Mother Refused to Let Police Forget

The circumstances of Earnest Pickett Jr.’s murder were like those of many other killings in Los Angeles.

He was a good kid, a teen-ager minding his business when a stray bullet from a gang fight pierced his back one afternoon in 1984 as he was leaving Dorsey High School to pick up some equipment for baseball practice.

But there was someone in the 17-year-old’s life who made sure that in death he did not wind up like so many other gang victims--a name in a forgotten case moldering in the files because no one would dare testify against the gunman. That someone is Lee Bertha Pickett-Allen, Earnest’s passionately persistent mother, a woman who would not let police forget that her son’s killer had not been punished.

Because of that commitment, she was asked Monday to take part in a joint Los Angeles Police Department-FBI news conference to announce the formation of a special task force to find the killers in more than 1,000 open homicide cases--her son’s among them.

After the death of her youngest child and only son, Pickett-Allen co-founded a group called Justice for Homicide Victims. Since then, she has written letters, lobbied politicians, put up reward posters and called the police--again and again.

She would prod them: “Do you remember my son? What’s the status of my son’s case?”

It was always inactive. “There’s nothing new now, ma’am. We can’t get any witnesses,” the police would tell her.

“When my son was first murdered, I didn’t know that I would have to take an active role in helping to catch his murderer,” Pickett-Allen, 53, said, recalling how naive she was. “I thought it would be taken care of, that the police would do their jobs.”

In fact, the police did make several arrests soon after the slaying. But the evidence evaporated when gang members threatened the witnesses, who refused to identify the suspected teen-age shooter at the preliminary hearing. The case was dismissed, the suspects released.

Over the years, holidays and birthdays have gnawed at Pickett-Allen’s family, reminders of what she and her three daughters had lost. “My family was incomplete, and I could see my family falling apart. My daughters were trying to hold me up and they were grieving too much themselves,” recounted Pickett-Allen, who runs a substance abuse program for a community health clinic.

“So here this bastard had ruined our lives. And how can (I) as a parent just say, ‘Well, it’s OK that he destroyed our family. We must forgive and forget.’ I couldn’t do that,” she said. “And I didn’t want to end up being a very cynical, bitter person. So I had to find positive ways of taking out this anger.

“I mean I had deep holes in my stomach. Just rage, just rage--that how dare you take my child’s life and you go on with your life,” she said intensely, referring to the killer.

She did not listen when friends and family questioned her obsession. She could not abide people saying that her son--an honor student and college-bound senior--had simply been unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“What do you mean, ‘in the wrong place at the wrong time?’ ” she said. “He was at school. . . . Where was he supposed to be?

“Within the minority communities, it’s just minorities killing minorities and nobody seemed to care,” she added. “And we as people of color, we sit back and we accept it. We don’t put any pressure on anybody and say this is not acceptable.”

By now, anyone who has dealt with Pickett-Allen knows it’s not acceptable. It is a message that LAPD Detective Carolyn Flamenco hopes all of Los Angeles hears.

“They have to stand up for their rights and come forward and put these guys in jail,” said Flamenco, whose work led to the filing of new charges against Earnest’s suspected killer. “They cannot be intimidated. . . . That’s the only way they’re going to win this battle.”

Assigned the case two years ago when she was working unsolved homicides, Flamenco spent several hours listening to Pickett-Allen and left with a promise that she would try her best. “It was the first time I had a glimmer of hope,” Pickett-Allen recalled.

The shooting--in which a gang member was also killed--occurred in front of hundreds of people at the end of the school day. Flamenco started going through yearbooks, looking for the names of potential witnesses who would now be adults--and parents.

Her strategy was to find sympathetic witnesses who saw the shooting and would be willing to come forward now “because they could put themselves in Mrs. Pickett’s position because they have children now and would want the same response.”

Her efforts paid off and now, Flamenco said, she has several strong witnesses who she thinks will stand firm. Two counts of murder were filed in the fall against Edwin Oswald Smith, who is still at large. Now 29, Smith has been in and out of jail over the past decade on drug-related charges and is also wanted on charges that he was involved in another killing a year ago.

Pickett-Allen said she is gratified that police officials have recognized the importance to grieving families--and to society--of digging into dusty cases such as her son’s.

“This,” she said, “has been a long time in coming.”