Infamous 'Zebra killer’ found dead in San Quentin cell 
 
 One of the four “Zebra killers,” whose string of racially motivated slayings terrorized San Francisco in the 1970s, was found dead in his cell at San Quentin State Prison, corrections officials said Friday. 
 
 The body of J.C.X. Simon, who was accused nearly 40 years ago of killing 14 random victims and wounding seven others on San Francisco streets, died alone in his cell of unknown causes Thursday night, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. He was pronounced dead at 11:59 p.m. inside the prison. 
 
 “The cause of death is pending an autopsy,” said Krissi Khokhobashvili, a spokeswoman for the corrections department. “All that can be released at this point is that he was unresponsive in his cell.” 
 
 The 69-year-old Simon was convicted in San Francisco of two counts of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and assault with a deadly weapon in 1976 after the killing spree, which prompted what authorities said was the biggest manhunt in the city’s history. He was serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole when he died. 
 
 Simon and three other black men — Larry Green, Manuel Moore and Jessie Lee Cooks — went on a six-month rampage from October 1973 to April 1974. They targeted white people, mostly at night along the Divisadero Street corridor. 
 
 The 14 victims were mostly shot in the back or the back of the head execution-style. The slayings were called the “Zebra” murders because of the special radio band, the Z channel, that investigators used. 
 
 The seven victims who survived the attacks were crucial in finding the culprits, detectives said. 
 
 One of the survivors was future Mayor Art Agnos, who was then a 35-year-old social worker. He had left a meeting in Potrero Hill on Dec. 13, 1973, and was walking to his car when he said he heard a loud popping noise at Wisconsin and 23rd streets. Agnos at first tried to calm the people fleeing the gunshots when he realized he had been shot twice in the back. 
 
 The intensive manhunt, overseen by Mayor Joseph Alioto, lasted several months and included a $30,000 reward for information about the killers. At one point the mayor authorized police to stop and question any black man who resembled witnesses’ descriptions. The practice, which resulted in the questioning of hundreds of innocent men, was eventually halted by a federal judge. 
 
 Police, acting on a tip by an informant, eventually raided an apartment complex at 844 Grove St., in the old Fillmore district. Seven men were arrested, but only Cooks, Green, Moore and Simons were charged. 
 
 The killings were among several horrific and bloody events in the late 1960s and 1970s by San Francisco radicals, including the Zodiac serial killer, the Symbionese Liberation Army and the Rev. Jim Jones, who forced his followers to drink cyanide-laced punch. Dan White also murdered Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk that decade. 
 
 The four Zebra killers were convicted and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole, which has been denied repeatedly. 
 
 Green, 63, is serving his sentence at California State Prison-Solano in Vacaville; Moore, 70, is at Ironwood State Prison (Riverside County); and Cooks, 70, is at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego. 
 
 The men have never been allowed to be in the same institution, corrections officials said. ||||| One of San Francisco's infamous "Zebra Killers," a gang of four convicted of a slew of racially motivated murders in the 1970s, has been found dead in his cell at San Quentin prison, officials said Friday. 
 
 J.C.X. Simon, 69, was found unresponsive in his single cell and pronounced dead late on Thursday at the prison where he was serving a life sentence. 
 
 "The cause of death is unknown pending the results of an autopsy," according to the prison statement. 
 
 Simon and his accomplices were convicted of a string of racially motivated killings that took place in San Francisco. The four black men were convicted of targeting white victims during a six-month spree between October 1973 to April 1974 that left 14 people dead and wounded seven more. 
 
 Simon was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and assault with a deadly weapon. The three other men convicted in the killings — Larry Green, Manuel Moore and Jessie Lee Cooks — are serving life sentences at separate California prisons. 
 
 SOCIAL 
 
 JUST IN: J.C.X. Simon, convicted of ‘Zebra Murders,’ in Bay Area during the early 70's dies in prison. pic.twitter.com/5NZMeOeM3t — John Zuchelli (@tvzuke) March 13, 2015 
 
 — Jillian Sederholm ||||| Victims’ families cry as killers are sentenced in Marin County 
 
 A year and a half after a pair of savage murders, the families of Audrey Carey and Steve Carter remain haunted by thoughts about their loved ones’ final moments. 
 
 Were the victims scared, the families wonder, as they realized the dark motives of the three drifters who targeted them almost randomly amid a drug-fueled crime spree? Were they in pain when they died, Carey in a secluded spot in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and Carter on a remote hiking trail in Marin County? 
 
 These emotions spilled out in a Marin County courtroom Tuesday as the ringleader in the slayings, 24-year-old Morrison Haze Lampley, was sentenced to 100 years to life in prison for first-degree murder. He shot both Carey, a 23-year-old Canadian backpacker, and Carter, a 67-year-old tantric yoga instructor. 
 
 Lampley’s girlfriend, Lila Scott Alligood, 19, got 50 years to life, while a third defendant, 25-year-old Sean Michael Angold, was given 15 years to life for second-degree murder in connection with Carter’s death. 
 
 “She trusted you, you three unspeakable monsters,” said Isabelle Tremblay, Carey’s mother, in a statement read in the San Rafael courtroom by a prosecutor. “And you stole her from me. 
 
 “You are proof that evil exists,” Tremblay said. 
 
 Though the sentencing closed a case that stunned the Bay Area, the families made clear that they’ll never fully recover from the events of October 2015. 
 
 “It’s not like those people just killed Steve,” said Lokita Carter, the victim’s widow. “They killed a huge chunk of me. They killed a whole other part of another human being.” 
 
 All three defendants pleaded guilty in deals that were endorsed by the victims’ families. Angold had pleaded guilty last May, while agreeing to testify against the other two if the case went to a jury trial. 
 
 Angold said during a preliminary hearing that the violence began when the three took a handgun from an unlocked truck near Coit Tower in San Francisco. He had planned to join Lampley and Alligood as they traveled to Oregon with dreams of starting a pot farm, Angold said, but soon after finding the gun, they crossed paths with Carey near Ocean Beach. 
 
 The drifters befriended Carey, who was on her first solo backpacking trip, but planned to rob her because “she was foreign and possibly had money,” Angold said. He said the robbery went awry as they sat in thick brush in Golden Gate Park. 
 
 Carey had just thanked the three for being her friends, according to testimony, when Alligood tackled her and Lampley held the gun to her head. Angold, who had been trying to tie up Carey’s legs, heard a pop, and he said Lampley told him, “She’s dead, dude. Don’t worry about it.” 
 
 Emily Hansen, Carter’s daughter, questioned how the three could have “no remorse” after killing Carey and go on to kill her father. 
 
 Angold said that while they had initially intended only to rob Carey, they targeted Carter for death because they wanted his station wagon. Alligood was the one who chose Carter, Angold said, and they followed him as he walked his Doberman pinscher, Coco, down a popular trail northwest of Fairfax. 
 
 Lampley shot him and his dog. The three then rifled through Carter’s pockets for his keys and wallet, which had been pierced by a bullet, and used the ripped, bloody cash to buy gas and cigarettes in Point Reyes. 
 
 “Three people killed my dad, for what?” Hansen sobbed. “A little cash? A car? 
 
 “I wish they would have just given him the chance to give them his cash, his car,” she said. “He wasn’t there to walk me down the aisle at my wedding. When I have kids, they will never be able to know their grandfather. And how do I tell them how he died?” 
 
 All three were arrested two days after Carter’s death outside a Portland, Ore., soup kitchen after authorities tracked the station wagon’s GPS device. 
 
 During Tuesday’s hearing, Alligood wept as the families delivered their victim impact statements. Angold’s head hung for the entire proceeding, and he cried as well. Lampley showed no emotion, spending the majority of the sentencing staring blankly ahead. His attorney, Chief Deputy Public Defender David Brown, read a statement Lampley wrote to the court. 
 
 “I wish I could go back in time and change things,” he said. “I know I cannot ask for your forgiveness, but I hope you find peace some day.” 
 
 Brown said Lampley had lived a life of “neglect, homelessness, abuse and mental illness,” with a psychiatrist once describing him as a “feral child.” 
 
 “This is not offered as an excuse,” Brown said, “but as an attempt to understand why we’re all here.” 
 
 Angold also prepared a statement to both families that his attorney, Terrence Bennett, read on his behalf, saying, “I have no excuses to offer, but can only hope at this time to earn a small measure of forgiveness.” 
 
 Alligood read her statement herself in a shaky voice. “I would like to say I’m truly sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry for what I did, the decisions I made and the indescribable pain I’ve caused others.” 
 
 But Deputy District Attorney Leon Kousharian objected to any suggestion that Alligood was a bystander in the killings. 
 
 “She paints herself as a victim who got caught up in all this,” he said. “She was an active participant. She was the one who jumped on Ms. Carey. She was the one who selected Mr. Carter.” 
 
 “It was the drugs and the love she had for Mr. Lampley,” said her attorney, Amy Morton, outside court. “It was a very twisted type of companionship. They were both people who had holes in their hearts, and when they met each other, they got involved in heavy drugs.” 
 
 Under California’s youthful offender program, which grants earlier parole eligibility for any prisoner who was under 23 at the time of the offense, Alligood will be eligible for parole in 25 years. 
 
 “She’s culpable and she understands that, but she doesn’t understand it to the degree that our society wants her to understand it,” Morton said. “She will.” 
 
 Vivian Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: vho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @VivianHo
– A man who went on a murder rampage against white people in San Francisco 40 years ago has died at San Quentin. NBC News reports that JCX Simon, 69, one of four notorious "Zebra killers," was found unresponsive in his cell. An autopsy is pending. Simon and three others were convicted of killing 14 random white victims and wounding seven others from October 1973 to April 1974. Most were shot in the back or execution-style while walking down a street, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. They were dubbed the "Zebra" killings because investigators used the Z channel radio band to communicate, explains the newspaper. At one point, the manhunt was so intense that police stopped and questioned any black men who remotely resembled the suspects—until a federal judge ruled that the stops were unconstitutional. The LA Times reports that the men hoped to "run all the whites out of San Francisco" and make the city headquarters for a group known as the Death Angels, an offshoot of the Fruit of Islam, which provided security for the Nation of Islam. The other three killers are still serving life sentences without parole at separate prisons.