Slaughter on North Lasalle (8 page)

By December 8, 1971, more than a week after the murders, McAtee and his team realized that they didn’t seem to be going anywhere. Instead of dropping names off their suspect list, the more they investigated, the more suspects they added. Their attempts to approach the case by establishing a motive seemed equally blocked.

“The biggest problem in most homicides is finding a motive,” said Popcheff. “In this case we had at least five possible motives.”

The detectives found that the three victims had been in arguments and fights with dozens of people in the bars they prowled on Friday nights, and they’d also been sleeping with dozens of other men’s wives and girlfriends. There were a number of people, both in the men’s business and social lives, who felt that the men had done them wrong. Consequently, because of the victims’ lifestyles, McAtee and his team found that the list of possible motives, just like the list of suspects, continued to grow. The
Indianapolis Star
said of the North LaSalle Street case that it wasn’t three murders that lacked a motive, but rather that there were too many possible motives. The crime could have been motivated by jealousy, involving three likely possibilities: an enraged father, a jealous husband or boyfriend, or even jealousy stemming from B&B’s incredible success. Or, the newspaper theorized, the motive could have been financial: Maybe the men had borrowed money from loan sharks and were unable to pay it
back, or perhaps it was a message from the Mob, who was trying to muscle in on the microfilm business. Or the murders could have been motivated by revenge, coming from someone the trio had reportedly embarrassed or humiliated in one of the cheap bars they prowled. But which was it?

The detectives realized that, like narrowing their investigation in order to pinpoint a suspect, they needed to do the same with a motive. According to the coroner, the murderer or murderers had grabbed the victims by the hair, stretched their necks taut, and then sliced through skin, muscle, cartilage, and bone. The blood flow would have been tremendous. And whoever did this had to do it three times. This meant the killer or killers had to be extremely motivated.

However, through their investigation, the detectives did realize that it was very unlikely that such a crime could have been committed by an amateur. And the idea of several amateurs teaming up seemed unlikely. The lack of forced entry, and especially the manner in which the three men were bound, pointed to someone who knew what he was doing. Consequently, news reports after the murders said that several of the detectives involved in the investigation suspected that the murders were the work of hired killers.

On December 9, 1971, the
Indianapolis Star
put forth the theory that the three men had been killed by organized crime as a warning not to try to stop the Mob infiltration of the microfilming business. Microfilming was relatively new technology but had the potential for
making a lot of money. The newspaper also suggested the possibility that B&B Microfilming might have been just a front for the Mob, who had paid to start it up, or that perhaps the Mob had tried to muscle in on B&B and the men had resisted. This theory was supported by an earlier interview with Captain R. Wayne Hall, head of the Indiana State Police Organized Crime Unit, who, when asked if he thought it was possible that organized crime was involved in the North LaSalle Street murders, told the reporter, “You can read between the lines.”

In addition to all of this, the possibility of loan sharks or some illegal source of money also arose. “These guys were spending money they weren’t making,” said Popcheff. “And we couldn’t understand where that money was coming from.” During their investigation, the detectives found that the men were spending a lot of money partying and drinking. Also, experts had told the detectives that starting up a business like B&B Microfilming would be an expensive venture, yet neither Gierse nor Hinson seemed to have the legitimate funds to do this. As a part of their investigation, the detectives obtained copies of tax returns for Gierse and Hinson and found that their expenses far outweighed their income. Where had the extra money come from? Was it a motive for the murders?

The possible motives in the case, like the list of suspects, seemed to just keep multiplying. An article appeared in the
Indianapolis News
on December 9, 1971, claiming that the police had established a definite motive in the case, but this was only an attempt by the police to
unnerve the murderer in the hopes that he would consequently make a mistake. In truth, the police still had many motives and many suspects.

Meanwhile, on December 7, 1971, the detectives had returned once more to the North LaSalle Street neighborhood to try to talk with neighbors they’d previously been unable to contact. They finally found and interviewed a neighbor who said she had seen something suspicious on the night of the murders: a yellow car with three men sitting in it parked across the street from 1318, which she said sat there for several hours. She had never seen this car or its occupants in the neighborhood before. The detectives knew this information could be crucial and that they would now need to interview every single person on the block to see if anyone else had seen the car or the men in it.

On December 8, 1971, McAtee and his team were still no closer to solving the case when they received a report from an Indianapolis police officer who said he had talked with a man named Ron Lisby, an employee of a company called Scott Graphics on East 52nd Street in Indianapolis. Lisby, as it turned out, had helped Gierse and Hinson get several of the very lucrative contracts they had at B&B Microfilming and had loaned them some equipment to use at their new business. But much more importantly, he told the officer that he had once visited Gierse and Hinson at their home, where he claimed he met a motorcycle bum who was apparently a friend of Gierse and Hinson’s, and reportedly on parole for
manslaughter. Lisby said he later learned that the man stole a motorcycle and $1,000 from Gierse and Hinson, and that Gierse had supposedly sworn out a warrant for him. The parolee only had one eye, Lisby said, and claimed that he lost the other one in a knife fight. The detectives reluctantly added another person to their list of suspects.

The police officer, while at Scott Graphics, also spoke with a man named Lafayette Robert Roe. Roe told the officer that he’d had his car, a 1964 cream-colored Chevrolet Impala, stolen from the rear of Scott Graphics just before the triple murder. He said that Marion County sheriff’s deputies had recovered his car on December 1, 1971, in the 2000 block of South Ritter Avenue, a little over four miles to the south of the North LaSalle Street address. Upon reclaiming his car, Roe said that he found red stains on the rear seat, floor, and inside of the right door. It looked to him like blood, as if someone sitting there had been bleeding. The detectives, upon receiving this information, sent a crime lab technician out to check the stains, which the technician indeed found to test positive for type O human blood. All of the victims on North LaSalle Street, however, had been blood type A. Still, the detectives wondered, could the type O blood be the killer’s? Could the murderer have possibly cut himself in all of the slashing and left some of his own blood behind?

On December 9, 1971, while still trying to retrace the victims’ movements in the days just before the murders, a
detective took a statement from Sandra Ann Hannemann, a woman who told them that she had met Barker, Gierse, and Hinson at the Sherman Bar on November 26, 1971. She met them, she said, when Barker came over and asked her to dance. On the night of the murders, between 7:00 and 8:00
P.M.
, the woman told the detectives, she had received a telephone call from Barker inquiring about a date they had set up that night at the Sherman Bar. He told her that he was calling from Gierse’s house on North LaSalle Street. She said that the conversation lasted only about ten minutes and that she didn’t hear any noise in the background, as though he was there at the house by himself.

For more than a week now, even though detectives had worked intensely, the investigation didn’t seem to be going anywhere—but then suddenly a potentially crucial piece of information turned up. The detectives discovered that Jim Barker’s previous address had been burglarized the night before the murders. Had the killer believed that Barker still lived there and hoped to catch him alone? The detectives realized that if the burglary detective could come up with some suspects in that case, it could provide a huge break in their investigation, too. But they also knew they couldn’t just wait on that. It might happen. It might not. They had to keep their own investigation going.

While in the little over a week they had been assigned to the North LaSalle Street murders the detectives had conducted
dozens of interviews, they’d also had to spend a lot of time wading through and examining all of the evidence from the murders. And there was plenty. Crime lab technicians had taken a large number of fingerprints from the house and the victims’ cars. They had recovered fingerprints from beer and whiskey bottles, drinking glasses, door moldings, and a telephone. They also found a good fingerprint on an ashtray but discovered that it belonged to Diane Horton, Gierse’s girlfriend. Likewise, James T. Cole’s fingerprints on the inside glass of the front door were easily explained away because he had attended several parties at the house. The fact that so many people, including a number of the suspects, had been in and out of the North LaSalle Street house while attending one of the many parties held there meant that most of these fingerprints, like the ones found of Horton and Cole, didn’t prove to be of much value.

In addition, the crime lab personnel and the coroner had taken many other items as evidence, including the clothing the men wore, hair samples, fingernail scrapings, a bloody pillow found on the floor, many blood samples from throughout the house, and even pieces of the tile floor, but again, though the detectives had been hopeful, these items didn’t point toward any specific suspect. The detectives also hadn’t been able to find a suspect with boots or overshoes matching the diamond design left in the hallway.

During their investigation, the detectives had, naturally, also gone to the offices of B&B Microfilming on East 10th Street. There they took as evidence a considerable
amount of paperwork, in the hopes that it might alert them to someone with a serious grudge against the men. But again, though the detectives spent many hours going through the stack of papers, no definite suspect turned up.

However, something crucial to the case did appear at the offices of B&B Microfilming (adding another layer of complexity to a case that was already unbelievably complex). While there, the detectives discovered that a piece of equipment present—a typewriter used by B&B—had previously been reported to the police as stolen. And as they investigated further, the detectives found that this wasn’t the only piece of suspicious equipment there. Detectives discovered that Gierse had reported a burglary at Records Security Corporation on June 25, 1969, in which $5,500 in microfilming equipment had been stolen. The police officer sent to take the report, however, had felt that the report was very questionable. Not only had there been no signs of forced entry, but only certain pieces of equipment had been taken, while other equally valuable pieces had been left behind. The detective assigned to the case additionally said in his report that he was told conflicting stories about the missing equipment and that he had learned Records Security Corporation was experiencing serious financial difficulties at that time. The detective suspected it might be an insurance scam.

However, although all signs pointed to a scam, it apparently wasn’t for the insurance. The detectives investigating the North LaSalle Street murders found that
while much of the equipment at B&B Microfilming had had their serial numbers removed, the items appeared identical to the equipment listed as stolen in the burglary reported by Gierse. On December 9, 1971, the police department had eighteen pieces of microfilming equipment sent to the police property room to hold as evidence. Experts had told the detectives that it would take at least $10,000 to start up an operation like B&B Microfilming. The detectives had naturally wondered where this money had come from. The stolen equipment answered part of this question.

The detectives, because of the discovery of stolen property at B&B Microfilming, suddenly saw a possible new direction in the case. They began looking for a connection between the killings of John Terhorst, the murdered man who’d known the three men on North LaSalle Street, and that of a local burglar named Bobby Lee Atkinson, who had been murdered in a manner very similar to Terhorst: shot twice in the head and dumped in a lover’s lane south of Indianapolis. Also, the detectives had discovered during their interviews that several witnesses to Gierse’s ex-girlfriend Ilene Combest’s tirade over another woman said that during it she had screamed she would expose Gierse’s and Hinson’s involvement in the “Vette deal.” The police wondered if the three men had been murdered because they knew who Terhorst’s killer was. Alas, however, although it was a good possibility, this new direction also went nowhere. The detectives could never turn up a connection.

In their search for a motive and suspect, the police
department hired the accounting firm of Geo. S. Olive & Co. to conduct a financial audit of B&B Microfilming to see if any clues could come from this. B&B Microfilming, the detectives learned, had not yet filed incorporation papers with the state, but had opened its bank accounts on September 17, 1971. The audit, however, didn’t find anything other than a new business starting out with very limited funds.

Yet, the list of customers B&B Microfilming had attracted in its very brief life was nothing short of impressive. They had as customers a number of Indianapolis’s biggest companies: Indiana National Bank, American Fletcher National Bank, and Merchants Bank (the three largest banks in Indianapolis at the time). In addition, they also held microfilming contracts with Pioneer Title Company, Anacomp, Blue Cross Blue Shield, the Federal Home Loan Bank, the Board of School Commissioners, and even the city government of Indianapolis itself.