Slaughter on North Lasalle

by Robert L. Snow

  But the suspects kept coming. In an interview with Carol Ann Faulkner, a former girlfriend of Jim Barker’s, the detectives became apprised of yet another person whom the three men had made very angry. She told them that after she and Barker started dating, one time she, Barker, and Hinson had gone with a friend of theirs named Dick Roller and his girlfriend to a tavern. Barker and Hinson had persuaded Roller’s girlfriend to get up onstage and sing a song, but once she did, they began making fun of her. Incensed, Roller grabbed his girlfriend and stormed out of the tavern.

  Further investigation into this incident with Roller and his girlfriend brought the detectives in contact with a lady named Sharon Mitchell, who said that she and Roller had moved to Indianapolis together from Dallas, that Jim Barker had moved in with them for a while—and that when Roller found a new girlfriend, she moved out and started dating Barker. To add more complicated connections, Mitchell also told the detectives that she was now living with Ilene Combest, Gierse’s old girlfriend.

  Although Mitchell mentioned that Roller had moved back to Texas prior to the murders, which was later confirmed (and so wasn’t a suspect), detectives would learn that the manner in which the three victims had treated Roller’s girlfriend wasn’t an isolated case—the three men had seemed to really enjoy embarrassing or humiliating people. Witnesses also said that the men liked to bully and try to intimidate people. This information, the detectives knew, only added the possibility of many more suspects. Someone who’d been deeply embarrassed or humiliated in public might have felt motivated to kill, even in as vicious a manner as had been done on North LaSalle Street.

  The report also mentioned yet another couple of wrinkles in the case. The detectives interviewed a man named Bob McAbe, a business associate of Bob Gierse’s who worked for the 3M Corporation. McAbe told the detectives that he and Gierse would help each other with business leads, and that Gierse had tried to persuade him to quit 3M and come work for him. On the morning of November 30, 1971, McAbe said, he had spoken with Gierse on the telephone and Gierse had asked him if he had ever worked with classified material. McAbe said he had. “Isn’t that [a] hell of a way to do business,” Gierse had responded. The detectives had also heard from other sources that the men were working with secret material, yet the records of B&B Microfilming didn’t show any contracts with organizations that might want classified material microfilmed. Had Gierse just been trying to make it seem as if they did?

  The detectives had wanted to conduct a follow-up interview with Diane Horton, Gierse’s girlfriend, but hadn’t been able to reach her by telephone. Consequently, the detectives sent a police car out to check the security of her residence since, like many of those involved in the case, she had earlier reported receiving threatening telephone calls. The officer didn’t find anything amiss there, and the detectives were finally able to contact Diane and have her come into the Homicide Office. They also had Louise Cole and April Lynn Smoot return for more questioning.

  They learned from these interviews that Gierse and Hinson had gone to the Big Wheel Restaurant in Bloomington, Indiana, in late September to meet with Ted Uland, just two days after Hinson had left the company. The two men were accompanied to the meeting by Gierse’s on-and-off girlfriend, Ilene Combest. Reportedly, after a few minutes, when Hinson had said that he wouldn’t change his mind about leaving Records Security Corporation, Uland had excused him, and Hinson went out and sat in the car with Combest. Gierse and Uland then talked for almost two hours. The detectives made a note to follow up with Ilene Combest and see if they could find out what Gierse and Uland had talked about.

  Later in their report, the detectives mentioned speaking with a Mrs. King, who also lived on North LaSalle Street. In addition to corroborating that streams of young women would come and go at all hours from Gierse and Hinson’s house, Mrs. King also stated that on the night of November 30, 1971, she had seen an unfamiliar light-colored car parked in front of their place. She had never seen the car in the neighborhood before. She told the detectives that she saw the car there at between 9:30 and 10:00 P.M.

  In addition to Mrs. King and the neighbor interviewed on December 7, the detectives then found a third person in the neighborhood who had witnessed the same car parked there. He also said he’d never seen the car in the area before and had walked by it, noticing that the license plate had a 26A prefix (meaning that it came from Gibson County in southern Indiana). While this should have raised red flags for the detectives investigating the murders, it didn’t. This license plate is mentioned in the progress report but nowhere else in the homicide case file. For some unknown reason, the detectives didn’t appear to follow up on this information about the unusual license plate or attempt to find the owner of this car, or if they did, they didn’t generate any paperwork about their efforts.

  The detectives would, however, eventually talk to a fourth witness about this mystery car. “About two weeks after the murders we hear from a witness that a car with three guys in it was sitting across the street from the murder scene,” said Detective Sergeant Popcheff.

  In mid-December, another neighbor on North LaSalle, Michael Ray, told the police that on the night of the murders, he’d been walking home from his brother’s house on North Kealing Avenue, five blocks east, and had walked along the 1300 block of North LaSalle Street. On that night, he said, he saw a light-colored dirty car with three males sitting in it, parked across the street from the house. He said that the driver had looked strangely at him as he passed by, and that as he kept walking he noticed a man sitting in the backseat also watching him. He gave the police a very general description of the men, saying the man in the backseat looked about thirty to thirty-one, and was heavyset, with a round face, black hair, and bushy sideburns. The one in the front seat, he said, appeared older and slimmer. He told the police he didn’t see what the third man looked like.

  “They were drinking beer and throwing their bottles out onto the ground. But by the time we found out it was too late,” lamented Popcheff years later. The detectives knew that the beer bottles would have contained fingerprints that could have been key pieces of evidence. Popcheff said they asked the man why, since he knew there had been a triple murder, he hadn’t called the police earlier. Ray replied that he’d been busy with school and just hadn’t gotten around to it.

  Popcheff would later say that incidents like that seemed to plague the North LaSalle Street investigation. It was a case, he said, that the detectives just couldn’t seem to ever get a grip on.

  The report then told of an additional development in the case that raised the possibility of yet another suspect in the ever-increasing pool. Working on a tip, the detectives went to the Merry-Go-Round Bar on East New York Street and spoke with the bartender, who told them that a man named Phil Pickard had been in the tavern the previous night, bragging about how good he was with a knife and how he had killed three men with one. The bartender said that Pickard had been so drunk that he had personally driven him home. The detectives went to Mr. Pickard’s residence and picked him up, taking him down to the Homicide Office, where they questioned him.

  Pickard said that he remembered the bartender taking him home, but denied any knowledge of the North LaSalle Street murders. The detectives showed Pickard some crime scene photos to see his reaction, but he showed no signs of being upset. When asked if he would take a lie detector test, he agreed to.

  Pickard was just one of several individuals throughout the course of the investigation who would falsely brag that they had a connection to the murders. It’s not an uncommon phenomenon in highly publicized crimes—men will often want to impress or scare others, and so they will brag or hint that they committed some infamous crime. With just a little investigation, though, the police could usually dismiss these claims for the empty boasts they were.

  In their progress report the detectives also told of how, in response to a tip, they went to the Marion County Recorder’s Office to check on a report that the federal government had pu
t a lien against Records Security Corporation. The detectives had been told by several people that Records Security Corporation was in serious financial straits, and they found that indeed, on December 2, 1971, the federal government had put a lien of $6,385.88 for back taxes against Records Security Corporation. The detectives also learned that this wasn’t the first time; it turned out that the federal government had put several other liens against the business in the past.

  On December 11, 1971, the report said, the homicide detectives had Ted Uland come into the Homicide Office for an interview. He brought with him some records that the detectives had requested from Records Security Corporation. They advised Uland of his constitutional rights against self-incrimination. He said he understood them, but then refused to sign the waiver of rights form, although he agreed to talk with the detectives.

  Uland told them that the insurance policies on Gierse and Hinson had been taken out by Gierse, not him, and that he’d recently found out that they were in effect only until December 10, 1971. In any case, he added, some question had apparently arisen as to whether or not the insurance company would pay off because neither man worked for the company any longer.

  When asked about the meeting with Gierse and Hinson in Bloomington, Uland said that it had occurred on September 26, 1971, and that he had offered Hinson $5,000 to stay with Records Security Corporation until the end of the year. He had really needed him. Hinson, however, had refused. Uland then told the detectives that for some reason Hinson had brought a gun along with him to the meeting, though Uland was unable to describe or give any other information about the gun. The detectives still listed Uland as a possible suspect, and when they offered him two dates for a lie detector test, he wouldn’t commit, but said that he would have to get back to them.

  As a part of the investigation, the detectives also brought in a certified public accountant and asked him to look through the Records Security Corporation paperwork given to them by Uland. In this paperwork, the accountant found what he believed to be at least nine forged checks drawn up and signed by Gierse in amounts from $30 to $140. When contacted by the detectives, the men these checks had been made out to stated that they hadn’t seen the checks or endorsed them. This piqued the interest of the detectives, who’d heard from several sources that Gierse might have been stealing money from Records Security Corporation.

  Was this, they wondered, how Gierse had financed his lifestyle and new business start-up? By stealing money and equipment from his former employer? The incident Louise Cole had spoken about, in which Gierse suspected that Uland had come into the house on North LaSalle Street to take canceled checks, suddenly took on new relevance. Had Uland, the detectives also wondered, suspected or known that Gierse was writing phony checks and wanted evidence? This, if true, would certainly move Uland up on the suspect list, particularly since he hadn’t mentioned anything about the checks to the detectives.

  The detectives then talked with a Sharon Bidwell, who worked at the Executive Health Club in downtown Indianapolis and had dated Jim Barker. The three victims had all been members of the club. She told them that when Gierse and Hinson formed B&B Microfilming, Barker had acquired an expensive piece of microfilming equipment and gave it to them. Bidwell didn’t know how Barker had come to obtain this piece of equipment. The detectives found this particularly interesting because, of the three men, Barker seemed to have had the most money problems. Bidwell also mentioned in passing that Bob Hinson had once dated a married WAC (Women’s Army Corps) officer from nearby Fort Harrison, who might be on the men’s scorecard.

  Hinson seemed to have had no problem dating married women—the report also tells of a police officer who brought his sister-in-law, who had dated Hinson for several weeks, into the Homicide Office. Even though she was married, she said she didn’t think dating Hinson had bothered her husband because she had dated other men in the past and he hadn’t been upset about it then.

  Bob Hinson’s own ex-wife, Geraldine Hinson, wasn’t much help, either. She told detectives that she and Hinson had been married for six years and were on good terms, visiting each other often. She did say that Hinson always seemed to be short of money.

  Another witness the detectives spoke to, the owner of a liquor store, also said he’d heard that Gierse and Hinson had swindled Uland out of some money—though he also brought up the possibility of Gierse and Hinson being involved in industrial spying or spying on the government agencies whose documents they microfilmed. (He admitted to detectives, however, that he had no proof or evidence of any of this. It was only what he had heard or suspected.)

  The detectives told in their report of having gone to the Idle Hour Tavern in Indianapolis to speak with another one of Hinson’s girlfriends, a Norma Jean Duran, who threw a further complication into the case. She told the detectives that a male friend of Barker’s had dated a female FBI employee who would sometimes get information on people for Barker. Duran didn’t know who Barker wanted information on or what he needed the information for, but she said that the three men had told her several times that they had been involved with some kind of syndicate while living in Chicago, and that they had to be very careful. Was this the truth or just empty boasting that the men hoped would impress young ladies, particularly young ladies at the type of taverns they frequented? The detectives didn’t really know.

  In the course of their investigation, the detectives also learned that April Lynn Smoot’s husband had moved back to Indianapolis from New Orleans, and that he and his wife were now living together. When called, April’s husband, David Lynn, said that he didn’t feel like coming into the Homicide Office right then. Detectives went out and picked him up. At that moment, considering his reported level of jealousy—and the fact that he’d left town on the day the murders had been discovered—David Lynn still stood high on the suspect list. The detectives questioned him extensively but couldn’t find any serious inconsistencies in his story. When asked, he voluntarily took a lie detector test and passed it. The detectives ultimately eliminated him as a suspect.

  Adding another bit of good news, the detectives said in their report that they felt they could also eliminate another one of their key suspects: Louise Cole’s husband, James T. Cole, who had come into the office and taken a lie detector test, which showed that he had no knowledge of the crime. At last, the detectives thought, the case was moving forward. With Mr. Lynn and Mr. Cole removed, the detectives felt that they were finally eliminating from, rather than adding to, the suspect list.

  The detectives ended their report with the comment that they had interviewed many people not talked about in the report but hadn’t mentioned them because these individuals didn’t contribute anything to the case. They also said that they had many more people yet to interview. The case was still very much open.

  After three weeks, the detectives realized that, even with all of the work they’d done so far, they hadn’t found the kind of evidence yet that could point them toward any one suspect. While they had finally eliminated several key suspects, many possible ones still remained. But no one suspect stood out as more likely than the others. The detectives knew that they needed to find some more physical evidence that could tie one person to the case.

  And so, on December 20, 1971, the Indianapolis Police Department sent the bedsheets, pillowcases, and cloth strips used to tie and gag the men to the FBI Laboratory in Washington, D.C. (In the early 1970s local police departments seldom had the laboratory facilities to do much more than rudimentary science. If extensive scientific testing needed to be done, the materials were often sent to the FBI Crime Laboratory.) The Indianapolis Police wanted the federal investigators to see if they could recover any fingerprints from the fabric, and also asked the FBI to have a study done on the knots used to tie the cords around two of the victims’ hands. The knots had appeared unusual, and the detectives hoped they might be able to provide a clue.

  Unfortunately, on January 19, 1972, the police department received notice from the FBI
that they couldn’t recover any usable fingerprints from the materials sent and didn’t have any information about the knots. Another dead end.

  And as if McAtee and his team didn’t already have enough wrinkles in the case, the detectives, when talking to people who knew the three men or knew people who knew them, began picking up rumors that the three victims might have been killed because they’d been involved in pornography trafficking. In the 1970s, long before the advent of the Internet, pornography was circulated in printed or film form. Because pornography was illegal in many communities, pornographic photos, magazines, movies, and books were often distributed much like drugs were, through criminal networks. Dealing with these networks, like dealing with drug cartels, could be dangerous, so these tips struck the detectives as worth checking out.

  One of the people who had given the police this information about pornography trafficking was Elwood Rogers, a man who’d done microfilm business with Gierse. He told the police that a couple of years before the murders, Gierse had given him the telephone number of a man who lived in Avon, Indiana, and who was supposedly involved in pornography. Rogers said that he believed Gierse and this man might have been partners in trafficking pornography. Like dealing in drugs, dealing in pornography in the early 1970s could be very profitable. The detectives wondered if this was how Gierse and Hinson had gotten the money to start up B&B Microfilming.

  Rogers told the detectives that he knew about the sex contest and that Gierse was in second place with twenty women. He said Gierse told him, “And you should see number twenty!”

  To check out the rumors about pornography trafficking, the police brought back in several of the three victims’ girlfriends and questioned them about it. Wava Winslow, who had dated Jim Barker, was brought in on December 21, 1971, and asked about this. She told them that she had met Barker through Diane Horton, who had been dating Bob Gierse, and that while she and Barker had had a very full sex life, she hadn’t witnessed any of the men having an unusual interest in pornography. She also corroborated what Paula Palmer, Barker’s ex-wife, had told Sergeant Stark: that Barker had become very unhappy at Bell and Howell because they were cutting his salary, and that he was planning to leave there and go in with Gierse and Hinson at B&B Microfilming.