Dying in the Post-War World

21

The deaths of Otto Bergstrum and James Watson made a bizarre sidebar in the ongoing saga of the Lipstick Killer, but neither the cops nor the press allowed the “fatal falling out between friends” to influence the accepted scenario.

It turned out there was even something of a motive: Watson had loaned Otto five hundred dollars to pay off a gambling debt; Otto played the horses, it seemed. Speculation was that Watson, knowing Otto was due reward money from the Keenan case, had demanded payment. Both men were known to have bad tempers. Both had killed in the war — well, each in his individual war.

The cops never figured out how the two men had managed to kill each other with the one knife, not that anybody seemed to care. It was fine with me. Nobody had seen me in the vicinity that rainy night, or at least nobody who bothered to report it.

Lapps was indicted on multiple burglary, assault, and murder charges. His lawyers entered into what years later an investigative journalist would term “a strange, unprecedented cooperative relationship” with the State’s Attorney’s office.

In order to save their client from the electric chair, the defense lawyers — despite the prosecution’s admission of the “small likelihood of a successful murder prosecution of Jerome Lapps” — advised the boy to cop a plea.

If Lapps were to confess to the murders of Caroline Williams, Margaret Johnson, and JoAnn Keenan, the State’s Attorney would seek concurrent life sentences. That meant parole in twenty years.

Lapps — reluctantly, I’m told — accepted the plea bargain, but when the boy was taken into a judge’s presence to make a formal admission of guilt, he said instead, “I don’t remember killing anybody.”

The recantation cost him. Even though Lapps eventually gave everybody the confession they wanted, the deal was off: all he got out of it was avoiding the chair. His three life terms were concurrent with a recommendation of no parole. Ever.

He tried to hang himself in his cell, but it didn’t take.

I took a ride on the Rock Island Rocket to Joliet to visit Lapps, about a year after he was sent up.

The visiting room at Stateville was a long narrow room cut in half by a long wide table with a glass divider. I’d already taken my seat with the other visitors when guards paraded in a handful of prisoners.

Lapps, like the others, wore blue denims and a blue-and-white striped shirt, which looked like a normal dress shirt, unless the wearer turned to reveal a stenciled number across the back. The husky, good-looking kid had changed little in appearance; maybe he was a little heavier. His dark, wavy hair, though no shorter, was cut differently — it was neater looking, a student’s hair, not a j.d.’s.

He sat and smiled shyly. “I remember you.”

“You should. You tried to shoot me.”

“That’s what I understand. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t remember?”

“No.”

“The gun you used was one you’d stolen. The owner identified it along with other stuff of his you took.”

He shrugged; this was all news to him.

I continued: “The owner said the gun had been his father’s and had been stuck in a drawer for seventeen years. Hadn’t been fired for a long time.”

His brow knit. “That’s why the gun didn’t go off, when I shot at you?”

“Yes. But a ballistics expert said the third shot would have gone off. You’d reactivated the trigger.”

“I’m glad it didn’t.”

“Me too.”

We looked at each other. My gaze was hard, unforgiving; his was evasive, shy.

“Why are you here, Mr. Heller?”

“I wanted to ask you a question. Why did you confess to all three murders?”

He shrugged again. “I had to. Otherwise, I’d be dead, my lawyers say. I just made things up. Told them what they wanted to hear. Repeated things back to them. Used what I read in the papers.” One more shrug. Then his dark eyes tightened. “Why? You asked me like... like you knew I didn’t do them.”

“You did one of them, Jerry. You killed Margaret Williams and you wrote that lipstick message on her wall.”

Something flickered in his eyes. “I don’t remember.”

“Maybe not. But you also assaulted Katherine Reynolds, and you tried to shoot me. As far as I’m concerned, that’s why you’re here.”

“You don’t think I killed that little girl?”

“I know you didn’t.”

An eagerness sprang into his passive face. “Have you talked to my lawyers?”

I shook my head no.

“Would you talk to my...”

“No. I’m not going to help you, Jerry.”

“Why... why are you telling this, then...?”

My voice was barely above a whisper; this was just between us guys. “In case you’re not faking. In case you really don’t remember what you did. I think you got a right to know what you’re doing time for. What you’re really doing time for. And you did kill the second girl. And you almost killed the nurse. And you damn near killed me. That’s why you’re here, Jerry. That’s why I’m leaving you here to rot, and don’t bother repeating what I’m telling you, because I can out-lie every con in Stateville. I used to be a Chicago cop.”

He was reeling. “Who... who killed the first girl? Who killed that Caroline Williams lady?”

“Jerry,” I said, rising to go, “George did it.”