Slaughter on North Lasalle (17 page)

A prosecutor has to have a lot more evidence than just a taped conversation with a man that neither the prosecutor nor Schultz knew anything about before a murder warrant could be issued. A successful prosecution for murder took much more. Consequently, the prosecutor told Schultz that nothing could be done with just the evidence she had. Also, the prosecutor knew that an arrest for murder could ruin a person’s life, and, even if
dropped later, would still follow that person forever. It was no small accusation to make.

In the book she wrote about her investigation, Schultz said that she could not understand why the prosecutor wouldn’t take the information she had and immediately go out and arrest Horton. She said she was flabbergasted and left the office bitterly disappointed. What did they want? She had proof! And as if her rejection by the prosecutor wasn’t bad enough, she also found out that the
Unsolved Mysteries
story had apparently fallen through.

Schultz, however, refused to give up and became determined to gather enough evidence so that the prosecutor would have to arrest Horton. To this end, she eventually contacted Horton’s ex-wife Diane in Florida. When Schultz told Diane she wanted to speak with her about Bob Gierse, she said Diane began crying. Schultz also claimed that when she asked Diane if she thought her husband might have been the killer on North LaSalle Street, Diane told her after a few moments that she didn’t know. To Schultz this seemed like just a little more confirmation.

During Schultz’s attempts to gather evidence on Horton, she also arranged for Floyd Chastain and Carroll Horton to talk with her in a three-way telephone call, hoping that during it Horton would confess or at least be forced into saying something incriminating. During the conversations, though, Horton gave Schultz nothing she could use, but he did become (understandably) very upset during these exchanges, especially when Chastain attempted to accuse him of being involved in the North
LaSalle Street murders and a number of other crimes. Horton called Chastain a liar, and was almost certainly regretting his decision to put Schultz in contact with him.

Interestingly enough, even after Chastain had told Schultz that Horton had committed the murders on North LaSalle Street, which she apparently believed, Schultz still continued to call and talk with Horton every day. She said that she only called him because she was afraid that if she stopped, he would become suspicious that she believed Chastain’s story that he was a killer. She didn’t want to be his next victim, so she religiously called him every morning between 5:30 and 6:00
A.M.
to catch him before he went to work.

Finally, unwilling to give up in her attempt to gather evidence against Horton, Schultz said that she decided to go out on a date with him and try to get him to make an incriminating statement, a statement that would be enough that the prosecutor would have to arrest him. To this end, she called and asked Horton to dinner, and also arranged for her bounty hunter friend to sit out in the parking lot just in case. At dinner, though, all Horton talked about was himself and his exploits during World War II. She tried over and over to guide the conversation back to the North LaSalle Street murders, but Horton was uninterested in the topic and would go right back to talking about himself.

The day following their dinner, Schultz said, Horton called her and told her how pretty she was, and how someone could very easily fall in love with her. She said that a long silence followed this statement, as though he
was waiting for the appropriate reply. Schultz said she realized right then that Horton had fallen in love with her. She felt thunderstruck and didn’t know what to say in response. And so she got off of the telephone as quickly as possible.

But Carroll Horton wasn’t the only one in love with Carol Schultz. While Schultz spoke with Horton on the telephone every day, she also talked regularly on the telephone with Floyd Chastain. According to Chastain, she also sent him information about the North LaSalle Street murders, though it is never explained why she did this since Chastain claimed to have been there. It’s also not clear what the two of them talked about on the telephone, but whatever it was apparently made Chastain fall in love. He reportedly even sent her a ring from prison. In later correspondence with detectives at the Indianapolis Police Department, Chastain claimed the feelings were mutual, and that he and Schultz were in love.

However, for Schultz, while she might have felt safe from Chastain, who was safely locked away in a prison in Florida, the thought of Horton being in love with her terrified her. Since she believed him to be a serial killer, she continued to fear that his next victim might well be her. He lived much too close, and she was much too vulnerable, especially if he found out what she believed about him. Schultz finally decided that she couldn’t just live in constant fear. She had to do something about it, and what she decided to do was to contact Joe McAtee, the detective lieutenant who in 1971 had been in charge of the North LaSalle Street murder investigation.

Joe McAtee had been a rising star at the Indianapolis Police Department through the 1970s and ’80s. Following his stint as a detective lieutenant in the Homicide Branch, McAtee had been promoted to captain, then deputy chief of operations, and finally to chief of police, a position he held for five years. Not satisfied, however, with just being the chief of police, McAtee then ran for and easily won election to become the sheriff of Marion County, which was the office he held when Schultz called him in late 1992 to request an appointment.

Schultz said that she felt very intimidated meeting Sheriff McAtee and wasn’t certain he would believe her. However, she convinced him to listen as she played him one of the tape recordings she had made. According to Schultz, after listening to it, McAtee then called Lieutenant Popcheff and told him that they needed to meet right away. Schultz said she felt elated. She had finally gotten someone in authority to listen to her. Sheriff McAtee was going to reopen the North LaSalle Street case.

¹
Denotes pseudonym

Following Carol Schultz’s meeting with Sheriff Joe McAtee, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office began looking into her claim of knowing who the killer on North LaSalle Street had been. The sheriff immediately began having meetings with Lieutenant Michael Popcheff, apparently to map out their strategy.

There was apparently some discussion within the Prosecutor’s Office about the sheriff looking into a crime more than two decades old that didn’t seem to fall within his jurisdiction. At this time, the sheriff’s responsibilities didn’t include crime inside the old city limits (which would include the North LaSalle Street address). McAtee responded in an article in
NUVO
, “No one can tell me I can’t investigate crime inside Marion County. And if I don’t do it, it won’t get done.” Like the other original
detectives on the North LaSalle Street case, he wanted to see it solved.

As Schultz waited for something to happen on that end, she also decided to do something herself to help move the investigation along. If she was going to write the book, she figured that she needed to take an active part in solving the case. So she came up with a new idea of how to gather evidence against Carroll Horton that the police could use. She decided she would go to dinner with Horton again, but this time, rather than a tape recorder in her purse, she would be wearing a concealed microphone that the police could listen in on. She would try to get him to make some incriminating statements or maybe even a confession if she was lucky. Eventually, he would have to say something that would prove he was the killer, and with the police listening to the conversation they could step in and make an arrest just as soon as he had said enough.

Schultz said she called the sheriff and proposed her idea to him. Sheriff McAtee apparently liked the idea—she claims he even offered to provide her with a body wire to wear under her clothing and told her that he would have some of his officers stationed nearby using surveillance equipment. They would listen in on the dinner meeting, and if she could get Horton to say anything incriminating, they would be able to record it. Schultz admitted she felt a bit guilty about what she was doing, since she knew that Horton had fallen in love with her, and that she was going to use this fact to get him to
incriminate himself. But still, she felt justified because she truly believed that Horton was a serial killer who ought to be brought to justice.

On the night of the dinner date, Schultz said, a female deputy came to her house with the body wire. As she got dressed for her date with Horton, the deputy fastened the recording device to her. Schultz was all set to go catch a murderer.

As she had planned, Schultz and Horton were to meet for dinner at Mickler’s Sirloin Inn on the east side of Indianapolis. Schultz arrived early at the restaurant, and first went to talk with the sheriff, who was sitting in the back of a surveillance van parked at the rear of the parking lot. She said that Sheriff McAtee told her she needed to try to get Horton to talk about being inside the North LaSalle Street house on the day of the murders. Although Horton had claimed to her that he’d been inside the house and had viewed the crime scene, the sheriff told her that Horton had definitely not been allowed inside the house on the day the murders were discovered, so any information he had about the crime scene (the positions of the bodies, the condition of the house, etc.) could be incriminating.

Schultz said in her book that she had once again brought along her bounty hunter friend that night, just in case she needed help right away. Even though sheriff’s deputies sat out in the parking lot, she wanted someone much closer. The bounty hunter agreed to sit at a nearby table, and would pretend to eat alone, while all the time waiting to jump in if she needed him. Schultz went into the restaurant, was seated, and then waited for Horton.
When he was late arriving, Schultz began to worry that perhaps he was on to her and knew what she was doing. Panic set in momentarily until Horton finally walked in the door and apologized for being late, explaining that an emergency at work had held him up.

Schultz smiled and tried to act as though it was nothing at all. They ordered their dinners, but just like the previous time, although during the meal Schultz tried to get Horton to talk about the North LaSalle Street murders, he instead talked about everything else. He did tell her, though, about going to his ex-wife’s apartment one time to pick up his children and seeing Gierse run out the back door carrying his pants. He also told her about the top secret documents Gierse and Hinson were supposedly working on, the same information he said he had given to the police at the murder scene. Yet, while he didn’t give Schultz any incriminating information, Horton did try to get her to come and spend the night with him at his place. He told her to pack a toothbrush and her pajamas and meet him there. She politely declined, and then began to worry again that he was on to her and that was why she couldn’t get him to say anything incriminating. Did he know what she was up to?

Schultz said that when she realized she wasn’t going to get any incriminating evidence she told Horton she had to leave. She got up and hurried out, terrified that Horton would follow her. She knew she had to get out of there. She didn’t want to be the next victim of a serial killer. According to her recollections, she got into her car, pulled out of the parking lot, and then drove to a
drive-in restaurant nearby where she had made plans to meet with the bounty hunter after the dinner. Minutes later, the bounty hunter pulled into the parking lot and she got out of her car and into his. They pulled out, leaving her car there.

Schultz said she finally felt safe. But it was short-lived. Once in the car the bounty hunter told her that he had spotted a member of the Mafia sitting at a table near her, and that the man had watched her conversation with Horton intently. How the bounty hunter would have known the man was a Mafia member wasn’t explained (and even more puzzling given that those individuals seldom found their way to Indianapolis). But the bounty hunter wasn’t finished with his revelations. Schultz said he told her that they were being followed at the moment, probably by the Mafia, and for her to hang on and he would lose them. He then floored the accelerator.

Naturally, the police—who were unaware of Schultz’s backup plans with the bounty hunter—were concerned about her sudden disappearance. Popcheff, who had joined the sheriff’s deputies in the surveillance van, said that halfway through the meal with Horton the body wire suddenly shut off and Schultz disappeared. Concerned for her safety, the police went looking for Schultz and finally found her at her house. Popcheff said she told them that she had become frightened and that was why she left abruptly.

Sheriff McAtee, according to Schultz, was disappointed that Horton hadn’t said anything incriminating during the dinner date and, like Schultz before,
apparently had no luck trying to persuade the Prosecutor’s Office to go after Horton. So finally, Schultz said she decided to try the direct approach. She would confront Horton with her belief that he was the killer on North LaSalle Street and force him into an incriminating statement. She had been talking with Horton now every day for over a year, and so, in one of their telephone calls, Schultz told Horton that Chastain had fingered him to the police, and that, because of this, he was now their number one suspect in the North LaSalle Street murders. She said that Horton flew into a rage and called Chastain a liar. He also complained to her that he would now be forced to hire an attorney. However, to her dismay, he didn’t say anything incriminating.

Horton told her he believed Chastain had actually been the killer on North LaSalle Street. While she didn’t contradict him, she didn’t believe it, either. She still believed Chastain’s story that it was Horton. Schultz said that as she continued to talk with Horton every day on the telephone, however, she quickly discovered that he was jealous of the time she spent with Lieutenant Popcheff and would constantly try to belittle him. Horton thought that Popcheff had romantic ideas about her, which she said was ridiculous. He was a perfect gentleman.