“This Webb,” Babcock asked then, abruptly. “Did she know this Webb? Any type of relationship there?”
“I don’t know,” Tom said.
Jim Webb told the police he hardly knew the girl. “They know more about who we are than we know about who they are,” the foreman explained, “because they only come up maybe every four or five months, something like that.” He said he had never been invited to any of their social gatherings. “Definitely not, definitely not.” Jim knew she had long blond hair and was sharply dressed when he saw her, Saturday afternoon, with the other two fellows, but he didn’t know much about Hope Masters at all. One thing he did know was that when he saw the powdery trail on the kitchen floor, like a trail of cleanser, he knew his wife wouldn’t have left that kind of trail because she was a meticulous housekeeper and besides, if she didn’t clean up just right, the owners would let her know about it. And he knew Hope Masters couldn’t have left it, because “from what I heard, she had never done any cleaning in her life.”
In his subsequent statements to the police, after his first predawn statement on Wednesday, Jim Webb admitted that he’d gone into the house, with gloves on, and socks over his shoes, not just stood outside and shined in the windows with his flashlight, the way he’d told it the first time.
Sgt. Richard Morris, who was conducting the interview along with Detective Flores, was very polite when he spoke to Jim Webb. “Would you care to explain why, when you were giving the first statement, when you had the first opportunity to tell what you knew about this situation, that you didn’t tell about going into the house?”
Jim said in the first place, he was scared to death, and in the second place, when he called the police Tuesday night, after he’d talked with Van, the police had told him not to go into the house, and Jim didn’t want to get into trouble by telling them he already had.
Before he talked with Jim Webb again, Detective Flores had talked with a man named Ed Pillstrom, who knew Jim. Ed Pillstrom told Flores that when he’d talked with Jim—“I was kind of kidding him about that crime wave they were having up at the ranch, and I asked him why he didn’t find the body, because I know he works up there”—Jim had told Ed Pillstrom he was going down to the substation to change his statement about a gun.
But when Detective Flores asked Jim about a gun, Jim said he had not mentioned the word “gun.”
“Definitely not,” he said, adding that maybe Ed Pillstrom had mistaken the word “gun” for “gone.” “Maybe I told him I had gone into the house,” Jim said.
Before he talked with the police on Thursday, Jim Webb had the Miranda warning read to him by Detective Flores, and after he talked, late Thursday night, the deputy district attorney had asked him to take a lie detector test. Jim said he would take one after he’d had some sleep and had talked with his lawyer. But the D.A. had wanted it done right then. “I can get you the best guy from Bakersfield; I can have him here within the hour,” the D.A. told Jim. But Jim still said he wanted to wait.
Honey kept going over and over in her mind the afternoon and evening when Taylor had sat talking, at the end of her velvet sofa. She remembered his anecdote about Hope picking up the runny-nosed baby at the market, but she also remembered him saying he hadn’t arrived at the ranch until Sunday morning. “When could that have happened, if he didn’t arrive till Sunday?” she asked Van.
She also remembered Hope pointing out to her that Taylor was fifty-one years old. She’d spoken in such a strange, shrill voice that Honey was startled, and now it occurred to her that Hope was perhaps trying to get Honey to take a really good look at Taylor. Honey had taken a very good look and had written a complete description of Taylor, which didn’t seem to interest the police at all. “They just told me, ‘Well, if you hear from him, have him turn himself in,’” she reported to Van. Honey kept going over the notes she’d made, trying to remember everything Taylor had said, everything Hope had said. As she thought about it, Honey began to wonder why Hope hadn’t telephoned the minute she was safely away from the ranch; surely, Honey thought, the public phones along the highway would not have been tapped.
Honey was so upset and fearful about it all that when Tom Masters telephoned, the phone trembled in her hands. Tom said he was calling to ask about Hopie and the children.
“K.C. is well and happy and being well cared for,” Honey told Tom. “Somebody will be in touch with you soon.”
She hung up as quickly as she could and phoned the Beverly Hills police. She told the officer they were all very frightened, and she asked for a policeman to come around and guard the house. When they told her the case was out of their jurisdiction, and they couldn’t send a man, Honey was furious. “The fact that I have been a resident of Beverly Hills for forty years, and a property owner, doesn’t matter to you at all!” she exclaimed. Van called his son Michael, who was a reserve deputy in Los Angeles; Michael came over and sat all day in the living room with his loaded gun.
Tom Breslin was in and out of the jail three or four times, bringing Hope cigarettes, a toothbrush, a hairbrush. “Don’t worry,” he kept saying, so Hope tried not to as she lay on her bunk, gazing at the ceiling. She had been moved into a single cell, a cell for special cases, so she figured something would happen on Friday, but she tried not to think about anything, even after she’d heard a news bulletin about the murder, coming from a radio in one of the trustee’s cells. She listened to the women singing—sometimes from several cells at once, sometimes from one, then another, one woman picking up where another had left off. She recognized Vanessa’s voice—sweet and clear and mournful—but she didn’t recognize any of the songs; they were made-up songs, Hope realized, more like laments, about their men and their children and their loneliness and troubles. My God, Hope thought, this is the real thing. This is the Jail-house Blues.
Thursday/March 1, 1973
Ms. Marthe C. Purmal
Attorney at Law
422 East 47th Street
Chicago, Illinois 60653
Marcy,
This may be my last letter from freedom, for, I fear that tomorrow I must go into a district attorney’s office and spill my guts to get a woman out of jail and charges of murder, all because she refuses to talk, thereby protecting me.
This seems to be the season for women coming into trouble and/or jail for me.
First off, I am enclosing a brief story from the front pages of the S.F. paper, which tells a bit of what is up in the fast-moving life of Run-Dan-Run! Next, I am enclosing a picture of Hopie (her name is Hope but is called Hopie) and I took the picture in Hopie’s garden in L.A. (Yes, I’ll just bet I have some explaining to do—later.) Actually, I have several hundred pictures and slides I have taken along the way to share with you, however, I have been waiting to send them or show them as things meant for you tend to end up with “them.”
Of course, on to more important matters—while you sit in Chicago and feel sorry for yourself about becoming involved with me, tending to feel I am playing games with you and that you might be indicted, Hopie is spending her second night in the Tulare County Jail, has been already arraigned, and continues to be silent solely to protect me and give me time to run away, and is willing to stand trial.
All right, as you can see by the article, Hopie’s father is part owner in a large ranch up in the hills of California at Springville, and I have been staying there along with Hopie, her children, and several other friends—the place has many bedrooms, but eat your heart out where I was sleeping.
Hopie’s daughter, Hope (10) had a dental appointment, and the other two kids (Keith, 12 and Casey, 3) were ready to give up the wild life at the ranch, and two women (nameless L.A. socialites) had to go to L.A., which is approximately a 3 hour drive. Otherwise the body would not be that of William T. Ashlock, Creative Director for Dailey & Associates Advertising of Los Angeles, but would be that of G. Daniel Walker, for Bill Ashlock was the only man present at the ranch and assumed to be your true love.
H
opie was nude, bound with adhesive tape, and had been raped when I arrived, and yet, she gave me an accurate description of what had happened and who had accomplished the task. I tossed her into my car and drove to the private airport at Porterville where I rented a small plane and flew to L.A., dropped Hopie at her home and headed for where I knew my friends would go. Unfortunately, only one showed up and I left his body across a bed, which I am certain the police will discover shortly, and given enough time they would have a second one also.
Meanwhile, Hopie promised not to say anything until she had to, thereby giving me enough time to accomplish what I must and get away. Unfortunately the ranch foreman entered the ranch’s main house and then called Hopie’s father, who had no other choice but to call the authorities since a body was in the ranch house.
Since the ranch foreman was questioned he told that Hopie was there with friends of hers. The police arrived and Hopie and her children refused to answer any questions, and Hopie elected to go to jail to give me enough time to finish my manhunt in L.A. and get away.
My missing guy has flown to San Francisco, I am right on his tail, and assuming things go well and he gets his good tonight, I plan on driving to the Tulare County area and get Hopie out of jail. Ohhhhhhhhh, I shall not tell all, my dear, but fake it and hope to hell that my identity gets past the law folks, and yet, I tend to guess it won’t.
In the event it all goes wrong, I am truly sorry that you were such a prissy bitch that you could not do what others have done—come along with me and enjoy a few days. It has been a ball, one you would have liked, but then anyone who would fly to Vail with an Illinois State Cop and State’s Attorney has got to be a bum lay with a broken heart.
Love you, darling, and yet, it is amazing that while the authorities cannot find me, other folks with different strokes sure did—bang! Bill Ashlock was one great guy, he and Hopie were going to be married. (See, there is not that much to tell, after all).
Wish me luck.
love and stuff …
CHAPTER NINE
Melvin Eugene Parker was the only person in the Ashlock murder case who ever referred to the aristocratic Honey as “Hope’s mom.”
Gene Parker had never planned to be a cop. He was not from California, but from “back east,” by which he meant Paragould, Arkansas, where he grew up on a one hundred sixty-acre farm and played baseball so well, at Oak Grove High School, that the Philadelphia Phillies picked him up for their farm club in Carthage, Missouri. A player then was paid either sixty dollars a month with room and board, or ninety dollars a month without, so Gene drove back and forth every day from Paragould to Carthage. He washed out after one year and, with nothing else to do except go back on the farm, decided to go west.
He worked on construction jobs up and down the coast, ending up, for no special reason, in Porterville, California, where he bought himself a little grocery store. It was a nice, slow, easygoing business, with lots of time to talk to the people who came in. “I got a vacancy coming up in Woodville,” the sheriff told him one day, but Parker shook his head. “No thanks, I don’t want to be a cop,” he replied and, next thing he knew, he was driving around Woodville with the deputy who was leaving. The deputy introduced Parker to the barber and to the man who ran the gas station, then he parked the car and handed Gene the keys. “It’s all yours, kid,” he said.
Parker came to like his work a lot. “It kind of grows on you,” he said simply. He liked it mostly because it involved helping people. “I am not a college degree person,” Parker said. “But if your neighbor has a burglary, or gets hurt, or there is some trouble, you do not have to be a college degree person to get your neighbor’s stuff back, or help him out, or stop the trouble. I always felt that if a guy had a gun on me, I wouldn’t say nothing to him. I wouldn’t stand still, either, ’cause I’d have to keep my feet going; I would walk up to him and take the gun away. That’s just common sense, ’cause if I go for my gun, or start talking, he’ll probably shoot.” Parker paused, searching for words to define his philosophy. “Common sense,” he repeated. “It does not take a college degree person to do your neighbor right.”
Parker was assigned to the Ashlock investigation on his fortieth birthday, March 1. Some of his kids—he had five of them—had painted his toenails red while he slept, as a birthday surprise, and when Parker got the call to go down to L.A., he went so quickly he didn’t stop to remove the nail polish.
Gene Parker and his partner, Detective Jim Brown, never knew why they were picked for the L.A. job, but they did know that this was the first time in the history of the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office that men had been sent out of the county on an investigation, and they were looking forward to it. They checked in first at the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office to let them know they’d arrived; then Sgt. Ed Harter of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office (LASO) took them over to the Mayfair, where the other two officers from Tulare County, Babcock and Tucker, were already staying, at the special police rate. Brown and Parker had a room with a view of a flashing neon sign across the street for a topless, bottomless bar. They slept very well, their first night on official business in L.A. and their first night on waterbeds.
Mary Bowyer, Van’s secretary, took the call shortly after noon on Friday. She said Van was away. “Is there a message? May I ask who’s calling?”
“This is Taylor.”
The secretary caught her breath. “Mr. Taylor, what is your number, please? I’ll have him call you.”
“There is no number,” Taylor said. “I’m Hope’s friend. She is being arraigned at three o’clock today in Porterville. I want to get word to Van. I have some information.”
“Why don’t you go to Porterville?” Mary Bowyer suggested. “You have plenty of time to make it. You could help Hopie so much—they all need your help.”
“I want to help,” Taylor said, “but I am not going to make a personal appearance. The arraignment is to be in the Porterville Justice Court at three o’clock. I am going to call there around three o’clock.”
“Please, please call before three o’clock, before the hearing begins,” Mary Bowyer urged him.
“I will probably call around ten to three,” Taylor said. “Is there an attorney on the case other than Van?”
“Yes, his name is Ned Nelsen,” Mary replied. She spelled the name, emphasizing the second e, and gave his phone number. “Please go to Porterville,” she said again. “Do you realize what you are putting the family through? You could clear Hopie, if only you would.”
“I want to help, but I have to do it my way,” Taylor declared. “I am not going to make a personal appearance. I am not an American national and I am not going to be picked up. I would be in deep trouble myself. I have a telephone number for the justice court in Porterville and will call there. Is there any way you can reach Van?”
“I don’t know,” Mary said. “He’s on his way to Porterville now. But I’ll try.”
When she hung up, Mary Bowyer called Mildred Maguire, Ned Nelsen’s secretary, but she was out to lunch. Mary called again at 1:15 and, just before 2:00, Mildred returned her call. Mary told Mildred about Taylor’s call. “What do you think I should do?” Mary asked.
“Well, there’s no point in your calling Porterville, because you really don’t have anything tangible,” Mildred said. “We have an investigator up there. I’ll call him, and if Taylor does call Porterville, perhaps the call could be traced. Did you try to have Taylor’s call traced?”
“No, I had no way of going off the line without putting him on hold, and I surely didn’t want to put him on hold,” Mary said.
As the secretaries were talking, at 1:54 P.M. on Friday, March 2, a man rented a new Thunderbird, brown over gold, California license 139GFK, at the San Francisco International Airport. Janet Bender, the Hertz clerk, took the Bankamericard and filled out the rental form: William T. Ashlock, Checkmate Productions, 211 South Lafayette Park Place, Los Angeles, California.
Hope knew she looked awful wh
en she arrived at the Porterville Justice Court for her arraignment. Matron Arenas had given her a rubber band to hold back her hair, but a reporter was right when he described her as “wan and frail … very thin … wearing baggy red corduroy pants and a drooping knitted vest … she appeared exhausted.” She was led into the courtroom through the back entrance, the prisoners’ entry, from the parking area with the barbed wire atop the fence, around the little cement blockhouse where she had been held for a while on Wednesday, through a shadowy, cement-walled corridor into the courtroom.
Honey and Van were already seated on one of the narrow, straight-backed pine benches that made the little justice court look more like a plain country chapel—maybe even plainer, with no stained glass, its only color furnished by an American flag and the California state flag with a brown bear on a red background, gold-fringed. When she saw Hope being led in, looking so sick and scared and miserable, Honey began to cry.
Ned Nelsen and Tom Breslin stood with Hope at the counsel table, as Judge George Carter walked to the bench. He yawned, then smiled at the attorneys. “Gentlemen, you’ll have to bear with me,” he said. “I am very tired. I just got back from taking the bar exam.”
Hope pleaded not guilty. She stood tensely between Tom and Ned, clutching a black sweater and a pack of cigarettes as Ned argued that if the man known to them as Taylor could be found, he was confident that the charges against Hope would be dismissed. “While Mrs Masters did not use the best judgment,” Nelsen argued, “she certainly did not kill Mr. Ashlock.” But when Deputy District Attorney James Heusdens argued that she be held without bail until the preliminary hearing, Judge Carter nodded, and ordered her returned to custody.
There was a moment’s hush, then a voice was heard from the middle of the courtroom. “I wish to address the court.”
The courtroom stirred as Van moved forward and stood beside Hope. He put his arm around her and looked directly at Judge Carter, speaking in a firm, steady voice.
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