By A.C. Thompson

Photo courtesy of the Tom family Murdered: Harry Tom was robbed, beaten, and left for dead in a bathroom at Stonestown Galleria.

Her dad, Harry Tom, was beaten to death just over two years ago. He was 68, retired after a life of toil – he'd worked in parking garages and a hardware store – and was enjoying tending to his orchids and cooking and watching the 'Niners and Giants on the tube. On the final day of his life, Tom visited Stonestown Galleria shopping mall with his wife, Norma, and his sister-in-law. The plan was to go shopping and grab a late lunch at the Olive Garden.

While at Stonestown, Tom entered a bathroom on the second floor of Macy's department store, where an assailant – or assailants – attacked him, fished his wallet and keys out of his pockets, and abandoned his near-lifeless body, leaving Tom face-down on the floor, surrounded by what investigators later described as a "large pool of coagulated blood."

An ambulance spirited him to San Francisco General Hospital, where he died at approximately 4:40 p.m. on June 6, 2003.

"By the time we got to General he had already passed away," recounts Vicki Tom, in a voice as flat as the Great Plains. "I insisted on seeing my dad. I had to know. The neurosurgeon said, 'You don't want to see him.' I said, 'I just need to know it's him.' "

She walked into a scene from a horror flick. "His eye was protruding from his face," she says.

Tom's skull was a jigsaw puzzle. According to an autopsy performed by the San Francisco Medical Examiner's office, the attacker(s) busted his left cheekbone, his upper jaw, and an eye socket and cracked a 9.5-centimeter fracture on the side of his cranium. The damage triggered explosive cerebral hemorrhaging and bruising Tom's system couldn't withstand.

Two weeks after the slaying, homicide inspector Holly Pera informed the San Francisco Chronicle, "We don't have a suspect at this point." Today police still haven't made an arrest in the case.

• • •

Guardian photo by Lori Spears Waiting for justice: Vicki Tom wants to see someone arrested for her father's murder.

A cache of clues about the case spilled out in court recently during the course of a civil lawsuit brought by police officer Paul Lozada. A longtime undercover officer assigned to the elite Violent Crimes Task Force, Lozada sued the department, claiming he was unfairly disciplined after complaining about missteps in the Tom probe.

The department said the cop's disciplining had nothing to do with the Harry Tom case. Actually, they said, Lozada was properly transferred to a desk job in the planning division in 2003 after opening fire on a suspect wanted for an attempted double homicide. That suspect, Andre Reid, was behind the wheel of an SUV when he purportedly tried to run down Lozada, prompting the officer to loose a single shot, which punctured the vehicle's windshield.

After hearing approximately two weeks of testimony, the jury agreed with the SFPD, on June 14 issuing a verdict clearing the department of inappropriately sanctioning Lozada.

But while the suit fizzled for Lozada, it succeeded in bringing to light new information about the Harry Tom slaying. Among the revelations:

• Three informants identified an ex-felon named Michael Powell, a.k.a. "Black Mike," as the killer.

• Those snitches clearly had knowledge of the crime – they directed police to the location of Tom's credit cards, which were recovered from a sewer in the Sunnydale housing projects.

• Surveillance video captured one of those informants using the man's credit cards.

• At least one cop thinks two men now facing trial in connection with another killing used the stolen credit cards.

• • •

On the stand, Lt. Kitt Crenshaw, a 28-year veteran who headed the Violent Crimes Task Force at the time of the murder, detailed his dealings with an informant codenamed "L1."

According to Crenshaw, days after the slaying he got a solid tip from L1. "The informant told me he was there," Crenshaw testified. "He knew who killed the old man.... [The snitch] had used the credit cards." And it was the informant's photo that the SFPD had captured via surveillance camera and given to local TV stations in hopes of generating leads.

The informant, Crenshaw said, told him Michael Powell "committed the homicide" and shared the cards with two to three other individuals who used them, before secreting the plastic "in a gutter in the Sunnydale housing projects."

Crenshaw and Lozada tracked Powell to a home in Stockton, where, according to L1, the alleged killer "was distraught. He was crying. He said he didn't mean to kill the old man. He was on a heroin comedown."

In a clandestine phone conversation, L1 told Crenshaw, "He could bring Black Mike to me." Even if the department didn't have an airtight case against Powell, the suspect was already wanted on a warrant for violating the terms of his parole, so he could be jailed and held while detectives built their case.

Crenshaw made plans to snatch Powell. He twice scheduled raids on the Stockton house. Both times, though, the missions were called off by Homicide commander Lt. John Hennessey. Said Crenshaw, "We were gonna go out and arrest Michael Powell on the parole warrant and hopefully through that obtain information on the Harry Tom homicide. It was a case that could be made, and I had it in my hand."

In Crenshaw's view, SFPD "missed a key opportunity" by not busting Powell.

During the course of the trial, lawyers for the police department hinted at an alternative theory, suggesting the key suspect should've been L1, not Powell. After all, L1 had a bunch of info about the incident and had been caught on video using Tom's credit cards.

In confidential SFPD memos obtained by the Bay Guardian, Lt. Hennessey urged police brass to quit using L1 as an informant. "I believe that it would be improper to maintain him as an active informant for this department," Hennessey wrote July 2, 2003.

This wasn't just a turf skirmish pitting Lozada, Crenshaw, and the Violent Crimes Task Force against the homicide squad; the probe seems to have devolved into some sort of battle of the snitches. In another memo, dated July 9, 2003, Hennessey described L1 as a disruptive force on the investigation and said, "From the beginning of this investigation, the Homicide Detail has had to adapt its investigative strategy to the action taken by Officer Lozada [and] his informant." L1 "has obstructed the efforts" of another snitch, who'd been retained by Homicide, while pushing Lozada and Crenshaw to "arrest Michael Powell for the homicide," Hennessey wrote.

In other words, it looks like one faction within the SFPD was employing one informant who said Powell did it, while another faction was cultivating another snitch who said he wasn't the guy. And neither side wanted to admit their snitch might be wrong.

• • •

Is Michael Powell the killer? Is L1? Who knows? But clearly there's a wealth of evidence, and it seems like two years on, somebody should be in custody.

As it turns out, Crenshaw thinks two men who are currently locked up had something to do with the slaying. In court the cop said Emmitt Lewis and Michael Wilson, two associates of Powell, used the credit cards. Lewis and Wilson are in jail awaiting trial on charges that they ran down and killed a man in the Excelsior in a stolen truck about a month after Tom was killed.

So far, though, neither man has been charged in connection with Tom. One well-placed law enforcement figure says, "We're optimistic about the progress we're making on the case."

Officially, SFPD is saying little about the situation. "It's still an open investigation, and it would be inappropriate for us to comment when it's still open and ongoing," spokesperson Sgt. Neville Gittens tells us.

In an interview for an earlier story, a source familiar with the case described Lozada and Crenshaw's assertions as "bullshit."

Lozada's lawyer, Phil Kaplan, is still dogging the department. "I do believe there's been a cover-up," he says. "I'm going to expose whatever corruption went into the investigation." Kaplan's about to get another shot: He's now representing Vicki Tom, who's filed suit against Macy's Department Stores Inc. and parent company Federated Department Stores Inc., arguing the company knew of "dangerous conditions on the property." Also named in the suit: Powell, who's accused of "assaulting and battering" Tom, leading to "great bodily injury and death."

While researching this story we were unable to locate Powell to get his thoughts on the allegations.

As for Vicki Tom, her faith in the SFPD has fissured. She can't understand why the department didn't reel in Powell and his crew after they got the tip from L1. "Why didn't they bring them all in?" she asks. "Why didn't they bring every one of them in?"

Research assistance by Cameron Scott.

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