The woman said that LaFever called her two weeks later, and from time to time afterward, always asking her what the police had found out about the murders on North LaSalle Street. She said he would kind of chuckle about it. The woman told the police that LaFever would have her save and read him articles out of the paper about the murders. She also said that LaFever and Bob Hinson had been friends, and that LaFever had brought Hinson over to her house a few days before the murders. The woman said she didn’t know Hinson, but that LaFever had later told her that’s who it had been.
This woman also told the police that though LaFever never came out and admitted he had actually committed the murders, he liked to hint that he had. He would, for example, explain to her how one person could manage to kill all three of these men by himself. She also said that LaFever had always been fascinated by martial arts and stealth killing. The police, though certainly looking into this report, didn’t attach much importance to it. Since the murders, they had received reports of many men who had bragged to women they wanted to either scare or impress that they had committed the North LaSalle Street murders.
In early July 1985, however, the Coconino County Superior Court in Flagstaff, Arizona, sentenced David LaFever to twelve years in prison for sexually molesting his twelve-year-old adopted daughter. His wife Margaret received a two-year sentence for “Facilitating the Sexual Exploitation of a Minor.” Soon after the sentencing, David contacted the authorities and told them that he wanted to discuss the triple murder on North LaSalle Street in exchange for a more lenient sentence for Margaret. The police in Indianapolis were getting ready to fly out to Arizona to talk with David when he suddenly changed his mind about wanting to discuss the case. At the end of the day, the police believed he’d probably been hoping to fabricate a story that would help his wife but then realized he would either have to come up with facts he didn’t have or implicate himself in it. But just in case, the police compared David’s fingerprints with the unidentified fingerprints from the North LaSalle Street case. No match was found.
Most distressingly, on June 8, 1984, a sergeant from the Homicide Branch—for some unknown reason—signed off to have much of the evidence in the case destroyed, including microfilm, address books, the bloody bedsheets, large quantities of written material, several knives, pieces of cord, checks, and bank statements. He did this despite the fact that evidence in murder cases is supposed to be held until the case is finally solved, the defendant convicted, and the appeals exhausted. How this oversight could have happened was baffling, especially since the words murder case were stamped in large, bold letters on the property room form specifically to prevent such a thing from occurring.
Naturally, the original detectives in the case, though they had long since moved on to new cases, had never given up hope of being able to perhaps one day solve the North LaSalle Street case. Detective Sergeant Strode, when he heard the news about the evidence destruction, fired off a memo to the chief of police asking how this could have happened on an open murder case and pointing out how this action could cripple any future attempts to solve the case.
Although this incident upset many people, no one in the police department considered it an act of corruption or collusion with the killers. Police department property rooms routinely become so full of evidence and confiscated property that the officer in charge of the property room will send out disposition notices to the officers, telling them to come down and either dispose of the evidence or signal that it is still needed. Apparently, the North LaSalle Street evidence simply got mixed up with the wrong cases.
Fortunately, a small amount of the evidence, two of four original boxes of clothing and some of the blood and autopsy samples, had not yet been destroyed, and the detectives managed to recover them. They also recovered some of the microfilm and several pieces of microfilm equipment.
In 1987, sixteen years after the murders, an employee of the state parole board received information that a former go-go dancer by the name of Margo (or possibly Margaret) had information about the triple murder on North LaSalle Street. This woman, the man said, now worked at the Golden Palace Bar.
It was enough of a lead for the police department to detail Popcheff, now working as a lieutenant in uniformed patrol, back to the Homicide Branch. Popcheff, still hopeful of solving the North LaSalle Street murders, located Margo, who told him that at the time of the murders she and her boyfriend had been managing Tommy’s Starlight Palladium Bar, then owned by a local crime figure named Norman Flick. Margo told Popcheff that she believed Flick had possibly been involved in the North LaSalle Street murders. Local burglar Bobby Atkinson, a cousin of hers, she said, was a suspect in the John Terhorst murder and was then murdered himself. She thought that Atkinson had sold Gierse and Hinson some stolen microfilm machines. She had no proof of this but still believed it. Margo said that right after the triple murder two men from out of town came into Tommy’s Starlight Palladium Bar and talked with Flick for some time, but then soon left town. She believed they may have been involved in the North LaSalle Street murders. Again, she had no proof, only her belief that it was so. One of the men, Margo said, had “dark, hateful eyes.” Popcheff had the Identification Branch compare the fingerprints of the men Margo mentioned as possibly being involved in the North LaSalle Street killings against the unidentified fingerprints from North LaSalle Street. The technician found no match.
Margo said that when she heard of the murders she called the Homicide Branch, but they thought she was crazy and wouldn’t talk to her. Margo said she also called the local newspaper, which sent out two reporters. However, since no news stories about her had appeared in 1971, Popcheff suspected that they hadn’t believed her. Indeed, when contacted later, one of the reporters said that he hadn’t considered her a very reliable source, because she was so weird, making wild claims with no proof.
Following this, Popcheff lost contact with Margo. He said in his report that she had agreed to meet with him again, but then never did. Popcheff wrote of his meeting with Margo that while she might have been of some help in 1971, he felt that she had forgotten too many details in the years since then. Popcheff sent his report in to the deputy chief of investigations and then went back to his assignment as a uniformed street lieutenant.
This case, however, simply wouldn’t let go of him. In an article in the Indianapolis News in 1992, more than two decades after the murders, Popcheff would say that the crime had stumped police because it had had no eye-witnesses and far too many possible motives. He said they’d tried to find nearly one hundred women who had been involved with one or all of the three men. Despite the optimism of the detectives in 1971, the North LaSalle Street case sat unsolved in the cold case file for twenty years.
In 1991, however, a beautiful young reporter took an interest in the murders. She began her own investigation and soon brought the case back into the media spotlight.
PART TWO
1991
CHAPTER SIX
In 1991, a very attractive journalist in her late twenties named Carol Schultz wrote a feature article for the Indianapolis News about bounty hunters. The article went on to garner Schultz a journalism award and high praise from her editor. Naturally, she wanted a repeat of this.
Schultz knew, however, that she had to come up with a really good subject if she was going to follow up on her earlier success. After quite a bit of thought and investigation, Schultz found out that the television program Unsolved Mysteries was filming in Fort Wayne, Indiana, a town about 125 miles northeast of Indianapolis. And so, she decided to write a piece for the newspaper about the person they were profiling on the program.
As she became involved in writing that article, Schultz also began to wonder about whether there were any unsolved mysteries closer to home, in Indianapolis. What, she asked herself, was Indianapolis’s greatest unsolved mystery? Eventually, a librarian at the Indianapolis Marion County Public Library pointed Schultz toward the North LaSalle Street murders, still unsolved, and
whose twentieth anniversary would be coming up in December of that year. The librarian told Schultz it was a fascinating case and that she should read up on it.
Schultz began researching the murders and soon found herself indeed fascinated by the case. It had everything she needed for a feature article: sex, death, and mystery, wrapped in the story of three handsome, virile men who were brutally murdered. The case, she found, had enthralled the public for some time in the early 1970s, and everyone she talked to confirmed that the North LaSalle Street murders were definitely the biggest unsolved mystery in the history of Indianapolis. With just a little reading on the case, Schultz found that the police had committed thousands of man-hours to the investigation, but no solution had materialized. Schultz also discovered that theories about the perpetrators had numbered in the dozens, making the case even more complicated and mysterious. With its twenty-year anniversary in the near future, Schultz knew she could get some good play from her editor on the idea of a feature article about the murders; once she got approval, she knew she needed to begin some really in-depth research on the case.
In a book she later wrote, Schultz said that one of the first things she did when she started her research was to call and arrange a meeting with Lieutenant Michael Popcheff, one of the original detectives who had investigated the North LaSalle Street murders in 1971. Popcheff had then been a detective sergeant in homicide, but in 1991 he was a lieutenant working in uniform on the south side of Indianapolis. Popcheff agreed to meet with her at a Waffle House restaurant on East Washington Street, about six or seven miles from the original murder scene.
Popcheff later said he regretted agreeing to that meeting. “Carol Schultz called me at roll call and said she would like to do a story about the LaSalle Street case,” he said. “I said okay, no big deal. That was a mistake.” Popcheff regretted meeting with her because Schultz eventually began subscribing to an extremely elaborate conspiracy theory in the North LaSalle Street killings that didn’t fit any of the information or evidence the detectives had uncovered in 1971.
Popcheff said that during their meeting at the Waffle House, they discussed what the detectives had seen and done at the murder scene, and then they talked about how hard all of the detectives had worked on the case. Popcheff told her about the detectives missing Christmas and New Year’s with their families to stay on the investigation, and about how he had even missed his sister’s wedding because he wanted to stay on the case. He also told her about chasing down the hundreds and hundreds of leads that came into the police department, almost all of which led nowhere.
During the meeting, Schultz claims that Popcheff also told her that he had a new clue as to what might have actually happened on North LaSalle Street, but that the police department wouldn’t give him permission to investigate it. He then, according to Schultz, suggested to her that she check it out, telling her that he had recently run into a witness in the murder case named Margo, who in 1971 had worked at a tavern in Indianapolis called Tommy’s Starlight Palladium Bar. This was the hangout, he said, for a minor organized crime figure in the 1970s named Norman Flick. Popcheff then told her the witness said that on the night of the murders a man with “dark, evil, crazy” eyes had come into the bar and spoken with Flick. Margo believed that this man had been involved in the North LaSalle Street murders at the order of Norman Flick.
Schultz’s version of this story was interesting, though it diverged from the report Popcheff wrote for the homicide case file about his interview with this Margo, and what she told him. Popcheff had ended his report by saying that he didn’t think Margo could be of any assistance in solving the North LaSalle Street murders. And quite differently from Schultz’s claim that Popcheff told her he was unable to get permission from the police department to check out this lead, the police department had actually pulled Popcheff off of uniformed duty and detailed him back to the Homicide Branch specifically in order to do so.
Popcheff would later say that he recalled telling Schultz about the information concerning Margo, but not telling her that she should investigate it herself.
However, Margo apparently wasn’t the only person to have seen this man with the “dark, evil, crazy” eyes. Schultz and Popcheff also talked about Michael Ray, the young man who’d been walking home from his brother’s house along North LaSalle Street on the night of the murders and had told the police he’d seen a car sitting across the street from the crime scene. According to an article written by her in NUVO, Schultz claims that Popcheff said this witness also told the police that one of the men sitting in the car had “dark, evil, crazy” eyes. Schultz couldn’t believe it was a coincidence and thought that this had to be the same man that Margo had talked about. (It’s unclear where this idea came from, since the report in the homicide case file of what Ray told the police about the car and its occupants on the night of the murders didn’t contain any reference to “dark, evil, crazy” eyes.) Nevertheless, Schultz knew that if she was ever going to solve the North LaSalle Street case, she’d have to find out who this man was.
Schultz took all of the information she had gotten from Popcheff and, combining it with the other research she had done, wrote a feature article about the twentieth anniversary of the greatest unsolved murder case in the state of Indiana’s history. Her article ran on the front page of the Indianapolis News on November 30, 1991, and garnered Schultz some good attention from her editor, and apparently a good response from readers. Still, she couldn’t help but keep thinking about the clue Popcheff had given her. The case fascinated her, and she knew that the articles she had written so far would be only minor sidebars compared to the coverage she would get if she could solve the twenty-year-old mystery. But to do this, Schultz realized she needed to find both Margo and Michael Ray. She felt certain they could lead her to the man with the “dark, evil, crazy” eyes.
After an extensive search, Schultz wrote in an article for NUVO, she eventually found Ray, then living in Michigan, and spoke with him about what he had seen that night on North LaSalle Street. (However, neither in the article nor in her book does Schultz say exactly what he told her during the conversation.) Next, Schultz set out to find the woman named Margo, whom she said she eventually located working at a run-down bar in Indianapolis. Again, neither in the article nor in her book does Schultz note precisely what Margo told her, and whether or not she confirmed the information about the man with the strange eyes.
(Interestingly, in Schultz’s book where she talks of her early investigation of the North LaSalle Street murders, she also claimed to have found information stating that the FBI and the CIA had been called into the case the day after John Karnes found the bodies. However, she didn’t mention where she got that information. The only reference to either of these organizations in the homicide case file was regarding sending some evidence to the FBI Laboratory several weeks after the murders; there is no reference to the Indianapolis Police Department asking either of those organizations for assistance in the actual investigation. It would have been odd if they had, since it was a murder case and no federal laws had been broken. Schultz also claimed that the CIA may have attended the funeral services for the three men, and that both they and the FBI were baffled by the case. Again, however, Schultz doesn’t note where that information came from.)
Still intent on her story, Schultz then set out to find Norman Flick, the owner of Tommy’s Starlight Palladium Bar and the individual whom the man with the strange eyes had presumably talked to. In his report to the Homicide Branch, Popcheff said that Margo had believed Flick and this man had been involved in the North LaSalle Street killings. Some years earlier, however, Flick had been convicted and sent to a federal prison. So Schultz wrote a letter to him and sent it to the penitentiary. Flick answered her letter and then reportedly called her on the telephone. Schultz said that he denied everything, not only having anything to do with the North LaSalle Street murders, but he even denied owning Tommy’s Starlight Palladium Bar.
After having
conducted these interviews, Schultz’s next step was to meet again with Lieutenant Popcheff to tell him what she had uncovered. They again met at the Waffle House. In her book, Schultz claims that Popcheff seemed amazed at what she had found out and complimented her on her story in the newspaper. She said that he seemed completely in awe of what she had done and uncovered in such a short time. Then, according to Schultz, Popcheff produced the telephone and address book that had contained the victims’ scorecard of sexual conquests, which Schultz said Popcheff let her touch and look at. Following this, she said, he also handed her Gierse’s bankbook to examine.
Popcheff then, Schultz said, told her that if she really wanted to solve the case she had to find out the identity of the man with the strange eyes. He suggested that she research some of the dozens of newspaper articles that had been written about the case to see if she could find a clue about his identity. Schultz said she asked him if he thought it would be helpful if she found some of the old girlfriends of the three victims. Popcheff thought it might, she said, because all they did when the police talked to them in 1971 was cry. (Apparently, according to her, he made no mention of the pages of notes in the homicide files detailing the extensive interviews with these women.) Schultz said that she and Popcheff then met every Saturday at the Waffle House for the next year.
Soon after their conversation about the man with the strange eyes, Schultz claims, Popcheff took her down to the Homicide Branch of the Indianapolis Police Department, where he introduced her to the homicide commander and managed to get her access to the case file for the North LaSalle Street murders. Schultz said that she then sat down and read the file while the homicide commander brought her a collection of crime scene photos to review, which she said both horrified and fascinated her. Schultz claims it took several hours to read through the case file and take notes, but she finally completed it and gave it back to the homicide commander. Interestingly, in her book, Schultz said that the North LaSalle Street case file was contained in a black ledger about a foot thick. This is puzzling, because the Indianapolis Police Department keeps its homicide case files in storage boxes, not ledgers.
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