He had a point.
Motels were an outgrowth of the country’s enthusiasm for auto camps, whose popularity peaked in the years immediately following World War I. The mass production of automobiles provided thousands, and ultimately millions, of Americans with an unprecedented opportunity to travel for long distances within a relatively short time whenever and to wherever it suited them.
Privately owned auto camps with individual showers and bathrooms eventually evolved into tourist cabins or cottages—usually mom-and-pop operations built around a simple theme. Log cabins and wigwams were among the popular motifs of the era. The popularity of motor courts soared when the federal government began construction of Route 66, the first concrete-paved, year-round highway linking the East and West Coasts. The last section of the highway was finally completed, in Arizona, in 1937. Not surprisingly, Route 66 eventually became affectionately known as the “Mother Road”—the primary if somewhat meandering national thoroughfare not only for tourists and traveling businessmen, but also for Army personnel and equipment being transferred to and from military bases.
That was the business climate in 1940 when Hoover called for an investigation of motels—the word concocted in 1925 by Californian Arthur Heineman, who created it by combining “motor court” and “hotel”—which had already acquired a reputation for seediness and immorality. A man who probably agreed with the FBI director’s assessment of the dark purposes fueling the popularity of motels was a St. Louis entrepreneur named John Carr. But whereas Hoover saw motels as potential cesspools of crime and immorality, Carr saw opportunity.
In 1942, two years after Hoover’s article appeared in American Magazine, Carr opened a motel just outside the city limits of St. Louis that was destined to play a major role in the Greenlease case, and ultimately to become notorious in subsequent decades chiefly for its noir association with this horrific crime.
Carr had been the successful operator of a brothel in St. Louis, and later married the woman who had served as the establishment’s madam. His home in the 3700 block of Washington Boulevard was well known as a rendezvous for professional bondsmen, some policemen, and what the St. Louis Post-Dispatch described as “police characters.” Wanting to expand his business, he purchased 8.73 acres of land in the municipality of Marlborough, in south St. Louis County. St. Louis was a logical stopover point for travelers from points east of Chicago, and Carr’s motel would give them an ideal place to resume their westward journey after an overnight stay. Marlborough was composed almost entirely of tourist courts and roadside establishments. Carr—who had a long police record—served as its treasurer, and the municipality’s police department was notoriously corrupt.
But Carr also intended to exploit the reputation of motels for amoral assignations—exactly what Hoover was worried about—by creating a motel masterpiece, a roadside Shangri-la that would have no peer on Route 66. Hall and Heady may have harbored a similar vision when they talked of using some of the ransom money to operate their own motel in La Jolla.
Carr chose Adolph L. Struebig, a local architect, to design the motel. The original court, built in the Streamline Moderne style, a variant of Art Deco, consisted of ten single-story, two-unit buildings, with a large manager’s building closer to Route 66, which was also known locally as Watson Road. The flat-roofed, rounded-corner cabins, ultra-sleek for their time, were separated by garages that allowed visitors to seclude themselves with no telltale automobiles parked outside to announce their presence. Most of the windows consisted of glass blocks, further ensuring privacy. Each room also had its own private bathroom—the Moderne architectural motif referred to the fact that all rooms contained a private toilet, still an unusual feature at the time—and beds were equipped with Beautyrest mattresses. Carr christened the motel the Coral Court because the ceramic used as a veneer on the concrete walls was the color of golden honey, or coral, with dark brown accents. A few years after World War II, he built twenty-three new buildings totaling forty-six rooms, with the final tally reaching seventy-seven.
Business was good from the start, with rooms available both for overnight accommodations and for four-hour rest periods. Highway rest areas were still more than a decade off, but the discount rate available to those who needed a room for only four hours quickly made the Coral Court locally infamous. Rumors that Carr had formerly operated a brothel in the city’s midtown area, that he now ran a prostitution ring out of the motel, that he had mob connections, and that the employees had a reputation for being tightlipped, only added to the Coral Court’s no-questions-asked appeal. Such was its reputation on the evening of Monday, October 5, when Hager chose it as the logical place to deposit his most recent customer and call girl Sandra O’Day.
A rather plump, big-boned woman of medium height with long blond hair, twenty-two-year-old Sandra O’Day and her seven-year-old daughter lived with her aunt, Polly Lane, on St. Louis’s North Side. Hager and O’Day, known as Sandy, had known each other for only a few months when Hall entered their lives. After they picked up O’Day at her house at 2023 North 9th Street, the three of them stopped at a tavern called McNamee’s Bar at 2500 St. Louis Avenue for a couple of rounds each and to get acquainted. It was now mid-afternoon, around four. Hall excused himself to use the men’s room. Hager, noticing a bulge in his coat, wondered if his fare was a policeman carrying a gun who was preparing to set a trap, and not a good-time Charley.
When he returned, Hall asked the bartender for a pencil, a piece of paper, and an envelope. He went to another table, wrote a note, put it into the envelope, sealed it, and addressed it to Esther Grant, Heady’s pseudonym. After tucking the envelope into a pocket, he rejoined Hager and O’Day.
“Steve, I’m doing this for you only as a favor,” Hager said. “But are you a cop?”
Hall laughed and said, “John, if you knew the truth, you’d really get a kick out of it.”
Hall paid for the drinks with a $20 bill, and then shoved the $18 worth of change across the table to Hager, saying, “You take this.”
“What a fare I’ve got here,” Hager thought to himself, as they left the tavern.
Hall asked Hager to buy him some shaving gear, and Hager obliged by pulling up at the Sturgis Drug Store at 1701 South Grand Avenue. When Hall saw a Laclede Cab parked nearby, he told Hager to give the driver the note he had just written to Heady, and tell him to deliver it to Esther Grant at the address on the envelope—4504 Arsenal Street. Hager complied.
After buying shaving materials for Hall, Hager found a motorcycle policeman stopped beside his cab, which had been parked illegally. The policeman pointed to a no parking sign and told the cabbie, “You guys are always squawking about not being able to park around town.” As Hall squirmed in the back seat, the policeman lectured Hager on parking rules. When he finished, Hager drove to the Coral Court motel on Route 66, just outside the city limits, stopping along the way to pick up a fifth of David Nicholson 1843 Bonded Whiskey and four packs of Pall Mall cigarettes at the coincidentally named Hall Package Liquor at 5217 Chippewa Street. Once on their way again, Hall gave Hager five $20 bills and said, “Here, some money on account.”
“Gee, what’s this?” a by now thoroughly puzzled Hager thought. “I’m going to stick with this guy.”
En route, O’Day asked Hall what was in his luggage. He replied that he was a pharmaceutical salesman, and that the luggage contained serum samples, adding curiously, “Animal or human, what’s the difference?”
The cab reached the Coral Court between 4:30 and 5:00 P.M., and Hager checked to see if there were any vacancies. He soon returned, and told Hall that a room was available. Hall registered, giving his and O’Day’s names as Mr. and Mrs. Robert White of Chicago. Pleased to learn that the rate was only $5.50 per day, he paid for three days in advance. During his trips to California, motel rates had been triple that amount in some places. Hager lugged both suitcases up to cabin 49-A, located on the top floor of a two-story building.
Once inside, Hall hung
his coat in a closet, and he and Hager had a drink or two from the whiskey bottle. Feeling comfortable with his two companions, Hall began to relax somewhat, and told them, “Money doesn’t mean anything. I trust you two kids. Sometimes I go on a bender for three or four days. I like to have a good time and maybe spend two or three thousand dollars.”
Going over to his coat, he took a fistful of $20s from a pocket and sat down on the bed, trying to count the money. Hager’s eyes bulged. When O’Day interrupted Hall, he lost count, much to his annoyance. He then handed the money to the cabdriver and asked him to count it, explaining that he was half-drunk. Hager reported that the sum came to $2,480. Hall gave Hager another $20, to make it an even $2,500, saying, “John, I want you to keep this for me.”
Realizing that his shirt was dirty and that he had no other clothing, Hall asked Hager to buy him a white silk shirt, some underwear, and socks, and to bring them to his room around ten that night. Then, he suggested, the three of them could go nightclubbing. Knowing that she was not suitably dressed for such an evening out, O’Day asked Hager to get a dress and other apparel from her aunt Polly.
Hall opened the closet, retrieved his .38 caliber revolver, and showed it to his two guests, remarking, “Ain’t this a beaut?”
O’Day agreed that the gun looked “cute,” but took it from him and removed the shells. A gun, she sarcastically explained, was just what she needed. Then she handed it back. Her remarks angered Hall, who told her that he had more cartridges in his pocket; but when he pulled out a handful to display as proof, Hager and O’Day both thought they were .25 caliber, too small for Hall’s revolver. Most likely, they were for Heady’s gun. Hall explained that he kept the pistol for protection because he often carried around a considerable sum of money.
Hager was dispatched to buy some beer, and soon returned with three bottles of Budweiser and two cigars that he purchased at a nearby bar, Connor’s Pink House. Knowing that Hall and O’Day planned on going out that evening, and that his own services might be needed, Hager asked the manager for a business card to give to Hall. The cabbie thought he could simply wait at the bar until his fare—Steve Strand—called him.
Hager later went out to buy sandwiches for all of them. While the cabdriver was gone, Hall gave O’Day $200. The money was still lying on the bed when Hager returned with some egg sandwiches, and O’Day handed him the money, asking that he give it to her aunt Polly. Hager’s arrangement with O’Day was that he took a 40 percent cut of her earnings. Around six o’clock, he left.
O’Day wanted to go to bed immediately, but Hall, who had not slept for at least forty-eight hours, and not eaten in three or four days, knew that he could not perform sexually. Nor did he particularly want to, since he had hired O’Day for another purpose. “I paid your money,” he told her. “I’ve got something I want you to do, so relax.” But O’Day grew restless and annoyed at this rebuff, and continued to grouse while watching television. Hall went on drinking until finally, giving in to her complaints, he said, “Well, go on in and get cleaned up.” Moments later, he confessed, “I haven’t been to bed for five days. The last thing I want is sex.”
Then he explained, “I got you here for one reason, and I will tell you what that is later.”
O’Day, though, went in to take a bath, later reemerged, and continued to complain, saying, “What kind of deal is this?”
She sensed that she had found an easy, generous mark, and wanted to capitalize on her opportunity in the only way she knew—through sex.
“Don’t worry,” Hall said, trying to soothe her once more, “you got your money.”
Trying another tack, O’Day mentioned that she had a daughter. Also, she told Hall, she owned a farm, and asked him for money to buy a bull because she wanted to raise prize show cattle.
“Why would anyone want to spend money for a bull?” Hall thought. “Whiskey, yes, but not a bull.”
“Is that all you want money for?” he asked.
“I want to buy a big Guernsey bull,” she said. “If you would buy me a bull, I would be the happiest woman on earth.”
If O’Day would fly to Los Angeles and mail a letter for him, Hall told her, he would buy her the biggest bull in the state of Missouri. In fact, he said, the reason that he asked Hager to get a woman for him was not to have sex, but to mail a letter for him from that city.
At no time, during this period, did Hall fall asleep, and the footlocker and the suitcase remained plainly in view in the room. He did send O’Day out for ice at one point, and it was possible that she made one or more telephone calls.
For his part, Hager was feeling flush, and it appeared that his customer would continue to be generous with him. That day was also his father’s birthday, so he arranged to meet his wife—from whom he was separated—in the suburb of Wellston, where at a J.C. Penney’s store he bought a shirt, some underwear, and socks for the man he knew as Steve, and a box of cigars for his father. He also explained to his wife that he had a customer who had given him $2,500 for safekeeping, plus $100 for himself, and that his chances looked good that he might make another $400 or $500. Perhaps finally, he hinted, they might even be able to have a decent life for themselves. After leaving his wife in Wellston, he dropped off the cigars for his father, drove to O’Day’s house to pick up the clothes she had asked for, and gave her aunt Polly $120.
At 10:30 P.M., Hager reappeared. Hall, clad only in shorts, greeted him at the door and seemed very pleased to see him. They all agreed to have supper together, and to skip going to a nightclub. O’Day wanted to eat at Ruggieri’s, a popular restaurant in St. Louis’s Italian neighborhood known as The Hill. Hall refused. While O’Day was putting on her new set of clothes, Hall tried to hand the cabdriver his gun, asking him to keep it for safekeeping. Hager, knowing that it would be disastrous for an ex-convict like himself to be caught with a gun, declined. Instead, he hid the gun in one of O’Day’s slippers. All three then went to the Harbor Inn, a small roadside establishment located at 8025 Watson Road, about a mile away. Hall and O’Day ordered steaks, and Hager asked for fried chicken. Hall, worried about the footlocker and suitcase filled with cash that he had left behind at the motel, ate only a few bites. Hager paid the bill.
When all three returned to the Coral Court, Hall, recognizing a kindred spirit in his fellow ex-convict, said to Hager, “You’re the right kind of guy.” But he seemed unusually fidgety, and asked the cabbie if he could buy him some morphine. Hall also realized that he needed to explain two things—why he had no car and no luggage besides his so-called sample cases; and why he needed morphine. The story he came up with was that his car had been stolen. Also, he was a drug addict, and the stolen luggage contained his drug paraphernalia. Hager replied that he did not know of any place where he could obtain the drug, but that he would try to find some. Hall said that he could easily afford it, and specified that Hager should also get a number 25 or 26 needle for a syringe. He also asked Hager to rent a car in his own name for him, and also to buy a leather suitcase and a briefcase. Hager left sometime around midnight. Hall asked him to return the next day by 10 A.M.
Hall and O’Day had a few more drinks. Finally, they went to sleep. Hall stuffed the keys to his suitcases inside his pillow, and aligned the trunk with the leg of the night table so that he would know if they were moved. He knew there was a risk that O’Day might attempt to roll him.
Hager, according to his own account, drove to Polly Lane’s, arriving there around 12:30 A.M. He and Lane were lovers. After an hour, he left, and went to Carrara’s Bar at 417 Chestnut Street downtown. Hall had also asked him to procure some bennies. Mary Carrara, the proprietor, got three from Edward Jones, the bellhop of the MacArthur Hotel, which adjoined the bar, and gave them to Hager. Hager then drove to the Lincoln Hotel at 2226 Olive Street and went to bed.
4.
The Third Man
The next morning, Hall and O’Day both awoke around eight. He noticed immediately that the footlocker and the suitcase were
in the same spot where he had left them. While waiting for Hager to arrive, they each had a few shots of whiskey. As they were moving about, O’Day’s elbow bumped against Hall’s pillow, and the keys fell out of the pillowcase. When she asked what they were, he merely replied that they were keys, and put them into his pocket. He then asked her to find someone who could bring them something to eat. Strolling out to the balcony of their second-floor room, she spotted a maid and asked her if she could bring them some breakfast. The maid went to her manager to get permission to buy breakfast for the occupants of cabin 49-A, and he bluntly refused.
Hager awoke about the same time as Hall and O’Day, gassed up his cab, and handed his cash receipts from the previous night to Bob James, the dispatcher, telling him about the “angel” he had picked up the previous night. “Angel” was a term used by cabbies, pimps, hookers, and others to indicate a person who spent money lavishly. Hager also obtained three more bennies from a Black & White Cab driver who happened to be at the lot. After parking his cab, he sought out an Ace mechanic named Chris, giving him $26 for a repair. He then hired a cab to take him to a U-Rent-It agency, where he discovered that no car rental was available that morning. Walking to the Heater Rent-a-Car Company at 365 Olive Street, he rented a two-door green 1952 Plymouth for one day, giving Joseph Costello as a reference. Mildred Binder, the clerk, phoned Costello, who verified the reference. Hager drove to the Ber-Neu Leather Company, a luggage shop at 1810 Washington Street, where he purchased a matching tan leather two-suit bag and a leather briefcase, stating that Costello had directed him to the store. The bill came to $60. He then stopped for breakfast at a restaurant on the same block.
Zero at the Bone: The Playboy, the Prostitute, and the Murder of Bobby Greenlease Page 8
