Playland (60 page)
The cloth found stuffed down Meta Dierdorf’s throat and into her esophagus was finally identified as a crepe tetra nonelastic bandage, ten inches in width, made in France and not sold in this country since the start of the war. A canvass of local medical and surgical supply houses, as well as both civilian and military hospitals, was unable to find any remaining stock of this bandage, or records of sales in the past to pharmacies, hospitals, or doctors. A medical wholesaler in Chicago said he had fifteen rolls of the bandage in question still in stock, but that the company’s last sale of the ten-inch nonelastic tetra was in November 1942, when purchasing agents for England’s Royal Navy had bought one hundred thousand rolls. Acting on this information, Lieutenant Spellacy checked with the harbormaster of the Port of Los Angeles, and learned that HMS
Resolve
, a Royal Navy aircraft carrier, had put to sea at 2045 hours the night of July 26, 1945, along with six escort vessels. During the squadron’s two-day layover in port, all officers and men had been confined to their ships; after the squadron sailed, the force commander informed the U.S. Navy shore patrol that one British officer, two petty officers, and eight seamen were absent and unaccounted for. Ten of these eleven were quickly rounded up and remanded to the Long Beach brig, while the body of the
eleventh, Lieutenant Commander Alastair Drummond, RN, washed up naked on the beach at San Pedro three days later, he apparently having drowned while trying to swim from the
Resolve
to Terminal Island. The two petty officers and eight seamen were eliminated as suspects as it could be proven that none had ventured far from Long Beach the night of the murder; Lieutenant Commander Drummond was listed as a suspect until Royal Navy authorities informed the Shore Patrol that he had been about to be accused of oral and anal copulation by an able seaman on the
Resolve
, and it was determined that he had committed suicide rather than face the indignity of a court-martial that would have led to his being sentenced to a naval prison and cashiered from the service.
Using Meta Dierdorf’s address book, her photo albums, and her considerable correspondence, and with the assistance of provost marshals at military facilities both in this country and abroad, Lieutenant Spellacy and his investigators interrogated, fingerprinted, and eliminated one hundred and nine officers and enlisted men from all the services as possible suspects in her murder. The crime-against-person reports of all sex crimes in the months preceding and following her death, whether resulting in homicide or not, were examined for any similarities in M.O. to the Dierdorf case. Nameless suspects were identified only as being “left-handed” or having “tattoo of naked woman with pubic hair on right arm” or as “dope fiend.” Two nights after Meta Dierdorf was killed, and only three blocks away from her apartment at 8497 Fountain Avenue, there was an attack against a young woman living alone that also involved a bandage. Miss Evangeline McGuinn, a twenty-year-old cashier at the Fox Wiltern Theater, reported that after counting the box office receipts for the 9:00
P.M
. showing of
The Story of G.I. Joe
, she had returned to her apartment at 1016 Hancock Avenue, listened to Jimmy Dorsey on the radio, and then had gone to bed. At 11:30, she was awakened by a male Caucasian, age twenty to thirty years, approximately five feet ten inches tall, with a medium build. The attacker had apparently entered the
apartment via a rear door with a broken latch. According to the crime-against-person report filed with the LAPD:
Victim stated she was awakened by a man who had his hands around her neck. Susp said, “I don’t want to rape you, all I want to do is kiss you all over. If you scream, I’ll fix it so you can’t scream.” Susp then took victim’s hands, and tied them behind her back with an Ace bandage. Victim said she had purchased said bandage when she had sprained her wrist when she fell from a step ladder while painting her apt in the spring. Ace bandage was in her bathroom medicine cabinet. After tying vict’s hands, susp raised vict’s nightgown and began to caress her body with his lips, finally placing his mouth on her private parts. Susp then said. “I think I’ll change my mind and rape you after all.” Vict stated, “Under other circumstances, I might enjoy this, but as you see, I am very upset.” At this, susp apologized and told vict not to scream. Vict said, “He then proceeded to play with himself until he came.” Vict pointed out several apparent semen stains on carpet where susp had been kneeling. A few seconds after susp left the house, vict McGuinn heard a car start and drive away down rear alley. Vict was able to remove Ace bandage, and after waiting to make sure susp would not return she dialed operator and asked her to call police. Susp did not remove anything from vict’s apt, even though she was wearing amethyst ring and had $57 in her purse.
F. Y. Masaryk
Robbery-Homicide
Investigator (Primary)
CC: Lieutenant Spellacy for Dierdorf File
From Lieutenant Spellacy’s notes:
1) how’d he know Ace bandage was in medicine cabinet? ck it out first? she tell him?
2) bet she knew him? likes getting tied up? there’s them that do.
3) “Under other circumstances I might enjoy this.” Under any circumstances, I bet.
4) “Until he came,” she says. Since when do nice girls say “came.” “Climax” is what they say, or “You know,” something like that. This is a live wire, this one. Re-interrogate HOLlywood 3685.
I wondered if Lieutenant Spellacy had something other than interrogation in mind for the live wire at 1016 Hancock Avenue, Hollywood 3685, and if the circumstances were right for Evangeline McGuinn to enjoy it.
Other leads vanished, other trails led only to dead ends. As if by rote, Lieutenant Spellacy sent letters:
With reference to above subject, Wallace Morris, who was executed at Walla Walla January 15, 1948, I would appreciate some information respecting the subject which might connect him to a similar unsolved murder I have open in my files. Specifically if subject Morris was known to be in the Los Angeles or southern California area o/a July 26, 1945.
And again:
I would greatly appreciate if you would question Jack Tunney Kiefer, who as I understand it is to be executed at Utah State Penitentiary for a similar crime, and ascertain if he was in the vicinity of Hollywood, California, o/a July 26, 1945.
The last official entry in the case file was the reply to a letter Lieutenant Spellacy had sent, in 1952, seven years after the murder of Meta Dierdorf, to the police chief in Fort Smith,
Arkansas, about a murder suspect, Emory Lyon, who had come to Lieutenant Spellacy’s attention via a report distributed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Emory Lyon had crammed a towel down the throat of his latest victim before he had raped and killed her. There was no reason to believe that Emory Lyon had strangled Meta Dierdorf, as his area of criminal activity centered on the Southwest, but in the absence of any other evidence, the M.O. of the crime seemed at least to warrant an inquiry. The reply from the chief of police in Fort Smith, Arkansas, to Lieutenant Spellacy read:
This man is a professional hitchhiker and murderer. He claims he has been hitchhiking since he was 14 years of age. The states he has been hitchhiking mostly in are Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah.
We have him definitely connected with five murders in Arkansas and one in Kansas. When we start questioning him about murders outside the state of Arkansas, we will definitely question him about your murder in Los Angeles.
There was no further communication in the Dierdorf murder book from the Fort Smith, Arkansas, police department. Yet in this single cryptic communiqué (available, I suppose, only to me, and perhaps to Lieutenant Spellacy during the lonely hours during which he was trying to tie any threads together), there was the clearest possible sense of life’s improbabilities, of the way the path of Emory Lyon, a professional hitchhiker and murderer from Arkansas, the Land of Opportunity, could happen to cross, however indirectly, the equally haphazard path of Blue Tyler, child star and box office champion. As had the paths of Harold Eustis, Evangeline McGuinn, Lieutenant Commander Alastair Drummond, RN, and the red gelding named Oscar. I would argue that consideration of these improbabilities is a recipe for madness.
After thirty years in the LAPD, Lieutenant T. J. Spellacy finally retired in October 1963. Clipped to the last page of the Dierdorf murder book was a handwritten note, dated the day of his retirement:
“V, Vida—who?”