The Case of the Courteous Killer

Chapter XIV

Back at the car, we reported by radio that the suspect was in custody and the surrounding police units could be removed. Then we drove him to the Police Building. All the way he kept assuring us that we had made a mistake.

Because of his record of violence, we took him directly to the booking desk in the Felony Section and had him booked on suspicion of robbery and homicide. Ordinarily we would have taken him to an interview room for questioning before having him booked. But the Courteous Killer was classified as too dangerous a criminal to get less than the full security treatment.

At the desk he was required to empty his pockets and was thoroughly searched. A Form 5.1 was filled out, listing the items in his possession and the amount of money he had. He wore no watch or jewelry. In his pockets he had cigarettes and matches, a handkerchief, a small pocket knife, a key ring with two keys on it, some change, and a wallet. A driver’s license in the wallet gave his name as George Whiteman and a North Hollywood address.

All these items were sealed in a manila envelope, to which the white sixth copy of the Form 5.1 was attached. The pink fifth copy was given to the prisoner as a receipt. Of the remaining copies, one would go to C.I.I. in Sacramento, one was for us, and one would go to the district attorney. The original, which contained his complete booking record in addition to the property list, was the Felony Section’s file copy.

The door leading to the cell rows was unlocked by the booking sergeant, and the prisoner was led inside to be fingerprinted. From the fingerprint desk, he was taken to the shower cell. All newly booked prisoners are required to take a shower before being assigned to a regular cell.

When he had had his shower, he was led to a cell in the first row and locked in. Frank and I remained out in the corridor. The booking sergeant left us there, locking the door at the end of the corridor when he went back to the desk.

The cells of the Felony Section are clean and modern, with white porcelain fixtures and double-decker bunks. Instead of bars, the front walls are of shatterproof herculite glass thick enough to withstand the blows of a sledge hammer. The only bars are on the doors.

George Whiteman gazed around his cell with a numb look on his face. Then he turned to us.

“Why are you doing this to me?” he asked. “You’re making a terrible mistake.”

“We don’t think so,” I told him. “George Whiteman your real name?”

“Of course it is.”

“How’d you get the nickname Gig?”

He gave me a blank look. “Nobody ever called me Gig.”

I looked at him for a moment. “Still live at the address on your driver’s license?”

“Yes.”

“Anybody live with you?”

He shook his head. “It’s a rooming house. I just got one room.”

“How long you lived there?” I asked.

“Couple of weeks this trip. I’ve stayed there on and off for over a year.”

“Where’d you live before a couple of weeks back?”

“In Kansas City. I thought I had a job there, but it didn’t pan out, so I came back to Los Angeles.”

“Uh-huh. What date did you leave Los Angeles to go to Kansas City?”

“First week in September. The fourth, I think.”

September seventh was the night I had been kidnapped by the Courteous Killer. I said, “Where were you living from June nineteenth until you left for K.C.?”

“At the rooming house. I checked in about the first of May. Mrs. Lawson can tell you I’m not any bandit.”

“Who?”

“My landlady. Mrs. Lawson. You’ve got this all wrong.”

“Not from where we sit,” I told him. “What size shoe you wear?”

He looked puzzled. “Eight-and-a-half-B.”

“Where are your glasses? In your room?”

He looked even more puzzled. “What glasses?”

“The ones you read with.”

“Oh, sure,” he said. “In my room. I never wear them at work.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You told me the night of September seventh. The guns in your room, too?”

He just looked at me blankly.

“We’ll find them, anyway, if they are,” I told him. “Why do this the hard way? You know you haven’t got a chance. You can save a lot of trouble by giving it to us straight.”

“Giving what to you straight?” he asked. “I haven’t done anything.”

I looked at him steadily for a long time. Then I said, “It won’t stand up, Whiteman. We’ve got you made all along the way. Why don’t you make it easy on yourself?”

“By confessing to something I haven’t done?” he asked in a high voice. “I want a lawyer.”

“You’ll get one,” I said. “But he won’t beat this rap for you. How about it?”

He walked over and sat on the lower bunk. “I don’t have to talk to you. I’m not going to say another word till I see a lawyer.” He looked up at me stubbornly.

I glanced at Frank, and he shrugged. “Think we’re wasting our time, Joe. Be better to take a look at the room.”

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll be back, Whiteman. Don’t go away.” We walked down to the end of the corridor, and Frank yelled for the sergeant to come let us out.

8:30 p.m. Before leaving the Police Building, we called Latent Prints and asked them to compare the suspect’s prints with the partial developed on Harold Green’s wallet and the thumbprint lifted from the seat-adjustment knob of the 1955 Ford the suspect had stolen the night he killed Viola Carr. We also called the Crime Lab and asked for a comparison of the shoes the suspect was wearing with the footprints found at the scene of Marine Sergeant Nick Grotto’s murder. We told the lab we would bring in any other shoes we found when we searched the suspect’s room.

Then we obtained a search warrant and drove out to the North Hollywood rooming house where George Whiteman lived.

Mrs. Lawson, the landlady, turned out to be a tall, thin woman of about sixty, with the harassed air of a person who never finds quite time enough to get everything that needs doing done. She looked flabbergasted when we identified ourselves as police officers and showed her the search warrant.

“What’s it all about?” she asked. “What do you expect to find in Mr. Whiteman’s room?”

“Some shoes, ma’am,” I told her. “Would you show us the room, please?”

She led us up the stairs to the second floor and opened a door with a pass key. The room was about fifteen by fifteen, furnished with a brass bed, a marble-topped dresser, a writing table, and a couple of chairs. It was just a place to sleep, not a place to live.

A glasses case lay on the writing table. I opened it and frowned when I discovered it contained a pair of horn-rimmed glasses instead of rimless ones.

We made a quick but thorough search of the room. There were no guns in it, nor any other incriminating evidence. We found an extra pair of shoes in the closet. Frank and I both marked our initials inside the tongues of the shoes and had the landlady mark hers, too, so that if they ever had to be presented in court as evidence, there would be no question that they were the same shoes we found in the room.

Mrs. Lawson asked, “Are these shoes all you were looking for?”

“No, ma’am,” I said. “Mr. Whiteman own any glasses aside from those on the table?”

She stared at the glasses case as though she had never seen it before. Apparently she hadn’t, because she said, “I didn’t even know he had those. I never saw him with them on.”

Frank said, “He have any possessions anywhere else in the house? In a storage room, for instance?”

Mrs. Lawson shook her head. “No. Some of the roomers keep trunks in the attic. But all Mr. Whiteman owns is a suitcase. It’s in his closet.”

We had already looked in the suitcase and found it empty. I said, “Happen to know if he owns any guns?”

“Guns?” she repeated, shocked. “Of course not. I wouldn’t allow a gun in the house.”

Frank said, “Understand he’s lived here off and on for about a year, ma’am. Happen to have a record of just what periods he was here?”

“It would be in my rent book. What’s he done, Officer?”

I said, “We’re just making an investigation, ma’am. Could you get the rent book, please?”

“It’s downstairs,” she said.

We followed her downstairs and waited in the front room while she went to get it. It was a ledger similar to the one the landlady of the rooming house on Burbank had shown us. The record indicated that George Whiteman had been in town during the entire period of the Courteous Killer’s activity. He had checked out on September 4th telling the landlady he was taking a job in Kansas City, Missouri, and had returned again on September 16th.

“Dates figure,” Frank commented. “Doesn’t seem much doubt.”

“There never was from the time I first spotted him,” I said. “I had plenty of time to memorize his face that night.”

“What’s he done?” Mrs. Lawson asked again.

“We think he may be a man we’ve been looking for, ma’am,” I said. “You know where he worked before he left town earlier this month?”

“Why, in a filling station over on Moorpark. Stoddard’s Texaco Station. He worked days.”

Frank entered the name of the station and its address in his notebook. Then he referred to another section of the notebook and said, “Be helpful if you could remember whether or not Mr. Whiteman was home on certain nights we’re interested in, ma’am. Wednesday, June nineteenth, for instance.” That was the date of the Courteous Killer’s first robbery, and his attack on young Harold Green.

The landlady looked blank. “My goodness, I couldn’t remember that far back.”

“There’s also the nights of June twenty-first, twenty-fourth, twenty-sixth, twenty-seventh, twenty-ninth, and thirtieth,” Frank said, reading off the dates of other robberies from his notebook. “Recall any of those nights?”

Mrs. Lawson’s face lit up. “June thirtieth, I do. That’s my birthday.”

I said, “Recall if Mr. Whiteman was away that night?”

Her face fell again. “Yes, he was. The roomers all gave me a party. Lasted till after midnight. But Mr. Whiteman left at nine thirty. Said he had some business, but we all figured he had another date, and was just running out on the party. Hadn’t gotten home by one a.m., when I went to bed.”

That was the night before the murder of Marine Sergeant Nick Grotto and the wounding of Nancy Meere. The night of the Courteous Killer’s seventh robbery.

“Recall the next night?” Frank asked. “July first?”

Mrs. Lawson looked thoughtful. “Believe he went out again. Can’t be sure, though. He goes out a lot at night.”

She was unable to remember whether or not he had been home on the night of July 22nd, when Viola Carr was murdered, or on the 24th, 26th, or 29th, the dates of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh robberies.

I said, “We have reason to believe that the man we’re looking for was wounded on the night of Tuesday, August sixth. You recall Mr. Whiteman giving any indication that he might have been injured about that time?”

The-thoughtful look returned to her face. “He laid off from work sick a few days the first part of August. Can’t remember the exact dates. First or second week, it was, though.” After a pause she added, “Does that every once in a while, though. Pretends he’s sick to get a few days off. Doesn’t mean anything.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “It would be helpful if you could recall the exact day he got sick.”

She thought some more, finally shook her head. “Afraid I can’t come any closer than the first or second week of August.”

There wasn’t any point in asking her about the seventh of September, the night of my kidnapping, as he had checked out of the rooming house on the fourth. We thanked her for her trouble and left.

9:27 p.m. We drove over to Stoddard’s Texaco Station on Moorpark. The place stayed open till 11:00 p.m., and we found Earl Stoddard, the proprietor, still there. He was a plump, middle-aged man with an easygoing manner.

The filling-station proprietor could give us no information about George Whiteman’s evening activities on the dates we were interested in. However, he did have a record of the days the suspect had missed work because of illness. One of the periods was from Sunday, August 4th, through Friday, August 9th.

“I remembered I suspected at the time he’d been on a toot Saturday night, and all he really had was a hangover,” Stoddard told us. “Must’ve really been sick, though, to stay out six days. When he went on a bust, usually he only missed a day or two afterward.”

The record showed that he had missed several other periods from work because of claimed illness, but none of the others were for more than three days at a time.

As we drove back to the Police Building, Frank said, “Funny he laid off sick two days before he was shot.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Course, he might have gone on a drunk on Saturday the third, like Stoddard seemed to think, and missed a couple of days because of that. Then missed more time because of his wounds.”

“One way to find out,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Have a doctor look him over for a couple of eight-week-old wounds.”