Infamous 'Zebra killer’ found dead in San Quentin cell

J.C.X. Simon was one of four notorious "Zebra killers" convicted of 14 slayings. J.C.X. Simon was one of four notorious "Zebra killers" convicted of 14 slayings. Image 1 of / 42 Caption Close Infamous 'Zebra killer’ found dead in San Quentin cell 1 / 42 Back to Gallery

One of the four “Zebra killers,” whose string of racially motivated slayings terrorized San Francisco in the 1970s, was found dead in his cell at San Quentin State Prison, corrections officials said Friday.

The body of J.C.X. Simon, who was accused nearly 40 years ago of killing 14 random victims and wounding seven others on San Francisco streets, died alone in his cell of unknown causes Thursday night, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. He was pronounced dead at 11:59 p.m. inside the prison.

“The cause of death is pending an autopsy,” said Krissi Khokhobashvili, a spokeswoman for the corrections department. “All that can be released at this point is that he was unresponsive in his cell.”

The 69-year-old Simon was convicted in San Francisco of two counts of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and assault with a deadly weapon in 1976 after the killing spree, which prompted what authorities said was the biggest manhunt in the city’s history. He was serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole when he died.

Simon and three other black men — Larry Green, Manuel Moore and Jessie Lee Cooks — went on a six-month rampage from October 1973 to April 1974. They targeted white people, mostly at night along the Divisadero Street corridor.

The 14 victims were mostly shot in the back or the back of the head execution-style. The slayings were called the “Zebra” murders because of the special radio band, the Z channel, that investigators used.

The seven victims who survived the attacks were crucial in finding the culprits, detectives said.

One of the survivors was future Mayor Art Agnos, who was then a 35-year-old social worker. He had left a meeting in Potrero Hill on Dec. 13, 1973, and was walking to his car when he said he heard a loud popping noise at Wisconsin and 23rd streets. Agnos at first tried to calm the people fleeing the gunshots when he realized he had been shot twice in the back.

The intensive manhunt, overseen by Mayor Joseph Alioto, lasted several months and included a $30,000 reward for information about the killers. At one point the mayor authorized police to stop and question any black man who resembled witnesses’ descriptions. The practice, which resulted in the questioning of hundreds of innocent men, was eventually halted by a federal judge.

Police, acting on a tip by an informant, eventually raided an apartment complex at 844 Grove St., in the old Fillmore district. Seven men were arrested, but only Cooks, Green, Moore and Simons were charged.

The killings were among several horrific and bloody events in the late 1960s and 1970s by San Francisco radicals, including the Zodiac serial killer, the Symbionese Liberation Army and the Rev. Jim Jones, who forced his followers to drink cyanide-laced punch. Dan White also murdered Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk that decade.

The four Zebra killers were convicted and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole, which has been denied repeatedly.

Green, 63, is serving his sentence at California State Prison-Solano in Vacaville; Moore, 70, is at Ironwood State Prison (Riverside County); and Cooks, 70, is at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego.

The men have never been allowed to be in the same institution, corrections officials said.