Rick Smoot in New York’s Central Park.
Law enforcement agencies have stacks of cold case files to be investigated, such as these at the Department of Public Safety in Sunnyvale. San Francisco Police have even more.
It’s Feb. 8, 1978, outside 244 Ninth St., San Francisco, about 2 a.m. Rick Allen Smoot, my brother, is shot and killed by an unknown assailant with a handgun.
It was you.
After you brutally shot Rick, a San Francisco police officer found him and had him taken to a hospital where he died. A few days later, a call was made to the police department with the person asking whether a shooting victim on Ninth Street had died. The caller was asked if he shot this victim. The caller said, “Yes.” When asked to turn himself in, the caller hung up.
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Was that you who called?
San Francisco police officers worked feverishly to find the killer. One officer, Rotea Gilford, became the department’s first Black homicide detective, and another, Earl Prentice Sanders, became San Francisco’s first Black police chief. Both are deceased now. Other talented and passionate officers tried their best to find you. Nothing turned up. A cold case in the making. Calls from me over the next few years led to the same reply: “Nothing new, Mr. Smoot. We’ll keep on it.”
And so Rick Allen Smoot became an unsolved San Francisco homicide statistic.
My uncle called to tell me about Rick’s killing. He, my Aunt Bea and my late wife cried in shock. I screamed in disbelief. “Who? Why?”
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Was it a gang “initiation” killing? Someone he knew? Someone copying “The Doodler”?
Decades later, no one knows.
Except you know. And you may still be alive. You pulled the trigger or you were there when your friend did.
Rick was a few months away from completing his master’s degree when you killed him. He was only 28, with an exquisite imagination, full of dreams spawned by six weeks in the Amazon region, modeling and making commercials in New York City to pay for his undergrad and graduate work in California, his goal of writing history-based articles.
Rick protected my little brother and me countless times. He and my other older brother saved me during a fight in Cincinnati when we were jumped by a gang. He was there for me, again, and again. He fed my love of words, writing and activism, along with Aretha Franklin songs and musicals.
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People were easily drawn to him. Yet, in his final moments, he was alone with no one beside him. No one comforting him in his final gasps. No one, including me, could protect him, heal him, hold him as he lay alone, bleeding on a sidewalk with your bullet in his abdomen.
His San Francisco friends attended his funeral in Ohio with us. We exchanged “Rick” stories — ours pre-S.F. and theirs after-S.F. We laughed. We cried. Aunt Bea and Uncle Dick, who raised us after our dad died, were torn apart. One of their boys was ripped away from them. Aunt Bea especially carried her grief to her grave.
Rick never met my late wife before cancer took her away. She loved hearing Rick stories. My amazing second wife loves Rick stories and grieves never meeting her brother-in-law. I never got to see them or my son hug and laugh with Rick. When my two other brothers came to meet my new son, Uncle Rick wasn’t there. Family photos of our newest Smoot’s life were incomplete. You stole that moment and thousands more from us. My son often said, “I wish I could talk with Uncle Rick.” You destroyed such possibilities.
Are you still alive? What life have you lived since 1978 after Rick’s life ended that dark morning? Have you agonized about his pain-filled face and falling, bleeding body? Or have you gone on with your life, possessing no remorse or guilt?
About a year ago, I felt a strong nudge to tell Rick’s story and possibly reach you. My first step was to contact the San Francisco Police Department’s homicide cold case team. It still pains me to write or say “homicide” about Rick.
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I’ve had the distinct pleasure of speaking with Sgt. Al Levy, and detectives Dan Cunningham and Dominic Celaya, who, along with others, are devoting hours to investigating, and, hopefully, solving cold cases. They update me and take my calls and emails gracefully and patiently. Their passion for offering families and surviving victims answers or closure is palpable. They always listen and tell me the status of Rick’s case in their queue.
The department’s homicide cold case team still wants to find you but has dozens of cases ahead of Rick’s to investigate.
Forty-six years have flown by since you killed my brother, and I’ve never quite recovered. When I hear Aretha belting out “R.E.S.P.E.C.T.,” I see Rick dancing. I see his handwriting in a “Living Bible” he gave me when I was 16 or 17. I hear him telling me about the Amazon, surfing in the Pacific and skiing in the California mountains. I see him driving his white ’60s Ford Galaxie. I see the picture hanging in our hallway, of him smiling in New York’s Central Park.
Do you still see him, too? Do you see Rick crumple as you or your friend shot him? Does your guilt eat away at you? If not, I pray something softens your merciless heart before you die. Eternity is a long time to be driven by hate and evil.
Feb. 8, 1978, 244 Ninth St., 2 a.m. “POP!!” “FLASH!!” Rick stumbles, crumples, dies.
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You killed my hero. My brother Rick.
I want answers, please!
Roy Smoot is a retired banker living in Maine with his wife, June. Forty-six years later, his heart still grieves for his brother.
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