by Jeff Rice
Finally, at four o’clock he could ignore his conscience no longer. He called the Clark County Sheriff’s Office and was soon connected the Lieutenant Jenks.
CHAPTER 12
MONDAY, MAY 18, 1970
I got to the paper on the dot of nine on Monday and spent the next two hours typing furiously in triplicate what I had compiled over the weekend. I now felt ready to approach my editors and police “friends” with what I felt sure was solid stuff that would convince them we were dealing with a very special kind of maniac, just in case they weren’t already convinced.
Several calls to my usual resources revealed that nothing new had happened since young Mr. (“Miss”) Hemphill had been so ingloriously deposited on her “throne.” Nor had the Katz girl turned up. The police still hadn’t any concrete reasons to suspect a connection between her disappearance and the series of killings. But, with wealthy and prominent locals as parents, there was still the possibility of kidnapping, even though no ransom note or call had been made.
While I worked we got a call from the Clark County Humane Society to apprise us that there had been an unusually large number of dogs reported missing or stolen during the last two weeks. Somehow, that rang a bell and I remembered the dead watchdog found at the Dunes’ Emerald Green Golf Course. I put in a call to the animal shelter but they told me the dog had already been destroyed so there’d be no clues from that quarter. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking for, but from what I’d read it didn’t seem impossible that there’d be a connection somewhere between our mysterious murderer and the increase in disappearing dogs.
I got in to see Cairncross around noon and he scanned my research.
“Nothing new here. Might be good background for a wrap-up piece when this thing’s over with. Why all the stuff on the legends? You don’t for one minute suggest that this guy…”
He looked at me.
“No,” I said tentatively. “But he may think so. And I think that may give us a clue to how he operates so we can predict his next move. If he is convinced he is a vampire, you’ll never see hide nor hair of him in daylight. So far, “I pointed out, “no one has.”
“I’m thrilled,” he said in a flat voice. “I suppose you’re going to present this to the boys downtown and start telling them how to run their show again.”
I didn’t answer.
“It’s your funeral,” he continued. “At any rate, we are trying to cooperate with them by…”
“By suppressing the news!” I bellowed. “By withholding information the public has a right to know how those girls died. The cops know. The D.A. knows. The coroner knows and every goddamn newsman in town knows, too. This whole thing stinks of cover-up from top to bottom. Don’t kid yourself, Lew. They’re not worried about starting a panic. They’re worried about their own skins, about looking stupid at election time. And this paper is just helping them get back into office for four more years of ineptitude.”
I was getting red in the face, and I knew it.
“Since when have we ever let something as serious as this situation go on for weeks without some kind of editorial demanding the cops get off their fat asses and do something?”
“Since now! Since Jake Herman gave us the word. The competition is cooperating. So are all the TV and radio stations. Even the girl at United Press is playing it cool.
“Remember, son. This is a tourist town. A gambling center. Gamblers, my boy, are a very suspicious breed of cat. Being proprietors of hotels and casinos makes them even worse. They don’t even like guys with thin, black moustaches. Bad for business. And, a lot of talk making this loony out to be superhuman wouldn’t help this town’s business at all. We have to remember priorities. If people don’t come here, they don’t spend money here. And we stop eating. It’s that simple.”
“So we’re going to forget all about it like we forgot all about those killings in that ex-mayor’s home in North Las Vegas?”
“Exactly.” He repeated himself. “It’s that simple.”
“Maybe for you,” I told him, and stormed out of his office.
Ella came over and informed me the front office would not OK her time spent at my place so I slipped here a ten-spot, added another two and asked her to order me a Chicken Delight and a can of Coors. I then checked out the weekend roundup of thefts, robberies, etc. Mostly it was routine, except for a massive narcotics raid by the sheriff’s office that netted $350,000 in dangerous drugs and three suspects. On Friday night, May 8, gunshot victim LeVeam Hardison, twenty-five, was buried at Sunset Memorial Gardens; Vern Gardner of Oakland had $3,244 in clothing and jewels stolen from his car in a downtown casino’s parking lot; and the Waller Lumber Company’s safe was relieved of $2,700. The Convention Center’s marquee collapsed Saturday morning. And Benito Albaro, seventy-three, of Delano, California was struck and killed by a dairy truck on US 93 south of Whitney Avenue in East Las Vegas. A routine weekend in Las Vegas.
The sheriff’s office had picked up the suspect’s car which they had found abandoned on First Street near Bridger, not four blocks from the courthouse. They had dusted it for prints and were now trying to get a match with the smudged ones found on the Hanochek girl’s kitchen door. I nibbled absent-mindedly at my chicken, reflecting sourly that the general publicity might have driven the s.o.b. into hiding.
At about 4:30 I got a call from Jenks at the sheriff’s office informing me that Henri St. Claire, one of Las Vegas’ big show producers, was on his way downtown to talk with Sheriff Lane. Apparently he felt he personally knew the suspect and had seen him on Friday night. I told him I was coming over.
Later, after St. Claire had had his say and explained why it had taken him so long to get in touch with the authorities, I got Bernie aside and asked him if he now had enough reason to check out the suspect, now under the various names of Martin Lubin, Dr. Hampden and Janos Skorzeny.
He nibbled his nails awhile and then told me, “Possibly. I think we might start with the Immigration and Justice department and see if they have a dossier on him. From there, assuming they do come up with something, we could contact Scotland Yard, Interpol and the Surete in Paris and see what they come up with. But I’d have to check with Washington first.”
“What about the Katz girl?”
“We’re keeping tabs on that… unofficially.”
I headed for the Daily News desk in the courthouse press room and Bernie followed me in.
“I think I’ll just finish out the day here and avoid going back to the office,” he said.
“Fine by me,” I answered as I dialed Vincenzo and gave him the dope on Lubin-Hampden-Skorzeny’s being spotted by St. Claire and the fact that his car had been found just to make sure he knew it all. When I finished I called the PD for one final check before quitting time and was rewarded with a bonus for the day. The desk Sergeant told me to hang on and switched me to Masterson’s special phone hookup at the courthouse.
“Thought you’d like to know we’ve got another missing person report that just came in about thirty minutes ago. We were processing it while the St. Claire gent was talking to Lane. I’ll give you the particulars.”
I told him to wait and phoned the paper to stand by for more news. Then I got Helen O’Brien to give us a three-way hookup and then told Masterson to go ahead.
“Carolyn Riegel, twenty, receptionist for Homer G. Rasmussen, a chiropractor on Maryland Parkway near Bridger. Didn’t show for work today. A call from the doctor to her mother, a widow, at 1137 E. Bracken revealed the girl hadn’t been seen since Sunday afternoon when she went, alone, to a movie.
“The girl has no steady boyfriend and the mother is understandably upset. Thought about calling the police last night but decided to wait until the wee hours of the morning, then fell asleep before she could call. When she woke up she was just about to call us when Mr. Rasmussen phoned her.
“Description follows: five-four, 120 pounds, ash blond, hazel eyes, is nearsighted.
“We checked all the local t
heaters and drive-ins and one, the Viking, out on Maryland Parkway near the Boulevard Mall, reports three pairs of glasses among their lost-and-found articles. One pair is a man’s type. The other two are women’s, both prescription. Her mother gave us the name of her eye doctor and we’re checking both pairs to see if one matches Carolyn’s prescription.
“The cashier at the Viking didn’t recall seeing anyone answering Carolyn’s description but that doesn’t mean very much. Most of the time they don’t really look at their customers; too busy counting change.
“That’s all we’ve got right now. Her car wasn’t found at the Viking lot, by the way, and we’re keeping an eye out for it as well.”
Masterson hung up and I told Vincenzo I could stop by the mother’s place for a photo of the girl. He said to forget it, that one of the copy boys could get it and told me my stuff would make the 10:30 paper and warned me to keep in touch by phone in case anything broke later on either of the two “disappearances” or the murders.
But that was the end of the day’s excitement.
If Monday had produced little in the way of progress, Tuesday proved more fruitful. The combined forces’ lab people were able to make an “almost positive” ID by comparison between the smudged print found on Carol Hanochek’s kitchen doorknob and one, very clear print discovered on the underlip of the Chevy’s trunk lid. These were turned over to Bernie’s people at the FBI for a crosscheck on the Bureau’s Washington files, and for investigation with the Immigration Department.
Miss Riegel’s eye doctor confirmed that one pair of glasses found at the Viking did, indeed, belong to Carolyn. From the extent of her nearsightedness, it was obvious she could not drive a car without them and it seemed unlikely she’d left them by accident. She must have been taken by force from the theater. This enabled Bernie to step into this end of the investigation in an official capacity and gave him a little more leeway in his inquiries into the murders on the basis of a later possible connection between the two.
“Jake” Herman’s editorial for the Wednesday paper, while not exactly chiding local law enforcement agencies for their apparent inability to cope with the rash of murders, did at least publicly speculate on the possibility that the killings, blood thefts and two missing girls might all be combined in some awful way. D.A. Paine was quoted as saying, “We are leaving no stone unturned in this all-out effort to rid Las Vegas of its present scourge. While there has been no evidence to the effect that the Mafia is in any way involved in these murders, we are not overlooking that possibility and the very murders themselves point up the growing lawlessness and violence both here and throughout the nation. We are not considering an official request to the FBI for assistance on the basis that the two missing young women may be, in some way, tied in with the recent murders of four innocents.” (Somehow, I guess, the D.A. either forgot all about the death of the drag queen, Hemphill, or didn’t consider him an “innocent.” But, then, he always maintained a public stance of wanting to rid Las Vegas of all “sexual perverts.”)
However, nowhere in any of these news stories was there a single mention of the fact that the police officials claimed the official cause of these deaths was “still to be medically determined.” I still couldn’t see why the Daily News would allow such blatant disregard of the public’s right to such information to go unchecked. But, when I asked Cairncross about it he told me, angrily, “That’s the way it is. Stop trying to change the whole world! Learn to live in it like everyone else.”
CHAPTER 13
WEDNESDAY, MAY 20, 1970
NIGHT
Things really started happening today. I was doing double duty as a fill-in copy editor on the night shift at about 8:40 when the PD squawk box started making noises about “one helluva fight” going on at Old Town Hospital not more than five minutes away.
Police units, then more backup units were called and inside of five minutes Stefan (who was “moonlighting” in the darkroom on some fashion photos for a private client) and I were on the way in his Porsche, which is equipped with a two-way radio.
As we rolled up we got the first photos of the suspect in action as he came tearing out of the old building’s main entrance with white-clad orderlies hanging from each arm and one holding onto his throat. He was covered in blood and moving with incredible speed for a man hauling three large men all simultaneously dragging at him and slugging him. Before he reached the sidewalk he’d thrown the one on his right off balance with a shrugging gesture. When he reached the grass by Eighth Street sidewalk, he kicked the man hanging onto his left arm, twisted, then bent forward quickly and threw the man on his neck clean over him onto the grass. Then he swung a brutal right to the remaining orderly’s midsection and dropped him to the pavement.
The police closed in from both sides with their batons raised. As he reached the curb one of them struck him across the right temple and he staggered slightly, then plowed into that group of three officers and right on through them like they were tackling dummies on a playing field. A single officer detached himself from the other contingent and raced for his station wagon, loosing the police dog which reached the suspect as he hit the corner of Eighth and Ogden. The remaining officers formed a skirmish line with pistols leveled and were calling for him to halt.
By now, both Stefan and I had left the car and his motorized Nikon was whirring and clicking repeatedly, taking stop-action photos with a strobe-equipped roll of ultra-high speed film.
The suspect whirled around just as the dog leaped at him and he was knocked off his feet. The police started forward, spreading out to surround the struggling figures on the ground.
Stefan and I advanced from the opposite direction.
The man now wrapped his long arms and legs around the dog and rolled over on his side. Suddenly, the animal gave a terrified yelp and then a prolonged sort of screech, like a pig makes when frightened.
Somehow the man got back on his feet and was holding the now-limp animal as a sort of shield. The police opened fire and the man, plainly hit but to no effect, hissed like a basket full of snakes and hurled the dog at the nearest two cops, knocking them down like bowling pins. Then he was off down Eighth Street with the police in full chase. A few were kneeling, offering covering fire to the others and two were sprinting for their cars. The two cops on the ground were scrambling to their feet and one of them shouted, “The dog’s dead. That son of a bitch broke his neck!”
As the guns roared, one officer was calling for more backup units and doctors were coming out of the main entrance to tend to the injured orderlies. The suspect, now a block away and running like a decathlon sprinter, rounded the corner of Eighth and Fremont and the squad car was now less than a hundred yards behind. The other patrol car had stalled and its starter was grinding away.
I ran for Stefan’s Porsche as he stood snapping off shots of the orderlies. I made an illegal U-turn and picked him up just off the main entrance area, then we took off after the first police car with the other one on our tail. While I tried to pretend I was a road-racing professional, Stefan ducked into his cramped space and reloaded the Nikon.
We picked up the sound of the first car’s siren two blocks ahead, and screamed down an alley between Seventh and Sixth only to find our quarry and his pursuer nearly two blocks ahead of us. We were doing almost fifty when I hit the brakes. The cop car ahead of us had stopped and was backing up. We almost collided. As the patrol car headed up to Sixth and screeched around the corner I could see the alley up ahead was strewn with upended garbage cans. Our suspect had neatly led the cops into a hand-made “dead end.”
We rounded the corner on Sixth and Stefan radioed the paper and began a running commentary in his thick Hungarian accent, giving a blow-by-blow account of what had taken place and what we were up to. I hoped someone in the newsroom was taking it down because I was too busy just driving to give the facts much attention at the time.
The police car behind us was using both its sirens, the growler and their curio
us electronic “woop-woop” device. Its red lights were flashing angrily. We weren’t able to average more than forty on a block-to-block basis because of the dips at each corner and the cross-traffic that wouldn’t stop for the sirens ahead of us. A moving van turning down Sixth from Bonneville brought our parade to a halt and by the time it had cleared our path I could once again make out the scarecrow figure of our quarry about a block ahead. He was running, if anything, even faster than before.
The squad car behind us passed with a roar and a screech of tires. By the time we reached Gass, just behind the two patrol cars, they were again stopped, this time by a line of vehicles moving both ways, and when we got going again the frenzied figure of the suspect, let’s call him Skorzeny was far ahead and still running strong.
Two blocks ahead lay Charleston Boulevard which the city fathers, in their wisdom, some years back, had seen fit to divide at that corner with a traffic island preventing any through traffic on Sixth Street. Skorzeny had sucked us into another dead end and the two police cars were already stopped in their tracks as Skorzeny leaped and dodged the traffic, ran across the traffic island, and disappeared down the street. One of the cars ahead made a U-turn and started back the way we had come, heading back to the hospital, I figured. As we made our turn the other one was bellowing for backup units to head in north from Sahara Avenue.
We headed east on Hoover, cut across Charleston and took Eighth to Park Paseo following the curve back up to Sixth Street on the south side of the boulevard, but by the time we got there there was no Skorzeny in sight. Several minutes of cutting back and forth across the area of Sixth, Fifth Place, and Houssels all the way to Oakey produced nothing but other patrol cars doing the same.
Vincenzo called us to say the police had lost the man and were preparing to blanket the entire area. Inside of another fifteen minutes there must have been twenty police units scouring the entire section of town from Sahara to Charleston, and from Las Vegas Boulevard to Maryland Parkway. Periodically, the police copter, finally launched from the upper parking level at the courthouse, buzzed overhead.