Neither Hall nor Heady was allowed a radio in their cells, but on Sunday each was given a newspaper to read.
While Hall and Heady counted down the days leading to their execution, the search for the missing ransom continued to be front-page news in St. Louis and Kansas City, where the federal grand jury was scheduled to resume its investigation on December 14, a Monday. Subpoenas were issued to four St. Louis policemen who were in the Newstead Avenue station on the night of Hall’s arrest, but who reportedly did not see Shoulders bring in the kidnappers’ two suitcases containing the ransom.
During this period, Shoulders asked Chief O’Connell for police protection, saying that there had been threats on his life. When an inspector interviewed the suspended detective at his North Side home on 5382 Wabada Avenue, however, Shoulders declined to reveal how the threats were conveyed, and noted that he had not asked for around-the-clock protection. Rather, he simply wanted a detective to accompany him whenever he left home, because he sensed that he was being followed. O’Connell described Shoulders as being “non-cooperative” in his interview with Parker. Shoulders had only recently returned from his trip to Hawaii with his landlady, June Marie George.
A few days before the grand jury reconvened, the newspapers also reported that the “mysterious blonde woman” had surfaced and was being questioned by police in connection with the missing ransom. The police refused to identify the woman, for her protection, but revealed that she had been seated in an automobile parked near the door when Hall and the two policemen emerged from Hall’s Town House apartment. She had gone to the hotel on a visit. Hall had noticed her when he was being led out, and later told the police that she had short blond hair and was seated in a light gray or tan Oldsmobile. In her statement to the police, the woman corroborated Hall’s account that neither Shoulders nor Dolan was carrying a suitcase when the group left the apartment.
Walter H. McDowell, a clerk at the Newstead station, also told St. Louis assistant chief Joseph E. Casey that, after reflecting on the matter of the missing ransom for some days, he had remembered seeing a policeman carrying a suitcase walk through the front door of the station house approximately one hour and twenty minutes after Hall had been booked. Hall had been booked at 8:57 P.M. Earlier, McDowell had told federal agents that he had not been in a position to see whether Hall’s suitcases had been brought into the station.
Late in the afternoon of Thursday, December 10, St. Louis Board of Police president I. A. Long summoned reporters to his office and handed them a statement saying that he was suspending patrolman Elmer Dolan, pending a hearing, on charges of conduct unbecoming an officer and dereliction of duty. He also said that charges would soon be filed against Shoulders. Although neither charge against Dolan was of a criminal nature, the suspension made front-page news around the country the next day. Stunned by the suspension, Dolan said, “What can I say? I’m not accused of anything. If I were, I’d make a statement. I’m not hiding.”
Shoulders merely laughed when he learned of the board’s actions, saying, “Why, I’m no longer a policeman, and haven’t been since the twenty-fourth of October.” Reminded that his resignation had not been accepted, he retorted, “They stopped my pay, and that’s enough for me.”
But in the wake of the Board of Police charges, a desperate Shoulders changed his story. On December 12, testifying before the federal grand jury, he now asserted that he had kept Hall’s luggage in his car until after Hall was booked. Shoulders’s explanation was that he did not want “any gassy policemen” discussing the case at that time. He explained that he had left the two suitcases in the police car while Hall was being booked, at 8:57 P.M., and had not brought them in until ten minutes later. But several policemen and other witnesses who were at the station when Hall arrived contradicted Shoulders’s revised version. No witness had been found who saw either of the two policemen make a second trip into the station with the suitcases. Originally, Shoulders had also claimed that one suitcase was transported in the police car and the other in the automobile driven by cabdriver John Hager. Now he said that both suitcases were brought in the police car. Shoulders also challenged the Board of Police to make public the transcript of his statements at the departmental inquiry into the missing ransom.
Hager had followed behind the police car en route to the station, Shoulders said. But Dolan told his superiors that he did not see Hager following the automobile at any time.
Shoulders’s landlady, June Marie George, had also changed her unlisted number to another unlisted number two days after the kidnappers were arrested. The police wanted to know why.
When the federal grand jury reconvened on December 14, it was faced with the challenge of trying to answer several unresolved questions related to the missing ransom:
What did Shoulders do from 3:30 P.M., Tuesday, October 6, when he got his first tip on Hall, until 7:30 P.M., when the arrest was made?
Where was Shoulders when he left the Newstead Avenue station after Hall was booked at 8:57 P.M., until he returned at 10:40 P.M.?
Why did he pick patrolman Dolan, a uniformed beat patrolman and until recently a member of the vice squad, to accompany him to the Town House to arrest Hall?
Where was the stakeout that Shoulders said he was on when the desk sergeant called him at 7:05 P.M.?
Why did Shoulders neglect to handcuff Hall when he arrested him at the Town House?
Who were the mysterious persons hanging around the Town House on the night Hall was there?
Why had Shoulders now changed his story regarding the suitcases containing the ransom?
Was the suitcase seen being brought into the police station one hour and twenty minutes after Hall was booked one of those belonging to the kidnapper?
Three St. Louisans were the first witnesses to testify: FBI agent Frank Staab; John Sakellarios, chef at the Congress Hotel; and grocer Max Wolff. The mystery blonde was also identified as Viola Freeny, a former cashier at the Town House, who had left that job three months prior to her testimony.
Other witnesses scheduled to testify included seventeen-year-old Barbara Cupp, who was in the Newstead station, waiting for a friend, when Shoulders entered on the night of Hall’s arrest; Walter McDowell, the clerk in the station who saw Dolan walk in with a suitcase one hour and twenty minutes after Hall was booked; and FBI agent John Bush.
Katharine G. Overstreet, a switchboard operator at the Town House when Hall was a guest, testified that she was on duty October 6 when she saw Dolan, accompanied by another man who was not in uniform, take the elevator to the third floor shortly after 10 P.M. When they returned a short time later, Dolan was carrying a man’s straw hat, a belt, and a whiskey bottle. She recalled that the manager, Jean Fletcher, had asked what the trouble was, and Dolan replied that it was nothing but a routine investigation. Hager told reporters that he was the man who accompanied Dolan, and that they had gone to look for a pistol.
Shown the two suitcases and the briefcase used by Hall, Max Wolff, who operated a grocery store across from the Town House, told the grand jury that he had seen three men hurry out of the building carrying three suitcases on October 6. But he was unable to identify the luggage, saying he had seen the bags too long ago to have any distinct memory of what they looked like.
Wolff also declared that neither man with Shoulders was Dolan or Hager, however. He was able to establish the time as “shortly before” 9 P.M. because he had watched the start of the Veiled Prophet Ball on television—an annual society event. The next morning, he told Jean Fletcher, manager of the Town House, “I saw money being taken out of here last night.” He told a reporter that he had just parked his car in an apartment garage and was walking to his apartment on Union Boulevard when he saw the three men exit the Town House. “I was right in front of the place, and I’m sure one of the men was Shoulders. He was in civilian clothes, had on a black tie, and was wearing tortoise shell glasses. I was within two feet of him and the lighting was good. He was carrying a shiny black suitcase
. He crossed to the north side of Pershing to a car parked there. The other two men cut across the lawn and walked east to the southwest corner of Union and Pershing. They were also in civilian clothes but were smaller than Shoulders. Neither was handcuffed. One man carried a two-suiter piece of luggage. The other had an ordinary size suitcase and a briefcase.” By “two-suiter piece of luggage,” Wolff apparently meant the large green footlocker.
On the same day that the grand jury reconvened, the Post-Dispatch revealed that Shoulders was seeking a permit from the St. Louis Police Department to carry a pistol. He had requested the application form the previous Saturday, saying that his life had been threatened, but without providing any details.
Also that day, Shoulders’s wife, Florence Shoulders, filed a petition for divorce. She and Shoulders had been married since 1927. Mrs. Shoulders declared that her husband deserted her without cause on September 2, 1952. They had three grown children. Circuit judge James F. Nangle declined to issue an immediate decree, as was customary, indicating that he was taking judicial notice of Shoulders’s intention to marry June Marie George. His wife was asking for $300 a month in alimony, and for her estranged husband to assume the remainder of her mortgage debt.
Governor Donnelly reported that he had received between twenty and twenty-five requests, mostly from nonresidents of Missouri, urging him to grant clemency to Hall and Heady. Some wanted the execution to be delayed until after Christmas. Donnelly noted that he did not have authority in the matter. Since the crime was a federal one, President Eisenhower was the only person who could grant clemency to the kidnappers. Authorities did note, however, that a telephone was inside the death house, just a short distance from the gas chamber, in the event the president gave the condemned pair a last-minute reprieve. Officials noted that the telephone had saved only one condemned man since the chamber was built. The last prisoner to create any disturbance was Adam Richetti, a gangster associate of the late Pretty Boy Floyd, who had been convicted for his role in the Kansas City Union Station Massacre of June 1933. On October 7, 1938, when the door of the Missouri gas chamber closed on him, the twenty-seven-year-old murderer had screamed and cringed as he waited for the sodium cyanide pellets to drop into the jar of acid beneath his chair.
As the day of their execution drew near, both Hall and Heady remained calm. Outside the prison, residents of Jefferson City decorated their stores and homes, shopped for presents, and prepared for Christmas. Inside, the grim preparations for the execution proceeded apace. Both Hall and Heady were asked what they wanted for their last meal, and both gave identical answers—fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, a combination salad with Roquefort dressing, and orange or pineapple sherbet. Neither asked for a beverage.
Father Evans reported that he would be with Hall during his final hours, and his curate, Father Bull, with Heady. “I want you to stay with me until the very end,” Father Evans quoted Hall as telling him.
Hall spent much of his last hours reading Wild West magazines, while Heady seemed devoted to working crossword puzzles in the daily newspapers. Both had put on weight—Hall about twenty pounds, and Heady about five. Heady even joked about the roll of fat she said Hall had gained around his midriff. Neither had been given the opportunity to do any exercise, apart from walking around their cells.
Yet again, on the afternoon before he was to be executed, Hall insisted that he had all of the ransom money at the time of his arrest. In a final conference with Dietrich, he also assumed full responsibility for the kidnapping and murder of Bobby Greenlease, and denied that he ever had any intention of killing Heady. Dietrich also offered his opinion on the matter, saying that he thought Heady remained “still loyal” to Hall. The attorney told reporters that he had visited Hall at the kidnapper’s request.
“I believe in an infinite God,” Dietrich said, after the meeting, “and if I felt that I could give any help to Hall, I would be glad to do so. Although he knew what he was doing, he was drinking so heavily and taking Benzedrine to such an extent his sense of right and wrong was dulled.”
Dietrich also revealed that Hall was halfway through reading The World’s First Love by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, a popular Catholic preacher.
Prison officials, though, were quick to observe that Hall had told more than one fellow prisoner—most likely trustees serving his meals—that his only regret was that he had doomed himself by going on a drunken spree after arriving in St. Louis. “It was a life or death proposition with me,” a prison official quoted Hall as saying. “I had intended to sit on that money for five to ten years if necessary, then fence it. If I had a chance, I’d never have been taken alive. I didn’t intend to be. Those cops made me sit in a chair and they caught me away from my gun.”
On the morning before Hall was scheduled to die, John Downs, the prosecuting attorney from Buchanan County, Missouri, visited Hall to see whether he was involved in the murder the previous August of Mary Jane Nester, a wealthy Nodaway County resident. He was accompanied by Sergeant Jack Inman of the state highway patrol. Hall told Downs, “If it would please you, I could attest to anything. But I know you don’t want that, and it wouldn’t do anyone any good.”
Hall also told Downs, “I hope God doesn’t judge me as harshly as society.”
Downs also interviewed Heady, who appeared embarrassed when the prosecutor found her with her hair up in curlers and wearing a pink housecoat.
“I’m sorry you came before I had time to dress,” she said.
Heady also told Downs that she was concerned about what would happen to Doc, her pet boxer. Unable to find a home for him, she had considered putting him to sleep, but changed her mind after receiving too many complaints from those who opposed that idea.
As the prosecutor was leaving, she asked him, “Aren’t you going to ask me about the money?”
“No,” Downs replied.
“Well, everyone else has,” she retorted.
Heady also had another visitor on the day before the execution—St. Louis Food and Drug agent Roy Pruitt, who asked her about the supply of drugs—mostly amphetamines—found in her purse at the time of her arrest. Pruitt had, in fact, gone to both Heady’s and Hall’s cells the previous day, while accompanied by an FBI agent, and both refused to talk with the FBI agent present. Now Heady told Pruitt that she could tell him about the drugs, and added mysteriously, “Carl can tell you all about the money, too.”
Pruitt arranged for Heady to be brought into the corridor outside Hall’s cell, and she then urged him to talk about the ransom and the drugs. He said to her, “Shut up. We have already talked too much. Remember, we never rat on a pal.”
After Pruitt took her back to her cell, he asked her, “Why didn’t you tell me you knew about the pills and the ransom money?”
She replied, “Carl and I have a pact. I cannot talk about the drugs or the money without his permission. And he has refused to give it to me. My lips are sealed.”
That was her—and Hall’s—final word about the missing ransom.
One of Heady’s last requests was that she be allowed to wear her golden slippers, which were brought to her.
On the same day that Dietrich visited his client, the grand jury in Kansas City heard testimony from Esther Wells, who had been at the Newstead station on the night of October 6, shortly before Shoulders and Dolan arrived with Hall. At the moment when Hall was brought in, Wells had gone to a nearby store to place a long-distance telephone call; her testimony was important because it allowed the grand jury to fix the time of Hall’s arrival. As Wells returned to the station, she testified, she saw both Shoulders and Dolan leaving.
While Hall and Heady prepared for death on the day of their execution, the grand jury in Kansas City indicted a tormented Elmer Dolan on perjury charges. The indictment charged Dolan with committing perjury in testimony given before the grand jury on October 30, when he was asked about his movements and those of Shoulders on the night of October 6, when they arrested Hall and Heady. The grand jury als
o handed down five other indictments, but U.S. Attorney Scheufler refused to say whether they were related to the Greenlease case or not. He did indicate, though, that Shoulders was not among those indicted. The grand jury then went into recess until December 29.
The indictment of Dolan charged that under questioning by Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth C. West, Dolan was asked the following questions and gave the following answers:
Q. When did you first know that there were two suitcases involved in this case?
A. After I got to the police station.
Q. Did you take them out?
A. I took one of them out, and Lt. Shoulders took the other one out.
Q. Was this immediately after you got to the station?
A. Right after I got to the station; the lieutenant was going into the station with the prisoner and I had taken one of the suitcases out.
Q. Where was the other suitcase?
A. In the police car.
Q. And the briefcase?
A. I had the briefcase with me, too.
Q. You had a suitcase and a briefcase?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. And the other one was still in the police car?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Where did you take those?
A. Back in to Lt. Shoulders’ office.
Q. Was that the same time you went in with Hall, roughly?
A. Hall was already in the station then.
Dolan, who had been sitting in the anteroom of the grand jury chambers waiting to testify, was placed under arrest immediately after the indictment was handed down. Scheufler explained that the policeman had been subpoenaed in order to give him the opportunity to change his testimony. The patrolman, clearly more afraid of being killed by Shoulders or Costello than of going to prison, was held pending bail of $25,000.
9.
Goodbye and Thanks
Zero at the Bone: The Playboy, the Prostitute, and the Murder of Bobby Greenlease Page 17
