“This is a repeat performance for you,” Heady quipped, glancing at Hall. While they were being fingerprinted, she cheerfully took up the refrain again, saying, “This is just like a homecoming.” Earlier that year, on a Friday in April, Hall had been released after serving fifteen months of a five-year sentence for robbing taxi drivers in Kansas City.
As she crossed the prison yard en route to death row, however, Heady’s mood took a more serious turn.
“Some people looked at me so horrible,” she said to Bertha Carroll, superintendent of the women’s division of the prison, who was escorting her. Heady was shivering from the cold, and Carroll put a coat over the prisoner’s shoulders. Heady also told Carroll that the death sentence was exactly what she had hoped for, adding, “I don’t think I could have stood a life term.”
Prison officials were taking extra security measures, refusing to permit Heady any further use of a manicure set that her aunt Nellie Baker had also given her. But Hall was to be allowed to shave himself each morning with a safety razor as a guard looked on. Word on the prison grapevine was that the kidnappers could expect no sympathy from their fellow prisoners. “Hall was like a sucker who walks in on a fixed gambling game,” one prisoner was reported as saying, “and hopes to win the pot. He didn’t have a chance. He’s just a punk.”
The three daily meals for Hall and Heady were to be obtained from the officers’ mess, rather than from the convict-manned kitchen, to ensure that neither was poisoned. Other precautions were also taken. Prisoners were known to scorn kidnappers and others who abused or murdered children, and such inmates were often the object of retribution. Many of the prisoners in the Missouri penitentiary also harbored a particular resentment against Hall because they felt that his early release from prison the previous April, followed so quickly by his crime, jeopardized their own chances for parole. Around-the-clock guards were posted outside both Hall’s and Heady’s cells to prevent a suicide attempt.
“I can’t think of anything more embarrassing,” said Director of Corrections Whitecotton, “than not having them here on December 18.”
From his cell, number 25, Hall could see the gas chamber, a small building across the prison yard. Heady’s cell, number 18, looked out upon a solitary sycamore tree. A fine steel mesh was placed over the bars of both Hall’s and Heady’s cells to prevent anything from being passed into or out of either one.
In anticipation of Heady’s arrival, an enclosed shower was installed in death row to allow her some privacy while bathing. Male prisoners bathed in a communal shower, though Hall would bathe alone. Each cell contained a toilet and small washbowl extending from the wall, and a flat, metal-spring cot. The large overhead lights were kept on day and night.
Several cells just below death row were known as “The Hole.” Recalcitrant convicts were kept there in solitary confinement, with a board for a bed, and bread and water for rations.
Until Hall and Heady arrived at the Missouri State Penitentiary, death row held only one occupant—a twenty-one-year-old ex-convict named Samuel Norbert Reese, who was awaiting the outcome of his appeal of a death sentence for the murder of a St. Louis hotel clerk. He had previously killed a liquor store clerk after being released from a reformatory.
Federal authorities imposed a blackout on news about Hall’s and Heady’s stay on death row. Marshal Tatman announced that only three reporters—one representative each from the Associated Press, the United Press, and the International News Service—would be permitted to witness the execution. Before they could transmit their stories, they would have to debrief colleagues who worked for various accredited newspapers and magazines, as well as for radio and television stations. Also, none of the reporters would be allowed to use a prison telephone to inform the public of details of the kidnappers’ death, and photographs of the execution would be prohibited.
Hall and Heady were served their first prison dinner around 7 P.M. on Friday, November 20. Asked if she was ready for supper, Heady replied, “I’d love it.” The meal consisted of beef stew, navy beans, spinach, French fries, bread and butter, and black coffee. There was no dessert. Although she ate heartily, Hall sat down on his cot and rested for a time before eating.
On November 24, St. Louis police chief Jeremiah O’Connell received permission from federal authorities to question Hall and Heady one last time about the missing $303,720. The police wanted to ask him about several statements he made in his confession to the FBI that were later introduced at his trial. Those statements conflicted substantially with accounts by Shoulders regarding the circumstances surrounding Hall’s arrest on October 6. Now that the St. Louis police had complete copies of Hall’s confession, in which he claimed that neither of his suitcases had been taken to the Newstead station at the time of his arrest, O’Connell wanted to ask Hall about his references to a mysterious man he had seen in the corridor at the time of his arrest, and to a blond woman he had seen sitting in a car parked outside the hotel at the time of his arrest. The FBI grudgingly granted its permission to O’Connell on condition that he alone interrogate Hall, since only he had made the request.
That evening, I. A. Long, president of the Board of Police Commissioners, telephoned James V. Bennett, director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and obtained permission for St. Louis circuit attorney Edward L. Dowd to join O’Connell in the interrogation, with two stenographers also sitting in, since it was likely that there would be other prosecutions related to the Greenlease case. An FBI agent arranged to meet O’Connell and Dowd in Jefferson City, and accompany them to the penitentiary.
Meanwhile, also on November 24, the FBI again questioned Dolan; and St. Louis chief of detectives James E. Chapman, Inspector George Parker, and O’Connell revisited the Town House. The Board of Police Commissioners announced that a departmental inquiry would formally question Shoulders, Dolan, and Hager about the missing ransom.
That same day, Roy Dietrich, Hall’s lawyer, visited his client for the first time since his sentencing. Their meeting lasted three hours, and afterward the lawyer told reporters, “He seems ready to go. Hall’s attitude is one of resignation more than courage.” Dietrich, who did not see Heady during his visit, also complained that Marshal Tatman had “whisked Hall out of jail without my knowing.” Dietrich had gone to the Jackson County jail at 3 P.M. on the previous Friday to see Hall, only to discover that he and Heady had been taken to Jefferson City an hour earlier.
“Hall still doesn’t realize what he did,” Dietrich said, noting that Hall showed no indication that he wanted to appeal. “He tells me it was all a nightmare.”
Explaining the purpose of his visit, Dietrich said, “My duties as a lawyer have ended; my duties as a man haven’t. I told Hall that, as the clock ticks off his last twenty-four days, to realize no man actually knows how much time he has ahead of him.”
Harold Hull, Heady’s lawyer, and her aunt Nellie Baker had managed to visit with the condemned woman by arriving at the Jackson County jail a few hours prior to her transfer. The day marked the deadline for a motion for a new trial, and Heady reiterated her decision not to appeal.
Missouri governor Phil M. Donnelly said he continued to receive hundreds of requests for tickets to the execution of Hall and Heady, though he himself did not plan to attend. Arrangements for witnesses were in the hands of Marshal Tatman and the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, in an editorial published November 25 titled “Where Did It Go?,” articulated the sentiments of a great many people who still believed that Hall knew where the missing ransom was hidden. “Now that Hall is a condemned man,” it said, “living in the death cell, ticking off the days until his end in a gas chamber, there is little reason for him to tell anything other than the truth. . . . Five weeks later, the mystery is bigger than ever.”
Shoulders—one of four men who knew the answer to that mystery—had submitted his resignation from the police force to protest against the departmental inquiry, but that resignation still rem
ained “in abeyance.” He was still assigned to the Newstead district, but was not being paid.
The Kansas City federal grand jury inquiring into the whereabouts of the missing ransom twice called Costello to testify. On each occasion, he declined to account for his activities on the night of Tuesday, October 6—the night of Hall’s arrest—insisting that the testimony might tend to incriminate him. St. Louis police had determined that, on that night, Costello had not appeared at his usual haunts. At 3:15 in the morning of Wednesday, October 7, during Hall’s interrogation, a squad car had stopped Costello, who was driving a yellow Cadillac, on South Kingshighway—not far from his home—for routine questioning. Ace driver Joseph Travis was following him in a black Cadillac, also owned by Costello. Travis just happened to be the driver who claimed that he drove Hager to the Town House to rent an apartment for Hall. Hotel manager Jean Fletcher, of course, insisted that another man—not Hager—had rented the apartment.
Costello also refused to answer questions about his whereabouts on the night before Hall’s and Heady’s arrests.
Shoulders continued to insist publicly that he had a second tipster on Hall, in addition to Hager, while also stating that he would rather be killed or go to prison than reveal the informant’s name—who, of course, was Costello, a close friend for twenty-five years. On October 15, the two men even went to Lambert-St. Louis Field, the city’s airport, to pick up Shoulders’s son, Louis Jr., who was flying in from Colorado after receiving his military discharge. The younger Shoulders had driven an Ace cab before going into the service. Moreover, when Costello was in Faith Hospital some years earlier for an operation, Shoulders and June Marie George, his so-called landlady, had gone to visit him.
Meanwhile, ex-cabdriver Hager moved to California. His wife claimed that he left because he wanted to avoid further questioning by investigators about the missing ransom, despite his insistence that he had told them all that he knew. It was true that he wanted to avoid further questioning. But it was his boss, Joe Costello, who had ordered him to leave town, and no doubt provided the necessary funds to underwrite the move, since Hager could not even afford to move into a bigger apartment with his wife, much less resettle in California.
Costello had good reason to want Hager far away. The cabbie’s lies were the only thing protecting the mobster and the two policemen who had colluded with him in the theft of half of the ransom. Under relentless questioning, Costello feared, Hager might tell the truth. Since Hall was the only other person who knew at least some of the truth—and, improbably, was actually telling it—it seemed a safe bet that Costello’s stonewalling, Shoulders’s indignant insistence that he was being truthful, Dolan’s corroboration of Shoulders’s account out of fear for the well-being of his own family, and Hager’s sudden departure for California might keep the authorities at bay until Hall and Heady were safely executed.
The FBI also questioned a prisoner named Charles Rasmussen, who had spent a night in the Jackson County jail, where Hall was also incarcerated, while being transferred from New Orleans to Minneapolis. The authorities had planted Rasmussen in the prison to obtain information from Hall. Rasmussen, in an all-too-transparent attempt to get some kind of quid pro quo leniency, claimed that Hall told him two other prisoners, Thomas Bordelon and Victor Linkletter, both being held for robbing safes, had received some of the ransom money from a Detroit underworld syndicate. Hall wanted Rasmussen to warn the two men that the money was “hot.” Linkletter denied that he had ever received any of the money, or that he even knew Hall. However, a jail trusty reported that he saw Hall pass a note to Rasmussen on the night of November 1–2. Federal authorities later charged Rasmussen, a car theft suspect, with making false statements to the FBI.
While Rasmussen was attempting to manipulate the FBI in an effort to gain his freedom, several ordinary citizens tried to exploit the Greenlease family for financial gain. The FBI arrested four people on federal charges of plotting to defraud Robert C. Greenlease. Bennie Bruce Hatfield, an eighteen-year-old high school senior from Sedalia, Missouri, was charged with using the mail in an attempt to obtain $10,000 from the family in exchange for information about Bobby’s whereabouts. Gerald T. Lambkins, also eighteen years old, of St. Joseph made three calls to the Greenlease home, while negotiations with Hall were underway, and demanded $50,000 in ransom; he also was arrested. A Philadelphia waitress named Betty Robbins was accused of trying to extort $4,000 from the boy’s father through the mail. A few days later, another Philadelphia woman, Frances Keplin Fallaro, the mother of two children, was arrested and charged with writing an extortion letter demanding $25,000 from Bobby’s father. Both Robbins and Fallaro claimed to be holding Bobby.
In a last-ditch attempt to discover where the missing half of the ransom was, Chief O’Connell and Circuit Attorney Dowd, accompanied by FBI agent Don Walters, finally met with Hall and Heady on November 30, just weeks before the execution. Their statements were taken in the legal form of a dying declaration.
“Well, I made my statement and the FBI has it,” a somewhat exasperated Heady told O’Connell, “and it has been read at the trial and everything, and I don’t think I have anything more to say at all.”
But O’Connell and Dowd persisted in reviewing her and Hall’s movements from the time they arrived in St. Louis until they rented the apartment. Although Heady continued to cooperate, many of her answers were variations on the same theme—she could not remember, because most of the time she was drunk. She could not even recall having gone to the bus station with Hall when they first arrived in St. Louis. As for Rasmussen’s statement that Hall had told him about passing the bulk of his money to a Detroit syndicate, she said, “Don’t you know that everybody wants to get in the act now? That they want to tell they knew something to get their name in the paper, or get a little attention?”
Heady also noted that both she and Hall planned to visit large cities such as New York and make small purchases in retail stores with the $10 and $20 bills, getting unmarked money as change.
She insisted that neither she nor Hall had been permitted to talk to any other prisoner, and that her and Hall’s cells on death row were separated by three empty cells.
She also repeated once again that she and Hall knew that the ransom money would be marked. That was why they insisted on having it from all twelve Federal Reserve banks. They had never discussed selling it to a syndicate. Referring to Shoulders, she remarked, “He probably sold it to some syndicate for maybe half, or maybe a hundred thousand dollars. We heard that rumor. That’s probably why they didn’t find it on him, because he probably got rid of it to some syndicate.”
Informed by Dowd that the police were “still very anxious” about finding the missing ransom, she said, “And so are we. And I didn’t get a trip to Hawaii. That’s what burns me up. Maybe somebody else is running around on something else you got for them.”
So far as Heady was personally concerned, the biggest mystery surrounding the kidnapping and its aftermath was why Hall had behaved so unpredictably and even bizarrely after killing Bobby, when he had planned and rehearsed taking Bobby out of school down to the last detail.
“I can’t figure out why he did any of the things he did,” Heady admitted. “I can’t figure out why he had left me in that apartment. I can’t figure out why he starts running around in a taxicab. I wanted him to go right back home and stay there. He said no, ‘Go to St. Louis.’ I don’t know why. I asked him, and he said he didn’t know either; and the only thing I could figure out was he just got drunk and didn’t have any sense. I’ve never got an explanation for it and I have wondered and wondered, why he went out there and started tossing [the money] around.”
Heady was asked: “Will you give us any leads on that money, where it might be, even if it is just your opinion?”
She replied: “I think Shoulders has it.”
For his part, Hall insisted once again that the two suitcases were not taken to the police station at the time of his arrival. He no
ted that Shoulders made no effort to determine if he had a weapon on him, but almost immediately asked for the keys to his luggage. After getting the keys, said Hall, Shoulders opened the closet and examined the two suitcases.
“They pushed me into an overstuffed chair,” Hall said. “Imagine! A policeman with his experience letting me sit in a chair like that. It would have been one of the best places in the world to have a pistol stashed.”
Hall also noted that he had not been handcuffed, and that both Shoulders and Dolan walked out of the hotel room ahead of him, and let him close the door.
During the four-hour interview, O’Connell and Dowd showed Hall a number of photographs, including those of Costello and other members of the criminal underworld, in an effort to identify the mysterious third man Hall saw standing outside his apartment talking to Shoulders on the night of his arrest. Hall was unable, though, to identify the man.
Hall also said that he once found Sandra O’Day holding keys to his suitcases containing the ransom when the two of them were spending the night of October 5 at the Coral Court. He had hidden the keys in a pillowcase while napping, and when he questioned O’Day about how she found the keys, she explained that they had just “slipped out” and she was looking at them out of curiosity.
“I was afraid of being rolled,” Hall said, adding that he had tried to persuade Hager and O’Day that he did not really have much money on him. “They were beginning to ask a lot of questions about the money. Once I opened a suitcase at Coral Court, but I don’t think Sandra saw me.”
In a jocular moment, a complacent Hall even told O’Connell and Dowd, “The food is very good here. You’ve heard of these guys they have to carry to the gas chamber. Well, if I keep gaining weight, they’ll just roll me in.”
Zero at the Bone: The Playboy, the Prostitute, and the Murder of Bobby Greenlease Page 16
