Judge Nathaniel Pendleton (his second), and Dr. David Hosack arrived a few minutes before seven. Lots were cast for the choice of position and which second should start the duel. Both were won by Hamilton's second, who chose the upper edge of the ledge for Hamilton, facing the city. However, Joseph Ellis claims that Hamilton had been challenged and therefore had the choice of both weapon and position. Under this account, Hamilton himself chose the upstream or north side position.

Some first-hand accounts of the duel agree that two shots were fired, but some say only Burr fired, and the seconds disagreed on the intervening time between them. It was common for both principals in a duel to deliberately miss or fire their shot into the ground to exemplify courage (a practice known as deloping). The duel could then come to an end. Hamilton apparently fired a shot above Burr's head. Burr returned fire and hit Hamilton in the lower abdomen above the right hip. The large-caliber lead ball ricocheted off Hamilton's third or second false rib, fracturing it and causing considerable damage to his internal organs, particularly his liver, and diaphragm, before lodging in his first or second lumbar vertebra. According to Pendleton's account, Hamilton collapsed almost immediately, dropping the pistol involuntarily, and Burr moved toward him in a speechless manner (which Pendleton deemed to be indicative of regret) before being hustled away behind an umbrella by Van Ness because Hosack and the rowers were already approaching.

It is entirely uncertain which principal fired first, as both seconds' backs were to the duel by the pre-arranged regulations so that they could testify that they "saw no fire". After much research to determine the actual events of the duel, historian Joseph Ellis gives his best guess:

Hamilton did fire his weapon intentionally, and he fired first. But he aimed to miss Burr, sending his ball into the tree above and behind Burr's location. In so doing, he did not withhold his shot, but he did waste it, thereby honoring his pre-duel pledge. Meanwhile, Burr, who did not know about the pledge, did know that a projectile from Hamilton's gun had whizzed past him and crashed into the tree to his rear. According to the principles of the code duello, Burr was perfectly justified in taking deadly aim at Hamilton and firing to kill.

David Hosack's account

Hosack wrote his account on August 17; about one month after the duel had taken place. He testified that he had only seen Hamilton and the two seconds disappear "into the wood", heard two shots, and rushed to find a wounded Hamilton. He also testified that he had not seen Burr, who had been hidden behind an umbrella by Van Ness. He gives a very clear picture of the events in a letter to William Coleman:

When called to him upon his receiving the fatal wound, I found him half sitting on the ground, supported in the arms of Mr. Pendleton. His countenance of death I shall never forget. He had at that instant just strength to say, "This is a mortal wound, doctor;" when he sunk away, and became to all appearance lifeless. I immediately stripped up his clothes, and soon, alas I ascertained that the direction of the ball must have been through some vital part. His pulses were not to be felt, his respiration was entirely suspended, and, upon laying my hand on his heart and perceiving no motion there, I considered him as irrecoverably gone. I, however, observed to Mr. Pendleton, that the only chance for his reviving was immediately to get him upon the water. We therefore lifted him up and carried him out of the wood to the margin of the bank, where the bargemen aided us in conveying him into the boat, which immediately put off. During all this time I could not discover the least symptom of returning to life. I now rubbed his face, lips, and temples with spirits of hartshorn, applied it to his neck and breast, and to the wrists and palms of his hands, and endeavored to pour some into his mouth.

Hosack goes on to say that Hamilton had revived after a few minutes, either from the hartshorn or fresh air. He finishes his letter:

Soon after recovering his sight, he happened to cast his eye upon the case of pistols, and observing the one that he had had in his hand lying on the outside, he said, "Take care of that pistol; it is undischarged, and still cocked; it may go off and do harm. Pendleton knows" (attempting to turn his head towards him) "that I did not intend to fire at him." "Yes," said Mr. Pendleton, understanding his wish, "I have already made Dr. Hosack acquainted with your determination as to that." He then closed his eyes and remained calm, without any disposition to speak; nor did he say much afterward, except in reply to my questions. He asked me once or twice how I found his pulse; and he informed me that his lower extremities had lost all feeling, manifesting to me that he entertained no hopes that he should long survive.

Statement to the press

Pendleton and Van Ness issued a press statement about the events of the duel which pointed out the agreed-upon dueling rules and events that transpired. It stated that both participants were free to open fire once they had been given the order to present. After the first fire had been given, the opponent's second would count to three, whereupon the opponent would fire or sacrifice his shot. Pendleton and Van Ness disagree as to who fired the first shot, but they concur that both men had fired "within a few seconds of each other" (as they must have; neither Pendleton nor Van Ness mentions counting down).

In Pendleton's amended version of the statement, he and a friend went to the site of the duel the day after Hamilton's death to discover where Hamilton's shot went. The statement reads:

They ascertained that the ball passed through the limb of a cedar tree, at an elevation of about twelve feet and a half, perpendicularly from the ground, between thirteen and fourteen feet from the mark on which General Hamilton stood, and about four feet wide of the direct line between him and Col. Burr, on the right side; he had fallen on the left.

Hamilton's intentions

Hamilton wrote a letter before the duel titled Statement on Impending Duel with Aaron Burr in which he stated that he was "strongly opposed to the practice of dueling" for both religious and practical reasons. "I have resolved," it continued, "if our interview is conducted in the usual manner, and it pleases God to give me the opportunity, to reserve and throw away my first fire, and I have thoughts even of reserving my second fire."

Hamilton regained consciousness after being shot and told Dr. Hosack that his gun was still loaded and that "Pendleton knows I did not mean to fire at him." This is evidence for the theory that Hamilton intended not to fire, honoring his pre-duel pledge, and only fired accidentally upon being hit. Such an intention would have violated the protocol of the code duello and, when Burr learned of it, he responded: "Contemptible, if true." Hamilton could have thrown away his shot by firing into the ground, thus possibly signaling Burr of his purpose.

Modern historians have debated to what extent Hamilton's statements and letters represent his true beliefs, and how much of this was a deliberate attempt to permanently ruin Burr if Hamilton were killed. An example of this may be seen in what one historian has considered being deliberate attempts to provoke Burr on the dueling ground:

Hamilton performed a series of deliberately provocative actions to ensure a lethal outcome. As they were taking their places, he asked that the proceedings stop, adjusted his spectacles, and slowly, repeatedly, sighted along his pistol to test his aim.

Burr's intentions

There is evidence that Burr intended to kill Hamilton. The afternoon after the duel, he was quoted as saying that he would have shot Hamilton in the heart had his vision not been impaired by the morning mist. English philosopher Jeremy Bentham met with Burr in England in 1808, four years after the duel, and Burr claimed to have been certain of his ability to kill Hamilton. Bentham concluded that Burr was "little better than a murderer."

There is also evidence in Burr's defense. Had Hamilton apologized for his "more despicable opinion of Mr. Burr", all would have been forgotten. However, the code duello required that injuries that needed an explanation or apology must be specifically stated. Burr's accusation was so unspecific that it could have referred to anything that Hamilton had said over 15 years of political rivalry. Despite this, Burr insisted on an answer.

Burr knew of Hamilton's public opposition to his presidential run in 1800. Hamilton made confidential statements against him, such as those enumerated in his letter to Supreme Court Justice John Rutledge. In the attachment to that letter, Hamilton argued against Burr's character on numerous scores: he suspected Burr "on strong grounds of having corruptly served the views of the Holland Company;" "his very friends do not insist on his integrity"; "he will court and employ able and daring scoundrels;" he seeks "Supreme power in his own person" and "will in all likelihood attempt a usurpation," and so forth.

Pistols

The pistols used in the duel belonged to Hamilton's brother-in-law John Barker Church, who was a business partner of both Hamilton and Burr. Later legend claimed that these pistols were the same ones used in a 1799 duel between Church and Burr in which neither man was injured. Burr, however, wrote in his memoirs that he supplied the pistols for his duel with Church and that they belonged to him.

The Wogdon & Barton dueling pistols incorporated a hair-trigger feature that could be set by the user. Hamilton was familiar with the weapons and would have been able to use the hair trigger. However, Pendleton asked him before the duel whether he would use the "hair-spring", and Hamilton reportedly replied, "Not this time." Hamilton's son Philip and George Eacker likely used the Church weapons in the 1801 duel in which Philip died, three years before the Burr–Hamilton duel. They were kept at Church's estate Belvidere until the late 19th century. During this time one of the pistols was modified, with its original flintlock mechanism replaced by a more modern caplock mechanism. This was done by Church's grandson for use in the American Civil War. Consequently, the pistols are no longer identical.

The pair was sold in 1930 to the Chase Manhattan Bank, now part of JP Morgan Chase, which traces its descent back to the Manhattan Company founded by Burr and is on display in the bank's headquarters at 270 Park Avenue in New York City.

Aftermath

This July 25, 1804 article in The Adams Centinel expressed extreme lamentation over Hamilton's death, and described the plan for his funeral procession and other tributes, including a 30-day wearing of a commemorative black crepe armband by members of the Society of the Cincinnati of Pennsylvania, an organization Hamilton led as its president general.

After being attended by Hosack, the mortally wounded Hamilton was taken to the home of William Bayard Jr. in the present-day Greenwich Village section of New York City, where he was given communion by Bishop Benjamin Moore. He died the next day after seeing his wife Elizabeth and their children, in the presence of more than 20 friends and family members; he was buried in the Trinity Churchyard Cemetery in Manhattan. Hamilton was an Episcopalian at the time of his death.

Following the duel, Burr fled to St. Simons Island, Georgia, where he stayed at the plantation of Pierce Butler, but he soon returned to Washington, D.C. to complete his term as vice president.

Burr was charged with murder in New York and New Jersey, but neither charge ever reached trial. In Bergen County, New Jersey in November 1804, a grand jury indicted Burr for murder, but the New Jersey Supreme Court quashed it on a motion from Colonel Ogden. He presided over the impeachment trial of Samuel Chase "with the dignity and impartiality of an angel, but with the rigor of a devil", according to a Washington newspaper. Burr's heartfelt farewell speech to the Senate in March 1805 moved some of his harshest critics to tears.

Memorials and monuments

The first memorial to the duel was constructed in 1806 by the Saint Andrew's Society of the State of New York of which Hamilton was a member. A 14-foot marble cenotaph was constructed where Hamilton was believed to have fallen, consisting of an obelisk topped by a flaming urn and a plaque with a quotation from Horace, the whole structure surrounded by an iron fence. Duels continued to be fought at the site and the marble was slowly vandalized and removed for souvenirs, with nothing remaining by 1820. The memorial's plaque survived, however, turning up in a junk store and finding its way to the New York Historical Society in Manhattan where it still resides.

From 1820 to 1857, the site was marked by two stones with the names Hamilton and Burr placed where they were thought to have stood during the duel, but a road was built through the site in 1858 from Hoboken, New Jersey, to Fort Lee, New Jersey; all that remained of those memorials was an inscription on a boulder where Hamilton was thought to have rested after the duel, but there are no primary accounts which confirm the boulder anecdote. Railroad tracks were laid directly through the site in 1870, and the boulder was hauled to the top of the Palisades where it remains today. An iron fence was built around it in 1874, supplemented by a bust of Hamilton and a plaque. The bust was thrown over the cliff on October 14, 1934, by vandals and the head was never recovered; a new bust was installed on July 12, 1935. The plaque was stolen by vandals in the 1980s and an abbreviated version of the text was inscribed on the indentation left in the boulder, which remained until the 1990s when a granite pedestal was added in front of the boulder and the bust was moved to the top of the pedestal. New markers were added on July 11, 2004, the 200th anniversary of the duel.

Anti-dueling movement in New York State

In the months and years following the duel, a movement started to end the practice. Eliphalet Nott, the pastor at an Albany church attended by Hamilton's father-in-law, Philip Schuyler, gave a sermon that was soon reprinted, "A Discourse, Delivered in the North Dutch Church, in the City of Albany, Occasioned by the Ever to be Lamented Death of General Alexander Hamilton, July 29, 1804". In 1806, Lyman Beecher delivered an anti-dueling sermon, later reprinted in 1809 by the Anti-Dueling Association of New York. The covers and some pages of both pamphlets:

1804 Anti-dueling sermon by an acquaintance of Alexander Hamilton

Opening text of 1804 sermon

Anti-Dueling Association of New York pamphlet, Remedy, 1809

Resolutions, Anti-Dueling Association of N.Y., from Remedy pamphlet, 1809

Address to the electorate, from Remedy pamphlet

In popular culture

The rules of dueling researched by historian Joanne B. Freeman provided inspiration for the song "Ten Duel Commandments" in the Broadway musical Hamilton. The songs "Alexander Hamilton", "Your Obedient Servant", and "The World Was Wide Enough" also refer to the duel, the very latter depicting the duel as it happened. The musical compresses the timeline for Burr and Hamilton's grievance, depicting Burr's challenge as a result of Hamilton's endorsement of Jefferson rather than the gubernatorial election. In Hamilton, the penultimate duel scene depicts a resolved Hamilton who intentionally aims his pistol at the sky and a regretful Burr who realizes this too late and has already fired his shot.

Descendants of Burr and Hamilton held a re-enactment of the duel near the Hudson River for the duel's bicentennial in 2004. Douglas Hamilton, fifth great-grandson of Alexander Hamilton, faced Antonio Burr, a descendant of Aaron Burr's cousin. More than 1,000 people attended it, including an estimated 60 descendants of Hamilton and 40 members of the Aaron Burr Association. The Alexander Hamilton Awareness Society has been hosting the Celebrate Hamilton program since 2012 to commemorate the Burr–Hamilton Duel and Alexander Hamilton's life and legacy.

In his historical novel Burr (1973), author Gore Vidal recreates an elderly Aaron Burr visiting the dueling ground in Weehawken. Burr begins to reflect, for the benefit of the novel's protagonist, upon what precipitated the duel, and then, to the unease of his one-person audience, acts out the duel itself. The chapter concludes with Burr describing the personal, public, and political consequences he endures in the duel's aftermath.

The Kidnapping of Carlina White

 

Carlina Renae White (born July 15, 1987), also known as Nejdra "Netty" Nance, is an American woman who solved her own kidnapping case and was reunited with her biological parents 23 years after being abducted as an infant from the Harlem Hospital Center in New York City. The case represents one of the longest known gaps in an abduction in which the victim was reunited with the family in the United States. For years she lived with Annugetta Pettway, a woman she believed was her mother; however, she later discovered that Pettway was actually her kidnapper. White was portrayed by Keke Palmer in the Lifetime film Abducted: The Carlina White Story. Upon discovering her kidnapping and her biological parents, she kept her legal name as Carlina White.

Annugetta Pettway had an abusive upbringing, her mother often beating her with belts and extension cords. Pettway was motivated to commit the kidnapping out of a desire for a child after having multiple miscarriages.

Abduction

Harlem Hospital Center in Manhattan

Carlina was 19 days old when her parents, Joy White and Carl Tyson, took her to the hospital with a fever of 104 °F (40 °C) on August 4, 1987. She had swallowed fluid during her delivery and had an infection. A woman reportedly dressed as a nurse had comforted the parents at the hospital but was not a hospital employee. The woman had been seen around the hospital for three weeks prior to the abduction. The baby disappeared during the early morning, around 2 a.m. when the shifts were changing. The hospital had video surveillance, but at the time it was not working. There was no way of knowing what the woman in white looked like except for the description given by Joy White and Carl Tyson. The baby had been receiving intravenous antibiotics when, between 2:30 a.m. and 3:55 a.m., someone removed the IV line and abducted her. A guard said a woman matching the suspect's description left the hospital at 3:30 a.m., and that no infant was visible, although the baby could have been concealed in the heavyset woman's smock.

The case was the first known infant abduction from a New York hospital.

Life as Nejdra Nance

Carlina Renae White was raised as Nejdra "Netty" Nance by Annugetta "Ann" Pettway in Bridgeport, Connecticut, just 45 miles from where her parents had lived. White attended Thomas Hooker School and graduated from Warren Harding High School in Bridgeport. Pettway and White later moved to Atlanta, Georgia. White grew suspicious during her teens that Pettway was not her biological mother, because of her inability to provide a birth certificate.

In 2005, when White was pregnant with her daughter, she requested Pettway obtain her birth certificate so she could get health insurance. Pettway acquired a forged Connecticut birth certificate, which White attempted to use as proof of identity so she could obtain the health insurance, but the officials told her the document was forged.

Later that evening, in a state of shock, White confronted Pettway, who broke down and confessed that she was not White's biological mother. The revelation was not entirely surprising to White as she had begun to notice that she did not share physical traits with Pettway. Pettway lied and told White that she had been abandoned by a drug addict. At age 23, White used websites such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, where she found that the images of the kidnapped Carlina resembled infant photos of herself as Nejdra and those of her daughter, Samani. She called the center's hotline and was able to contact her birth family. DNA profiling confirmed in January 2011 that she was the missing Carlina White.

Investigation and legal proceedings

Perpetrator Annugetta Pettway

In 1987, New York City Police Department detectives questioned a woman in Baltimore, who witnesses had identified as having been seen in the hospital, without apparent result.

After the confirmation that Nejdra Nance was really Carlina White, the Federal Bureau of Investigation began a search for Ann Pettway. The statute of limitations for the state kidnapping law had expired in New York, but there is no statute of limitations for the federal law on kidnapping. An arrest warrant for Ann Pettway was issued by the North Carolina Department of Correction on January 21, 2011, for violating her probation from a conviction for attempted embezzlement. White stated, "I just hope that the officials be able to get her in their hands, so we can just hear her side of the story now."

Pettway turned herself in to the FBI office at Bridgeport on the morning of January 23, 2011. She had driven from North Carolina to Connecticut to arrange care for her biological son. Pettway told federal investigators that she kidnapped White after enduring several miscarriages because of the stress over whether "she would ever be able to be a parent." Pettway did not enter a plea at her arraignment at the U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan, where she faced between 20 years and life in prison for kidnapping. On February 17, 2011, a federal grand jury indicted Pettway on the kidnapping charge.

On February 10, 2012, Pettway pleaded guilty to a federal kidnapping charge. As part of a plea bargain, prosecutors agreed to recommend to the judge a prison sentence of 10 to 12½ years. On July 30, 2012, Judge P. Kevin Castel sentenced Pettway, who was then 50 years old, to 12 years in prison. Her lawyers had asked for leniency, saying Pettway had been severely depressed after suffering from multiple miscarriages and stillbirths. However, the judge said she was selfish and "inflicted a parent's worst nightmare on a couple." Carlina White's father said he thought the sentence was too lenient and that Pettway should've received the amount of time as she'd kept his daughter, 23 years. During the hearing, Pettway apologized, saying "I would like to apologize to the family. It may be rejected, but I am deeply sorry for what I've done. If they don't accept it, it's understandable. I'm here to right my wrong."

Pettway served her sentence in the Federal Correctional Institution, Aliceville in Alabama until she was released on April 14, 2021.

Aftermath

Upon being reunited with her biological parents, Carlina White's attorney advised her to ask them about the cash settlement from the hospital. Joy White and Carl Tyson both confirmed that most of this money had been spent during the years before their reunion, and that a trust fund that had been established was obtainable only if Carlina had been found before the age of 21. Joy White later stated that there had been a falling out over the issue of the money.

In May 2011, public defender Robert Baum said that he met Carlina White during preparations for Ann Pettway's trial and that White agreed to testify on Pettway's behalf. By the following July, White became estranged from her biological parents. However, several months later, she contacted both of her biological parents individually, having had a bit more time to process the situation; she later publicly stated that the issue over settlement funds was "just a misunderstanding." While "Carlina White" is her legal name, as it appears on official documents, she says that she will continue to go by "Netty" in public since it was neither the name her biological parents gave her nor the name given to her by the woman who raised her, but rather is "[the name] I gave myself.”

In 2014, White spoke at the Crimes Against Children Conference, the leading national training event for law enforcement professionals working to combat child victimization. As of 2014, she continues to have a relationship with her biological parents.

The Kidnapping of Kamiyah Mobley

 

Kamiyah Teresiah Tasha Mobley was abducted from a Florida hospital on July 10, 1998, when she was only eight hours old. In January 2017, she was found alive in Walterboro, South Carolina. DNA testing proved that she was not the daughter of Gloria Williams, her abductor. She had been raised under the name Alexis Kelli Manigo.

Her biological mother in Florida, Shanara Mobley, was awarded US$1.5 million after settling a lawsuit against the former University Medical Center. She has since had three other children.

Abduction

Kamiyah Mobley was born on July 10, 1998, to 16-year-old Shanara Mobley. She was abducted eight hours after birth by a woman impersonating a nurse, reportedly dressed in hospital attire, who entered the room, assisted and conversed with the mother, and later walked out of the room with Kamiyah in her arms. Employees initially believed that the woman who kidnapped Kamiyah was a member of the Mobley family. Shanara was interviewed later, pleading for the return of her daughter.

The abductor was believed to be between 25 and 35 years old and possibly wore a pair of glasses and a wig. She was dressed in a floral blue smock and green scrub pants. It is known that Gloria Williams, about 33 at the time, later forged documents to create a new identity for Mobley. Williams was in an abusive relationship and had just miscarried a child a week before, which is believed to be her motive for the abduction.

Investigation and recovery

The case made national headlines in 2017 after new tips led investigators to Walterboro, South Carolina. Because there were no photographs taken of Kamiyah before her abduction, a computer-generated composite of her was created to distribute to the media. Distinctive features, such as Mongolian spots and an umbilical hernia, were included in reports. Mobley was swabbed, and a DNA sample taken from Mobley after she was born was matched to a swab taken from the potential match.

After the match was confirmed, Mobley was described as "in good health but overwhelmed". She had been living in South Carolina under the name Alexis Manigo and had since graduated from Colleton County High School and had a boyfriend. She had been raised alongside Gloria Williams' two other children. Mobley connected with her father and grandmother over FaceTime and planned to reunite with other biological family members in person. She had never met her biological father, as he was incarcerated at the time of her birth for drug possession and delivery, and because he was 19 while Shanara was 15 at the time of Kamiyah's conception.

Williams was arrested in South Carolina and extradited to Florida, where she was charged with kidnapping and interfering with custody. She had a prior history with law enforcement, having previously been charged with check and welfare fraud. Mobley described Williams as "no felon" and insisted that Williams raised her with "everything [she] needed".

In February 2018, Williams pleaded guilty to kidnapping. She admitted she acted alone in the 1998 abduction.

On June 8, 2018, Williams was sentenced to 18 years in prison for the kidnapping of Mobley, who still communicates with Williams and refers to as her mother. In March 2022, Williams was denied a motion to reduce her sentence to nine years. The plea included a handwritten letter from Mobley in support of the motion, stating "I would like to make it very clear that she is my mother." Williams is pursuing a master's degree in business administration and completing community service while serving her sentence at the Hernando Correctional Institution. She is scheduled for release on July 9, 2034.

Adaptation

Lifetime announced a film called Stolen by My Mother: The Kamiyah Mobley Story, which aired on January 18, 2020, as part of its "Ripped from the Headlines" feature film. The film stars Rayven Ferrell as Kamiyah Mobley, Niecy Nash as Gloria Williams, and Ta'Rhonda Jones as Shanara Mobley. Robin Roberts serves as the executive producer.

Michael Fagan: Buckingham Palace Intruder

 Michael Fagan (born 8 August 1948) is a British citizen who intruded into Queen Elizabeth II's bedroom in Buckingham Palace in 1982.

Early life

Michael Fagan was born in Clerkenwell, London, on 8 August 1948, the son of Ivy and Michael Fagan, Sr. His father was a steel erector and a "champion" safe-breaker. He had two younger sisters, Marjorie and Elizabeth. In 1955, he attended Compton Street School in Clerkenwell (later St Peter & St Paul RC Primary School). In 1966, he left home at 18 to escape his father, who, Fagan says, was violent. He started working as a painter and decorator. In 1972, he married Christine, with whom he had four children (she left him the year of the break-ins, but later came back). At some point in the 1970s–1980s, Fagan was a member of a North London branch of the Workers Revolutionary Party.

Break-ins

First entry

In early July 1982, Fagan intruded into Buckingham Palace. He stated that he shimmied up a drainpipe and startled a housemaid, who called security. He disappeared before guards arrived, who then disbelieved the housemaid's report. Fagan said he then entered the palace through an unlocked window on the roof and wandered around for the next half-hour while eating cheese and crackers. Three alarms in total were tripped, but the police turned them off, believing they were faulty. He viewed royal portraits and sat for some time on a throne. He also spoke of entering the postroom. He drank a half bottle of white wine, became tired, and left.

Second entry

At around 7:00 a.m. on 9 July 1982, Fagan scaled Buckingham Palace's 14-foot-high (4.3 m) perimeter wall, which was topped with revolving spikes and barbed wire, and climbed up a drainpipe. An alarm sensor detected his movements, but police thought the alarm was faulty and silenced it. Fagan wandered the corridors for several minutes before reaching the royal apartments. In an anteroom, Fagan broke a glass ashtray, cutting his hand. He entered the bedroom of Queen Elizabeth II at about 7:15 a.m. carrying a fragment of glass.

The Queen woke when Fagan disturbed a curtain. Initial reports said he had sat on the edge of her bed; however, Fagan said in a 2012 interview that the Queen left the room immediately to seek security. The Queen phoned the palace switchboard twice for police, but none arrived, so she used her bedside alarm bell; she also beckoned a housemaid in the corridor, who was quickly dispatched to seek urgent help. The duty footman, Paul Whybrew, who had been walking the Queen's dogs, arrived, followed by two policemen on palace duty, who removed Fagan. The incident had happened as the armed police officer outside the royal bedroom came off duty before his replacement arrived.

A subsequent police report was critical of the competence of officers on duty, as well as a system of confused and divided command. The Home Secretary, who held sole responsibility for the police, William Whitelaw, offered his resignation but it was refused by the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.

Arrest

Since Fagan's actions were, at the time, a civil wrong rather than a criminal offense, he was not charged with trespassing in the Queen's bedroom. He was charged with theft of the wine, but the charges were dropped when he was committed for psychiatric evaluation. In late July, Fagan's mother said, "He thinks so much of the Queen. I can imagine him just wanting to simply talk and say hello and discuss his problems." He spent the next three months in a psychiatric hospital before being released on 21 January 1983.

It was not until 2007, when Buckingham Palace became a "designated site" for the purposes of section 128 of the Serious Organized Crime and Police Act 2005, that trespass at the palace became a criminal offense.

Later life

Two years after entering Buckingham Palace, Fagan attacked a policeman at a café in Fishguard, Wales, and was given a three-month suspended sentence. In 1983, Fagan recorded a cover version of the Sex Pistols song "God Save the Queen" with punk band the Bollock Brothers. In 1997, he was imprisoned for four years after he, his wife, and their 20-year-old son Arran were charged with conspiring to supply heroin.

Fagan made an appearance in Channel 4's The Antics Roadshow, an hour-long 2011 TV documentary directed by the artist Banksy and Jaimie D'Cruz charting the history of people behaving oddly in public.

After the death of the Queen on 8 September 2022, Fagan told reporters that he had lit a candle in her memory at a local church.

In fiction

The intrusion was adapted in 2012 for an episode of Sky Arts' Playhouse Presents series entitled "Walking the Dogs", a one-off British comedy-drama featuring Emma Thompson as the Queen and Eddie Marsan as the intruder. In 2020, Tom Brooke played Fagan in the fifth episode of season 4 of The Crown. The intrusion also inspired Trinidadian calypso singer Mighty Sparrow to write his ironic song "Phillip My Dear", very loosely based on the event.

The Norfolk Four

 

The Norfolk Four are four former United States Navy sailors: Joseph J. Dick Jr., Derek Tice, Danial Williams, and Eric C. Wilson, who were wrongfully convicted of the 1997 rape and murder of Michelle Moore-Bosko while they were stationed at Naval Station Norfolk. They each declared that they had made false confessions, and their convictions are considered highly controversial. A fifth man, Omar Ballard, confessed and pleaded guilty to the crime in 2000, insisting that he had acted alone. He had been in prison since 1998 because of violent attacks on two other women in 1997. He was the only one of the suspects whose DNA matched that collected at the crime scene, and whose confession was consistent with other forensic evidence.

Nearly ten years later, after the four recanted their confessions and entered years of appeals, they gained support for a clemency campaign and received conditional pardons in 2009 from then-Virginia Governor Tim Kaine. New exculpatory evidence was found after that and the Norfolk Four were exonerated in 2017, receiving absolute pardons by Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe. In December 2018, they received a combined settlement of $4.9 million from the City of Norfolk and $3.5 million from the Commonwealth of Virginia for their wrongful convictions.

These four were among a total of eight men whom the Norfolk Police indicted and initially prosecuted as suspects in what the prosecution said was a multiple-offender crime. Three men, named by others from the four, were released and their charges dismissed, because of lack of evidence against them. Omar Ballard, a man who had an independent association with the Boskos, was the last arrested for this crime in March 1999 after it was found his DNA matched that at the crime scene, and was the only match made. He confessed in March and April 1999 and insisted that he committed the rape and murder of Moore-Bosko by himself, but the prosecution continued to press the theory of a group crime. In 2000, Ballard pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 100 years in prison, 59 of which were suspended by the court. Forensic evidence is consistent with his account that there were no other participants.

Each of the Norfolk Four had confessed to the police about these crimes, but later recanted their confessions, saying they had been threatened and coerced by Norfolk detectives, and their confessions were false. Williams and Dick pleaded guilty to rape and murder before trial, under threat of receiving the death penalty. Dick testified for the state in trials in 1999 and 2000 against the other two defendants. Each of their DNA was excluded from matching the collected evidence from the scene. As there was virtually no physical evidence against them, Wilson and Tice were convicted by juries based on their confessions. With the plea deals and trial, Tice, Williams, and Dick, were convicted of both rape and capital murder, and sentenced to one or more life sentences without the possibility of parole (LWOP). Wilson was acquitted of murder but convicted of rape; he was sentenced and served 8½ years in prison.

Events and investigation

On July 8, 1997, Bill Bosko, a 19-year-old sailor in the US Navy, returned home after a week at sea and found the body of his wife Michelle Moore-Bosko, 18, who had been murdered at their apartment at the Bayshore Apartment Gardens in Norfolk, Virginia. High school sweethearts, they had married in April 1997 in Norfolk. He went to his neighbor Danial Williams's apartment for help, and they called the Norfolk Police Department.

Moore-Bosko was found to have been raped, stabbed, and strangled to death. At the time, police noted that there were no signs of a break-in or a large struggle inside the apartment. The crime was estimated to have taken place during the night before, sometime after 11:30 p.m. on July 7, 1997. Neighbor Tamika Taylor said she had been out with Moore-Bosko most of that day from noon until that time.

The coroner's report said that Moore-Bosko had died due to being stabbed and strangled. As introduced in evidence in the trials, the state's medical examiner described the stab wounds to Moore-Bosko as of a uniform depth and clustered closely together. He said that the pattern was consistent with a scenario in which one assailant had stabbed her multiple times, but there was an outside possibility of more.

As the Norfolk police investigation progressed, detectives questioned residents of Moore-Bosko's development. Tamika Taylor told one of them that their neighbor, Danial Williams, was "obsessed" with the murdered woman. Williams, also a sailor in the U.S. Navy, lived in an apartment across the hall from the Boskos, with his wife Nicole. They had recently married after she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer (she died on November 2, 1997). They shared their apartment with Joe Dick (Joseph P. Dick, Jr.), another sailor who was a shipmate from Williams's USS Saipan.

Confessions

Detective Ford arrested Williams and led the interrogations. According to Williams, he had been interrogated for eight hours before Ford began at 5 A.M. He obtained a confession from Williams within another hour. Williams said he felt threatened and treated like a criminal until he was overwhelmed and worn down.

His later defense lawyers (as of 2007) said it appeared Ford and other investigators were satisfied with Williams's confession and after they indicted him in August 1997, not much happened in the investigation for several months. The attorneys found no record or evidence that the police ever searched Williams's apartment despite his status as a prime suspect, or tried to recover any evidence, such as blood from the crime scene, his own blood, or DNA from the victim on his clothing or items in his apartment. They never took an affidavit from his wife. The Norfolk Commonwealth's Attorney's office, which conducts prosecutions, later refused Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for records related to the Norfolk Four case.

His attorneys asked the court for funds to investigate further crimes in the area, which would have revealed the additional rape by Ballard, but the funds were never spent. Several days after his wife's death in early November, he filed a motion to suppress his confession, but the court rejected it.

It was not until December 11, 1997, that police learned that Williams' DNA did not match the DNA evidence taken from the scene. They did not tell his attorney until April 30, 1998. In January 1998 they offered him a plea bargain in exchange for a life sentence, which he refused. Needing to expand their field, they arrested Williams' roommate and shipmate Joe Dick as a suspect.

Dick maintained his innocence for hours, saying that he was on duty on his ship USS Saipan at the time of the murder. According to a 2007 New York Times feature article, neither his supervising Chief Petty Officer, Senior Chief Michael Ziegler, nor his supervisor, Commander Scott Rettie, were interviewed by Norfolk police or Dick's defense counsel Michael Fasanaro, Jr. As far as the Navy men knew, no records were sought from the ship, although ship logs and attendance records show clearly who is on duty at every hour. Those records were destroyed before the New York Times published a feature on this case in August 2007.

Dick's original defense attorney, Fasanaro, and the lead prosecuting assistant commonwealth's attorney, Damian J. Hansen, continued to assert that Dick was not on the ship that night. But Ziegler told the New York Times in 2007 that he had "no doubt" that Dick was on duty that night. Already aware of and concerned about what he perceived as Dick's limited mental capacity, Ziegler stressed the high security maintained on the ship. He did not believe that Dick was capable of sneaking off and on the ship to commit the crime and return. But, since Dick pleaded guilty before trial, the state never had to prove their assertion or break his alibi.

Eleven weeks later, in March 1998, Dick's DNA was also excluded as a match to the forensic DNA evidence found on Moore-Bosko. Because Williams had refused the plea bargain offered by the prosecution, his attorneys ordered a competency evaluation in February 1998. He told the psychiatrist that he was not guilty and had made a false confession.

Investigation expands, new arrests are made and confessions are gained

The police and prosecution decided to widen their search again for suspects. A jailhouse informant, at the jail where Dick was being held pending trial, suggested that he name a co-conspirator. He named Eric Wilson, another sailor. Wilson's DNA was also excluded from matching the evidence at the scene.

The police came back to Dick for more suspects. He said that a fourth man, whom he called "George" but who he identified from Navy photographs as Derek Tice, was also involved. Three of these four men were on active duty with the Navy and one was recently retired. None of them had a prior criminal record. Ford went to Florida, where Tice was then living, to arrest him.

After being arrested and interrogated for eleven hours, Tice finally confessed to the crime. In the process, he implicated two additional Navy men as having been involved in the crime. He claimed that the group of several men had broken into the apartment and each attacked Moore-Bosko. But this contradicted the police review of the crime scene and evidence. The apartment did not appear to have been broken into or disrupted, and there was no evidence of wide-scale violence from several people. The small apartment was neat and clean. Within weeks, Tice's DNA was also excluded from matching the DNA evidence collected at the scene.

These men: John Pauley, (USN), retired; and Geoffrey A. Farris, (USN) arrested for rape and capital murder but did not confess. Farris asked for counsel and stopped his interrogation. Pauley was verified as being hundreds of miles away, where he lived and worked, at the time of the murder, as shown by his work records and by bank records of his having withdrawn money from a cash machine at that distant location. At a late August 1998 hearing about Pauley and Farris, Dick testified that these two were involved in the attack on Moore-Bosko, but said he had not seen Farris stab her. Their attorneys challenged the theory of multiple offenders, but the judge decided there was probable cause and indicted them.

After being interrogated again in October 1998, Tice named John E. Danser, (USN), as a seventh suspect. He did not confess; he had retired from the Navy and lived and worked in Warminster, Pennsylvania, 300 miles from Norfolk. Despite his having two paper records supporting that he was there at the time of the murder, he was indicted for rape and capital murder.

In November Tice recanted his accusation against Danser and his own confession when talking to Detective Ford, but the Commonwealth attorney's office did not give this information to Danser's attorney. A month later, Tice repeated his accusation against Danser at the latter's preliminary hearing.

In February 1999, a refined DNA test excluded all seven men from the forensic DNA associated with the crime. None of the last three men indicted was tried, and the state charges against them were eventually dismissed. But detective Glenn Ford and prosecutor Damian J. Hansen continued to act at the trials of Wilson and Tice in 1999 and 2000 as if the other men were still part of a large, multiple-offender attack.

Omar Ballard

In the summer of 1997, Omar Abdul Ballard met the Bosko couple. On June 27, 1997, he had beaten Melissa Morse with a bat at the Bayshore Apartment Gardens complex, where the Boskos also lived. That night, his friend Tamika Taylor took him to her neighbors, the Boskos for refuge. William Bosko briefly gave him shelter at their apartment, turning away men who were seeking him.

On July 17, 1997, about 10 days after the rape and murder of Moore-Bosko, Ballard beat and raped a fourteen-year-old girl about a mile from the Bayshore apartment complex. He was later apprehended and, on January 15, 1998, he pleaded guilty to this crime. A month later he pleaded guilty to the attack on Morse. He was sentenced to a total of 41 years in prison for these two crimes. In February 1999, he sent a letter from prison to a female acquaintance threatening her and claiming to have murdered Michelle Moore-Bosko.

In 2005 Taylor claimed that she had told the Norfolk police soon after the Moore-Bosko murder that they should investigate Ballard as a possible suspect.

Ballard was not investigated until February 1999, after the police received a copy of the letter he wrote from prison claiming he had killed Moore-Bosko. He twice confessed to the police in March 1999, and again in April 1999, in papers filed with the court.

In March 1999 he was arrested as the eighth suspect in this case: his DNA was verified as matching that found at the Moore-Bosko crime scene; he was the only suspect whose DNA did match that at the scene. In addition, Ballard confessed to the crime. Unlike the other suspects, he provided details of the crime in his confession that was consistent with the physical and forensic evidence. He told investigators that "They four people who opened their mouths is stupid". Despite police and prosecution pressure to implicate Williams, Dick, Tice, and Wilson, Ballard insisted until his plea bargain that he had committed the crime alone. He did not testify against the four other defendants who confessed.

However, the police and prosecutors incorporated Ballard into their theory of a group crime with multiple offenders, which had grown to include eight assailants. Seven of the men had associations through the Navy. They claimed in court that Ballard refused to name his accomplices for fear of being labeled a "snitch". They said that the first four suspects arrested, although they had been willing to implicate others in the crime, were afraid of Ballard, and specifically refused to implicate him. But they did not know him. In June 1999, Ballard was indicted for rape, capital murder, and robbery.

Eight men were arrested and indicted

(Listed in order of arrest for capital murder and rape from July 1997 to June 1999; ages at time of crime)

Danial Williams (USN) 25

Joseph J. Dick Jr. (USN) 21

Eric C. Wilson (USN) 21

Derek Tice (USN) 27

Richard D. Pauley Jr. (USN), was interrogated but did not confess to the crime. Records supported that he was talking and emailing with his girlfriend in Australia for 3 hours in the period when the murder was believed committed; although he was indicted, charges against him were dismissed.

Geoffrey A. Farris (USN), was interrogated but asked for an attorney and did not confess.

John E. Danser (USN), worked and lived nearly 300 miles away in Warminster, Pennsylvania, by the time of the murder. He did not confess. He had two records that established him in Pennsylvania; charges against him were finally dismissed before trial.

Omar Ballard pleaded guilty in 1998 to beating Melissa Morse and to raping a 14-year-old; he was sentenced to 41 years and was serving time for those crimes when arrested and interrogated in the Moore-Bosko rape/murder. He confessed to the crime in detail, saying he had acted alone. He had earlier taken credit for it in a February 1999 letter to a friend.

Trials

Threatened by the prosecution with potential sentences of the death penalty, Williams and Dick each pleaded guilty to rape and capital murder and agreed to a stipulation of facts, Williams in January 1999. They were not tried before a jury. They were each sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole (LWOP). In addition, Dick agreed to testify as the state's witness against the other two defendants in their trials.

Wilson's trial began on June 14, 1999. He was acquitted of murder and found guilty of rape. He recanted his confession and explained that he had given it to end Ford's aggressive interrogation. Damian J. Hansen was co-prosecutor, one of the three assistant commonwealth attorneys of the Norfolk Commonwealth's Attorney's office who prosecuted the eight men originally arrested for these crimes.

Defense counsels for Wilson and Tice noted at each of their trials that the DNA of each of the men was excluded from that found with the forensic DNA of Moore-Bosko and the crime scene. But Hansen said that the lack of DNA evidence did not mean that these defendants were not at the scene, and they emphasized the recorded confessions of each man. The defense counsels noted that Ballard had confessed to having committed the rape and murder by himself and that the police had said the apartment was not broken into, but the prosecution persisted in arguing there was a group attack.

In September 1999, Wilson was sentenced to eight and a half years. Because of widespread pre-trial publicity about the sensational case, Tice's defense counsels gained a change of venue to Alexandria, Virginia. Tice's trial started on November 22, 1999, and he pleaded not guilty. Dick testified against him, but the only real evidence was his signed statement, which he had recanted.

Despite having confessed, at this trial, Ballard denied being involved in the crimes against Moore-Bosko. Judge Poston refused to allow the defense to introduce Ballard's previous confessions of March and April 1999 to be introduced, as the defendant had said on the stand that they were "lies". Poston refused to let James Broccoletti, Tice's attorney, question Ballard about his February 1999 confession letter, or to introduce evidence related to his other crimes against women, for which he was serving time. Poston also denied a defense motion to call an expert witness about false confessions but allowed the defense to question Detective Glenn Ford about his interrogation techniques. Tice was found guilty of rape and capital murder in February 2000. In June 2000 he was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences.

After Tice's trial, on March 22, 2000, Ballard pleaded guilty to rape and murder of Moore-Bosko; he said he incriminated the Norfolk Four in his associated statement in exchange for a sentence of two life terms in prison, after being threatened with the death penalty by the prosecution. He did not testify against Tice.

In 2001 Damian J. Hansen was transferred from Norfolk to the City of Chesapeake Commonwealth Attorney's Office, from where he continued to prosecute the Norfolk Four cases as appeals and petitions for clemency were made. In 2013 he was Deputy Attorney of the office; Chesapeake is the third-most-populous city in Virginia.

Retrials, appeals, and release

Williams appealed his verdict to the Virginia court but was denied in 2000.

Tice appealed his conviction, and it was reversed in 2002 by the Virginia Court of Appeals. It ruled that Judge Charles Poston had not allowed Tice's attorney to question Ballard about his written confession. The case was remanded to the lower court.

 During the January 2003 retrial of Tice, Judge Poston again presided. Dick testified against Tice again for the state, saying he and the other two men of the Four were involved in the attack. Judge Poston refused to allow Ballard's confession or statements to be introduced as evidence because he said they were not properly authenticated. He did allow Tice's defense attorney to read Ballard's February 1999 confession letter aloud. Tice was again convicted by a jury, and sentenced to two life sentences in prison.

2004 support by pro-bono lawyers and the Innocence Project

The case of the Norfolk Four had attracted increasing attention and there was concern about the interrogations and convictions. Three major Washington, DC area law firms committed pro bono lawyers to provide counsel to each of the men in their appeals and other legal actions. Representatives of the Innocence Project also became involved.

Tice's second conviction was overturned on November 27, 2006, by a Virginia circuit court review on constitutional grounds, of lack of adequate defense counsel. Judge Everett A. Martin concluded that "the police violated the well-established rule that once a suspect has invoked his right to remain silent, the police must stop questioning." In addition, "‘There was no fingerprint, DNA, or other scientific evidence against [Tice], no independent eyewitnesses implicated him; no physical evidence implicated him,’ the judge explained. The judge concluded it was likely the jury would have acquitted Tice had the confession not been part of the trial evidence." The state appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court, which reaffirmed and thus reinstated the conviction.

Tice filed a petition for habeas corpus with a United States District Court. On September 14, 2009, U.S. District Judge Richard L. Williams vacated Tice's rape and murder convictions, because Tice had been denied his constitutional right to effective counsel. On November 19, 2009, Judge Williams ruled that prosecutors could retry Tice. The state appealed the decision.

On April 20, 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed Judge Williams' ruling to vacate Tice's convictions. Tice was freed later in 2011 after the Fourth Circuit ruled that the lower court should have thrown out Tice's confession.

Wilson had been released from prison in 2005 after completing his sentence. He was required to continue to register as a sex offender with local authorities for the rest of his life and had severe restrictions limiting where he could work and live. In March 2010, he asked the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia for a writ of habeas corpus challenging his conviction. The court refused to hear Wilson's case, saying that since he was no longer in prison, on probation, on parole, or on supervised release, he was not in custody, and therefore could not petition for habeas. The Fourth Circuit also refused to hear the case.

 In May 2010, former detective Robert Glenn Ford of Norfolk, who had retired, was indicted in Virginia in May 2010 on unrelated federal extortion charges of accepting payments over years from criminal suspects in return for favorable treatment. He was found guilty in federal court of two of the four counts against him.

After the conviction of Ford, attorneys for the Norfolk Four called for the full exoneration of their clients. In 2013, Yale Law School's Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic filed a petition for the US Supreme Court to clear Wilson's record of his crimes. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli did not file a response, but the US Supreme Court ordered him to file a brief by April 25, 2013.

On June 24, 2013, Wilson's petition for a writ of certiorari to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals was denied. The case is Wilson v. Flaherty, No. 12-986.

On October 26, 2016, U.S. District Judge John A. Gibney Jr. ruled that "by any measure," the evidence showed that Danial Williams and Joseph J. Dick did not commit the rape and murder to which they each pleaded guilty, and "no sane human being" could convict them by the available evidence. After Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring (D) "conceded errors in the initial investigation and withdrew his office’s long-standing opposition to their claims of innocence", Gibney vacated the convictions of Williams and Dick and exonerated them. The state withdrew all charges against them.

By that time Tice's conviction had been overturned and he had been released from prison. As noted, Wilson's efforts to be formally declared innocent (to clear his name and be removed from the sex offender register) were rejected by the courts because he was no longer in custody.

Clemency pets were filed in 2005; absolute pardons were granted in 2017

By 2005 the Norfolk Four had attracted support from the Innocence Project, and teams of pro bono attorneys from three different firms began to work on their legal appeals and clemency petitions. The work was supported by a 60-page report by the Academy Group, Inc., a Virginia forensic consulting firm. Based on its review of the evidence and confessions, it concluded that none of the Norfolk Four had been involved in the rape and murder of Moore-Bosko and that Ballard was solely responsible as he had claimed.

That year attorneys for Dick, Tice, and Williams petitioned for clemency on November 10, 2005, from Virginia Governor Mark Warner, as they were each serving life sentences. Warner did not rule on the petition, but it was considered by his successor, Governor Tim Kaine. Several retired FBI agents supported the men's claims of innocence, as did eleven of the jurors who had initially publicly convicted Tice and Wilson. These jurors submitted affidavits in support of the sailors' clemency request before the Virginia State Parole Board, saying that they believed the men were innocent. Eventually some "10 former state attorney generals, more than 20 former FBI agents, and 13 original jurors in two of the cases" publicly supported their innocence.

On August 6, 2009, Kaine granted a conditional pardon to Dick, Tice, and Williams, which gained their release from prison. But this action did not vacate their convictions. As part of the conditional release, the three men, like Wilson, were still required to register with local authorities as sex offenders and felons, a requirement that meant they had to frequently return to update their records and had severe restrictions on work, movement, and where they could live.

As noted in the section above, the convictions of Williams and Dick were vacated by a federal court in October 2016, after evidentiary proceedings and the Virginia Attorney General's Office ended its opposition. Tice's conviction had already been overturned. In November 2016 the Virginia Attorney General instructed the Norfolk Police to videotape all interrogations and confessions in cases relating to homicides.

On March 21, 2017, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe granted absolute pardons to the Norfolk Four. These cleared their names and removed them from the sex offender and felon registers.

In a statement, a spokesman for the governor said:

"These pardons close the final chapter on a grave injustice that has plagued these 4 men for nearly 20 years. While former Governor Kaine had initially granted conditional pardons in the case, more exculpatory information discovered since then and detailed by Judge John Gibney during exhaustive evidentiary proceedings indicate that absolute pardons are appropriate."

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The Norfolk Four filed a civil suit against the city and state for their wrongful convictions. In December 2018 both jurisdictions settled: the City of Norfolk agreed to $4.9 million in compensation and the state to an additional $3.5 million to be awarded in total to the four men.

Representation in other media

The case was featured in the 2001 episode of Forensic Files, entitled "Eight Men Out".

Off Center Media made a video, "The Norfolk 4: A Miscarriage of Justice" (2005), used to support their petitions for clemency.

Tom Wells and Richard A. Leo wrote a non-fiction book about these men and events, The Wrong Guys: Murder, False Confessions, and the Norfolk Four (2009).

In 2009 author John Grisham was reported to be writing a screenplay about the case. He had become interested after reading the unpublished manuscript by Wells and Leo for The Wrong Guys. He is on the board of the Innocence Project and encouraged the Virginia governor to pardon the Four.

A documentary of the Norfolk Four events was featured as The Confessions (2010) on Frontline. It was investigated and produced by Ofra Bikel. This aired on PBS on November 9, 2010. It is available to stream on the website, with supporting materials.

1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike

 

The 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike (also known as the 1934 West Coast Longshoremen's Strike, as well as several variations on these names) lasted 83 days and began on May 9, 1934, when longshoremen in every US West Coast port walked out. Organized by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), the strike peaked with the death of two workers on "Bloody Thursday" and the San Francisco General Strike which stopped all work in the major port city for four days and led ultimately to the settlement of the West Coast Longshoremen's Strike.

The result of the strike was the unionization of all of the West Coast ports of the United States. The San Francisco General Strike of 1934, along with the Toledo Auto-Lite Strike of 1934 led by the American Workers Party and the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934 led by the Communist League of America, were catalysts for the rise of industrial unionism in the 1930s, much of which was organized through the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

Background

Longshoremen on the West Coast ports had either been unorganized or represented by company unions since the years immediately after World War I when the shipping companies and stevedoring firms had imposed the open shop after a series of failed strikes. Longshoremen in San Francisco, then the major port on the coast, were required to go through a hiring hall operated by a company union, known as the "blue book" system for the color of the membership book.

The Industrial Workers of the World had attempted to organize longshoremen, sailors, and fishermen in the 1920s through their Marine Transport Workers Union. Their largest strike, the 1923 San Pedro Maritime Strike, bottled up shipping in that harbor but was crushed by a combination of injunctions, mass arrests, and vigilantism by the American Legion. While the IWW was a spent force after that strike, syndicalist thinking remained popular on the docks. Longshoremen and sailors on the West Coast also had contacts with an Australian syndicalist movement that called itself the "One Big Union" formed after the defeat of a general strike there in 1917.

The Communist Party had also been active in the area in the late 1920s, seeking to organize all categories of maritime workers into a single union, the Marine Workers Industrial Union (MWIU), as part of the drive during the Third Period to create revolutionary unions. The MWIU never made much headway on the West Coast, but it did attract several former IWW members and foreign-born militants. Harry Bridges, an Australian-born sailor who became a longshoreman after coming to the United States, was repeatedly accused of his acknowledged Communist party membership.

Militants published a newspaper, The Waterfront Worker, which focused on longshoremen's most pressing demands: more men on each gang, lighter loads, and an independent union. While a number of the individuals in this group were Communist Party members, the group as a whole was independent of the party: although it criticized the International Seamen's Union (ISU) as weak and the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), which had its base on the East Coast, as corrupt, it did not embrace the MWIU, but called instead for creation of small knots of activists at each port to serve as the first step in a slow, careful movement to unionize the industry.

Events soon made the MWIU wholly irrelevant. Just as the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act had led to a spontaneous significant rise in union membership among coal miners in 1933, thousands of longshoremen now joined the fledgling ILA locals that reappeared on the West Coast. The MWIU faded away as party activists followed the mass of West Coast longshoremen into the ILA.

These newly emboldened workers first went after the "blue book" union, refusing to pay dues to it and tearing up their membership books. The militants who had published "The Waterfront Worker", now known as the "Albion Hall group" after their usual meeting place, continued organizing dock committees that soon began launching slowdowns and other types of job actions to win better working conditions. While the official leadership of the ILA remained in the hands of conservatives sent to the West Coast by President Joseph P. Ryan of the ILA, the Albion Hall group started in March 1934 to press demands for a coastwide contract, a union-run hiring hall and an industry-wide waterfront federation. When the conservative ILA leadership negotiated a weak "gentlemen's agreement" with the employers that had been brokered by the mediation board created by the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Bridges led the membership in rejecting it.

The sticking point in the strike was recognition: the union demanded a closed shop, a coastwide contract, and a union hiring hall. The employers offered to arbitrate the dispute but insisted that the union agree to an open shop as a condition of any agreement to arbitrate. The longshoremen rejected the proposal to arbitrate.

The Big Strike

The strike began on May 9, 1934, as longshoremen in every West Coast port walked out; sailors joined them several days later. The employers recruited strikebreakers, housing them on moored ships or in walled compounds and bringing them to and from work under police protection. Strikers attacked the stockade housing strikebreakers in San Pedro on May 15; police fired into the strikers, killing two and injuring many. The killing of Dick Parker created resentment up and down the coast. Daily similar smaller clashes broke out in San Francisco and Oakland, California, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington. Strikers also succeeded in slowing down or stopping the movement of goods by rail out of the ports.

The Roosevelt administration tried again to broker a deal to end the strike, but the membership twice rejected the agreements their leadership brought to them and continued the strike. The employers then decided to make a show of force to reopen the port in San Francisco. On Tuesday, July 3, fights broke out along the Embarcadero in San Francisco between police and strikers while a handful of trucks driven by young businessmen made it through the picket line.

Some Teamsters supported the strikers by refusing to handle "hot cargo" – goods that had been unloaded by strikebreakers – although the Teamsters' leadership was not as supportive. By the end of May, Dave Beck, president of the Seattle Teamsters, and Mike Casey, president of those in San Francisco, thought the maritime strike had lasted too long. They encouraged the strikers to take what they could get from the employers and threatened to use Teamsters as strikebreakers if the ILA did not return to work.

Shipping companies, government officials, some union leaders, and the press began to raise fears that the strike was the result of communist agitation. This "red scare" also helped ignite a controversy about the New Deal Public Works of Art Project murals that were at the time being completed in San Francisco's Coit Tower (on Telegraph Hill, close to the location of the strike in San Francisco), leading to the postponing of the tower's July 7 opening, and later to the removal of communist symbols from two of the American Social Realism style murals.

May 15, 1934      San Pedro, CA                   When 500 strikers attacked and tried to set fire to a ship housing strikebreakers in San Pedro, police unsuccessfully tried to stop them with tear gas, then shot into the crowd, killing strikers Dick Parker and John Knudsen.

June 30, 1934     Seattle, WA                        Upon hearing that replacement crews were about to take two oil tankers out of the port, union members went to the dock. When the longshoremen tried to get past the dock's gates, they were ambushed by guards. Worker Shelvy Daffron was shot in the back and later died.

July 5, 1934         San Francisco, CA             When striking longshoremen surrounded a San Francisco police car and tried to tip it over, the police shot into the air and then fired into the crowd, killing Nick Bordoise (originally named Nick Counderakis) and Howard Sperry.

August 20, 1934                Portland, OR                      James Connor, a 22-year-old college student and newlywed working as a replacement worker on his vacation, was shot and killed in an altercation with striking longshoremen. This was one of a string of violent incidents, including visiting Senator Robert F. Wagner coming under fire. A second replacement worker named R.A. Griffin was also wounded in the head.

"Bloody Thursday"

After a quiet Fourth of July, the employers' organization, the Industrial Association, tried to open the port of San Francisco even further on Thursday, July 5. As spectators watched from Rincon Hill, the police shot tear gas canisters into the crowd and then followed with a charge by mounted police. Picketers threw the canisters and rocks back at the police, who charged again, sending the picketers into retreat. Each side then refortified and took stock.

The events took a violent turn that afternoon, as hostilities resumed outside of the ILA strike kitchen. Eyewitness accounts differ on the exact events that transpired next. According to some witnesses, a group of strikers first surrounded a police car and attempted to tip it over, prompting the police to fire shotguns in the air, and then revolvers at the crowd. Other eyewitness accounts claim that police officers started shooting in the direction of the strikers, provoking strikers to defend themselves. Policemen fired a shotgun into the crowd, striking three men in the intersection of Steuart and Mission streets. One of the men, Howard Sperry, a striking longshoreman, later died of his wounds. Another man, Charles Olsen, was also shot but later recovered from his wounds. A third man, Nick Bordoise – a Greek by birth (originally named Nick Counderakis) who was an out-of-work member of the cook's union volunteering at the ILA strike kitchen – was shot but managed to make his way around the corner onto Spear Street, where he was found several hours later. Like Sperry, he died at the hospital.

Strikers immediately cordoned off the area where the two picketers had been shot, laying flowers and wreaths around it. Police arrived to remove the flowers and drove off the picketers minutes later. Once the police left, the strikers returned, replaced the flowers, and stood guard over the spot. Though Sperry and Bordoise had been shot several blocks apart, this spot became synonymous with the memory of the two slain men and "Bloody Thursday".

As strikers carried wounded picketers into the ILA union hall police fired on the hall and lobbed tear gas canisters at nearby hotels. At this point, someone reportedly called the union hall to ask "Are you willing to arbitrate now?".

Under orders from California Governor Frank Merriam, the California National Guard moved in that evening to patrol the waterfront. Similarly, federal soldiers of the United States Army stationed at the Presidio were placed on alert. The picketers pulled back, unwilling to take on armed soldiers in an uneven fight, and trucks and trains began moving without interference. Bridges asked the San Francisco Labor Council to meet that Saturday, July 7, to authorize a general strike. The Alameda County Central Labor Council in Oakland considered the same action. Teamsters in both San Francisco and Oakland voted to strike, over the objections of their leaders, on Sunday, July 8.

Funerals and general strike

The following day, several thousand strikers, families, and sympathizers took part in a funeral procession down Market Street, stretching more than a mile and a half, for Nicholas Bordoise and Howard Sperry, the two persons killed on "Bloody Thursday". The police were wholly absent from the scene. The march made an enormous impact on San Franciscans, making a general strike, which had formerly been "the visionary dream of a small group of the most radical workers, became ... a practical and realizable objective." After dozens of Bay Area unions voted for a general strike over the next few days, the San Francisco Labor Council voted on July 14 to call a general strike. The Teamsters had already been out for two days by that point.

San Francisco Mayor Angelo Rossi declared a state of emergency. Some federal officials, particularly Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, were more skeptical. Roosevelt later recalled that some persons were urging him to steer the USS Houston, which was carrying him to Hawaii, "into San Francisco Bay, all flags flying and guns double-shotted, and end the strike." Roosevelt rejected the suggestion.

The general strike began on the 16th, involving some 150,000 workers. On the 17th the police arrested more than 300 "radicals, subversives, and communists" while systematically smashing furniture and equipment of organizations related to the strike; the same day, General Hugh S. Johnson as head of the National Recovery Administration spoke at UC Berkeley to denounce the general strike as "a menace to the government".

The strike lasted four days. Non-union truck drivers joined the first day; the movie theaters and nightclubs closed down. While food deliveries continued with the permission of the strike committee, many small businesses closed, posting signs in support of the strikers. Reports that unions in Portland and Seattle would also begin general strikes picked up currency.

End of the strike

The calling of a general strike had an unexpected result: it gave the General Strike Committee, whose makeup was far less militant than the longshoremen's strike committee, effective control over the maritime strike itself. When the Labor Council voted to terminate the general strike it also recommended that the unions accept arbitration of all disputed issues. When the National Longshore Board put the employer's proposal to arbitrate to a vote of striking longshoremen, it passed in every port except Everett, Washington.

That, however, left the striking seamen in the lurch: the employers had refused to arbitrate with the ISU unless it first won elections on the fleets on strike. While Bridges, who had preached solidarity among all maritime workers and scorned arbitration, apologized to the seamen for the longshoremen's vote, the President of the ISU urged them to hold out and to burn their "fink books", the membership records of the company union to which they had been forced to pay dues.

On July 17, 1934, the California National Guard blocked both ends of Jackson Street from Drumm to Front with machine gun-mounted trucks to assist vigilante raids, protected by SFPD, on the headquarters of the Marine Workers' Industrial Union and the ILA soup kitchen at 84 Embarcadero. Moving on, the Workers' Ex-Servicemen's League's headquarters on Howard between Third and Fourth was raided, leading to 150 arrests and the complete destruction of the facilities. The employer's group, the Industrial Association, had agents riding with the police. Further raids were carried out at the Workers' Open Forum at 1223 Fillmore Street and the Western Worker building opposite City Hall which contained a bookstore and the main offices of the Communist Party, which were thoroughly destroyed. Attacks were also perpetrated on the 121 Haight Street Workers' School and the Mission Workers' Neighborhood House at 741 Valencia Street. A police spokesperson suggested that "maybe the Communists staged the raids themselves for publicity".

General Hugh S. Johnson, then head of the National Recovery Administration, gave a speech urging responsible labor leaders to "run these subversive influences out from its ranks like rats". A lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union was kidnapped and beaten, while vigilantes seized thirteen radicals in San Jose and turned them over to the sheriff of an adjoining county, who transported them to another county. In Hayward in Alameda County, someone erected a scaffold in front of the city hall with a noose and a sign stating "Reds beware". In Piedmont, an upscale community surrounded by Oakland on all sides, the chief of police prepared for a reported attack by strikers on the homes of wealthy ship-owners.

Aftermath

While some of the most powerful people in San Francisco considered the strike's denouement to be a victory for the employers, many longshoremen and seamen did not. Spontaneous strikes over grievances and workplace conditions broke out as strikers returned to their jobs, with longshoremen and teamsters supporting their demands. Employers conceded many of these battles, giving workers even more confidence in demanding that employers lighten unbearably heavy loads. Longshoremen also began dictating other terms, fining members who worked more than the ceiling of 120 hours per month, filing charges against a gang boss for "slandering colored brothers" and forcing employers to fire strikebreakers. Other unions went further: the Marine Firemen proposed to punish any member who bought a Hearst newspaper.

The arbitration award issued on October 12, 1934, cemented the ILA's power. While the award put the operation of the hall in the hands of a committee of union and employer representatives, the union was given the power to select the dispatcher. Since longshoremen were prepared to walk out if an employer did not hire a worker dispatched from the hall, the ILA soon controlled hiring on the docks. The employers complained that the union wanted to "Sovietize" the waterfront. Workers complained that the employers were exploiting them for cheap labor and forcing them to work in unsafe conditions without reasonable safety measures.

The union soon utilized the "quickie strike" tactic to force many concessions from employers such as safer working conditions and better pay. Similarly, even though an arbitrator held that the 1935 Agreement prohibited sympathy strikes, the union's members nonetheless refused to cross other unions' picket lines. Longshoremen also refused to handle "hot cargo" destined for non-union warehouses that the union was attempting to organize. The ISU acquired similar authority over hiring, despite the philosophical objection of the union's own officers to hiring halls. The ISU used this power to drive strikebreakers out of the industry.

The rift between the seamen's and longshoremen's unions deepened and became more complex in the succeeding years, as Bridges continually fought with the Sailors' Union of the Pacific over labor and political issues. The West Coast district of the ILA broke off from the International in 1937 to form the International Longshoremen's Union, later renamed the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union after the union's "march inland" to organize warehouse workers, then renamed the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) in recognition of the number of women members.

The arbitration award also gave longshoremen a raise to ninety-five cents ($21 in 2022 dollars) an hour for straight-time work, just shy of the dollar an hour it demanded during the strike. It was also awarded a contract that applied up and down the West Coast. The strike also prompted union organizer Carmen Lucia to organize the Department Store Workers Union and the Retail Clerks Association in San Francisco.

Legacy

The ILWU continues to recognize "Bloody Thursday" by shutting down all West Coast ports every July 5 and honoring Nick Bordoise, Howard Sperry, and all of the other workers killed by police during the strike. The ILWU has frequently stopped work for political protests against, among other things, Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, fascist intervention in Spain's civil war, South Africa's system of apartheid, and the Iraq War.

Sam Kagel, the last surviving member of the original union steering committee, died on May 21, 2007, at the age of 98.

Bloody Thursday, a documentary film that told the story of the strike, was broadcast on PBS stations across the nation and was awarded a Los Angeles Area Emmy for best historical film in 2010.