Austin was a sleepy college town in April 1978 when I moved here from Miami, the day after my wife Tere and I were married in a park by Biscayne Bay. We were in our early twenties and were both starting our first careers away from home and family. I worked in department store security and dreamed of being a cop someday but that would have to wait until 1980 when I started at the Austin Police Department.

I don’t have any clear memories of May 17, 1978 when APD Officer Ralph Ablanedo pulled over David Lee Powell in South Austin near Travis High School. I’m sure news coverage was full of the details but I don’t clearly remember watching then. Here is the text from the Austin Police Association’s webpage concerning the details of the event:

Officer Ralph Ablanedo was killed in the line of duty during a traffic stop in the 900 block of Live Oak Street. Officer Ablanedo had ticketed the driver of the car, Sheila Meinert, for driving without a license, then ran a routine check on the passenger, David Lee Powell, who had warrants for misdemeanor theft and hot checks. As Officer Ablanedo spoke on his radio, Powell opened fire with a fully automatic AK-47, penetrating Officer Ablanedo's bulletproof vest. Despite his injuries, Officer Ablanedo was able to give officers a description of the car before he lost consciousness and died. Powell opened fire on a second officer when he was stopped a short time later, and also tossed a hand grenade, which failed to explode. His companion, Meinert, surrendered, and Powell fled on foot, only to be arrested a few hours later after an extensive manhunt. Powell was eventually convicted of murder and sentenced to death. 

It took only seconds for Powell to shoot him and then minutes for Ralph Ablanedo to die from his wounds but it took 32 years, three complete jury trials, the exhumation and reburial of Ralph’s remains and numerous appeals all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court for Powell to finally be executed in Huntsville on June 15, 2010. I had retired by that time but I was honored to be allowed to be the photographer for the police association and the family on the trip to Huntsville now commemorated as “Journey to Justice."

Ralph was a six year veteran working the night shift in 1978 and had left his wife Judy and their 5 year-old son Steve and infant son David at home to go to work that night. I wore a uniform for almost ten years and there was a sense of ritual for me dressing to go to work, something like a Matador layering protective cloth on before battle. There is a feel of changing from family man to soldier in the sense that these things you wear will hopefully bring you home at the end of your shift. My wife and I would try to always say goodbye peacefully before I left the house even if we had been bickering earlier. Most people probably know the feeling of dropping a loved one off at an airport, hoping they make it to their destination safely. Multiply those times four or five days a week for a career. We can be a superstitious bunch wearing lucky charms and amulets, anything to increase the odds of survival.

Ralph was wearing a bullet proof vest made of fiberglass cloth under his light blue uniform shirt but it didn’t stand a chance from the ten rounds of AK-47 rifle fire that struck him in the chest. Bruce Mills, Ralph’s partner on patrol was the first officer to reach him and he cradled Ralph’s head in his lap waiting for the ambulance as Ralph passed from this earth. Bruce would later marry Judy, Ralph’s widow and help raise their two boys to manhood.

The police association organized the travel of family and friends from Austin to Huntsville in something I can only compare to a very somber funeral escort ending in a long awaited wake for Ralph, complete with slideshows of better times and remembrances spoken with love. There had been an invitation to “hoist a beer” in Austin the night of the Powell execution but that did not address the events with the somberness I thought more appropriate. Ralph was the last regular APD officer killed by gunfire in Austin and that says a lot about what a great city we live in. One other Austin officer, William DeWayne Jones Sr.  of the Park Police was killed by gunfire near Zilker Park on May 28, 2000 by a man that then fled to Houston and killed himself, so Powell was the last “cop killer” to go through this process. Powell by this time was the longest serving prisoner on Death Row and was being hailed as a reformed person no longer dangerous to society, an element required for the death penalty in Texas.

I am not normally thought of as your typical cop or ex-cop for that matter. I’m definitely liberal and have friends from all walks of life and ethnic groups. Policing can be an isolating career if you let it happen. I think it has less to do with beliefs and politics and more to do with shift work, especially night shifts. We used to rotate shifts every month and you are off when your non police friends are working so you spend increasing time with your cop friends and your non cop friends can fall by the wayside. As the city got bigger and recruiters had to go further from Austin to find candidates, it was not unusual to have officers working in Austin but living in towns a hundred miles away. A lot of society is bound by who your kids play soccer with and spend the night with. That is the glue of community.

I worked a variety of assignments during my career but it is violent crime investigation that ages you. Seeing the victims and dealing with their loved ones creates a sense of urgency that you can’t lay down. Once you have your own children, the scales tip and you become more affected by death and tragedy. The victim’s pain becomes your pain and you can’t just drop your thoughts on the short commute home. Add in the friends that you lose in the line of duty and the funerals and bagpipes,  and emotions can well up at random times like when you cross an intersection where a friend lost his life or another friend was forced to shoot someone that was trying to kill another person.

Just because I was a cop and was prepared to use deadly force didn’t mean I was always a death penalty advocate. I had only met a few people that I was convinced were so evil that there was no safe place for them to be without fear of escape but those few did exist and they killed many people in their times. I came to the belief that the death penalty as we know it in Texas is similar to parenting a difficult child where you find yourself saying or doing things you thought you never would. You reach a point where you have to do something, even if it is unthinkable on an average day. You are literally at your wits end. That is where I think I found myself on the drive to Huntsville.

The people travelling on chartered buses and by motorcycle to Huntsville met up at a parking lot in north Austin and the motorcade wound its way out Highway 290 east past the city limits where the uniformed officers dropped back and returned to Austin. I followed behind the buses and a group of retired cops many of whom had rode motorcycles’ most of their careers. Many of these were the old backbone of APD, strong men and women that used to run towards danger but now moved a bit slower. They had grayed and gained many pounds but in their gaze and demeanor was that “I will survive” look. There were actually two groups of motorcyclists. There were the “Blue Knights” few of whom I recognized and “Los Pistoleros” a motorcycle club of Austin cops formed in the 1970’s and many of these men had been members ever since. They looked a lot different now as old retired men with long hair and dark tans and tattoos. Most were spit and polish when I knew them as motor officers that led funerals and parades besides enforcing “highway discipline” simply by the way they rode and looked. If you think I’m making that up, there are numerous stories I could share with you about this group of officers. 

I had carried a small tape recorder with me and I was struck by the roar of the Harleys they rode as we drove down country roads heading to Huntsville. It brought back memories of the comforting sound of squad cars racing to get to you when you called for help. You couldn’t tell who each one was coming to you but you knew they were one of yours by the throaty roar of the carburetor. There was an unwritten code that you should hold off on calling for help unless you really needed it but when you did, you knew the whole city was coming to your aid.

I am telling you things I thought in the privacy of my own car and I am not representing APD by writing this. I am just sharing some very conflicting thoughts and feelings that came with the experience of these tragic events. As we got closer to Huntsville I wondered if Powell was able to hear the outside surroundings and may hear us coming? In my mind this was a call for backup made long ago by Ralph and his loved ones and it was just now forming.

Once the motorcade arrived in Huntsville we moved in to the host hotel. This was not the first group coming to this hotel for an execution, as they have hosted groups representing the defendant and the deceased many times over the years. There were about one hundred officers, active and retired on the buses. It was like a reunion in the lobby seeing folks you hadn’t seen for many years or at least since the last big funeral. Austin had grown from about 450 officers in 1978 to over 1500 now. We visited for a bit and then moved in to a conference room to meet with the family and to hear from the Austin Police Association (APA) President Wayne Vincent on the order of the day. I have been a photographer at some somber ceremonies before and try to be as unobtrusive as possible while trying to capture what images I can without destroying the ambiance. If you picture the noise that motor driven cameras make at news conferences, you know what I wanted to avoid.

There was a very moving slideshow of photos of Ralph’s life from boyhood to fatherhood. I was sitting within arms distance of Ralph’s family and loved ones and it gets difficult to shoot phots through tears. This was the long awaited wake for Ralph and many of the officers in the room had been there for the first one 32 years before and I am sure it was much more bitter then. One of the most touching moments came when Vincent and APA Executive Director Val Escobar presented the family with a keepsake box with small mementos of Ralph’s career including a replica of his badge on top.

When this semisweet memorial was over we formed back up in another motorcade for the drive to The Walls Unit where Death Row is housed. It was especially heartwarming to see all of the Huntsville PD and TDC Officers blocking the intersections along the way reminiscent of other funeral escorts I had been on throughout my career. We parked near the family contact area and filed in to a small cafeteria where the warden, Charles Thomas O’Reilly explained the procedures for the day. He also uncovered large trays of food that had been prepared for us and told us to settle in because there could be a lengthy wait. We were possibly the largest group of visitors hosted in this place in a long time. There had been other executions of men who had killed officers but no group before had brought such a large contingent.

As happens at many events after retirement, you find yourself standing and talking to someone you haven’t seen in a long time and asking them about someone in the room you don’t recognize. I pointed at a man talking to two old cops I knew and asked who this man was. He was one of the jurors on one of the three juries to decide on the death penalty in Powell’s case. He was one of 36 people that heard all of the evidence and decided unanimously that death was the only answer for David Lee Powell. There were retired officers in the room that were older than Ralph when he was killed in 1978 and many on the job now that weren’t even born when he died.

To be continued.

 (Photo by Hayley Ford.)