Slaughter on North Lasalle (19 page)

In the case of the North LaSalle Street murders, the prosecutor declined. No arrest warrants would be issued based just on what evidence Layton had available, which was mostly witness statements with really no new hard physical evidence. Most prosecutors, besides not wanting to damage someone’s reputation by arresting him or her for a murder that can’t be proved, and through this waste taxpayer money, also live and die by their conviction rate. Every prosecutor wants to brag about having a high conviction rate. It’s how they measure their success. Also, few individuals who run for the office of prosecutor see it as an end. Most see it as a springboard to a higher political office. But to get to this higher office they have to have been successful as a prosecutor. Therefore, taking on a case that has a strong likelihood of falling apart in court is never an attractive idea.

In addition, in any murder investigation, while it is nice to have statements from witnesses, and even confessions, these cannot take the place of hard evidence. Jurors like to see physical evidence that can tie a suspect to a crime. Jurors like to see fingerprints or DNA left behind at the crime scene. Jurors like to have the murder weapon found in the suspect’s possession or the victim’s blood on the suspect’s clothing. Members of a jury feel much more comfortable about convicting someone when there is physical evidence. Jurors don’t like to convict on murder charges—which typically carry a lengthy prison sentence or even the death penalty—unless they can see convincing evidence the person is guilty. In the North LaSalle Street case, however, no physical evidence at all
tied Carroll Horton to the murders. All the police had were the statements supplied by Floyd Chastain, a convicted felon, and Mary Cavanaugh, an apparently unreliable witness.

This is not to say that witness statements have no prosecutorial value. They do. But prosecutors know that statements can often be distorted by what a witness has read somewhere, has heard from other witnesses, or believes he or she saw based on the witness’s opinion of the perpetrator. How a person feels about someone else can often color their impressions of what they see. For example, acts that would appear innocuous when done by ordinary people can often appear devious and criminal if done by someone a witness doesn’t like.

Also, prosecutors must always consider whether witnesses may be lying for some reason. The witness may actually be the perpetrator and is trying to shift the blame, or the witness may have a grudge against someone and is lying as payback. In addition to this, people simply see events differently. Ask any police officer taking witness statements at the scene of a crime: It can be amazing how differently people who witnessed the same event saw it. That’s why statements like these have to be confirmed or corroborated by physical evidence in order to carry real evidentiary weight.

In the case of Mary Cavanaugh, the prosecutor saw serious problems. When Cavanaugh told the police that she had been dragged into the murder scene, she was talking about events that had occurred well over twenty years earlier, and which had been reported on extensively
in the news media. The prosecutor knew that Cavanaugh had very likely read and heard a lot about the North LaSalle Street murders over the passing years. Anyone living in Indianapolis during that time couldn’t help but hear about them. Also, the prosecutor was concerned about reports of a drinking problem, which raised fears about how this condition could affect her memory.

Additionally, the police had had Cavanaugh hypnotized in an attempt to enhance her memory. While this technique can assist people in recalling traumatic events, it is also fraught with problems. Individuals in a hypnotic state are very prone to suggestion and can be made to “remember” events that are suggested to them. Consequently, the prosecutor knew that a good defense attorney would jump all over the issue of Mary Cavanaugh having been hypnotized, using it as evidence that her testimony was unreliable.

But Cavanaugh wasn’t the only witness that the prosecutor had trouble with. Carol Schultz admitted that she’d told Chastain details from the case files, such as the fact that there had been pizza boxes under the coffee table in the living room of the North LaSalle Street house (something Chastain had related back to the police to convince them he had been there). She also admitted to sending him a newspaper clipping, the contents of which, like the pizza boxes, Chastain had used in his statements to the police. Schultz later agreed that she told Chastain too much about the case, rather than letting him tell her. Schultz apparently didn’t realize that, like Horton, Chastain had fallen in love with her and
wanted very much to impress her. He obviously believed that having and sharing knowledge about the North LaSalle Street murderers was the way to do it.

Between the lack of physical evidence and the issues with Chastain and Cavanaugh, the prosecutor simply didn’t think that the police had enough evidence to warrant an arrest. He felt they simply had no chance of winning with just what they had, so he declined to act.

Carol Schultz said in her book that she again felt devastated that the Prosecutor’s Office wouldn’t do anything. She had been positive that with Layton taking over the case, and with Cavanaugh adding her testimony to Chastain’s, it would be more than enough. Schultz’s take on this latest setback was that she’d heard the prosecutor, because of an upcoming election, didn’t want to do anything that could turn out badly (which this case had the strong possibility of doing). She said she felt crushed.

Despite being deeply disappointed by the prosecutor’s decision, Carol Schultz continued to stay in constant contact with both Carroll Horton and Floyd Chastain. She simply could not give up hope of eventually bringing Horton to justice. And the book, she knew, wouldn’t have a proper ending without an arrest and trial.

Then, according to Schultz, a new wrinkle in the case appeared. Early one morning Chastain called her collect from the prison in Florida. She said he told her that he had been up all night praying and that he had something he wanted to confess to her.

Chastain had earlier told Schultz that he had just
been the driver of the getaway car, and that was his total involvement in the North LaSalle Street murders. But now he told her that this wasn’t true. He was actually much more involved than that. Chastain’s new story was that on the morning of December 1, 1971, he drove his mother’s car to the North LaSalle Street address. In the car with him, Chastain said, were Carroll Horton and a man named Michael Golden,
¹
or as Chastain knew him, “Big Mike.” Chastain said that he parked the car and went into the house with them and, while they were there, two
other
men, named Paul Green
²
and Ben Wheeler,
³
drove up in an El Camino, and they also came into the house. A little later, a woman in a black Cadillac pulled up in front. According to Chastain, Horton went out and brought the woman inside. (Including the three victims, this now placed nine people in the house.)

Chastain told Schultz that he witnessed Horton slice Bob Gierse’s throat, and next watched Big Mike kill Jim Barker. Chastain said that Horton then ordered him to either slit Bob Hinson’s throat or else they would kill him. So he did it. He said he later went outside and threw up.

Schultz said in her book that, after this confession, Chastain began talking about all of Horton’s other victims, naming almost a dozen, until the operator finally cut
him off. (The Indianapolis Police Department Identification Branch would later compare the fingerprints of all of the individuals identified by Chastain as taking part in the North LaSalle Street murders, including Chastain’s, with the still unidentified fingerprints found inside the North LaSalle Street house. No matches were found.)

Later on, after digesting all of this information, and feeling it to be even more of a justification for her belief about the North LaSalle Street murders, Schultz tried to call Horton and found to her surprise that the phone service for the number she used to reach him at his shop had been disconnected. She checked and found that in fact all of the telephone lines going into his shop had been disconnected. She began panicking. Something was wrong. Did Horton know how much she knew about his involvement in the murders? The panic really took hold after she next called the electric and gas companies and found that their services were also being disconnected. Later that night, when Chastain called her collect again, Schultz told him about Horton disappearing. Chastain said he thought that Horton was probably trying to flee the country, and he again urged her to try to get the police to search Horton’s property for bodies.

When Schultz finally did make contact with Horton the next day at noon, she said she screamed at him for not letting her know that he was having his telephone service disconnected. He explained the disconnections by telling her about his need to downsize his auto business and move everything into just one building. Schultz
finally calmed down and then they talked for a while. Following this, she and Horton then returned to their daily telephone calls.

Despite Carol Schultz’s continued contact with Horton and Chastain following the prosecutor’s refusal to proceed, nothing was happening in the North LaSalle Street case. It simply sat dormant, as it had for well over twenty years. Schultz knew that something had to be done. So she decided that perhaps a little more publicity could stir things up a bit. She contacted
NUVO,
the largest alternative newspaper in Indianapolis, and persuaded them to commit to publishing an article concerning what she had uncovered about the North LaSalle Street murders.

Schultz said that when she told Carroll Horton about the article she was going to write for
NUVO
, he seemed very pleased. He told her that she needed all the publicity she could get if she wanted the book she was writing to be a success. According to Schultz, he then asked her if she was worried about him going to jail, and she told him yes. She later said that she couldn’t believe her attachment to him. She wrote that even though she honestly believed Horton to be a murderer, she still felt sorry for him.

But Schultz also feared him. She still believed him to be a serial killer who wouldn’t hesitate to add her to his list of victims. Although Sheriff McAtee didn’t recall this, she said she mentioned to him how scared she was of Horton, and McAtee, she said, sympathized with her and offered to park an empty sheriff’s car out in front of
her house. (With it out front, the thinking went, if Horton passed by he would believe a deputy was inside.) She said McAtee told her she’d have to occasionally move the car and park it in different positions so that Horton would think the deputy had left and then came back.

Sometime earlier, in late 1993, Schultz had resigned from her job as a reporter for the
Indianapolis News
. She knew she had to. Schultz said her editor told her that she had gotten much too close to the police in her investigation of the North LaSalle Street killings. He told her that a reporter didn’t do undercover work for the police. Her going to dinner wearing a body wire that the police could listen in on had compromised her ethics. Journalists simply didn’t do that.

Consequently, on New Year’s Eve 1993, as Schultz sat at home, lonely and depressed, waiting for 1994, she said she wished she had someone to share it with, but that she hadn’t dated much since she started the North LaSalle Street investigation. It had taken over her life. Finally, bored with being alone, she decided to call Horton. He told her that she shouldn’t be alone on New Year’s Eve, but out celebrating with someone. He then suggested that she come over to his place for the night, but she turned him down. Instead, she plugged in the tape recorder and tried to get him to talk about the North LaSalle Street killings. They talked for three hours, but still no confession or incriminating statements.

Horton, however, did reportedly tell her that Sheriff McAtee had asked him to come down and take a lie detector test, but that his attorney had told him not to.
Horton, though, said he was considering it. He said he was innocent, and that taking a lie detector test might be the best thing to do since it would prove he was innocent.

Horton eventually did show up for a lie detector test, but then apparently decided at the last moment that it wouldn’t be in his best interests to go through with it after all.

“We had Carroll Horton in for a lie detector test,” confirmed Popcheff. “When he arrived, he asked if we had a doctor or a hospital close by, and all of a sudden he’s having heart problems. He never did take a lie detector test.”

Regardless though of Horton’s decision not to take a lie detector test, the prosecutor’s office simply didn’t feel there was enough evidence to proceed, which certainly wasn’t what Carol Schultz had expected. Along with Carol Schultz, though, family members of the North LaSalle Street victims also felt disappointed with the prosecutor’s decision not to issue an arrest warrant. They had been in contact with Schultz, who’d convinced them that she had solved the murders of their loved ones. On October 24, 1994, Ted Gierse, Bob Gierse’s brother, delivered a scathing letter to Marion County Prosecutor Jeff Modisett. In it, he told Modisett how disappointed he was that the Prosecutor’s Office wouldn’t be pursuing charges based on the new evidence recovered by Carol Schultz. Ted said that, because of this new evidence, he had changed his belief that the North LaSalle Street murders had been committed for business reasons to
now considering jealousy as the motive. He pleaded with the Prosecutor’s Office to do something.

Prosecutor Jeff Modisett, on October 25, 1994, answered Ted Gierse’s letter, explaining why his office didn’t want to proceed with the case. Modisett said that while he would love to solve the most notorious crime in Marion County history, the evidence Carol Schultz had provided was extremely weak, and he believed the witnesses (Chastain and Cavanaugh) were simply caught up in the excitement and attention they were getting because of being involved in the case. Furthermore, he said, the statements of the two witnesses were too contradictory to use in a trial, which they would almost certainly lose. Any good defense attorney would tear their statements apart. (Chastain, for example, had originally said that he had been working at a garage when a man came in covered with blood and told him he had gotten $30,000 to kill the three men. Then Chastain’s story changed to himself as the getaway driver.) For these reasons, prosecution simply wasn’t possible.