by Betty Webb
Also troubling are the persistent rumors that a month before Ernst’s capture in the Mediterranean, his U-boat torpedoed a civilian ship bound for Palestine from Europe. However, this was never proved and all non-German witnesses to the events are dead.
I let out my breath in a slow whistle, causing several nearby library patrons to raise their fingers to their lips in protest. I ignored them. Torpedoing civilian craft was against international law, even in wartime. Furthermore, judging from the ship’s destination, there was a good chance it had been filled with Jews fleeing the Holocaust. I’m not much of a believer in coincidence, and I felt deeply uncomfortable about Ernst’s connections to so many crimes within such a short period: the civilian boat sinking, the torture-death of a fellow Camp Papago inmate, and the fact that he had been on the loose in the same area where an entire family was slaughtered. But after searching through the microfilm for a few more minutes, another article led my suspicions in a different direction.
January 6, 1945
MURDER SUSPECT CAPTURED
Scottsdale——The last surviving member of the murdered Bollinger family was discovered last night, hiding in the attic of a friend’s house only two miles away from the murder scene.
When taken into custody, 15-year-old Chester Bollinger told sheriff’s deputy Harry Caulfield that after a family argument early Christmas morning, he left home to go to a friend’s house and therefore knew nothing about the murders which took place later that day. The teenager was charged with his family’s murder.
“The community can rest easy now because we believe we’ve solved this heinous crime,” said Maricopa County Sheriff Leroy Jeakins.
I stared at the headline. murder suspect captured. No “alleged” to soften the accusation. How times had changed.
Further Journal articles stated that by the end of January 1945, twenty-five of the German POWs had been caught and returned to Camp Papago. Three of them—Ernst and two of his former crewmen, Gunter Hoenig and Josef Braun—remained at large. Fast-forwarding the microfilm to early March, I found the article celebrating Ernst’s capture by the two Apache Junction farm workers who had walked in on him while he was stealing food from the shed where they’d been bunking. But nowhere could I find anything on the subsequent capture of Gunter Hoenig and Josef Braun. The two had been swallowed up in the Arizona desert.
Chester Bollinger’s trial for the murder of his family was covered extensively by all the Arizona newspapers. He was found not guilty. A neighboring farmer testified that he had seen the Bollinger family alive on Christmas Day, hours after Chess turned up at his friend’s house. A school friend of his further drove a stake through the prosecution’s heart by testifying that for the entire day and night of the murder, the two had been playing card games in the friend’s attic. The jury accepted this unlikely alibi, but it hadn’t been good enough for the Scottsdale Journal. The day after the “Not guilty” verdict was handed down, the newspaper ran the following editorial:
June 12, 1945
Scottsdale——In what appears to many to be an astounding miscarriage of justice, 15-year-old Chester Bollinger, known as Chess, was released from jail today and sent to live with a cousin. Although acquitted of the murder of his family, most Scottsdalians——especially those who know the young man personally——bemoaned the fact that he was once more free to continue his violent career.
“I don’t know what this country is coming to when decent people can be murdered in their beds by young punks like Chess,” said elderly Horace Stanton, who owns a grapefruit orchard not far from the Bollinger farm. “I can bet you that his father was too lenient with him, and that’s why he’s turned out like this. It goes to show you the Bible knows what it’s talking about: spare the rod and spoil the child.”
Not everyone agrees with Stanton’s assessment. One of the teenager’s staunchest defenders has been Deputy Harry Caulfield, Chess’ arresting officer.
“Chess is no angel but the jury found him innocent and we have to accept their verdict,” said Caulfield. “As for the talk that the boy was undisciplined, it simply isn’t true. The story I hear is that the kid frequently showed up at school covered with bruises from beatings administered by his father. We should let young Chess get on his with life. If he commits more crimes in the future, we will deal with them then.”
Other Scottsdale Journal articles showed that Chess Bollinger’s troubles did not end with his not guilty verdict. At the age of seventeen, he served four months in jail for beating a grocery clerk. At nineteen, he knifed a man on a downtown Scottsdale street and pulled a deuce at Arizona State Prison. After his release, he married a woman who had been writing to him while he was in prison, and for several years he vanished from the Scottsdale Journal’s pages. The honeymoon ended in 1963, when the Journal reported that Chess was arrested for breaking his wife’s arm because she undercooked the Thanksgiving turkey. At that point Chess’ former pen pal divorced him. Two weeks after being released from jail on the domestic violence charge, he was arrested again, this time for car theft. He served three more years in prison.
None of this stopped him from re-marrying or beating more women. Once he’d done his time for the car theft, his arrests for domestic violence began again. The worst incident happened in 1988, when he was sent back to Arizona State Prison for battering his second wife and their ten-year-old daughter. The wife escaped with a few bruises and scalp lacerations, but the daughter was hospitalized with two broken ribs.
The daughter. After looking at the dates again, I finally figured out MaryEllen Bollinger’s connection to the Bollinger family. And to Erik Ernst.
She was Chess Bollinger’s daughter.
The last time Chess made the pages of the Scottsdale Journal was in 1993, when he was arrested once more for domestic violence. This article, written by my friend Fay Harris—the paper had started printing its reporters’ names—stated that Bollinger’s wife refused to press charges. Chess went home, where the family supposedly lived happily ever after.
It did not escape my notice that on the occasion of each of Chess Bollinger’s arrests, the Scottsdale Journal always made reference to the 1944 murders of his family and his subsequent trial. The newspaper’s disclaimer that Chess had been found innocent always sounded less than convincing.
“The name ‘Bollinger’ will never be cleared. The damned Nazi saw to that sixty years ago.”
Did MaryEllen believe Ernst held information that could clear her father’s name? I thought about the possibility for a while, eventually coming up with a more intriguing question. Was it possible that MaryEllen suspected that Ernst killed the Bollingers?
While returning the boxes of microfilm to the librarian, I began to wonder why MaryEllen believed that Kapitan Ernst ’ssupposed crimes were the only things tarnishing the Bollinger name.
Why didn’t she hold her father responsible, too?
Chapter Seven
Continuing to break my vow not to work today (hanging out in the library didn’t count) I drove to back Desert Investigations and let myself in. I hit the light switch to kill the gloom empty offices always have, and crossed to my desk. Many of the art galleries along Main Street opened on Sundays, and as tourists wandered by, some of them stopped to peek through my glass office door. I ignored them and punched in MaryEllen Bollinger’s number. Although it was early afternoon, MaryEllen sounded like she’d just crawled out of bed, her sweet soprano deepened to a rasp. Working the night shift can do that to you.
“Christmas Day, 1944,” I said. “Your grandparents and your aunt and two uncles are killed. Later, your father stands trial for murder, but thanks to a neighboring farmer and a friend who alibis him, he gets off. How am I doing?”
She coughed and cleared her throat. Then I heard something that sounded like the click of a Bic, and seconds later, a deep inhale. The real reason for the rasp. “You did your homework, Ms. Jones. Now we’re ready to talk.”
“First question. How did you know Erik Er
nst was living in Scottsdale?”
Another inhale, another cough. “I didn’t. At least not until they started filming that documentary in Papago Park. The Journal ran an article about it and actually mentioned him. I started dropping by and hanging out in back with the other film groupies, knowing that he’d have to turn up sooner or later, and he did, about a week ago. I made sure he didn’t see me, and later, I followed him home, but I didn’t try to talk to him then because I was too shook up. I only confronted him the night he, uh, died.”
The night he, uh, was murdered. I didn’t believe her. Rada Tesema had told me that Ernst complained about a “crazy lady,” and I was certain he’d meant MaryEllen Bollinger. I said as much.
“Oh, all right. I called him a few times. So what?”
So plenty. “Why? What was the point?”
Inhale. Exhale. Cough. She really should stop smoking. “Because I wanted to make him confess. I thought if I told him how much he’d hurt my father, how much he’d damaged my family, that he’d finally tell the truth, go with me to the police and confess.”
Somehow I refrained from laughing. MaryEllen was abysmally ignorant about human behavior. Getting a murderer to confess his crimes out of the goodness of his heart seldom worked, which is why we have trials. “Ernst denied killing your grandparents, didn’t he?”
“Yeah. When I went to his house that night and asked him to clear our family name, he laughed in my face.”
I tried to put myself in her place: late at night, alone in a house with the man she believed had destroyed her family. What would I have done? “MaryEllen, did you search his house to see if he’d hidden some kind of proof?”
“No.” More coughing, a real fit this time. Maybe she had searched his house, maybe she hadn’t. Probably not. Like most people trying to get information on their own, she could only go so far and no farther, which is why God created private investigators.
A tap at the door made me start. A man in a pink golf shirt and madras shorts. “Hold on, MaryEllen. I’ll be right back.” I set the phone down and opened the door. “We’re closed on Sundays. Come back tomorrow.”
“I’m looking for the mystery bookstore,” the man said in a Minnesota accent. “It used to be here.”
“Not for years.” Irritated, I directed him to Poisoned Pen’s new location and closed the door. Then I killed the lights and closed the door blind so no one else could see in. Fortunately MaryEllen was still on the phone, puffing away at her cigarette. “Sorry about that,” I told her. “Just a tourist. But back to your visit at Ernst’s. What did you think would happen even if Ernst confessed everything to you?”
“My poor father would be vindicated.”
Ah, yes. Poor Chess, the father who beat his wives and shattered his little girl’s ribs. Why should she care how the thug felt? I was so curious, I asked.
“You don’t understand. Nobody does.”
“Try me.”
“Ms. Jones, please believe me when I say that Daddy isn’t a bad man. He’s had a rough life and he never got any good breaks. After his whole family was murdered, he was forced to go live with some older cousin of his who already had seven children, and resented him being there. Her husband beat him every time he opened his mouth, so he ran away when he was seventeen. Not that it made any difference. Maybe he was found innocent at the trial, but no one ever believed it. His…his problems later weren’t his fault. Things just kind of happened.”
“Beating a child until she suffers broken bones doesn’t ‘just kind of happen.’”
“You don’t understand.”
“You already said that.”
Her voice dropped so low I could hardly hear her over the laugher of tourists passing by on the sidewalk outside. She’d said something about “reasons.”
“You’ll have to speak up, MaryEllen.”
“I said, ‘Daddy had his reasons.’ He said I was a real handful as a kid.”
I considered her reply, then put two and two together. As softly as I could, I asked, “MaryEllen, does Clay say you’re a real handful, too?”
She hung up on me.
As long as I was in the office, I decided to make a few more calls. I knew that former Maricopa County Sheriff Leroy Jeakins was dead, because I had pulled traffic duty at his funeral during my first year at Scottsdale PD. And even if the FBI agent in charge of the Bollinger case was still alive, well, the Feds were notorious for not cooperating with PIs. Or anybody, for that matter. This left then-sheriff’s deputy Harry Caulfield. Although he had to be in his eighties, I decided to give him a try anyway.
Sometimes, although not often, life gets easy, and this was one of those times. The first Harry Caulfield in the Phoenix phone book turned out to be Deputy Caulfield’s son. Without coaxing, he gave me his father’s phone number. “Dad has a lot of time on his hands and he loves to talk about the old days,” Caulfield Jr. said. “Especially the Bollinger case. He gave a long interview about it to a reporter a few years back, you know, the same woman who wrote about those German POWs in that book, Escape Across the Desert. I guess she’s kinda famous now, ’cause they’re turning it into a movie. Let me warn you, once Dad gets started on the Bollingers, there’s no stopping him.”
A garrulous subject would make for a nice change, so I punched in Caulfield Sr.’s number.
“Harry’s Bar and Brothel.”
What a card. “Deputy Caulfield?”
“If you’re sellin’, I’m not buyin’. But if you’re giving it away, what the hey.” A snicker.
“Deputy Caulfield, my name’s Lena Jones. I’m a private investigator working on the Erik Ernst murder, which I’m sure you’ve read about, and I’ve begun to suspect that the Bollinger case might be connected. Could you spare me some time?”
The snicker grew into a guffaw. “Are you good-looking, PI Jones? If you are, hustle yourself over here tomorrow and I’ll tell you anything you need to know. Come to think of it, I’ll tell you even if you’re only medium-looking!”
For a moment I wondered how fast Deputy Caulfield could run, then took comfort in the fact that I could probably run faster. “I’m booked tomorrow, Deputy Caul…”
“Call me Harry. I retired twenty years ago.”
“Okay, Harry. How about right now? Or at least as soon as I can get there from Scottsdale.”
“It’s a date, sweet thing. Leave your chastity belt at home.”
God help me.
***
Apache Junction, only twenty-five miles due east of downtown Phoenix, had originally been an Apache Indian hunting grounds, but in the mid-eighteen hundreds, the Apaches were edged out by prospectors mining for gold in the nearby Superstition Mountains. Local legend held that one of those mines, the Lost Dutchman, still contained untapped reserves of gold, but the word “Lost” wasn’t a mere romantic term, it was descriptive. Jacob Waltz, the man who supposedly discovered the rich vein in the mountains, died in 1891 without revealing its location. Apache Junction now played host to retirees instead of gold miners and Indians, but from time to time, you could still see twenty-first-century prospectors leading their pack mules into the Superstitions in search of the Lost Dutchman.
Deputy Harry Caulfield lived in Sundown Sam’s Retirement Village, a small mobile home park huddled against the foothills of the mountains. The park was typical of Arizona’s many retirement communities: about five acres of concrete pads with hookups for trailers and RVs, an over-chlorinated pool, and a rec center that offered card games and crafts. A purple shuttle bus was parked in front of the rec center to haul the residents off to Barry Manilow concerts in downtown Phoenix. As I drove along the narrow lane looking for Caulfield’s pad, I noticed numerous elderly women walking in groups or tending to the flowers that grew in pots in front of their trailers. I saw almost no men.
The exterior of Caulfield’s double-wide reflected the local legend. Life-sized decals of miner’s tools decorated the white sides of his trailer, and a plaster statue of an old prospector
and his burro stood on his concrete porch. Affixed to the trailer door was an incongruous bit of whimsy: a sign reading IF THE DOUBLE-WIDE’S A-ROCKIN’, DON’T COME A-KNOCKIN’. I took a moment to make certain the double-wide wasn’t a-rockin,’ then rapped on the door. It opened immediately.
An elderly pirate look-alike—wolfish grin, black eyepatch—faced me. What little hair the man had left was white and slicked back with something that smelled like Old Spice. “Pretty Miss Lena, I take it! We been waiting for you!”
We? He stepped aside to usher me into a living room crammed with a large sofa, two recliners, a gun cabinet stocked with a large assortment of rifles, and several oak tables weighted down with U.S. Navy memorabilia and award plaques from the Maricopa Sheriff’s Department. As he made his way to one recliner, he limped badly. The man sitting on the sofa clutching his cane was easily as old as Harry, and his bald pate was speckled with age spots. He looked vaguely familiar, but for the moment I couldn’t quite place him.
“Pardon the hobble, but my arthritis is acting up,” Harry explained, as he lowered himself into the recliner and motioned me into the other. “I shouldn’t complain. Here I am, eighty-two years and my cholesterol count’s damn near perfect, unlike my buddy’s there, whose blood could butter pancakes. In case you’re wondering, after we hung up I called him and told him to get his butt over here. He moved to Sundown Sam’s a year ago. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that my new neighbor used to guard those Nazis over at Camp Papago.”
Now I recognized the man. Warren had hired him to tell his story in Escape Across the Desert. He’d been chauffeured to the set one morning while I was finalizing the pilfering investigation, but when it had started to rain, his scene was rescheduled and he was taken back home. During that brief time, we hadn’t said a word to each other.
He waggled his fingers at me. “I’d be pleased ta meetcha if Harry’d perform the formalities.” His voice sounded as young and elastic as a teenager’s.