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BERKELEY <br>
Twin sisters held in death of cop in 1970 <br>
Women accused of being accessories to killing of rookie <br><br>
<a href="mailto:hlee@sfchronicle.com">Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff
Writer</a> <br>
Thursday, June 17, 2004<br><br>
<br><br>
<br>
</font><font face="arial" size=2>Twin sisters from Oakland have been
arrested on suspicion of aiding the killers of a Berkeley police officer
in a 1970 slaying that authorities believe was connected to the Black
Panthers. <br><br>
Joyce Gaskin and Joy Hall, both 53, were accompanied by their attorneys
when they turned themselves in Tuesday, but they declined to speak to
police, authorities said. Each is being held at Berkeley City Jail in
lieu of $250,000 bail on suspicion of being an accessory after the fact
to murder. <br><br>
The Alameda County district attorney's office is expected to review the
case today. <br><br>
"Our intent is to charge everybody, whether or not they were the
participants or were the people who withheld the information then or
now," Berkeley police Lt. Russ Lopes said Wednesday. "We want
them all." <br><br>
Lopes, who is investigating cold cases for the department, declined to
detail the evidence against the sisters or their connection to convicted
burglar Don Juan Warren Graphenreed. A former member of the Black
Panthers, Graphenreed was taken into custody last month in the Aug. 20,
1970, slaying of Officer Ronald Tsukamoto, 28, a newlywed with only 11
months on the job. <br><br>
Graphenreed, 54, of San Francisco, was not charged in the slaying but
remains a suspect and is being held in lieu of $100,000 bail at Fresno
County Jail on unrelated charges of robbery and petty theft. <br><br>
But a law-enforcement source confirmed that the women were associates of
the Black Panthers and had connections to a group of men suspected of
being the primary participants in Tsukamoto's killing, which happened
during a traffic stop on University Avenue. <br><br>
In March, police searched the sisters' Oakland homes and that of their
mother, Betty Mae Edwards, 82, said George Holland, an Oakland lawyer who
represented Gaskin in connection with the search. <br><br>
"They trashed the place" and confiscated -- and later returned
-- several guns belonging to Gaskin's husband, Stephen, Holland said.
<br><br>
Stephen Gaskin did not return a call for comment Wednesday. Edwards said
she was in ill health and had no immediate response to her daughters'
arrests. <br><br>
Tsukamoto's family declined comment. <br><br>
Gaskin and her husband operate Panda Day Care out of their home on 63rd
Street in North Oakland. Hall works as a schoolteacher. <br><br>
The sisters "have led blameless lives for many years," said
Gaskin's attorney, Jules Bonjour of Hayward. "These women are very
anxious to get this situation clarified." <br><br>
The case could have significant problems legally, Bonjour said, because
the statute of limitations for the charge of accessory after the fact is
three years. <br><br>
Thomas Broome, Hall's attorney, said, "Certainly there's a
connection between them and the Black Panthers. They were just kids then
at the time this took place." <br><br>
In 1980, Broome represented Edward Brooks, the Black Guerrilla Family
member who shot and partly paralyzed Fay Stender, an attorney for George
Jackson, the founder of the group. <br><br>
Broome said the defense had not seen any paperwork in the case against
the sisters. "I want to see the evidence," he said. <br><br>
<i>E-mail Henry K. Lee at
<a href="mailto:hlee@sfchronicle.com">hlee@sfchronicle.com</a>.</i>
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