Slaughter on North Lasalle (16 page)

Horton then went on to tell Schultz about how the case had deeply affected his ex-wife, and about how emotionally distraught she had been for a long time afterward. The suddenness and savagery of the murders had crushed her. In truth, Horton said, he didn’t believe his ex-wife had ever really gotten over it, and probably never would. Hearing this, Schultz felt that she had found a sympathetic ear, and so she decided to tell Horton the whole story about how she’d gotten interested in the case. She then went on to tell him about Margo and Michael Ray, and about how she’d identified the man with the strange eyes, who she believed had committed the murders.

Horton then surprised her by saying he had actually been inside the North LaSalle Street house on the day of the murders. He told her that he had seen the carnage firsthand, and he had seen the blood-soaked sheets covering the bodies. According to an article in
NUVO
, he claimed that he had been able to just walk past the police barrier, up onto the porch, where he said he told the officer guarding the door that he knew the three murdered men had been international spies. According to Horton, the officer, upon hearing this and apparently impressed, let him in to have a look around. How much of this tale Schultz believed is unclear, but although it was true that too many people trampled through the scene that day,
they were nevertheless all police officers—no member of the general public would ever have been allowed inside (especially not one who was on the early suspect list like Carroll Horton, whose ex-wife was dating one of the victims). Regardless of what Horton told Schultz, homicide detectives don’t allow sightseers into the crime scene. Homicide crime scenes are severely restricted areas, and anyone allowed into the crime scene is noted on the crime scene access list. Horton’s story is not reflected in the official police reports or in the list of people who were allowed into the crime scene.

Perhaps the most inadvertently revealing thing Horton told Schultz was that he saw the bodies covered with sheets. The crime scene photos clearly show that the victims on North LaSalle Street certainly weren’t. This is a Hollywood invention: In real life, homicide detectives don’t cover murder victims with sheets, because a cover such as this could easily soak up any liquid evidence on the bodies and destroy it. The bodies are left just as they are found until they have been processed by the crime scene technicians and the coroner. And when the bodies are removed from the crime scene, they are usually put in body bags specifically built to retain evidence.

Carroll Horton
was
near the scene on that day, though. Still, “the closest Carroll Horton got to the crime scene was up to the crime scene barrier,” said Michael Popcheff about Horton’s claim. “I walked out and talked to him and told him I’d get with him later.”

It seemed Horton wasn’t one to let facts get in the way of a good story, however. According to Schultz’s book,
after he and Schultz had talked for a bit—and he had bragged to her that he had a photographic memory, had been awarded the Purple Heart in World War II, and possessed ESP—Horton suggested that they meet for dinner sometime to discuss the case. The two of them, he said, should pool their knowledge and talents. He told her that if they worked together she could probably win the Pulitzer Prize for her story. It’s unclear how much of Horton’s boasting Schultz believed at the time, but apparently she was compelled enough to feel flattered that he wanted to meet with her. After all, he could be of tremendous help to her research. He knew a lot about the victims, and he had been at the crime scene, maybe inside, maybe not, but still there. He had a lot of information she needed.

Ultimately, their relationship would very quickly become one of close confidants. Schultz, a single mother in her late twenties, worked closely with Horton, a gentleman in his midsixties who had been married seven times, on her story during the spring and summer of 1992. But while they would talk on the telephone about the North LaSalle Street case, they also soon became good friends and would share stories with each other about their lives. Schultz said in her book that she soon fell into the comfortable routine of calling Horton every day and talking. In her recollection of their relationship, she says that they talked on the telephone every day for six months, and occasionally more than once a day. He coined the pet name Pretty One for her. And yet, though they often talked as friends, Schultz also made sure that they always
got back to the North LaSalle Street case. She had not lost a bit of her desire to solve it, and eventually decided that rather than a newspaper article she would write a book about the case.

Schultz apparently became so impressed by how much Horton knew about the North LaSalle Street murders that she said in an article in
NUVO
that she began to believe that perhaps he did have psychic powers after all. In her telephone conversations with Horton, she said Horton would tell her that he was going into a psychic trance and then, while in the trance, would claim he could see the murders on North LaSalle Street as they occurred. She said that he knew things about the murders that the police didn’t (though how she verified this is uncertain).

But even though Horton assisted and encouraged her in her investigation, providing her with information from his psychic trances, Schultz knew that to solve the case she still had to find the man with the strange eyes. She now knew his name was Robert J. Leonard,
¹
but she didn’t know if he was alive or dead, and if alive, where he was living. He was the key. In her book about the case, Schultz says that she hired a professional bounty hunter she knew from having previously written newspaper articles about him. She wanted him to try to verify the location of Leonard, who Schultz had learned might now
be living in Florida. She had gotten his name from the newspaper articles by Dick Cady and had used her news reporter investigative resources to find him. She wanted to be certain that he was still alive and living at the address she had. The bounty hunter, Schultz noted, apparently had to go to Florida anyway to locate a couple of bail skippers and so he agreed to take care of the matter for her while he was there.

Soon afterward, she got a call from the bounty hunter, who told her that he had located the man and had snapped some photographs of him for her. He still lived at the address she had for him. When Schultz called Horton to tell him about it, she waited as he went into a psychic trance. A few minutes later, he told her that she was right about this man being the killer. Schultz was thrilled. Although this didn’t close the case, she now felt she had important information that eventually could.

Carroll Horton, though, did more than just encourage Schultz and go into psychic trances to verify her information. He also gave her the names of some people to contact about the case. He had been at the crime scene, his ex-wife had dated Gierse, and he knew a number of the principal people involved in the case. But his attempts to impress Schultz with his knowledge of the case would take a bad turn.

During the summer of 1992, Horton told Schultz that she needed to get ahold of a man who might know something about the murders, a dangerous criminal, he said, by the name of Floyd Chastain. Chastain had, in the 1970s, worked for Horton at his auto parts and repair
shop, and he was now, Horton told her, currently serving a life sentence in Florida for murder.

By this time Schultz seemed to have become completely in awe of Horton. In addition to all of his other talents, he had bragged of having contacts in the criminal underworld. Horton had seemingly given her some pretty good information in the past, and so, thinking this seemed like a good idea, Carol Schultz wrote Floyd Chastain a letter that summer and said that she would like to speak with him about the North LaSalle Street murders. She told him she was writing a book about the crime and had heard that he might be able to help her. She gave Chastain a telephone number to call her at, but then, feeling the need to protect herself, she signed the letter using the pseudonym Betty Thompson.

When Schultz didn’t hear anything from Chastain for several months, she forgot about the letter. But then, on September 1, 1992, Chastain called Schultz from the prison in Florida. At that time Schultz still worked for the
Indianapolis News
, and so they could patch Chastain’s call from their office to her home telephone. Chastain told her that he knew a lot about the North LaSalle Street murders, things no one else knew, and that he also knew who the murderer on North LaSalle Street had been. Schultz, flustered but impressed, told him about her research and about how she had found Leonard living in Florida. She told Chastain that she felt certain Leonard had been the North LaSalle Street killer. Chastain, though, told her that she had it wrong, that the killer wasn’t that man, but that he knew who the real killer was.
According to
NUVO
, Chastain told Schultz, “Ma’am, I know the man who killed the men on LaSalle. If you come down here, I’ll tell you.”

Having a young son to take care of, Schultz knew she couldn’t make the thousand-mile trip to Florida, so she tried to get Chastain to tell her who the killer was. But when he wouldn’t tell her, she began guessing. She asked if the killer was still alive, and Chastain said yes. After some more questions from Schultz, Chastain also told her that the North LaSalle Street killer still lived in Indianapolis. Schultz then tried to guess the killer’s occupation. Finally, after a number of wrong guesses, she asked Chastain if the murderer worked in the car business. When Chastain said yes, Schultz said that she thought about it for a moment and then asked him if the murderer on North LaSalle Street had been Carroll Horton. Chastain said yes, Carroll Horton was the killer. Chastain told her that he had watched Horton slice Gierse’s throat with a knife.

According to Schultz, Chastain told her that he had been with Horton at North LaSalle Street on the night of the murders. Chastain claimed to her that he had just been the getaway driver, though eventually this story would change several times. He then told her that the sentence he was serving right then in Florida was for another murder that Horton had committed, but which he had taken the fall for. He claimed that Horton had beaten a man to death with a board and then promised to do things for Chastain if he took the rap. Chastain said he was scared to say no. Chastain also told Schultz
that Horton was a serial killer who had claimed victims all over the United States.

One question that never seemed to have occurred to Carol Schultz during her investigation was that if Horton and Chastain had really been murder coconspirators on North LaSalle Street, why would Horton have introduced her to Chastain? Why would a man who had been working very hard to impress her then put Schultz in contact with someone who knew incriminating things about him?

Also, in Schultz’s recounting of her telephone conversation that day with Chastain, she doesn’t offer any information or evidence as to why she believed a voice on a telephone. She doesn’t tell what made her, an investigative reporter, believe the story of a man she knew was serving a life sentence for murder, a man she had never met and knew practically nothing about. But nevertheless, she
did
believe Chastain and became absolutely certain from that point on that Horton was not just the North LaSalle Street murderer, but also a serial killer who had claimed victims all over the United States. Schultz said that following this initial telephone call, Chastain called her several more times that month with more information about Horton and his crimes. After this, she said, they began to talk regularly, usually every Saturday afternoon.

Following her initial conversation with Floyd Chastain, Carol Schultz said in her book that she spent the rest of the day in terror, fearing that at any minute Carroll Horton would be at her door, ready to make her his next victim. (Why she thought Horton would know
about what Chastain had told her was unclear, but she apparently felt certain that he did, and it terrified her.) Schultz recounts how sometime later she called a retired police officer she knew, who came to her house. After listening to her story and a tape of her conversation with Chastain, she said he advised her to get a gun and learn how to use it.

Schultz also said that, following Chastain’s bombshell, she felt the need to test Horton. So she called him and made up a story about having evidence that a man who went by the name of Fat Alex had committed the North LaSalle Street murders. Schultz said she then asked Horton to use his ESP powers and see if this was true. According to Schultz, Horton acted as though he was going into a psychic trance and finally told her that, yes, she was right; Fat Alex had committed the murders. Schultz said she knew right then that Horton was the murderer and that he’d only been stringing her along with his offers of help in her investigation. The perhaps likelier motive she apparently didn’t consider was that Carroll Horton was an elderly man who was infatuated by a beautiful young woman and was telling her whatever it was he thought she wanted to hear.

Eventually, Carol Schultz told Lieutenant Michael Popcheff about what she had found out in her conversations with Floyd Chastain. While she claimed that Popcheff didn’t seem impressed or enthusiastic about what she had found, police department records show that on September 14, 1992, Popcheff had the Identification
Branch at the police department compare Carroll Horton’s fingerprints with the still unidentified fingerprints from North LaSalle Street. They didn’t match.

A week after her initial telephone conversation with Chastain, in which he had fingered Horton as the North LaSalle Street killer, Schultz went to the Prosecutor’s Office. She brought with her the tape of her conversation with Chastain. She said she felt certain that the prosecutor would immediately issue an arrest warrant for Horton. The case, she imagined, would be solved and closed. She would write the book. It would be a bestseller.

However, things didn’t turn out that way.

For someone like Carol Schultz, who had never dealt with criminals on a daily basis, and didn’t know how they will lie to get something they want, will lie to get themselves out of trouble, and sometimes will lie simply because that is their lifestyle, the tape she had brought along seemed damning. Apparently, it didn’t occur to her that Floyd Chastain might be lying; that he, like Carroll Horton, might be simply trying to impress her. The prosecutor, however, wasn’t impressed by the tape.