The Laughing Gorilla

by Robert Graysmith

  While the crooked cops had plenty of money, the grand jury didn’t. Although the DA could legally tap his graft fund for money to prepare a grand jury transcript, only $10,000 remained, scarcely half of what was needed. Mayor Rossi would have to be convinced to provide it. There was a certain urgency about the matter. Judge Robinson had uncovered a plot to destroy the only record of grand jury testimony. Every word taken down existed in twelve longhand steno notebooks in the care of T. J. McIlveen, the official stenographer. Under guard, Robinson had the notebooks placed in envelopes, sealed with wax, and locked in two downtown bank vaults until the transcripts could be made.

  Supervisor Brown found the mayor at his florist shop, which he had kept throughout his tenure, and asked him to use some of his emergency reserve fund to pay for transcripts. On May 6, the mayor expressed willingness to recommend a further appropriation. “I hardly think the $25,000 already appropriated to delve into police corruption is sufficient,” he said. “Without transcripts any future prosecution of the officers would be fatally handicapped. Besides, there has already been sufficient testimony before the Grand Jury to show that there is more to find out.”

  A procession of defiant witnesses and recalcitrant officers marched into the Grand Jury room and marched right out again. The following night Mrs. Emma Hoertkorn, attractive, brown-haired, motherly, and nervous hobbled to the witness stand supported by her son Harold, an accountant, and her lawyer, Chauncey Tramutolo. Harold patted her back as he eased her into the chair, but she hardly needed consoling. She was tough as nails.

  “I have some rights!” she snapped at the first question about her husband’s vast array of bank accounts, stocks, and bonds.

  “Are you aware that you are committing an act of contempt?” asked the DA.

  “I guess I am.”

  She was dismissed and limped away. Using other testimony, the DA established Hoertkorn’s fortune as $70,000 ($47,000 in three separate bank accounts and $23,000 in real estate). At 9:20 P.M. Shannon was called into the Grand Jury room where he admitted to four savings accounts: two in the Anglo Bank, one in the American Trust, and one in a Bank of America branch (each of his five children had an account at the Eighth Avenue Bank of America branch). He emerged ten minutes later with sweat on his brow. “They threw me out!” he said. “But I’ve talked too much already.” Then he vanished into the stairwell.

  “Thar’s gold in them woodpiles, Pat,” a reporter called after him.

  Brouders staggered out next. “Somebody give me a cigarette,” he said. His hands were shaking as he lit up. He sprinted down the stairs so fast he overtook Shannon.

  Captain Lemon was still a no-show. The next morning the chief summoned Acting Surgeon D. M. Campbell into his office. “I want you to thoroughly examine Captain Lemon,” he told him, “and see if the arthritis he complains of is really debilitating or even exists. But even if it is shown conclusively that he is physically fit to appear before the Grand Jury, I am still powerless to do anything about it. From my knowledge of the law, I would say that the Grand Jury has the power, if it sees fit, to convene in Lemon’s home. But I am awaiting your report with interest, doctor.”

  About the same time, the DA was saying, “I want to see if Lemon is faking,” and sent Dr. Louis Oviedo to examine him and get a second opinion.

  Near midnight on Friday, May 1, four uniformed Taraval District officers pulled up in front of Police Commissioner Shumate’s drugstore at 901 Taraval Street, one of a chain of thirty. Two of the officers smashed the glass in the front door, and Officer Sydney Hinson left prints on the glass as he picked out the shards. Three witnesses saw the cops reemerge, stack crates of liquor in their cruiser, and drive away. When assistant manager John Collins arrived at the store at 8:00 A.M., he went directly to a concealed drawer. The hidden money was missing, yet money in plain view in a stamp box by the register was untouched. “Only five people had knowledge of the hiding place,” Collins told Dullea.

  Outraged, Dullea personally filed burglary charges against the four patrolmen—John Farrell, radio car Officers Hinson and Thomas Miller, and station keeper John T. McKenna, the only officer not suspended. Yet McKinna had the worst record—fined for intoxication and unofficer-like conduct and twice charged with neglect of duty he once shot the door lock off the Cairo Club. In April 1930 McKinna visited his estranged wife on Leavenworth Street and, when barred from entering, climbed a drainpipe that broke and dropped him two stories into a light well. While still recuperating, he was involved in a hotel room shooting in which a woman wounded herself in the thigh. But after the four cops were formally booked, the chief released them on $250 bail each. “Why are they not in jail,” curious reporters asked. “Is discrimination being shown them because they are officers? Who are the witnesses?”

  “I will not identify the witnesses publicly.”

  “Are you afraid they will be intimidated?”

  “I just want to be sure they are available to testify,” said the chief.

  Immediately, the reporters tried to identify the witnesses. “The area is in darkness by midnight and at that time wholly without pedestrians,” they speculated. “That leaves the rows of houses on 19th Avenue with front windows providing a clear view of the drugstore entrance.”

  A few hours later, Quinn’s close friend and secretary of the Police Commission, fifty-one-year-old Captain Charles Skelly, went to lunch in North Beach. After parking in front of La Compagna on Broadway, he went inside. One of the indicted patrolmen, John Farrell, was eating there. The lean, dark-haired young man spied Skelly. “I ought beat the hell out of you,” he barked. “If I had a gun, Skelly, I’d kill you and I will kill you sooner or later.”

  Farrell mistakenly believed Skelly had granted “virtual immunity” to Patrolman Hinson in exchange for testifying against him. Farrell swung at Skelly, but the former Olympic Club boxer who had once knocked out World Heavyweight Champ Jack Johnson, dodged and tagged Farrell with a powerful right. Two of Dan Barbini’s waiters and noted bartender Joseph Toschi overpowered Farrell. “You’re under arrest for making threats against a superior officer,” Skelly said.

  Toschi called for a cruiser. Just as the patrol car arrived Farrell threw another punch, and Skelly knocked him cold. After Farrell was jailed, Chief Quinn said, “We simply feel that this man is dangerous to Captain Skelly’s life. I demand the highest possible bail.” But next morning, Farrell was out again, on an even lower bail than his cohorts. When Dullea demanded Farrell’s indictment for the attack and burglary, his fury inspired several police officers to seek out Atherton to make a deal.

  Three days later, another police fortune was revealed—$35,000 in cash and stocks inside a pine box. “It’s been my habit to keep large sums of money in just a little box,” said Lieutenant Ed Copeland, another Central District cop under Captain Lemon. He had been a steamship company storekeeper for $100 a month, then a policeman for fourteen years, but never filed a federal income tax. The year before he had paid a state tax of $7.98.

  City Treasurer Duncan Matheson, a dour Scotch Presbyterian and former captain, came up with a proposal to help Quinn. “A police chief is ham strung when he has to face political pressure in his official acts—either from a mayor or anyone else,” he said. “Under the present conditions a police captain names his own special duty men and the chief has little to say about it. Under proper Charter provisions preventing Quinn’s removal from politics, he would be in a position to wield full authority over his captains and other officers.”

  The image of an un-fireable Chief Quinn was on Dullea’s mind as he stood on a sandy beach south of Fleishhacker Pool. Snowy plovers were diving as eight patrolmen and three fire searchlight truck crews ended their all-night search without result. Now only gawkers in their cars clogged the shore road above. A prayer book lay amid the purple needle grass and monkey flowers. Dullea picked it up and read the name inside: “Rev. Father Walter Semeria, S. J.” The depressed logic and philosophy teacher habitually took sun
baths at the beach to aid his recovery from a serious operation. Dullea found Semeria’s auto with his hat and coat locked inside and concluded the worst.

  Dullea, a very moral man, was more deeply disturbed by the corruption rumors than the average man. During World War II, when half the city’s regular police officers were conscripted, he would order every known brothel closed to reduce the incidence of venereal disease. “We cannot substitute hygiene for morality,” he said, “and any attempt to evade the moral issue, or pass over it lightly is bound to end in tragedy.”

  At war’s end, when drunken sailors and soldiers packed Market Street and eleven died during a three-day orgy of looting and rape, Dullea would express his disgust with “the unbridled and unrestrained acts of a lot undisciplined men in uniform.” He returned from the beach to City Hall to discover more special-duty men had defied the grand jury.

  Even worse, Dullea knew most of them: Captain Art de Guire, commander of Harbor Station, was relieved of his badge and gun; Lieutenant Henry Ludolph was having his second brush before a Grand Jury; and Harry Gurtler, fat and many chinned, and Alec Mino (two Southern Station duty men) refused to be sworn. When Gurtler produced a doctor’s note to excuse his absence, the DA threatened to call all captains and special-duty men of the other thirteen districts to testify. That day, two officers from the Ellis-Polk Station applied for sudden retirement. Now those suspended for refusing to answer questions numbered an even dozen. Captain Lemon, seeing the furor wasn’t going to die down, climbed out of bed, walked into court, refused to be sworn, and became the unlucky thirteenth man.

  “Honest police officers, ashamed to put on their uniforms since the graft hearings began,” Commissioner Roche said, “are entitled to be exonerated as thoroughly as possible. If captains named honest men there would be no cause for complaint.” But he also admitted there was a definite need for the special-duty squads. “They have work to perform that cannot be done by the man on the beat. It is not advisable to abolish a position because of the man who holds it unless you find a suitable substitute.”

  That afternoon a well-dressed man who claimed to be a high official of the SFPD offered Atherton a bribe.

  On May 19, the Police Board dismissed Brouders from the force. When Shannon argued for a secret hearing, his lawyer Vince Hallinan, a former boxer, got in a knockdown-drag-out brawl when opposing council Paul Dana made the mistake of calling Shannon “Woodpile Pat.” Hallinan began it by sucker-punching Dana at a fourth-floor water cooler. When the board unanimously fired Shannon for “over-talkativeness,” he questioned their authority over him by raising the specter of Frank Egan, who was serving twenty-five years in San Quentin. Egan had challenged the mayor and supervisors’ power to fire him for failing to cooperate at the coroner’s inquest into Josie Hughes’s death. Judge Harris settled that legal question. “When Egan took the oath of office,” he said, “he pledged himself to support the constitution of the United States and that of California. When he subordinated his official duty to his personal rights he violated his official pledge and, therefore, was clearly guilty of official misconduct. . . . [T]he Supervisors had the power to dismiss him after finding him guilty of misconduct.” Shannon’s firing was legal.

  Shannon began dickering with IRS collector John Lewis to pay federal income taxes on his $100,000 fortune. Lewis wasn’t in a dickering mood. He wanted cash in full along with all penalties, special assessments, and accrued interest from unpaid taxes since 1914. The total came to $25,000—the exact amount Shannon had hidden in a woodpile.

  May 21 began with a dawn fire that burned all day, eating away the oil-soaked pilings and lumber along the channel from Third Street to Seventh Street. Seven ships were cast adrift, and the Bay Bridge was damaged. Patrolman George Lillis, a Central Station bagman, was suspended for contempt. An hour later, the grand jury ordered the McDonough brothers to testify on May 27, the anniversary of the luncheon club speech that had initiated the probe.19 Lewis had been talking about former Captain Stephen Bunner and now demanded Bunner pay his long-delayed federal tax on a personal fortune of $110,000. Though Bunner was onboard a steamer chugging through the Panama Canal, Lewis stripped him of a large portion of his wealth. Eventually Bunner would pay double penalties and assessments stretching over many years.

  Harold Boyd, chief deputy tax collector, ordered Patrolmen Gurtler and Ed Christal, Captain de Guire, and Joe Nolan of Central District (who also was suddenly up for retirement) to appear before him about paying income tax. “I will take you to municipal court unless you settle with the city,” Boyd threatened.

  As word spread, twenty-three other officers made appointments with Boyd to quietly talk over their liability. Many more called on Jake Ehrlich to defend them; so many, his offices resembled the squad room at Central Station. San Francisco was such a wonderfully corrupt town that the word hoodlum had originated there. A local reporter, instead of referring directly to local gang boss Muldoon, spelled the mobster’s name backward and changed the initial letter to arrive at hoodlum.

  Lieutenant Mark Higgins, Western Addition, revealed $46,000 in cash and assets, Captain Will Healy told of $24,000 in cash, and Lieutenant Martin Fogarty of Harbor Station apprised the grand jury of his $44,000 fortune. “The amount of my wealth has been misquoted,” said Fogarty, a good-looking man with a high pompadour and thick mustache. “For twelve years I was at the Ferry Building where I gave $1.50 daily to stranded people to get across the Bay. And there’s no chance of getting any graft at the Ferry Building.” He admitted $8,200 in three bank accounts of which $2,200 was his own.

  After the DA did a little spade work, he invited Fogarty back. “Are you not a joint holder with your brother William in the following accounts—Just how did your mentally disturbed brother come by $16,000 in cash?”

  “He was a frugal man.”

  Chief Quinn transferred Fogarty from Harbor Station to Potrero Station just as another of Captain Lemon’s bucket men, Patrolman George Lillis, a former gripman on the old Union Street cable line, refused to take the stand. “Rule 19 of the SFPD orders officers to testify before the Grand Jury,” Roche informed him.

  Assistant DA Leslie Gillen, who had once covered City Hall as a Chronicle reporter while studying law, conducted the next questioning. The DA was exhausted. Patrolman William Quinlan of Richmond Station listed his stocks—242 shares in the Owl Drug Company at $10,000 a throw, 114 shares of AT&T, 283 shares in Transamerica, over 2,000 shares in PG&E, 40 shares of General Motors in a safe deposit box at Wells Fargo, and $92,000 in securities. Gillen, an inflexible and humorless man, showed uncharacteristic surprise.

  “Where did you get the money to make such big investments?” he asked.

  “Out of my savings as a patrolman.”

  “On a policeman’s salary?” Gillen shook his head.

  Quinlan had entered the department on March 29, 1905, at the age of thirty-two as a teamster earning between $35 and $80 a month and “his keep.” He had $52,000 in cash stockpiled, he said, out of a policeman’s salary of $200 a month over the last six years.

  “I have other sources,” said Quinlan, who shifted in his chair and smiled. “I never gamble, though I once won $91 on a $4 bet.” He said he had inherited $3,000 from his brother, James, a veterinarian who mysteriously vanished and was declared legally dead in 1930. He also owned three vacant lots in the Bayview district and had a fifth interest in a two-story frame house on Folsom Street. He had accounts in banks all over town—Hibernia, Crocker First Federal, Bank of America—a total of $34,003. Then there was a category Quinlan called “found” money, which amounted to $100,000 in cash and stocks. He had made out an income tax report once, but forgotten to file it. Like most of the nontestifying cops, he had never paid a cent of tax.

  With disgust, Gillen dismissed him. Quinn’s close friend Inspector Charles Gallivan, a former $20-a-week butcher, came next. He operated out of the chief’s office as one of his two private investigators, though his expertise was in bunco. He admitt
ed $13,247.83 in cash in two bank accounts and a safe deposit box containing $43,575 in stocks—AT&T, Sears-Roebuck, Consolidated Oil, Anchorage Light and Power, and Kolster Radio. He rattled off a dozen real estate deals, concluding with the purchase of a southwest corner property on Fillmore and McAllister streets for $65,000, which sold for $80,000. “When I sold the McAllister property,” he said, “I found myself in possession of about $43,000 in cash.” All told he admitted to $56,822 in riches, but had paid only $30 in federal income tax and $10 in state tax. He seemed proud of that.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” first appeared in book form in a thin leaflet in tan-colored wrappers in 1843 for 12½ cents.

  —THE PROSE ROMANCES OF EDGAR A. POE

  IT was a crisp night. A tall, good-looking young man walked into the HOJ and admitted strangling a woman in a hotel room. “I want you to hang me,” he said matter-of-factly. His voice was calm, well-modulated, and he was neatly dressed. Inspector Alvin Corrasa looked up from his desk and into his pale blue eyes. The man was not drunk. “No, I mean it,” he said. “Get it over as soon as possible please. I’ve killed a girl in a hotel, strangled her with my bare hands, and I’ve come to turn myself in.”

  A strangling? In a hotel? Dullea would be interested, but first—“Show us where.” Corrasa and his partner, William Stanton, followed the young man to 840 California Street between Powell and Stockton streets. It was not far from Nob Hill and offered a splendid view of the Bay. Inside the room, they followed a trail of clothes—a blue wool sweater, pink slip, silk underwear, and a pair of brown slacks, which led to a folding in-a-door bed. When Corrasa pulled it down, the nude body of a tall woman, bent in half, tumbled out.

  Her head was drawn back tautly by a pair of brown silk stockings knotted to the brass bedposts. Dark, ugly marks had been dug into her throat, and her eyes were bulging. She had been strangled by a huge pair of hands. What struck Corrasa was that the victim’s hair was the same red as Bette Coffin’s. Had they found the Gorilla Man at last? Corrasa was doubtful because of the young man’s slenderness and height.