Symbionese Liberation Army - Murder of Marcus Foster

Murder of Marcus Foster

On November 6, 1973, in Oakland, California, two members of the SLA killed school superintendent Marcus Foster and badly wounded his deputy, Robert Blackburn, as the two men left an Oakland school board meeting. The hollow-point bullets used to kill Foster had been packed with cyanide.

The SLA had condemned Foster for his plan to introduce identification cards into Oakland schools, calling him "fascist". In fact, Foster had originally opposed the use of identification cards in his schools, and his plan was a watered-down version of other similar proposals. An African American, Foster was popular on the Left and in the black community.

On January 10, 1974, Joseph Remiro and Russell Little were arrested and charged with Foster's murder, and initially both men were convicted of murder. Both men received sentences of life imprisonment. Seven years later, on June 5, 1981, Little's conviction was overturned by the California Court of Appeal, and he was later acquitted in a retrial in Monterey County.

Little has stated: "Who actually pulled the trigger that killed Foster was Mizmoon. Nancy was supposed to shoot Blackburn, she kind of botched that and DeFreeze ended up shooting him with a shotgun."

Read more about this topic:  Symbionese Liberation Army

Famous quotes containing the words murder, marcus and/or foster:

    Suddenly, she wasn’t drunk anymore. Her hand was steady and she was cool. Like somebody making funeral arrangements for a murder not yet committed.
    John Paxton (1911–1985)

    No failure in America, whether of love or money, is ever simple; it is always a kind of betrayal, of a mass of shadowy, shared hopes.
    —Greil Marcus (b. 1945)

    ...to many a mother’s heart has come the disappointment of a loss of power, a limitation of influence when early manhood takes the boy from the home, or when even before that time, in school, or where he touches the great world and begins to be bewildered with its controversies, trade and economics and politics make their imprint even while his lips are dewy with his mother’s kiss.
    —J. Ellen Foster (1840–1910)