Born to Lose

by James G. Hollock

  Q. Did you go to Buffalo?

  A. No, I made the girl do all the driving. She told me her name was Linda. I didn’t tell her my name, and she talked about working in a restaurant, but she didn’t tell me anything about her family. She started to mouth off.

  Q. What do you mean by that?

  A. She wanted me to let she and the baby go, said she wouldn’t tell the cops anything, and she wanted to get out of the car. Somewhere on Route 219 she pulled off the road and she was mouthing off.

  Q. What took place there?

  A. She was running her mouth off. I got sick of that. I took the gun and wanted to scare her by putting a bullet past her but shot her in the right side. She started to scream. The baby was still in the backseat and crying, and I shot Linda right through the temple. That shut her up.

  Q. What did you do then?

  A. She was bleeding a lot. I took her out and threw her in the trunk.

  Q. Was there blood in the car?

  A. Yes, all over both seats in the front, on the console, and the floor. I put her in the trunk right away.

  Q. Can you give me the exact location on 219 where you shot Linda?

  A. I don’t know where I was myself. It was before I got to Route 322, though, and there might have been a farm in the distance.

  Q. Did you have sexual relations with Linda?

  A. No, I didn’t touch her.

  Q. What gun did you shoot Linda with?

  A. The same .22 Higgins.

  Q. When did this shooting occur?

  A. Just before dusk the same day I picked her and the baby up.

  Q. Were there any bullet holes in the car?

  A. I didn’t see any. They must have stayed in her.

  Without prompting Hoss proceeded to explain what he did after killing Linda Peugeot. As needed, the FBI probed for particulars.

  “Here is the first time I started driving her car, the GTO. I was going to stay in a motel but saw a state trooper hanging around so I drove away south past Slippery Rock, then almost to Butler.

  “These are … ?”

  “Towns in western Pennsylvania,” Hoss clarified. “I flirted with going home to see some people, say goodbye. Also, I wouldn’t have minded killing a couple cops on my way out of town.” (Hoss may have said this for effect, yet a revenge list in Hoss’s handwriting was found in his room at the Travelers Motel just after his capture. Among the six officers listed were Chiefs Steve Radage and Wilbur Bliss and Patrolman Red Orris.) “But I guess I thought it was too risky,” Hoss went on, “and I had the baby with me, so I turned west into Ohio.”

  Hoss spoke with authority and displayed little hesitation over details, like one would if crafting a tale or making all or parts of it up as the story unfolded. Hoss’s memory, too, whole or selective, appeared remarkable. To his listeners, Hoss seemed to be telling an honest version. Still, every cop knows that every criminal, to a lesser or greater degree, is a liar.

  Hoss drank more coffee and laid out more of his travels. The agents let him talk, but were anxious to bring him to the fate of the little girl. He was asked how he was financing this cross-country jaunt.

  “Well, I was out of cash when I got to LaVale. The few bucks Linda had I used for gas. After that I pulled stickups whenever I needed money.”

  “You never got caught?” asked Flint.

  Hoss smiled at the silly question. “Guess not.”

  When Hoss started in again about driving across the United States, Agent Dunn cut in. “Stanley, we’ve heard this. Believe me, we’ll be checking out every city, town, and hamlet. Now, I am asking you, the little girl, Lori Mae … what have you done with her?”

  Hoss’s face remained unreadable as he sipped his coffee, then rolled his shoulders, as if to loosen up before making eye contact with Dunn.

  “The baby died,” replied Hoss, spending the same emotion if he’d said he’d lost a dollar.

  “Died?” said Dunn, thinking of some horrible accident. “How did she die?”

  “I guess I made her die, I killed her. The baby stuck with me for a couple thousand miles, and then we got to Kansas City.”

  “Do you know the date you got there?” said Dunn, who had evolved into the lead questioner.

  “No, but the baby was with me about a week.”

  “What happened there?”

  “I didn’t know how to take care of the kid. One place, a couple of colored ladies fixed her hair in a restaurant. She wouldn’t eat scrambled eggs. I would buy her milk and mashed potatoes.”

  “You mention you got near Kansas City, Kansas?”

  “Yes, I pulled off of a dirt road near Kansas City and I took my right hand and put it over the baby’s mouth and smothered her. Then I found a pasteboard box that I got off some kind of dump. I put the baby in the box and I put the box on the dump.”

  “Was the baby alive when you put her in the box?”

  “I don’t know. She’d been kicking before I smothered her but she stopped. I don’t know if she was breathing or not when I put her in the box, but I took my gun and I emptied it at the box, all nine shots.”

  “Did you hit the box?”

  “Yeah, every time. The baby was another link in the chain against me, to follow me, so I emptied the gun in her.”

  “Why did you kill Linda?”

  Hoss gave a philosophical shrug. “Why should I care about other people? I didn’t want to kill the girl and baby but I wanted to be free. I knew if I’d leave Linda go, the cops would be on my trail. Another murder wouldn’t make any difference. If you kill, you might as well kill half a dozen. You can only burn once.”

  After Hoss’s chilling denouement, Dunn brought the session to a close.

  “Have you been fully warned of your constitutional rights each time you’ve been interrogated?”

  “Yes. I’m going to plead guilty to everything. I’m not going to fight anything. I haven’t asked for an attorney and I don’t want one.”

  “Is there anything you wish to add to this statement, Stanley?”

  “Yes, I want to tell you about cops. There is no cops I care for. And yeah, I’ll tell you now, I shot the one in Verona. Instead of killing those people, the girl and the baby, I should have killed all cops. When I was surrounded at the diner, if I just had my gun I would have killed all eight of them. I’d have shot them down. I’d have saved the ninth bullet for myself. I fought to get that gun. If I could have just gotten to it, I’d have shot them all. The gun was loaded on the front seat. I gave them a battle and almost got one policeman’s gun, but I didn’t.”

  Later in the evening, Hoss was again brought out. He looked weary. The agents wanted to keep up the pressure in hope of breaking him.

  Though evasive, Hoss admitted he knew the location of the bodies. He stated neither would be found unless he showed where they were, but he added he would not do this. After some thought, he said he would like to make a deal.

  “I’ll tell you where they are,” Hoss said quietly, “if after I do, you’ll leave a gun on the table and give me a minute in this room by myself.”

  “That’s impossible,” Agent Dunn said.

  “Well, that’s it then,” said Hoss, with a bang of his handcuffs on the tabletop. “Now you’ll never know.”

  After a pause, Hoss surprised everyone. “All right, they are buried in separate graves, not in cemeteries or in water. They’re two states apart, but no one but me can ever find them.”

  Finally Hoss said he would reveal the grave sites, but not until he was returned to Pennsylvania and allowed to personally explain his actions to Jodine Fawkes and his parents, since he felt the newspapers and other media would mishandle the facts. The agents agreed to this barter, in which Hoss controlled the where and when, even the if.

  At session’s end, Hoss said, “Remember, the grave locations are my ace in the hole.”

  . . .

  “We were led to the cell and there he was, sitting on his bunk with a plate of wieners and beans on his knees.
Beside him was the biggest, glossiest red apple I’d ever seen. Working homicide, I never even heard of him until Zanella was shot. Why we weren’t in the interrogation room, I don’t know, but when we entered the cell I was struck by his crystal clear green eyes and, considering his charges, lack of trepidation—no fear whatever. He was an arrogant sonovabitch. He continued to eat without looking up, but said, ‘Hi, enjoy your flight’?” This is what Captain Joseph Start recalled when first laying eyes upon Stanley Hoss.

  Joe Start’s match with police work was like snow on a pine bough. Back from Europe after World War II, Start pinned on a badge in 1947 and steadily climbed the ranks of Allegheny County’s Detective Bureau.

  In 1963, Start made it into the homicide section—the Pinnacle Club. Three years later, Start, with captain’s bars, was the officer in charge of the club. Naturally, then, by position and acumen, it was Start who was selected by his boss, District Attorney Robert Duggan, to hasten out to Waterloo. Accompanying Start was big, burly Marty Corcoran, who had followed in the footsteps of his father, also a detective.

  Their mission held three goals: to present to proper authority a bench warrant for Hoss’s arrest for the killing of patrolman Joe Zanella; to interrogate and seek confession; and to take custody of the suspect for his return to Pittsburgh under state jurisdiction.

  This was straightforward enough, but soon after the pair landed at Waterloo Airport the evening of Monday, October 6, things got curious.

  After finding a motel, Start and Corcoran made their way to the Black Hawk County Jail, where they received a cordial welcome. They learned that federal agents, including Pittsburgh Special Agent Danny Dunn, had arrived the day before and had already talked to Hoss several times. Asked when they could see Hoss, the detectives were told he was in the custody of the feds and no other authority could see him until OK’d by the FBI. Captain Start shrugged. “All right, when they’re done, we’ll talk to him. If the FBI had something good going, we’d back off, but I soon learned this was perhaps more courtesy than if the shoe was on the other foot.”

  After Start showed his bench warrant to the jail’s warden, the detectives were left to cool their heels for the next couple of days. It was understood that Hoss had waived extradition as early as Saturday night, so there was no fight coming from that quarter. The detectives might have been miffed that the federal agents barely seemed to acknowledge their presence, engaging in only the most cursory of exchanges, but if this was a snub, Start let it go, saying, “Really, we were there for the Zanella case. Whatever the FBI could find out about the Peugeots, that’s fine. We just wanted to bring Hoss back on the Zanella case, but it never happened that way.”

  In the interim, Start and Corcoran hung around with some of the local cops and jail officers who, over evening beers, told what they could of Hoss. On Tuesday, the Waterloo Kiwanis Club held a formal luncheon to honor the city policemen for their part in capturing the “Most Wanted Man in America.” In their tribute, the Kiwanians laid the butter on with a trowel. Detective Tom Matzen hoped their kind but excessive remarks didn’t make it back to the squad house, “for we’d be in for years of ribbing.”

  Finally, on Wednesday, October 8, Captain Start and Detective Corcoran were permitted their time with Hoss. In the jail cell, Hoss lingered over his wieners and beans, saying nothing. Seated on either side of him on the bunk, the detectives feared they’d have to suffer through Hoss dawdling over the big apple too, but the prisoner put it aside.

  “Stanley, we’ve come in from Pittsburgh to ask you some questions,” Start opened. “Are you ready to give answers?”

  “I guess,” answered Hoss, dripping indifference.

  “Stanley, we’ve told you we are here about the policeman back home,” said Start.

  Hoss had already confessed to shooting the cop, but during his time with these two detectives he got the impression they knew nothing of what he’d said to the feds only the day before. Don’t these people talk to each other?

  In fact, they didn’t know he’d confessed. The feds hadn’t bothered to inform the Pennsylvania detectives of anything. “When in Waterloo,” Start recalled, “neither Marty nor I had any decent relationship with the FBI. They never talked to us at all, and heck, I knew Danny Dunn. He flew out to Waterloo right away, too, but got there ahead of us. But that doesn’t mean you don’t share information. The FBI even tapped the phone in our motel room.”

  In the dark about anything Hoss had said to the FBI, Start began at square one, leaving Hoss free to toy with the state as he had with the feds.

  “Patrolman Zanella?” Start began again.

  Hoss spoke in the broadest of terms, now and again using phrases like, “Yeah, yeah, what the hell,” or “You do what you have to.” This was tantamount to a confession, but with an eye toward a trial the detectives persevered for words that could not be misconstrued by any juror. After more minutes of Hoss talking in every direction, he was with effort led back to Verona on that late afternoon …

  Q. Stanley, we know you were in the yellow Chevy when you drove into Verona. What happened?

  A. I came into town on the way to see my girl. I see a cop behind me and he flashes his lights, so that was it. I took off through town but he’s right on me now. I pulled off on a side road. I was ready for him. I saw his door open and him coming up to my car from the side. I had my gun in my hand.

  Q. What happened next?

  A. I showed that dumb bastard.

  Q. What, you what … ?

  A. I said I showed the dumb bastard. I shot him. I saw him fall. I didn’t know he was dead right there but … him or me, ya know.

  After these impenitent words, Hoss segued to the Peugeots. He admitted to kidnapping and murdering both females, putting two bullets into Linda and “nine shots into the little girl.”

  Working homicide, Start’s and Corcoran’s business was to see and hear bad things, terrible things, yet they were still unprepared for Stanley Hoss. When a suspect is nabbed, usually the first words out of his mouth are, “I didn’t do it.” Later, after a wheelbarrow of evidence is dumped on him, his tune changes to, “I didn’t mean it,” and a thousand variations thereof. Once caught dead to rights, any criminal knows the best avenue is to show a little contrition, keep hammering away that it wasn’t really his fault, and refrain from speaking ill of the victim. Scrubbed up and looking sorrowful in view of a gullible jury while an oily defense attorney muddies the waters … well, who knows? But Hoss showed no concern about any of this.

  In the latter part of their interview, Start and Corcoran were shocked speechless when “out of the blue Hoss went into a rant, slandered Zanella and used profanity against the mother and child, saying such things as ‘fuck them in the ass.’”

  Of this experience, Start said, “That was the first and only time I felt I had talked with a man who had lost his soul.”

  Linda and Lori Mae were dead. A select few federal and state officials knew this, but everyone else was left to pray for a miracle. The FBI had clamped a lid of silence over details of the fate of the Peugeots. The burdensome secret would soon be revealed, but at the moment those who had interviewed Hoss, as well as their superiors, had little choice but to accept Hoss’s conditions for his revealing the location of the bodies. Nothing could bring back the mother and daughter, but the utmost had to be done to retrieve the bodies for a Christian burial, together. If that meant making a “deal with the devil,” so be it. And now that the deal had been struck, one could only hope for divine grace that the sanguinary and soulless Hoss would show a spark of chivalry and abide by his word.

  Legal bodies and law enforcement agreed that Hoss should be returned to Pittsburgh without delay. The disunity arose over who would do the honors. On behalf of the feds, Evan Hultman, U.S. attorney for northern Iowa, declared that since “Hoss was initially arrested in Waterloo on a federal charge, there is no question who’s had jurisdiction from the start.” Representing Pennsylvania, Captain Joe Start disagreed, a
sserting that his state had dibs on Hoss: “Hoss was captured on a federal UFLAP [Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution], but the origin of the UFLAP warrant lay in Pittsburgh due to the Zanella case.”

  Shortly after Zanella’s murder, Start himself had gone before a grand jury in Pittsburgh and presented the particulars of the Zanella case; the jurors had brought in a true bill, another name for an indictment. This true bill was taken to the FBI. “It was only then,” reported Start, “that the FBI issued the UFLAP warrant. Ours should trump theirs.”

  The lines were drawn. The federal government wanted Hoss for the Peugeots, Pennsylvania wanted Hoss for Zanella, and both powers wanted to stick the dagger in first.

  “While in Waterloo,” said Start, “we were told that the FBI had first choice in custody of Hoss and they’d take him back to Pittsburgh.” With this news, Start knew he had to call his boss, District Attorney Robert Duggan, to get authorization to relinquish the state’s bench warrant. Start may have been piqued at how the FBI was throwing its weight around but, in general, Start was “all right with the FBI having possession of Hoss. If they were getting the information out of him, fine. I felt we’d get Hoss soon enough for Zanella, after the Peugeots were taken care of.”

  If Captain Start could be this generous, DA Duggan could not. “At the time,” explained Start,

  there was a young U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh, who of course represented the feds. His name was Dick Thornburgh. Both Duggan and Thornburgh were capable men in big office; still, they had bosses too, and I don’t know how high this custody battle went but I’ve heard J. Edgar Hoover and Pennsylvania Senator Hugh Scott had something to say. But with Duggan and Thornburgh, I don’t know what it was between them. I wasn’t privy to all the politics involved, but when I called Duggan from Waterloo to lift our bench warrant, he was stern, emphatic, saying, “No, no, you serve the bench warrant on them, you do what you have to … don’t you let them get Hoss from us!”

  Through a friend in the Waterloo Police Department, the Pittsburgh duo learned Wednesday evening that the FBI planned to move Hoss out early the following morning, Thursday, October 9. The same source also provided the flight plans. Certain of their inability to wrest custody of Hoss from the FBI, at least while in Waterloo, Start called his boss with the details of the flight plan. “Maybe something could be done on that end,” Start figured, “but Duggan was still telling me, ‘I want that warrant served. You are to follow my orders.’”