movement, with very brief mentions of ‘the Black Jacobins in Miami’. They were described, almost dismissively, as a fringe group, one that didn’t share the separatist ideals of the Black Panthers – ‘Panther Cubs’, ‘Black Flower Power’ and ‘Age of Aquarius Niggaz’ were some of the phrases used. The pieces mentioned Vanetta Brown killing a Miami police detective called Dennis Peck in 1968 and absconding to Cuba, seemingly the only thing that she did of note.
Next he found a site called ‘Cuba: Gangsta’s Paradise’, which listed ninety-four US criminals given asylum by the Castro regime between the 1960s and the 1980s. The list was subdivided into five categories: cop-killers, murderers, hijackers, robbers and fraudsters.
The name ‘Vanetta Brown’ headed the cop-killer roll. Alongside it, a blue link: ‘DT’. Max clicked on the letters and the ‘FBI’s Most Wanted’ site came up in a separate window. It categorised Brown as a ‘Domestic Terrorist’ and briefly detailed her crime, present location (‘Havana – unconfirmed’) and the government bounty on her head: ‘$500,000’.
Then he came to Justice4Dennis.com – a site devoted to the memory of Dennis Peck. The home page presented an official police photograph of Peck in dress blues – a fresh-faced, ginger-haired twenty-two-year-old with freckles, dimples and blue eyes sparkling with that familiar rookie glow, right before they hit the street and got the shine scared out of them. Max felt those eyes could have been his own, a mirror throwing all that unfulfilled potential and all those broken promises back at him with a single question: why had he fucked things up so badly?
Below the picture were Peck’s dates of birth and death: ‘November 9, 1934 – June 4, 1968’.
Thirty-three years old when he died.
Max found an account of Peck’s murder on the site. In 1968, Vanetta Brown had fled during a police raid on the Black Jacobins’s headquarters in Overtown. Dennis Peck had been one of the detectives involved in the raid. Four eyewitnesses described seeing Brown shoot him as she escaped through a back window.
The raid netted a big cache of heroin, money and guns.
Captain Eldon Burns and Lieutenant Abe Watson led the operation.
Vanetta Brown went into hiding and evaded a nationwide manhunt. In 1971 she resurfaced in Cuba, where Fidel Castro described her as an innocent victim of racist, imperialist America. They were happy to give her a permanent refuge, he said. She was granted asylum.
Peck’s family and colleagues formed the Justice4Dennis movement, devoted to bringing Brown back to the US to stand trial for her crime. They’d been writing to Castro every year since 1972, requesting her extradition. The family also wrote to Pope John Paul II in 1997, asking him to raise the matter with Castro when he visited the country the following year. No dice. Castro hadn’t budged.
The site included a slideshow of family photographs: Dennis Peck graduating from police academy, on his wedding day, and multiple portraits of him with his daughters, Wendy and Thelma. Wendy was the eldest. Images of her wearing her father’s police hat, playing with a toy police car, sat at the wheel of a real one, complete with a pair of sunglasses too big for her head. Then came her first Communion, followed by a family Christmas on the beach. The last photograph was of both daughters, now grown up, standing by Peck’s grave, holding hands.
The final search link was the Miami Herald ’s online picture archive, where Max found two related photographs, the first of Vanetta in 1967 – a posed, black-and-white studio shot. She could have been a model or a blaxploitation movie queen. She was striking – dark skin, high cheekbones, full lips on a wide mouth – but so angry and defiant with it, any suggestion of sensuality was choked out of her features.
The second image was a US government photo-portrait of Wendy Peck, taken in 2006 and issued to
Next he found a site called ‘Cuba: Gangsta’s Paradise’, which listed ninety-four US criminals given asylum by the Castro regime between the 1960s and the 1980s. The list was subdivided into five categories: cop-killers, murderers, hijackers, robbers and fraudsters.
The name ‘Vanetta Brown’ headed the cop-killer roll. Alongside it, a blue link: ‘DT’. Max clicked on the letters and the ‘FBI’s Most Wanted’ site came up in a separate window. It categorised Brown as a ‘Domestic Terrorist’ and briefly detailed her crime, present location (‘Havana – unconfirmed’) and the government bounty on her head: ‘$500,000’.
Then he came to Justice4Dennis.com – a site devoted to the memory of Dennis Peck. The home page presented an official police photograph of Peck in dress blues – a fresh-faced, ginger-haired twenty-two-year-old with freckles, dimples and blue eyes sparkling with that familiar rookie glow, right before they hit the street and got the shine scared out of them. Max felt those eyes could have been his own, a mirror throwing all that unfulfilled potential and all those broken promises back at him with a single question: why had he fucked things up so badly?
Below the picture were Peck’s dates of birth and death: ‘November 9, 1934 – June 4, 1968’.
Thirty-three years old when he died.
Max found an account of Peck’s murder on the site. In 1968, Vanetta Brown had fled during a police raid on the Black Jacobins’s headquarters in Overtown. Dennis Peck had been one of the detectives involved in the raid. Four eyewitnesses described seeing Brown shoot him as she escaped through a back window.
The raid netted a big cache of heroin, money and guns.
Captain Eldon Burns and Lieutenant Abe Watson led the operation.
Vanetta Brown went into hiding and evaded a nationwide manhunt. In 1971 she resurfaced in Cuba, where Fidel Castro described her as an innocent victim of racist, imperialist America. They were happy to give her a permanent refuge, he said. She was granted asylum.
Peck’s family and colleagues formed the Justice4Dennis movement, devoted to bringing Brown back to the US to stand trial for her crime. They’d been writing to Castro every year since 1972, requesting her extradition. The family also wrote to Pope John Paul II in 1997, asking him to raise the matter with Castro when he visited the country the following year. No dice. Castro hadn’t budged.
The site included a slideshow of family photographs: Dennis Peck graduating from police academy, on his wedding day, and multiple portraits of him with his daughters, Wendy and Thelma. Wendy was the eldest. Images of her wearing her father’s police hat, playing with a toy police car, sat at the wheel of a real one, complete with a pair of sunglasses too big for her head. Then came her first Communion, followed by a family Christmas on the beach. The last photograph was of both daughters, now grown up, standing by Peck’s grave, holding hands.
The final search link was the Miami Herald ’s online picture archive, where Max found two related photographs, the first of Vanetta in 1967 – a posed, black-and-white studio shot. She could have been a model or a blaxploitation movie queen. She was striking – dark skin, high cheekbones, full lips on a wide mouth – but so angry and defiant with it, any suggestion of sensuality was choked out of her features.
The second image was a US government photo-portrait of Wendy Peck, taken in 2006 and issued to
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