A Death in California

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A Death in California Page 45

by Barthel, Joan;


  Judge Ginsburg was truly annoyed. “Mr. Walker, if you had someone identify the Brooklyn Bridge, and you had testified that you were at the Brooklyn Bridge on February 25, would the identification of the Brooklyn Bridge prove you were there?”

  “Your Honor, I don’t think I understand the court’s response about the Brooklyn Bridge,” Walker said innocently.

  “Apparently you don’t,” Ginsburg snapped. “The objection is sustained, Mr. Walker, on the grounds of lack of relevancy.”

  Ginsburg was further annoyed when Walker presented a motion asking that the defense be allowed to subpoena a dozen out-of-state witnesses. Among the witnesses Walker wanted was Illinois state trooper Frank Waldrup, whom Walker maintained would testify that on Saturday, February 10, 1973, he’d taken Marcy Purmal in for questioning at O’Hare Airport, after seeing “a large stack of U.S. currency” in her purse, and that, under questioning, Marcy had admitted that her relationship with Walker had been a sexual relationship. Walker also wanted Armond Lee, an elevator operator at the Illinois Research Hospital, brought to Visalia to testify that on the last Sunday of January 1973, when Lee had brought food and drinks to Walker in his hospital room, Lee had seen two visitors; Walker said Armond Lee would identify the man as William T. Ashlock and the woman as Hope Masters. A third witness from Illinois would be James Mager from the Standard station on North LaSalle. Walker told the court that Mager would testify that he had identified Marcy Purmal as the woman who had been with Walker at the station at 2 A.M. on February 5, 1973, and Mager would further testify that Walker had been back at the station the following night, February 6, with another woman; Mager would identify that woman as Hope Masters.

  The motion was denied.

  Nevertheless, Jim Heusdens was concerned about the impact of Walker’s story, especially with the two witnesses, the Holiday Inn clerk and the pizza cook, placing Walker in Los Angeles late Saturday night and early Sunday morning. So on the first weekend in January, Heusdens, Jim Brown, and Gene Parker drove down to L.A. to check out those people and find out what they could. On Saturday afternoon, though it went sorely against his grain, Heusdens met with Hope at her mother’s house to discuss what the prosecution might do to strengthen its case.

  He didn’t like Hope Masters any more than he ever had; he still thought she was snippy and arrogant and probably, in some way, guilty, though that didn’t bother him anymore. “It wasn’t my duty to judge that case,” he explained. “It was my duty to prosecute Walker.” He didn’t like Honey’s decorator living room—“too much crystal and brass crap,” Heusdens thought—and he especially didn’t like the coffee table, which he thought was much too big. But when he saw Hope’s son Keith, just turned thirteen—tall, blond, nicely mannered, and articulate—he liked very much what he saw.

  Honey always felt that Keith’s appearance in court had a lot to do with his later, long-term problems. “He was given too much responsibility at too early an age,” Honey said sadly. “He was the man of the house at a time when he ought to have been just a little boy.” It was Keith whom Hope had charged, in her phone call from jail, with taking care of his little brother and sister; it was Keith whom Hope had told, when they drove down the hill to Honey’s in the yellow and brown car, that someone was trying to kill them all. Now it was Keith who raised his hand to be sworn in and who perched on the edge of the big witness chair, because Jim Heusdens felt the boy would make the mother’s story more credible, to substantiate that she had been very much afraid, and, more than that, to clear her name.

  “Did Mr. Walker tell you his name was Taylor?” Heusdens asked the boy.

  “Yes,” Keith said. “When I came to the house after the basketball game, and he was there with my mother, and I asked him what his name was, and he said ‘Taylor.’”

  “Had you ever heard your mother mention Mr. Walker’s name before?”

  “Never,” Keith said.

  “Now if your mother has a friend—you know, a boyfriend—did your mother always tell you what those boyfriends’ names were, and introduce you to them?”

  “Yes,” Keith said. Lois Bollinger said she was crying inside for the child at that point.

  “Keith, before your mother married Mr. Masters, in 1969, did your mother ever leave you for a period of more than one or two days?”

  “She couldn’t,” Keith said, “Because it was just my mother and my sister, and we had no housekeeper and nobody else.”

  “Now, when you went down to the House of Pies with Mr. Walker, did the waitress ask you where your sister was?”

  “I told her that my mother was scared for her to come out of the house,” Keith related. “And Mr. Walker told me it wasn’t right to talk about family business in front of other people.”

  Keith said that when his mother came home from the ranch Sunday evening, she seemed kind of quiet. Both she and Mr. Walker told him that Bill had had car trouble and had stayed up at the ranch. Most of the time, then, until they went down to his grandmother’s, his mother was in the house—“She was in and out”—and both she and Mr. Walker had told Keith that Mr. Walker was there to guard the house, so nobody could get K.C. Keith said the man had told him he’d stayed up all night, guarding them. On Tuesday, in the car, when Keith asked his mother what was wrong, she’d told him somebody was trying to kill them all. That evening, while he was watching TV in the den, Keith said he’d seen a man pass by the window. He went into the living room to tell the grown-ups, and Mr. Walker told Keith “it was all right, it was just somebody that was protecting the house.” After Mr. Walker left, Keith said, he saw his grandfather close all the curtains and turn on the alarm and bring out a lot of guns into the living room. Keith said his mother went away that night, for about four or five days, and when she came back, she never went out anywhere. He and his sister stayed home from school for fifteen days, but they were allowed outside after Mr. Breslin and Gene said it was okay.

  When Jay Powell objected, Heusdens said this witness would rebut testimony that had placed Hope in San Francisco eight days after the murder, and Ginsburg allowed the line of questioning.

  “She was home every day. You saw her?” Heusdens asked.

  “Every day and every night,” Keith said firmly.

  Walker smiled widely at the witness. “Is it Mister, or Keith, or Super Sport?” he asked jovially.

  “Keith,” the boy said gravely.

  “Do you remember the weekend that you went over to your relatives’ house?”

  “Yes, I went with my uncle, for a day and a half,” Keith said.

  “So you weren’t there all the time?”

  “I wasn’t gone eight days,” Keith said. “And I know my mother wasn’t in San Francisco for eight days.”

  “Could she have been there for four hours?” Walker asked gently.

  “Could have been,” Keith said. “But my grandmother and my grandfather would have known it.”

  Walker paused. “Keith, in 1969, how old were you?”

  “Ten or nine,” Keith said. “Nine, I think.”

  “What time was your bedtime?”

  “Eight-thirty,” Keith said. “I had a strict bedtime.”

  “So you wouldn’t know where your mother happened to be when you were in bed?”

  “Yes I would,” Keith said stoutly. “Yes I would. She would come to my room and cover me up every night.”

  Walker’s smile was sad, as he spoke softly to the boy. “Keith, you love your mother, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Keith said.

  “Wouldn’t trade her for anybody in the world, would you?”

  “No,” Keith said.

  Lionel had brought Keith to Visalia. He himself testified briefly that he’d been in London working on a television movie, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, starring Kirk Douglas, on the weekend of February 24 and 25, 1973, and that he’d been in London from mid-November 1972 until March 12, 1973, except for a twenty-four-hour trip to Los Angeles on February 9 or 10 to pick up a check. On th
at one quick visit, he said he’d stayed at the Hyatt House. He said he knew Hope’s parents but had never been to their ranch, although he’d been told it was in Springville, “wherever that might be. I have no idea.”

  One of the best things about the legwork Gene Parker and Jim Brown had done in Los Angeles, Gene said, was talking to pretty women, and he was pleased to see Sara Monaco again in court, a state’s rebuttal witness, to identify Walker as the man who’d come to Dailey & Associates on Friday, February 23, 1973, to take Bill Ashlock to lunch.

  Jay Powell maintained that the witness’s identification was invalid because she’d seen newspaper photographs of Walker after that date. In her explanation, Sara proved almost as talkative as Hope. “The pictures that I have seen in the newspaper were not a close picture, they were a distant picture, and I tried to sit down and think of what he looked like when he was sitting in the lobby of where I work, and the way he is sitting there now and what I see, I feel it is the same person,” Sara said.

  “All right,” Jay said wearily.

  Sara Monaco said the man had told her his name was Wright Taylor, or Taylor Wright, and he’d said he was there to do a story on Bill Ashlock. When Sara told him Mr. Ashlock was delayed because he was on the phone with his girlfriend, the man was amused, because the story was on Bill’s bachelorhood. Sara said that when she told Bill the man was waiting, Bill had asked her the man’s name again; in the lobby, Sara saw them introduce themselves to each other.

  Mr. Tony Tidd came down from Markham, Ontario, Canada, to testify that on Saturday night, February 24, 1973, he and his wife had stayed at the Holiday Inn in Los Angeles and had checked out Sunday morning.

  The Holiday Inn clerk, Robert McRae, returned to correct his earlier testimony. He said he had not been working the weekend of February 24 and 25 and had not been in the hotel. However, he remembered seeing the defendant, though he didn’t know the date; he remembered, from registration slips, the names Kassler, Jungnickel, and Gantou; and he remembered seeing, at some point, Tennessee Ernie Ford.

  When Jim Heusdens recalled the Casa Bella owner, the prosecutor pointed out that the California sales tax had been 5 percent in February 1973, not 6 percent. Jay Powell said that Mr. Richardson had simply overcharged Mr. Walker by five cents and there was nothing sinister about a five-cent mistake. Mr. Richardson himself said he could easily have made a mistake like that because he had a cataract on his left eye, and Lois Bollinger said later that she couldn’t figure out how, in that case, he could have seen through the restaurant window out into the parking area, so late at night, and noticed raindrops on the customer’s Lincoln Continental.

  Neither the hotel clerk nor the pizza man was a liar, Heusdens told the jury in his summation, simply people who had seen the defendant at some point and then had been convinced by him that they had seen him that crucial Saturday night.

  “He has the whole month of February,” Heusdens pointed out. “He puts in a bunch of evidence, a bunch of hotel registration slips with names. He threw in Mr. Tidd—but here comes Mr. Tidd. So he had to find somebody else. I imagine, if we go look, we will find Norman Carter, we will find that he was at the Holiday Inn that night. I don’t doubt we will find a Kassler there, and a Jungnickel.

  “He has pulled you down a merry path,” Heusdens told the jury, “but I think all of you have seen through the man that he is, a man who takes a family, twists them, uses them and then, when he is caught, tells you a twisted story.” Heusdens said Walker had used people all his life, especially women, especially Hope Masters.

  “Remember Ingrid? Remember Miss Kassler? Remember some of the other people—the maid, the woman up at San Francisco? Remember all these women Mr. Walker has talked about? I think the evidence shows that Mr. Walker thought he could control Hope Masters. I think he believed he could control her, and I think he could do what Mr. Tinch said he was going to do—take Mr. Ashlock’s identification and go to England and send a letter back saying ‘I resign’ and then live in England as Mr. Ashlock.

  “Mr. Walker is a planner. He plans things. He knows what he is going to do, and he knows when he wants to do it.

  “Now, why did he not kill Hope? Because he thought he could control her! When she first told her story, she didn’t tell anybody that Mr. Walker was the killer, and it’s probably questionable to you now, what parts of Mrs. Masters’s story do you believe—and rightfully so, because, after all, her story was changed on a couple of occasions.

  “You have to look at Mr. Walker and say, ‘Is Mr. Walker capable of causing enough fear for somebody to do the things that Mrs. Masters did? Is he capable of causing that much fear? Can he convince someone to tell that kind of a story?’

  “Mrs. Masters has three children—a two-year-old, a nine-year-old, a thirteen-year-old. She’s at a ranch with the defendant. Her boyfriend—who she is going to marry—has been killed. Her three children have been threatened. The defendant is with her for two days. She doesn’t even know who he is!

  “And sometimes,” Heusdens couldn’t resist adding, broadly, “sometimes I wonder if even I know who he is! Is he Taylor Wright? Is he Larry Burbage? Is he William T. Ashlock? Or is he G. Daniel Walker?

  “Now, maybe she went along with the defendant. Maybe she did have intercourse with the defendant. But if those other people can come up here under the influence of the defendant when he’s in custody, and commit perjury, what else can Mrs. Masters do, if she was in the condition and in the situation she was placed in?

  “All I can tell you”—Heusdens waved his arms dramatically—“is, out of the mouths of babes comes truth! Keith took the stand and he told you things that his mother told you. He liked the defendant Walker. The defendant Walker was always nice to him. But that boy knew something was wrong, and he asked his mom, ‘What’s wrong?’ And she said, ‘Somebody is trying to kill us all!’

  “Now, was Mrs. Masters convinced at that point that somebody was trying to kill them? If Mr. McRae could be convinced, if other people were convinced by the defendant, I think Mrs. Masters could be convinced.

  “Now, could Mrs. Masters have been involved in the shooting? Answer: yes. Could she have been the trigger man? The evidence says no. You look at her? You can consider all the facts. And no matter how much anyone can believe she may go to bed with Mr. Walker—she may have done that—but are you convinced that that woman is capable of pulling the trigger and putting a bullet through Mr. Ashlock’s head? I don’t think so.

  “On the other hand, are any of you convinced that Mr. Walker could put a bullet through somebody’s head? I am sure Mr. Taylor Wright kind of felt like that on one particular moment in Michigan on February the ninth.

  “Mr. Walker said he knew Hope Masters and Mr. Ashlock a long time ago. Miss Monaco, the secretary, was here. After hearing her testimony, do any of you believe that Mr. Walker knew Bill Ashlock?

  “Well, he went to Los Angeles, you know. Now, why did he go to Los Angeles?” Heusdens shook his head forcefully.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I can’t explain to you a person like Mr. Walker. I can’t explain why did he do this? Or why didn’t he do that? I won’t try to explain to you a person like Mr. Walker. The only thing I can explain to you is that Mr. Walker is the type of an individual who for his own purposes—his own desires—would destroy the life of another human being! If Mr. Walker was there—and I think the evidence clearly shows he was there—then only one person who has been in this courtroom was capable of the crime, and only one person in this courtroom committed the crime”—Heusdens swung around and pointed at Walker—“and he is sitting over there at that table, and he is going to wait for you to bring in a verdict, and we ask you to bring back a conviction of murder in the first degree!”

  Jay Powell was as cool, as composed as ever, as he summed up the defense case. “We have a most unusual case here,” he said quietly, “and I am sure that all of you, for the rest of your lives, will remember it, no matter what the outcome.

  “Now, M
rs. Masters has told us that she didn’t know Mr. Walker until the weekend of the crime. We have both Mr. Walker’s testimony that he knew her for years, and we have the testimony of the ex-lieutenant from the Illinois State Prison, Mr. Wendel. Mr. Heusdens tried to impeach Mr. Wendel by showing that he had a bad reputation among prison guards. Even if he did—and I don’t concede that he did—that still doesn’t mean he didn’t mail letters from the prison from Mr. Walker to Hope Masters. It also does not mean he had never seen her picture before.

  “You will recall that Mrs. Masters, the first time around, told us she did not know the intruder. She woke up. She didn’t know the intruder. She did not see him. It was dark. He talked obscene things to her, spoke to her, raped her. Then they had a long conversation in which she finally talked him out of killing her. But she did not recognize his voice, and she did not know him, even though she had several hours with him on Saturday and she had the opportunity to know his voice.

  “If he’s the killer, why didn’t he kill her at the ranch? Why let her live? If she’s the only person who can identify him, and he’s the killer, why not shoot her as well?

  “Remember how Mrs. Masters said there was blood all over her, and there was vomit all over the pink blouse? She said she had never been able to find out what happened to her clothing at the ranch, but she was sure there were bloodstains on that crepe blouse. Then when we took the sack to the witness stand, it was so obvious there was no blood on the blouse, all the buttons were intact, there was no vomit. That caught her in another lie.

  “What did she tell her lawyer on those tapes? She said Walker was different from the man that raped her. ‘Yes, he seemed to be very different.’

  “This woman, pathetic as she may be, or as willful as she may be—that’s for you to decide—has lied to us. Maybe she did hallucinate. How much of this did she make up? I don’t know. That’s for you to decide.

 

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