Carol Schultz had been very happy when Sheriff McAtee took an active interest in her claims, and although Lieutenant Popcheff had earlier only assisted her in an advisory capacity, meeting and talking with her at the Waffle House, he eventually joined forces with McAtee to investigate her claims about Horton and the North LaSalle Street murders. One day, she said, Popcheff even took her to the police department property room and allowed her to see and smell the bloody clothing worn by Gierse and Hinson. She said it repulsed her, but when she recounted the experience to her bounty hunter friend, he told her that it was a shame they didn’t have the investigative technology then that they have today. He told her they could probably have solved the case right away. This started Schultz thinking about whether these same scientific advances could still be used on the case. After conferring with a friend about this, Schultz contacted the very prestigious Vidocq Society.
This organization, based in Philadelphia, is made up of former homicide detectives, forensic scientists, medical examiners, and others involved in homicide investigation. This group will lend assistance to police departments and other organizations involved in extremely difficult murder investigations, and particularly in cold cases (murder cases that have been inactivated and shelved because of a lack of evidence or witnesses). The group sent an investigator to Indianapolis, who conferred with the sheriff and took a look at the evidence. After this, he flew back to Philadelphia to present the case to the society. Because only a few cases the society sees every year actually have a chance of solution, and because the cost of an investigation is so high, the society typically declines most of the cases presented to it. However, the society voted to look into the North LaSalle Street case and lend Carol Schultz a hand. The society would later question whether this had been a good decision.
According to an article in the September 1996 issue of Indianapolis Monthly magazine, several members of the society said they didn’t know when they accepted the case how emotionally involved Carol Schultz was in the investigation. They soon found out, however. These members said that they continuously warned Schultz that she needed to distance herself from the case, but apparently she couldn’t. Consequently, the members soon began feeling very uncomfortable about the investigation. According to the magazine article, one of the members said, “Dealing with her is like trying to herd a group of cats down a driveway.” Nevertheless, despite their doubts, several members of the society came to Indianapolis to investigate. Alas, however, though they looked at all aspects of the case, they were unable to come up with much more than the police already had.
Meanwhile, because of the information Carol Schultz had supplied, Sheriff Joe McAtee, Lieutenant Michael Popcheff, and Jim Strode (by then retired) flew to Florida and spoke with Floyd Chastain. They apparently believed that Carol Schultz had uncovered clues they had missed in 1971. The men returned cautious, but encouraged. They didn’t know at that time, however, how much of the information Chastain had given them he had gotten from Carol Schultz in the first place.
Eventually, two other detectives, Lieutenant Charles Briley and Lieutenant Louis Christ (who would later become the deputy chief of investigations), also traveled to Florida to follow up on the earlier questioning of Chastain. They weren’t nearly as impressed.
“We interviewed Chastain twice and we couldn’t decide if he was telling us the truth or not,” said Briley. So he decided to try a new tactic. “When we interviewed Chastain a third time, I told my partner that I was going to tell him some silly things, and to just go along with whatever I said. So I told Chastain some things about the crime scene that weren’t true, and I found that they would become a part of his story. This proved to me that he wasn’t there. For example, I mentioned a vacant lot next door to the crime scene, and he said, ‘Yeah, that’s where we parked.’ There was no vacant lot next door.”
Lieutenant Christ agreed with Briley’s assessment. “Floyd Chastain made up everything he said about that case,” said Christ. “He had no direct knowledge of any of that. There was nothing he said that he could substantiate.”
At the conclusion of his interviews, Chastain apparently realized that Briley and Christ knew he was lying, and he panicked. Lying to police officers or prison officials is a violation that can result in a revocation of privileges. “The last thing Chastain said to us was ‘Please don’t tell the warden that I lied,’” said Christ. “He knew he was going to lose all of his phone privileges. The guy had absolutely nothing of his own as far as knowledge of that crime.”
Eventually, though, another person who claimed to know something about the North LaSalle Street murders also surfaced. On March 9, 1993, at around 5:30 P.M., the Indianapolis Police Department received a call from a woman named Mary Cavanaugh.1 Cavanaugh said she wanted to report an attempted burglary at her house.
Officer Tony Lorenzano arrived to take the report and discovered that someone had definitely tried to get in. He found pry marks and fresh wood chips at her side door, but also found that entry hadn’t been gained and nothing had been taken. As is standard police procedure, he explained to Cavanaugh that he would make a report and try to keep an eye on her house, and then he started to leave. However, as he did so, Lorenzano said Cavanaugh suddenly became very upset and started asking him what he knew about the North LaSalle Street murders. She claimed that she had recently been in contact with Sheriff McAtee about it. Cavanaugh then also told Officer Lorenzano that a man named Carroll Horton had been trying to contact her through her daughter. Cavanaugh said she hadn’t heard from Horton in over twenty years.
Cavanaugh then began telling Officer Lorenzano about being at the North LaSalle Street house on the night of the murders. She told him that when she walked into the house there was blood everywhere, that two of the men were already dead, and that they were getting ready to kill the third, who was begging for his life. She said she started screaming, and Carroll Horton, who was supervising the murders, slapped her and told her to shut up. She claimed that Horton then made her go to a typewriter in the house and type a message that said, “This is what happens to people who cross me.” (There is no mention in the original 1971 homicide case file of there even having been a typewriter in the house on North LaSalle Street, let alone of the police finding any note such as the one Cavanaugh claimed she typed.)
Although Officer Lorenzano hadn’t been a member of the police department when the North LaSalle Street murders occurred, he clearly still knew about them. So he immediately contacted the Marion County Sheriff’s Office in an attempt to verify that Cavanaugh had spoken with Sheriff McAtee about the case. He wasn’t able to raise anyone at the Sheriff’s Homicide Office but did finally manage to get ahold of one of their homicide run cars. The deputy in the run car said that he had heard that McAtee, Popcheff, and Strode had flown down to Florida recently to talk with a man in prison there about the North LaSalle Street killings, but that was all he knew about it.
Officer Lorenzano then called Lieutenant Popcheff at home. When he told him what Cavanaugh had said, Popcheff told Lorenzano that he would be there as soon as he could. Within thirty minutes, both McAtee and Popcheff had arrived at Cavanaugh’s home and had taken over.
Unfortunately, what McAtee and Popcheff apparently didn’t know was that Carol Schultz would also soon be in contact with Mary Cavanaugh and her family, and possibly taint anything Cavanaugh would tell the police. Schultz said in her book that Sheriff McAtee called and told her about Mary Cavanaugh. Schultz somehow obtained Cavanaugh’s unlisted telephone number and called her. Although Cavanaugh wouldn’t talk with Schultz and told her to never call her back, Schultz talked to Cavanaugh’s daughter, and told her about the murders. Schultz gave her some pictures of the North LaSalle Street victims and asked her to show them to her mother and see if they stirred up any memories. When Cavanaugh’s daughter showed her mother the photographs, she said her mother didn’t show any signs of recognition, and indeed said that she didn’t know the men. Only later did she seem to st
art remembering things.
Since Mary Cavanaugh had made some very damning statements against Carroll Horton, however, the police department realized that they needed to investigate whether or not Cavanaugh was a reliable witness. They assigned this task to Detective Sergeant Don Wright. On March 30, 1993, about three weeks after the initial break-in call, Detective Wright wrote a memo about the various interviews he had conducted concerning Cavanaugh. He said he met first with a man named Sam Gibson, who had lived with Cavanaugh from 1976 to 1987. Gibson said that Cavanaugh had a serious drinking problem the whole time they had been together. But he also said that she had never once during the time he knew her mentioned the North LaSalle Street murders. Gibson added that in 1978 or 1979 Cavanaugh introduced him to Carroll Horton, who she said was an excellent mechanic. She didn’t seem frightened or intimidated by him, and in fact Gibson told Wright that Cavanaugh and Horton appeared to be very good friends, and that he suspected they might have been even closer than that.
Gibson then told Wright about how in the early part of 1993, long after he and Cavanaugh had parted ways, he saw Horton come into a bar he was in. He said he watched Horton walk over and ask the bartender for information about Cavanaugh, specifically her address. The bartender couldn’t help him, but Gibson said he stopped Horton and told him that he could get Cavanaugh’s telephone number for him, which he did.
Although Horton originally told Gibson that he needed to talk to Cavanaugh about some tax problems he was having with a house he had bought from her, Gibson said that Horton later told him he really needed to contact her because Floyd Chastain was trying to pin some murders on him, and he needed to talk to her about it.
Detective Sergeant Wright, in his report, also mentioned speaking with a man named Bert Cavanaugh,2 Mary Cavanaugh’s first husband. Like Gibson, he said that Mary had never once mentioned anything to him about the North LaSalle Street murders during the time they were together.
Lieutenants Louis Christ and Charles Briley also assisted in attempting to verify Cavanaugh’s reliability as a witness. They weren’t impressed with what they turned up.
“Mary Cavanaugh’s memory was so bad that she couldn’t even tell us where she used to live,” said Christ. “We drove her down there and she let us drive right past her old house. She had no idea where it was.”
The Prosecutor’s Office wasn’t impressed with Mary Cavanaugh’s recollections, either. There were far too many inconsistencies, enough to make them very wary of issuing a murder warrant based on them. Also, they worried about reports that she had a serious drinking problem, which they feared would further damage her credibility if the case went to court.
On November 3, 1993, the Identification Branch of the Indianapolis Police Department said that Cavanaugh’s fingerprints didn’t match any of the unidentified fingerprints the crime lab technicians had found in the house.
Still, despite the reluctance of the Prosecutor’s Office to issue a murder warrant, the Indianapolis Police Department—because of the information supplied by Carol Schultz, Floyd Chastain, and Mary Cavanaugh—did decide to officially reopen the North LaSalle Street case. The police department felt that they needed to take a fresh look at the case, so veteran homicide detective Jon Layton was assigned to head up the reopened investigation.
Layton, of course, had to start from the beginning and read the entire 1971 case file. Then he had to look at what Carol Schultz claimed were fresh leads that would solve the case once and for all.
1 Denotes pseudonym
2 Denotes pseudonym
CHAPTER NINE
On April 11, 1994, Indianapolis homicide detective Jon Layton, after reading through the 1971 homicide case file and reviewing the recent statements from Carol Schultz, Floyd Chastain, and Mary Cavanaugh, typed up a probable cause affidavit and submitted it to the Prosecutor’s Office. A probable cause affidavit basically tells the prosecutor what evidence a detective has in a case, listing the witnesses and what they said. It also details the physical evidence available, which can not only support what the witnesses said, but also tie a suspect to the crime. In addition, it contains any other information available that the detective feels can support his or her assertion that a certain person committed a crime. The prosecutor, after reading the probable cause affidavit, can then decide whether or not to issue arrest warrants based on this information and evidence.
In the case of the North LaSalle Street murders, the prosecutor declined. No arrest warrants would be issued based just on what evidence Layton had available, which was mostly witness statements with really no new hard physical evidence. Most prosecutors, besides not wanting to damage someone’s reputation by arresting him or her for a murder that can’t be proved, and through this waste taxpayer money, also live and die by their conviction rate. Every prosecutor wants to brag about having a high conviction rate. It’s how they measure their success. Also, few individuals who run for the office of prosecutor see it as an end. Most see it as a springboard to a higher political office. But to get to this higher office they have to have been successful as a prosecutor. Therefore, taking on a case that has a strong likelihood of falling apart in court is never an attractive idea.
In addition, in any murder investigation, while it is nice to have statements from witnesses, and even confessions, these cannot take the place of hard evidence. Jurors like to see physical evidence that can tie a suspect to a crime. Jurors like to see fingerprints or DNA left behind at the crime scene. Jurors like to have the murder weapon found in the suspect’s possession or the victim’s blood on the suspect’s clothing. Members of a jury feel much more comfortable about convicting someone when there is physical evidence. Jurors don’t like to convict on murder charges—which typically carry a lengthy prison sentence or even the death penalty—unless they can see convincing evidence the person is guilty. In the North LaSalle Street case, however, no physical evidence at all tied Carroll Horton to the murders. All the police had were the statements supplied by Floyd Chastain, a convicted felon, and Mary Cavanaugh, an apparently unreliable witness.
This is not to say that witness statements have no prosecutorial value. They do. But prosecutors know that statements can often be distorted by what a witness has read somewhere, has heard from other witnesses, or believes he or she saw based on the witness’s opinion of the perpetrator. How a person feels about someone else can often color their impressions of what they see. For example, acts that would appear innocuous when done by ordinary people can often appear devious and criminal if done by someone a witness doesn’t like.
Also, prosecutors must always consider whether witnesses may be lying for some reason. The witness may actually be the perpetrator and is trying to shift the blame, or the witness may have a grudge against someone and is lying as payback. In addition to this, people simply see events differently. Ask any police officer taking witness statements at the scene of a crime: It can be amazing how differently people who witnessed the same event saw it. That’s why statements like these have to be confirmed or corroborated by physical evidence in order to carry real evidentiary weight.
In the case of Mary Cavanaugh, the prosecutor saw serious problems. When Cavanaugh told the police that she had been dragged into the murder scene, she was talking about events that had occurred well over twenty years earlier, and which had been reported on extensively in the news media. The prosecutor knew that Cavanaugh had very likely read and heard a lot about the North LaSalle Street murders over the passing years. Anyone living in Indianapolis during that time couldn’t help but hear about them. Also, the prosecutor was concerned about reports of a drinking problem, which raised fears about how this condition could affect her memory.
Additionally, the police had had Cavanaugh hypnotized in an attempt to enhance her memory. While this technique can assist people in recalling traumatic events, it is also fraught with problems. Individuals in a hypnotic state are very prone to suggestion and can be made to “remember” events that are suggested t
o them. Consequently, the prosecutor knew that a good defense attorney would jump all over the issue of Mary Cavanaugh having been hypnotized, using it as evidence that her testimony was unreliable.
But Cavanaugh wasn’t the only witness that the prosecutor had trouble with. Carol Schultz admitted that she’d told Chastain details from the case files, such as the fact that there had been pizza boxes under the coffee table in the living room of the North LaSalle Street house (something Chastain had related back to the police to convince them he had been there). She also admitted to sending him a newspaper clipping, the contents of which, like the pizza boxes, Chastain had used in his statements to the police. Schultz later agreed that she told Chastain too much about the case, rather than letting him tell her. Schultz apparently didn’t realize that, like Horton, Chastain had fallen in love with her and wanted very much to impress her. He obviously believed that having and sharing knowledge about the North LaSalle Street murderers was the way to do it.
Between the lack of physical evidence and the issues with Chastain and Cavanaugh, the prosecutor simply didn’t think that the police had enough evidence to warrant an arrest. He felt they simply had no chance of winning with just what they had, so he declined to act.
Carol Schultz said in her book that she again felt devastated that the Prosecutor’s Office wouldn’t do anything. She had been positive that with Layton taking over the case, and with Cavanaugh adding her testimony to Chastain’s, it would be more than enough. Schultz’s take on this latest setback was that she’d heard the prosecutor, because of an upcoming election, didn’t want to do anything that could turn out badly (which this case had the strong possibility of doing). She said she felt crushed.
Despite being deeply disappointed by the prosecutor’s decision, Carol Schultz continued to stay in constant contact with both Carroll Horton and Floyd Chastain. She simply could not give up hope of eventually bringing Horton to justice. And the book, she knew, wouldn’t have a proper ending without an arrest and trial.
Slaughter on North Lasalle Page 14