Slaughter on North Lasalle (10 page)

As a part of their progress report, the detectives told of how a uniformed street lieutenant had called the Homicide Office and advised them that he had learned the SupeRx Drug Store a half block from B&B Microfilming on East 10th Street had developed some photographs that had apparently been taken at Bob Gierse’s birthday party on November 18. The lieutenant also learned that Wava Winslow, one of Jim Barker’s girlfriends, had come into the store and tried to pay for and pick up the photographs. The manager of the store, however, knowing about the police investigation of the triple murder, had put her off and managed to snap a Polaroid picture of her before she left. The detectives instructed the lieutenant to get the photographs and bring them to the Homicide Office. They hoped that the photographs might show someone at the party they weren’t aware of. However, though they studied the photographs intently, nothing of significance came of this lead.

The report also talked about the detectives’ attempts to locate the women on the three men’s sexual conquest scorecard, and about how they weren’t having much
success. A lot of these women, the detectives found, had apparently been one-night stands picked up in bars, and so the people who knew the victims didn’t know them, which made locating these women very difficult. In addition, the three men apparently had nicknames for some of the women that they had shared only among themselves.

The detectives, in their report, also told about contacting the Homicide Branch of the St. Louis Police Department. McAtee and his team had received information from several witnesses that the three victims had been arrested while attending a football game there in November of 1971. Perhaps, the detectives thought, the men had gotten into a dispute with someone who could be considered a suspect. The detectives in St. Louis said that they would look into it and send any reports they could find.

The progress report then went on to tell of a message the detectives had received from the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office in Florida. It stated that a man in custody there had claimed to be the one who had committed the triple murder in Indianapolis. The man had no identification on him and his identity had not yet been learned. Upon calling the department in Florida, the detectives spoke with a deputy there who told them that they had arrested a very shabbily dressed man of Puerto Rican descent who told them that he had committed the triple murder in Indianapolis. The deputy said that the man told them this in English and then began speaking Spanish and hadn’t spoken English since. It was believed
that the man had serious mental problems, however, and the deputy told the detectives that the triple murder case in Indianapolis had been on the news in Florida, so the man might have learned about it that way. Although the Indianapolis detectives didn’t consider the man a viable suspect, they requested that the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office send Indianapolis whatever information they could obtain about him.

Strange as it might seem, false confession is not an uncommon occurrence in murder cases that garner a lot of publicity. Often, individuals with serious mental problems want to confess to these crimes, causing major problems for investigators. Whether it is because these individuals have deluded themselves into believing they actually did commit the crime, or because they feel they deserve to be punished for some other misdeed, and confessing to the crime is how they do it, it is often hard to determine. Many of these individuals have also read up on and studied the case, so they seem to have an intimate knowledge of it, just as a real suspect would. Such false confessions are part of why homicide detectives never release all of the details of a major crime to the public. Mentally disturbed individuals who want to confess to a crime, though they may be thoroughly versed in the case, will not know these undisclosed details.

In their progress report, the detectives went on to tell of visiting restaurants and taverns the men frequented. At the White Front Tavern, they learned from customers of yet another person of interest in the case, a regular who might have had a motive for the murders. One of
the victims had dated his wife. The detectives took all of the information they could get about the man and then asked the owner of the bar to notify them when the man came in. They didn’t say it in their report, but one thing the detectives certainly didn’t need was another suspect.

But the suspects kept coming. In an interview with Carol Ann Faulkner, a former girlfriend of Jim Barker’s, the detectives became apprised of yet another person whom the three men had made very angry. She told them that after she and Barker started dating, one time she, Barker, and Hinson had gone with a friend of theirs named Dick Roller and his girlfriend to a tavern. Barker and Hinson had persuaded Roller’s girlfriend to get up onstage and sing a song, but once she did, they began making fun of her. Incensed, Roller grabbed his girlfriend and stormed out of the tavern.

Further investigation into this incident with Roller and his girlfriend brought the detectives in contact with a lady named Sharon Mitchell, who said that she and Roller had moved to Indianapolis together from Dallas, that Jim Barker had moved in with them for a while—and that when Roller found a new girlfriend, she moved out and started dating Barker. To add more complicated connections, Mitchell also told the detectives that she was now living with Ilene Combest, Gierse’s old girlfriend.

Although Mitchell mentioned that Roller had moved back to Texas prior to the murders, which was later confirmed (and so wasn’t a suspect), detectives would learn that the manner in which the three victims had treated
Roller’s girlfriend wasn’t an isolated case—the three men had seemed to really enjoy embarrassing or humiliating people. Witnesses also said that the men liked to bully and try to intimidate people. This information, the detectives knew, only added the possibility of many more suspects. Someone who’d been deeply embarrassed or humiliated in public might have felt motivated to kill, even in as vicious a manner as had been done on North LaSalle Street.

The report also mentioned yet another couple of wrinkles in the case. The detectives interviewed a man named Bob McAbe, a business associate of Bob Gierse’s who worked for the 3M Corporation. McAbe told the detectives that he and Gierse would help each other with business leads, and that Gierse had tried to persuade him to quit 3M and come work for him. On the morning of November 30, 1971, McAbe said, he had spoken with Gierse on the telephone and Gierse had asked him if he had ever worked with classified material. McAbe said he had. “Isn’t that [a] hell of a way to do business,” Gierse had responded. The detectives had also heard from other sources that the men were working with secret material, yet the records of B&B Microfilming didn’t show any contracts with organizations that might want classified material microfilmed. Had Gierse just been trying to make it seem as if they did?

The detectives had wanted to conduct a follow-up interview with Diane Horton, Gierse’s girlfriend, but hadn’t been able to reach her by telephone. Consequently, the detectives sent a police car out to check the security of her
residence since, like many of those involved in the case, she had earlier reported receiving threatening telephone calls. The officer didn’t find anything amiss there, and the detectives were finally able to contact Diane and have her come into the Homicide Office. They also had Louise Cole and April Lynn Smoot return for more questioning.

They learned from these interviews that Gierse and Hinson had gone to the Big Wheel Restaurant in Bloomington, Indiana, in late September to meet with Ted Uland, just two days after Hinson had left the company. The two men were accompanied to the meeting by Gierse’s on-and-off girlfriend, Ilene Combest. Reportedly, after a few minutes, when Hinson had said that he wouldn’t change his mind about leaving Records Security Corporation, Uland had excused him, and Hinson went out and sat in the car with Combest. Gierse and Uland then talked for almost two hours. The detectives made a note to follow up with Ilene Combest and see if they could find out what Gierse and Uland had talked about.

Later in their report, the detectives mentioned speaking with a Mrs. King, who also lived on North LaSalle Street. In addition to corroborating that streams of young women would come and go at all hours from Gierse and Hinson’s house, Mrs. King also stated that on the night of November 30, 1971, she had seen an unfamiliar light-colored car parked in front of their place. She had never seen the car in the neighborhood before. She told the detectives that she saw the car there at between 9:30 and 10:00
P.M.

In addition to Mrs. King and the neighbor interviewed on December 7, the detectives then found a third person in the neighborhood who had witnessed the same car parked there. He also said he’d never seen the car in the area before and had walked by it, noticing that the license plate had a 26A prefix (meaning that it came from Gibson County in southern Indiana). While this should have raised red flags for the detectives investigating the murders, it didn’t. This license plate is mentioned in the progress report but nowhere else in the homicide case file. For some unknown reason, the detectives didn’t appear to follow up on this information about the unusual license plate or attempt to find the owner of this car, or if they did, they didn’t generate any paperwork about their efforts.

The detectives would, however, eventually talk to a fourth witness about this mystery car. “About two weeks after the murders we hear from a witness that a car with three guys in it was sitting across the street from the murder scene,” said Detective Sergeant Popcheff.

In mid-December, another neighbor on North LaSalle, Michael Ray, told the police that on the night of the murders, he’d been walking home from his brother’s house on North Kealing Avenue, five blocks east, and had walked along the 1300 block of North LaSalle Street. On that night, he said, he saw a light-colored dirty car with three males sitting in it, parked across the street from the house. He said that the driver had looked strangely at him as he passed by, and that as he kept walking he noticed a man sitting in the backseat also
watching him. He gave the police a very general description of the men, saying the man in the backseat looked about thirty to thirty-one, and was heavyset, with a round face, black hair, and bushy sideburns. The one in the front seat, he said, appeared older and slimmer. He told the police he didn’t see what the third man looked like.

“They were drinking beer and throwing their bottles out onto the ground. But by the time we found out it was too late,” lamented Popcheff years later. The detectives knew that the beer bottles would have contained fingerprints that could have been key pieces of evidence. Popcheff said they asked the man why, since he knew there had been a triple murder, he hadn’t called the police earlier. Ray replied that he’d been busy with school and just hadn’t gotten around to it.

Popcheff would later say that incidents like that seemed to plague the North LaSalle Street investigation. It was a case, he said, that the detectives just couldn’t seem to ever get a grip on.

The report then told of an additional development in the case that raised the possibility of yet another suspect in the ever-increasing pool. Working on a tip, the detectives went to the Merry-Go-Round Bar on East New York Street and spoke with the bartender, who told them that a man named Phil Pickard had been in the tavern the previous night, bragging about how good he was with a knife and how he had killed three men with one. The bartender said that Pickard had been so drunk that he had personally driven him home. The detectives went
to Mr. Pickard’s residence and picked him up, taking him down to the Homicide Office, where they questioned him.

Pickard said that he remembered the bartender taking him home, but denied any knowledge of the North LaSalle Street murders. The detectives showed Pickard some crime scene photos to see his reaction, but he showed no signs of being upset. When asked if he would take a lie detector test, he agreed to.

Pickard was just one of several individuals throughout the course of the investigation who would falsely brag that they had a connection to the murders. It’s not an uncommon phenomenon in highly publicized crimes—men will often want to impress or scare others, and so they will brag or hint that they committed some infamous crime. With just a little investigation, though, the police could usually dismiss these claims for the empty boasts they were.

In their progress report the detectives also told of how, in response to a tip, they went to the Marion County Recorder’s Office to check on a report that the federal government had put a lien against Records Security Corporation. The detectives had been told by several people that Records Security Corporation was in serious financial straits, and they found that indeed, on December 2, 1971, the federal government had put a lien of $6,385.88 for back taxes against Records Security Corporation. The detectives also learned that this wasn’t the first time; it
turned out that the federal government had put several other liens against the business in the past.

On December 11, 1971, the report said, the homicide detectives had Ted Uland come into the Homicide Office for an interview. He brought with him some records that the detectives had requested from Records Security Corporation. They advised Uland of his constitutional rights against self-incrimination. He said he understood them, but then refused to sign the waiver of rights form, although he agreed to talk with the detectives.

Uland told them that the insurance policies on Gierse and Hinson had been taken out by Gierse, not him, and that he’d recently found out that they were in effect only until December 10, 1971. In any case, he added, some question had apparently arisen as to whether or not the insurance company would pay off because neither man worked for the company any longer.

When asked about the meeting with Gierse and Hinson in Bloomington, Uland said that it had occurred on September 26, 1971, and that he had offered Hinson $5,000 to stay with Records Security Corporation until the end of the year. He had really needed him. Hinson, however, had refused. Uland then told the detectives that for some reason Hinson had brought a gun along with him to the meeting, though Uland was unable to describe or give any other information about the gun. The detectives still listed Uland as a possible suspect, and when they offered him two dates for a lie detector test, he wouldn’t commit, but said that he would have to get back to them.