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Also this issue: Gale Warning Turf Wars Gunsmoke The Bell Curve |
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June 19-25, 2003
city beat
 SCENE OF THE CRIME: Whoever killed John Gilbride last September may have been lying in wait in this perfect hiding place. Photo By: Michael T. Regan |
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Lots of questions in the MOVE murder, but few answers.
In the nine months since the grisly murder of her husband, John Gilbride Jr., Alberta Africa has remained silent. Through the white-hot glare of two weeks of media and law-enforcement scrutiny and the equally bizarre media silence since, Alberta has been mum on the ambush that cut down the US Airways baggage supervisor in a hail of automatic gunfire outside his South Jersey apartment on Sept. 26, 2002.
On the last day of his life, Gilbride went about his usual routine. After working his evening shift at Philadelphia International Airport, Gilbride drove his 1985 Ford Crown Victoria to his Maple Shade apartment complex shortly after 11 p.m. Before he could shut the engine off, someone sprayed him with bullets. From the start, this was no run-of-the-mill homicide.
At the time of his death, Gilbride was embroiled in a contentious custody battle over his young son, Zachary, with Alberta Africa, longtime MOVE member and widow of group founder John Africa, who died in the now-infamous May 13, 1985 fire that leveled four West Philadelphia blocks and killed 11 MOVE members. Several members of MOVE, the back-to-nature group that made news through its anti-government teachings and its tense, sometimes violent clashes with neighbors and police, were questioned in connection with the murder.
Today, those members, including Alberta, are finally willing to talk publicly. They're also willing to blame the unsolved killing on the government and even Gilbride's parents who, until a conversation with City Paper last week, have also been silent.
Alberta Africa (all MOVE members take the surname Africa) says she hasn't heard much from detectives working the case. Still, she remains convinced that Gilbride's murder was a professional hit.
"They only contacted me once, not long after it happened, to ask me to come in for questioning," she recalls. "I wasn't consulted about John's funeral arrangements and I wasn't invited to the services. I was left in the dark, and I'm still in the dark as to what happened to my husband."
Alberta says Gilbride's parents, John and Frances, make the trip from Herndon, Va., every few months to visit Zack. While she doesn't object to the grandparents' visits, Alberta believes their advice urging their son to leave his family contributed to his death. If he were still with his wife and son, she says, he wouldn't have rented the apartment where he died.
"They were in a position to give John good advice, to tell him to go back and rebuild his family, but they didn't. They made it clear that they didn't approve of me or our marriage. They may not have done the deed, but they allowed him to put himself in a position where he was in that parking lot that night," Alberta says angrily. "I allow them to see Zack because I want him to know his grandparents, but I keep my distance. When they visit, I go to another part of the house. The hurt is just too deep."
Rather than being a suspect, Alberta says she's a devastated widow who lost a second husband to violence. She's desperate to find out what happened, specifically who pulled the trigger.
"I don't even know what happened to his remains after he was cremated," she says, her voice choked with tears. "I deserve to know what happened to him, who killed him and why, but more importantly, my son deserves to know what really happened to his father."
Like their daughter-in-law, John and Frances Gilbride say they remain devastated by the loss, but despite a lack of answers, they trust investigators to find the killer.
"I have regular conversations with the Burlington County Prosecutor's Office," says the father from his Virginia home. "I don't want to say anything that would compromise their investigation, but I will say that we have faith that the police are trying to find out who did this, and we believe they will."
"We can't really comment beyond that," chimes in Frances Gilbride, listening on another phone. "I'm sure we'll comment some time in the future, but right now we just want to let them go about their jobs."
For their part, investigators admit the probe is stalled but insist they're still actively seeking Gilbride's killer.
"We have detectives working on the case, and victims' services continues to keep in touch with the victim's family, but there just hasn't been a break in the case," explains Detective Sgt. Jack Smith, spokesperson for the Burlington County, N.J., Prosecutor's Office.
Citing a policy "to disclose as little information as possible during an ongoing investigation," Smith refuses to confirm the exact number of shots that riddled Gilbride as he sat behind the wheel, the caliber of the weapon used or whom investigators have interviewed and eliminated as suspects.
"We don't want to compromise the work of the detectives, and we don't want to give out information that might possibly tip off the killer," he notes, adding that they have no plans to solicit help from the public, even with so little to go on. (There's no suspect description or information about a possible getaway car, and John Gilbride's neighbors at Ryan's Run West haven't been much help.)
A quick visit to the crime scene exposes the fact that the area offers a perfect stage for an ambush. The small parking lot fronts a narrow wooded area that not only offers cover for a hiding gunman, but gives an easy escape route. Behind the trees is the exit ramp for Route 73 and the shoulder of Route 41. A short 20-foot scramble up the hill and a killer could hop in a waiting car and be long gone, in any direction, within seconds. This fact is not lost on Gilbride's neighbors.
"It was certainly well-planned," speculates an eight-year complex resident who didn't give her name. "This is a quiet, lovely complex. I think they must have used a silencer, because I live two doors down and I didn't hear anything until the cops arrived with their sirens. Nothing like this has ever happened here before or since."
Having headed the Philadelphia Police Department's Civil Affairs Unit for the past five years, Capt. William Fisher probably has a better relationship with MOVE than anyone associated with city government. Fisher, while not speculating on who murdered Gilbride, expresses serious doubts about any perceived MOVE involvement.
"The way he was killed, if it happened at 10th and Fitzwater, would have immediately been labeled a mob hit," says Fisher. "This was not a random or amateurish job -- they literally shot him to pieces. I understand that Mr. Gilbride was something of a gambler. I would take a long, hard look at whether he had any outstanding gambling debts if this was my investigation."
Fisher says he was consulted by Burlington County investigators because of his long history with MOVE, but like Alberta Africa, he hasn't heard from anybody since.
"I told them that MOVE has a natural distrust of police, and the way to get cooperation from MOVE is not to accuse, but to listen," Fisher says. "This case is like the Kennedy assassination, a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma."
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