Donald David DeFreeze (November 16, 1943 – May 17, 1974), also known as Cinque Mtume and using the

nom de guerre A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name (orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individua ...

"General Field Marshal Cinque", was known as the "spokesman" of the

Symbionese Liberation Army The United Federated Forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) was a small, American far-left organization active between 1973 and 1975; it claimed to be a vanguard movement. The FBI and American law enforcement considered the SLA to be the ...

(SLA), a small, American

far-left Far-left politics, also known as the radical left or the extreme left, are politics further to the left on the left–right political spectrum than the standard political left. The term does not have a single definition. Some scholars consider ...

group that formed in Oakland, California in 1973. Some analysts suggested he was a figurehead; others said he was the leader. Born and raised in

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

, he dropped out of high school and was involved from the age of 14 in frequent brushes with the criminal justice system. He received generous probation in the late 1960s, leading some sources to suggest he was serving as a police informant to the

Los Angeles Police Department The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), officially known as the City of Los Angeles Police Department, is the municipal police department of Los Angeles, California. With 9,974 police officers and 3,000 civilian staff, it is the third-large ...

. He and several white allies began to make plans for armed action that they believed would arouse the black community and attract more recruits. Three SLA "soldiers" fatally shot

Marcus Foster Marcus Aurelius Foster (March 31, 1923 – November 6, 1973) was an American educator who gained a national reputation for educational excellence while serving as principal of Simon Gratz High School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1966–1969), ...

, the Superintendent of Public Schools in Oakland, the first black superintendent of any major public school system, and wounded his deputy. They mistakenly believed he supported a program of student IDs, and, by his assassination, alienated the black community. Two members of the SLA were arrested in January 1974, convicted and sentenced to prison for the crimes. DeFreeze and co-conspirators next kidnapped heiress

Patty Hearst Patricia Campbell Hearst (born February 20, 1954) is the granddaughter of American publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst. She first became known for the events following her 1974 kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army. She was found a ...

February 1974, seeking a ransom and attention. Police pressure rose. During a shootout with law enforcement in Los Angeles, DeFreeze committed suicide by gunshot when he and five SLA members made a stand in a burning house. A private investigation before this last assault suggested that DeFreeze may have been a police informant and agent provocateur from before the founding days of the SLA. His remains were returned to Cleveland, where the funeral was organized at the family's request by members of the Sunni Orthodox Moslem sect.

Early life

DeFreeze was born in

, to African-American parents Louis and Mary DeFreeze; he was the oldest of eight children. His mother was a registered nurse at a convalescent home. His father was a violent man who punished DeFreeze frequently; he broke both of the boy's arms three times when he was a child. DeFreeze dropped out of school in the ninth grade at age 14 and ran away from home. He moved to

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from South ...

, where he lived with the Rev. William L. Foster, a

fundamentalist Fundamentalism is a tendency among certain groups and individuals that is characterized by the application of a strict literal interpretation to scriptures, dogmas, or ideologies, along with a strong belief in the importance of distinguishing ...

minister, and his family. He became a street gang member in Buffalo. The Rev. Foster would say of him later:

He was a get up and go kid... he had a heart that was as big as a house. But some of the boys he used to hang around with, I didn't care for. You just knew they were 99 and 44/100 percent bad.

In his first brush with the law, DeFreeze was arrested for stealing from parking meters and stealing a car. He was sent to the state reformatory in

Elmira, New York Elmira () is a city and the county seat of Chemung County, New York, United States. It is the principal city of the Elmira, New York, metropolitan statistical area, which encompasses Chemung County. The population was 26,523 at the 2020 cens ...

. In 1970, DeFreeze wrote of his time there, which he called a prison or a mental institution:

Life in the prison, as we called it, was nothing, but fear and hate, day in and day out... I would not be part of any of the gangs, black or white... I didn't hate anyone, black or white, and they hated me for it.

Following his release, DeFreeze moved to the

Newark, New Jersey Newark ( , ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the seat of Essex County and the second largest city within the New York metropolitan area. They reconciled. After having some gun charges dropped, in 1965 DeFreeze moved with his family from the Northeast to

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, where they settled in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

. He said that the worries of trying to support the children engulfed him. He wrote, "I just couldn't take it anymore. I was slowly becoming a nothing".

Prior arrests, warnings and probations

During his period away from his family, in 1964, police stopped DeFreeze while he was hitchhiking on the

San Bernardino Freeway Interstate 10 (I-10) is a transcontinental Interstate Highway in the United States, stretching from Santa Monica, California to Jacksonville, Florida. The segment of I-10 in California runs east from Santa Monica through Los Angeles, San Bernar ...

near

West Covina, California West Covina is a suburban city in Los Angeles County, California Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the List of the most populous counties in the United States, most popul ...

. They found him carrying a tear-gas pencil bomb, a sharpened butter knife, and a sawed-off rifle in his suitcase. In 1965, having returned to Newark, DeFreeze was arrested for firing a gun in the basement of his home. "I started playing with guns and fireworks," he would later write. "Just anything to get away from life and how unhappy I was". The charges were dropped and DeFreeze took his family to California. In 1967, the police stopped DeFreeze for running a red light on his bicycle. The police said that when they searched him, they found a homemade bomb in his pocket. The bicycle basket held another bomb and a pistol. DeFreeze said he had found them and was trying to sell them because of his family's needs. He was given three years of probation. The probation officer who interviewed DeFreeze wrote that the youth was "deeply troubled by this case". In recommending probation, the officer said:

...The difficulties which the defendant has encountered in his life are real and serious. He feels his responsibilities deeply and is overcome when he cannot meet them. He appears to have a warm relationship with his wife and children... The type of behavior encountered in the present offense appears to be the defendant's way of compensating for feelings of inadequacy and powerlessness... The defendant is potentially dangerous if he again encounters such severely threatening circumstances as he was encountering at the time of the offense.

An early probation report described DeFreeze as, "a schizoid personality with strong schizophrenic potential" who had "a fascination with firearms and explosives." Psychiatric officials at the prison testing center where he was briefly sent recommended that he be jailed "because his fascination with firearms and explosives made him dangerous". Despite these recommendations, he was given a further five years probation. In 1969, DeFreeze and an accomplice were arrested in New Jersey for the kidnapping of a caretaker of a synagogue. His accomplice was tried and acquitted. A memorandum from the prosecutor's office said that they decided to drop charges against DeFreeze since by the time of trial, he was jailed in California. On October 11, 1969,

, police spotted DeFreeze on the roof of a bank carrying two pistols and an 8-inch dagger. Police said they found a burglar's tool kit and a hand grenade nearby. He paid the $5,000 bond money and then left for Los Angeles.

Imprisonment and the Black Cultural Association

On November 17, 1969, DeFreeze was injured in a gun battle with police outside a bank in Los Angeles. He was convicted in 1970 of having stolen a $1,000 negotiable cashier's check and was sentenced to 6-to-14 years; he was sent to

Vacaville Prison Two prisons are located in Vacaville, California, United States: * California Medical Facility (CMF) () * California State Prison, Solano () These two prisons are located together at the base of several hills on the outskirts of Vacaville. These ...

. While incarcerated at Vacaville Prison, DeFreeze joined the

Black Cultural Association The Black Cultural Association (BCA) was an African-American inmate group founded in 1968 at the California Medical Facility at Vacaville, a California state prison, and formally recognized by prison officials in 1969. The primary purpose of the B ...

(BCA), intended as an educational group to help prepare prisoners for return to general society. He became known as a dynamic member. Started in 1968, the group began to operate at Vacaville in 1969.

Colston Westbrook Colston Richard Westbrook (1937–1989) was an American teacher and linguist who worked in the fields of minority education and literacy. At the University of California, Berkeley, he established a program of prison outreach and approved students ...

, a grad student and later professor who taught African-American studies at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, became involved in recruiting Berkeley students to visit Vacaville as volunteers to BCA. They helped lead educational and political discussions. People from outside the university also attended BCA events, especially related cultural programs. Through this organization, DeFreeze met with

Willie Wolfe William Lawton Wolfe (February 17, 1951 – May 17, 1974) was one of the founding members in 1972 of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), an American radical group based near Oakland, California. While in the group, he adopted the name "Kahjoh", ...

, a white Berkeley student who was taking Westbrook's course. Wolfe also persuaded white friends Russ Little and Robyn Steiner to volunteer through the BCA. Wolfe, Little, and DeFreeze are thought to have introduced more political radicalism to the group. DeFreeze set up a separate small group, called Unisight. He invited radicals Wolfe and Little to join. In addition, inmate

Thero Wheeler Thero Lavon Wheeler (1945–2009), aka Bruce Bradley while a fugitive (1973-1975), was a founding member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, an American left-wing organization in the San Francisco Bay area. He left the group in October 1973 as he o ...

, a former

Black Panther A black panther is the melanistic colour variant of the leopard (''Panthera pardus'') and the jaguar (''Panthera onca''). Black panthers of both species have excess black pigments, but their typical rosettes are also present. They have been d ...

, jailhouse lawyer, and self-taught Marxist, also joined the group. Willie Wolfe has been credited in some accounts as the catalyst for forming the

. In December 1972 DeFreeze was transferred to

Soledad Prison Correctional Training Facility (CTF), commonly referenced as Soledad State Prison, is a state prison located on U.S. Route 101, north of Soledad, California, adjacent to Salinas Valley State Prison. Facilities The institution is divided into ...

Soledad, California Soledad is a city in Monterey County, California, United States. It is in the Salinas Valley, southeast of Salinas, the county seat. Soledad's population was 24,925 at the 2020 census, down from 25,738 in 2010. Soledad's origins started with ...

for good behavior.

Escape

FBI Wanted Flyer 473 - Donald David DeFreeze

DeFreeze escaped from

on March 5, 1973. He made his way to

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

, where he was hidden by white friends from the Vacaville BCA. He was taken to the house of Patricia "

Mizmoon Patricia Monique Soltysik (May 17, 1950 – May 17, 1974) was an American woman who was best known as a co-founder and activist in the Symbionese Liberation Army, a far-left militant group based in Berkeley and Oakland, California. She participat ...

" Soltysik, with whom he lived for several months. Through Soltysik, DeFreeze met

Camilla Hall Camilla Christine Hall (March 24, 1945 – May 17, 1974) was an American artist, college-trained former social worker, and a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). She is best known for her membership in the SLA, a very small radical gro ...

, a white Berkeley artist and former social worker. The two women had an established lesbian relationship, and DeFreeze eventually had relations with each of them. Later he was also sexually involved with SLA member

Emily Harris Emily Harris (born February 11, 1947 as Emily Montague Schwartz) was, along with her husband William Harris (1945–), a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), an American left-wing terrorist group involved in murder, kidnapping, and b ...

, after she and her husband

William William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...

decided to have an open marriage.

SLA

DeFreeze and Soltysik co-founded the

, and soon recruited members for the group. DeFreeze adopted the name ''General Field Marshal Cinque'' (which he pronounced "SINK-you", though this is not how the name is historically pronounced). He took the name from

Joseph Cinqué Sengbe Pieh (18141879), also known as Joseph Cinqué or Cinquez and sometimes referred to mononymously as Cinqué, was a West African man of the Mende people who led a revolt of many Africans on the Spanish slave ship ''La Amistad'' in July 1839. ...

, a captive Mandan who reportedly led the slave rebellion that took over the

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...

slave ship Slave ships were large cargo ships specially built or converted from the 17th to the 19th century for transporting slaves. Such ships were also known as "Guineamen" because the trade involved human trafficking to and from the Guinea coast ...

'' Amistad'' in 1839; the Africans regained their freedom following a United States Supreme Court case. He adopted the surname ''Mtume'' from the Swahili word for "prophet". By late summer SLA members included

Joe Remiro Joseph Michael Remiro (born 1947) is an American convicted murderer and one of the founding members of the Symbionese Liberation Army in the early fall of 1973. It was an American leftist terrorist group based in the Bay Area of California. He use ...

, a Vietnam veteran and activist who was a friend of Little and Wolfe. As DeFreeze's circle of leftist friends widened, he also came to know

Angela Atwood Angela DeAngelis Atwood (February 6, 1949 – May 17, 1974), also known as General Gelina, was a founding member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), an American terrorist group which kidnapped Patricia Hearst and robbed banks. She was ki ...

, 25. She and her husband had moved to the Bay Area from Indiana along with William and Emily Harris. All had moved from Bloomington, where they knew each other at university. The Atwoods separated that year, and Angela lived with the Harrises. After acquiring arms, the group perpetrated a number of crimes, the most infamous being the November 1973 murder of Oakland Schools Superintendent

, a black candidate for mayor of the city. DeFreeze is the primary suspect in the murder of Foster and the shooting of his deputy, Assistant Superintendent Robert Blackburn. The SLA provoked outrage in the black community by their assassination of Foster, an admired public figure who was the first black superintendent of any major public school system. In February 1974 they kidnapped newspaper heiress

in Berkeley. They first sought an exchange and release of political prisoners. When that was refused, they told her to ask her father for a ransom enough to feed the poor people. On April 15, 1974 they robbed the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco of $10,000. Both Hearst and DeFreeze were captured on security videos that showed them brandishing weapons.

Informant allegations

At an earlier probation hearing, defense attorney Morgan M. Morten said that it had been "indicated that eFreezehad been cooperating with the police". When

's father, Dr. Wolfe, learned of his son's involvement in the SLA, he hired private detective Lake Headley, to provide him with more information. On May 4, 1974, thirteen days before the younger Wolfe's death with DeFreeze and others in a shootout and fire, Headley and freelance writer

Donald Freed Donald Freed (born May 13, 1932) is an American playwright, novelist, screenwriter, historian, teacher and activist. According to Freed's friend and colleague, the late Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter, "(Freed) is a writer of blazing imagination, c ...

held a press conference in San Francisco. They presented 400 pages of documentation of their findings, some of which included evidence that, a year before the kidnapping, Patty Hearst had visited DeFreeze in prison. Lake Headley also provided evidence for the following:

DeFreeze's arrest records

Records showed that DeFreeze had set up the arrest of an associate in a case involving a stolen gun. The

officer who handled the case became a key intelligence officer who handled informants related to black militants. According to Headley's research, police records showed that between 1967 and 1969, DeFreeze was given probation despite a series of adverse encounters with the police, which related to charges for illegal possession of weapons and explosives. These included arrest for possession of weapons, a kidnapping charge in New Jersey, an attempted bank robbery in Cleveland, and a gunfight with Los Angeles police and bank guards. On March 10, 1968, DeFreeze was charged with burglary in

Inglewood, California Inglewood is a city in southwestern Los Angeles County, California, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 107,762. It was incorporated on February 14, 1908. The city is in the South Bay ...

. There was no disposition of the charges. On August 16, 1968, he was charged with stealing a motorcycle. There was no disposition. His probation was modified, on December 13, 1968, to forbid possession of firearms or bombs. On March 20, 1969, he was picked up with a loaded 9-millimeter semiautomatic rifle with 32 rounds in the magazine. There was no disposition.

BCA contact worked with LAPD unit targeting radicals/DeFreeze a possible LAPD informant

Evidence showed that

, a professor and the BCA's main contact at UC Berkeley, had worked closely with the

's Criminal Conspiracy Section (CCS) and the State of California's Sacramento-based CII (Criminal Identification and Investigation) unit. This was during the same period when DeFreeze was receiving unusually lenient treatment and extended probation from the Los Angeles County criminal justice system. Headley suggested this implied that DeFreeze was working as an informant. On May 17, 1974, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' ran the story about Dr. Wolfe's investigation and Headley's report with some of this information. But the major story that day was the LAPD shootout at the SLA house, which was engulfed by an accidental fire. DeFreeze was found to have committed suicide by gunshot; two SLA members were fatally shot by police when they left the house; two others died of smoke and fire. Investigator Lake Headley presented additional evidence that Donald DeFreeze was a

police informant An informant (also called an informer or, as a slang term, a “snitch”) is a person who provides privileged information about a person or organization to an agency. The term is usually used within the law-enforcement world, where informan ...

and an

agent provocateur An agent provocateur () is a person who commits, or who acts to entice another person to commit, an illegal or rash act or falsely implicate them in partaking in an illegal act, so as to ruin the reputation of, or entice legal action against, the ...

in his book ''Vegas P.I.: The Life and Times of America's Greatest Detective'' (1993), co-written with freelance writer William Hoffman. He also concluded that the Black Cultural Association was used by law enforcement to monitor radicals among both Berkeley students and prison inmates. Upon meeting radicals after his prison escape, DeFreeze was known for his eagerness to sell them firearms, explosives, and related items. Some of his contacts were suspicious that he was trying to set up sting operations. His means of acquiring weaponry has remained unexplained.

CIA assassination squad theories

Building on the work of Headley, some authors have explored theories that the SLA was a fully controlled

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

assassination squad, with the

Black Panther Party The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Marxist-Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, Califo ...

as its main target. They suggest that the SLA originated within California prisons with active recruitment by authorities. In addition, they claim that the assassination of Oakland Schools Superintendent

was approved by the squad's handlers. They say that the squad was eliminated in the 1974 Los Angeles shootout (see below) because their operation security had been compromised.

Death

On May 17, 1974, the

tracked DeFreeze and five other SLA members to a house at 1466 East 54th Street; they surrounded it and demanded that occupants surrender. An elderly man and a child were allowed out of the house. Following that, police fired a tear gas canister through a window, which the SLA answered with bursts of automatic weapons fire. During the shootout the police were outgunned by the SLA's automatic weapons, and the SLA's gas masks rendered the tear gas ineffective. But the house caught fire during the shootout, possibly from an outdoor-type combusting tear gas canister. DeFreeze and five others made their way into a crawlspace beneath the house, where they continued to fire at police. A canister exploded and the house caught fire. As it burned, Nancy Ling Perry and Camilla Hall left the house, brandishing pistols according to police, and were fatally shot. DeFreeze was found to have committed

suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders (including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders), physical disorders (such as chronic fatigue syndrome), and s ...

by shooting himself in the right side of his head with a pistol before succumbing to the fire. Angela Atwood and Patricia Soltysik, in the crawlspace, may have died of smoke inhalation before the flames reached them.

Funeral and burial

DeFreeze's body was returned to family in Cleveland. They asked members of the Sunni Orthodox Moslem sect to organize and conduct the funeral, which was held in the chapel of a funeral home. Some 500 attended, with another 1500 persons gathered outside. His younger brother Delano DeFreeze said that his brother had "lived for the people" and "died for the people". The family had appealed to revolutionaries to come to the funeral, but none were observed there. DeFreeze was buried in Highland Park Cemetery in

Highland Hills, Ohio Highland Hills is a village in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States. The population was 1,130 at the 2010 census. It was formally incorporated in 1990.Stephen King Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novels. Described as the "King of Horror", a play on his surname and a reference to his high s ...

said in notes to his book ''

Danse Macabre The ''Danse Macabre'' (; ) (from the French language), also called the Dance of Death, is an artistic genre of allegory of the Late Middle Ages on the universality of death. The ''Danse Macabre'' consists of the dead, or a personification of ...

'' (1981), that DeFreeze was one of the inspirations for his recurring character

Randall Flagg Randall Flagg is a fictional character created by American author Stephen King, who has appeared in at least nine of his novels. Described as "an accomplished sorcerer and a devoted servant of the Outer Dark", he has supernatural abilities involv ...

I sat there for another fifteen minutes or so, listening to the
Eagles Eagle is the common name for many large birds of prey of the family Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of genera, some of which are closely related. Most of the 68 species of eagle are from Eurasia and Africa. Outside this area, just ...
on my little cassette player, and then I wrote: Donald DeFreeze is a dark man." He first referred to him in his book ''The Stand''.

DeFreeze and the SLA are referred to in the 1976 film ''

Network Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

''. A television show is purportedly created that uses members of a fictional version of the SLA as the stars.

Paul Schrader Paul Joseph Schrader (; born July 22, 1946) is an American screenwriter, film director, and film critic. He first received widespread recognition through his screenplay for Martin Scorsese's ''Taxi Driver'' (1976). He later continued his collabo ...

's 1988 film ''

'' features DeFreeze played by

Ving Rhames Irving Rameses Rhames (born May 12, 1959) is an American actor. He is best known for his supporting roles as IMF Agent Luther Stickell in the ''Mission: Impossible'' film series and gang kingpin Marsellus Wallace in ''Pulp Fiction''. He also ap ...

. The

Camper Van Beethoven Camper Van Beethoven is an American rock band formed in Redlands, California in 1983, later based in Santa Cruz and San Francisco. Their style mixes elements of pop, ska, punk rock, folk, alternative country, and world music. The band init ...

song "Tania" from '' Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart'' refers to DeFreeze by his

"Field Marshal Cinque" in the lyrics "A Polaroid of you, Cinque/With a seven-headed dragon/In a house in Daly City".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Defreeze, Donald 1943 births 1974 suicides American bank robbers American kidnappers American male criminals African-American people Fugitives People from Cleveland Suicides by firearm in California Symbionese Liberation Army Terrorism in the United States