On the night John Gilbride was murdered, September 26th, 2002, I was at a MOVE supporter meeting in a crowded room of a twin home in Pennsauken, NJ. I was living in the house, as were other MOVE supporters at the time. The home was owned by longtime MOVE supporter, Gary Wonderlin. Though these events were fully reported in last week's episode of "Murder at Ryan's Run" they feel worthy of a bit of exploration here too.
The small room was crowded with over a dozen people and things felt tense. We were all there to strategize about how to protect MOVE in what we thought may be a confrontation similar to the one on May 13th, 1985. John was scheduled to have an unsupervised visit with Zack, his son with MOVE's leader, Alberta Africa, the next day and we knew that MOVE would not allow that to happen. The windows at MOVE's Kingsessing headquarters had been covered in slats for weeks and MOVE was ready for war.
Many of us in the room had, unfortunately, been heavily participating in the campaign of character assassination and harrassment of John Gilbride for years. We'd been in dozens of MOVE supporter meetings together, but this one was particularly strange. For one, this is the only meeting that I can ever remember taking place at Gary Wonderlin's house in Pennsauken. Most of the MOVE supporters lived in Philly. On top of that, MOVE was preparing for a confrontation, and until this point had wanted supporters staying as close to headquarters as possible in case police tried to enter the house. For the past month I'd spent most of my time crashing at a house at 45th and Springfield in West Philadelphia so that I could get to headquarters in minutes.
To make things stranger, this meeting had no agenda from MOVE's heirarchy, specifically Ria and Bert. MOVE is very heirarchical and, typically, if a MOVE member wasn't present at a MOVE supporter meeting we would be given specific directives from leadership on how to steer the meeting while giving the appearance of group decision making. For this particular meeting we were given no direction from Ria and Bert. However, Ria was very clear that the meeting needed to take place at Gary's house. The order was given, and most of the supporters drove over the bridge from Philly into South Jersey for this meeting with no clear purpose.
The meeting began around 8 pm and meandered on until sometime around 10, maybe later. This would all just be a strange footnote, something I'd likely not even remember, if John hadn't been murdered four miles away roughly an hour after the meeting ended. The next morning when we heard the news of the murder some of us were so concerned by the proximity, in time and distance, of our meeting to the murder that we checked in with one another to confirm alibis.
I was a true-believer at the time. I was so enamored with MOVE that I didn't consciously allow myself to think about the fact that Alberta very likely had John killed. It wasn't until years later, reflecting on these events, that I realized that Bert and Ria were attempting to set supporters up as suspects. The fact that we had never before had a meeting at that house, and the proximity of Gary's house to John's apartment seems far too convenient to be a coincidence.
Until hearing last week's podcast episode I was unaware of the experience of former MOVE supporter Tony Allen dropping by MOVE's headquarters on his way to the meeting. In the weeks previous to that night MOVE members had been on watch in front of the house 24 hours a day. We've since learned from June (formerly Pixie Africa) that MOVE men were also stationed on the roof with guns. That evening Tony stopped by and found the post in the front yard abandoned. In the previous month I'd driven by MOVE headquarters dozens of times at all hours of the day (supporters were doing 24 hour driving patrols of the neighborhood) and in all that time I never saw that post abandoned, even for a minute.
All of these aligned circumstantial pieces lead me to believe that the level of security at MOVE's Kingsessing Ave. headquarters had shifted because the leadership knew that within a few hours the custody case, and the threat of potential confrontation, would be over. We, as supporters, were moved into place as pawns, easily sacrificed in the interest of protecting the queen.
Alberta has a history of sacrificing supporters in order to cover for actions she orchestrated. In March of 2000, while being cross-examined during a custody hearing, she was asked about a major event in the harrassment campaign against John Gilbride's parents; the fliering of their entire neighborhood with fliers making some very serious, and false, claims. I took part in this reprehensible action and know first hand, based on receiving orders from her, that Alberta organized the entire event. At trial Alberta blamed the harrasment campaign on MOVE supporter Tony Allen, and acted as if she had no control over the supporters. At that very moment there were a dozen MOVE supporters picketing in front of the courthouse at her demand. This exchange can be found on page 160 of the trial transcript.
When Alberta insisted that Mario Hardy (formerly Mario Africa) sit next to her at the press conference in MOVE headquarters the morning after John was murdered she knew exactly what she was doing. In the previous week she'd already set Mario up in a position to be in a physical altercation with John. The altercation resulted in a police report being filed. By pulling Mario into the spotlight that morning she knew that she was putting him in postion to be a suspect. Mario had been pushing back, trying to protect his kids from MOVE, and Alberta had the leverage to keep him in check.
When June (formerly Pixie Africa) started opening up to my wife, Maiga, and me in March of 2021 she told us that Alberta often blamed John's murder on whichever MOVE supporter she was angry with at the time. When Tony Allen left MOVE and began challenging them publicly in 2004 Alberta would tell people that Tony had killed John. When Mario left the next year she told people at MOVE headquarters that Mario killed John. And apparently, when I began pushing back against MOVE leadership the same was said about me.
Some have voiced concern over the desire that I, and many of the survivors, have expressed; that evidence will surface, and that Alberta and Ria will be arrested for the murder of John Gilbride, the psychological and sexual abuse of children, and a myriad of financial crimes. I understand why many in the activist circles that have gravitated to MOVE wince at that. I understand how deeply troubling the US criminal justice system is. However, many of the survivors will not feel safe as long as Alberta and Ria are free, and the Gilbride family (and many others) deserve justice.
Some have even said that we're calling for the arrest of leaders in the Black liberation movement. This is an area that is much more clear; Alberta, Ria, and even John Africa have nothing to do with Black liberation. MOVE has nothing to do with liberation. Alberta is a fraud; a con artist who's exploited radical politics for personal gain and would not have lost a night's sleep if one of us had ended up in prison for the rest of our lives. She would have found a way to turn a profit from it, happily selling t-shirts with our faces on them, claiming to fight to free us while refusing to pay attorneys, and going on European vacations. For 33 years Alberta has run a cult that operates as a crime family and disguises itself as a liberation group. Based on what I've learned from the survivors I don't believe that Alberta has a conscience, but I'm really hoping that someone who knows something does.
Is it more likely that just the perpetrator would know what they were instructed to do, or that multiple adult members would know of the activity?
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry for my delayed response. That's hard to say. My gut is that Ria, Bert, Carlos and possibly a few others know exactly what happened. My guess is that others, like Pam and Ramona, know enough to have a good idea of what happened, but may not know exactly who killed John. Again, this is just my best guess based on my observations about how MOVE functions.
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