The Case of the Courteous Killer

Chapter XVII

5:31 p.m. We talked to the officers who had originally arrested George Whiteman, and were allowed to examine the file on the case. The suspect had been apprehended just before midnight on Tuesday, October 8th. He had been caught in the act during a lovers’ lane robbery on Forest Park’s Art Hill, a favorite parking place for petters. The St. Louis police had no package on him showing a previous record.

The property section had two pairs of shoes that had been found in Whiteman’s room after his arrest. We asked that they be released to us, and were granted the request.

The gun in the suspect’s possession at the time of his arrest was a .38-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver. As no other weapons were found either on his person or in the room he had at the time, apparently he had disposed of the gun he took from me the night of the kidnapping.

The St. Louis police did not want to release the .38 to us, as they now wanted the suspect prosecuted for murder in the neighboring State of Illinois in the event that he was apprehended. To policemen everywhere a cop-killing is the supreme crime, and it was understandable that the rewards offered in California now meant nothing to the St. Louis police. Their prime concern was the suspect’s apprehension and conviction for the murder of a St. Louis police officer.

Even though the gun taken from the suspect at the time of his arrest had not been used in the killing, we didn’t argue with them. If a Los Angeles policeman had been killed, we would have wanted to hold onto every possible bit of evidence. However, the lab did furnish us with a couple of bullets fired from the gun, so that we could take them back to Los Angeles for comparison with the bullets that had wounded Nancy Meere and killed Viola Carr.

When we had collected all the information available from the police department, Frank and I left the building to look for a place to spend the night. The nearest hotel was the Jefferson, which was only a couple of blocks north on Twelfth from Police Headquarters. As all we had to carry was a small overnight bag apiece plus the package containing the suspect’s two pairs of shoes, we walked to the hotel.

By the time we had settled ourselves in our hotel room and had had some dinner, it was 7:00 p.m. As we left the dining room, Frank said, “Not much we can do except catch a plane back in the morning, I guess.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“At least we accomplished a little,” Frank said. “If either of those shoes match the plaster casts, or the bullets match the ones that killed Viola Carr and wounded the Meere girl, we’ve got that much more evidence against him.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Captain told us to get that stuff.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But we muffed his most important instruction.”

“Huh?”

“He told us to hang onto the suspect.”

Frank’s mention of evidence reminded me that there was one item we hadn’t checked. The watch with the inscription on its back reading, To Gig from Min — 1944. We had brought along the watch in the hope that by questioning the suspect we might learn the location of the woman who had bought it in North Hollywood.

On a hunch I led Frank to the small room off the lobby where there were twin banks of phone booths. I riffled the pages of a phone book.

“You know somebody in this town?” Frank asked.

I ran an index finger down a page in the “W” section, and stopped near the bottom of the page. “Not yet,” I said. “But I plan to.”

“Huh?”

“There’s a Minerva Warden listed in South St. Louis. Just might be the same Minerva Warden who bought that watch.”

We returned to Police Headquarters and had another conference with the same officers we had talked to before. We explained about the watch and that there was a possibility the local Minerva Warden was the same one who bought it in 1944. We suggested that a St. Louis police officer go with us to interview the woman.

A Homicide sergeant named James Slade was assigned to accompany us.

We decided against phoning Minerva Warden in advance. If she was the woman we were looking for, and was still on intimate terms with the suspect, it was possible he had been in contact with her since his escape. It was even remotely possible that he had doubled back to St. Louis and was hiding at her place.

If he was, we didn’t want to give any advance notice that police officers were on their way.

The address listed in the phone book was 5322 South Thirty-seventh Street, which was down in the Carondolet section. We arrived shortly after 8:00 p.m.

Fifty-three-twenty-two South Thirty-seventh was a four-family flat with a separate outside entrance to each flat. Minerva Warden’s nameplate was on the mailbox of the right-hand downstairs one. There was a light on in the front room.

When Sergeant Slade pushed the bell button, a plump, brisk-mannered woman in her early forties opened the door. Her graying hair was drawn straight back in a tight pompadour, and she wore light-gray horned-rimmed glasses. Her severely tailored suit was gray in color, too. She wore no make-up aside from a touch of nearly pink lipstick.

I glanced at Slade, who indicated with a gesture that he wanted us to handle the matter.

“Miss Warden?” I asked.

“Yes?”

I showed her my I.D. “We’re police officers from Los Angeles, Miss Warden. My name’s Friday. This is my partner, Frank Smith, and this is Sergeant Slade of the St. Louis police. We’re in St. Louis on a case both Los Angeles and St. Louis have an interest in.”

“I see.” The words were brisk and uncommitting, neither friendly nor unfriendly. Her tone was that of a teacher who over the years has been required to deal authoritatively with so many children that a sort of impersonal patience has become second nature. She waited for me to go on.

“We’d like to talk to you,” I said.

“What about?”

“Could we come in?”

She thought this over a moment before saying, “Let me see that badge again.”

I took out my wallet a second time and opened it. She examined the badge carefully. “You really are policemen?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“You could be robbers using a badge to get into houses. Sometimes they use fake badges, you know.”

I looked at Frank, and he said seriously, “No, ma’am. We’re Los Angeles police officers. And Sergeant Slade here is a local officer.”

Sergeant Slade silently exhibited his badge, too.

“I haven’t anything you could steal, anyway,” she decided. “I’m a schoolteacher, and you know how they pay teachers. I’ll tell you in advance that the only money in the house is a dollar seventy-eight cents in a cookie jar in the kitchen cabinet. So if you are robbers, you needn’t ransack the place and mess everything up.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Frank said. “We have no intention of ransacking the place. We just want to talk to you.”

She stepped back to let us into a small, square living room, neatly but inexpensively furnished with mid-Victorian furniture. Through a center hallway off the living room, we could see the open door to a kitchen and bedroom. Two other closed doors, I guessed, led to a bath and to basement stairs. Unless he was in the bathroom, it didn’t seem likely the suspect was hiding in the apartment.

Minerva Warden asked us to have seats, and Frank and I sat side by side on a hard mohair sofa, facing the center hall. She seated herself in an easy chair across the room. Sergeant Slade took a chair that also faced the hall.

“Were you in Los Angeles in 1944, ma’am?” I asked.

Her eyes widened. “My goodness! Don’t tell me you came for me after all these years for a little thing like that?”

“What?” I said.

“That jay-walking ticket. I told the policeman I was catching a train home that night, and couldn’t possibly appear.”

I smiled. “No, ma’am, it isn’t that. We didn’t even know about it. You were in Los Angeles during the summer of 1944, then?”

“Yes, I was.”

“Are you the Minerva Warden who purchased this watch?” Taking the watch from my pocket, I rose, crossed the room, and held it so that she could see the inscription.

She let out a gasp. “Where in the world did you find that?” She reached for the watch, but I drew it back. “You recognize it, ma’am?”

“That’s Gig’s watch,” she said in an indignant tone. “What are you doing with it?” Then understanding showed in her face. “That’s why you’re up here all the way from Los Angeles, isn’t it? Because of all this nonsense about Gig Whiteman.”

“Ma’am?” I said.

“It’s all in the evening’s Post-Dispatch. About Gig’s being wanted for murder in California, and killing a policeman when he escaped this morning. I never heard anything so ridiculous in my life.”

I glanced over at Sergeant Slade, and he raised his eyebrows. He said, “You don’t believe the man who escaped is the one you know?”

“Of course he is,” Minerva Warden said. “His picture’s in the paper. But there’s been some awful mistake. Gig wouldn’t do any of the things the paper says he has. He’s the kindest, most gentle man I ever knew. Courteous Killer, indeed!”

I said, “There isn’t much doubt he’s done everything he’s accused of, Miss Warden.”

“I don’t believe it! I have it all figured out what must have happened.”

“What do you mean, ma’am?”

“In the first place, his arrest must have been a mistake in identity. According to tonight’s paper, you had another man in jail out in California whom you at first thought was the Courteous Killer. But you let him go when they arrested Gig. Obviously you released the wrong man.”

“We don’t think so, ma’am.”

“Well, I do!”

Frank said, “Even if he weren’t the Courteous Killer, he killed a police officer when he escaped this morning.”

“That’s absurd, too,” she said. “Gig wouldn’t harm a fly. You know what I think happened?”

“No, ma’am,” Frank said.

“I think the real Courteous Killer — that man you had hold of out in California and let go — came up to St. Louis to make sure Gig got the blame for his crimes. I think he got his gang together and staged that escape without poor Gig knowing what was going to happen. He couldn’t let Gig go to trial, you see, because they’d prove he wasn’t the real criminal. So he kidnapped Gig.”

I looked at Frank and Slade, and they looked back at me. There wasn’t much point in arguing with her faith. I changed tack by asking, “How long have you known this man you call Gig, Miss Warden?”

“For more than twenty-five years. He used to deliver laundry to the girls’ dormitory when I was in school at Missouri U. That’s how he got the nickname Gig.”

“How was that?” I asked.

“When he brought clean laundry, instead of saying, ‘the price is a dollar and a half,’ or whatever it was, he used to say, ‘the gig is a dollar and a half.’ All the girls got to calling him Gig.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I suppose I’m the only person in the world who still calls him that. Because I’m the only one of the girls who stayed in contact with him after graduation. We were almost engaged once.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“After knowing a man more than a quarter of a century and almost being engaged to him, I think I’m in a position to judge his character. That’s why I’m sure he’s innocent of these charges.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “You gave him this watch in 1944?”

She nodded, then unaccountably blushed a flaming red. I said, “What’s the matter?”

“That’s the year we were almost engaged,” she said, not looking at me. “I took my vacation in Los Angeles that summer at Gig’s suggestion. He was working in a defense plant out there, and we’d been corresponding. We hadn’t seen each other since the beginning of the war, but... well, we’d sort of started a romance by mail. Funny, in a way.”

“How’s that?” I asked.

“The way it started. Here I’d known Gig off and on for a dozen years before he went to California. In all that time we never developed into more than casual friends. He had lots of opportunity to make a move, if he wanted to. But he never showed any interest in me. As a woman, I mean. Just as a friend.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then he moved a couple of thousand miles away and began to write. Seemed to get more and more interested with every letter. First thing you know, they were regular love letters. He’d say how terribly he missed me, and how empty his life was without me around.” She paused, and a faraway look appeared in her eyes. “Got so we almost had to see each other. He couldn’t come back to Missouri because of his job, so I went out there.” She sighed. “I guess I was foolish to think it’d amount to anything.”

“Ma’am?”

“I thought we might get married. But it turned out he only knew how to make love at long-distance. Froze right up the minute I appeared in person. He was polite and friendly enough, but we were just like we’d been before the letters started. Just friends. He couldn’t seem to say the things in words that he wrote in his letters.”

I said, “I see.”

“Funny thing, how it worked out. You may not believe this, but it’s the Gospel truth. You know, after knowing Gig for twenty-five years and once being almost engaged to him—”

“Uh-huh.”

“—he never once ever tried to kiss me.”

We continued to talk to Minerva Warden. She said that after her unsuccessful trip to Los Angeles, their correspondence had cooled. During subsequent years she had heard from him only at long intervals, and had seen him only twice, briefly, when he passed through St. Louis. It had been more than two years since she had last seen or heard from him. She had not known he was in town until she’d read the newspaper account of his spectacular escape.

She gave us considerable background material on the suspect, including a list of relatives and past associates. But when we finally left, she was still convinced that he was the innocent victim of some terrible mistake in identity.

After we left, I asked Sergeant Slade, “What do you think?”

“Sounded on the up and up to me,” he said. “I don’t think she’s the type would harbor a criminal, even if she thought he was innocent.”

“Guess not,” I said.

“We won’t take any chances, though,” Slade said. “We’ll stake out the place on the chance that Whiteman tries to get in touch with her.”