Tookie's victims

Death penalty | Lost in the hype about Stanley Williams' death sentence were the lives he took in 1979 | Lynn Vincent

Lost amid the clemency cries for Stanley "Tookie" Williams was much talk about why, exactly, a judge sentenced him to die. That the Crips streetgang co-founder, executed at San Quentin State Prison in California on Dec. 13, murdered four people crossed the wires, yes. But as Williams' date with death approached, most media zoomed in on the celebrity clemency clamor, while training soft focus on the nature of the death-row killer's crimes—and his sprawling urban legacy of assault, rape, and murder.

In the early-morning hours of Feb. 28, 1979, Williams, wielding a 12-gauge sawed-off shotgun, burst into a Los Angeles convenience store. While three accomplices robbed the till, Williams jammed his weapon into store clerk Albert Owens' back and forced him to walk to the stockroom.