A Death in California

by Barthel, Joan;

  “Did he appear friendly?” Jim Heusdens asked.

  “Friendly, I think,” Martha agreed.

  “When you saw Mrs. Masters massaging the man’s back, did she have a nightgown on?” Jay Powell asked.

  “I think she had on pants,” Martha said. “I’m not sure.”

  “Did she have anything else on besides pants?”

  “I didn’t see.”

  Walker had brought up his co-counsel motion again, and again it was denied. Jay Powell moved to quash the search warrant—on the grounds that one of the police affidavits was signed and two were not—along with the arrest warrant. Judge Carter denied them, along with Powell’s motion to continue the preliminary until a handful of witnesses could be subpoened in Los Angeles, including Tom Masters. The subpoenas had been issued, but apparently were not served.

  One subpoena had been served, on Sandi, but while he was talking with her by phone, Jay Powell said, “She cried,” telling him that she had four children and a job, no husband and no money. Finding her upset and hysterical, he had excused her as a witness, after her promise to cooperate. “This was done without my client’s permission,” Powell said. “I went over to the jail this morning and told my client this, and Mr. Walker was most upset with me, and he wishes me to state for the record that he was not consulted prior to excusing her, and that he strongly objects to my conduct in this regard. I state that.” Jay Powell turned to Walker. “Is that what you want on the record?”

  “Basically,” Walker said.

  Judge Carter denied the continuance.

  The People rested.

  Jim Heusdens moved that probable cause had been established and that the defendants be bound over to superior court for trial. Furthermore, he said, based on Hope’s father’s admission that he hadn’t talked openly with the police on March 9, when he gave his second statement, Heusdens felt Van’s statement at the bail hearing, when he personally guaranteed Hope’s appearance in court, could no longer be relied upon. Heusdens asked that Hope Masters’s bail be revoked.

  Tom Breslin asked for the charges to be dismissed.

  “The only evidence that the court has at this time is the fact that she was going with the victim, there was absolutely no animosity between the two, and the victim was contacted by an individual known as Taylor with this bull story that he’s working for the L.A. Times and doing an interview. They met for lunch, and following the lunch the victim himself asked if it would be all right if this individual were invited to the ranch.

  “There is no showing that Mrs. Masters knew, in any way, Mr. Taylor, before approximately one or two o’clock on Saturday. Now, at the point where Mrs. Masters went to bed, the two individuals—the victim and this Taylor—were in the house. The next thing she knows, Ashlock was killed. She is violated once or more than once, she is tied, she is abused, she is threatened, she was verbally tortured, and she was in absolutely a state of hysteria. But at this point a man is dead, and there is not a scintilla of evidence that Mrs. Masters had any connection with that killing. None!”

  Tom Breslin was not flamboyant, but his voice strengthened and rose as he spoke. “Now, to what I consider the second phase of this case. Taylor is, as we all know, an intelligent individual. Having had the interview with Mr. Ashlock, and having listened to the conversation Saturday, he pieces together enough so that when he creates this story of the Mafia contract, he puts enough credence in it that Mrs. Masters finally believes there is a contract. He pinpointed enough facts—her father’s heart attack, her mother’s burglar alarm key, meeting Tom Masters at the Beverly Hilton—and she recalls that her husband did say he was going to the Beverly Hilton to have a meeting—and the other hit man that was following him. And she recalled, approximately a week before, she was supposed to go to a certain restaurant, at the last minute changed to a second restaurant.

  “All of these things now begin to bring to her mind the realization that there may well be a contract, and of course Taylor is one of the two people involved in that contract. Now, significantly enough, if she is trying to escape a homicide and leave the body there, surely she doesn’t leave the car. There is only one reason why the car was left: Taylor couldn’t allow her to drive the car home alone, he didn’t have enough control at this point. So the car was left, just like a calling card.

  “They drive to Los Angeles, and she is not free at any point. Then he finally determines that they are going to find the body anyway, and allows her to go to her mother’s.

  “But even at the mother’s and father’s, she is terrified of the intruder, of Taylor, and of the contract, the existence of the contract, and within a short time both her mother and her father are absolutely convinced too, to the point where her father allows Taylor to use his name when he goes to a hotel to make this phone call, because the home line is tapped, and there is somebody in front of the house. He wouldn’t even call an attorney for consultation; in his own words, ‘That’s a hell of a thing to do, to bring a man onto your doorstep and have him shot.’ That’s how fearful—Taylor had convinced all members of the family that this story was true.”

  Judge Carter kept his eyes on Tom the entire time. The room was very still.

  “Now to the third phase of the case,” Tom continued. “That is, Mrs. Masters telling her mother that in fact it was Taylor that performed the rape and it was Taylor who—” Tom paused, very briefly. “Well, she says, ‘I can’t say he actually pulled the trigger because I wasn’t there at the time, but shortly thereafter he was at me.’

  “And the question has arisen as to why she didn’t contact the authorities herself. But then we have to go into the background of Mr. Taylor. He has escaped from Joliet, is coming to Los Angeles, is possibly connected with a second homicide. At the time he was apprehended he had taken—or he was found with a ring with W.T.A. on it. He was found armed at the time of his arrest. He was found to have a rifle in one of the vehicles he was observed driving. There was property from other individuals, among them Taylor Wright, an extensive amount of property. And even within a short time after this crime occurred, he was using the credit cards of William Ashlock.

  “When you leave an institution, you don’t have much credit, nor do you have credit cards. And the court can infer as to how they were obtained.

  “As far as leaving the scene, or failure to report the incident, I would say that having introduced the statement of Mrs. Masters, and the testimony of her parents, in a legal sense the People are bound by their testimony, unless there is evidence to the contrary. And, going back to the scene of the crime, the People have no evidence that there is any connection between these two individuals.

  “And they also haven’t shown that she is an accessory. There is no evidence that there was a concerted effort by Mrs. Masters to aid and abet the killing of Bill Ashlock.

  “I would submit that the prosecution has failed to establish sufficient evidence to hold Hope Masters to answer for this crime, and urge the court, at this time, to dismiss her.”

  Jay Powell said that everything Mr. Breslin and Mr. Nelsen had said for their client went double for his.

  “The only evidence is that Mr. Walker was present that weekend at the ranch. The only evidence that he personally ever said anything was when he spoke in her parents’ home, and stated that he had come to the ranch and rescued Mrs. Masters, and that was the same story that Mrs. Masters was telling, at that time.

  “All this other evidence, her changing stories and all the rest, was not evidence against Mr. Walker. The only additional evidence against Mr. Walker is that, when he was arrested, one or two items of Ashlock’s personal effects were found on him. At most, that might lead the court to conclude that he may be guilty of some other crime, but certainly not the crime that’s charged here.

  “I would ask the court to not hold Mr. Walker to answer the charge that is before this court.”

  Jim Heusdens was mightily annoyed by the argument that the People were bound by the evidence—Hope Master
s’s statement, and her parents’ testimony—without proof to the contrary. “Do we have any proof to the contrary?” he demanded, and answered his own question with a forceful gesture. “First we have witnesses putting Mrs. Masters and Mr. Walker up at the ranch on Saturday afternoon, late, with Mr. Ashlock. We have the car still present at the ranch at six o’clock in the morning, but gone at nine o’clock. After these people have left the ranch, Mr. Ashlock is subsequently found dead, hidden underneath a blanket in a back bedroom—the photographs show that somebody, or something, was moved across that carpet and I don’t think it takes too much of an inference to determine what was moved across the rug and into the kitchen.

  “We have heard a story from Mrs. Masters: the first story we got was that there was an intruder—she did not know who he was—and that Mr. Taylor, the hero, came along and rescued her at nine o’clock in the morning. Then, the hero took her home and protected her by the use of a rifle, thirty-ought-six, with a scope, over Sunday and Monday and up until Tuesday.

  “She went to her parents’ home, and counsel says they were convinced of this great fear. And they had fear—that’s why they let Mr. Taylor use her father’s name on the telephone. But who convinced the parents to believe that Mr. Taylor was the hero who rescued Mrs. Masters?”

  Heusdens made a wide wave in Hope’s direction. “Who—but Mrs. Masters!

  “Then, sometime later, Mrs. Masters changes her story and says, ‘No. Now I tell you that Mr. Walker was the intruder, he’s the one who raped me, he’s the one who did all these things to me,’ and then she tells that story.

  “The evidence shows this: that Mr. Walker and Mrs. Masters were present, with Mr. Ashlock, at the ranch on Saturday evening. Then these two people left the ranch, went to Los Angeles, and stayed at Mrs. Masters’s home for a period of two days, until finally—Mrs. Masters finally went to her mother and told her something terrible had happened at the ranch, that Bill Ashlock had been murdered and she had been brutally raped—she brings the supposed murderer, who she says now is the murderer, into her mother’s home, and then they look to him for protection.” The prosecutor shook his head in amazement. “And now we are to believe that Mrs. Masters had nothing to do with it? And that the People are bound with this type of a statement?

  “Can the court forget that on Monday evening, when Miss Padilla returned home, Mr. Walker was lying on the floor, and Mrs. Masters was rubbing his back? And this was a day after the murder had been committed—this was to a man who had just brutally murdered her lover and then had turned around and raped and did all these horrible things to her.

  “I think there is more than sufficient evidence to show that Mrs. Masters was a participant in the murder of Mr. Ashlock. There were two people present. But we have more to show than mere presence,” Heusdens ended, ominously. “And we respectfully request that they be bound over to the superior court.”

  Tom Breslin stood up quickly, in a fine Irish temper. “I have got to—” he began, then caught himself and nodded toward Carter.

  “May I, Your Honor?”

  “Yes,” Carter said.

  “As far as the back rub incident, I would challenge anyone”—Tom waved his arm, encompassing the group—“I would challenge anyone, Judge, Mr. Heusdens, Lieutenant Barnes, or anybody else, to be in the situation Mrs. Masters was in at the time, knowing that Taylor had killed Bill Ashlock, and if he said, rub anything, any one of us would have done it!”

  Jim Heusdens gave a half-smile, half-sneer. “Your Honor, I think maybe Mr. Breslin would, but I don’t think—”

  “Just a second, counsel, I’m not through,” Tom snapped. He went on to explain that he, Breslin, had stopped Van from being totally open with the police, in Van’s March 9 statement, because Jim Heusdens had been so hell-bent on prosecuting Hope from the very beginning, that it had made them wary of working with the Tulare cops, except for giving hair samples and answering questions. He disputed the interpretation of the statement Hope had given to Officer Stien and in conclusion, he said, looking not at Heusdens, but at Judge Carter, “The whole purport of my argument is that without any evidence to the contrary, the People are bound. And they are bound by the story of Mrs. Masters! Counsel doesn’t seem to understand that. There is absolutely no evidence that she participated in this crime. None! There is not one iota of evidence.”

  Perhaps what Jay Powell said then, in closing, did not make any difference. Probably not; Judge Carter had listened to two weeks of testimony, some of it damaging to the defendants, and all he had to determine was probable cause, not guilt. Still, it was interesting to speculate how Jay’s words must have sounded to a man who wasn’t a lawyer, a lay judge whose sense of security could not have been greatly enhanced by the presence of thousand-dollars-a-day attorneys up from L.A. with their elephantskin briefcases, and another mild-mannered but punctilious man from a prestigious law school who had honed his criminal trial skills under the tutelage of Melvin Belli.

  Jay Powell told Carter that “this court has no choice” but to dismiss.

  A little after 4:00 P.M. on Wednesday, April 18, 1973, Judge Carter chose to order G. Daniel Walker and Hope Masters bound over to superior court to be tried for murder.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Tom Masters always refused to discuss the case with Hope, both at the time he was implicated and afterward. He declined to be interviewed by Gene Tinch, or to take a polygraph test administered by anyone on Hope’s team. Tom maintained a careful distance, communicating mostly through his lawyer, although he did write to Honey and Van, pointing out that he hadn’t been able to see K.C. Tom wrote that, before he took legal steps to gain access to K.C., he was writing to try to work something out.

  “Honey and Van, certainly this incident has caused a great deal of hardship and strain on your lives, the lives of Hopie’s children, and on my own life,” Tom wrote. “I’m horrified that you and Hopie could even conceive of the possibilities of my being involved in this case. I’ve always been very fond of Hopie since our separation and thought that all of us maintained what I considered was a friendly relationship. Hopefully, some day we can all return to some form of normalcy.”

  Tom’s friend Nadine typed the letter for him, and he signed it “Kindest personal regards.” Van was impressed with the letter and showed it to Hope. She thought it was a good letter, too. Soon afterward, Tom began coming to see K.C. and to take him places, so Tom was seeing Hope again, too. The incongruity of the situation was so readily absorbed into the habitual incongruities of life on the Drive that when Hope came home from Porterville, trailing so many headlines—DEATH TRIAL ORDERED FOR SOCIALITE—that she couldn’t keep track, Tom put his clipping service onto it.

  But Tom did talk to the police again, when Gene Parker and Henry Babcock visited him at his office. In that second statement, Tom related again his activities on the weekend Hope and Bill went to the ranch. He said that Hope had asked him to take K.C. on Saturday and Sunday both, and Tom had agreed. When he returned K.C. on Sunday around 6:00 P.M., the child spotted Bill’s Triumph in the driveway and began to squeal happily. “Oh, Bill’s here, Bill’s here!” Tom was interested in the strange car in Hope’s driveway. “Who the hell owns the white Continental?” he asked Nadine.

  “Who owns the white car?” Tom asked the maid, when he took K.C. inside. Nadine waited in the car.

  “A friend of Mrs. Masters,” Licha told him.

  Tom said he and Nadine had gone to dinner then at El Coyote, a Mexican place on Beverly Boulevard. The next day, Monday, he worked at his office all day, as usual, until 7:30 P.M., when he met a friend for a couple of drinks at the Playboy Club. On the way home he stopped at Schwab’s Drugstore for a quick bite and got home early, about 10:30. On Tuesday morning, he and Nadine left early for Mammoth, a long drive, nearly as far as Yosemite, where Tom attended a meeting of the Mammoth Merchants Association, hoping to pick up an account.

  He got back to L.A. Wednesday night and on Thursday morning, March 1, was a
wakened by a call from his business manager, Lou Grant. Lou told Tom he’d just heard on the radio that Hope had been arrested for murder. Tom thought it was a bad practical joke, but when Lou insisted, Tom turned on his own radio. When Tom and Nadine heard it themselves, on the KNX news, Tom went right to his office and stayed there.

  “Now Tom, like we’ve mentioned before, you’ve been placed in the role of a possible suspect in this, right?” Babcock said.

  “Right.”

  “Would you have any reservations about taking a polygraph, also known as a lie detector test, covering this incident only, nothing to do with your personal life other than this incident we’ve been talking about?”

  “No, I would do it,” Tom said. “I have no objections to that.”

  Hope had no objections to taking one either, at least not after Gene Tinch put his foot down. “We’ve heard a couple of different stories,” he told Tom Breslin. “It’s time for a poly. I’m kind of a funny guy; I like to know what I’m doing. If I’m trying to get her off the hook and she’s innocent, that’s one thing; if I’m trying to get her off the hook and she’s guilty, that’s another thing, okay?”

  Although Gene said a couple of points on the test showed deception patterns, he felt the test confirmed that her second story was true. Tom Breslin attributed the discrepancies to her emotional distress; Hope blamed her deepdown feelings. “When they asked me, ‘Do you have any responsibility in the death of Bill Ashlock?’ the test went crazy, because I feel responsible. I’ve been told I’m responsible. I felt so guilty that I could never take a clean lie detector test.”

  The issue of her polygraph test never came up in public, nor did anybody else’s. As far as she knew, Tom Masters was never tested by the police, nor was the other man who had been asked to take one, Jim Webb. Jim Heusdens finally dismissed the whole matter of lie tests with a sarcastic snort: “If anyone in this damned thing had taken a polygraph, the machine would have burned up.”