Excerpt: ‘Murdered By Mumia’

That’s how I learned my relationship with Danny of 913 days, 396 of which we were married, was over. The horrors of the night had started with a knock and ended with a scream. I remember shrieking and crying and thinking I was in a nightmare, hoping I could be dreaming and it wasn’t true. Then, my parents walked through the door and brought reality with them. It was the first time in my life I ever saw my dad, a hardened WWII vet, cry. In twenty-five years, I had never seen him break down, but I remember that he sat there with his head in his hands, his tears hitting the floor. We all—the Foley and Faulkner families—just sat in that anteroom and held hands and cried as my new world turned in slow motion.

They then asked me if I wanted to see Danny. I went to the door of the room where they had cleaned him up—and I remember seeing what seemed like a vision of him lying on the table. I wanted desperately to help him but I couldn’t go near him. I was too scared. Still disbelieving, I guess. I thought that if I went near him, I would snap and lose all control. I was in a state of shock. Everybody was crying and I remember saying that I didn’t want to go back home. By now it was daylight, so I went with Mom and Dad and spent the day with them at their place. It was the first time my mother ever gave me a glass of wine. My parents were in their bedroom, and I remember I was so devastated over losing my husband that I crawled in between my mom and dad and went to sleep. I was twenty-five years old, an adult, out in the world. I was married and I had started a new life with a husband I deeply loved. But when you have something so devastating happen to you, you just need to be with your parents.

The next day, I returned to the house Danny and I had shared in southwest Philadelphia. A steady procession of family and friends began to gather to grieve and comfort me, and each other. Suddenly, my ten-year-old nephew, Jimmy, shouted, “Look, Aunt Maureen, Uncle Danny’s not dead, he’s right here.” For an instant, my heart raced. When I looked up, I saw Danny’s good friend Thom Hoban in his Philadelphia police uniform, there to pay his respects. For just a split second, I actually entertained the thought that Danny had walked in. That’s how crazy and upset I was then: I was willing to believe he was still alive a day after seeing his body in the hospital. I remember how difficult it was for me to see any man in a uniform after that.

Video   Police widow’s fight for justice Dec. 6: Daniel Faulkner was killed in the line of duty by Mumia Abu Jamal. His death is the subject of a new book titled “Murdered by Mumia”. TODAY anchor Matt Lauer reports. Today Show Books

When it happened, the story of Danny’s murder in what was then the nation’s fourth-largest city dominated the local news for days. He was killed in the early hours of the morning of December 9, and somehow they were able to get it on the cover of that day’s Philadelphia Daily News. I was numb to the coverage at the time and the newspapers were kept from me by friends. In fact, I remember when I first looked at the press coverage—it was New Year’s Eve going into 1982. I was alone in my parents’ home—they were going out with close friends Frank and Peg Salerno. I was getting panicked as the clock moved closer to midnight. I did not want to be alone. I remember running to get the telephone to call my parents at the Salernos, and in reaching into a drawer for their phone number, I suddenly came upon a picture of Danny in the casket. They had taken it at the viewing and hidden it from me until more time passed. I was shocked, and started to scream. Thank goodness, my brother Michael arrived at that moment and took me into his arms. After I calmed down, I went back, that night, and read all of the stories about the murder. For me, New Year’s Eve has always been the most difficult. Not Christmas. For me it remains New Year’s Eve.

Over the years I have often gone back and re-read the clips saved for me by friends. One edition ran with the full-front-page headline: “Cop Shot to Death; Newsman Arrested; Mumia Abu-Jamal Held in Killing.”  Next to the headline was a large picture of Danny, identifying him as a five-year veteran. It was his official police photo and, although no one could have known it at the time, that picture would become the symbol of decades of battle in his honor.

Inside the front cover, the Daily News reported that Danny had been shot at Thirteenth and Locust Streets and that he died at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital from two gunshot wounds. The suspect was identified as “Wesley Cook, 27—who used the name of Mumia Abu-Jamal.”  I had never heard of him before, but the news stories gave details about the crime and his checkered past.

Police piecing together the details of the shooting said that, at 3:45 a.m., Faulkner apparently stopped for investigation a car driven by Wesley Cook’s brother, William Cook, and ordered William Cook out of the car. Moments later, Wesley Cook apparently approached on foot and saw the confrontation between the two, police said. The shooting followed.

One witness told police he saw Wesley Cook fire one shot as he ran across the street toward his brother and Faulkner. The witness reportedly said Faulkner, apparently hit by the shot, crumpled to the sidewalk and that Wesley Cook then stood over him and fired another shot at him point-blank. The witness was not able to say when Faulkner fired his gun.

Police said five shots had been fired from the gun they believe to be Wesley Cook’s. Faulkner had fired his gun once.

Wesley Cook of 17th Street near 66th Avenue was widely known for his support of black activist causes. He was a leader of the local Black Panther Party while still a teenager.
. . . .
Up until November, Abu-Jamal had served as president of the association [Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists] for a year and during his tenure, said Daily News City Hall reporter Linn Washington, Abu-Jamal urged the organization to become “more active and out front.”

Abu-Jamal most recently had been a radio stringer for radio station WDAS. Before that, he worked with WUHY radio as a reporter and commentator. He left the station in March after a disagreement with news director Nick Peters.

Peters said Abu-Jamal agreed to leave his position after disagreements between the two men over Abu-Jamal’s trouble showing objectivity and fairness on several stories over a period of months.

Abu-Jamal often reported on housing, prisons, and other stories involving poor people and minorities. “Anyone who knows him knows he has a lot of talent; he had an incredible voice, he was a very good writer and could do wonders with a microphone,” Peters said.
. . .
One of the subjects about which Abu-Jamal had difficulty maintaining objectivity was his coverage of the radical, back-to-nature group MOVE. MOVE had a violent stand-off with police at its Powelton Village compound in 1978 which resulted in the death of a police officer named James Ramp. It was reported that, as Abu-Jamal covered MOVE, he also grew close to the group, and when several MOVE members went on trial for manufacturing bombs the previous summer, Abu-Jamal was seen in the City Hall press room selling copies of the group’s newspaper called “First Day.”
[no para]Abu-Jamal’s fondness for black radical politics was also noted in the coverage following the murder:

In 1970, while attending Benjamin Franklin High School, Cook, then a member of the Black Panther Party, was dismissed and transferred for circulating pamphlets calling for “black revolutionary student power.”

“He was a very bright student,” said Dr. Leon Bass, principal of Franklin. “He was very articulate and could write well. But he was very radical. His radical views were disruptive.”

Abu-Jamal and three other students who were dismissed filed suit on the ground that their right to free speech had been denied. A Common Pleas Court judge upheld the dismissal.

In a 1970 interview, Jamal said: “Black people are facing the reality that the Black Panther Party has been facing: political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

The clips from those first few days remain a good insight into Abu-Jamal. According to the articles, Abu-Jamal had become enamored with the Jamaican-based Rastafari religious movement, which worshipped the late Ethiopian King Haile Selassie as a deity and advocated the frequent use of marijuana. It was reported that Abu-Jamal was a member of the board of directors of the Marijuana Users Association of America, a group based in Philadelphia with the goal of legalizing marijuana use. The group had apparently broken up earlier in the year because of a lack of funds. Most menacing was his association with the MOVE group, a radical back-to-nature outfit that was responsible for the 1978 murder of Philadelphia police officer James Ramp.

Elsewhere, Danny was remembered as a man who had “won citations.” One day after his murder, on page one, the Philadelphia Inquirer told about his recent hunting trip with Hugh Gallagher. They wrote that he would have turned twenty-six on December 21, twelve days after he was murdered, and that we had recently signed up for a ski trip that winter and a Bermuda cruise in the spring. That’s true, and we had been excited about both. On what would have been his birthday, I went to St. Barnabas Church with my friend Carol McCann and lit a candle for Danny—she shared his birthdayThe coverage of Danny also noted that he was raised in southwest Philadelphia in a house with five brothers by a father who worked for the old Philadelphia Transportation Company (SEPTA’s forerunner), and that his adolescence was spent at West Catholic Boys and Bartram High Schools and was followed by brief service in the army. Family members and police officials told the newspaper that Danny received numerous citations for his police work and finished second in his class at the Police Academy in 1976. Our neighbors along Harley Avenue said he used to play baseball with the local youngsters during the summer.
    
“He was a good guy, one of the best guys in the squad. He was a normal guy, just one of the guys. As far as police work, he was tops. He loved police work and he was one of the best I’ve seen at it,” Sgt. William Ryan was quoted as saying in the Daily News. Sgt. Ryan remembered that Faulkner had ambitions of “moving ahead in the department.”  An elderly man who lived down the street from Maureen and Danny said that the police officer was a “nice guy” who “used to come out on the stoop to talk in the summertime.”

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