My Dark Places Read online

  Peter Tubiolo was prompt. Bruton, Hallinen and Lawton talked to him in a mirrored interview room. Tubiolo was heavyset and round-faced. He did not resemble the dark man in any way, shape, manner or form.

  He was the vice-principal of Anne LeGore Elementary School. The victim’s son just completed the fifth grade there. He was a frightened and rather volatile child.

  Tubiolo said he met Jean Ellroy on only one occasion. She came to his school to discuss her son’s poor scholastic progress and inability to get along with other children. He did not “date” or “socialize” with the late Mrs. Ellroy. Such actions were against school district policy.

  The cops told him the kid said otherwise. Tubiolo stuck to his story. All he knew about the Ellroys’ private life was that the parents were divorced and the boy wasn’t allowed to see his father during the week. Mrs. Ellroy was a fine woman—but there was nothing personal between them.

  Margie Trawick observed Tubiolo. She got a good close look through the mirror.

  She told the cops he wasn’t the guy. They cut Tubiolo loose with apologies.

  Ward Hallinen got a tip Thursday night. The West Covina PD had a suspect: a local foul ball named Steve Anthony Carbone.

  Hallinen had Frank Godfrey check it out. Godfrey ran a make on Carbone and came back enthusiastic.

  Carbone was a white male American of Italian descent. His DOB was 2/19/15. He was 5′10″ and 140 pounds, with hazel eyes, straight black hair and a high forehead. He owned a ’55 Olds two-door sedan, polar white over green, license MMT 879.

  He hailed from Detroit, Michigan. He was popped three times for indecent exposure: 10/41, 11/41, 8/53. He moved to West Covina in ’57. He ran up a string of three drunk drivings and two assault-with-a-deadly-weapon beefs. His last ADW was notable. He pulled a 30.30 carbine on a cop.

  Carbone was foul-tempered and belligerent. Carbone was a well-known cop hater and a sex offender.

  Hallinen and Lawton jumped on him.

  They had the West Covina PD haul him in. They had his Oldsmobile impounded and photographed in the PD parking lot. A Sheriff’s lab man dusted it, checked it for bloodstains and vacuumed it for fibers resembling the white ones found on the victim.

  The lab man came up empty.

  Hallinen and Lawton leaned on Carbone. He gave them a vague account of his actions Saturday night. Jim Bruton brought Margie Trawick and Lavonne Chambers in for a show-up.

  They both said he wasn’t the guy they saw with the redhead.

  Hallinen and Lawton worked straight through the weekend.

  They talked to the victim’s co-workers and failed to turn up any leads. They walked through the victim’s house again. They spent hours at the Desert Inn and talked to dozens of patrons. Nobody could put a handle on the blonde or the dark man.

  Metro got a tip on a guy named Robert John Mellon—a former mental patient from North Dakota. A deputy checked Mellon out and wrote the tip off as worthless.

  A man named Archie G. Rogers called in a tip to the El Monte PD.

  He said a guy named Bill Owen had a girlfriend named Dorothy. They sort of matched the description of those people in the paper—the folks seen with the dead nurse.

  Owen was a painter and a mechanic. He used to live with Mr. Rogers’ sister. Dorothy frequented the Manger and the Wee Nipee bar. She slept in Mr. Rogers’ car Saturday night, June 21st.

  Dorothy’s phone number was ED4-6881. Dorothy said she had a new friend named Jean. Dorothy planned to bring Jean by Mr. Rogers’ sister’s house that Saturday night.

  Mr. Rogers found the whole thing suspicious.

  The El Monte PD forwarded the tip to Sheriff’s Metro. Deputy Howie Haussner—Jack Lawton’s brother-in-law— handled it.

  He got Rogers’ sister’s address and matched Dorothy’s phone number to a Harold T. Hotchkiss in Azusa. He attached the two addresses to the names William Owen and Dorothy Hotchkiss and teletyped them to the Criminal Records Bureau in Sacramento.

  The kickback was inconclusive.

  The name Dorothy Hotchkiss came back blank: no record, no wants, no warrants, no listing at the Azusa address. “William Owen” came back six times over—various Owens with criminal records dating back to ’39. None of the Owens lived in the San Gabriel Valley.

  The Owen-Hotchkiss paperwork was stuffed in an accordion file. The file was marked Z-483-362.

  Jean Ellroy was buried on Tuesday, July 1st, 1958.

  A rent-a-preacher performed a Protestant service. She was placed in the ground at Inglewood Cemetery—out in southwest L.A.

  Jean’s sister and brother-in-law were there. Some Airtek people showed up. Armand Ellroy and a few of Jean’s old friends attended.

  Jack Lawton and Ward Hallinen were there.

  Jean’s son copped a plea and stayed away. He spent the day watching TV with some friends of his dad’s.

  The headstone was marked “Geneva Hilliker Ellroy. 1915-1958.”

  The plot was on the west edge of the cemetery. It was inches from a busy street and a stretch of chain-link fence.

  4

  The L.A. Sheriff’s Office hailed from the Wild West days. It was a modern police agency suffused with 19th-century nostalgia. The LASO embraced Wild West motifs wholesale. It made for brilliant PR.

  The Sheriff’s manned county lockups and patrolled county turf out of twelve substations. Said turf ran through the city of Los Angeles and out into the north-, south- and eastbound boonies. Deputies worked the desert, the mountains and a swanky stretch of beach. Their jurisdiction took in hundreds of square miles.

  Malibu was plum duty. West Hollywood was good—the Sunset Strip was always percolating. East L.A. was full of rowdy Mexicans. Firestone was wall-to-wall colored. Temple City and San Dimas were out in the San Gabriel Valley. Deputies could drive up into the foothills and shoot coyotes for kicks.

  The Sheriff’s Detective Bureau investigated criminal actions county-wide. Sheriff’s Homicide handled murders for numerous Mickey Mouse police departments. The Sheriff’s Aero Bureau flew county skies and supplanted rescue operations.

  The Sheriffs Office was expanding full-tilt. 1958 L.A. was a boomtown.

  Los Angeles was always rough-and-ready. The place was built from land grabs and racial grief. The L.A. Sheriff’s Office was chartered in 1850. It was meant to bring rule to an unruly slice of land.

  The first string of County Sheriffs were elected to one-year terms. They dealt with marauding Indians, Mexican bandits and Chinese tong wars. Vigilantes were a significant threat. Drunken white men loved to lynch redskins and dusky bandidos.

  L.A. County grew. Elected Sheriffs came and went. The sworn deputy force grew, concurrent with county expansion. Civilian help was often required. The Sheriff would deputize men and form them into mounted posses.

  The L.A. Sheriff’s Office modernized. Cars replaced horses. Larger jails and more substations were built. The L.A. Sheriff’s Office grew to be the largest of its kind in the continental U.S. of A.

  Sheriff John C. Cline resigned in 1920. Big Bill Traeger served the remainder of his term. Traeger was elected to three four-year terms of his own. He ran for Congress in 1932—and won. The County Board of Supervisors appointed Eugene W. Biscailuz Sheriff.

  Biscailuz joined the Sheriff’s Office in 1907. He was half Anglo and half Spanish-Basque. His people came from money. His California roots went back to the Spanish land-grant days.

  Biscailuz was a brilliant administrator. He was politically deft and likable. He was a public relations genius with a huge love of Wild West lore.

  Biscailuz was a half-assed progressive. Some of his views were near-Bolshevik. He expressed those views in an avuncular manner. He was rarely accused of spouting heresy.

  Biscailuz mobilized forces to fight fires and floods and developed the county’s “Major Disaster Plan.” Biscailuz built the Wayside Honor Rancho and shaped its rehabilitative policy. Biscailuz launched a juvenile crime deterrence program.

  Biscailuz intended
to hold his post for a good long time. Wild West rituals helped assure his re-elections.

  He reinstated the Sheriff’s Mounted Posse. The Posse rode in parades and searched for occasional lost kids out in the boondocks. Biscailuz was often photographed with the Posse. He always rode a palomino stallion.

  Biscailuz sponsored the annual Sheriff’s Rodeo. Uniformed deputies sold tickets all over the county. The rodeo usually sold out the L.A. Coliseum. Biscailuz appeared in western garb, replete with twin six-shooters.

  The rodeo was a moneymaker and a goodwill extravaganza. Ditto the annual Sheriff’s Bar-B-Q that fed at a rate of 60,000 a year.

  Biscailuz took the Sheriff’s Office out to the people. He seduced them with his very own myth. Mythic show-and-tell perpetuated his power. It was blue-ribbon disingenuousness.

  Biscailuz knew that a lot of his boys called Negroes “niggers.” Biscailuz knew that phone book beatings assured rapid confessions. Biscailuz rounded up Japs and locked them down at Wayside after Pearl Harbor. Biscailuz knew that one shot with a beaver-tail sap could knock a suspect’s eyes clean out of his head. Biscailuz knew that police work was an isolating profession.

  So he gave his constituents the Wild West as Utopian Idyll. It got him re-elected six times. He backed his ritualistic bullshit up to an ambiguous degree. His boys were less suppression-minded than their cross-town rivals in blue.

  William Parker took over the LAPD in 1950. He was an organizational genius. His personal style was inimical to Gene Biscailuz’s. Parker abhorred monetary corruption and embraced violence as an essential part of police work. He was an alcoholic martinet on a mission to reinstate pre-20th-century morality.

  Biscailuz and Parker ruled parallel kingdoms. Biscailuz’s myth implicitly stressed inclusion. Parker co-opted a TV honcho named Jack Webb. They cooked up a weekly saga called Dragnet—a crime-and-severe-punishment myth that ordained the LAPD with a chaste image and godlike powers. The LAPD took their myth to heart. They stuck their heads up their asses and isolated themselves from the public that Gene Biscailuz embraced. Bill Parker hated Negroes and sent goons down to Darktown to lean on club owners who admitted white women. Gene Biscailuz liked to schmooze with his Mexican constituents. He was sort of a taco-bender himself.

  Gene Biscailuz’s myth was strictly local stuff. Bill Parker’s myth was marketed nationally. The Sheriff’s resented the LAPD’s celebrity. The LAPD considered the Sheriff’s a bush-league outfit and hogged the credit for their joint operations.

  Ideology divided the two agencies. Topography divided them more. The LAPD pointed to their densely packed jurisdiction and racial demographics as proof of their superiority and the justification for their state-of-siege mentality. The Sheriff’s pointed to the county spreading out at a boom rate.

  They had new turf to learn. New cities were signing up for contract services. They simply couldn’t afford to kick indiscriminate ass.

  Bill Parker turned 56 in 1958. His sensibility was on the rise. Gene Biscailuz turned 75 and planned to retire at the end of the year.

  Biscailuz joined the Sheriffs Office 50 years before. He saw horses replaced by flivvers and “Grey Ghost” sedans and Ford black & whites. He saw his Wild West Los Angeles grow and reinvent itself—way outside the borders of his myth.

  He probably knew that white settlers raped Indian squaws. He probably knew that Wild West lawmen were psychopaths and drunks. He might have conceded that his myth was mostly wishful thinking and moonshine.

  He might call nostalgia an indulgence. He probably knew that the Wild West played hell on women—then and now.

  He probably knew that Wild West Saturday Nights comprised a myth of their own. He might have written that red-haired nurse off as a mythic casualty.

  5

  He investigation continued.

  Hallinen and Lawton worked it full-time. Jim Bruton stayed on board. Godfrey and Vickers moved on to fresh assignments.

  The L.A. papers ran the sketch of the suspect and dropped the story cold. The redhead never clicked as a victim. The Lana Turner/Cheryl Crane/Johnny Stompanato case hogged all the headlines.

  Hallinen and Lawton habituated the Desert Inn. They talked to regular patrons and people passing through. They got no solid leads. They hit the other bars around Five Points repeatedly. They tapped out everywhere.

  The El Monte PD kept the pressure on. Patrol units rode with the sketch and a snapshot of the victim. Local awareness ran high.

  The PD logged a tip on Thursday, July 3rd. A man said he saw four guys dumping beer cans in the Rio Hondo Wash a few weeks ago. They drove up in an Olds 88, license HHP 815. One of the guys said he had a date with a nurse named Jean coming up that evening.

  The tip was checked out. The car was identified as a ’53 Oldsmobile coupe. It was registered to Bruce S. Baker, 12060 Hallwood, El Monte. Baker and his friends were interviewed and crossed off as suspects.

  Hallinen and Lawton reinterviewed the victim’s co-workers and located her friends. Everybody stuck to the chaste Jean Ellroy line. Nobody conjured up a ponytailed blonde or a dark man. Jean’s ex-boyfriend Hank Hart was picked up and cut loose fast. He was short and fat and had one thumb. He was alibied up for the night of June 21st.

  Hallinen and Lawton checked out recent choke jobs and tried to identify a pattern. One Sheriffs case and two city cases caught their attention.

  Helene Kelly, DOD 10/30/53, Rosemead. Beaten and manually strangled inside her house. The victim was old. She wasn’t raped. It looked like a botched burglary.

  Ruth Goldsmith, DOD 4/5/57, the Wilshire District in L.A. The victim was 50 years old. She was found on her bathroom floor, partially clad. She was raped. Her wrists were bound behind her back with a nylon stocking. A washcloth was stuffed into her mouth and cinched by another nylon. The victim died of suffocation. Her apartment was not ransacked. LAPD detectives ruled out burglary.

  Marjorie Hipperson, DOD 6/10/57, the Los Feliz District in L.A. The victim was 24 years old. She was found on her bed, with her nightgown up over her hips. She was raped. A nylon stocking was tied to her right wrist. A second nylon was cinched around her neck. Her lips were bruised. A white washcloth gag was found under her head.

  All three cases were stalled dead. The MOs diverged from the Ellroy job more than they connected.

  The Sheriff’s Records Bureau kicked loose mug shots and rap sheets: forty-odd sex offenders resembling the dark man.

  Most of the men were white. A dozen were classified “Male Mexicans.” Their sex offenses ran the gamut. Most of the men were on county parole.

  Some had left L.A. Some were back in jail. Hallinen and Lawton ran all the mugs by Lavonne Chambers and Margie Trawick. They struck out uniformly.

  They leaned on the most dark-man-like guys just to be sure. They found them at home and had their parole officers roust them. They struck out all the way.

  Other agencies sent in mug shots. Hallinen and Lawton ran them by Lavonne and Margie.

  Lavonne and Margie kept saying no. They were decisive witnesses. They knew what they knew.

  Lavonne had three kids out of one failed marriage. She was making good tax-free coin at Stan’s Drive-in. Her boyfriend was a deputy at the Temple City Station. The carhops at Stan’s fed the Temple boys for free—so they’d chase down check dashers and pry money out of them. Station trustees washed and waxed Lavonne’s car. Lavonne knew her way around cops.

  Margie had a 14-year-old daughter. Her bookie husband died of a heart attack back in ’48. Margie blew the money he left her and moved in with her parents. She looked sort of like a brunette Jean Ellroy. She knew the El Monte bar scene intimately. She was in poor health and strung out on doctor-prescribed dope.

  Lavonne and Margie dug the whole witness scene. Hallinen and Lawton liked them. They dawdled over coffee when they brought mug shots by.

  They got a tip that the victim’s hairdresser resembled the dark man. They took Lavonne by his salon and treated her to a rinse-and-style. Lavonne said he
wasn’t the guy. He was a flamboyant swish moreover.

  More tips came in.

  7/11/58:

  A man named Padilla called the El Monte PD. He said he got released from the Hall of Justice Jail on June 30th. He saw a man resembling the suspect walk out of a bar on South Main Street.

  7/13/58:

  A man named Don Kessler called the Temple City Sheriff’s Office. He stated that he worked at the El Monte Bowl and saw a man resembling the suspect in his establishment. Mr. Kessler’s mother followed the man to the Bonnie Rae bar. The man ditched her. The man was dirty and appeared to be a Mexican.

  7/14/58:

  The Temple Sheriffs relayed a tip to the El Monte PD. It involved another dirty man at the El Monte Bowl.

  The man resembled the suspect. The man was wearing dirty tan trousers. An El Monte PD officer found a similar pair of trousers on the street a short time later. The officer picked them up, brought them to the station and placed them on Captain Bruton’s desk.

  The El Monte PD had Dead White Woman Fever.

  A Coroner’s Inquest was held on Tuesday, July 15th. Dr. Charles Langhauser presided. Jack Lawton represented the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office.

  Six jurors heard evidence. The inquest was held in Room 150 at the Hall of Justice.

  Armand Ellroy testified first. He stated that he had no recent relationship with his ex-wife and hadn’t seen her alive in over two years. He stated that he viewed her body on Monday, June 23rd, and acknowledged that her full name was Geneva Hilliker Ellroy, 43 years of age and a native of Wisconsin.

  George Krycki testified. He described a brief conversation he had with the victim on Saturday, June 21st. Jean did not appear to be inebriated. He said it was funny—“Her face seemed to be always made up.”

  Jack Lawton asked Krycki several questions. He emphasized the victim’s friends.

  Krycki said he didn’t know her friends. His wife might—she knew Mrs. Ellroy better than he did.

  Anna May Krycki testified. Langhauser ran her through her activities on the night of June 21st and cut back to the issue of Jean Ellroy’s friends. Mrs. Krycki said she only knew one couple—older people currently visiting Europe.