The Onion Field
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RAVES FOR JOSEPH WAMBAUGH AND …
THE ONION FIELD
“ONCE THE ACTION BEGINS IT IS DIFFICULT TO PUT THE BOOK DOWN.… Wambaugh’s compelling account of this true story is destined for the best-seller lists.”
—Library Journal
“SUPERB!”
—Columbus Dispatch
“A DRAMATIC RETELLING OF A TRUE-LIFE TALE OF HORROR … an account which could only have been written by a skilled novelist who also happens to be a cop.”
—Book-of-the-Month Club News
“WAMBAUGH’S GREAT AND ENVIABLE ACCOMPLISHMENT IS THAT HE MADE HIS POLICE COME ALIVE AS HUMAN BEINGS.”
—Los Angeles Times
BOOKS BY JOSEPH WAMBAUGH
FICTION
The New Centurions
The Blue Knight
The Choirboys
The Black Marble
The Glitter Dome
The Delta Star
The Secrets of Harry Bright
The Golden Orange
Fugitive Nights
Finnegan’s Week
Floaters
NONFICTION
The Onion Field
Lines and Shadows
Echoes in the Darkness
The Blooding
THE ONION FIELD
A Delta Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Delacorte Press hardcover edition published 1973
Dell mass market edition published August 1974
Delta trade paperback edition / September 2007
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
All rights reserved
Copyright © 1973 by Joseph Wambaugh
Introduction copyright © 2007 by James Ellroy
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 73007540
Delta is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-307-48912-8
www.bantamdell.com
v3.1_r1
FOR THE CHILDREN:
Laura, Kurt, and Christine Hettinger
Valerie and Lori Campbell
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Note to the Reader
Epigraph
The Onion Field: Introduction by James Ellroy
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Afterword
About the Author
Note to the Reader
There is no way to thank properly the sixty persons whose intimate revelations to me permitted the telling of this true story, nor would the book have been possible without the help of scores of others who provided the thousands of pages of evidence and the mountain of clues needed to understand fully the most maddening case of any detective’s life.
The re-creation of events was at all times done as accurately as possible. The strange relationship of Gregory Powell and Jimmy Smith could be re-created in great detail, thanks in part to a frank, unpublished autobiography written by Jimmy Smith during the trials.
The courtroom dialogue was not re-created. It was taken verbatim from official court transcript.
The names of two minor characters have been changed by request: the priest, Father Charles, and the juror, Mrs. Bobbick.
After having lived so long with this story, the investigator must implore the reader to respect the privacy of those men and women who let the truths be revealed, who let their story be told.
JOSEPH WAMBAUGH
Los Angeles, California
The wild insistent pipes and the
marching feet defiantly answer
that there is no more death.
A piper’s incantation
THE ONION FIELD
INTRODUCTION BY JAMES ELLROY
Writers’ debts accrue over time. You determine the origins of your craft. You look back. You chart books read, style and theme assimilated, the big hurts that made you vow payback on paper. Crime writers get wistful over gas-chamber ghouls and sex psychopaths. Middle age makes you mark moments. You rematriculate your criminal education.
Mine was more street than most and puerile in the long run. It was snafu as lifestyle. It was idiot kicks. It was books read, books read, books read.
They transmogrified my childhood grief. They supplied narrative transfusion. They gave me my world heightened and eroticized. Writers came and went. A few turned escapism into near-formal study. One man served as moral rebuke and all-time teacher. This is for him.
It was fall ’73. I was 25. I ran circumspectly wild in L.A. I vibed grotesque. I ran six three and one forty. My upper-body weight was all pustule. My diet was shoplifted luncheon meat, dine-and-dash restaurant food, Thunderbird wine, and dope. I slept in a Goodwill box behind a Mayfair Market. The fit was tight. Discarded clothes provided warmth and minor comfort. I stayed west of skid row and Mass-Street-bum encampments. I carried a razor and shaved with dry soap in gas station men’s rooms. I took garden-hose spritzes and minimized visible dirt and stink. I sold my blood plasma for five scoots a go. I roamed L.A. I did sporadic pops of county jail time.
I was a minor misanthrope on a mission. My mission was READ. I read in public libraries and my box. I read crime books exclusively. My crime-study mandate was 15 years tenured. My mother was murdered in June ’58. It remained an unsolved sex-snuff. I was ten years old then. My mother’s death did not inflict standard childhood trauma. I hated and lusted for the woman. The killing instilled my mental curriculum and beckoned me to full-time obsession. My field of study was CRIME.
Fall ’73. Warm days undercut by smog. Cramped nights as a Goodwill-box dweller.
Joseph Wambaugh had a new book out. The title was The Onion Field. It was Wambaugh’s first shot at nonfiction. Two punks kidnap two LAPD men. It goes way bad from there. I’d read a prepub magazine excerpt. I was half bombed at the Hollywood library. The excerpt was brief. It slammed me and made me want more. Pub date approached. Two blood-bank jolts would glom me the cover price, with booze cash to spare. I sold my plasma. I got the coin. I blew said coin on T-bird, cigarettes, and kraut dogs. I raged to read that book. Inimical and more pressing urges interdicted it. Frustration reigned. Ambivalence grabbed me. My chemical/survival compulsions warred with my higher calling of reading. I got hammered and hitched up to Hollywood. I hit the Pickwick Bookstore. I wore my shirttail out and utilized my skinny physiognomy. I jammed a copy of The Onion Field down my pants and beat feet.
Fate interceded—in the form of LAPD.
I got 80-odd pages in. Park-bench reads by daylight, box reads by night. I met the two shanghaied cops and liked them. Ian Campbell—doomed to die young. A Scots-American bagpiper. Brainy, a bit mournful. Dislocated in ’58 L.A. Become a policeman?—sure. Stand tall, touch the wild side, and rake in five yards a month. Karl Hettinger—Campbell’s partner. A dry wit, surface cynicism, stretched nerves underneath. Gregory Powell and Jimmy Smith—a salt-and-pepper team. They’re parolees. White m
an Powell’s the alpha dog. He’s a skinny-ass, long-necked stone pervert. Black man Smith’s a hype. He’s playing lapdog and porking Powell’s bitch on the side. They’re out heisting liquor stores. Campbell and Hettinger are working felony-car nights. The four-man collision occurs. Character is fate. It goes shit-your-pants, all-the-way bad.
Knock, knock—nightstick raps on my Goodwill-box door.
It’s Officer Dukeshearer and Officer McCabe—Wilshire Division, LAPD. They’ve popped me before. It’s a plain-drunk roust this time. Someone saw me hop in my box and buzzed the fuzz. Dukeshearer and McCabe treat me with the expansive courtesy that cops reserve for the pathetic. They note my copy of The Onion Field and praise my reading taste. I go to Wilshire station. Copy #1 of The Onion Field disappears.
I got arraigned the next morning. I pled guilty. The judge gave me time served. This did not mean instant courtroom kick-out. It meant county jail intake and release from there.
The intake took 16 hours. Cavity searches, chest X rays, blood tests, delousing. Intensive exposure to various strains of indigenous L.A. lowlife—all possessed of greater machismo and street panache than me. A Mexican drag queen named Peaches squeezed my knee. I popped the fucking puto in the chops. Peaches went down, got up, and kicked my ass. Two deputies quelled the fracas. It amused them. Some inmates applauded Peaches. A few hooted at me.
I wanted to be back in my box. I wanted to be back on Crime Time. I wanted to get down with Ian and Karl and the killers.
I processed in and out of jail within 20 hours. Crime Time became Wambaugh Time. I stole a pint of vodka, got bombed, and walked to Hollywood. I hit the Pickwick Bookstore and stole copy #2 of The Onion Field. I read some park-bench pages and hit my box at twilight. I was now 150-odd pages in.
Knock, knock—nightstick raps on my Goodwill-box door.
It’s Officer Dukeshearer and Officer McCabe—Wilshire Division, LAPD. Kid, you hopped in that box. Someone saw you. Jesus, you’re reading that Wambaugh book again.
It’s the same process. The same plain-drunk roust. The same judge. The same time served. The same intake and outtake, 20-plus hours strong.
Vexing. Exhausting. Wholly fucked-up. Lunacy defined: doing the same stupid shit over and over but expecting different results.
I wanted to get back to that book. I was strung out on Wambaugh Time and juiced with Wambaugh-inflicted remorse.
Wambaugh Time. Wambaugh-inflicted remorse. Learn from it? Change your life?—no, not just yet.
I got out of jail. I stole a pint of vodka, got bombed, and walked to Hollywood. I hit the Pickwick Bookstore and stole copy #3 of The Onion Field. I read some park-bench pages and curled up behind a bush near my box. I was now 250-odd pages in.
Poke, poke—nightstick jabs on my legs.
It’s two new cops—Wilshire Division, LAPD. It’s the near-same process again.
I lose copy #3. I go to Wilshire station. I go to court and see the same judge. He’s tired of my theatrics. My raggedy ass offends him. He offers me a choice: six months in the county jail or three months at the Salvation Army Harbor Light Mission. I vibe the options. I opt for hymns on skid row.
The program was simple and rigidly enforced. Take the drug Antabuse. It allegedly deters the consumption of alcohol. You get righteously ill if you imbibe. Share a room with another drunk. Attend church services, feed bums, and pass out Jesus tracts all over skid row.
I did it. I took Antabuse, fought booze-deprivation shakes, and stayed dry. My sleep went sideways. I kept brain-screening conclusions to The Onion Field text. I shared a room with a rummy ex-priest. He’d quit the church to roam, drink, and chase poontang. He was a big reader. He disdained my crime-books-only curriculum. He didn’t know Joseph Wambaugh from Jesus or Rin Tin Tin. I tried to tell him what Wambaugh meant. My thoughts spilled out, inchoate. I didn’t really know myself.
My blood bank was three blocks from the mission. Two plasma sales earned me book money. I walked to a downtown bookstore. I bought copy #4 of The Onion Field and read it through. Wambaugh’s outrage. Wambaugh’s terrible compassion. Wambaugh’s clearly defined and softly muted message of hope at the end.
I reread the book. I took in Wambaugh’s knowledge. It dovetailed with my knowledge and gave me a view of the flip side of the room. I couldn’t quite dodge its moral power. I routinely violated the rule of social order that Wambaugh eloquently expressed. Joseph Wambaugh would dismiss me on moral grounds, and rightfully so.
The book moved me and scared me and rebuked me for the heedlessness of my life. The book took me tenuously out of myself and made me view people at a hush. It changed my life.
The gardener was a thief. That’s the thing that bothered him most. The trials didn’t bother him so much anymore. It was strange how much he used to fear the trials, but not now. He just went to court and testified when he was told, then went back to his gardening.
For a while they feared the trials would continue clear into the new decade. But now they assured him it was almost over, and 1970 was still eight weeks away.
Sometimes the gardener wore a hat, the battered wide-brimmed straw he was wearing today. Mostly he wore it to keep the sweat out of his eyes, not to protect himself from the sun. The gardener loved the sun. He hated dark places, hated the night in fact, and sometimes sat up until dawn. No matter how tired he was and how much work he had to do the next day he was always glad to see the daylight come.
“Would you like some iced tea?” The old woman had come out on the porch without the gardener seeing her.
“No ma’am, I just have to trim back this juniper,” he answered, squatting in the grass, his shears poised.
“That’s a blue pfitzer.”
“Yes, I know. It’s one of the tallest junipers. It’s very pretty,” said the gardener. He was trying to remember what he’d learned about the blue-green juniper while landscaping with his friend. His friend knew all the botanical names. For the last year, though, he’d been working alone. He preferred to be alone these days.
“You know about junipers? How nice,” said the old woman.
“I used to know the names better,” said the gardener, removing the straw hat and raising his sweat-stained dusty face to the November sun. Yes, I used to remember, he thought. But so many things were slipping away. It was getting so hard to remember.
Then the gardener glanced at a “no parking” sign on the street. He stared at the red arrow on the sign and something flashed in his mind, an indefinable glimmer. He began getting afraid for no reason at all, and a throbbing pain started at the base of his skull. He crossed the small yard to the mower because he didn’t want to talk to the lonely old woman today. The fear was weakening him and the pain was ferocious. He wanted to work it off.
The gardener yanked the rope and the motor caught and he was behind the mower, the engine roaring in his ears. The pain was spreading like fingers of blood, spreading from the tiny spot at the base of his skull. He knew it would flood over his head until his entire skull felt crushed by a merciless bloody hand. Sometimes then it would go away.
Even the pain would not stop the gardener from thinking about his crimes. As he walked behind the mower, the pain pulsing clear through his eyes, the gardener thought of how the first time had been.
He had been walking through the store as part of a job, when he saw something he needed: masonry drills. He needed them for some cement work he was doing on his duplex. He had picked up the drills and put them in his pocket. And that was that. He couldn’t believe it until it was done. But his heart began pounding then, more from excitement than fear. Or was it excitement? It was so hard these days to recall all the emotions clearly. The crimes he could remember as if they just happened. The feelings were what eluded him.
All thieves start small, the gardener thought gravely, as the shower of grass in his face helped him forget the pitiless driving pain. He used to think about the night in the onion field all the time—before he became a thief. But now the crimes he had co
mmitted overshadowed all else, even the four men and the death in the onion field.
ONE
The night in the onion field was a Saturday night. Saturday meant impossible traffic in Hollywood so felony car officers did a good deal of their best work on side streets off Hollywood and Sunset boulevards. On those side streets, revelers’ cars were clouted or stolen. F-cars also cruised the more remote commercial areas, away from intersections where traffic snarled, and the streets undulated with out-of-towners, roaming groups of juveniles, fruit hustlers, desperate homosexuals, con men, sailors, marines.
Nothing the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce said could camouflage the very obvious dangers to tourists on those teeming streets. Most of the famous clubs had closed, the others were closing, and Hollywood was being left to the street people. The “swells” of the forties and early fifties had all but abandoned downtown Hollywood and were gradually surrendering the entire Sunset Strip, at least at night.
In spite of it all, Hollywood Division was a good place for police work. It was busy and exciting in the way that is unique to police experience—the unpredictable lurked. Ian Campbell believed that what most policemen shared was an abhorrence of the predictable, a distaste for the foreseeable experiences of working life. It wasn’t what the misinformed often wrote, that they were danger lovers. Race drivers were danger lovers. That’s why, after Ian and his old friend Wayne Ferber had crashed a sports car several years before, he had given up racing, though he would never give up police work.
He felt that the job was not particularly hazardous physically but was incredibly hazardous emotionally and too often led to divorce, alcoholism, and suicide. No, policemen were not danger lovers, they were seekers of the awesome, the incredible, even the unspeakable in human experience. Never mind whether they could interpret, never mind if it was potentially hazardous to the soul. To be there was the thing.
Karl Hettinger was newly assigned to felony cars and Ian was breaking him in. The partnership had jelled almost at once.