When Uland hired Gierse at Records Security Corporation, Combest went on, the company had been experiencing serious financial problems because of unpaid taxes and a lot of misuse of money by Colchee. Uland expected Gierse to straighten it out. Along with microfilming, Uland had business interests in several other areas, his major business being digging oil wells, and so consequently, Uland had let Gierse essentially run Records Security Corporation until he quit to start up B&B Microfilming.
Combest then told the detectives how Hinson had quit Records Security Corporation first, but that Gierse had told her he was going to stay on until he could be sure that B&B would get several good contracts for microfilming. For a while Hinson ran B&B by himself. Combest said that for a time she had helped by answering the telephones for the business, which had been set up to ring at both the office on East 10th Street and at the house on North LaSalle Street. She said she asked Gierse if he thought that Records Security Corporation was going to be a lot of competition to them at B&B, but that Gierse had laughed and said no, since Uland didn’t have a clue about what he was doing when it came to microfilming. She also later mentioned that Ted Uland and Richard Roller, a friend of the three men, both had keys to the house on North LaSalle Street. Why they did, no one knew.
The detectives, having heard hints and rumors from other individuals about a possible affair, also asked Ilene Combest about Bob Hinson’s relationship with Louise Cole. Combest told the police that yes, she believed Hinson and Cole had been having an affair for several years, but that apparently Louise Cole had had no intention of divorcing her husband, with whom she’d had seven children. This was despite the fact that, according to Combest, James Cole had often threatened to beat his wife. There had even been an incident at a party once, she said, in which James, angry and suspicious as always, had poured a cup of coffee over Louise’s head and made her cry.
When asked about other women the three men had dated, Combest told them about one of Gierse’s girlfriends named Bonnie Russel, who had told several people at the beauty shop where Combest worked that the murders had been committed by the Mafia. She didn’t say where this information had come from.
Finally, Combest told detectives about how she had heard from another person that Bob Gierse had once sent money to a woman named April Lynn Smoot when she and her husband, David Lynn, were stranded in New Orleans. Smoot had contacted Gierse and asked for his help, so he sent her $50. Smoot’s husband, Combest said the person told her, became very suspicious and jealous, and accused her of having an affair with Gierse. He then reportedly blacked her eyes and threatened to kill all of them if April ever tried to leave him. The detectives made a note to add Mr. Lynn to their list of possible suspects, and, very important, to find out if April Lynn Smoot had recently been involved with Gierse.
Also on December 2, 1971, the detectives interviewed Sue Ross, the office manager at the Bell and Howell plant in Indianapolis, where James Barker had worked as a service manager. She said she had known all of the victims but hadn’t dated any of them. Although the police had already learned about the men’s lothario ways, Ross was the first person to mention the sex contest to the police, and it changed the direction of the investigation. She said Barker had told her about it. Suddenly, the detectives had a new motive and possibly dozens of new suspects. This information also gave new meaning to the list of women’s names the detectives had found in the address book at the North LaSalle Street house.
The detectives knew this also meant they’d need to find and interview dozens of new individuals in the case; not only the women involved in the sex contest, but potentially also their husbands or boyfriends. Any one of the women could have become angry at being used for the contest, or could have had a husband or boyfriend who found out about the contest and decided to seek revenge. But since the list only contained the first names of the women involved, or in some cases what appeared to be a nickname, the detectives could see hundreds of hours of work ahead trying to find these individuals.
And as if this thunderbolt of information didn’t already add enough new suspects to the case, Ross added yet another to the detective’s ever-growing list. As kind of an afterthought, she related how Barker had told her about an incident he and Bob Gierse had been involved in a couple of weeks earlier: Around the middle of November, Barker and Gierse had gone to a bar on East Washington Street and, while there, had gotten into an argument with a man who had ended up holding a knife to Barker’s throat and telling him and Gierse to get out, which they did. Ross didn’t know what the disagreement had been about, but chances were one of them had flirted with the man’s wife or girlfriend. The detectives made a note to look further into this incident, too.
Another name that came from those initial interviews held on December 1 and 2 was Tim Ford. Detective Sergeants Popcheff and Strode found that Ford, who worked at a SupeRx Drug Store, had become acquainted with both Bob Gierse and Bob Hinson from riding motorcycles with them. He also independently corroborated Ilene Combest’s belief that Hinson had been intimately involved with Louise Cole for some time. Ford said that he had attended Gierse’s birthday party at the North LaSalle Street house on November 18 of that year, and that Louise and James Cole had also been there. A friend at the party, he said, told him that James Cole had been drinking heavily and was extremely angry and upset, telling the friend that he believed one of the three men was sleeping with his wife. Cole then told the friend that he would cut anyone he caught messing with his wife.
Following this bit of information, Ford recounted for the two detectives an incident that had occurred earlier in the year at a Knights of Columbus hall, in which James Cole had cut off Bob Gierse’s tie with a knife. The detectives made a note to talk to Mr. Cole about these occurrences. He had suddenly moved up on the suspect list, especially when the detectives recalled the incident Bill Anderson, the reporter for the Indianapolis Star, had told them about in which two women in the crowd outside the North LaSalle Street house on the day of the murders discussed suspicions that Cole might be the murderer.
After talking to Ford, the detectives, again using information gained from other interviews, traveled to a home on West 26th Street in Indianapolis, where they spoke with a Mac and Laura Harbor, who also reportedly had information about the victims. This couple said that they, like Ford had said earlier, knew Gierse and Hinson from riding motorcycles with them. They also knew the Coles, and they said James was always suspicious that someone was messing with his wife. Like Ford, the Harbors had been present at the incident in which Cole had sliced off Gierse’s tie.
Though not new, all this information confirmed the seriousness of James Cole as a key suspect. The Harbors said that they had also been at Gierse’s birthday party. At that party, Mac said, he had been talking with James, who had been drunk. He said that James told him he was positive one of the three men was messing with his wife, and that if he could find out which one of the sons of bitches it was, he would cut his throat. Had Cole, the detectives wondered, found out which one he thought was having the affair with his wife? Or had he perhaps just decided to kill all three of them to be certain he got the right one? Popcheff and Strode knew that Cole had some serious explaining to do.
The detectives then drove back to the house on North LaSalle Street, where they met with Bob Gierse’s brother Ted. Because the house had been sealed by the coroner, he needed their permission to go inside. Popcheff and Strode allowed him to go into the house to get a gray suit, white shirt, and pink-striped tie to use for Gierse’s funeral. They also allowed Ted to take Gierse’s Masonic apron from a dresser drawer so that it could be used during the Masonic ceremony at the funeral.
While there, the detectives took another look around the house, just to be absolutely certain they hadn’t missed anything. Despite the very thorough search they had conducted on the day the murders had been discovered, the detectives knew that sometimes, once the bodies and other evidence had been removed, other items could stand out that
hadn’t seemed obvious the day of the initial investigation. Or, based on interviews with witnesses and persons of interest they’d since conducted, an item that hadn’t appeared significant before could suddenly become key evidence. In this case, however, the detectives didn’t find anything new.
The two detectives then drove to Jim Barker’s house on North Rural Street to take another look around for any evidence they might have missed. But again, they didn’t find anything of value. Barker’s parents showed up while Popcheff and Strode were there, and after talking with them for a bit, the detectives called the coroner’s office and had the house and its contents released to Barker’s parents. The detectives had already searched the house twice, and since the murders had been committed somewhere else, they couldn’t see any reason to keep the house sealed.
On the way back to police headquarters, Popcheff and Strode stopped off at the home of James and Louise Cole and requested they come back down for some more questioning. The detectives particularly wanted to confront Mr. Cole with the information about his threats to cut the throat of anyone he caught messing with his wife and see how he responded.
When the detectives arrived at police headquarters, however, they first talked briefly with Barbara Munden, one of Bob Hinson’s former girlfriends who had just been located. She said that she had started dating Hinson about two years earlier, and that she had gotten a divorce six months after that. She and Hinson had broken up two weeks before the murders because she said she had found a new boyfriend, who had since moved in with her. However, Munden also added that her new boyfriend had come home recently to find Hinson in her house. This added at least one more possible suspect—the new boyfriend—to the detectives’ growing list; or maybe two, if the ex-husband had found out about the woman’s affair with Hinson while they were still married.
Following this, Popcheff and Strode then began an in-depth interview with Louise Cole. She said that the last time she saw Gierse and Hinson had been at around 5:30 P.M. on Tuesday, November 30, 1971. She was leaving for home and they told her that they had some important microfilming to do and would be working late, probably until about 7:30 or 8:00 P.M. or even later. She then told the detectives that, like two of the murdered men, she had also previously worked for Records Security Corporation. She had gotten that job through Hinson, whom she had met at the Sherman Bar in Indianapolis. When Gierse and Hinson decided to leave Records Security Corporation and start their own business, they persuaded her to come and work for them at B&B Microfilming.
Mrs. Cole also told the detectives about an incident between Gierse and Ted Uland, the owner of Records Security Corporation. She said that Gierse had a drawer in his house in which he kept all of his canceled checks, and that recently he had opened the drawer and found them missing. She said that Gierse told her he believed Uland, who had a key to the North LaSalle Street house, had come in and stolen the checks. Gierse was upset but didn’t tell her why he thought Uland would want to do this.
In regards to her husband, Louise Cole told the detectives that on the night of the murders he had left home at around 7:40 P.M. and returned at about 9:30 P.M. She said she didn’t know where he went but assured them he hadn’t come back bloody. She would have noticed, she insisted—though of course, the detectives knew, he could have simply cleaned up before coming home. When asked if she would be willing to take a lie detector test, Louise agreed readily.
The polygraph, or lie detector, came into use in law enforcement in the 1920s. The device is meant to measure several physiological responses—such as perspiration, blood pressure, and pulse—as a person is asked a series of questions, the theory being that these measures will change when a person lies. Several contemporary studies, however, have since shown lie detectors to be only 80 to 90 percent effective; consequently, most courts won’t allow their use as evidence. However, though much less likely to be used today, back in the early 1970s polygraphs were considered by the police to be much more reliable, and were often used to include or exclude someone as a suspect.
After this interview, the detectives talked to James Cole. They confronted him about his threats to cut the throat of anyone he caught messing with his wife. Cole at first denied knowing what they were talking about and claimed he had been too drunk to remember making this threat at Gierse’s birthday party, but then finally said that, yes, he was a very jealous man and he might have said it. Apparently realizing where this was going, Cole then denied having anything to do with the North LaSalle Street murders, and when asked about the incident at the Knights of Columbus hall, he claimed that he had cut Gierse’s tie off as a joke because the event was supposed to be casual. There had been no threat involved. It had all been in fun.
James Cole said that the last time he saw the three victims had been on November 25, Thanksgiving Day, when Bob Gierse had given the Coles an old Chevrolet he had. James said that on the night of the murders he left home around 7:30 P.M. and went to the Irvington Play Bowl, where he met up with some people he worked with, then stopped by a grocery store for a few minutes before returning home between 8:30 and 8:45 P.M. (about an hour earlier than his wife had said). He claimed that he knew what time it was when he got home because he got there in time to watch the television program Hawaii Five-0, which came on at 9:00 P.M. He couldn’t, however, tell the detectives what the show had been about. When asked if he would be willing to take a lie detector test, he said he would, and the detectives—still listing him as a key suspect—decided to schedule it for as soon as possible.
After the questioning of Hinson’s girlfriend and the Coles, Popcheff and Strode left police headquarters and, to close out the day, stopped by the Sherman Bar, which had been a popular hangout for the murdered men. A number of the people they’d interviewed had mentioned seeing or meeting the three victims there. At the bar, three separate customers told the detectives that they thought the murders might have been committed by a very jealous local thug who hung out at the bar and whose ex-wife had dated one of the victims. Although not married to her any longer, this man still became incensed whenever his ex-wife even talked to another man. The detectives looked into it, and given this man’s reputation and police record, they realized he was certainly another possibility to consider.
The list of possible suspects just seemed to keep getting longer and longer. According to the Indianapolis News, the city’s afternoon newspaper, by December 3, 1971, the police said they had three definite suspects they were looking at—but the truth was that they had many more possible suspects, and many, many people of interest yet to be interviewed. They hadn’t even gotten to most of the women listed on the men’s scorecard yet. The investigation seemed to grow more involved and complex with every person they talked to.
On December 4, 1971, the Grinsteiner Funeral Home in Indianapolis held the funerals for James Barker and Robert Gierse, one right after the other. They held Barker’s at 1:00 P.M. and Gierse’s at 1:30 P.M. (On December 5, 1971, Joyner’s Funeral Home in Wilson, North Carolina, held Robert Hinson’s funeral.) The police naturally attended the ceremonies in Indianapolis, both to pay their respects and to see who attended. Through experience, the police knew that a killer will often come to a victim’s funeral because he wants to hear what people are saying about the murder. Interestingly, of the eighty-five people present at the two funerals, officers reported that half of them were young, attractive women. Aside from that note, however, nothing else at the funerals seemed unusual.
Hinson’s family buried him at the Evergreen Memorial Cemetery in Wilson, North Carolina; Gierse’s family buried him at the Sts. Peter and Paul Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri; and Barker’s family buried him at the Odd Fellows Cemetery in Salem, West Virginia.
After attending the funerals, and as part of their investigation, the detectives then visited a large number of the kind of cheap taverns in Indianapolis that the victims were known to frequent. They hoped to pick up rumors of any threats made against the men or to find out about any other
incidents that might lead someone to want to kill them. Alas, ultimately the detectives didn’t learn much from the people at these taverns, but they did hear from several of those close to Bob Hinson that for the last month or so he had been very moody and depressed, not his usual happy, ready-to-party self. However, these people said, he had refused to talk about what was bothering him. The detectives naturally wondered if the source of Hinson’s unhappiness could have had anything to do with the motive behind the murders. Did he know or suspect that someone intended to kill him?
On December 6, 1971, six days after the murders, detectives interviewed April Lynn Smoot, the woman whom Bob Gierse had sent $50 when she and her husband were stranded in New Orleans. When asked about the day of the murders, she said that she had driven by the office of B&B Microfilming that day and saw Gierse’s and Hinson’s cars parked there but didn’t stop. She also told the detectives that she had talked to Hinson on the telephone the day of the murders at around 4:30 P.M. It had just been a friendly conversation, and there’d been no hint of anything bad about to happen. When asked about her husband, she shrugged and said that he had left her and she believed he was probably headed back to Louisiana. She told the detectives that her husband, David Lynn, had left town for New Orleans on December 1, 1971—the day the murders were discovered—which seemed very suspicious, since Lynn was reported to the police to be an extremely jealous man who had once allegedly beaten and threatened to kill her and others because he suspected she was involved with Gierse. When asked about her husband’s whereabouts on the night of the murders, she gave Lynn an alibi for the entire night, saying that on the night of November 30, 1971, they and another couple had spent the evening going to several taverns. She said that she spent the whole night with her husband. However, she later became very upset when the detectives caught her in several lies concerning other events. The detectives, naturally suspicious, asked her if she would be willing to take a lie detector test, and she said she would. Ultimately, the test showed that she was telling the truth about her lack of participation in the crime. However, the test operator said that he had questions about whether or not she believed her husband might be involved.
Slaughter on North Lasalle Page 5
