A Death in California

by Barthel, Joan;

  “He said that several times, perfectly commonly. And finally, when my daughter stopped shaking Bill, the intruder then said, ‘Look at your arms.’ And she looked at her arms and noticed that they were covered with blood. I didn’t mention that this took place during the nighttime hours, Saturday night or Sunday morning, depending on what the clock said. My daughter was completely unable to tell us about the time. She did say that the individual was with her for a matter of four to six hours and that the individual left while it was still dark.”

  Babcock cut in again. “How did he leave? Did she say?”

  Van frowned. “No, I don’t believe she said. You mean by vehicle or walking out? She didn’t, and if she said, I’ve forgotten. Shall I continue?”

  “Sure, please.”

  “The man grabbed her. He tore off her clothes and he either attempted to rape her or he did rape her. I’m fuzzy; I’m unclear on which of those two events actually took place. At one point, whether it was a subsequent assault or whether it was the first assault I don’t know, but she said that the man started to rape her but stopped when she showed no interest. She—the man tied her up, I presume earlier, with adhesive tape, with her hands behind her back and also, I believe, put adhesive tape on her feet. I do not recall whether my daughter said she was tied to the bed. I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten about that.

  “Apparently she and the intruder had lengthy conversations in which this intruder told her, among other things, that he was doing the job on a contract, that he was being paid thirty-six hundred dollars for doing the job.” Van explained that the intruder told Hope that her two older children were to be killed, too, but not the baby, in case he showed up. He told Babcock the names of Hope’s two husbands, though he didn’t know where either of them lived in Los Angeles.

  “My daughter said that somehow or other she was able to persuade the man not to kill her.”

  “What kind of weapon did this man have?” Babcock asked.

  “My daughter said that he had a handgun with a great big barrel, that the man tried to push the barrel of the gun into her mouth and the barrel was too big to go in.”

  “Then what happened?” Babcock asked.

  “Well, the man left, somewhere at a time that my daughter could not identify. She could only say that it was four to six hours after she was awakened.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Well, I don’t want to tell you anything that I’m surmising,” Van said carefully. “The next incident that my daughter mentioned to me was when Taylor or Tyler, the photographer-writer, arrived at the house.”

  “What time did he arrive, according to her?”

  “She has no idea at all, but at this stage of the game, Taylor, who was present in my house last night, as I told you, picked up the story. He says that he arrived at the house around eleven or twelve o’clock Sunday morning, and the first thing I can remember him saying was that all he could hear were screams coming out of the house. Yells. He went into the house and then saw Bill, the deceased, lying on the couch, but didn’t pay any attention to that and followed down the screaming to where my daughter was lying on the bed, bound with the adhesive tape.

  “My daughter wanted to get up and go to the telephone—I’ve forgotten who she was going to call—but in order to do so she would have had to go through the living room. And she was in a state, according to Taylor, of extreme agitation—I suppose that means hysterics—and she would not go into the living room where the body was. Taylor tried to persuade her to go, and asked what he was supposed to do about it.”

  “He was telling you this, right?” Babcock said. “He told you this, right?”

  “With her present,” Van said. Babcock nodded again.

  “He asked her what he was supposed to do,” Van continued. “And she said, ‘Move the body.’ She said, ‘Get Bill out of there.’ So Taylor did move the body. He put the body on a bed in one of the other bedrooms. I don’t know which one.” After that, Van said, Taylor and Hope left the ranch in Taylor’s car.

  “Do you know where this gentleman is now?” Babcock asked.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Well, eventually we’ll contact him,” Babcock said. “Of course, it’s a little bit unusual for the man originally to be involved in contacting the police and then make himself scarce. Something’s wrong there.” He paused. “Does your daughter own any weapons, any firearms?”

  “She not only doesn’t own them, they frighten the hell out of her,” Van said emphatically.

  “How about your wife?”

  “She has the same attitude toward guns that my daughter does. She’s scared to death of them.”

  “Do you own any firearms?”

  “Yes, I do,” Van said firmly. “I own a 12-gauge shotgun, a .45 automatic, and a .38 automatic and, incidentally, none of these guns has been fired, as I recollect, for ten to fifteen years. I also won, however, a .22 rifle that I take up to the ranch for the purpose of trying to shoot ground squirrels, and I also own a .22 Colt Woodsman handgun.” Van explained that he had bought the two automatics more than thirty years before, when he had been in the navy, and that the shotgun, the Colt, and the rifle had been gifts.

  “All right,” Babcock said. “I just got about two or three more questions to ask.” Actually, he had four.

  “One, has your daughter ever been arrested, and if so, for what?”

  “My daughter has never been arrested, to my knowledge, other than for traffic violations.”

  “Number two. Why do you think the man let her live?”

  When Van did not reply promptly, Babcock leaned forward in his chair.

  “Mind you, now,” the detective reminded him, “you have a man who, at least coming from your daughter’s lips to you, has been told that the man was paid to kill. The man sees a lady—a woman—a witness—who can identify him. Why—why didn’t he kill her?”

  “I cannot answer that question,” Van said slowly. “If indeed he was a paid killer, as he said he was, then I have no answer for your question, and I’m every single bit as puzzled as you are.”

  “And another thing,” Babcock pressed. “Why wait so long to report this crime?”

  “The reason that my daughter gave me, and this was verified by Taylor, is because she had been told by the intruder, the killer, that she was not to report anything to the authorities, that he would be in touch with her and that he would let her know when, if ever, she could report to the authorities and that he was going to watch her and her family—namely me, her mother, and her children—and that if she did not obey his instructions, everybody would be killed.

  “She was frightened into doing this and, uh”—uncharacteristically, Van stammered a little—“uh, let me just say editorially that I think it was a mistake, but on the other hand, you had a forty-five-year-old man going right along with it.”

  “Let me ask you this,” Babcock said slowly. “Your own opinion, naturally. Do you think that possibly your daughter and this gentleman might be involved in the killing?”

  “I—I—I—I think—”

  “Think it’s a possibility?” Babcock prodded.

  “I think—I think it’s absolutely inconceivable from any standpoint,” Van said.

  “You don’t think it’s conceivable that your daughter and this other gentleman would be involved in this killing as perpetrators?”

  Van stopped stammering. He spoke very firmly.

  “I think it would be absolutely inconceivable either one of them could possibly have been involved.”

  Hope’s coffee cup had just cooled enough for her to handle it when the jailer came to pick up the tray. “Your attorney’s here,” he announced. Again, the man was a stranger; again, trembling slightly, she asked to see his identification.

  Tom Breslin was feeling moderately cranky when he was led into the cell and the door locked behind him. He’d been awakened at home by Ned Nelsen, telling him to get on down to the Beverly Hills jail to talk to a woman named Hop
e Masters, that it was a homicide. Tom had spent an hour driving around, trying to find a shop open so early, so he could buy a notebook. He sat down on the edge of Hope’s cot and regarded her sternly.

  “Don’t lie to me,” Tom Breslin warned her. “The last person who lied to me got the death penalty!”

  When he looked closely at his new client, though, he softened. In the harsh white light of the cell, he thought she looked awful—skinny, even gaunt, with huge purple circles under her eyes, very shaky, very scared. So he smiled his open, Irish smile and tried to put her at ease by joking about the decor of the cell, especially the open toilet, no lid, on the opposite side. “That’s very picturesque, don’t you think?”

  Hope smiled a little, and Tom took out his new notebook. Before she began talking, he told her she should be very courteous to the police but she must not say anything more to them, anything at all. He did not have the heart to tell her she’d already said too much.

  Van came home to pick up his guns. He took them down to the police station while Honey dressed, and when he returned, she went down to give her statement.

  “May I see Hopie?” Honey asked. They said she could not.

  “Does she need anything?” Honey asked. “How is she?”

  They said she didn’t need anything, that she was fine, and they reminded Honey she was there to give a statement.

  Honey told the Tulare detectives about Hope arriving at her house the day before in a yellow car that Honey didn’t recognize, and how terribly upset and distraught Hope had been as she told a story of a contract on their lives and tapped telephones, of a killer in the night who had told Hope her husband wanted her dead.

  “She’d hesitated for a moment,” Honey said, “because she’s been married twice.”

  “Which husband?” Babcock asked.

  “That’s just what she said to him!” Honey exclaimed. “Which husband? Which husband?” She recounted to Babcock some of the conversation between Hope and the killer, conversation about the house keys. “You understand now, everything I’m telling you is just what my daughter has told me,” Honey pointed out.

  “Right,” Babcock said.

  “And I have every reason to believe her explicitly,” Honey said firmly. “She’s a very honest person. Totally honest.”

  Honey explained that the killer had told Hope that the baby was not supposed to be hurt, and in fact was not supposed to be there at all, because her husband was going to pick up the baby, and when Hope heard that, she had known which husband the killer was talking about.

  “Which husband was he talking about?” Babcock asked.

  “Tom Masters,” Honey said.

  Babcock merely said, “All right,” and Honey continued with Taylor’s account of his arrival at the ranch, moving Bill’s body to the back bedroom and bringing Hope back to the city. She told how frightened they all had been, including Taylor. “He was obviously frightened for his life,” Honey said. “He said he had been switching cars and doing all kinds of things to avoid being seen or being followed by these people. Taylor was obviously terrified.” She told how Taylor had left to call the police, and how Van himself had then called. “He had a terrible time persuading anyone from the Beverly Hills police to come,” Honey said tartly. She began to describe Taylor in detail—his boots, his glasses, and his unusual pipe—but she was cut short.

  “Do you believe your daughter’s story?” Babcock asked sharply.

  “Completely. Completely,” Honey said. “Taylor, who seemed to be a very rational man, believed it completely, and even Van, when he came in—he believed it too.”

  “Why hasn’t Taylor made himself available?” Babcock wondered.

  “I don’t know,” Honey said. “Whether he was afraid to come back to the house for fear of these people killing him, or whether he was afraid for himself. He—he realized he had done a very stupid thing in moving the body and then not telling the police right away.”

  “Let me run through this now,” Babcock said. “It sounds—well, let me run through it. First of all, the gentleman Tyler or Taylor, if that’s his correct name, we know of no address on him, right? And he has not made himself known to the police of his presence, right?”

  “He promised he would come back,” Honey said plaintively.

  Babcock could not contain his skepticism. “Let me ask you this,” he said bluntly. “Do you think it would be likely for a Mafia-type professional killer to let the only witness to a murder live? It doesn’t seem logical, does it?”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Honey admitted, “except I think she convinced him that—” Babcock cut her off again.

  “We’re talking about a professional killer, right?”

  “Right,” Honey agreed.

  “It doesn’t seem logical, does it?”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Honey said again. She looked at Babcock and clasped her hands fervently. “I think it’s an absolute miracle.”

  Babcock looked at her, perhaps seeing her for the first time not just as a subject being interviewed, but as a mother. “We’re not out here to persecute your daughter,” he said, less sharply. “But we have a dead man on our hands.”

  All Dr. Hayes knew, when he got to Myers Chapel in Porterville, was that the body had a lot of blood on it. When he saw the small hole in the back of the head, apparently a gunshot wound, he sent the body over to the Sierra View District Hospital for X rays.

  When the body was returned, Dr. Hayes began his autopsy at 4:10 A.M. He asked Sgt. Vern Hensley to photograph the body clothed, because of the pattern of the bloodstains; there was a great deal of blood, clotted and dried, on the shirt, both in front and in back; on the pants; on the hands; and in the victim’s mouth. In fact, the chief source of blood seemed to be from the mouth.

  Ted Goode of the funeral home staff helped Dr. Hayes undress the victim, then, and Sergeant Hensley took more pictures. Then Dr. Hayes put on surgical gloves and continued his work. He found no defense wounds, indicating no struggle—no markings on the knuckles, no hairs under the fingernails. From the discoloration of the body, he determined that the body had been in two positions: first, lying up against some solid object, then lying face down.

  Because of the areas of the brain that were injured, and the massive bleeding, Dr. Hayes thought that death had been instantaneous. He concluded that the bullet had fractured the bones at the base of the skull and emerged through the palate. The bullet was fragmented. The head wound measured three millimeters in diameter and since it had seared edges, with no powder burns, he decided the gun had been fired at a minimum distance of two to three feet. He estimated the man had been dead from one to three days.

  Lieutenant Becker of the Coroner’s Division, whom Dr. Hayes knew from other autopsies, other cases, was standing by, but the doctor didn’t know the other officers; unless someone was specifically helping him at an autopsy, he didn’t pay any attention to the people wandering about.

  Sergeant Hensley took the clothing as evidence, as well as seven small metal fragments and a hair sample. Dr. Hayes drew blood and sent it to the crime lab, where the analysis showed blood alcohol concentration of .23 percent, eleven or twelve drinks. He drew as much urine as he could, but there wasn’t much, only 144 cc’s, about a tablespoonful; that analysis showed a spot characteristic of morphine, which could have been present if the victim had taken codeine, heroin, or morphine within three days before the examination. The victim’s stomach contained rice and some dark brown material, possibly beans, which had been in the digestive system one to five hours.

  Dr. Hayes did not sign a death certificate. On the documents sent to the lab with the samples he wrote “John Doe.”

  The autopsy took two hours, about the usual amount of time, just as it was usual, Dr. Hayes reflected, for a homicide autopsy to be done at 4:00 in the morning. The only thing unusual in this case, to him, was the fine physical condition of the body. He had been told the victim was forty-three years old. “This man doesn’t look like a m
an who is forty-three years old,” Dr. Hayes told one of the detectives. He thought the man appeared much younger.

  Hope and Tom Breslin were still talking when someone came to her cell door and announced that the Tulare police were ready to transport her up north.

  Tom helped her as she got up, shakily, to her feet. He squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry,” he said. “And don’t talk to anybody till you see me again.” He walked downstairs with her, the guard leading the way, around to the parking lot behind the jail, where he introduced himself to the two detectives. “Mrs. Masters might want to talk to you while on the trip,” Tom said, already aware of Hope’s flair for talking nonstop. “But I’ve advised her not to talk, and I’d appreciate it if you don’t discuss this case with her.”

  Sergeant Babcock brought out a pair of handcuffs. “Not too tight,” Hope said. “My hands are really hurting.” He snapped on the cuffs and led her to the back seat, where there were no door handles on the inside. He and Detective Tucker got in front, and they left Beverly Hills at 10:26 A.M.

  Cliff Einstein kept thinking Bill would walk in any minute. They had an important layout to show this morning, and Bill couldn’t possibly have forgotten. It was an important presentation, one Bill had been working on for weeks.

  This morning, Wednesday morning, was the first time Cliff felt really concerned about Bill, even though he hadn’t seen him since Friday afternoon. “Where’s Bill?” someone had asked Cliff on Monday, when Bill hadn’t come in, and although Cliff didn’t know, he didn’t think too much about it then. Bill had some vacation time coming and he’d talked about taking a three-day cruise some weekend, running into Monday. Bill had never before failed to tell Cliff when he’d be out, so Cliff thought maybe Bill had told him and Cliff had just forgotten.