A Death in California

by Barthel, Joan;

  “You will recall also that she told her attorney that the killer-intruder took mug-shot pictures of her with a camera, four or five. Now, the sheriff’s office developed the photographs in Walker’s camera. If there were mug-shot pictures, as Hope claims, surely they would have been evidence here for you to look at.” Jay Powell shook his head, too, not forcefully, as Heusdens had, but in a quiet, bemused way. “It’s just another instance of Hope Masters’s incredible tale, which they are asking you to believe so they can convict Mr. Walker.

  “When they got back to Beverly Hills, why did he stay with her constantly? Did he keep her naked in the shower for a couple of days? No. If we believe she was under such a threat and was so terrified she could do nothing then, why didn’t she say to the police on Tuesday night when she was in jail, when she was safe, ‘Hey, quick, this guy is the killer.’ She didn’t say that. Then she was in jail in Tulare County. Did she tell the Tulare County authorities, ‘Walker is the killer! Get him!’ No. She did nothing.

  “She was released on bail. What about the FBI, then? Walker wasn’t around, and Mr. Paul Luther was talking to Hope. Why didn’t she say, ‘Quick, Walker is the killer, go get him!’ She didn’t say that.

  “Now, did Mr. Walker go to Los Angeles on Saturday night? Detective Jim Brown is a very hard-working man, very fine man. He testified that the gas slip to the service station in Earlimart said February 24. Could one think for one minute that Mr. Brown would lie in favor of Mr. Walker?

  “Or Mrs. Marvin Crane, who was driving by the ranch entrance. Did Mr. Walker get her to lie? I don’t think so. Yet she saw a green, foreign-looking car there. Did Walker get the fishermen to lie? They went by the ranch on Tuesday, and the drapes were open. When they drove out, the drapes were closed. And on Saturday, when the fishermen were there, there was a Lincoln and a Vega and another car—a green foreign car.

  “And shall we believe that Mr. Walker has control over the weather? Did he arrange the weather so that on Saturday night it would rain at the right time for him? Yet you will remember the weather expert’s testimony that the only time it rained at any time back and forth after that Saturday night was between 10:30 and 11:30 that particular Saturday night.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Jay Powell finished, quietly, “you are not trying Mr. Walker for robbery in Ann Arbor, Michigan. You are not trying Mr. Walker for escape in Chicago, Illinois. You are trying Mr. Walker for murder in Tulare County, and I think you will conclude that the People have failed to prove Mr. Walker guilty of murder beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty. There is no question Mr. Ashlock was murdered up there. But merely because Mr. Walker is the only defendant left in the case, the only person before you, does not mean that you must now find Mr. Walker guilty. We ask that you consider the reasonable doubt instruction carefully, you weigh the evidence, and we ask you to find Mr. Walker not guilty.”

  In his closing statement to the jury, Jim Heusdens dispensed quickly with a couple of defense points. On Detective Jim Brown and the gas station slip dated February 24: “Mr. Shawn says he works twenty-four to thirty-six hours at a stretch. And the card is dated the twenty-fourth. Okay. When does the twenty-fourth start? It starts at midnight on Friday and goes to midnight on Saturday, so we’ve got two periods of night, do we not? Mr. Walker had to drive sometime to Springville. When did he leave Los Angeles?” On the weatherman: “He said during the month of February it rained sixteen days. Twenty-eight days in February. Sometimes twenty-nine. Over half. It could have been any particular night.”

  Then Heusdens got to the main point. The starting and ending point. The only point. He leaned toward the jury in a confidential manner, rather chatty.

  “I’m not going to tell you that Mrs. Masters is not a pompous little broad. She is. She acted it. She acts kind of smarty.

  “But after the charges against her were dismissed, she could have sat on that stand and said, ‘I shot Mr. Ashlock myself,’ and she would still walk out the door, because the charges were brought, the jury was sworn and at that point, when the charges were dismissed, she could never be brought back in the court again for the charge of murder against Mr. Ashlock. So she did not have to keep this thing going.

  “Mr. Powell says, ‘Why didn’t she tell the police? She had plenty of opportunity to tell them.’

  “Now, I ask you ladies on the jury”—Jim Heusdens looked earnestly at each of the women, his gaze lingering especially on the pregnant woman—“I ask you, if you had three children and you were taken off to jail because you were implicated in a crime, would you put the finger on the man who told you not to, and risk your three children’s lives?

  “You heard the tape Mr. Walker made about ‘my people,’ ‘the organization,’ ‘the contract.’” Jim Heusdens pounded on the jury rail. “I don’t think there is a woman on this jury who would do it! And I don’t think Mrs. Masters would do it!

  “You heard the tape,” he repeated, his voice trembling slightly with tension. “Do you think that was at another person’s direction? You heard the ramblings and the goings on. Mr. Walker expected someone to believe that, just as he had Mrs. Masters believing everything, along with her parents. But, ladies and gentlemen, I don’t believe Mr. Walker has you”—now Heusdens pointed suddenly at the jury—“I don’t think he has you believing anything other than that he is guilty of murder, in the first degree!”

  It was a wonderful, florid speech. One of the jurors wanted to applaud. But beneath the flamboyance, the show for the sake of the show, winning for the sake of winning, Jim Heusdens felt a sense of urgency in this case. As he sank into his chair and pulled out a handkerchief to wipe his steamy face, as the judge was instructing the jury, Heusdens leaned toward his assistant, Jim Brown. “It’s important that they don’t turn this guy loose,” Heusdens muttered.

  Judge Ginsburg reminded the jury that a defendant in a criminal action was presumed innocent, until proven guilty, and that in case of reasonable doubt, he was entitled to an acquittal. He told them motive need not be shown, although presence of a motive might tend to establish guilt, as the absence of motive might tend to establish innocence. He not only defined murder—the unlawful killing of a human being, with malice aforethought—he then defined malice—a wish to vex, annoy, or injure another person, or an intent to do a wrongful act.

  When he concluded his instructions—meticulous, by the book—he paused, looked steadily at the jury, then continued.

  Judge Leonard Ginsburg had considered what he was going to say very, very carefully. In all his years on the bench, he had never before made personal comments to a jury. But neither had he presided at the trial of G. Daniel Walker before. And Walker’s jury was two-thirds women.

  “At this time, for the purpose of assisting you in deciding this case, I am permitted by the Constitution of California to comment on the evidence and the testimony and credibility of any witness,” Ginsburg told the jury.

  Neither attorney had ever heard a judge comment before; they stared at him. Walker had a half-smile on his face.

  “My comments are intended to be advisory only and are not binding on you,” Ginsburg went on. “You should disregard any or all of my comments if they do not agree with your views of the evidence and the credibility of the witnesses.

  “It is my opinion that the defendant Walker’s testimony contains so many contradictions, improbabilities, and fabrications in material matters that I personally would disregard it entirely and give it no weight whatsoever.

  “It is further my opinion that the witnesses produced by the defendant were people of good will but were mistaken in crucial parts of their testimony, such as the dates when certain events took place, and the identities of certain persons.

  “It is further my opinion that the circumstantial evidence produced by the plaintiff in this case established that the defendant was the only person present, besides Hope Masters, who was awake, conscious, and had the ability and motive to commit the offense charged, and that he did so fo
r the purpose of taking the credit and the identity of the decedent in connection with the defendant’s endeavors to evade capture by the Illinois authorities.”

  The jury was sent out at 4:03 P.M. on Friday, January 11, told to remain until they reached a unanimous verdict. Over the objections of the woman who dried her own raisins, the foreman was Lois Bollinger, the tall, attractive blond bookkeeper whom Walker had declined to excuse from service when her boss got sick.

  At 6:30, when the jury had not announced a verdict, Judge Ginsburg sent them to dinner. Jim Heusdens grabbed a bite with his wife, Gwen, and his son, who had driven over from Porterville for the closing speeches, and his law partner. They discussed the prospects. Heusdens felt Ginsburg’s comments had been pretty strong, but with a jury—especially a jury trying G. Daniel Walker—you never could tell. Of the three murder cases Heusdens had prosecuted before Walker, he’d won two, lost one. One of the victims had been stabbed seventeen times, but the jury acquitted, and one of the jurors rushed over and kissed the defendant, right in the center of the courtroom. You never could tell. Walker’s jury was two-thirds women, and Heusdens felt that women didn’t trust other women. “It’s important they don’t turn this guy loose,” he said again.

  Hope opened her eyes, closed them, opened them again, yawned and stretched. She raised her head slightly from the pillow, but the room had no clock, and it was darkened with heavy draperies, so she couldn’t even guess the time.

  She groaned and fell back onto the pillow, pulling the covers partly over her head. Waking up never seemed to get any easier. As she burrowed in, she remembered she wasn’t at home, and she didn’t have to get up. She could stay in bed all day, or as long as she liked. It was going to be a wonderful, lazy, restful weekend.

  All through the trial Hope had been on twenty-four-hour call. She was still tired and vaguely unwell from the virus she’d had just before Christmas, when she had dressed in her bodysuit and miniskirt to go back to testify. The holidays had been depressing, spent, as usual, in what she called “one of those Christmas-divorce type setups.” She took the children to Honey’s on Christmas Eve, when Van’s children came there; on Christmas Day, his children visited their mother, and Hope had Honey and Van up to the Drive. Lionel went with her to Honey’s, but he did not come to Hope’s dinner on Christmas Day, when Tom and Nadine were invited. Tom had called Hope just before Christmas. “Am I still invited over this year?” he’d asked. “Well, of course,” Hope said. “It’s your kid, what the heck.”

  As January wore on, damp and chilly, she felt she had to get away, and she’d telephoned Heusdens. “Will you need me on Monday? Because if you don’t, I’d like to go away for the weekend.”

  “No, we won’t need you on Monday,” Heusdens told her.

  So Hope and Lionel had come down to La Costa, one of her favorite hotels, where she could lie around the pool, sleep late, watch TV all day, and just hang out in the room, then party all night.

  Knowing that she didn’t have to get up brought her wide awake. She wriggled out from under the covers and sat on the edge of the bed. She brushed her hair away from her face, lighted a cigarette, and called room service for coffee and juice.

  When the knock came, she opened the door, and a smiling waiter pushed in the breakfast cart, adorned with fresh flowers and the morning paper. As he was fussing around, pouring ice water, unfolding the napkins, Hope picked up the paper.

  WALKER CONVICTED IN SLAYING OF AD MAN

  She did not notice the waiter leave. She stood as though she were frozen, right where she was. She felt alarmed, confused, excited, depressed, sad, and very angry. When Lionel, waking up, said something to her, she snapped at him to leave her alone.

  Minutes after they went into the jury room, the jurors had decided that Walker was guilty. There seemed to be no doubt in anybody’s mind. But they thought it would look funny if they came right back out and said so, so they talked a while and then took their dinner break, then talked some more. They took one written ballot before returning to the courtroom at 10:00 P.M. to say “We, the jury, find the defendant guilty as charged, murder in the first degree.”

  After the initial, momentary hush, the courtroom broke into excited conversation and handshaking. Judge Ginsburg thanked the jury, the clerk, the reporter, and the bailiff. He congratulated Jim Heusdens for a performance that he called “unusually brilliant,” and he commiserated with Jay Powell “because he has been saddled with a situation that would make any attorney cringe.”

  Jim Brown was so relieved when he heard the verdict that he folded his arms on the table and just rested his head there for a while. “Boy, that’s a relief,” he said. “That’s a relief.”

  Three weeks later, in the same courtroom, Jay Powell moved for a new trial.

  He argued again that Walker’s arrest was illegal, the result of an illegally seized letter, the fruit of the poisoned tree. He said the People had withheld evidence, especially an airline ticket purportedly used by Hope Masters to fly from Illinois to California on February 7, 1973. He argued that the court should have allowed the testimony of Dolly Hicklin, because the murder of her husband had followed the Ashlock pattern: her husband was on vacation, Taylor was an intruder who broke in and shot him in the head. Finally, Jay protested Ginsburg’s personal comments, calling it “a directed verdict.”

  Heusdens defended those comments. “When the testimony is this blatant, this far out, it’s the judge’s responsibility to make some kind of comment.” He reminded the court that Marcy Purmal had testified she gave Walker’s letters to the authorities. He said that for Jay Powell to bring up the Hicklin-Ashlock similarities only now, on the day of sentencing, was too late. He said he had never heard of any such airline ticket.

  Judge Ginsburg said that in a two-month trial, the court was bound to make a few mistakes, but if he’d made any, he didn’t think they were of any consequence. He denied the motion for a new trial.

  Jay had one other motion. He asked that the defendant’s clothing be returned, along with an undeveloped roll of 35-mm color film taken from the camera found in the Thunderbird. Walker didn’t ask for the camera back, Powell assured the court, only the film.

  Jim Heusdens argued that the clothing was mostly stolen. He said if the film were given to Walker, and developed, a set of prints ought to be turned over to the sheriff, in case it might be evidence. Jay said it couldn’t be evidence; it had been suppressed.

  Ginsburg ruled that an attempt should be made to sort out which clothes belonged to Walker and which didn’t. He ruled that Walker was entitled to the undeveloped film. He sentenced G. Daniel Walker to life imprisonment.

  And so the case of The People of the State of California v. G. Daniel Walker ended, officially, on the note of confusion and contradiction that had become apparent even before the trial. Whenever the country cops, Brown and Parker, got together, for a long time afterward, they would toss around some of those contradictions and unanswered questions. Down in the city, Hope’s team was inclined to do that, too. “The problem is that Walker mixes in one or two percent fact, along with the fiction,” Gene Tinch explained, “which is why it’s so hard to separate the two.”

  Were there two cars at the ranch on Saturday, or three?

  On Tuesday afternoon, at the ranch, were the living room drapes open or closed?

  Why was no bloody or ripped clothing found at the ranch?

  How many tapes were made, how many were erased, and why?

  Did the rifle with the telescopic sight belong to Bill Ashlock?

  Who were Walker’s “people”?

  Was there an airline ticket in somebody’s hands?

  What was on the roll of undeveloped film given back to Walker?

  Why did Walker say, on tape, that he left the ranch at 11:30 Saturday evening, and in court, 8:30?

  Was Walker’s involvement with two men who had been college classmates—Taylor Wright and Bill Ashlock—the merest coincidence, or a grudge darkly nurtured for tw
enty years?

  “She’s away from him, she’s free from him, why continue to take the rap for him?”

  EPILOGUE

  “Five years,” Walker had said to Hope, the night before she went down the hill to her mother’s house, the night before Bill’s body was found, when she and Walker were sitting by the gas-jet fire in her living room, listening to music, sipping wine. “How do you think you will feel about me in five years? If I stay out of trouble for five years, will you marry me?”

  “I honestly don’t know how I’d feel in five years,” Hope had answered, desperately evasive. “I just don’t know.”

  By the spring of 1978, Bob Swalwell was dressed in plainclothes permanently, assigned to the elite unit guarding the governor of Illinois. After Walker’s arrest, the men who had so vigorously opposed Swalwell’s tracking of the prey welcomed him back to Chicago with a banquet, a colossal cake, and the Superintendent’s Award of Merit. His buddy Gus framed the photograph of Walker, taken nude at the North Hollywood station, and hung it in his bathroom.

  Marcy Purmal, who had gone to Jamaica for a while, after the trial, then had joined a distinguished private law firm in Chicago and was embarked on a promising career, got a letter from Walker. She considered it a friendly letter, a signal that Walker wanted to strike up a correspondence. Marcy threw it in the wastebasket.

  Gene Parker and Jim Brown were each named “Cop of the Year” and received plaques, Jim in 1974, Gene in 1975. Jay Powell was elected district attorney for Tulare County, then moved into private practice, in a modern office with a photograph of Walker, along with Judge Ginsburg’s comments, framed and hung on the teakwood wall. When Jim Heusdens ran for D.A. and lost, he blamed the clique in Visalia, who didn’t want an attorney from Porterville, across the tracks, running the county. “I’m not a part of that in-group and I wouldn’t be in if they let me,” Heusdens announced. “It’s their loss and my gain, what the hell.” But his private practice flourished, and he bought a small ranch outside Porterville, named the 4 Circle Bar for no particular reason. Judge Carter abandoned plans for a law career and moved to a job in traffic court. Judge Ginsburg retired, because he was finding criminal cases routine and boring, mostly involving drugs; although he spent a lot of time in San Francisco, he still lived in Greenacres, in the life-style Hope had instinctively recognized and appreciated; he bought a new Mercedes, burnt-orange.