History has a funny way of catching up with people. Sometimes it’s a slow burn, a quiet weight that settles in the chest over decades. For William O’Neal, that weight seemed to finally break him on a freezing January night in 1990.
Most people know him now as the "Judas" from the Oscar-winning film Judas and the Black Messiah. He was the FBI informant who famously infiltrated the Illinois Black Panther Party, gained the trust of its charismatic chairman Fred Hampton, and then handed over the floor plans that led to Hampton’s assassination by Chicago police in 1969.
But for twenty years after that bloody raid, O'Neal was a ghost. He lived under an alias, William Hart, tucked away in California by the Federal Witness Protection Program. Then he came back to Chicago. And then, he was gone.
The William O'Neal Cause of Death: A Dark Night on the Eisenhower
It happened in the early morning hours of January 15, 1990. O'Neal had been visiting his uncle, Ben Heard, at an apartment in Maywood, a suburb of Chicago. According to Heard, O'Neal was acting "strange." He kept going into the bathroom, staying for ten or fifteen minutes at a time.
The last time he came out, something snapped.
O'Neal tried to jump out of a second-story window. His uncle managed to grab his ankles and pull him back inside, but O'Neal was a big man, and he was determined. He broke free, ran out the door, and headed straight for the Eisenhower Expressway.
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William O’Neal died of multiple blunt force injuries after running into traffic on Interstate 290. He was 40 years old. He was struck by a car in the westbound lanes, and while his wife later maintained it was an accidental fall, the Cook County Medical Examiner officially ruled it a suicide.
The "Eyes on the Prize" Connection
Timing is everything in a story this tragic. Just hours before O’Neal ran onto that highway, PBS had aired the first episode of Eyes on the Prize II, a documentary series about the Civil Rights Movement.
While O'Neal's specific segment—where he finally sat down for a raw, uncomfortable interview about his time in the Panthers—didn't air until February, the release of the series had clearly brought his past back into the light. He had spent years trying to be "William Hart," a guy who worked for a law firm and lived a quiet life. But you can't outrun a legacy like that.
In the interview he gave for the documentary, he looked conflicted. Sorta. He said he felt bad about the raid "indirectly," but then he’d turn around and say he had no allegiance to the Panthers anyway. He claimed he was just a man who "had the courage to get out there and put it on the line."
It’s a bizarre thing to watch. He’s trying to convince the interviewer—and maybe himself—that he was some kind of hero or, at the very least, a professional doing a job. But his uncle saw a different man that night. Heard told the Chicago Tribune that O'Neal was "tortured" by what he had done.
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Was it Guilt or Something Else?
The debate over why O'Neal did it hasn't really stopped.
- The Guilt Narrative: This is the most common theory. After twenty years of looking over his shoulder, the weight of Fred Hampton's death (and the death of Mark Clark) became unbearable.
- The Pressure of Exposure: Coming out of the shadows for the Eyes on the Prize interview meant his neighbors, his coworkers, and the world would know exactly who he was. The witness protection shield was effectively gone.
- The Accidental Theory: His wife, Maria O'Neal, insisted he didn't mean to die. She claimed he was just trying to cross the road. But given the attempted window jump minutes earlier, that's a hard sell for most historians.
Honestly, it’s probably a mix of all of it. O'Neal wasn't just a guy who told a secret. He was the guy who reportedly drugged Fred Hampton with secobarbital so he wouldn't wake up when the police burst in. Imagine living with that for two decades.
The Eerie Coincidence
There’s a detail about that night that most people miss because it sounds like something out of a movie. The day after O'Neal died, another man from the same apartment complex committed suicide by running onto the same expressway in almost the exact same spot.
Two men. Same place. Same way.
It doesn't mean there was a conspiracy—police investigated and found no link—but it added a layer of grim surrealism to the end of O’Neal’s life.
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Why We Still Talk About Him
William O'Neal's death is more than just a footnote in a crime report. It's the final chapter of one of the most effective and devastating government operations in American history: COINTELPRO.
The FBI didn't just want to watch the Black Panthers; they wanted to destroy them from the inside. They used a nineteen-year-old kid who had been caught stealing a car and turned him into a weapon. They paid him $300 a month plus bonuses to betray people who treated him like a brother.
When O'Neal died on that highway, he took a lot of secrets with him. He was a man who lived a lie so long he didn't know how to exist in the truth.
Next Steps for Research and Action:
- Watch the Interview: You can find the raw Eyes on the Prize II interview footage of William O'Neal on YouTube. Pay attention to his body language; it tells a story his words try to hide.
- Read the Documents: Look up the Senate’s Church Committee reports on COINTELPRO. It’s heavy reading, but it provides the factual backbone of how the FBI used informants like O'Neal to destabilize political groups.
- Visit the Site: If you're in Chicago, the Fred Hampton mural and the site of the raid (2337 West Monroe Street) serve as a sobering reminder of the stakes involved.
- Support Accountability: Research current legislation regarding police and federal informant transparency to see how the "O'Neal era" influenced modern oversight laws.