Slaughter on North Lasalle (13 page)

The first thing Uland wanted was to be certain the people at the meeting knew that he had called long-distance from southern Indiana and talked with Gierse and Hinson on the night of the murders. He didn’t know if the call went to the office of B&B Microfilming on East 10th Street or to the house on North LaSalle Street. (Gierse
had his phone system set up so that it would ring in both places.) Uland said that he had also called earlier in the afternoon about a quote Gierse had been involved with concerning microfilming and records storage for a hospital in Danville, Indiana. His new manager at Records Security Corporation apparently couldn’t find the quote, and Uland thought that Gierse might know where it was. He said that he’d also wanted to ask Gierse about a $600 check he had written on the Records Security Corporation account. Uland said Gierse told him to call back later that evening after he’d had time to look at his records.

Uland told the group that he called back at around 9:00
P.M.
and first spoke with Hinson, who said that Gierse was out getting sandwiches and that he should call back in about a half hour. At 9:30
P.M.
, Uland said, he called back and talked to Gierse. They straightened out the matter of the missing quote and then, he said, Gierse told him that he had used the $600 check to pay some of his personal bills. Uland told the prosecutor’s staff that Gierse claimed he had put some of his personal money into the company to make up the payroll and that this was just him being repaid. Uland told the prosecutor’s staff that he then said okay and hung up, and that was the last time he ever spoke to either man.

An investigator who reviewed the transcript of this meeting wrote in the margin: “Pretty nonchalant about $600!” The investigator also noted: “Uland called Gierse to make sure he was home?”

When asked how he felt about Gierse and Hinson leaving
Records Security Corporation to start their own company, Uland told the prosecutor’s staff that it had caught him completely by surprise. He said he first learned about it when he found out that an important client of his had signed with a new company. This was the same day, he said, that Hinson resigned, a few weeks before Gierse would. Uland claimed Hinson told him that a company named Technifax had gotten the contract and that he was going to work for them, when in actuality he was leaving to start up B&B Microfilming, who had really gotten the contract.

Uland went on to tell the prosecutor’s staff that Gierse also said he was considering leaving the company. Uland then talked about the meeting at the Big Wheel Restaurant in Bloomington, and how at the meeting he had tried to convince Hinson to stay on at Records Security, but wasn’t successful. Hinson told him that he had definitely decided to go with Technifax. He said that Gierse then told him that he hadn’t decided yet whether he was leaving Records Security, but that Technifax had made him an offer he was considering. (In a strange coincidence, Lafayette Robert Roe, the man whose stolen car had turned up with blood in it the day after the murders, worked for Technifax, which owned Scott Graphics.) Uland told the prosecutor’s staff that he believed both men respected him so much that neither one could tell him the truth: that they were leaving to start their own business.

Following this, Uland then went on to talk about how he had just found out that some of the equipment the
police had recovered at B&B Microfilming actually belonged to him and that it was the same equipment Gierse had claimed was taken in a burglary. He also told them that he thought Gierse and Hinson might have ripped him off for over $10,000 by writing checks that looked as though they were for business purposes, but which the two men had actually cashed themselves. The prosecutor’s staff was puzzled because Uland seemed very nonchalant about the missing money. The investigator reviewing the transcript wrote in the margin next to the comment about the $10,000: “Why wasn’t Uland mad?”

They then talked about the key man life insurance policies on Gierse and Hinson. Uland told the prosecutor’s staff that he hoped the policies weren’t in effect, because if they were it would put him in a bad light. The investigator wrote in the margin: “No kidding!”

Uland next related how, since Gierse and Hinson knew all of the customers who used Records Security Corporation, they had been able to persuade these companies to change their business to B&B Microfilming. Uland also told the prosecutor’s staff about work that was supposed to be coming in to Records Security Corporation that had been secretly diverted to B&B. Most of the people at the meeting thought it strange that Uland told this very matter-of-factly and didn’t seem surprised or upset that the two men would do this, even though it cost his company dearly.

During the questioning, Uland also brought up the possibility that Gierse and Hinson might have been working on classified material. However, he said he didn’t
have any personal knowledge of this, only what one of his employees had told him. Uland also talked about having $5,500 in an account that was supposed to be sent to the Internal Revenue Service for quarterly taxes, and how Gierse had sent in the forms but not the money. When he checked the account recently, Uland said that he found it had no money in it. The investigator made a note in the margin: “Uland thought Gierse cleaned out accounts!”

Finally, Uland added another suspect to the already long list of jealous exes: He told the prosecutor’s staff about a woman whom Bob Hinson had dated, who lived only a street or two over from North LaSalle. Uland claimed Hinson had laughed about it and told him that she had a very jealous ex-husband who had threatened to kill him.

The interview finally ended, leaving many on the prosecutor’s staff feeling suspicious. Uland had admitted during the questioning that, because of what his former employees Gierse and Hinson had done, his company was now on very shaky financial grounds. He had been taken advantage of in a big way by Gierse and Hinson, yet didn’t seem visibly upset about it. He appeared cool—much
too
cool. Uland closed by telling the prosecutor’s staff how very close he had been to both Gierse and Hinson and how they had been like family to him. The investigator wrote in the margin: “If so close, why would they leave his company, steal money, equipment, and accounts?” The investigator also wrote: “What happened to [Uland’s] key to [the house on North] LaSalle Street?”

However, the people at the meeting also knew that Uland had a solid alibi for the night of the murders; one that the phone company and witnesses would back up.

The prosecutor’s staff closed the meeting realizing that the detectives had no firm evidence against Uland, or for that matter against any of the other multitude of suspects who had come up in the thousands of hours the police department had put into the case. Consequently, soon after this, the investigation began to slow down. It had been more than a month, with much searching but no progress, and new murders had since occurred that needed investigation. The detectives and prosecutor’s staff turned their attention to concentrating on these.

No one in law enforcement forgot about the North LaSalle Street case, especially not the original investigating detectives, but there wasn’t anything left they could do. They had followed hundreds of leads, talked to hundreds of witnesses, and interrogated dozens of suspects. But nothing had clicked. The detectives could see nothing that pointed to any one person as the most likely candidate. All of the original detectives hoped that someday new evidence or an unknown witness would show up. But until then, the case would lay cold.

A little over a year after the murders, New York Life Insurance Company finally paid off the $150,000 worth of key man life insurance policies Ted Uland had held on Bob Gierse and Bob Hinson. The insurance company had had no choice, since the policies had still been in effect and Uland had never been officially charged. Indianapolis
Police Department records show that Lieutenant McAtee, on December 5, 1972, approved release of the insurance policies to Uland’s attorney.

Although the Homicide Branch eventually pulled the detectives away from the North LaSalle Street case and assigned them new cases to work on, of course the detectives still wanted to eventually see it solved. And so, in July 1973, still desperate to figure out what had happened during the murders, the Indianapolis Police Department brought in Ross Peterson, a well-known psychic, to look at the case. When the news media heard about this, they naturally wanted to know all of the details. Deputy Chief Lumpkin reluctantly admitted to the press that they had brought in Peterson to see if he could offer any help in a case that, according to the
Indianapolis Star
, “has baffled the police because of its incredible butchery and the lack of concrete leads.”

However, while Deputy Chief Lumpkin may have thought calling in Peterson was worth a try, not everyone in the Indianapolis Police Department agreed with him. The new head of the Homicide Branch, Captain Robert Greene, made no secret of his dislike for the idea and what a waste of time he felt it to be. Greene believed in chasing concrete leads. For example, he would have his detectives periodically check with other police departments whenever similar murders occurred.

Still, psychics offering help in criminal investigations is fairly common in law enforcement. Every time a major crime occurs, generating a lot of publicity, police departments
will have many self-proclaimed psychics, sometimes dozens of them, calling in with their visions of what happened. Most police departments are very skeptical of psychics, usually because all they provide is very general information, such as “I see the victim’s body. It’s buried in a cornfield.” (In Indiana, at least, this isn’t really that helpful.) A lot of these “psychics” are looking for publicity; they know that all they need is one lucky guess that solves a high-profile crime and they are set for life. Psychic Jeane Dixon was able to propel her prediction (or lucky guess) of John F. Kennedy’s death into a lifetime of celebrity status. Detectives, however, don’t want guesses; they want facts, they want addresses, they want directions to where the body is. With the large majority of “psychics,” however, they don’t get this.

Peterson, according to news reports, climbed up and then stretched out on a conference table at police headquarters and went into what he called a theta trance. Peterson claimed not to know what he was saying when he was in a trance, and said he only found out later when he listened to a tape recording of it. His take on the North LaSalle Street murders was certainly different from the other directions the case had taken; he said that because the men were having such serious financial troubles with their new business, they had decided to raise money by selling drugs that a woman was supposed to bring them from Mexico. But when, according to Peterson, mobsters in Chicago heard about the drug deal, they set up a hit through contacts in New York City and Detroit because the men were apparently trespassing on the Mob’s turf.

“This guy climbs up on the table and lays there, then starts talking in a monotone voice,” said Popcheff. “He claimed to be able to see the car parked outside the crime scene, so I asked him to give us the license plate number. He couldn’t.”

However, not all psychics are dismissed by police departments. Sometimes—though very, very seldom—psychics have been able to give the police some insight into what happened. Whether this is the result of simply an educated guess or an actual psychic vision, police don’t care, as long as the information is usable.

Naturally, a crime as brutal as the North LaSalle Street case generated a number of articles in detective magazines. Most of these articles focused on the sex aspect of the case or on the brutality of the murders. Some, however, looked for a solution. For example, according to the magazine
True Police Cases
, psychic David Hoy offered his unsolicited help in the case, saying he didn’t think the case involved any jealous husbands or boyfriends, but rather that the murders had been business related. According to Hoy, a businessman had warned Gierse and Hinson to stop making waves, but they’d ignored him. The businessman then hired two men to kill Gierse and Hinson. Barker was killed simply because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Finally, Hoy said, the man who had contracted the killings soon began suffering from depression, and he believed the individual would eventually confess.

Because the murders had been such a highly publicized case, the Indianapolis Police Department had a number of people, even years after the murders, who wanted to confess to them. With just a little questioning, though, the police were soon able to confirm that the person only knew what he or she had learned through the news media.

For example, the police received an anonymous call from a man who told the policewoman who answered the telephone that he was the one who had killed the three men on North LaSalle Street. He told her that he’d only wanted to kill Bob Hinson because Hinson had been sleeping with his wife. He said word of this indiscretion had gotten around to some of the taverns he went to on the east side of Indianapolis, and so he’d had no choice but to kill him. The man then hung up and the police were unable to trace the call. This type of thing went on for years.