by James Ellroy
Mr. Krycki walked in. Bill asked him to recount those two days. Mr. Krycki told the same basic story. I asked him to describe my mother. He said she was a good-looking woman. She wasn’t the El Monte type. Anna May knew her better than he did.
Mr. Krycki looked uncomfortable. Bill smiled and told him we were fresh out of questions. Mr. Krycki smiled and walked outside.
Mrs. Krycki said there was one thing she never told the cops.
I nodded. Bill nodded. Mrs. Krycki started talking.
It happened around ’52. She was living on Ferris Road in El Monte. Gaylord was six or seven. She was separated from her first husband.
She shopped at a market nearby. A family named LoPresti owned it. This box boy played cupid with her. He said his uncle John wanted to take her out real bad. John LoPresti was about 30 then. He was tall. He had dark hair and an olive complexion.
She went out with him. He took her to the Coconino Club. They danced. He was a good dancer. He was “smooth and calculating.”
They left the Coconino. They drove out to the Puente Hills. LoPresti stopped the car and made some very fresh moves. She told him to stop. He slapped her. She got out of the car. He grabbed her and shoved her in the backseat.
He pulled at her clothes. She resisted him. He climaxed and wiped his pants off with a handkerchief. He said, “You’ve got mustard” and “You’ve got nothing to worry about now.” He drove her home. He didn’t touch her again. She didn’t call the cops. She was embroiled in a custody fight with her ex. She didn’t want to raise a stink and tarnish her reputation. She saw LoPresti two more times.
She was out walking. He drove by her and waved. He asked her if she wanted a ride. She ignored him.
She saw him about two years later. She was at the Coconino with George. LoPresti asked her to dance. She ignored him. She warned Jean Ellroy about him—right before she went out that Saturday night.
The story played ugly and true. The coda played fictitious. It sounded contrived and way too coincidental.
LoPresti was local. LoPresti was Italian. LoPresti was a nightclub predator. I closed my eyes and replayed the Puente Hills scene. I added a vintage car and period clothing. I put the Swarthy Man’s face on John LoPresti.
We had a real suspect.
We drove back to Orange County. We talked John LoPresti nonstop. John was a sex-assault bungler in 1952. Give him six years to refine his act and grow more twisted. Bill agreed. LoPresti was our first hot suspect.
The drive took 13 hours. We got back around midnight. We slept the trip off and drove to El Monte.
We hit the El Monte Museum. We checked the 1958 El Monte phone books. We found eight markets listed in the Yellow Pages.
Jay’s on Tyler. Jay’s on Central. The Bell Market on Peck Road. Crawford’s Giant Country Store on Valley. Earp’s Market and the Foodlane on Durfee. The Tyler Circle on Tyler. Fran’s Meats on Garvey.
No LoPresti Market. No listings for Italian specialty stores.
We checked the White Pages. Most of the personal listings featured parenthetical addenda. They listed occupations and wives’ first names. We turned to the L’s and hit twice.
LoPresti, John (Nancy) (Machinist)—10806 Frankmont.
LoPresti, Thomas (Rose) (Salesman)—3419 Maxson.
Frankmont was near 756 Maple. Maxson was near Stan’s Drive-in and the Desert Inn.
We drove to the Bureau. We ran all four LoPrestis through the DMV and DOJ computers. We got no hits on Thomas and Rose. We hit on John and Nancy.
Nancy had a valid California driver’s license. The printout listed a current address and her old address on Frankmont. Her DOB was 8/16/14. John lived in Duarte. I pointed to some weird numbers by his address. Bill said it was a trailer park listing. John was 69 years old. He had blue eyes. He was 6′1″ and 215 pounds.
I pointed to his height and weight. Bill pointed to his age and eye color. The cocksucker did not match the Swarthy Man’s description.
Duarte was three miles north of El Monte. The trailer park was butt-ugly. The trailers were old and weather-stripped. They were jammed together with no space between them.
We found #16 and rang the buzzer. An old man opened the door. He matched our driver’s license stats. He had blue eyes and thick features. His face exonerated him.
Bill badged him and asked him his name. The man said John LoPresti. Bill said we had some questions about an old murder. John said come on in. He didn’t twitch or cringe or shake or admit or deny his guilt.
We entered his trailer. The interior was six feet wide tops. The walls were decorated with Playboy centerfolds. They were handsomely mounted and laminated with high-gloss shellac.
John sat down in an old recliner. Bill and I sat on the bed. Bill sketched out the Jean Ellroy case. John said he didn’t recall it.
Bill said we were looking up the old El Monte crowd. We wanted to dig the late-’50s scene. We knew he was living on Frankmont.
John said that wasn’t him. That was his late uncle John and aunt Nancy. He lived in La Puente then. El Monte was his stomping grounds. His uncle Tom owned a market in El Monte. El Monte was a swinging location.
I asked him where he hung out. John said the Coconino and the Desert Inn. He went to the Playroom sometimes. It stood behind Stan’s Drive-in. They served shots of whisky for 25 cents.
Bill asked him if he’d ever been arrested. John said he got popped for drunk driving. I came on skeptical. I said, What else? John said he got popped in 1946. Somebody said he pulled some dirty shit.
I said, What kind of shit? He said somebody stuck a dirty book under some woman’s door. He got blamed for it.
Bill said we needed names. We wanted to find the old Desert Inn crowd. We wanted to find every lounge lizard who ever cruised Five Points.
John lit a cigarette. He said he was going in for open-heart surgery tomorrow. He needed all the pleasure he could get.
I said, Give us some names. John dropped eight or ten first names. I said, Give us some full names. John said, “Al Man-ganiello.” Bill said we were looking for him. John said he was working at Glendora Country Club.
I pressed him for more names. Bill pressed him for more names. We named all the El Monte spots and told him to match some names to specific venues. John couldn’t feed us one single name.
I wanted to fuck with him.
I said, We heard that you were one sharp dude with the ladies. John said this was true. I said, We heard you really liked women. John said, Oh, yeah. I said, We heard you got lots of pussy. John said he got more than his share. Bill said, We heard you mauled a woman named Anna May Krycki and shot your load prematurely.
John shook and twitched and cringed and denied his guilt. We thanked him and walked out the door.
24
We worked the case. We probed defective memory vaults. We logged information. We excavated names.
We dug up first names and last names and nicknames and full names and matching and nonmatching descriptions. We got names from the file. We got names from old cops. We got names from elderly barflies and El Monte lifers. We worked the case for eight months. We cultivated names and harvested names. We did not create an incrementally expanding concentric circle of names. We were up against a large place and a large block of time lost.
We kept going.
We found former deputy Bill Vickers. He remembered the two canvass jobs. They thought they had a two-time killer. They figured the same guy choked the nurse and the racetrack lady We asked him for names. He didn’t have any.
We found Al Manganiello. He gave us the same names Roy Dunn and Jana Outlaw gave us. He told us about an old carhop in Pico Rivera. We found her. She was senile. She didn’t remember the late 1950s.
We found Jack Lawton’s sons. They said they’d look for Jack’s notebooks. They looked. They didn’t find them. They figured their dad threw them out.
We found former LASD captain Vic Cavallero. He remembered the Jean Ellroy crime scene. He did not remember the
investigation or the Bobbie Long snuff. He said he popped a guy in the late ’50s. The guy was on the LAPD. He was bombing down Garvey double-fast. He had a woman with him. She hopped cars at Stan’s Drive-in. She said the cop beat her up. She refused to file a complaint. The cop was fat and blond. Cavallero said he was one choice prick. He didn’t remember his name.
We found ex-El Monte cop Dave Wire. We asked him for names. He said he had a suspect. His name was Bert Beria. He was dead now. He was an ex-El Monte reserve cop. Bert was a drunk. Bert was nuts. Bert beat up his wife and raced his police car on the San Berdoo Freeway. Bert looked like those old Identi-Kit pix. Bert drank at the Desert Inn. Bert would rape your pet turtle. Wire said we should check Bert out. Wire said we should talk to Keith Tedrow’s ex-wife, Sherry. Sherry knew the El Monte bar scene.
We found Sherry Tedrow. She gave us three names. We looked up two Desert Inn barmaids and a fat cat named Joe Candy. Joe bankrolled Doug Schoenberger. Joe lent him the money to buy the Desert Inn.
We ran some computer checks. Joe Candy and Barmaid #1 came up dead. We found Barmaid #2. She worked at The Place—not the Desert Inn. She knew zilch about late-’5os El Monte.
We talked to El Monte police chief Wayne Clayton. He showed us a 1960 snapshot of Bert Beria. He didn’t look like the Swarthy Man. He was too old and too bald. Clayton said he’d assigned two detectives to check old Bert out. He introduced us to Sergeant Tom Armstrong and Agent John Eckler. We ran our case by them and gave them a Xerox copy of the Blue Book. They checked their in-station files. They thought they might find a separate Jean Ellroy file built up by El Monte PD.
They found a file number. They found out the file was destroyed 20 years ago.
Armstrong and Eckler interviewed Bert Beria’s widow and brother. They pegged Bert as a misanthrope and an all-purpose shit. They didn’t think he killed Jean Ellroy.
We found Margie Trawick’s daughter. She remembered the case. She was 14. We asked her for names. She didn’t have any.
We found a deputy who knew computers backwards. His home system featured a 50-state reverse book. He ran Ruth Schienle through it. He got a long printout. Bill and I called 19 Ruth Schienles. None of them were our Ruth Schienle. None of them knew our Ruth Schienle. Women were hard to find. They got married and divorced. They got lost behind name changes.
We went back to the Ellroy Blue Book. We extracted four names. We wrote down “Tom Baker,” “Tom Downey” and “Salvador Quiroz Serena.” They were all exonerated. Serena worked at Airtek. He said he “could have had” my mother. We found the name “Grant Surface.” He took polygraph tests on 6/25 and 7/1/59. The results were “inconclusive.” “Psychological difficulties” fucked up the tests. We ran Baker, Downey, Serena and Surface through the 50-state reverse book and the state DMV and DOJ computers. We got no hits on Surface and Serena. We got a shitload for Baker and Downey. We called all the Bakers and Downeys. We did not find our Baker and Downey.
Bill called Rick Jackson at LAPD Homicide. Jackson checked rape-and-choke and bludgeon-choke murders from the Ellroy/Long time span. He found two LAPD cases. They were solved and successfully adjudicated.
Victim #1 was named Edith Lucille O’Brien. She was snuffed on 2/18/59. She was 43 years old. She was bludgeoned and dumped on a hilltop in Tujunga. Her slacks were turned inside out. Her bra was pushed up. It looked like a sex frenzy job.
Edith O’Brien prowled bars in Burbank and Glendale. She picked up men for sex. She was last seen at the Bamboo Hut on San Fernando Road. She left with a man. The man had a ’53 Olds. The man came back to the Bamboo Hut alone. The man talked to another man. He said Edith was out in his car. She spilled spaghetti on the front seat. The men put their heads together and whispered. The car man stayed at the bar. The other man walked out.
The coroner said the killer lashed the victim’s wrists tight. He probably wailed on her with a lug wrench. The LAPD popped a guy named Walter Edward Briley. He was tried and convicted. He was 21. He was tall and heavyset. He was sentenced to life in prison. He was paroled in 1978.
A man named Donald Kinman raped and strangled two women. The victims were named Ferne Wessel and Mary Louise Tardy. The DODs were 4/6/58 and 11/22/59. Kinman met Victim #1 in a bar. He rented a hotel room and killed her there. He met Victim #2 in a bar. He killed her in a trailer at his father’s trailer park. He left fingerprints at both scenes. He turned himself in and confessed. Kinman was stocky and curly-haired. Kinman fell behind two counts of murder. Kinman went to prison for 21 years.
Kinman jazzed me. He played like a two-time-only killer. He was more volatile than the Swarthy Man. He was purely self-destructive. I saw alcohol as his trigger. The perfect booze intake and the perfect woman came his way twice. He said, “I don’t know what came over me, but it just felt like something I had to do.”
Bill and I debated the Swarthy Man as serial killer. Bill was pro. I was con. We kicked the ball back and forth a hundred dozen times. Bill said we should contact a psychological profiler.
Carlos Avila worked for the State DOJ. He taught profile procedures. He gave seminars. He worked Sheriff’s Homicide for nine years and knew our geographical backdrop. We should commission a profile on the Ellroy and Long cases.
Bill called Carlos Avila. We lent him our files. He studied them and wrote up an opinion.
UNKNOWN SUBJECT;
GENEVA “JEAN” HILLIKER ELLROY; VICTIM (DECEASED);
AKA JEAN ELLROY;
JUNE 22, 1958;
ELSPETH “BOBBIE” LONG; VICTIM (DECEASED);
JANUARY 23, 1959;
LOS ANGELES COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT;
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA;
HOMICIDE (CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIVE ANALYSIS).
The following Criminal Investigative Analysis was prepared by Criminal Investigative Profiler Carlos Avila, Private Consultant in conjunction with Special Agent Sharon Pagaling, California Department of Justice, Bureau of Investigation. This analysis is based upon a thorough review of the case materials submitted by Retired Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sergeant William Stoner and James Ellroy, son of victim Jean Ellroy. The conclusions are the results of the knowledge drawn from the personal investigative experience, educational background and research conducted by these crime analysts.
It is not a substitute for a thorough, well planned investigation, and should not be considered all inclusive. The information provided is based upon reviewing, analyzing, and researching criminal cases similar to the cases submitted by Sergeant Stoner, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (Retired).
Two separate offenses were reviewed for this analysis. Due to analysis of submitted data and discussion of the two cases reported, this analysis will reflect a description of a singular personality type believed responsible for the deaths of victims Ellroy and Long.
VICTIMOLOGY
Examination of the victim’s background is a significant aspect of the analysis process. Their vulnerability of becoming victims of a violent crime was examined in conjunction with a review of their lifestyles, behaviors, personal histories, and social/sexual habits. Specifically, at what risk were they to becoming victims of a violent crime.
Victim Jean Ellroy was a forty-three year old white female, five feet five and one-half inches in height; weighed approximately one hundred thirty-one pounds and had red hair. She was divorced and had moved with her minor son to a well kept rental home in El Monte, California in 1958. She had been employed as an industrial nurse in Los Angeles since 1956. Victim Ellroy was physically attractive and enjoyed frequenting nearby nightclubs during the weekends while her son visited his father. Ellroy’s landlords described her as a quiet tenant who seemed to enjoy being alone with her son. She was described as being closed mouthed about her personal life and as having few close friends. After her death her landlords reported finding empty liquor bottles in the shrubbery near the victim’s home and in the trash container.
Ellroy’s landlords reported seeing her drive away from her residence
at approximately 2000 hours on Saturday, June 21, 1958. Witnesses reported seeing Ellroy later that evening in the company of an unidentified adult male at a drive-in restaurant at approximately 2200 hours; at a nightclub dancing at approximately 2245 hours; and lastly, back at the drive-in restaurant at approximately 0215 hours the following morning. Her body was discovered at a nearby high school on June 22, 1958, at approximately 1000 hours. The area where the victim was last seen was described as having a “low crime rate” with no previous abductions, sexual assaults or similar crimes reported.
Ellroy’s risk level of becoming a victim of a violent crime was elevated by her habit of frequenting nightclubs, socializing with persons she did not know well, and drinking alcoholic beverages. On the date of her death her risk level was further elevated by her personal circumstances: a woman alone in a car with a man.
Victim Bobbie Elspeth Long was a fifty-two year old white female, five feet five inches tall, weighed approximately one hundred thirty-two pounds and had dishwater blond hair. She was divorced and lived alone in a well kept two-room apartment in Los Angeles, which she had rented for the preceding four years. Long was employed as a waitress at a nearby restaurant where she worked the evening shift. Various persons familiar with Long said she enjoyed gambling at the race tracks and was in debt to a bookmaker. She was described as secretive regarding her personal life and family history. Long routinely lied about her age and after her death was determined to be eight years older than she had often claimed. Long reportedly enjoyed being escorted socially by various men, but was described as unlikely to become sexually involved unless she had believed the contact would somehow be financially lucrative for her. A search of Long’s apartment after her death revealed hidden liquor bottles. Long was described as having an outgoing assertive personality.
Long’s body was discovered at approximately 0230 hours on Friday, January 23, 1959, lying near the side of a road in the city of La Puente. The previous day Long had taken a bus to the Santa Anita Race Track where witnesses reported seeing her betting on various races throughout the day. Persons familiar with Long believed it quite possible she would have accepted an offer of a ride home from a stranger she met at the race track if she found him acceptable.
