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Temple and other young men in his neighborhood had plans that were bigger than crack. But the force of crack -- the easy money, the prestige that went with it, the simple thrilling rush of the drug itself -- always pulled them back into what is known in Bayview-Hunters Point as, simply, "the life."
"We had long-term goals," the informant says. "We wanted to use our street savvy to create something of ourselves. Bernard wanted to get into boxing. But you have to throw back to the day. Understand what Oakdale [a main strip of crack commerce in Hunters Point] was like [in the mid-'80s]. Everybody from the Bay Area came there. It was a party all the time."
Long before Bernard was arrested on murder charges, the black hole of drugs and violence had consumed the life of his twin brother, Lernard.
Lernard Temple had strikes against him from day one. He was borderline mentally retarded and suffered from hyperactivity syndrome and attention deficit disorder, according to the assessment of Dr. Thomas Hilliard, a court-appointed psychologist. In 1984, the twins' mother, Betty Temple, told a psychologist that Lernard was "mentally slow, immature, unable to comprehend events around him very well, and possessing little common sense."
A former associate of the Temple twins says Lernard was a hit man for crack dealers, just like his brother. The associate describes the twins' relationship simply: "Bernard was the bully, and Lernard was his backup."
At 16, Lernard was sent to Log Cabin Ranch, a Bay Area juvenile detention center, for grand theft. The next year, rushing to defend Bernard in a gang-related fight, Lernard shot a rival gangbanger with a sawed-off .22-caliber rifle. He pled guilty to assault with a deadly weapon and spent three years in a juvenile detention facility.
In another psychological report on Lernard, CYA staff psychologist Dr. Larry Nicholas came to a conclusion that mixes the comic, the tragic, and the delusional: "It appears this somewhat passive youth, feeling himself to be vulnerable and inadequate to deal with threatening situations, used this gun as a crutch to bolster his self-confidence and his psychological defenses."
Lernard Temple's life was all but completely circumscribed in 1993 when he was handed a life sentence for killing two people in Sacramento, a gang rival and a man named C.C. Cottonreader, a 400-pound cross-dresser who took care of the Temple brothers' dying grandmother.
During his trial in Sacramento, Lernard frequently quoted from the Bible, and referred to God in asides.
"I remember his saying things like, 'My arms are too short to box with God,' " Sacramento Assistant District Attorney Steve Grippi says.
The Temple twins and their two brothers and one sister were apparently damaged by their parents' marriage, which can be described as rocky, at best.
During the mid-1980s, Betty Temple split from her husband and left for the state capital with Lernard and the other children. (The couple now live together in Sacramento; both declined to be interviewed for this article.)
Bernard stayed behind in San Francisco and lived with his father, Lawrence, a City College custodian. Not yet a self-styled Soul-Jacker, Bernard racked up a "very vicious" juvenile record, filled with rape and assault, says Inspector Hendrix.
Bernard excelled at football, track, wrestling, and basketball at Woodrow Wilson High School, where he spent his freshman and sophomore years, and at Mission High School, where he graduated with a C+ average in 1986. He was known as a smooth talker and a sharp dresser. "He had those smooth edges," says James Calloway, a former dean at Mission High.
Beverly Hubbard, a former counselor at the school, says she remembers Temple being interested mainly in the time and location of the next party. "He was one of the students who I would ask about plans for the future who didn't have any," she says. "I remember the ones who had plans, and I don't remember him that way."
His graduation year, Temple was arrested for locking a girl in a schoolroom and sexually assaulting her. Details of the event are scarce in the public record; the case was dismissed after Temple spent three days in jail, according to court documents. But Inspector Hendrix, who is familiar with the case, says, "As I remember, his friends held the door while he went in there and brutalized the girl."
In 1987, Temple was convicted of raping a 14-year-old girl. In a pre-sentencing interview with a court-appointed psychiatrist, Temple downplayed the seriousness of his first adult offense.
"The defendant stated that the victim looked like she was 16, and that if she had looked 14, he would have nothing to do with her because he is not interested in children," the psychiatrist wrote. "The defendant stated that he had known the victim for about a month. He described her as very fast, and stated that she was overly friendly."
"On the day of the offense, the defendant stated that he was at home with a friend and she called wanting to come over. He stated that she came into the house and walked directly to his room, sitting on the bed, and they talked. He described the talk as 'boring,' and felt that she was simply stalling, 'like she came over for one thing.' He stated that she took off her coat, he turned off the radio, and they held each other. Then she lay back on the bed, he unzipped her pants and pulled them off. She told him not to tell anybody. He stated that he put on his tape recorder, and 'I recorded me and her.' When asked why, he stated that it was 'to give proof' to his friend, Caesar, that he had had sex with her."
Temple claimed that the girl bragged about the sex, the bragging got back to her mother, and when the mother confronted the girl, she cried rape. After pleading guilty to statutory rape in December 1987, Temple was sentenced to three years probation based in part on the recommendation of the psychiatrist, Ronald Levy.
