He hailed an unlicensed cab, called a jitney in San Francisco, and arrived late that afternoon at the archbishop’s mansion on Fulton Street at the northwest corner of Alamo Square Park. As George Lynn rang the bell, he turned to see someone else climbing the wide stone steps. Lynn took a step back and surveyed the man’s clothing, a strange tropical ensemble that seemed unsuitable for a metropolis like San Francisco. His dapper cream-colored outfit made from a blend of mohair and cotton, complete with a straw hat, would have been perfect for the hot, sultry streets of Palm Beach, but he looked out of place in San Francisco. Lynn eyed the man with curiosity.
The lanky stranger stood quietly near Lynn as the archbishop’s door opened. The archbishop’s assistant eyed the white-suited stranger warily and then nodded at the reporter. Was His Holiness at home? the newspaperman asked. The archbishop was finishing dinner, explained the assistant, but Lynn was welcome to wait inside. The man in the tropical outfit slid through the door as they both walked into the parlor.
“I don’t know this man,” Lynn said quickly, hoping the archbishop’s assistant would eject the stranger. “He just walked in with me. I’m not responsible for him.”
“I came to see the archbishop, too,” the man snapped. “I think I know where the missing priest is.”
* * *
—
William A. Hightower was the stranger’s name, and as he talked, Lynn silently remembered the witnesses’ description of Father Heslin’s kidnapper: “a small, dark man, probably a foreigner.” He looked over Hightower and decided that he could not possibly be that same man. Hightower was tall at about five feet ten, thin with medium-toned skin, and he was almost bald. He hailed from Texas and was raised on a cotton plantation, where he’d been a worker in the fields since he was young. He had a southern drawl, not a foreign accent. Lynn grew more relaxed as he listened to the man’s story. Hightower was certainly excitable, but he wasn’t the kidnapper. Lynn eyed the man’s light-colored suit again as Hightower smiled. “I’ve just arrived from Salt Lake City,” he explained, “and it was much warmer there.”
When the archbishop finally entered the parlor, he turned to Lynn and declared there was no third note and no scoop. The reporter nodded and introduced Hightower, and then both men listened as he narrated his wild story. The tale starred a “nightlife girl” named Dolly Mason and a dangerous stranger, a bootlegger with a foreign accent who bragged of burying mysterious cargo at Salada Beach, about twenty miles south of San Francisco. Hightower also added another distressing detail—Dolly said the foreigner seemed to despise Catholics.
The archbishop was skeptical of the man in the strange clothing, and he had no use for nonsense. Investigators had been chasing false leads for more than a week, and this tale of showgirls and bootleggers seemed to have no bearing on the search for Father Heslin. The archbishop refused to believe Father Heslin was dead, but he also suspected the man standing in his parlor was truly daft. However, there weren’t a lot of other clues coming in, despite massive searches, hundreds of volunteers, and even a sizable reward for the missing priest: $8,000.
“If you will return tomorrow about ten in the morning,” the archbishop assured him, “I’ll send a couple of investigators with you.”
George Lynn’s eyes widened. This guy Hightower might be a nutter, but Lynn knew a good story when he heard it. As the pair left the archbishop’s mansion, Lynn raised his arm, hailed another jitney, and swung open the door, inviting Hightower to join him for a short trip. The reporter ordered the driver to go directly to the offices of the San Francisco Examiner.
“He says he might be able to tell us where Father Heslin’s body is,” Lynn explained to his city editor, William Hines.
The pair was quickly swept into a private room, where Hightower recounted his bizarre conversation with Dolly Mason a few days earlier. She had believed that the stranger was concealing a cache of bootleg liquor, a scheme that wasn’t uncommon in the 1920s.
Even during Prohibition, there were many opportunities to drink, and not just in speakeasies. Some people simply asked their doctors for a prescription, as pharmacists actually distilled medicinal whiskey for patients. In fact, that had been one of Oscar’s duties at his own pharmacy when he was a teenager in Tacoma. Medicinal alcohol was such a profitable business that it allowed Walgreens pharmacies to expand from around twenty stores to more than five hundred during the 1920s. But if you weren’t lucky or rich enough to get a prescription, there were still many entrepreneurs willing to supply alcohol to you—illegal liquor was valuable merchandise, and the idea that Hightower’s friend Dolly Mason knew a less-than-savory character who was determined to protect his stash on Salada Beach was a believable prospect. But what did it have to do with Father Heslin?
Hightower was relishing the attention, dragging out the story for dramatic effect.
“So Sunday I took a run down there to the beach,” Hightower said slowly. “I remembered there was a billboard down there—one of those that shows a miner frying flapjacks over a campfire.”
George Lynn suddenly squirmed in his chair. Flapjacks. His heart raced. The pancakes reminded him of a detail offered by one of those handwriting experts mentioned in his stories, that outlandish clue from criminalist Oscar Heinrich in Berkeley. Something about cooking? . . . The journalist wanted to test Hightower, but he had to be clever.
“By the way,” said Lynn, abruptly cutting in, “I forgot to ask you, but just what do you do for a living?”
Hightower glared at him, suddenly peeved by the reporter’s rudeness. George Lynn was certain of how the man would reply, but he wanted to hear it said aloud.
“What difference does that make?” Hightower asked sharply. “If you must know, I’m a master baker.”
* * *
—
The headlights from the police cars illuminated a ghostly image on the giant billboard advertising Albers Mill flapjack flour, just off the side of the Ocean Shore Highway above Salada Beach. The sign showed a drawing of a weathered miner with a handlebar mustache who was tossing a flapjack over a campfire in the desert, just as Hightower had described. The sea mist from the warm Pacific Ocean floated around the sign, almost in waves; the black road felt slick underneath the shoes of San Francisco’s police chief, Daniel O’Brien, as he stood at the edge of the cliff. It was around eleven as the group of seven men peered below while the fog drifted up from the sand dunes and the waves slammed against rocks on the shore. It was an eerie mission—a gang of ghouls hunting for a body in the fog.
A few weeks earlier a production company in Germany began shooting what would become one of the greatest horror films ever made, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. In the film, a gaunt, pointy-eared creature named Count Orlok stalked his victims inside his castle in Transylvania—the first vampire depicted on the silver screen. The horrible anticipation of Orlok’s attacks was indelible for viewers. That nervousness and fervor would be echoed for the group of men standing above the Pacific Ocean as they allowed a suspected killer to lead them down the side of a cliff—a gorgeously gothic scene.
William Hightower, George Lynn, and a group of policemen stumbled over rocks down a narrow path, which led them down the side of a sand cliff. It was wet and windy as they lit matches for guidance through the fog. They climbed lower along the cliffs—the sounds of the ocean’s surges were deafening as the men hauled along shovels and picks. Someone would later visit a nearby artichoke farm in search of lanterns as a cameraman for the Examiner snapped photos from a safe distance. It was a dreadful night to dig for a corpse.
Hours earlier Hightower had informed George Lynn (and later the police) that he thought he had found a burial spot for something.
“Maybe it’s that missing priest,” he told police. “That’s what I’ve been thinking. The ground’s loose too. Seems to me that’s worth looking into, don’t you agree?”
As the group slowly traversed
the rocky trail in the dark, it was hard for investigators to settle on what they hoped to discover. The murder of a beloved religious leader was blasphemy, an act that could only be linked to a godless monster. But finding Father Heslin’s body would at least provide his loved ones with closure. Neither outcome would assuage Americans as the story continued to make national news.
Suddenly, Hightower hopped down to a low edge on the side of the cliff. As the others slowly followed, he dropped to his knees and shoved his hands into the sand, yanking up a piece of black cloth, a marker he said he had left just a few days earlier.
“There it is,” Hightower yelled. “That’s the spot.”
George Lynn and an officer, armed with shovels, began slowly digging like nineteenth-century grave robbers praying for a big payday. Hightower gripped his own shovel and began wildly flinging sand over his shoulder. Silvio Landini, the constable for the town of Colma, stepped back.
“If the body is in here, you ought to be a little easy with that shovel,” he warned. “You might strike the face and mar it and we don’t want to do that.”
Hightower paused and looked up. “Don’t worry,” he replied. “I’m digging at the feet.”
The other men stopped and glanced at one another. The police chief stepped cautiously toward Hightower as the baker continued to hurl sand behind him. Reporter George Lynn stopped suddenly—his shovel struck cloth buried just beneath the surface of the sand. He began to slowly lift it up.
“A hand,” the police chief yelled.
Within minutes they exhumed a heavy corpse wrapped in damp, black clothing. Hightower, now exhausted, proudly stood at the feet. There was no doubt that the dead man was Father Patrick Heslin. His sacred vestment, the one he had carried from his home eight days earlier, was still draped around his neck. His skull was bloodied, bashed in and partially gone. As the men waited for the coroner, Hightower stared at the body and quietly mused.
“Human life is a funny thing,” he whispered to the chief, who glared back.
“Let’s go!” Chief O’Brien bellowed before dragging Hightower up the cliff to his squad car.
George Lynn peered down at the priest’s body as it lay among the patches of green devil grass. The dim light of a lantern revealed a small picture of Christ.
4.
Pioneer:
The Case of the Baker’s Handwriting, Part II
How often have I said that when you have excluded the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
—Arthur Conan Doyle,
The Sign of Four, 1890
Get Ready.” That was the message from San Francisco Examiner city editor William Hines to his publisher. When George Lynn returned late that night from Salada Beach, the seasoned editor sensed that the horrible murder of a priest would become a sensational, twisted news story—an exclusive for his paper. San Francisco’s chief of police spent the night at the newspaper’s headquarters while police deputies protected the building from spies hired by other papers. The police had struck a deal with the Examiner: George Lynn’s delivery of Hightower to police in exchange for an exclusive story. The presses rumbled throughout the night, and the next day the San Francisco Examiner sold thousands of copies.
Three days later, after an immense amount of questioning in jail, police formally arrested William Hightower for Father Heslin’s murder, and soon the mechanism of criminal law jurisprudence suddenly started to move. Investigators didn’t believe Hightower’s harebrained story about a foreign bootlegger who confessed to a tart named Dolly Mason, but still they conducted a massive search for the woman. They would find her, Hightower insisted, and he would certainly be exonerated.
“You’ve got a funny way of showing your gratitude when I solved your case for you,” Hightower complained to detectives.
The coroner’s report on Father Heslin’s death was distressing. The priest had been beaten to death with a blunt object and then shot in the back of the head with a .45-caliber gun as the killer stood over him.
Police gathered spent shells, white cord, and blood-stained wood at the gravesite on the beach. These pieces were part of a very convoluted jigsaw puzzle, a mystery that San Francisco police couldn’t quite sort out. Detectives quickly realized that Father Heslin’s murder would not be solved by handwriting experts with limited forensic experience. The captain ordered his officers to hand-deliver the blood-stained wood and string to Oscar Heinrich’s lab in Berkeley.
Detectives searched Hightower’s cheap lodging house room in the Mission district of San Francisco and collected more evidence: pieces of bloody burlap, a rifle, and newspaper clippings that mentioned a reward. There was also something startling, even to experienced cops—a homemade weapon that police dubbed an “infernal machine.” It had ten short lengths of pipe, all stuck into a wooden frame, and each pipe held a shotgun shell. Hightower had designed it so that he could pull a long string and shoot all ten cartridges, an archaic machine gun.
“Follow the string,” the first ransom note had ordered. Detectives suspected a link between the machine and the kidnapper’s veiled instructions. An officer pulled out a heavy canvas tent hidden under Hightower’s bed with the word TUBERCULOSIS printed in large block letters. There were more .45-caliber shells, a machine gun, a gas mask, and some poetry apparently composed by Hightower.
Detectives searched for the contours of a broader scheme—a clear motive. But what they had gathered was a confusing collection of material from a man who seemed to be unmoored from reality. Yet investigators still had doubts because their suspect didn’t fit the description of the kidnapper, “the small, dark foreigner.” Hightower continued to deny the murder from his San Francisco jail cell and declared that Dolly Mason would provide clarity, if police could only find her.
Despite the new discoveries, the case against William Hightower was still largely circumstantial with few forensic clues; prosecutors admitted that an assortment of curious items found inside the dingy room of a flophouse would not secure a murder conviction.
* * *
—
On August 13, eleven days after Father Heslin disappeared, Archbishop Edward Hanna blessed and eulogized the priest at St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco. Bells tolled as thousands of people stood outside the church while more than four hundred members of the clergy watched the service inside.
“Father Heslin has made the supreme sacrifice,” Archbishop Hanna told the crowd. “He has shown the greatest love it is possible for man to give. His end is one that any priest might ask for.”
While the Catholic community in California honored Father Heslin, Oscar Heinrich examined evidence, determined to solve his murder. The police soon summoned him back to San Francisco for an update—once again, Oscar reveled in their anxious stares. He would be their savior, he was sure of it.
“Somewhere there is a clue to the method followed by the man who committed this crime,” Oscar told detectives. “What did Hightower have on his person when he was arrested?”
An investigator opened a manila folder. As a small pocketknife with a dark handle slid out onto the table, the detective assured Oscar that there was nothing to glean from it because police officers had already examined it thoroughly. The criminalist knew better.
Oscar returned to his lab in Berkeley, settled into his wood chair, and slipped the hilt of the knife under his microscope. He adjusted the oculars, narrowed his eyes, and spotted them—a few grains of sand. Oscar increased the device’s magnification, brightened the light, and placed his camera over the eyepiece, snapping a photo. He slid over a different microscope sitting on his long wooden table. Oscar glanced at his notes about the grains of sand that he had discovered adhered to the hat found inside William Hightower’s room. He examined the steel blade of the knife.
“There is a small patch at the foot of the large blade,” he wrote in his notes, “which corresponds in appearance
and size of grain with the sand from the hat.”
Hightower’s hat contained sand that likely came from Father Heslin’s gravesite—a solid piece of circumstantial evidence.
“Now I’m going to work on the other things,” Oscar told police, “the tent in his room, the lumber from the graves, everything.”
He unraveled the tent with TUBERCULOSIS printed on the side and looked closely at the block lettering. Investigators suspected that Hightower had used the ruse to discourage anyone from looking inside the tent.
“In form this writing corresponds with the writing on the ransom note,” Oscar said. “But the writing movement however is so different and the material upon which it is written is so different from the ransom note that a further comparison seemed to me inadvisable.”
Oscar acknowledged what few other handwriting experts would admit—letter comparisons were not always reliable. As much as he wanted to deliver a solid case against Hightower, Oscar was determined to not help convict an innocent man. For weeks, Oscar examined all the evidence and subjected the clues to a litany of tests using microscopes, cameras, and chemicals. He finally requested a meeting with the police and the district attorney in San Francisco. The prosecutor took notes as Oscar pulled out some large photographs and spread them on a table, each featuring huge rocks. The prosecutor and police chief looked at each other.
“They are grains of sand,” explained Oscar. “You see, when I put the hilt of Hightower’s knife under the microscope, I found a very small patch of sand. Only a few grains, three or four. They were all I needed.”
He had also identified sand embedded by high coastal winds in Hightower’s tent found inside his room. But small amounts of sand, even under a microscope, looked similar. Anxious to offer the police conclusive evidence, Oscar did something remarkable. He used a test that he had learned as a chemical and sanitation engineer in Tacoma—a groundbreaking technique in forensic geology that has since changed how police investigate crimes.
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