The Onion Field

by Joseph Wambaugh

“Now, do you want to tell us your story, Jimmy?”

  “Anything you want me to say,” said Jimmy.

  “I want you to tell us what happened. You’ve heard Powell and you’ve heard the officer.”

  “Yes sir. I did not fire into that officer’s body.”

  “All right,” said Brooks. “How could Greg possibly have gone over to the place you mentioned and shot at this officer and at the same time fired into Officer Campbell? The trajectory and the physical evidence bear out the story of Gregory Powell and this officer.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “It does not bear out your story.”

  “Yes sir. But I didn’t shoot him. I’m positive.”

  “You say that Powell fired one shot at the officer. The officer fell down. Then he fired more shots at the fleeing officer until you heard a click.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Then after the shooting was over, he came over to you and you got in the car for the reloading. How did the four bullets get into Campbell’s chest? And how did one shot get fired from the .32 automatic? The empty casing was found by the blood spot.”

  Then Jimmy began a rambling statement that took them back to the Hollywood streets, and Pierce Brooks tapped his fingers impatiently, but did not interrupt because one never knew when an innocuous statement could end in confession. Then Jimmy finished by saying, “I don’t know if he is firin at this officer or how. I said he’s firin at this officer because to me it’s the way it looks. It’s all hazy to me. If you want me to admit, sir, I will.”

  Pierce Brooks stiffened, because a remark such as that usually signals a seeking for rationale, a push, a man who wants to tell, doesn’t know how, needs help. But of course he could not encourage him or the confession would be inadmissible in court.

  “We want you to tell the truth,” said Brooks, and then he slumped disgustedly when Jimmy said, “I swear by my mother I didn’t shoot him. This don’t mean nothin to you, but I’m gonna get the same he gets, so why deny it?”

  “Do you recall, Officer,” said Brooks, “when Powell ordered you out of the car did he have just one gun in his hand?”

  “I only saw one gun in his hand,” said Karl.

  “All right, Jimmy, I want you to explain to me how there were four shots fired into the officer’s body after Powell had fired all of the ammunition in his .38 and you drove off with the other guns.”

  “Yes sir, when we got back to the car …”

  “You are not answering my question, Jimmy.”

  And so it went, and after it was over Jimmy turned as they were leaving the room and said to Brooks, “Sergeant, I’m sorry my memory was hazy and that I lied to you before. But now I do remember Powell firin into the officer’s body on the ground. And I know I fired one shot outta the .32. It bucked in my hand so I musta fired a wild shot somewhere, maybe at the officer runnin away.”

  “He’s a goddamn liar,” said Greg. “You’re just a lousy punk and too chicken to tell the truth!”

  “Well you told your share of lies too,” said Jimmy.

  “You’re a goddamn liar.”

  “Okay, bastard, I’m puttin a curse on the baby, on that unborn child that Max is carryin around. It’s gonna be born dead, hear me?”

  “That’s enough of that kind of talk,” said Pierce Brooks and the two friends were led back to their separate cells.

  Pierce Brooks, during the days to follow, talked individually many times to both of them, on virtually every crucial point, until one of them verified each event told by Karl Hettinger, including a remarkable recorded admission by Gregory Powell which he was later to deeply regret making.

  “I did think of killing the officer, Mr. Brooks, as we came down the Grapevine. The thought came to my mind if we hid their bodies in one of those canyons, they never would be found. I shied away from the thought to find some other alternative to turning them loose, and yet keep them tied down long enough for me to get back to L.A., get my wife and come back to Bakersfield to get my station wagon and get a running start.

  “As I got out of the car I was still trying to think up some alternative, and didn’t let the thought of killing them enter my mind. I thought of handcuffs, but realized that daylight was only four to five hours away, and there was no possibility of holding them long enough to do everything I needed to do.

  “So without even considering anything for fear that I’d change my mind, without really facing the fact that this is what I intended to do, I deliberately kept my mind occupied with other thoughts as I walked around the back of the car, raised my gun, and shot the officer.

  “I didn’t consciously think that I had to kill. I didn’t dwell upon it. I just raised the gun, fired at him, and immediately tried to hit the other officer, still without thinking consciously: this man I must kill also. Because if I let the thought enter my mind of what I was doing, I might’ve been confused and too scared to do what I knew or felt had to be done.”

  Pierce Brooks, anticipating the defense at the trial, the only defense other than insanity, said, “Greg, do you think by any chance, for any reason, that you fired the gun accidentally at the officer when you came around the back of the car?”

  And Greg looked at the patient paternal tired eyes of the detective and said, “I’ve handled the gun enough that I’m competent with it, and the chances of it going off accidentally are nonexistent.”

  Also anticipating the defense that Greg’s Colt had a “hair trigger,” Brooks tested the gun and found that, cocked, it had a trigger pull of more than five pounds. A police revolver’s authorized trigger pull was only between two and a half and three and a half pounds, making a hair trigger defense impossible.

  “You’ve told me you’re pretty good with a gun and a good shot. Now I know where the officer was hit. Just for kicks, you tell me where you were aiming when you squeezed off that shot.”

  “I aimed for his heart.”

  “Okay, the heart.”

  “You can end it this way,” said Greg. “The only other alternative was to give myself up or kill him. I think I thought of this previously and thought I would rather be dead myself than give up.”

  “Greg, you told us a story and Jimmy also told us an identical story of somewhere in the desert you stopped to fire off a few rounds.”

  “That’s when we bought the gun. It was outside of Henderson, Nevada, about three miles, and it was about a mile on this side of a railroad pass, and we pulled off to the right of the highway, and we drove down to this sort of junkyard there out in the desert. We fired at an old car.”

  After Greg related the story of his string of robberies to a robbery detective, exaggerating his daring only when his ego demanded, often glancing toward Pierce Brooks for approval, Brooks had him relate in detail how he and Jimmy practiced shooting in the desert.

  Though Greg could not imagine why the detective was interested in their target practice, he was proud of his memory and happy to draw Brooks a detailed map and diagram of the Henderson, Nevada, trash dump where he and Jimmy had practiced firing. At the trial, four months later, it would be used to destroy defense contentions that the shooting of Campbell was a spontaneous gesture by men who had never intended, nor were they prepared, to hurt another human being in any of their holdups.

  Greg demonstrated for Brooks his understanding of the police combat stance which he had learned in the prison yard and which he tried to teach Jimmy Smith. Afterward, Pierce Brooks drove to Henderson, Nevada, and returned, more than satisfied, to write the following:

  As a matter of interest, and to demonstrate Powell’s memory, the following comparison is listed, indicating actual measured miles, etc., versus information related by Powell during the interview.

  Powell Actual

  Dump location from Henderson 3 miles 3.4 miles

  Markers, in order from Henderson Speed sign Rest Area Quarry Road Road to dump Railroad pass Speed sign Quarry road Rest Area Road to dump Railroad pass

  Dump distance from RR pa
ss 1 mile 1.4 miles

  Name of quarry White Rock White Rock

  Distance, highway back to dump 400-500 yards 330 yards

  Fired .38 Colt 3 or 4 times Recovered 4 casings

  Fired .32 auto. 4 to 5 clips (32 to 40) Recovered 33 casings

  It is to be noted that all empty casings, except one, were recovered about 8 feet away from the old car used as a target. It is estimated that Officer Campbell was approximately 8 feet away from Gregory Powell when he fired the first fatal shot.

  Respectfully,

  P. R. Brooks, #5702, Homicide Division

  The defense had all but lost the spontaneity theory as well as the contention that much of Powell’s confessions were made by a man with a poor memory.

  Then, after Greg had in detail discussed the murder and his string of robberies and the practicing in the desert, it was safe to broach the statement and try to secure a remorseless admission to having made it:

  “Greg, there’s one point that I think you’ve hedged on a little. When the four of you were standing there, the statement you made about the Little Lindbergh Law just before you fired …”

  “That’s wrong, I said absolutely nothing, Mr. Brooks. I heard the statement being made. I don’t know who made the statement, whether it was Jimmy or them, but when I walked around the back of that car my mind was blank as I’ve told you.”

  “All right,” said Pierce Brooks. “Now, I want to ask you once again, would you object for any reason at all if I come and see you once in a while at the county jail?”

  “No, I sure wouldn’t.”

  “I mean, does it … does it bother you? Or do you want to sign it off here?”

  And Gregory Powell’s recorded answer was:

  “No. I’d like to see you from time to time, Mr. Brooks. You’ve been very fair and if I would … if the circumstances were reversed, I don’t think I could treat anyone more fairly than you’ve treated me, and I do feel a certain …”

  “Well, it’s part of my job, Greg.”

  “… friendship, you know?”

  “Greg …”

  “Well, above … above the job. I know you’re doing what you do as far as the job goes, but above that …”

  “Greg, I’m trying to …”

  “I feel you’ve shown me more than just a normal policeman doing his job. You’ve shown me consideration about that, and I appreciate it.”

  “Well, I … I’ve told you the things I could and would do for you.…”

  “And you’ve always got it done. Things you didn’t have to do at all, not policeman things.”

  And now Brooks, knowing the tape would be played for the court, was embarrassed by Greg’s declaration of affection and feared it might taint the confession.

  “They weren’t things that … in other words, I’ve never said to you that if you don’t tell me the truth, I won’t do these things for you?” said Brooks.

  “Oh no, no.”

  “And actually it’s part of my job.”

  “No, you’ve been rather good to me, Mr. Brooks.”

  Gregory Powell, at a later time, crestfallen that he endangered his life by telling so much to Pierce Brooks, sought to explain and understand his feeling toward the detective:

  “He was remote as a mountaintop, but yet forgiving and understanding as the dearest person in the world might be if he lived up to everything you hoped. He was stern and disapproving, yet not angry, just rather sad that you were so weak.”

  But if the detective had earned something approaching filial devotion from one killer of Ian Campbell, he was meeting stubborn, frustrating resistance from the other.

  “Jimmy, your original statement was that you had not fired a shot. That Greg had done all the shooting.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “In fact, you said nothing about the officer even being shot after he’d fallen on the ground.”

  “No sir.”

  “Now, listen carefully. On one occasion while you were relating this story to the Bakersfield police, you said you left the car with the .38, not the automatic. Then you corrected yourself.”

  “Well I can’t remember sayin that. I swear I don’t.”

  “You said a .38 revolver.”

  “I don’t remember sayin it. I swear I don’t.”

  “And you said the first time you felt Greg was going to kill them was driving down the little dirt road.”

  “But I didn’t know it for sure. Greg said in my ear on the trip it’s either them or us, you know? And about the Lindbergh Law and everything, and I kind of flinched, you know? And I tried to change the topic right away.”

  “What do you remember Greg saying just before he shot Campbell?”

  “He said … he was saying somethin about the Lindbergh … but I … if I finished the conversation I’d be lyin on him. I don’t know what all he said.”

  “Jimmy …”

  “I know I’ll never forget that officer’s light-colored jacket fallin …”

  “Jimmy …”

  “Fallin, you know?”

  “Jimmy …”

  “I heard a pow, you know, and then I see this officer look like he’d been lifted up.”

  “All right …”

  “If I could a just thought of the handcuffs I coulda saved it all, but I couldn’t think … didn’t think of the handcuffs.”

  “All right. That’s it for tonight, Jimmy.”

  “Yes sir. I wonder if you recorded all this? Is it all recorded, Sergeant?”

  “Yes,” said Brooks. “It’s recorded.”

  Pierce Brooks was not surprised when neither man at any time showed the slightest hint of remorse or concern for the dead policeman. The detective understood sociopathy, knew that the thing ordinary people call by numerous names, such as conscience, is as absent in the sociopath as the central nervous system in a shark. And since he didn’t expect remorse and understood that for them it does not exist, he never became incensed or horrified no matter how foul were the deeds confessed to him over the years. Therefore the detective knew no outrage. Like most policemen, Brooks could easier forgive a cop killer than one who frustrated every interrogation technique he used on him, who spent hours upon hours talking to him, and told him nothing. Who stubbornly resisted any attempts to cajole, ensnare, outwit. And who, Brooks knew by now, would reveal a bit at a time, only when he felt he must, after he first was fed police information and discovered how much the detective knew for sure. Who simply would not buy what a homicide detective is selling: a trip to the gas chamber. This was not in the detective to forgive.

  More than Gregory Powell, Jimmy Smith was what a man like Brooks despised: an admitted liar and coward. Brooks reasoned that after Smith snapped one quick shot at Hettinger with the automatic he hated, he pulled the other gun, Campbell’s own revolver, turned, saw the policeman writhing on the ground, saw the Man helpless at his feet, and in panic and horror and even rage for that which he felt had victimized him his entire life, he stepped forward and jerked the trigger four times. Smith’s story that he left Campbell’s gun on the seat when he got out, and that both Powell and Hettinger did not see it there in plain sight when they slid out just didn’t make sense.

  But most of all it was that Jimmy, during their first conversation, failed to mention the four chest shots at all. Though he remembered what happened before and after, it was as though the chest shots never happened. As though he blocked them out of his mind.

  Pierce Brooks’s contempt for Jimmy Smith was clear in a report he later wrote for his department superiors:

  It is hardly necessary to state that both men were homicidal, however, they are definitely of two different types. Powell, a boastful egomaniac, was a cool, treacherous, scheming, cold blooded killer. Smith, con-wise and cunning, was more impetuous and cowardly. Thus, if possible, Smith could be considered a more dangerous killer than Gregory Powell. There was no question of their sanity, and no pleas of insanity were entered.

  During his first night i
n county jail Jimmy Lee Smith had a fearful dream. In the dream the arm of Ian Campbell, the jacketed arm and hand, jerked toward Jimmy four times, once for each bullet that was fired into his chest. Jimmy told the detectives of the jerking of the jacket sleeve. And though he could almost draw a mental picture of Gregory Powell standing over Ian Campbell firing those shots, each time the image would slip and fade. He could not clearly see Powell, much as he wanted to, only the sleeve and the hand jerking.

  For an instant Pierce Brooks was forced to consider the possibility that neither man was willfully lying about those four chest shots. And if that was the case, then of course he could never get Jimmy Smith to confess. Brooks would have to do it all with physical evidence.

  But Brooks angrily rejected that interpretation. Like most policemen he’d seen too many criminals escape justice with con jobs done on well-meaning psychiatrists. Jimmy Smith was consciously, deliberately lying. No other interpretation was possible to the detective.

  After a few dreams in the county jail, Jimmy Smith never dreamed of the murder again. “Why should I?” he said. “My conscience is clean, if this thing you call a conscience is for real, and not just somethin rich white people say is for real just to make guys like me feel like they oughtta punish themselves. If the truth be known, I don’t think it really even exists. Not for anybody.”

  At a much later time, when Greg and Jimmy were together again planning strategy to beat the gas chamber in any way possible—scheming, promising, hating, fighting—each would become firmly convinced of one fact. Each man would say almost identical words about the other: “One thing’s sure, there’s no sense fighting him anymore. The sick bastard really believes he didn’t fire those four shots.”

  NINE

  A police officer neighbor of Ian Campbell was one of the pallbearers. He later said, “It was probably hard for the department to choose pallbearers for this thing because really, Ian didn’t have any close policeman friends. All his friends were civilians. I guess I was the nearest thing to a friend because I was a neighbor and had worked with him.