Pressman stood up, nodded at his colleagues, and walked to the front of the room. He stood before the podium, looking rigid and official in his gray suit. He looked like he should be a business executive instead of a detective. “Any of you out there remember the David Kearney case? It was also known as the Trash bag murders.”
A few nods around the room. Detective Jensen nodded; he’d heard of the case from a true crime book he read a few years before.
“We’ve got a couple of young guys here who were probably kids when it happened, so I’ll give you a run down of the basics,” Detective Pressman said. “David Kearney lived in Manhattan Beach in the late seventies. He was an engineer at Lockheed. He was convicted of the murders of several young men in 1978, and confessed to over a dozen more. The case first gained law enforcement’s attention in 1976, when the dismembered remains of several young men were found dumped near freeway onramps. The victims were all male, all homosexual, and Kearney later admitted he’d picked them up for sex, then killed them in his home, cut them up, placed them in garbage bags, and dumped them. His lover at the time lived with him, but claimed he had no knowledge of what David was doing and was never charged with a crime.”
“Jesus Christ, how the hell can you not know the guy you’re living with is pulling a Jeffrey Dahmer in your own kitchen?” This came from Cliff Reynolds, a lean six-foot three, African-American man who was slouched two rows down from Jensen. The rest of the detectives laughed uneasily. Pressman looked unfazed and continued.
“Kearney’s first murder was committed in 1968,” Pressman continued. “He went on killing until the end of 1977, when he and his lover walked into the San Bernandino Police station and pointed to a wanted poster that had been posted a few weeks earlier and indicated they were the men wanted in questioning for several murders. They were immediately arrested, and after extensive questioning, Kearney’s partner was never charged with any crime. Kearney cooperated, however, and was officially linked to sixteen murders. Unofficially he confessed to around thirty, although these can’t be verified.”
“Is there a connection between Kearney and the Valesquez case?” This from a detective in the back of the room.
“We’re trying to verify that now,” Pressman said. “Kearney confessed to over a dozen additional murders other than the ones he was linked with, and a handful of those are unverifiable due to the fact that we never recovered any bodies.” He paused, his gaze sweeping the room. “One of those victims resembled the physical description of Raul Valesquez.”
“Raul Valesquez was beaten and drowned,” Tom said, noting the discrepancy between MOs immediately. “I mean ... serial killers are usually pretty consistent with how they kill people. Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, preferred strangulation; Dahmer drugged his victims, then strangled them and dismembered them post mortem; Ted Bundy beat his victims to death for the most part. And Jack the Ripper, whoever he was, slit their throats and cut them up. It doesn’t make sense for a guy like Kearney to change his method of operation for just one victim.”
“True, and we’re not ready to even focus on Kearney as a suspect just yet,” Pressman continued, nodding at Jensen. “But in my conversations with Kearney at Corcoran State Prison where he’s housed, he identified a photo of Valesquez and said he remembered him, but when pressed on if he had anything to do with his death, he clammed up.”
“Did Valesquez have a record for prostitution?” A female detective that had been on the force for as long as anybody could remember asked this: Alma Smith, a fifty-something woman with graying hair.
“None,” Pressman said, leaning on the podium. “But as you all know, his mother had a pretty long record for prostitution, among other things. And I suppose now this can be a good springboard to review what we know about the case and discuss what we know and perhaps come to some sort of understanding between the two.”
At this point Pressman, with the assistance of Detective Little, went over the basics of the case in a straight, analytical tone, building a bullet chart on the whiteboard. Detective Tom Jensen already knew the background of the case like the back of his hand, but he reviewed it silently, immersing himself in that time period and location, trying to see if he could detect anything that could have been missed in the original investigation.
On the evening of August 27, 1977, a woman named Cathy Moore phoned the Palos Verdes Police Department to report she’d discovered the body of a dead boy lying face down in the bottom of her empty swimming pool. Originally formed as a haven for the rich, and still bearing wide open land that housed horse ranches and immense estates, Palos Verdes was the South Bay’s answer to Beverly Hills; affluent, seemingly aloof from the commoners that lived in the communities below: Torrance, Redondo Beach, Gardena, Hawthorne. For the most part, Palos Verdes consisted of affluent neighborhoods, even more affluent business districts, and a lot of wide, open land with plenty of rolling hills and marshlands. The homes were all exclusively upper-middle class to sprawling estates. It was behind the home of a well-to-do couple in their mid-fifties that Raul Valesquez’s body was found when Cathy Moore returned from her job as an executive for an insurance company.
The first officers to arrive secured the scene and within moments a forensic team was present, as well as homicide detectives from Los Angeles County and the Palos Verdes P.D. Identification was made at the morgue in Torrance from fingerprints lifted from the body. It was identified as an eleven-year-old boy named Raul Valesquez.
Raul Valesquez was well-known to the LAPD and the Gardena Police Department. He’d logged his first arrest at the age of seven for vandalism, when he broke the windows of every storefront in a mini-mall on Redondo Beach Boulevard. Despite the efforts of Los Angeles County social workers, Raul was continually placed back in the volatile home he was being brought up in, which consisted of two older brothers and an alcoholic mother who prostituted herself out of her house, many times with the children present. Eva Valesquez usually escaped jail time by periodically reforming — she’d hook up with a man, quit drinking for a while, settle into a state of normalcy, than slide back into her old habits. It was a never-ending battle.
According to the coroner’s report, cause of death had been drowning. Raul had been murdered where he was found, at the bottom of a large swimming pool in the backyard of the Moore home, his face pushed into a four-inch pool of muddy water. Like most homeowners that summer who owned a swimming pool, the Moore’s had emptied it due to the severe drought that had plagued Southern California for the past year. Water rationing had been so severe that homeowners were not allowed to water their lawns, wash their cars on their property, or fill their swimming pools. Restaurants served water only on request. Raul’s body bore trauma about the head and torso—consistent with a beating—and was found face down, the pants pulled down around the ankles and the shirt torn off. There were abrasions around the wrists and ankles, and duct tape residue across his mouth; his wrists and ankles were bound with together with duct tape. Examination of the skull and brain revealed he’d suffered a blow to the head that rendered him unconscious briefly in the hours leading up to his death. There was also evidence that Raul was raped shortly before he died; rectal swabs produced semen, and his anus was horribly dilated.
The initial investigation focused on the family, and their chaotic life-style played into focus briefly. The LAPD had wanted to file charges against Eva Valesquez for child abandonment, but the Gardena Police Chief had objected on the grounds that she was as much a victim as her son, despite her incompetence to deal with her own child. There had been some squabbling between both departments as each one headed up their own investigations: the Palos Verdes PD turned the case over to the LAPD since the body had been found in their jurisdiction and they rarely dealt with murder cases – homicides were about as common in their community as it was in a small ranching town in Montana with a population of six hundred. The Gardena Police Department spearheaded their own investigation, led by then Police Chief Walter
Manning, who quickly identified a suspect, twenty-three year old Doug Archer.
Gardena PD’s identification of a suspect came as a surprise to the LAPD and the evidence was compelling: Eva Valesquez and her thirteen-year-old son Rudy identified Doug as a frequent visitor to the house; a handful of Eva’s customers and other regulars who paid visits to the house indicated Doug was there at least once a week and had a passing acquaintance with the victim; and most compelling, phone records subpoenaed from Brad and Lillian Archer, Doug’s parents, with whom he was living with at the time, showed dozens of phone calls made to the Valesquez house in the two weeks leading up to the time of Raul’s disappearance and murder. In addition, both Eva and Rudy testified in depositions and in Doug Archer’s trial that Raul received sexually explicit phone calls from a man in the two weeks prior to his murder.
More evidence quickly mounted. Under questioning, Doug claimed he called the Valesquez house to talk to Raul, but steadfastly claimed he had never met Eva or any of her associates before. When asked where he’d gotten the Valesquez number, Doug claimed he’d gotten it off a phone booth kiosk at a skateboard park in Torrance where he liked to go and watch the kids skate. He also admitted to calling other boys and men whose names and numbers he culled from bathroom walls in the hopes meeting them for a sexual encounter.
“But he was adamant that he never followed through with any of the phone calls he made,” Detective Little related, reading quickly through his notes. “According to Mr. Archer, he was beginning to come to terms with his sexuality, was just beginning to admit to himself that he had homosexual tendencies and was trying to meet others like himself. He claimed he didn’t know Raul was only eleven-years-old when he called him. He claimed Raul sounded much older, which can be attributed to Raul’s voice and the way he carried himself. Raul was definitely far older than his years.”
As the Gardena Police Department investigated more, they uncovered one crucial piece of evidence a piece of clothing found with the body was tied to Doug Archer. Lillian Archer identified it as a torn scrap from a shirt he always wore, one she had been meaning to mend for weeks. A thread bearing identical consistencies with this piece of clothing was found in the Valesquez house, further turning the spotlight on Doug Archer. Because the coroner theorized Raul Valesquez was abducted and killed sometime between 4:00 pm and midnight on August 27, 1977, detectives from both Gardena and LAPD grilled Douglas Archer extensively as to his whereabouts during those crucial hours.
During questioning, Doug Archer continually evaded certain questions and gave the detectives misleading answers. He could not account for his time between 4:00 pm and midnight, August 27. He gave different accounts of what he was doing at that time: he was at the Del Amo Mall, he was at the movies, he was at the beach. Each time his claim was investigated, the detectives confronted him with the falsehood that he was not where he claimed to have been and he would offer up another explanation, which again led to a quick verification that Doug Archer was lying about his whereabouts.
Despite not being able to find evidence that Doug Archer possessed duct tape, nor bought any, he was quickly charged with murder on the circumstantial evidence that pointed to him—the clothing fragments, not being able to account for his time when the murder was believed to have been committed, witness statements indicating Doug knew the Valesquez family, phone records, and Doug’s own record of admission that he had phoned Raul’s home in the weeks leading up to his death, and the fact that he had a car which had incidentally been washed extensively the day after the murder. It wasn’t until he was arrested that he broke down in the interrogation room and gave one final explanation for his whereabouts that night: he had been in West Hollywood looking for a sexual encounter. He hadn’t wanted to confess this earlier because he didn’t want his parents to know that he was homosexual—they would be devastated. It had been too late, though; Doug Archer’s latest claim was never investigated, and he was booked anyway.
Much of this same evidence came to light at his trial, as well as more: Louie McWiggin, Raul’s friend, testified Doug tried to feel him up at the Valesquez house; David Marsh and Antonio Garcia, two regulars of the Valesquez household, made similar claims; gay pornography was found in a box under Doug’s bed, as well as a box containing pictures cut out of male underwear catalogues. The most damaging evidence had been an eight-millimeter tape depicting the rape of an eight-year-old boy in what looked like an abandoned house, which had been found hidden within the woodwork of the Archer garage. When this evidence was presented to the court there’d been gasps of outrage and shock from Doug’s parents. Doug Archer had stared goggle-eyed, his face slack and white with stunned shock. His attorney later confessed he had tried to have the evidence suppressed in closed chambers, but was over-ruled.
Doug Archer was convicted of murder on the morning of May 13, 1978. He was sentenced to death two months later, his sentence automatically going to the appeals process where it had been languishing ever since.
Detective Little quickly brought the task-force up to speed to the present. “The District Attorney fought to have the release of Archer overturned, but the State Supreme Court overruled, citing compelling documentary claims that crucial evidence was withheld from the defense at Archer’s original trial. The students who petitioned the State to reopen the case also produced evidence Doug Archer was arrested falsely, that the Prosecution and the original investigating team had planted the evidence against him in order to quickly close the books on the case. They argued that not only was key evidence in the original case overlooked, it was swept under the rug by the original investigators. More evidence came to the surface in the years following Doug Archer’s conviction and incarceration that shed doubt on his involvement with the murder of Rudy Valesquez.
“That’s where we are now,” Detective Little said. “I can’t speak for any members of the task-force that were part of the team that investigated the original case, but I will say that—”
“Well, I can speak for the original team and I’m going to.”
All heads turned to the back of the room. Tom recognized the ruddy, bulky man striding into the room with the graying hair and weathered face dressed in blue jeans, a plaid shirt, and brown cowboy boots as Walter Manning, ex Chief of Police of Gardena PD.
The representative from the DA’s office stood up quickly. “Walter! I...this is a surprise! We had no idea—”
Walter held up a hand to silence the prosecutor. He reached the front of the room, his gaze sweeping and penetrating. “What a pity none of you were around when that piece of shit brutally murdered that kid. If you’d only been there ... if you’d only known what we went through and what Doug Archer really did, you’d feel as outraged as I feel now.”
The DA representative tried to get a word in. “Walter, I hardly think—”
“Shut up!” Walter gave the officious little prick a steely glance, then turned his gaze back to the room. “How long you guys been on this force? Five years? Ten?”
Alma Smith raised her hand. “I’ve been a Gardena Homicide Detective since 1984, Chief Manning. You hired me after I spent a year on patrol duty.”
Walter nodded at Alma and Tom caught the first hint of a smile on his craggy features. “Ah yes, Alma. Nice to see you. How’s Jack and the kids?”
“I left Jack the year you retired, and Billy and Amanda are all grown up and out of the house,” Alma said, her voice pleasant. “How’s your family, Chief Manning?”
“Couldn’t be better, thank you.” Chief Manning nodded at Alma, than quickly looked at the rest of the room. “What about the rest of you? I retired in 1987...I find it hard to believe Alma’s the only one here who’s been a part of the lovely Gardena PD for that long.”
The other detectives began chiming in various dates of when they were hired. Chief Manning nodded, thumbs hooked into his belt loops. “Just what I thought. Nobody from the original team that investigated the Valesquez murder is even here. Which means you guys don’t k
now shit.”
“Excuse me, Chief Manning,” Detective Little said, clearing his throat. “But with all due respect—"
“With all due respect, Detective Little, I just want to say on the record that I think the State Supreme Court’s ruling on the Archer case, and his subsequent release as a result of the ruling, is a travesty of justice. Furthermore, that William Grecko’s investigation and his team of amateurs who brought this whole steaming mass of shit to be regurgitated is nothing but lies and falsehoods intending to do nothing but smear the hard work of the good detectives that brought Doug Archer to justice. Happily, most of those men went on to careers outside the Gardena PD as a result of their fine work—some with the LAPD, others with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and San Diego PD. Believe me, we’ve all kept in touch over the years, and I’ve talked with a few of them about the recent developments of the Archer case and they’re as disappointed as I am. Severely disappointed.”
“Chief Manning,” Detective Little tried again, his voice pleading. “We intend to do everything we can to—”
“I know,” Walter Manning said, and Tom realized that Manning had an uncanny knack for making his point known, going so far as to interrupt and bluster his way through to bludgeon his opponents into silence in order to do so. He glanced at Alma Smith quickly; Tom thought she didn’t look too happy to see her former boss. “And that’s why I’m here. To offer as much help and guidance and information as I can as a representative of the team that originally brought Archer to justice. With so many of the original team scattered or retired or dead, I feel it’s my duty to represent them and bring to the table what we know about the case and report to you our findings and insights.”
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