Lee was a joyful human being, full of joie de vivre. He had a leader personality, strong charisma that left many people feeling as if he was their best friend. He grew up in a small area of Redding, California inhabited by the African American population. It was a rural community in which the kids went to school barefoot in hot weather and school lunch was made by donations form the parent's gardens. His "involvement with gangs" is much romanticized. His actual participation was much more minimal than is often portrayed in articles about him after his death. As a high school student he excelled academically and was enrolled in local community college classes because high school was not challenging enough for him. His father worked for the IRS. A feat so unusual for a black man in the 50's there were news articles about him, Willard Bernard Lee, in the local paper. His mother, Frances, worked for a blood bank in Sacramento. Lee's father, originally from Mississippi, passed away December 4, 1992 from complications of HIV. Frances Lee passed away in 1994 in a Sacramento hospital. With inheritance from his mother, Lee moved from Seattle, Washington, - after living there since 1987 with his wife, Serena Scholl Lee - to pursue film and television acting. The court case against LAPD for his murder never got off to a start as it fizzled due to lack of witnesses, including the inability to locate security guards who had been working at the party. The confusion around Anthony Lee's death is suspicious and indicates culpability on behalf of the LAPD.