By Stephen Oduntan
Contributing Writer
He lay shackled to a prison bed, arms and legs stretched wide in a crucifix-like position, cuffed for hours. Worms crawled from his body. Feces piled beneath him. A hole in his throat where his voice used to be. Guards walked past. No one stopped.
“Why didn’t you say something?” they later asked. But he couldn’t. They had already taken his voice.
Raised in the Imperial Courts housing projects in Watts, George Ray Thomas — known across South Los Angeles as Tony Bogard — was one of five siblings in a single-parent household. Decades before the name became global, he was a co-founder of the Eastside Crips — part of a neighborhood movement that, he says, began as community protection.
His father, he said, “sold drugs.” His mother relied on public assistance.
“There wasn’t no love,” he said. “Only survival.”
At 13, he says he committed his first murder — the same age he entered the juvenile justice system. He recalls strip searches, sexual abuse by staff, and violence he says became routine.
“We didn’t know what was normal,” he said. “We just did what they told us.”
By the early 1970s, Thomas had joined the original Eastside Crips, which he describes as a neighborhood protection movement inspired by the Black Panthers.
“Crip meant Community Revolution in Progress,” he said. “It was about making sure kids got to school, making sure nobody was breaking into homes.”
But he said police antagonism helped transform the group’s purpose.
“They’d drop us off in rival neighborhoods, tell them, ‘There’s a Crip over here.’ That’s how it started to change,” he said.
Years later, Thomas said he was pulled over in Lancaster during a traffic stop. He said he was cavity searched in view of children walking home from school. He was charged with drug possession. After turning down a nine-year plea deal, he was tried three times — convicted on the third by an all-white jury.
“The judge told me, ‘You keep talking, I’ll make it two life sentences,’” he said. “Then he did.”
He was sentenced to 31 years to life after being tried three times for the same charge. His case — ultimately upheld by then-Attorney General Kamala Harris’s office — stemmed from that Lancaster stop.
In public remarks, including during the 2019 Democratic primary debate, Harris defended her prosecutorial record.
“I am proud of the work we did,” she said. “Work that has received national recognition for what has been the important work of reforming a criminal justice system.”
“Born Black, your skin is your sin,” Thomas said. “It ain’t no justice — it’s two kinds of justice in this country. White man justice and Black man justice.”
At Pelican Bay, he spent years in solitary confinement. A medical visit revealed stage 4 throat cancer.
“They said, ‘You’re gonna die in here,’” he said. He believes prison conditions — mold, asbestos, poor ventilation — contributed to his illness.
He began studying law from prison library books, filing his own motions late into the night. He eventually won on grounds that included ineffective counsel and due process violations.
“I didn’t escape,” he said. “I made law.”
During his appeal, he said he called Harris’s office, only to be told, “She’s having dinner.”
Nearly a decade after entering prison, his conviction was overturned. He walked out with a hole in his throat — and a legal record he rewrote himself. He received no financial compensation. No apology.
“My freedom was the compensation,” he said. “And even that came late.”
Today, Thomas speaks by pressing a device against his throat. His voice is a mechanical rasp.
“They thought if they took my voice, I’d stop talking,” he said. “They didn’t know I’d learn to speak another way.”
Since his release, Thomas has worked in conflict resolution and youth mentorship.
“If I can keep one kid from going where I’ve been, it’s worth it,” he said.
From his disability income, he gives out small checks — $25 here, $50 there.
“Sometimes I tell them, ‘Write on paper what you would’ve put on the wall.’”
He said he met the late Nipsey Hussle in jail, back when the rapper still went by the name Thundercat.
“He told me he wanted to build something like what me and my brother did with the Peachtree,” Thomas said.
Peachtree, a once-volatile corner in Watts, became known during the 1992 gang truce as a neutral ground for peacekeeping.
“And he did. That’s what the Marathon became.”
As the interview wrapped up, two young men — Max Todd and Anthony Owens III — walked into the room. One wore a sweatshirt printed with the word BOGARD. They weren’t just visitors — they were part of what he’s building now.
One of them, now an actor, credits Bogard with helping him leave gang life behind. The other, a filmmaker, said his company helped Thomas launch a nonprofit and a limited liability company.
“He’s not just someone who survived two life sentences,” he said. “He’s one of the last living founders of the Crips — and now he’s writing a new chapter.”
The name Bogard, he added, is more than memory.
“It’s a verb in the streets,” he said. “It’s in rap lyrics. People say it without even knowing where it came from.”
Even Tupac Shakur mentioned someone named “Bogard” in his 1996 track “Ambitionz Az a Ridah.” Whether it referred to Thomas or not, the name — and the man behind it — reverberates through a culture that once looked to him for leadership.
“They tried to break me,” Thomas said. “But I’m back.”
Bogard wasn’t just his name. It was what people remembered — even if they never knew the man.
Stephen Oduntan is a freelance reporter for Wave Newspapers.
