Year-End Update: Revisiting Scenes and People From 1986 View Stories : Fifth Time the Charm

View has revisited some of the people and places it reported on in 1986 to update their stories. Among them:

--A shelter for the homeless that was itself homeless.

--An author who had new ideas about how to market and promote his book.

--The campaign to save Nancy Reagan’s 1981 inaugural gown, which is stretching under the weight of its bugle beads.

Tony Cooks took lunch at the Blue Moon Saloon in Redondo Beach last week. Doing lunch is a new experience for Cooks, a young Compton man who was tried five times for a murder he did not commit. The lunch was hosted by producers Muffet Kaufman and Kara Fox, who hope to make a movie about Cooks’ harrowing experience that ended with acquittal at his fifth trial in November.

Cooks had just turned 18 when he was arrested and charged with being one of three youths involved in a particularly repugnant 1980 murder.

After the fourth trial, when he was found guilty, Superior Court Judge Roosevelt Dorn threw out the conviction. When an appeals court reinstated the verdict Dorn said he believed Cooks was innocent, but had no choice but to sentence Cooks to 16 years to life in prison. Then Dorn let Cooks out on bail.

Only at his fifth trial did a man Cooks contends is the real killer testify. Also at the fifth trial, the former Sheriff’s detective who investigated the 1980 murder case testified that he dropped the other man as a suspect because he could not reach the suspect by telephone.

Kaufman, who owns MKD Productions, recently took Cooks for a ride past the Beverly Hills Hotel and nearby mansions, sites Cooks said he had seen only in movies. “What I saw surprised me, to see that from where the richest live to where the poorest live--like the people who are homeless and all on Sunset Boulevard--is not too far apart,” Cooks said.

He also has a job with a Hollywood publishing firm that he reaches after a two-hour bus ride. In January, Cooks said, he will start classes at Compton Community College. “I dropped out of high school, but now I’m going to do everything right,” he said.

“Right now I’m happy and what matters is that I am free and that I feel good and I’m having a Christmas I will always remember,” Cooks said.