Street life — and death

Gruesome murder led writer to street-kid culture, and surprises

By Nick Budnick

The Portland Tribune, Jan 26, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (34 Reader comments)

L.E. BASKOW / PORTLAND TRIBUNE

Writer Rene Denfeld stands where members of the Thantos street family lived near Southwest Front Avenue and who, in spring 2003, began a deadly assault on one of its newest members, Jessica Williams.

Anyone who’s been to Pioneer Courthouse Square is aware of Portland’s thriving population of street kids. But after reading author Rene Denfeld’s new book, “All God’s Children: Inside the Dark and Violent World of Street Families,” it’s unlikely you’ll look at them the same way again.

Denfeld’s book delves into the case of Jessica Kate Williams, a mentally challenged black woman who had been adopted by a loving local family.

At 22, Williams was befriended by a group of street kids hanging out in Pioneer Courthouse Square in downtown Portland. The group was soon taken over by James Daniel Nelson, a former street kid and convicted murderer who had recently been released from prison.

After accusing Williams of made-up infractions, the street youths tortured and beat her for hours. Three finished the crime by stabbing her, stomping on her and then spraying her with lighter fluid and setting her on fire.

As Denfeld details, almost all the street youths who assaulted Williams came from white, middle-class homes. Some had left college for the streets, and one was the son of a former police officer.

On the streets they found a network of agencies that fed and supported them while they embarked on a savage crime spree.

In her book, Denfeld penetrates the violent, cultlike and secretive world of street kids, researching how it has developed and changed in Portland and the rest of the country over the past decade.

Her journey into the subculture of street families took her well beyond the media coverage of the case, challenging assumptions and leaving her a different person.

Denfeld is an author and contributor to publications such as The Philadelphia Inquirer and The New York Times Magazine. The Portland Tribune recently published her story on the European Kindred prison gang.

How did you get interested in this topic?

It started in 1992 when I was living in a house in the lower Lair Hill area. We became aware of this group of street kids that were squatting under the Marquam Bridge, right down the street.

I became fascinated with them because they were so unlike the image of homeless youth that I’d had from before. They were obviously organized into this little tribe; they squatted together, they hung out together, they panhandled together, and it turned out they committed a series of assaults and murders, as well.

They called themselves the family. And one of the people involved in that group went away to prison, James Daniel Nelson, and 11 years later he got out and murdered again. And that became the basis of this book.

The Jessica Kate Williams murder is what you’re referring to. And for those who don’t remember?

Sure. Well, Nelson was 16 when he murdered back in 1992. He served almost 11 years.

He got out in 2003 and within 52 days he organized another group of kids — they called themselves a street family. And the group assaulted, and some of the members murdered, a developmentally disabled woman called Jessica Williams.

What intrigued me was this whole society of what these kids called their street families.

What’s a street family?

I think a lot of us are aware of the street kids that you see hanging out in the square panhandling.

What a lot of people aren’t aware of is they have created a highly organized, very unique subculture. These are very akin to gangs; they are groups that have followers, leaders and a very strict code.

They in several cases have committed murders here in Portland, as well as hundreds of assaults and robberies and other crimes.

How did you research this?

I actually had a lot of information from 1992 when PDXS newspaper followed the case, and I also kept tabs on the street culture.

I have a lot of social workers in my family and friends who worked in the field. I was always fascinated with the street families that these kids created.

When I sat down to really dedicate full-time research to it, I interviewed not only everybody from sociologists to attorneys to prosecutors, but I also tried to interview as many street kids as I could, including the street youths who were involved in the assault and murder of Jessica.

I felt very lucky as a reporter that so many people were willing to talk to me and help me get some insight into the various reasons why these young people end up on the street.

Of the kids that you interviewed, with whom did you identify the most?

Boy, first of all one thing that really shocked me is that they call themselves street kids, but most of these people are actually young adults.

The majority of them are over the age of 18. That was really surprising to me because I had that popular image I think in my head of a child who was being victimized on the street.

Instead I found a lot of young adults who had chosen to be on the street living a very criminal lifestyle. Out of all those, one, Danielle Cox left college to live on the street. I could identify with her in many ways: she was very bright, ambitious, complex. But in the end she remained an enigma.

I’m not sure she’s even aware of not only what drove her to live on the street but why she continued to live on the streets while committing more and more serious crimes.

What surprised you the most?

Honestly, I went into this with some assumptions.

One was that most of these kids were going to be abused and neglected. The other was that they were trapped on the street and there was a lack of resources to help them get off the street.

And I found neither was true. The majority of the youths I examined actually chose to be on the street. A lot of them came from very adequate, even very loving homes. Their parents often wanted them to come back.

But they had chosen to be on the streets, and had become enmeshed in a very violent criminal subculture.

How about the programs to get kids off the streets?

In Portland we have everything from job training to education, even free medical, free dental care, acupuncture; these kids can even get free massage therapy, so they have a lot of opportunities.

I felt there was a real Catch-22 in youth services. Because there are some very genuinely homeless youths that are on the street, a few of the youths I examined did have these very horrible backgrounds, often with very profound mental illnesses.

What those kinds of kids need is very serious wraparound services with psychiatric intervention, and they weren’t getting it. And then conversely the bulk of the youths I looked at didn’t need to be on the streets at all; they were frankly using the agencies to support a criminal lifestyle.

What do you base that on?

Well, I’ll give you an example: The Thantos family, the group that ended up assaulting and some of its members murdering Jessica Kate Williams.

Every morning they would get up and go to a local agency to eat breakfast. They relied on the agencies for food, showers and clothing, shelter at times.

I can’t think of any that partook in any of the job or education programs. As a matter of fact, most of them had homes to go to with perfectly decent families, even college scholarships or jobs they had left — perfectly good.

So that was something I found troubling: that these youths are out on the street presenting themselves as homeless when in fact they are not.

What’s the appeal of this lifestyle?

It’s a very normal thing when you’re a late teenager or in your early 20s, to want to go out and have adventures. It’s an age of taking risks and of going thrill-seeking. It’s an age where we are often still developing some sense of conscience or morality.

But it used to be particularly if you grew up in a working-class neighborhood like I did, you get to 18, 19 and if you’re not going to go to college you get a job, you can get married, you would buy a house, start a family and start kind of this all-consuming process of adulthood.

Instead, today you have a lot of young adults who don’t really have any expectation of growing up right away.

They’re not really expected to settle down until their late 20s. They’re not going to college; there’s a decline of blue-collar work. They start hanging out downtown and they find hundreds of these street kids, teenagers, young adults hanging out in the streets. Nobody’s watching what they’re doing. Nobody’s really aware.

They’re fed and clothed by the agencies, but nobody’s really making them accountable for anything. They’ve created this remarkably lawless, savage kind of society.

They even have their own language. So I think the appeal to any teenager or young adult is to say, “Well, hey, I can go out and live out on the street and be wild and free and I don’t have to answer to anyone.” They adopt these mythical street names and act out these fantasy games.

To what extent was the Thantos family an aberration?

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