Omaha’s Forgotten Panthers Part I "A Tragedy Begins."
The Story of Ed Poindexter and W.M.E. we Langa (Mondo)
BY KIETRYN ZYCHAL
the story of ed poindexter and mondo (david rice)
PART ONE OF THREE: A DEADLY BOMBING, 1970
Ed Poindexter (left), Clarence Williams (middle) and Linda Clark (right) standing at the headquarters of the National Committee to Combat Fascism (NCCF), May 27th 1970. Source: Douglas County Historical Society Collections
In April 1971, David Rice and Edward Poindexter were convicted and sentenced to life in prison, but not “life without parole,” for building a suitcase bomb which killed Omaha Police Officer Larry Minard. They were convicted on the word of 16-year-old Duane Peak, who claimed Poindexter built the bomb in Rice’s kitchen and told Peak to deliver it and call 911.
Though some evidence entered at trial against them was illegally obtained, a 911 call was suppressed, and Peak’s confession showed evidence that it was coerced and false, judges in Nebraska and the federal courts denied the prisoners a new trial.
Rice changed his name in the 1980s to Wopashite Mondo Eyen we Langa (we Langa, or Mondo for short). He died in prison on March 11, 2016, of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at age 69.
Poindexter is 75 years old and is applying to the Pardons Board to have his sentence changed from life to “time served” so he may be released due to his failing health— diabetes, peripheral artery disease, heart disease and renal failure requiring dialysis.
NOISE has reached out to the Pardons Board Members, but at this time have only received comment from one, Secretary of State Robert Evnen stating, "His current application will be considered in due course.”
Poindexter and we Langa were prominent leaders of various militant organizations in Omaha including the Omaha chapter of the Black Panther Party, which later took the name the National Committee to Combat Fascism (NCCF).
The FBI field offices were instructed in a 1968 memo from J. Edgar Hoover to discredit and destroy militant Black nationalist organizations through counterintelligence measures (FBI Vault, Black Extremists, Sec. 1, p. 66).
It has been widely reported that Hoover considered the Black Panther Party to be the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States. The Omaha FBI had informants-- whose identities are unknown to this day-- surveilling local militants. The Special Agent in Charge of the Omaha FBI, Paul Young, reported to Hoover for a year that the local chapter of the Black Panther Party was nearly inactive with very few members and did not seem to have violent tendencies.
"the Black Panther Party, REPRESENTs the greatest threat among the black extremist groups to the internal security of the United States." fbi director J. Edgar Hoover
Photo: Hulton Archive / Getty Images
A review of FBI memos at the time show Young to be struggling to suggest methods to “disrupt” or “neutralize” them. He eventually suggested calling a source at Omaha’s airport to ask them to dispose of the Black Panther newspaper when it arrived by air-mail from California. He also suggested sending forged letters to the Omaha Star newspaper and the BPP headquarters in Oakland to make Poindexter look incompetent and disloyal.
Memo from Omaha FBI Special Agent in Charge (SAC) Paul Young, stating the party had very few members and he had no recommendations to cripple the organization in November of 1969. Source: FBI Vault
By contrast, the Omaha office of the Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) bureau and the Omaha Police were intent on raiding the headquarters of the NCCF.
In July of 1970, ATF agent Thomas Sledge, an eight-year veteran of the Omaha Police, claimed in an affidavit for a search warrant that a 12-year old girl named Mary Ellis [sic] Clark saw 60 AK-47s in the NCCF headquarters and 180 sticks of dynamite. (The correct spelling of her name was Marialice.)
Sledge claimed the girl watched five NCCF members make a bomb out of dynamite. According to the girl’s family, Tom Sledge never notified them that he named Marialice as an informant.
She never told her family she saw men making bombs. Two years later, the then 14-year-old disappeared and in 1980 she was declared dead by her mother.
When the Clarks were given a copy of the ATF affidavit for the first time in 1997, they wondered if Marialice’s disappearance was linked to it. They tried to find out if she was in a witness protection program, to no avail.
The search warrant granted based on the affidavit from Sledge claiming the 12-year-old informant told him about explosives and firearms on the premises. The search warrant was later returned unserved by order of the DOJ in Washington, D.C.
Based on the information attributed to Marialice, ATF Agent Sledge received a search warrant to raid NCCF headquarters in July 1970. Shortly after, the Omaha FBI called the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. because they believed the information in the affidavit was fabricated and that the 12-year- old girl was not a credible witness.
Omaha U.S. Attorney, J. William Gallup stated that an attorney in the criminal division of the DOJ told him he did not want a repeat of the 1969 raid in Chicago that killed Black Panthers Mark Clark and Fred Hampton.
DOJ ordered Gallup to tell Sledge to return warrant to raid NCCF headquarters to the court unserved. One month later, on August 17, the suitcase bomb exploded at 2867 Ohio Street, killing Larry Minard and injuring other officers.
The ATF and Gallup claimed that if the DOJ had allowed the raid of NCCF headquarters to proceed, they would have confiscated the dynamite that was used to build the bomb.
They held the DOJ and the FBI responsible for the death of Officer Minard. Gallup quit his job in disgust at the DOJ for prioritizing “political” considerations over intelligence developed by local authorities.
Edward Poindexter countered to the Omaha World Herald that the NCCF never had machine guns or dynamite and if police had raided headquarters in July, they would have found none.
Details of the bombing:
On August 17, an anonymous male caller reported to the 911 operator at 2 a.m. that a woman had been dragged screaming into a vacant house at 2867 Ohio Street.
The 911 operator does not ask the caller his name or phone number. He does not verify which side of the street the house is on; 2866 is on the north side of the street and 2867 is on the south side of the street.
The operator who takes the call makes a notation on a card that he sends to the dispatcher for the officers to “use caution.” Police Captain William Pattavina told the World Herald the next morning that “police had been receiving other “phony calls” from the 28th and Ohio area.” No tapes of these other calls were ever made public or investigated as part of the Minard investigation.
Moments after the 911 call, two cruisers were dispatched to 2867 Ohio. The first officers to arrive at the scene, Officers Minard and Moran were not assigned to cover the call. They came from a bordering district. They checked the exterior of 2865 Ohio that the caller had given as his address and found the front door nailed shut.
The next car to arrive was the unit that was assigned as a back-up, followed by another unit that volunteered. The last car to arrive was the car that was assigned to cover the call. Officers Michael Lamson and James Sledge (the younger brother of ATF agent Tom Sledge) who had less than six months on the force, approached 2867 Ohio. On the porch they saw a suitcase lying on its side halfway in and halfway out of the doorway.
TRAGEDY BEGINS
Photo of 2867 Ohio St. after a suitcase full of dynamite exploded. Officer Larry Minard was killed in the blast.
There had been a number of dynamite bombings in Nebraska and Iowa since May of 1970. The Police Station in Ames, Iowa and the Police Station in Des Moines, Iowa were damaged with dynamite bombs.
In June 1970, Des Moines police discovered a toolbox under a highway overpass that turned out to be a dynamite bomb made with a clothespin triggering device. Also in June, in North Omaha, a police assembly station was damaged with a bomb made of dynamite. One month later in July, Component Concepts Corporation in North Omaha was damaged by a dynamite bomb.
According to testimony by Captain Murdock Platner to the Senate Judiciary Committee on October 6, 1970, a bulletin was issued to all police officers that summer warning them to be especially careful of any kind of boxes.
It was two in the morning. The caller had given a vacant house as his address. None of the neighbors corroborated the report that a woman was heard screaming just moments before.
Nevertheless, according to police testimony at the trial, none of the officers voiced any concern that the suitcase was suspicious. Officer Lamson testified he commented out loud that the suitcase might belong to the girl. Young officer Sledge stepped over the suitcase and went into the house first followed by four veteran officers.
They fanned out into the house. The officers assigned to the call were in the back of the house when a tremendous explosion destroyed the building. Two officers who were not assigned to the call were near the suitcase bomb by the front door. At the hospital, badly injured Officer Tess said Officer Minard kicked or tripped over the suitcase. The explosion killed him instantly. Officer Tess was just a few feet away.
Trial Transcript, p. 475 (April, 1971) where Duane Peak says the wire was pointing up out of the suitcase.
During direct examination by the County Attorney, Duane Peak testified at the trial that he placed the suitcase on its side with the wire sticking straight up. (Trial transcript, p. 475). If we are to believe the testimony of Duane Peak, the hole with the wire sticking out of it would have been visible to the officers as they stepped over it.
None of the officers testified seeing a hole with a wire protruding from it.
Police and protectors who listened to the 911 call thought it was the voice of a black man and they later said that they immediately suspected members of the NCCF had made and planted the bomb.
Lt. James Perry told a private investigator in a 2002 interview that you would have to be “a sap-sucking idiot not to know who was responsible for the bombing.”
That same private investigator, a former Omaha Police officer, pointed out that the intelligence unit was in charge of Larry Minard’s murder investigation— not the homicide unit.