Slaughter on North Lasalle (15 page)

During the meeting, Schultz claims that Popcheff also told her that he had a new clue as to what might have actually happened on North LaSalle Street, but that the
police department wouldn’t give him permission to investigate it. He then, according to Schultz, suggested to her that she check it out, telling her that he had recently run into a witness in the murder case named Margo, who in 1971 had worked at a tavern in Indianapolis called Tommy’s Starlight Palladium Bar. This was the hangout, he said, for a minor organized crime figure in the 1970s named Norman Flick. Popcheff then told her the witness said that on the night of the murders a man with “dark, evil, crazy” eyes had come into the bar and spoken with Flick. Margo believed that this man had been involved in the North LaSalle Street murders at the order of Norman Flick.

Schultz’s version of this story was interesting, though it diverged from the report Popcheff wrote for the homicide case file about his interview with this Margo, and what she told him. Popcheff had ended his report by saying that he didn’t think Margo could be of any assistance in solving the North LaSalle Street murders. And quite differently from Schultz’s claim that Popcheff told her he was unable to get permission from the police department to check out this lead, the police department had actually pulled Popcheff off of uniformed duty and detailed him back to the Homicide Branch specifically in order to do so.

Popcheff would later say that he recalled telling Schultz about the information concerning Margo, but not telling her that she should investigate it herself.

However, Margo apparently wasn’t the only person
to have seen this man with the “dark, evil, crazy” eyes. Schultz and Popcheff also talked about Michael Ray, the young man who’d been walking home from his brother’s house along North LaSalle Street on the night of the murders and had told the police he’d seen a car sitting across the street from the crime scene. According to an article written by her in
NUVO
, Schultz claims that Popcheff said this witness also told the police that one of the men sitting in the car had “dark, evil, crazy” eyes. Schultz couldn’t believe it was a coincidence and thought that this had to be the same man that Margo had talked about. (It’s unclear where this idea came from, since the report in the homicide case file of what Ray told the police about the car and its occupants on the night of the murders didn’t contain any reference to “dark, evil, crazy” eyes.) Nevertheless, Schultz knew that if she was ever going to solve the North LaSalle Street case, she’d have to find out who this man was.

Schultz took all of the information she had gotten from Popcheff and, combining it with the other research she had done, wrote a feature article about the twentieth anniversary of the greatest unsolved murder case in the state of Indiana’s history. Her article ran on the front page of the
Indianapolis News
on November 30, 1991, and garnered Schultz some good attention from her editor, and apparently a good response from readers. Still, she couldn’t help but keep thinking about the clue Popcheff had given her. The case fascinated her, and she knew that the articles she had written so far would be only
minor sidebars compared to the coverage she would get if she could solve the twenty-year-old mystery. But to do this, Schultz realized she needed to find both Margo and Michael Ray. She felt certain they could lead her to the man with the “dark, evil, crazy” eyes.

After an extensive search, Schultz wrote in an article for
NUVO
, she eventually found Ray, then living in Michigan, and spoke with him about what he had seen that night on North LaSalle Street. (However, neither in the article nor in her book does Schultz say exactly what he told her during the conversation.) Next, Schultz set out to find the woman named Margo, whom she said she eventually located working at a run-down bar in Indianapolis. Again, neither in the article nor in her book does Schultz note precisely what Margo told her, and whether or not she confirmed the information about the man with the strange eyes.

(Interestingly, in Schultz’s book where she talks of her early investigation of the North LaSalle Street murders, she also claimed to have found information stating that the FBI and the CIA had been called into the case the day after John Karnes found the bodies. However, she didn’t mention where she got that information. The only reference to either of these organizations in the homicide case file was regarding sending some evidence to the FBI Laboratory several weeks after the murders; there is no reference to the Indianapolis Police Department asking either of those organizations for assistance in the actual investigation. It would have been odd if they had, since
it was a murder case and no federal laws had been broken. Schultz also claimed that the CIA may have attended the funeral services for the three men, and that both they and the FBI were baffled by the case. Again, however, Schultz doesn’t note where that information came from.)

Still intent on her story, Schultz then set out to find Norman Flick, the owner of Tommy’s Starlight Palladium Bar and the individual whom the man with the strange eyes had presumably talked to. In his report to the Homicide Branch, Popcheff said that Margo had believed Flick and this man had been involved in the North LaSalle Street killings. Some years earlier, however, Flick had been convicted and sent to a federal prison. So Schultz wrote a letter to him and sent it to the penitentiary. Flick answered her letter and then reportedly called her on the telephone. Schultz said that he denied everything, not only having anything to do with the North LaSalle Street murders, but he even denied owning Tommy’s Starlight Palladium Bar.

After having conducted these interviews, Schultz’s next step was to meet again with Lieutenant Popcheff to tell him what she had uncovered. They again met at the Waffle House. In her book, Schultz claims that Popcheff seemed amazed at what she had found out and complimented her on her story in the newspaper. She said that he seemed completely in awe of what she had done and uncovered in such a short time. Then, according to Schultz, Popcheff produced the telephone and address book that had contained the victims’ scorecard of
sexual conquests, which Schultz said Popcheff let her touch and look at. Following this, she said, he also handed her Gierse’s bankbook to examine.

Popcheff then, Schultz said, told her that if she really wanted to solve the case she had to find out the identity of the man with the strange eyes. He suggested that she research some of the dozens of newspaper articles that had been written about the case to see if she could find a clue about his identity. Schultz said she asked him if he thought it would be helpful if she found some of the old girlfriends of the three victims. Popcheff thought it might, she said, because all they did when the police talked to them in 1971 was cry. (Apparently, according to her, he made no mention of the pages of notes in the homicide files detailing the extensive interviews with these women.) Schultz said that she and Popcheff then met every Saturday at the Waffle House for the next year.

Soon after their conversation about the man with the strange eyes, Schultz claims, Popcheff took her down to the Homicide Branch of the Indianapolis Police Department, where he introduced her to the homicide commander and managed to get her access to the case file for the North LaSalle Street murders. Schultz said that she then sat down and read the file while the homicide commander brought her a collection of crime scene photos to review, which she said both horrified and fascinated her. Schultz claims it took several hours to read through the case file and take notes, but she finally completed it and gave it back to the homicide commander. Interestingly, in her book, Schultz said that the North LaSalle Street
case file was contained in a black ledger about a foot thick. This is puzzling, because the Indianapolis Police Department keeps its homicide case files in storage boxes, not ledgers.

Schultz also says in her memories of her investigation that Popcheff watched her closely the entire time she reviewed the file, apparently to be certain that she didn’t try to take anything. She was allowed to take notes, but she couldn’t have any of the documents from the file. Schultz said Popcheff was always extremely careful like that, and that whenever the two of them met at the Waffle House, he would even take items with him if he had to get up to use the bathroom, again apparently to be certain she didn’t try to take anything. (Popcheff, however, doesn’t recall these events involving evidence from the case.)

Following her trip to the Homicide Office, Schultz said she followed Popcheff’s recommendation and visited the microfilm room of the Indianapolis Marion County Public Library. There, she began researching all of the old newspaper articles about the North LaSalle Street murders, discovering that for several weeks in December 1971, an article about the murders had appeared almost every day on the front page of the city’s two newspapers. She also found that a number of the articles had been written by one reporter in particular, a man named Dick Cady. When she called him, though, Schultz said in an article in
NUVO
and in her book, Cady really didn’t want to talk to her because he claimed that he had already solved the murders and had written several articles
about it in 1977. When she asked him why, if he had solved them, the police hadn’t made any arrests yet, he told her that the press and the police didn’t work together in Indianapolis, and that she needed to read all of the articles he had written before she called him again.

What Cady said about the lack of cooperation between the local newspapers and the police in Indianapolis was true. It stemmed from a series of newspaper articles lasting over a year that the
Indianapolis Star
had published in the mid 1970s about alleged corruption within the Indianapolis Police Department. Most of the department’s officers felt that the articles were totally unfair and unsubstantiated, pointing to the fact that no one was ever indicted or convicted as a result of this assault on the police department’s reputation. The
Indianapolis Star
, on the other hand, pointed out that they won a Pulitzer Prize because of the series. Both sides thought they were right, and the distrust lasted for years.

Cady’s articles about the North LaSalle Street case claimed that it had been three men with serious criminal pasts who had committed the murders. Cady had even included photos of the three men in his articles. To her surprise, Schultz found that one of the men pictured had “dark, evil, crazy” eyes.

Schultz says she met with Popcheff again at the Waffle House and felt very disappointed that he didn’t seem nearly as excited as she was about finding the man. She said he was more angry at Cady’s claim that he had solved the North LaSalle Street murders. The distrust between reporters and the police still lingered. To cut the tension,
Schultz suggested that maybe she could call the producers of
Unsolved Mysteries
and see if she could get them interested in doing a segment on the North LaSalle Street murders. A program like that could bring out witnesses who might, even after all of these years, have information that could help in solving the case.

According to Schultz, when she made the call, the producer of
Unsolved Mysteries
seemed very interested in doing a segment about the murders but stipulated that Schultz had to find some of the three men’s ex-lovers to interview. The producer wanted to see what they looked like after twenty years, and whether they still felt something for the men. Schultz was game, but when she called her editor at the newspaper and told him what she was doing, she found that he wasn’t nearly as excited about it as she was. Schultz said that her editor had realized something she hadn’t: that she was more involved in trying to solve the case than she was in writing articles about it. Schultz was enjoying being a detective a bit too much. Also, her editor told her, the case was decades old and only held so much interest for the public.

Still, Carol Schultz said in her book that she felt certain that having a segment about the North LaSalle Street murders on
Unsolved Mysteries
could bring out witnesses who had disappeared in the twenty years since the murders or who had been afraid to talk back then. So, in order to keep
Unsolved
Mysteries
interested, Schultz began searching for some of the ex-lovers of Bob Gierse, Bob Hinson, and Jim Barker. The first woman she decided to go looking for was Gierse’s girlfriend Diane
Horton. Schultz realized this would be no easy task after twenty years, and it wasn’t; she later said it was only due to a chance meeting with Louise Cole, the former secretary for B&B Microfilming, that she was able to locate Diane Horton. In 1992, Cole was working as a receptionist at the Honda dealership where Schultz said she had her car serviced, and when she realized who Cole was, the reporter said she persuaded Cole to go to a local restaurant and talk.

According to Schultz, Cole told her that the murders had devastated her. She still thought about it, and told Schultz that she had cared so much for the three men that she would do whatever she could to help her solve their murders. So when Schultz told her about her quest to find Diane Horton, Cole told her that Diane’s ex-husband, Carroll Horton, who owned an automobile parts and repair service, had called recently about doing business with the dealership where she worked. She said that she would call Carroll Horton and have him contact Schultz.

This would be the beginning of an almost four-year relationship between Carol Schultz and Carroll Horton. He would appear at first to want to help her in her investigation, encouraging her as she struggled to piece together the information she uncovered. Their relationship, however, would eventually take an extremely ugly turn.

In the spring of 1992, soon after asking Louise Cole to have Carroll Horton contact her, Carol Schultz received a telephone call from him. She said in her book that she told him that she was looking for the Diane Horton who had known the three men killed in the North LaSalle Street murders, and wondered if that was his ex-wife. The silence, Schultz said, stretched out for several seconds before he finally answered, yes, they had been divorced for a long time, but that they had been married once. Schultz then told him who she was and that she was writing about the North LaSalle Street murders. She knew that Diane Horton had been dating Bob Gierse at the time of his murder, and wasn’t sure how cooperative her ex-husband would be, but she took a breath and then asked him if he would be willing to help her get in contact with Diane. Horton surprised her with his willingness
to help, and told her that even though Diane had moved to Florida some time ago and they hadn’t spoken in years, he would see if he could get a telephone number for her.