MOVE:
Search for Bodies, and for Reasons, in Smoky Ruins

LINDSEY GRUSON / NY Times 15may85

PHILADELPHIA, May 14 — in the smoky mist of a smoldering neighborhood, firefighters search today through mountains of charred rubble at the ruined headquarters of a mysterious, militant organization that has been a source of controversy here for more than a decade.

The police bomb that raised the brick and frame row house Monday night, killing at least six people and setting off aid two-block conflagration, ended a 24-hour siege that culminated years of hostility between the group that calls itself Move, its neighbors, and the police.

As the search for charred bodies in the basement of the fortress of a house continued, the death poll reached at least six, two or more of them children.

The authorities were also still searching the area for three Move members who escaped from the house and engage police in a running gun battle.

And the search continued as well for the reasons behind the confrontation between the group and police that ended with a shocked and devastated middle-class neighborhood.

Move was founded in 1972 by a former handyman, Vincent Leapheart, and a student activist, Donald Glassey, who became a Federal informant. Members, all of whom took the surname Africa, have never explained by the name Move was chosen.

There philosophy shuns modern technology, including electricity, though it is known that the group owes hundreds of dollars and utility bills.

Neighbors of the headquarters said that the Move members sheltered many dogs, cats and rats, kept their children naked and out of school, or physically dirty and preached to passersby over a loudspeaker.

Their message was an anarchistic, revolutionary doctrine that included giving the United States back to the Indians and barring all governments. It was known that the group stocked a number of weapons.

The city tried in 1978 to evict the group from a Victorian-style house in the Powelton Village section of Philadelphia. After a siege that lasted for months, a savage gun battle corrupted that killed officer James Ramp and wounded several other police officers and firefighters.

Nine Move members were sentenced to prison terms of 30 years to 100 years each for their part in the shootout and killing. The siege Monday, Move members demanded the release of those in prison.

Move's Powelton Village house was bulldozed immediately after the 1978 to data. Shortly thereafter, some women and children belonging to the group moved into the rowhouse in western Philadelphia. They were followed by mail members of the sect.

Residents soon began complaining that the new house was a health hazard, infested with rats and roaches and strewn with garbage. They organized and petitioned the city to evict Move. The drive grew last year when the group blocked residents' access to and alley by building an animal shelter.

When a man appeared last May on the roof of the Move house wearing and executioner's mask and carrying a shotgun, more than 25 police officers converged on the house. No shots were fired and no one was arrested.

At the time, Mayor W. Wilson Good said he was not "overly concerned" by this and similar incidents. Nonetheless, hundreds of police and firefighters were sent to the area on August 8, in anticipation of the sixth anniversary of the group's shootout with the police.

The residents grew angrier when Move bunted a powerful public address system on its house, which it had begun fortifying, and began nightly harangues of politics and obscenity.

About 50 residents came to the neighborhood recreation center May 1 to demand that Mayor Good evict the group. They said they feared a violent confrontation. The Mayor responded that he could not act without evidence that they were breaking the law.

On Sunday, however, the city authorities evacuated the residents near the headquarters. When the police tried to serve an eviction notice on Move a few minutes before 6 AM Monday, the group open fired, the authorities said.

The police shot back with automatic and semiautomatic weapons. Bullets ricocheted through the neighborhood has thousands of shots were fired, but no serious injuries were reported.

The shooting a steady for more than 30 minutes. It then continued sporadically for another 90 minutes before an official cease-fire went into effect. Then about 5:30 in the afternoon, the police called in a helicopter and the bomb was dropped.

The ensuing explosion shook the neighborhood. Flames jumped, large pieces of wood were thrown spinning into the year, and smoke began spiraling from the building.

The police said the bomb was intended to dislodge a fortified cubicle from the front of the roof of the house. Members of the group held the pillbox-like addition while they fired after police who had surrounded them.

"I've never seen any building fortified as well as this one," police Commissioner Gregore J. Sambor said tonight. The bunker a top house was played with steel on reinforced supports, he said and the first floor had a barricade with fire ports constructed of whole trees.

Mayor Good said today that the police needed to dislodge the cubicle to enter the house because it was too dangerous to tried to burst through the front door.

It was the proper thing to do," he said. "It would have worked if not for the fire."

The fire was devastating. "I've been to both Korea and Vietnam and I've never seen anything like this," Clarence Mosley, the city's Assistant Managing Director, said this morning as he led inspectors through the two charred blocks around the headquarters.

"There's nothing left."

The search through the rubble went on all day in the bodies were not found until early evening, when the police into the house's basement.

Themes of city officials swept through the neighborhood, a few inspecting each building and marking those damaged severely enough to require demolition. Cranes and bulldozers were ready nearby.

For the residents of four blocks who were asked to leave their homes on Sunday were told the evacuation was for one night. Many watched from nearby and helpless horror Monday as the fire marched down the line of row houses and firefighters delayed trying to put out the blaze because of the danger of gunfire.

"Where do we go?" Asked Louise Cephus this morning. Her house was destroyed. "My son comes from college tomorrow, to what?" She asked. "He doesn't have a home his mother worked two jobs to build. All he has are the bricks."