Slaughter on North Lasalle (25 page)

Naturally, his superiors were suspicious of this information. The North LaSalle Street murders had been the most widely publicized murders in Indianapolis history, and the police had received many false leads over the years (including, most recently, Carroll Horton). There had been many men who, to either impress or scare, had told someone that they had committed the North LaSalle Street murders. A little checking would usually prove these to be empty boasts.

But also of concern in reopening this case was that, along with it being the most notorious case in the history of the Indianapolis Police Department, it had also been one of the most embarrassing. In 1971, the police department had made a number of public announcements about how the case would be solved soon, about how the police were closing in on the perpetrators and arrests were imminent. Of course, none of that happened, and as the police department became more and more anxious for a solid lead, stories such as how they’d even gone so
far as to bring in a psychic in the hope that he could help solve the case all added to the embarrassment.

But while this was bad enough, there was the more recent fiasco in the mid 1990s with Carol Schultz, who’d succeeded in resurrecting the case with considerable fanfare until, much to the embarrassment of the police department, it fell to pieces. In the end, the chief of police had disciplined several of the officers involved in the handling of the reopened case.

So naturally, the police department administration was very skeptical and nervous about any new investigation into a case that had already blown up in their face twice. Yet still, it was obvious that information like this could not just be ignored without looking into it, so Sergeant West got his assignment, and the approval to travel to southern Indiana. Most importantly, he needed to obtain the original copy of the letter, if at all possible. That would be the key to making the case.

Before West traveled to southern Indiana, though, on November 23, 2000, Thanksgiving Day, he was working in the Homicide Office. The day before, Pankake had faxed him a copy of the letter written by Fred Harbison, the one he had scanned into his computer, and West was going over it for the tenth time.

On the copy of the letter faxed to him, West had found that the writer, Fred Harbison, said that he had been hired by Ted Uland to kill two men up in Indianapolis so that Uland could collect on insurance policies he had on them. Harbison stated that he had killed two
of the men in their beds by slitting their throats, and that “there was a nother [
sic
] guy there who was not suppose [
sic
] to be but I had to kill him to [
sic
] because he was there.” Harbison claimed in the letter that Uland was supposed to pay him for the murders when the insurance paid off, but that Uland never did because he claimed he lost the money.

Confirming what Angel Palma had earlier told the police, Harbison went on to write that when he wasn’t paid he warned Uland that he would put a letter in his lockbox at the bank telling all about the murders, and that if he died before being paid, the letters would be sent by his wife to the police and the newspaper. (He also stated that his wife didn’t know anything about the murders. He had told her, he wrote, that Uland owed him a large poker debt.) Harbison also mentioned in the letter that the yellow car seen at the murder site had been his yellow Road Runner, and that he had buried the boots he’d worn because he knew he had stepped in blood and left tracks.

After reading the letter again and again, West called Pankake on the telephone.

Jeff Pankake told West that his niece was still in shock after finding out about her father, and that she wasn’t dealing well with it. She knew it was true but didn’t want to believe it, and it was eating her up. Pankake asked West’s advice on how to get her some help so she could make it through this. This sort of request happens quite often in police investigations. The people involved in them will ask the officers for information or help outside
the officer’s scope of expertise. But West did what all good police officers do: He didn’t let the person lose faith. He told Pankake that he would see what he could do to get Palma some help.

As Pankake and West talked about the case, West was properly skeptical that this could be the break that had never come in the North LaSalle Street case. He well remembered the fallout from the Carol Schultz resurrection of the case, and so he knew he needed to be cautious. However, he wasn’t going to just brush it off, either. Pankake said that when Palma brought the letter to him, they had talked about it and decided that they needed to investigate the claims a bit before they did anything about it. If true, they knew these facts could do serious damage to her father’s memory and the family name. However, once they finally discovered that a crime like the one Harbison described in the letter actually had occurred, even though Palma still didn’t want to believe it, the two of them agreed that they needed to talk to the police about it, that their main concern was for the families of the three victims, that they deserved to know what had actually happened.

In their conversation, West learned that Jeff Pankake had also worked for Ted Uland’s oil drilling company. He said that Fred Harbison had been the foreman on an oil well crew he had worked on. He said Harbison had been a tough man who had expected hard work out of his crew. Pankake also said he suspected that Harbison, along with working in the oil drilling business with Uland, also did Uland’s dirty work; he thought that Harbison had been
involved in a lot of other crimes for Uland. When West pointed out that Harbison had typed his name but not signed the letter, Pankake said that this was likely because Harbison was afraid that the letter might be discovered while he was still alive, and without his signature it would be hard to prove that the letter had actually come from him. Pankake said that Harbison knew how to get away with things.

“He [Harbison] supposedly did a lot of work for Uland,” said West. “There was speculation that he had set fire to some property owned by Uland up in New Augusta. There was also property that was a business in Princeton or Jasper owned by Uland that was set on fire. The word was that he would do all of the dirty work for Uland.”

West then asked Pankake about the yellow Road Runner that Harbison had mentioned in the letter. West knew that each piece of the letter had to be authenticated if it was to be believed. Pankake said that he remembered the car, and that he would look for some old photographs of it. Finally, West asked whether Pankake would be available if he drove down to Princeton the next week. (Princeton is the county seat for Gibson County and has a population, according to the 2010 Census, of 8,644.) Pankake said that he would clear his calendar and be available to help in any way he could.

On November 28, 2000, Deputy Deborah Borchelt had to drive to Pendleton, Indiana, to pick up two prisoners, which necessitated her passing near Indianapolis. So, upon the request of Sergeant Roy West, she stopped
in at the Homicide Office on the way. West wanted to get her opinion of Angel Palma’s state of mind before he went to southern Indiana to interview her. Quite often, people who want to admit to crimes or accuse others of them are suffering from serious mental problems. Borchelt said that Palma seemed stable enough, and that she might very well be telling the truth. Deputy Borchelt also brought with her the two audiotapes of her own conversations with Palma.

The following day, Sergeant West traveled to Princeton, Indiana, which sits about 150 miles southwest of Indianapolis. West drove to Jeff Pankake’s house and spoke with him first. Pankake confirmed what his niece had told Deputy Borchelt, that Harbison had left school after the eighth grade and that the letter had been worded just as he would have spoken. Pankake told West that he personally felt the letter should be made public not only so that the families of the three murdered men could finally have some answers, but also so that Palma could put this behind her and move on. He said that she was still not dealing well with it. He felt that making the letter public might force her to face up to it and give her some closure.

In the interview, after talking about Palma and the letter, Pankake told Sergeant West that though he had worked for some time with both men, neither Harbison nor Uland had ever mentioned the North LaSalle Street murders in his presence. He believed he would remember it. However, he added that he felt Harbison was totally capable of doing what he said he’d done in the letter.
Harbison, according to Pankake, could at times be a very violent man, someone who liked to use fear to control people. He also mentioned that Harbison had hinted several times at being involved in other murders. Pankake added that he thought Harbison might have been picked up once by the police for kidnapping and attempted rape, but that no charges were ever brought against him. The man, he said again, knew how to get away with things.

When asked to describe Fred Harbison, Pankake told West that he had been a large man, who wore a size 18 ring. Pankake said that he had seen him knock men down with a backhand, and confirmed that Harbison always carried a six-inch bladed knife with him, and occasionally would also carry a gun. He said that Harbison loved fast, loud cars, like the yellow Road Runner he had owned in the 1970s.

Following this interview, Detective Roy West drove to Angel Palma’s house to talk with her. He asked her about going to the Gibson County Sheriff’s Office on November 17, and about how she had come into possession of the letter her father had written about the North LaSalle Street murders.

Palma said that she had been speaking with her stepmother and asked if there was anything left of her father’s from a safety deposit box he had owned. She was looking for pictures or any other remembrances of her father, with whom she had shared a very close, loving relationship. He had died just a couple of years before and she still missed him terribly. Her stepmother told her that there was a letter her father had talked about for years,
which she later gave to her. Palma said she didn’t read the letter right then, but stuffed it in her coat pocket and took it home.

The envelope, she said, was old and yellowed. It was also sealed, but once she got home she opened it and read the letter. She told West that she just couldn’t believe the letter’s contents. This wasn’t the loving father she knew. It was some kind of sick joke. It shook her up so much that she handed the letter to a friend named Ron Smith, who happened to be at her house, and asked him read it. She simply didn’t want it to be true. She wanted it to be some kind of hoax or joke, and apparently she hoped Ron would confirm this. Palma told West that the envelope the letter was in was addressed to the
Indianapolis Star
newspaper, and that it was a copy and not the original letter. She could tell because the copy had been made on a machine that needed serious cleaning.

After letting Ron read the letter, and apparently not getting the response from him she wanted, which was that it wasn’t true, Palma said that she asked him not to say anything about it. She then took the letter and showed it to her uncle, Jeff Pankake. She said that Jeff’s eyes got real big when he saw the letter, and he told her that he wanted to scan a copy of it into his computer. Apparently, he rightly feared that if he didn’t, knowing Palma’s state of mind, it could become lost or be destroyed.

Palma again told West that at first she didn’t believe the letter. She thought that maybe it was some kind of trick or something. This wasn’t the father she knew, even
though she realized that other people had seen Fred Harbison much differently than she had. Palma said that she decided to talk with the police because she wanted to see if what her father had written in the letter was even possible, and that was why she went to the Gibson County Sheriff’s Office.

When asked about her father’s relationship with Ted Uland, Palma recalled one time she had gone with her father to see Uland. Her father wouldn’t let her go in, but instead had made her lock the doors to the truck when he got out and told her not to open them for anyone. She said that when her dad came back he was angry and told her that Uland owed him a half million dollars. He never told her what it was owed for.

West then asked her how she came into possession of the second letter, the original, which had been addressed to the chief of police in Indianapolis. Palma said that she went back to her stepmother’s house to look through her father’s things, again hoping perhaps to find something that would show her the letter wasn’t true. She didn’t. Instead, she found another sealed envelope containing the original letter folded up inside an insurance policy. Palma then repeated the story she’d told Deputy Borchelt, about how she later put both letters into her purse, but said that while she was at the hospital for observation, they’d apparently both disappeared. She couldn’t imagine who had known about them or would want them. Palma promised to try to find the letters.

Knowing that all of this information would need verification, Sergeant West then asked Palma about any
typewriters she or her mother had, and whether she would have any problem with him taking them for a while and having them compared with the typing on the letter. Palma said she would have no problem, that would be fine. She also told him that, yes, her father had owned a yellow Road Runner, and that she had some old pictures of it. At the end of the interview, West realized that, without the original letter, much of the investigation depended on Angel Palma’s reliability. West knew he had to size her up and decide whether or not what she was telling him was the truth. He was inclined to believe her.

“From my talking with her [Angel Palma], she seemed credible in the sense of how she felt about her father and her love for him,” West said. “I just didn’t get the feeling she was making any of this up.”

After finishing up with Palma, Sergeant West then went to talk to Palma’s friend Ron Smith. He confirmed that Palma had seemed really upset and had asked him to read the letter from her father. The letter, he confirmed, had talked about Harbison killing three guys up in Indianapolis in 1971. He said that Jeff Pankake had told him that Palma’s dad was kind of crazy and it was possible he’d have done things like that. Smith also recalled that the letter had said something about a yellow car.