By Reason of Insanity

by Shane Stevens

  Why did he kill them? “They cheated me. I worked hard for them and then they didn’t pay me all my money. They were too stingy to live.”

  Sheriff Oates was jubilant as he took full credit for the capture. He mugged for the cameras and joked with the reporters and generally made everyone feel at ease. He went over details of the two murders lovingly and lingered longest on how he had solved the case by sheer brain power. “It was all a matter of finding the right connection,” he told smiling reporters. “After that the motive comes easy.”

  When someone finally asked about Vincent Mungo and that investigation, the sheriff suddenly excused himself. Urgent police business, he told them as he flew out the door.

  Toward the close of the first week of July, as the manhunt for Mungo was getting under way, another manhunt of sorts was winding up. But not soon enough to suit Derek Lavery, who sat in his Barclay Lounger scowling at the two men on the other side of his huge oak desk.

  He put the cigar down. “You had a week and even a day extra on this story. Now you say you want another week?” He looked pained.

  “Less than a week,” said Adam Kenton. “Just five days.”

  “That’s a week,” snapped Lavery.

  Kenton took a deep breath. “I got a few more leads I want to track down.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a couple of ex-cons who were in the death house with Chessman.”

  “They out now?”

  Kenton nodded.

  “Where?”

  “One’s in Long Beach, he saw Chessman go. The other’s right in town.”

  “And they’ll talk about him?”

  “They’ll talk.”

  Lavery shrugged. “That’s worth a day. What else?”

  “There’s a woman who worked in the prosecutor’s office at the time of the trial. She remembers a lot of things that never got in the papers. But …” He let the word hang.

  “She wants money,” Lavery said.

  “She wants money,” repeated Kenton.

  Lavery sighed. “You know we never pay for information. It’s unethical.” He paused a moment as Ding coughed loudly. “How much she want?”

  “A hundred.”

  Another sigh. “Take it from travel. Is she in town? So from now on she lives in Vegas. Anything else?”

  “Just Chessman’s final confession.”

  “His what?”

  “His final confession.”

  Lavery looked at Ding, then back to Kenton. “What are you giving me? Chessman claimed his innocence to the end, except for the alleged confession the cops beat out of him.” He put the cigar in the heart-shaped ashtray. “I never heard anything about a final confession.

  “Neither did anyone else,” Ding said softly.

  Kenton scratched his chin. “There was a psychiatrist used to be up at San Quentin in Chessman’s time. His name was Schmidt.”

  “So?”

  “So I got a connection in San Rafael near the prison who knows a guard there. He swears the guard told him that Chessman confessed to the psychiatrist before he died. Told him he was the robber-rapist back in ‘48 when they caught him.”

  Lavery glanced over at Ding, who shook his head.

  “Me neither,” he muttered and put the cigar back in his mouth. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “The guard supposedly said that he was passing Chessman’s cell,” Kenton continued, “when he overheard the confession.” He paused. “Personally I don’t believe it, because he’d have no business being there. What I think might have happened is, he got Chessman mixed up with a man named Bud Abbott who was executed a couple years earlier.”

  “Who’s Abbott?”

  “Bud Abbott was convicted of killing a young girl in San Francisco but he never confessed, and just like Chessman, he claimed he was innocent right up to the end. But just before he died he apparently told this Schmidt in confidence that he was guilty. I have his words here—” Kenton leafed through his notes for a few seconds “—here they are. Abbott supposedly said to Schmidt, ‘I can’t admit it, Doc. Think of what it would do to my mother. She could not take it.’” Kenton closed his notebook, looked up. “After his execution the authorities claimed that was his confession but not everybody was happy about it.” He paused for effect. “I think the guard—”

  “If there is a guard at all,” interrupted Ding.

  “If there is a guard at all, I think he just mixed them up,” said Kenton. “But it’s worth checking.”

  “If there’s no guard, you just got a lying connection,” Ding said gently.

  Kenton laughed. “You mean another lying connection.”

  “Check it out,” Lavery said abruptly. “But you’ll come up with nothing.” He puffed on the cigar. “I’ll bet you a year’s salary on that.”

  “Yours or his?” asked Ding.

  Lavery said nothing.

  “Do I get the week?” Kenton asked enthusiastically.

  “You get three days,” Lavery growled, “and that’s all you get.” He turned round, looked at the giant schedule calendar tacked on the cork-lined wall. “It’ll run on the thirty-first instead of the twentyfourth.” He turned back. “Anything else before we go on?”

  Ding had one final thought. “At least two women identified Chessman as the attacker, and there were a bunch of others who got raped at the time. Now remember, this was long before birth-control pills and free abortion clinics so there’s a good chance one or more of them became pregnant. Suppose we see if any babies were born to those women around nine months later. Might be worth a good picture spread. You know, ‘Son of Rapist! Caryl Chessman Executed for Bringing This Boy into the World!’ Or ‘Daughter of Raped Mother and Rapist Father!’ What do you think?”

  Lavery and Kenton sat in stunned silence for a long moment. Sunlight streamed into the penthouse office through the louvered windows. The air conditioner hummed peacefully in the background. Lights blinked on the telephone console at the end of the desk but no rings interrupted the creative juices at work.

  Finally Lavery broke the silence of the room.

  “That is the most disgusting and flagrantly unethical idea I have ever come across in twentyfive years in the business,” he stuck his cigar between his teeth, took it out again, “and I might add I have seen some real beauties.” He slammed it back in his mouth and sat there.

  “Good idea, though,” said Ding.

  “Goddam good idea,” said Lavery.

  “I can see it now,” Ding said and laughed.

  “Terrific,” agreed Lavery. “It’d sell an extra fifty thousand copies.”

  “At least.”

  “Maybe more.”

  After a moment Lavery shook his head sadly and hunched forward in the lounger. “Too bad we can’t use it,” he said sorrowfully.

  “Why can’t we?” Ding asked.

  “For a million reasons,” answered Lavery, “but I’ll give you only one. The kid would be about twentyfive now, and the son of a bitch would find you and he’d kill you or she’d kill you. Then they’d come after me.” He closed his eyes. “And I have enough troubles, God knows.” His eyes snapped open, ready for business. “Now what did I get for a week’s salary?”

  For the next fifteen minutes Adam Kenton outlined for his editor what he had learned about Caryl Chessman’s twelve years on death row and his execution. From an habitual criminal and three-time loser Chessman rehabilitated himself in prison to the point where he became a recognized writer and a fair country lawyer. But the times were against him, that more than anything else killed him. It was as though a gigantic conspiracy had formed around him, crushing him slowly in its maw. There was no escape. Nine months before he was executed, the sadistic rapist-murderer Harvey Glatman died in San Quentin’s gas chamber. The people of California quite properly had no mercy for such rapist fiends, and no distinction was made between a Caryl Chessman and a Harvey Glatman. Two months earlier the vicious mass murderer Charles Starkweather went to the electric
chair in Nebraska. The people of America quite properly had no mercy for such criminal monsters, and no distinction was made between a Caryl Chessman and a Charles Starkweather.

  The jaws began to close almost from the beginning. On his important appeals Chessman lost every time. The state of California was in no mood to order expensive retrials in a case where the accused served as his own lawyer in a capital-offense trial, or where he was not advised of his constitutional rights by arresting officers, or where he was given perhaps the harshest judgment ever handed a felon not having committed murder, or where the capital charge of kidnapping was ludicrous at least in the spirit of the law, Likewise, the country had not yet heard of the phrase “cruel and unusual punishment” or that everyone was entitled to adequate defense. Chessman petitioned himself through every state and federal court right up to the Supreme Court itself. He lost there too.

  Toward the end the jaws closed faster. The California Supreme Court affirmed his conviction, the United States Supreme Court denied his appeal, the United States Court of Appeals denied a stay of execution, the California Supreme Court refused to recommend executive clemency. Then the governor granted him a sixty-day reprieve for political motives. When the reprieve was over, so were the reasons that created it. No further reprieves would be forthcoming. Chessman lost. The California Supreme Court refused to annul the death warrant. Chessman lost. The California Senate Judiciary Committee voted down a proposal for abolishing the death penalty. The death penalty won. Chessman lost. An appeal was made to an ardent foe of capital punishment, Supreme Court Justice William 0. Douglas. Chessman lost. An appeal was made to another foe of capital punishment, California Governor Edmund Brown. Chessman lost.

  The jaws were almost closed. A final petition for a writ of habeas corpus was made to the California Supreme Court. The vote was 4 to 3. Chessman lost. A last-minute call was made to the governor’s office. Chessman lost. A last-ditch effort was waged before a Federal District Judge in San Francisco. He agreed to a stay of execution so that a new petition could be filed. His secretary hurriedly called the prison to stop the execution. Somebody got the phone number wrong. There was a pause. The number had to be verified, dialed again, or was it the operator who had to get the prison? It didn’t matter; by then it was too late. The cyanide pellets had just been dropped that very second. Caryl Chessman had suffered his final loss. He was dead. The jaws had snapped shut.

  Lavery liked what he heard. He especially liked the conspiracy idea of everything being against Chessman; that was a popular word at the moment. But it wasn’t the main attraction. “Lean heavy on capital punishment as the killer,” he told Kenton.

  Ding had much the same to report. Chessman was a loser from the beginning. A hard childhood, reformatory at sixteen, Los Angeles County jail at eighteen. Sentenced at age nineteen to multiple fiveyear-to-life terms in San Quentin for robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. Escaped prison in 1943.

  “From San Quentin?”

  Transferred to Chino minimum-security that year, escaped from there. Recaptured the same year, returned to San Quentin. A three-time loser at age twenty-two. Sent to Folsom maximum-security prison in 1945, paroled 1947. Captured in a stolen car January 1948. Two women identified him as their attacker. The trial in Superior Court lasted two weeks. He acted as his own lawyer, with a courtappointed public defender as legal adviser. The jury had eleven women, one man.

  “What?” yelped Lavery. “Eleven women on a jury in a rape and sex-offense trial?” He shook his head. “Chessman didn’t get executed. He committed suicide.”

  It took only thirty hours to find him guilty of three counts of kidnapping for purpose of robbery—a capital offense—and fourteen other crimes. No recommendation of mercy. Sentenced to death in May 1948 on two kidnapping with bodily harm counts, five years to life on the third. Ding had read the trial transcript, calling it a joke as far as adequate defense was concerned. “A fool for a client,” he said hopelessly. He had talked to some legal people, a few court attendants, one of the jurors. He could find none of the victims.

  Of the crime spree itself, Ding considered two points of particular interest. There had been other robbery-rapes in secluded areas of Los Angeles before Chessman ever came on the scene. If he didn’t do them all, who did the others? And if others did some, who said Chessman did any? Two witnesses. But under that kind of emotional pressure, who can be sure? And they never really faced any expert crossexamination, with Chessman acting as his own lawyer. At the least, there was room for doubt.

  “And the second point of interest?”

  Ding sighed, a long luxurious hollow sound. “There’s a good possibility that Chessman was impotent,” he said softly. “Rumor had it that after the arrest some people wanted him to be examined but he refused. I haven’t been able to check it out but it fits, in the sense that a guy like Chessman would’ve been too proud to reveal anything like that. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because the big charge was the kidnapping with bodily harm.”

  “But if he was impotent,” protested Lavery, “why go on a sex spree?”

  “Maybe he didn’t,” said Ding. “Remember that Chessman proclaimed his innocence right up to the end. His last words to the warden, a man named Dickson, were”—he read from a small card—” ‘I just want to keep the record straight. I am not the Red Light Bandit. I am not the man. I won’t belabor the point; just let it stand at that.’ Now why would he stick to it even after all hope was gone? What would he gain?” Ding put the card away. “All I’m saying is that Chessman was a loner. He never had much to do with women. I think maybe there was a reason. Did you know that his original name was spelled Car-_ol_? His mother wanted a girl. You see what I mean?”

  “No good,” said Lavery. “If Chessman was impotent he would’ve at least tried to get out of the sex raps. Nobody’s that proud.”

  Ding shook his head emphatically. “That’s what I thought until I talked to somebody in legal medicine. Most impotency is temporary and no alibi against rape done at another time. Even if it’s a physical defect the guy’s not clear because other things could be done that might constitute sexual abuse or attempted rape, which is legally the same as rape, at least in the gravity of the charge.” Ding took out the huge handkerchief he always carried. “If Caryl Chessman was impotent it wouldn’t have done him any good to shout it out.” He wiped his forehead. “What he was really being tried for was taking them somewhere and doing whatever he wanted to them.” He wiped the back of his neck. “That’s every man’s fantasy. But it works only if it remains a fantasy.” He crumpled the limp handkerchief—”So Chessman had to be punished”—and put it back in his pocket. He winked at Adam Kenton, then turned his gaze back to Derek Lavery who sat quietly in thought.

  “All right,” Lavery said eventually, pushing the lounger back. “I think we got most of it here. The crime, the trial, the death house, the execution. Chessman was a victim of his times. Push the capital punishment angle, work everything around that. He was helpless from the beginning but fought back bravely. That’ll get our men readers. Maybe he didn’t do it, that’ll get the women. The trial was a joke. Play up how the years on death row straightened him out, the redemption bit makes everybody feel good. But he got the gas anyway. Why? Capital punishment. The machine was oiled and needed another victim.” He grimaced. “I think we got enough to throw some doubt on his guilt, beside the fact that he never should’ve been there at all.”

  He wheeled to one side, his hand reaching for the telephone. “Ding, go easy on the impotency thing. I might want to use that idea about Son of Rapist. What a spread!” he said in awe. Then he pressed a button on the console and left Caryl Chessman for the next story.

  During the same first warm week of July, on the day after the brutal killing of one patient and the mysterious escape of another from Willows State Hospital, John Spanner spent several morning hours walking around the grounds. The rainstorm had long since given way to streams of sunshine that swiftly dried
the water-soaked earth. Few traces remained of the storm’s arrival and none at all of the killer’s departure. The body of his victim had been removed, the alarm on the roof door cleaned and reset. The big iron gates at the main entrance still remained locked, the gray stone walls surrounding the hospital still stood unassailable. Yet Vincent Mungo had walked out, Spanner reminded himself. Or flew out.

  He talked to the guards at the main entrance. The gates were always kept locked, opening only for vehicles. Those leaving were always thoroughly checked out. The pedestrian arch had a small gate of its own, also locked. And nobody could climb over the gates because they locked into the massive overhead stone slab, part of the wall design. Spanner was satisfied.

  At the rear of the grounds, behind the main building complex, a smaller gate was opened only for staff personnel and suppliers. A guard watched from a tiny office at the wall. Again the gate locked into the overhead design. Between the hours of 9:30 P.M. and 5:30 A.M. the gate was locked, and personnel were required to use the main entrance.

  Spanner next surveyed the wall itself. He found no breaks in it and nowhere to climb over without an extension ladder. Somehow he couldn’t see Vincent Mungo obtaining such a ladder.

  Leaving that problem for the moment, he talked to the attendants in the experimental building. To a man they expressed no surprise at Mungo’s violence, trained as they were to expect irrational behavior. He had been resentful of authority and erratic in his social performance. Spanner tactfully did not point out that those were traits common to most people. One attendant noted, however, that he would have expected that kind of violence even more from Bishop than Mungo. Why? “He was a cold fish, always watching everyone. Like he was the hunter, you know what I mean?”

  In the afternoon Sheriff Oates appeared with a deputy in swimsuit and goggles. He had been told of a drain that flushed out under the wall. Always the fisherman, Spanner was immediately interested. If their man couldn’t walk out or fly over, then maybe he swam under. At the ditch they found the wiremesh fence that had been built across the drain under the wall. It extended into the water, now only about five feet deep. The deputy waded in and sank underneath. In a moment he returned. The gate was a foot short of the bottom, just about enough for a thin man to squeeze through. “Now we know how he got out,” said the sheriff. He beamed at his cleverness in solving the mystery. “What I don’t understand is how he knew it was here. I bet there ain’t ten people in this whole damn place know that.” He kicked at a stone. “He was only here a couple months, for chrissake.”