It was a classic Joe Konopka moment. The anti-drug activist and his friend Freddy Batres were out patrolling the streets of Konopka's neighborhood one evening looking for "Fat Tony," one of the Haight's major dealers. The two were side by side but it was Konopka, founder of "Residents Against Druggies" or RAD — a group devoted to pushing drugs out of the Haight — who saw a deal going down and got on his two-way radio to bring police out to the scene.
What Konopka did next still amazes Batres to this day, some 10 years later. "Joe went right in front of him and started talking to (Fat Tony) nicely until the police arrived," Batres says.
The dealer was arrested on outstanding warrants, and Batres remembers the night as a turning point on RAD's controversial war on drugs in the Haight, a famously tolerant neighborhood widely known as the birthplace of hippie counterculture. "I got a lot of respect for that man," Batres says, adding that crime in the neighborhood dropped dramatically after Joe put the dealer in jail.
But that was back in the mid-1990s, during the heyday of Konopka and his Residents Against Druggies crusade when Joe believed he could parlay his activism into a seat on the Board of Supervisors. RAD gradually stopped patrolling and faded away —just as Joe Konopka did about seven years ago. That was when he lost his second bid for the Board of Supervisors, in 2000. Afterward, he all but vanished from the public eye until this past July, when the 65-year-old Konopka was found dead inside the Ashbury Street home he shared with his wife of more than 30 years, Ethel.
When homicide inspectors arrived at the couple's house that night — after emergency dispatchers received two 911 calls from Konopka's cell phone — they saw Konopka lying facedown on the bed in the master bedroom wearing black leather fur-lined restraints on his wrists and ankles. A black hood covered his face and head. A rope tied to the bed was wrapped around his feet, up to his wrists, and around his neck.
A week later, police arrested a 40-year-old drug user who, according to a friend, became a bondage and discipline, or B&D, escort mainly to finance his heroin habit. But what's unclear is whether this was a bondage session gone wrong or, as prosecutors say, murder.
During the 1990s, Haight residents complained of a crack epidemic sweeping the neighborhood. The longtime hippie crowd, known to cruise Haight Street looking to buy or sell "buds" and "doses," had given way to a crowd looking for harder drugs.
Joseph B. Konopka Jr., a food management consultant, was one of those disillusioned people who moved to San Francisco not long after the Summer of Love. Konopka himself acknowledged that he'd come to Haight-Ashbury "to do drugs" in the 1970s, but believed things had gotten out of hand. "We don't care if you do drugs. We're just saying don't do it on our streets," he told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1993.
In his view, the Haight was disintegrating. It wasn't just the drugs that infuriated him — he was also a major critic of what he described as an epidemic of public defecation in the neighborhood. At one point, he even hung a sign on his front stoop that read, "Do Not Crap on My Stairs."
In 1993, Konopka gathered about 150 people from the area into the auditorium of the Urban School. At the meeting he spoke of how neighborhood groups were sprouting up in cities across the country to take back the streets. He told them of author and longtime narcotics agent Michael Levine and his book Fight Back: How to Take Back Your Neighborhood, Schools and Families From the Drug Dealers. Levine urged ordinary citizens to fight drugs by targeting users, recommending everything from peer pressure to scare tactics to make them stop taking drugs — or at least push them elsewhere. Resident Karen Crommie remembered the moment in a recent newsletter article written for the Cole Valley Improvement Association in honor of Konopka: "He paused and looked across the faces of those sitting in the bleacher seats and said, 'If you want to follow the neighborhood patrol program of Michael Levine, stay. If you don't, leave now.'"
At the meeting, Residents Against Druggies was born.
Neighbors who joined RAD started donning matching T-shirts and caps in a distinctive lime green that was almost neon (dubbed "RAD green" among members) and patrolling the neighborhood looking for drug crimes and suspicious activity. Joe Konopka even brought in members of the Guardian Angels, the worldwide organization of civilian crime patrollers, to train RAD in everything from self-defense to how to spot drug dealers and buyers. Neighborhood patrollers with RAD focused on taking a nonconfrontational approach. They made their neon-clad presence known and kept notebooks filled with observations, but crimes in progress were usually not interrupted but rather called into "home base," where someone waited by the telephone to call the police.
Konopka's wife, Ethel, did more than stand by her man. She was a RAD patrol leader, known for delving into some of the toughest situations. At times, she even helped other groups like the Guardian Angels patrol in gritty neighborhoods, such as the Tenderloin.
The Konopkas, who organized social events as well as RAD meetings, were praised for helping to create a sense of community. This was especially true of Joe. "What he gave me was the sense that this was a neighborhood," says Susan Strolis, a former RAD member who's now a board member on the Haight Ashbury Improvement Association. "He gave a sense of neighborliness and community in an urban setting. So often, you don't know the people down the hall from you."
But to some in this ultraliberal neighborhood, Konopka was a polarizing figure. Shortly after he launched RAD, he told the San Francisco Chronicle that — although he'd been beaten up, called a Nazi, and received death threats after helping to start RAD — he felt it was "more dangerous to stay in the house and do nothing" about problems in the Haight.
Konopka's old patrol partner, Freddy Batres, who now oversees much of the West Coast operations as regional advisor for the Guardian Angels, says he remembers how Konopka "had this anger in him" because of crime in the Haight. But, Batres adds, Konopka stepped up and became "one of the greatest community leaders" he's ever known, someone who always pushed him and inspired him to commit to neighborhood activism. "He said, 'Freddy, when you want to do something, just go for it. Never stop. Because if you do stop, you're never going to accomplish anything,'" Batres says.
But then about seven years ago, Konopka stopped — stopped organizing street patrols, stopped agitating local politicians, stopped doing the things that made him a public figure. Some people believe Konopka withdrew after his crushing defeat in his 2000 bid for supervisor. In an 11-candidate field, Konopka got only 668 votes, more than 10,000 votes less than would-be Supervisor Matt Gonzalez.
"I don't think he ever recovered from the loss. I think he was shocked," says Calvin Welch, an Ashbury Street neighbor and longtime member of the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council, who often butted heads with Konopka during RAD's early days. "I think this guy really believed that he was an extraordinary political force. I think he was blown away that he did so poorly."
For Welch, Konopka's 2000 election loss showed "the level of isolation and delusion that characterized so much of RAD." Welch says he believes RAD was trying to turn Haight-Ashbury into a "gentrified clone zone," a political agenda not popular among most residents in the famously progressive neighborhood.
In recent years, Welch would occasionally run across Konopka around the neighborhood; Welch thought his neighbor looked ill whenever he saw him.
Konopka's health certainly may have been a factor in his decision to keep a low profile. According to Crommie, he suffered complications from spinal meningitis and encephalitis.
Konopka also apparently had a secret life: Ethel Konopka told police she found out seven years ago that her husband was gay, according to a search warrant and affidavit written by Inspector Michael Philpott.
She also told homicide inspectors that she knew her husband would have different lovers come over to the house on Wednesdays, when she was reportedly away at work or meetings.
"TOP MENACE," warned the headline of a classified ad in the May 17 and May 24 issues of the Bay Area Reporter, a local gay newspaper. Like lots of escort ads, the promise of sex was more than implied.
"Dirty White excon Total Top totally shaved tattooed with prison ink. experience in S.M. & B.D. Have much B.D. & S.M. equip. outcall only..."
It was signed, "Master Menace."
Police told the Bay Area Reporter that the ad was believed to have been placed by Terry D. Frazier, known among his friends as "Tye" (the credit card used to pay for the ad was under a different name). It was, Frazier told police, an ad Joe Konopka saw and responded to.
Frazier, 40, was a drifter who, during his years in San Francisco, often found himself homeless or crashing at friends' places.
Frazier has been in and out of jail over the years, mainly because of drug and burglary charges. He was caught stealing a couple of mirrors — valued at $700 — from a men's restroom at a San Francisco hotel in 2001 and sentenced to 16 months in state prison that July. He was allowed to enter a Salvation Army drug treatment program instead, but soon afterward, he failed to comply with the probation reporting and treatment programs. A January 2002 report to the court said Frazier had been homeless since being released. "As for his employment, he has not obtained a steady job," the report stated. "He indicated that he has been panhandling and collecting money with recycling in order to survive."
He wasn't showing up for his drug treatment program.
Frazier had in the past stayed with his friend Mario Eslava. Eslava, 51, called Frazier his "roommate" when he was interviewed by police. Eslava divulged that he paid "Tye" for sex and that he was in love with him. But he also told investigators that Frazier prefers women, doesn't love him, and has sex with men for money to support his drug habit.
Eslava declined to say much about the case to SF Weekly, but he says he knows Frazier to be a kind and wonderful person who would never want to harm anyone. Still, he describes him as scrappy. "He would fight if he had to," Eslava says. "But he wouldn't want to kill anyone."
Another friend of Frazier's says that while Frazier may be a heroin addict, he's no murderer. John "Tommie" Henry, who says he's known Frazier for about seven years, describes him as shy and a "caring, sharing, a loving person" who got into the bondage and discipline escort business not because he likes to inflict pain, but because he needed money.
Sitting on the bed next to his white stuffed animal — a prim kitten named "Marie" from the movie The Aristocats — inside his small room at the Drake Hotel, Henry says Frazier barely talked about his bondage work. Henry said he suspects his friend got into bondage only recently, because the Top Menace ad in the Reporter was "the first time that I'd heard of him doing such a thing." He added that he knows one of Frazier's exes and says "that was not what was going on" in that relationship. In any event, Henry says people who responded to Frazier's ad were "legitimate consumers" rather than prank callers, and so his business was going quite well.
But Henry says Frazier was definitely using drugs heavily when he stayed with him for a few nights at the Drake in mid-July. "He was strung out," he says.
In late May of this year, Frazier was busted with heroin, methamphetamine, a hypodermic needle and syringe, as well as a knife. He spent a few days in jail, but a judge granted him supervised pretrial release. After failing to appear at several hearings, however, Frazier was declared a fugitive. A bench warrant for his arrest was issued July 9, two days before Joe Konopka's death.
Just before 7:15 on the night of July 11, a 911 caller reported that Joe Konopka had taken drugs and had a heart attack, according to the police search warrant affidavit. Then someone from the same number called back about 45 minutes later to say Konopka's death was sex-related. Mrs. Konopka recognized the phone number when she later spoke with police — the calls were placed from her husband's cell phone.
It's unclear when police made it to the scene — the department refused to authorize the release of the 911 tapes as well as the dispatch records indicating when first-responders arrived at the Konopka's Ashbury Street home. But when homicide investigators did arrive, the place was turned upside down.
Late that night, police walked through the disheveled house with Ethel Konopka, who pointed out a brown jacket on the floor in the kitchen and told them it didn't belong to her or her husband. Nearby she looked inside a big black bag full of bondage equipment — adding that she'd never seen the bag nor the equipment in her house before. She also checked her jewelry boxes and found much of her jewelry, as well as her laptop, gone.
Even blankets had been moved around the house.
An identification card left inside the mysterious brown jacket led inspectors to Frazier's friend Mario Eslava. Eslava told police that his wallet — including his driver's license, credit cards, and Social Security card — had been stolen. A police report filed earlier this year corroborated his story.
Eslava told police about Frazier and noted that his friend "puts his name in a magazine to get dates for money," the affidavit reads.
Police arrested Frazier at the corner of Seventh and Market streets a week later, on July 18, on his outstanding narcotics warrant. He'd apparently been staying with Tommie Henry at the Drake Hotel on Eddy Street, and he had a room at the Henry Hotel near Sixth and Mission streets.
After Frazier was brought to the homicide detail at the Hall of Justice he told Inspector Philpott and another detective that he'd met Joe Konopka through the sex ad he'd placed in the Reporter, and that Konopka had paid Frazier for sex on at least two occasions before July 11.
According to Philpott's July 18 search warrant affidavit, Frazier said that day at about noon he went to the Konopka home and started to engage in a bondage act about an hour later. He put Konopka in restraints, he said, placing a mask over his head and tying him to the bed. He then began fisting him and spanking him with a paddle. But after 20 minutes, he said, he didn't hear any sounds and checked him for a pulse. After he noticed Konopka didn't have a heartbeat and wasn't breathing, he told them, he panicked and spent 20 minutes ransacking the house to make it look like a burglary had taken place. Then Frazier said he called 911 and slipped out a side door.
However, the sequence of events Frazier described to inspectors doesn't seem to match with the timing of the 911 call. If Frazier arrived at the Konopka home at about noon, then waited another hour before beginning a 20-minute bondage session, he would have called in the emergency long before 7:12 p.m. — even if he did spend another 20 minutes ransacking the house.
While talking to police, the warrant says, Frazier denied taking any jewelry, the laptop, or anything else — except for Konopka's cell phone, which he told them he threw away in a Drake Hotel garbage can. Police apparently found that hard to believe, explaining that there was jewelry found on the steps near the exit where Frazier admitted leaving the house.
Not long after the interrogation, authorities charged Frazier with false imprisonment, burglary, robbery, and murder.
When a guard led Frazier into the Department Nine courtroom last week for an early pretrial hearing, Frazier didn't look menacing. As his close-set eyes scanned the courtroom, he looked more like a scared kid waiting at the principal's office than a cold-blooded killer. His tattoos barely showed under his orange jail jumpsuit as he sat waiting along the edge of the courtroom, his shoulders sloped, while his public defender, Susan Kaplan, asked Superior Court Judge Curtis Karnow whether she and Deputy District Attorney George Butterworth could approach the bench.
When Frazier did approach the podium with Kaplan, his responses to the judge were barely audible.
"He is soft-spoken," Kaplan told the judge.
If convicted, Frazier could face life in prison. Frazier and his attorney both declined to speak with SF Weekly about the case. Court documents indicate Frazier has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The medical examiner's report was still pending at press time. But on the night of Konopka's death, the medical examiner at the scene did tell an inspector that it was a homicide, and that Konopka "died at the hands of another person."
Police investigators refused to comment for this story. A spokesperson for the district attorney's office said Frazier is being charged with first-degree murder because Konopka died during the commission of dangerous felonies — in this case, robbery and murder.
But Frazier's friend, Tommie Henry, insists that his pal wasn't capable of murder. "If anything, it was some kind of accident," Henry says. "Either the person that he was with went too far or wanted to go too far, or something in the process of their contact went wrong."
If Frazier is telling the truth, it wouldn't be the first time a bondage session has gone awry. (See "Safe Words" sidebar for details.) Bondage and sadomasochistic activities rely on consent and trust — and it's the responsibility of the dominant person, or "top," to respect the "safe word" decided with the other person, or "bottom," and not hurt that person more than he or she really wants. A man named Master J, for example, says that after 10 years of experience he has learned to read a situation by looking in the bottom's face and eyes.
Still, there's an element of risk. "Any time anybody plays, they are literally trusting the other person with their life," says Master J.'s partner, Sparky, who identifies himself as his boi.
For Konopka's widow, however, there is no gray area. Ethel Konopka says she has little interest in discussing the case with reporters, but she did say that her husband's death was no accident. "No one has the right not to help. Nobody has the right to murder somebody, or let them die," she says. "And that's the only thing I'm interested in."
She adds, "My husband did not die of natural causes."
