by James Ellroy
Acclaim for JAMES ELLROY’s
MY DARK PLACES
“An obsessive loop that tightens into a noose … bitter, twisted soul-searching.”
—New York
“The best true crime book of the year…. Too grotesque to ignore … too poignant to put down. James Ellroy’s My Dark Places [is] exceptional in every way.”
—The Boston Book Review
“Strange and perversely fascinating…. [My Dark Places] is part thriller, part screech of pain, part botched exorcism…. It is also a profoundly pessimistic meditation on the ubiquity of evil…. A candid chronicle of growing up weird under the sentence of unexpressed grief.”
—Newsday
“As close as you’ll get, safely, to a lifetime obsession with crime. Don’t read after dark.”
—Mirabella
“A dazzling memoir that reads half like a romance, half like the logbook for a homicide investigation…. My Dark Places is remarkable.”
—A. M. Homes, Bazaar
“A masterpiece…. Incredible, fascinating detail…. Ellroy is never anything but honest: All the scars are exposed … and best of all, it is all written in that familiar Ellroy style, each sentence like a finger jabbed in your chest…. This is a mesmerizing book.”
—Men’s Journal
“My Dark Places is a genre-busting, oddball classic. A creepy primer on murder one…. Ellroy’s rat-a-tat-tat narration gives his self-lacerating account a sense of brakeless free fall…. [He] is a haunted man, and more than writer enough to haunt anyone who hears his tale.”
—Newsweek
“Remarkable. His most shocking work yet. Ellroy’s writing— his whole life—has been leading him to this book.”
—GQ
“Magnificent…. Your mouth will go dry as you read this book. Savoring every word, you won’t stop until you’re done.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer
JAMES ELLROY
MY DARK PLACES
James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. His L.A. Quartet novels—The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, LA. Confidential, and White Jazz— were international bestsellers. American Tabloid was Time’s Novel of the Year for 1995; his memoir My Dark Places was a Time Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book for 1996; his most recent novel, The Cold Six Thousand, was a New York Times Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year for 2001. He lives on the California coast.
Also by JAMES ELLROY
Destination: Morgue!
The Cold Six Thousand
Crime Wave
American Tabloid
Hollywood Nocturnes
White Jazz
LA. Confidential
The Big Nowhere
The Black Dahlia
Killer on the Road
Suicide Hill
Because the Night
Blood on the Moon
Clandestine
Brown’s Requiem
TO HELEN KNODE
I
THE REDHEAD
A cheap Saturday night took you down. You died stupidly and harshly and without the means to hold your own life dear.
Your run to safety was a brief reprieve. You brought me into hiding as your good-luck charm. I failed you as a talisman—so I stand now as your witness.
Your death defines my life. I want to find the love we never had and explicate it in your name.
I want to take your secrets public. I want to burn down the distance between us.
I want to give you breath.
1
Some kids found her.
They were Babe Ruth League players, out to hit a few shag balls. Three adult coaches were walking behind them.
The boys saw a shape in the ivy strip just off the curb. The men saw loose pearls on the pavement. A little telepathic jolt went around.
Clyde Warner and Dick Ginnold shooed the kids back a ways—to keep them from looking too close. Kendall Nungesser ran across Tyler and spotted a pay phone by the dairy stand.
He called the Temple City Sheriff’s Office and told the desk sergeant he’d discovered a body. It was right there on that road beside the playing field at Arroyo High School. The sergeant said stay there and don’t touch anything.
The radio call went out: 10:10 a.m., Sunday, 6/22/58. Dead body at King’s Row and Tyler Avenue, El Monte.
A Sheriff’s prowl car made it in under five minutes. An El Monte PD unit arrived a few seconds later.
Deputy Vic Cavallero huddled up the coaches and the kids. Officer Dave Wire checked out the body.
It was a female Caucasian. She was fair-skinned and redheaded. She was approximately 40 years of age. She was lying flat on her back—in an ivy patch a few inches from the King’s Row curb line.
Her right arm was bent upward. Her right hand was resting a few inches above her head. Her left arm was bent at the elbow and draped across her midriff. Her left hand was clenched. Her legs were outstretched.
She was wearing a scoop-front, sleeveless, light and dark blue dress. A dark blue overcoat with a matching lining was spread over her lower body.
Her feet and ankles were visible. Her right foot was bare. A nylon stocking was bunched up around her left ankle.
Her dress was disheveled. Insect bites covered her arms. Her face was bruised and her tongue was protruding. Her brassiere was unfastened and hiked above her breasts. A nylon stocking and a cotton cord were lashed around her neck. Both ligatures were tightly knotted.
Dave Wire radioed the El Monte PD dispatcher. Vic Cavallero called the Temple office. The body-dump alert went out:
Get the L.A. County Coroner. Get the Sheriff’s Crime Lab and the photo car. Call the Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau and tell them to send a team out.
Cavallero stood by the body. Dave Wire ran over to the dairy and commandeered a length of rope. Cavallero helped him string up a crime scene perimeter.
They discussed the odd position of the body. It looked haphazard and fastidious.
Spectators drifted by. Cavallero pushed them back to the Tyler Avenue sidewalk. Wire noticed some pearls on the road and circled each and every one in chalk.
Official cars pulled up to the cordon. Uniformed cops and plainclothesmen ducked under the rope.
From El Monte PD: Chief Orval Davis, Captain Jim Bruton, Sergeant Virg Ervin. Captain Dick Brooks, Lieutenant Don Mead and Sergeant Don Clapp from Temple Sheriff’s. Temple deputies called out to contain the civilians and plain curious on- and off-duty cops.
Dave Wire measured the exact position of the body: 63 feet west of the first locked gate on the school grounds/2 feet south of the King’s Row curb. The photo deputy arrived and snapped perspective shots of King’s Row and the Arroyo High playing field.
It was noon—and closing in on 90 degrees.
The photo deputy shot the body from straight-down and sideways angles. ’Vic Cavallero assured him that the guys who found it did not touch it. Sergeants Ward Hallinen and Jack Lawton arrived and went straight to Chief Davis.
Davis told them to take charge—per the contract mandating all El Monte city murders to the L.A. Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau.
Hallinen walked over to the body. Lawton diagrammed the area in his notebook.
Tyler Avenue ran north-south. King’s Row intersected it at the southern edge of the school property. King’s Row ran east about 175 yards. It terminated at Cedar Avenue—the eastern edge of the school property. It was nothing more than a paved access road.
A gate closed off the Cedar Avenue end. An inner gate sealed some bungalows near the main Arroyo High buildings. The only way to enter King’s Row was via Tyler Avenue.
King’s Row was 15 feet wide. The sports field ran along the northern edge. A shrub-covered chain-link fence ran behind
the southern curb line and a 3-foot-wide ivy thicket. The body was positioned 75 yards east of the Tyler-King’s Row intersection.
The victim’s left foot was two inches from the curb. Her weight had pressed down the ivy all around her.
Lawton and Hallinen stared at the body. Rigor mortis was setting in—the victim’s clenched hand had gone rigid.
Hallinen noted a fake-pearl ring on the third finger. Lawton said it might help them ID her.
Her face had gone slightly purple. She looked like a classic late-night body dump.
Vic Cavallero told the coaches and baseball kids to go home. Dave Wire and Virg Ervin mingled with the civilians. Sergeant Harry Andre showed up—an off-duty Sheriff’s Homicide man hot to lend a hand.
The press showed up. Some Temple deputies cruised by to check out the scene. Half the 26-man El Monte PD cruised by—dead white women were some kind of draw.
The coroner’s deputy showed up. The photo deputy told him he could examine the victim.
Hallinen and Lawton pushed forward to watch. The coroner’s deputy lifted the coat off the victim’s lower body.
She was not wearing a slip, a girdle or panties. Her dress was pushed up above her hips. No panties and no shoes. That one stocking down around her left ankle. Bruises and small lacerations on the insides of her thighs. An asphalt drag mark on her left hip.
The coroner’s deputy turned the body over. The photo deputy snapped some shots of the victim’s posterior. The victim’s back was dew-wet and showed signs of postmortem lividity.
The coroner’s deputy said she was probably dead eight to twelve hours. She was dumped before sunrise—the dew on her back was a plain indicator.
The photo deputy took some more pictures. The coroner’s deputy and his assistant picked up the body. It was limp—still shy of full rigor mortis. They carried the victim to their van and placed her on a gurney.
Hallinen and Lawton searched the ivy thicket and the adjoining curbside.
They found a broken car antenna on the road. They found a broken string of pearls in the flattened ivy near the dump position. They picked up the pearls circled in chalk and strung them on the necklace. They saw that they had a complete set.
The clasp was intact. The string was broken in the middle. They evidence-bagged both pieces of the necklace.
They did not find the victim’s panties, shoes or purse. They did not spot tire marks in the gravel near the curb. There were no drag marks on any surface along King’s Row. The ivy surrounding the dump position did not look trampled.
It was 1:20 p.m. The temperature was up in the mid-9os.
The coroner’s deputy cut off samples of the victim’s head and pubic hair. He trimmed the victim’s fingernails and placed the cuttings in a small envelope.
He had the body stripped and positioned face-up on his gurney.
There was a small amount of dried blood on the victim’s right palm. There was a small laceration near the center of the victim’s forehead.
The victim’s right nipple was missing. The surrounding areola was creased with white scar tissue. It appeared to be an old surgical amputation.
Hallinen removed the victim’s ring. The coroner’s deputy measured the body at 66 inches and guessed the weight at 135 pounds. Lawton left to call the stats in to Headquarters Dispatch and the Sheriff’s Missing Persons Squad.
The coroner’s deputy took a scalpel and made a deep 6-inch-long incision in the victim’s abdomen. He parted the flaps with his fingers, jabbed a meat thermometer into the liver and got a reading of 90 degrees. He called the time of death as 3:00 to 5:00 a.m.
Hallinen examined the ligatures. The stocking and cotton cord were separately lashed around the victim’s neck. The cord resembled a clothesline or Venetian blind sash-pull.
The cord knot was tied at the back of the victim’s neck. The killer tied it so tight that one of the ends broke off—fraying and the odd lengths of the knot ends proved that fact conclusively.
The stocking around the victim’s neck was identical to the stocking bunched around her left ankle.
The coroner’s deputy locked up his van and drove the body to the L.A. County Morgue. Jack Lawton put out a police band broadcast:
All San Gabriel Valley units be alert for suspicious males with fresh cuts and scratches.
Ward Hallinen rounded up some radio reporters. He told them to put it on the local air:
Dead white woman found. Forty/red hair/hazel eyes/5′6″/135. Direct potential informants to the El Monte PD and Temple City Sheriffs Office—
Chief Davis and Captain Bruton drove to El Monte PD Headquarters. Three ranking Sheriff’s Homicide men joined them: Inspector R. J. Parsonson, Captain Al Etzel, Lieutenant Charles McGowan.
They settled in for a skull session. Bruton called the Baldwin Park PD, Pasadena PD, San Dimas Sheriff’s Office, Covina and West Covina PDs. He ran their victim’s stats by them and got identical responses: She doesn’t match any of our short-term missing females.
Uniformed deputies and El Monte cops grid-searched the Arroyo High grounds. Hallinen, Lawton and Andre canvassed the immediate neighborhood.
They talked to people out walking and people sunning in their yards. They talked to a long string of customers at the dairy stand. They described their victim and got down-the-line responses: I don’t know who you’re talking about.
The area was residential and semi-rural—small houses interspersed with vacant lots and blocks of undeveloped ranch-land. Hallinen, Lawton and Andre wrote it off as futile canvassing turf.
They drove south to the main El Monte throughways: Ramona, Garvey, Valley Boulevard. They swept a string of cafes and a few cocktail bars. They talked up the redhead and got a run of negative responses.
The initial canvass was tapped out.
The grid search was tapped out.
No patrol units were reporting suspicious males with cuts and scratches.
A call came in to the El Monte PD. The caller said she just heard a radio bulletin. That lady they found at the school sounded just like her tenant.
The switchboard operator radioed Virg Ervin: See the woman at 700 Bryant Road.
The address was El Monte—about a mile southeast of Arroyo High School. Ervin drove there and knocked on the door.
A woman opened up. She identified herself as Anna May Krycki and stated that the dead woman sounded like her tenant, Jean Ellroy. Jean left her little house on the Krycki property last night around 8:00. She stayed out all night—and still hadn’t returned.
Ervin described the victim’s overcoat and dress. Anna May Krycki said they sounded just like Jean’s favorite outfit. Ervin described the scarring on the victim’s right nipple. Anna May Krycki said Jean showed her that scar.
Ervin went back to his car and radioed the information to the El Monte switchboard. The dispatcher sent a patrol car out to find Jack Lawton and Ward Hallinen.
The car found them inside of ten minutes. They drove straight to the Krycki house.
Hallinen pulled out the victim’s ring straight off. Anna May Krycki ID’d it as Jean Ellroy’s.
Lawton and Hallinen sat her down and questioned her. Anna May Krycki said she was Mrs. Krycki. Her husband’s name was George, and she had a 12-year-old son from a previous marriage named Gaylord. Jean Ellroy was technically Mrs. Jean Ellroy, but she’d been divorced from her husband for several years. Jean’s full first name was Geneva. Her middle name was Odelia and her maiden name was Hilliker. Jean was a registered nurse. She worked at an aircraft-parts plant in downtown L.A. She and her 10-year-old son lived in the little stone bungalow in the Kryckis’ backyard. Jean drove a red-and-white ’57 Buick. Her son was spending the weekend with his father in L.A. and should be home in a few hours.
Mrs. Krycki showed them a photograph of Jean Ellroy. The face matched their victim’s.
Mrs. Krycki said she saw Jean leave her bungalow last night around 8:00. She was alone. She drove off in her car and did not return. Her car was not in
her driveway or her garage.
Mrs. Krycki stated that the victim and her son moved into the bungalow four months ago. She stated that the boy spent weekdays with his mother and weekends with his father. Jean was originally from a little town in Wisconsin. She was a hardworking, quiet woman who kept to herself. She was 37 years old.
The boy’s father picked him up in a taxicab yesterday morning. She saw Jean doing yard work yesterday afternoon. They talked briefly—but Jean did not discuss her Saturday-night plans.
Virg Ervin brought up the victim’s car. Where did she get it serviced?
Mrs. Krycki told him to try the local Union 76 station. Ervin got the number from Information, called the station and talked to the proprietor. The man checked his records and came back on the line with a plate number: California / KFE 778.
Ervin called the number in to the El Monte PD switchboard. The switchboard shot it out to all Sheriff’s and local PD units.
The interview continued. Hallinen and Lawton pressed one topic: the victim and her relationships with men.
Mrs. Krycki said that Jean had a limited social life. She seemed to have no boyfriends. She went out by herself sometimes—and usually came home early. She was not much of a drinker. She often said she wanted to set a good example for her son.
George Krycki walked in. Hallinen and Lawton asked him about his Saturday-night activities.
He told them Anna May went to a movie around 9:00. He stayed home and watched a fight card on TV. He saw the victim drive off between 8:00 and 8:30 p.m. and did not see or hear her return home.
Ervin asked the Kryckis to accompany him to the L.A. County Morgue. They had to log a positive ID on the body.
Hallinen called the Sheriff’s Crime Lab and told them to roll a print deputy out to 700 Bryant, El Monte—the small house behind the larger house.
Virg Ervin drove the Kryckis to the L.A. Hall of Justice—a twelve-mile shot up the San Bernardino Freeway. The Coroner’s Office and the morgue were in the basement below the Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau.
