by Steve Hodel
The state investigators had obtained the name of one of the doctor's former clients, which they could use as an entree and reference. This time they asked Stoker to operate on his own, without involving their office, which would obviate the necessity of their having to inform their supervisor, thus effectively bypassing LAPD Homicide and its Gangster Squad.
Stoker agreed, and the same undercover policewoman who had attempted to obtain the abortion at Dr. Audrain's office again posed as a pregnant woman seeking help. She met the woman doctor at her office, who informed her that "she was not doing abortions as she could not find a dependable assistant." The doctor said she would personally contact another doctor who would perform the abortion. The policewoman was advised to call back the following morning and the doctor would provide the other doctor's name. The following morning, the woman doctor told the undercover policewoman that she had spoken with another doctor, Eric Kirk, who had agreed to perform the abortion. She gave her Kirk's phone number.
Sergeant Stoker immediately contacted the state medical investigator, who told him that while Eric Kirk was a suspected abortionist, he was a chiropractor, therefore not a member of the ring. A decision was made to proceed anyway, to see if an arrest could be made on Kirk.
The policewoman made an appointment, was examined at Kirk's office on Riverside Drive in the North Hollywood area, was again, per standard operating procedure, found to be pregnant, and was given an appointment for an abortion for the following Saturday. She was again advised to bring $250 in cash. I checked the 1949 Los Angeles telephone directory for a listing of chiropractors and found Eric Kirk's office listed at that time at 2157 Riverside Drive. In the same directory, Kirk advertised his specialty as "Obstetrics and Gynecology."
On the day of the scheduled appointment, the cash was marked and the policewoman was driven to Kirk's office by Stoker and Officer Ruggles, where they maintained surveillance a block away. The policewoman entered the office and within five minutes exited the front door and was observed to enter a large sedan that had pulled up in front of the office. Stoker and Ruggles, on foot and out of their unmarked police car, ran back to it and quickly searched the area for the sedan, but could not locate it. Now fearful for the policewoman's safety, they entered the office and found a receptionist inside. Initially, the woman denied any knowledge of the appointment with a pregnant woman seeking an abortion, but when confronted with arrest as an accessory, she identified herself as Eric Kirk's wife, breaking into tears. "I knew it, " she said. "He's done it again. I hope you catch the son-of-a-bitch and send him to jail for life!"
Stoker contacted his vice unit, reported the police officer missing, and put out a broadcast for all units to be on the lookout for the vehicle and the missing policewoman. At that point, the policewoman walked into the medical office accompanied by Dr. Eric Kirk, who, upon learning that his patient was an undercover police officer, related the following story to Sergeant Stoker, Officer Ruggles, and the policewoman.
Two days after he had scheduled the appointment with the policewoman, Kirk said, two officers from LAPD Gangster Squad came to his office and arrested him for soliciting abortions. Stoker asked Kirk to identify the detectives and he complied. In his book, Stoker referred to them as "Detectives Joe Small and Bill Ball" — not their real names.
Since Dr. Kirk had not completed a solicitation for abortion with Stoker and the policewoman, Stoker lacked enough reasonable cause to make an arrest and was therefore forced to call the Gangster Squad detectives and inform them of the circumstances. Stoker contacted the two detectives and advised them of his own investigation and what had transpired that morning. He was told by them to "keep his nose out of their business and stop conducting unauthorized abortion investigations."
A few months later, the third and final incident involving Stoker, the California state medical investigators, and the Gangster Squad detectives took place. This one involved a nurse who was arranging for abortions for young girls at a cost of $500. The suspected doctor was one of the protected M.D.s, and again the state investigators asked Stoker to operate without the knowledge of their supervisor. This time they added another twist: he would have to obtain the $500 from his own department, in order not to tip off their connection to the investigation. Stoker went to his supervisor, Lieutenant Blair, who again said, "I'll try and get the money for you, but keep me out of it." Blair obtained the $500 from a vice slush fund, Stoker signed for the cash, and all was ready to proceed. The following morning at eight o'clock Stoker's phone rang. It was detective "Joe Small" from Homicide. "What do you think you're doing?" he asked, reminding Stoker that he had "already been told once to stay out of abortion investigations." Small informed Stoker that an officer would be by to pick up the $500 and would give him a signed receipt for the cash. Stoker signed over the cash to this officer: that ended his involvement in the abortion ring investigations. Eric Kirk was convicted of performing abortions and speedily sentenced to prison at San Quentin.
In May 1949, behind closed doors, Sergeant Charles Stoker was called before the grand jury and testified to everything he had learned about the abortion ring and the involvement of Gangster Squad detectives "Joe Small and Bill Ball." As a result of this testimony, the information he provided about the Brenda Allen scandal, and other testimony from LAPD officers, grand jury indictments were secured against Chief Clemence B. Horrall, Assistant Chief Joe Reed, Captain Cecil Wisdom, Lieutenant Rudy Wellport, and Sergeant E. V.Jackson.
After Stoker's testimony, Kirk, who remained behind bars in San Quentin, submitted, through his attorneys, a written affidavit to the Superior Court in an attempt to get a new trial based on the evidence provided by Stoker. In his affidavit, Kirk stated that he had been told by three separate Los Angeles attorneys that "some politicians, or the Los Angeles Police Department, were out to get me, but that they [the attorneys] could not identify the interested parties or give their reasons for wanting me out of the way." In his affidavit, Kirk said that immediately after his initial arrest, a co-defendant by the name of Tulley (no additional information was provided by Stoker) informed him that $2, 500 would "square the beef." The Monday following his arrest, Kirk and Tulley, out on bail, met with a seventy-one-year-old man named Dan Bechtel at his office in downtown Los Angeles. Upon receiving $2, 500 each from Tulley and Kirk, Bechtel immediately called a man by the name of "Joe, " spoke with him, and then told both defendants that the charges "had been quashed by Joe." Both Tulley and Kirk left Bechtel's office, but several days later were contacted and told to return. Both complied, and their monies were returned, whereupon Bechtel explained, "the deal could not go through, as too many people were involved." Bechtel made a final contact with Kirk, where he advised the chiropractor that "he could get the charges dismissed but it would cost Kirk $16, 000." Kirk could not raise that amount of money and, after his conviction, was remanded to custody and sent to prison. According to Stoker, in 1950 Dan Bechtel was indicted by the grand jury "for accepting large sums of money from abortionists on the pretense that this money would be utilized in paying off law enforcement officers whose duty it is to arrest and prosecute abortions."
From the moment that Sergeant Charles Stoker walked in and testified before the 1949 grand jury, his fate was sealed. He lost his job, lost his good name, and was publicly ridiculed. Ignoring warnings and threats to his life, he did ultimately publish a book about what had happened to him, which concluded:
Villains in the story books always get their just desserts, and we — the members of the 1949 county grand jury, and I — can only hope that justice and virtue will triumph in the future. In the words of the poet Young, "Tomorrow is a satire on today, and shows its weakness."
Ironically, on the same day a Superior Court jury was hearing testimony in the incest trial of my father — Wednesday, December 14, 1949 — the following article appeared in the Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express:
OUST STOKER AS LONE VICTIM
OF VICE PROBE
C
harles F. Stoker, former vice squad sergeant, who touched off the lengthy grand jury investigation of police protected vice, wound up today as the only victim of the much-publicized purge.
He was discharged from the police force by Chief W.A. Worton, who approved the recommendation of a police board of rights, which found Stoker guilty of insubordination and conduct unbecoming an officer.
The article went on to note that, although five other police officers, including former Police Chief C. B. Horrall and former Assistant Chief Joe Reed, were also indicted on perjury and bribery charges, all were cleared.
Twenty-five years later, on March 10, 1975, the following article appeared in the back pages of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner:
STOKER, EX-OFFICER, DIES AT 57
Former Los Angeles Police Sgt. Charles Stoker, who was a central figure in a 1949 department scandal, has died of an apparent heart attack.
Stoker, 57, died yesterday morning in Glendale Memorial Hospital, where he was taken after suffering chest pains, while working in the Southern Pacific railroad yards. He was employed as a brakeman.
Stoker played a key role in exposing corruption in the LAPD vice squad, but was later accused of a burglary, which led to his dismissal from the force. Stoker contended that he was framed on the burglary charge.
Dr. Francis C. Ballard, the Beverly Hills physician to whom Father paid $500 for performing Tamar's abortion, was in all likelihood a member of the abortion ring Charles Stoker was trying to expose. As a matter of record, despite the strong case surrounding his October 1949 arrest for the abortion performed on Tamar, criminal charges against him were ultimately dismissed in 1950 after attorneys Giesler and Neeb successfully branded Tamar as "a pathological liar and a young girl in need of psychological treatment, who should be in a hospital, not a court of law."
Dr. Walter A. Bayley
In January 1997, Los Angeles Times staff writer Larry Harnisch, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Dahlia murder, wrote an article entitled "A Slaying Cloaked in Mystery and Myths, " which provided a very good overview of many of the known facts relating to the fifty-year-old unsolved case.
Several years later, his search for a suspect would develop into a lengthy Internet article promoting his theory that the Black Dahlia killer was a Los Angeles physician by the name of Walter A. Bayley.
Harnisch based his theory on several points: first, that Bayley was a prominent surgeon, which was in keeping with LAPD's premise that the murder and bisection of Elizabeth Short had to have been performed by a skilled surgeon; that Bayley's wife — from whom he was separated — lived at 3959 South Norton Avenue, less than a block from the Black Dahlia crime scene; that Bayley's daughter knew Adrian West, Elizabeth Short's sister, and indeed had been a witness at her marriage; and, finally, that Bayley had left his wife for a woman colleague, Dr. Alexandra von Partyka, who worked in the same office with him. Harnisch speculated that she had discovered his "crime" and was blackmailing him.
In fact, Dr. Walter Bayley had no connection whatsoever with Elizabeth Short, or her murder. For one thing he had developed Alzheimer's disease, and had neither the mental nor physical capacity to either commit such a crime or taunt the police about it. No, his legitimate fears that Dr. Partyka would ruin his reputation arose from another source: she was undoubtedly blackmailing him with her knowledge that he was a member of the L.A. abortion ring.
My search of the 1946 Los Angeles-area telephone book showed that Dr. Walter Bayley's private practice was located at 1052 West 6th Street, the same address as that of Dr. Audrain, Stoker's head of the protected abortion ring. It is very likely that the name of the warned abortionist, contacted by the Gangster Squad detectives the night before Stoker's pending arrest, and who closed his office for a week following, was indeed Dr. Walter A. Bayley.
My research revealed a coincidental connection that seems to have gone unnoticed by police and press in the early days of the Dahlia investigation. Mrs. Betty Bersinger, who first discovered Elizabeth Short's body, told reporters that in notifying the police, she "ran to the closest house, " which she described as "the second house on Norton Avenue from 39th Street, " and said that it belonged to a doctor. It is highly probable that this house was the residence of Dr. Walter Bayley and his wife Ruth, out of which Dr. Bayley had moved the previous year.
I suspect, too, that my father knew Dr. Bayley, and probably Dr. Partyka and Dr. Audrain as well. All had worked for Los Angeles County, and their downtown medical offices were within six blocks of each other. If George Hodel knew or worked with active members of the M.D. abortion ring, which I believe he did, the probability that they were acquainted would be very strong. Although I don't believe George Hodel performed abortions, because he was opposed to them in principle — except in the unusual position of being coerced by his own daughter under an implied threat of disclosure — it is almost certain that he not only associated with the doctors inside the ring but knew they were being protected by the LAPD's Gangster Squad.
As a result of this inside knowledge and the people he could incriminate were he to have been prosecuted for any of the murders he committed, he was himself protected by the very same Gangster Squad that protected and profited from the work of the abortion ring that Charles Stoker sacrificed his career to expose.
Abortion Ring-Spangler Connections
Kirk,
Can't wait any longer. Going to see Dr. Scott.
Will work best this way while Mother is away.
It is my further contention that the Spangler note, related to the fact that Jean Spangler needed to obtain an abortion. I believe that "Kirk" is not a first name, as LAPD chief of detectives Thad Brown tried to suggest when he personally interviewed actor Kirk Douglas, but a surname. Kirk, I submit, was Dr. Eric Kirk, Sergeant Stoker's chiropractor, abortionist, and informant. I further submit that Jean Spangler was initially planning to have Kirk perform her abortion. Her note was directed to him! Because he was suddenly and unexpectedly arrested and incarcerated by Detectives "Bill Ball and Joe Small, " and because time was of the essence, she was forced to find a replacement for "Kirk, " either through or with the help of "Dr. Scott."
On September 17, 1949, just twenty days before Jean Spangler's kidnapping and murder, an article appeared in the Los Angeles Mirror over the headline "Wife of L.A. Abortionist in Hiding." The story carried a picture of Dr. Eric H. Kirk, captioned: "He'll testify." The article said that Kirk's wife, Mrs. Marion Kirk, "a key witness in a huge abortion-payoff-ring probe, was in hiding after it was learned that she received numerous telephone threats to 'keep her mouth shut.'" The article indicated that Dr. Kirk would testify to what he knew, with the following caveat: "I'm not going to name other doctors. I'm no stool pigeon. If all the doctors who perform abortions in Los Angeles were cleaned out, there wouldn't be many doctors left."
As a matter of procedure, it's likely that the Gangster Squad detectives involved in the Spangler investigation, in a fox-in-the-hen-house type of scenario, were assigned the task of trying to locate and identify the "Kirk" and "Dr. Scott" in the Spangler note. This would be logical because of their familiarity with abortionists city-wide. It of course permitted them to protect themselves, and their operation, by keeping the identities of both men secret. As we know from newspaper reports, despite these detectives' "exhaustive search, " neither "Dr. Scott" nor "Kirk" was ever located or identified.
It is inconceivable to me that the LAPD was unable to make the obvious connection between the abortionist Kirk and Spangler's handwritten note, addressed to him. Kirk's identity should have been obvious to the investigators, because "Bill Ball and Joe Small" arrested him for performing illegal abortions just three weeks prior to the discovery of the Spangler note. Their failure to identify the real Kirk was all part of the abortion ring cover-up. As we will soon discover, these same Gangster Squad detectives were subpoenaed and forced to testify in secret before the 1949 grand jury. Their testimony would be labeled "evasive" and "contradictory"
and they would publicly be accused by both the grand jury members and the district attorney's Bureau of Investigation of "covering up" facts and destroying evidence relating to "the Wealthy Hollywood Man" (Dr. George Hodel) named in secret before the grand jury as the prime suspect in both the Black Dahlia and Red Lipstick murders.
Thanks to Sergeant Stoker's detailed explanation of how the L.A. abortion ring operated, we are able to connect the dots not only to Dr. Bayley and his role as an abortionist, but, more importantly, to "Bill Ball and Joe Small." With Stoker's help, we see them as they were: active ringleaders in a LAPD high-stakes money-for-protection racket. By successfully silencing Dr. Eric Kirk, and speedily sending him to prison, the Gangster Squad detectives prevented any linkage between Kirk and Jean Spangler, who had likely sought him out to perform her abortion in the weeks preceding her disappearance. Then with his arrest and incarceration, she wrote the note, which remained undelivered in her purse, and was found only three weeks later, after she was kidnapped and murdered.
It was October 1949. In the previous two years, more than a dozen lone women had been found savagely murdered in the streets of Hollywood and downtown L.A. Two other socially prominent Hollywood women had disappeared and were suspected to have met the same fate. Gangsters were firing away at each other in open gun battles on Sunset Boulevard, wounding government officials and nearly killing a member of the press. An LAPD chief of police, an assistant chief, a lieutenant, and two vice squad officers were under indictment. My father had just been arrested for incest in a sex scandal that was making the front pages of the local papers. Sergeant Stoker, after testifying in secret before the grand jury as a whistle-blower, along with his partner, Officer Ruggles, had been fired. Corruption in the city and throughout its administration was so pervasive that even sexual predators were able to prey on women without fear of arrest.