Grief and Embarrassment : Death Plunges Compton Into Sorrowful Silence

There was a time when William Thomas, the sports information director at Compton College, could not brag enough about Roy Williams. But that was before the star basketball center was linked to the shocking death of Lina Aldridge, one of Compton’s star students.

Now Thomas sits in the bleachers of the school gymnasium, his grim silence reflecting the sorrow that has enveloped the campus and the city since Aldridge and Williams took a ride last month that ended with Aldridge’s body stuffed into the trunk of a car.

Compton residents say Aldridge’s unexplained death--and a police investigation that has centered chiefly on Williams--has come as a crushing blow to this racially mixed city of about 100,000 residents 13 miles south of downtown Los Angeles.

In the days after the discovery of the 19-year-old woman’s body, friends have formed an almost impenetrable wall around the Williams and Aldridge families to prevent further grief and embarrassment. Even local police are reluctant to discuss the case.

Compton Mayor Walter R. Tucker, an Aldridge family friend, said his city will remain in a troubled state until the mystery is resolved.

“There’s something smelly here,” Tucker said, “and we want to know what happened.”

On the tranquil, tree-lined campus of Compton College, disillusionment has settled in. Outsiders asking questions about the two students are greeted with icy stares and the sports information department refuses to discuss one of its stellar athletes.

In a blue-collar city, where youths commonly are subjected to drug and gang pressures, Aldridge and Williams were seen as escapees, though they came from different worlds.

Doe-eyed and slender with soft features, Aldridge made her mark in the classroom, earning praise for creative writing. A member of one of Compton’s elite families, she grew up among grazing horses and rolling green pastures in an exclusive agricultural section known as Richland Farms.

Williams, 24, was a street-wise product of one of Compton’s graffiti-scarred, gang-ridden neighborhoods. He won acclaim on the basketball court, where he helped lead the Compton College Tartars to two winning seasons when he wasn’t mopping floors in the school cafeteria. His mother calls him “a shining star.”

Wanted to Be Lawyer

Aldridge often spoke of becoming a lawyer. Williams, who sprouted to a height of 6-foot-8 after high school, had his sights set on a professional basketball career.

Their lives intersected when they enrolled at Compton College.

Friends say Williams often flirted with Aldridge on campus, especially when they both took jobs this summer in the school’s National Youth Sports Program for disadvantaged children.

“They were friends,” recalled one college administrator who asked not to be identified. “Roy had an interest in her, but it wasn’t the other way around. . . . Roy would do little stuff like go up and try to have conversations with her. You can tell when a person has a crush on somebody. She had an attitude, like she wished he’d stop, but she never said anything.”

Aldridge and Williams were last seen together at a school function on the night of July 26. Two days later, her partially decomposed body was found in the trunk of her gray Toyota Corolla, which had been abandoned on a busy downtown San Diego street.

Police said Williams told them that he and Aldridge had driven to San Diego where she overdosed on cocaine. But that story fell apart when the San Diego County coroner’s office found no trace of the drug in her system. The coroner is now running additional toxicological tests.

Williams was arrested by Compton police the night the body was discovered but was released the next day because there was no evidence to hold him. Homicide investigators, however, said he remains a suspect.

Residents Disturbed

The initial reports about the incident disturbed many Compton residents, who heard in the media coverage stereotypical echoes about their community and its problems with drugs and violence. The coroner’s report that Aldridge apparently had not overdosed further fueled resentment, and her family and other community leaders began to close ranks.

Earnest Spears, executive director of the Compton Chamber of Commerce, said Compton regards the mysterious death as something of a family matter.

“We’re only 10 square miles here,” he said. “We have that feeling of community. Though she didn’t live on my street, I feel a part of it. You’ve got an intelligent and attractive young lady. Most newspapers said that is uncommon in this community, and that’s not the case.

“The shocker was about the cocaine. It was like: ‘She’s from Compton, so it has to be cocaine.’ ”

The reluctance of some officials and residents to abide curious outsiders is not altogether unfamiliar in Compton, which has long felt maligned by the media.

“We’ve had to band together because of our negative publicity,” Spears said.

While the investigation continues, Williams spends his time playing basketball on local courts, preparing for his first season at Idaho State University in Pocatello, where he received a basketball scholarship this year.

Williams refused to be interviewed, but his mother, who declined to give her full name, said, “I know in my heart that he didn’t do it. He’s not one of those who goes around knocking people upside the head and taking their things.”

The Aldridge family, after some initial interviews, now refuses to discuss the case.

Mayor Tucker, however, who has become the de facto Aldridge family spokesman, said Williams’ account should not be trusted.

“That fellow started out lying and he hasn’t stopped,” Tucker charged. “This guy should be grilled and grilled. I’m frustrated with the progress of the whole case.”

Those who know Williams best deny that he is capable of committing murder.

Andre Stovall, a Compton College teammate who described himself as Williams’ best friend, said the only thing intimidating about Williams is his size.

“He was like a big kid,” Stovall said. “When he started getting letters from universities, you should have seen the glow in his face. . . . He was getting out of Compton.”

For most of his life, Roy Zachary Williams seemed destined to remain there. He grew up fatherless, the fourth of five children, in a hard part of town.

His mother, who maintains a tidy but modest white stucco tract house where Williams still lives, said she kept her children away from gangs by raising them as devout Catholics at Compton’s Our Lady of Victory Church, where Aldridge was later eulogized.

Williams graduated from Compton High School in 1983. Friends said he never played a day of organized basketball while on campus.

After graduation, Williams drifted from one job to another. Friends said he mostly rode his bicycle and played in pickup basketball games at local playgrounds.

Tane Sawyer, recreation director at Compton’s Wilson Park, still remembers the day he first met Williams.

“I was at a friend’s house,” Sawyer said. “Roy rode up on his bike, and when he stood up, he just towered over me, and I’m 6-5. I asked if he was going to college and he said, ‘No.’ He said he was just basically hanging out at the time.”

Sawyer got Williams a tryout on the Compton College basketball team. Like many of the school’s players, Williams was an older student who had honed his talents on the playground.

Thomas, the college’s sports information director, said Williams knew little about the intricacies of the game when he first walked onto the Tartars’ court in 1986, but he proved to be a quick study.

In his two years at Compton, Williams emerged as a star player, averaging 11 points a game in his final season. He was first-team all-South Coast Conference and was recognized as the team’s most inspirational player.

“Basketball changed Roy’s life,” Thomas said. “This was a real success story.”

Idaho State, a school lacking many big players, signed Williams to a letter of intent in April.

Glenn Alford, the university’s sports information director, said Williams was recruited for his rebounding skills. He described Williams as “220 pounds of muscle.”

Head basketball coach Jim Boutin said he has been apprised of Williams’ problems. But Boutin said the school intends to honor its commitment unless evidence surfaces implicating Williams in a crime.

“He’s a good person,” Boutin said. “Unless there are extenuating circumstances relating to this girl, we expect him to come play basketball.”

Taught Basketball

It was during the summer break that Williams signed up as a paid counselor at Compton College’s National Youth Sports Program. Williams taught basketball and assisted the soccer coach. Aldridge, who also worked there, was an aide to the dance instructor.

Aldridge was working at the school to earn money so she could attend pre-law classes at a major university. She also held down another job as a receptionist in Mayor Tucker’s dental office.

Raised by her grandparents, who live next door to the Tuckers, Aldridge was said to be surrounded by doting relatives. In her room, she hung photographs of Porsches and Mercedes-Benzes along with a crucifix and a poster of pop star Debbie Gibson.

Aldridge attended public schools as a child, then transferred to St. Michael’s, a Catholic girl’s high school in South-Central Los Angeles. Friends said she was bright and vivacious, able to recite Shakespearean verse.

In her senior year, she was crowned Yearbook Queen. In the book, she wrote that her goal was to make her grandmother proud “and to acquire fame and fortune.” Aldridge’s relatives bought eight full pages of yearbook advertisements in her honor, far more than any other student received.

In hindsight, classmates said Aldridge was one of the more complex people at St. Michael’s. Hard working and wholesome, they said she also had a disturbing fascination with youthful drug dealers who regularly peered at the girls through the school fence.

“She liked the drug dealer guys, the high rollers or whatever,” said a female classmate who asked not to be identified. “She wasn’t the type to use drugs, but she seemed to like the excitement of all that money.”

Friends said Aldridge’s proximity to the drug culture was underlined on one occasion during her senior year when she was thrown to the ground and frisked while still wearing her green plaid school uniform during a police raid on a neighborhood crack house.

Aldridge told friends that the incident had scared her. But last September, she landed in real trouble when she and a man identified as Dexter Johnson, 33, a convicted felon, were arrested for cocaine possession after authorities stopped them for speeding in the parking lot of a Lennox motel, according to Inglewood Municipal Court records.

Aldridge, who claimed to have no knowledge of the quarter-gram of cocaine found in Johnson’s car, was sentenced to a one-year drug diversion program under a plea-bargaining agreement.

Attorney Donald Hambrick, who represented her in the case, called Aldridge a “good kid” who got mixed up with bad people.

“To my knowledge, she wasn’t a user,” Hambrick said. “She might have become one somewhere along the line because of peer pressure, but she seemed like a victim.”

Aldridge’s uncle, Steve Aldridge, said she seemed to put her problems behind her this year. While maintaining a good grade-point average, she served as vice president of the Associated Student Body, had reactivated the Black Student Union and was a member of the school’s drama club.

“She was serious about becoming a lawyer and a leader,” the uncle said. “Before she died, I had set up some meetings for her with leaders in Sacramento. . . . She was going to get a sense of how political leaders think and work. She was looking for role models.”

Constance Taul, her health class instructor at Compton College, called Aldridge an outstanding student. When the school year ended, Aldridge delivered a paper that was so good, Taul had her read it to the next class. The subject concerned the dangers of cocaine abuse.

On the final day of her life, Aldridge took some of the youngsters from the National Youth Sports Program to the beach. Later, she returned to the campus for a farewell tribute to college President Edison O. Jackson.

When the ceremony ended, Aldridge told her family that she would be giving a friend a ride home. Lejeune Bell, the friend, said Williams was with Aldridge when they got into her car. Bell, who was dropped off at her Compton home, said she assumed that Aldridge was taking Williams home next.

“No one said, ‘Lejeune, you’re going home first’ in a forceful way,” Bell recalled.

On the following day, when Aldridge was already missing, a friend from the college saw Williams hanging out at Compton High School.

“There was no change in his personality,” the friend said. “It was just like any other day. A guy was in the car with him and he just said, ‘What’s up?’ and talked like nothing had ever happened. He was cool.”

Times staff writers Charisse Jones and Mathis Chazanov also contributed to this story.