Slaughter on North Lasalle (9 page)

The detectives were puzzled as to how such a new company, only a couple of months old, could have landed so many big contracts right away. This unusual success added yet another possible motive to the case. In 1971, big money could be made in the microfilming business. Could the murders have been committed by someone upset over how much of this money B&B Microfilming was getting? Had B&B Microfilming angered someone in the microfilming business by taking all of these big, and very profitable, customers?

The detectives had also learned that, even with the stolen equipment, B&B Microfilming would still have
been very expensive to start up initially (renting office space, buying supplies, and so forth). Hinson, as far as the auditors could tell, had made no financial contribution at all to B&B Microfilming, and Gierse certainly couldn’t have provided all of the money from his income. Could there have been silent partners? Or some other unknown source of income?

By December 12, 1971, almost two weeks after the murders had been discovered, most of the detectives assigned to the investigation, though not any closer to solving the case, had put in over three hundred hours of overtime without a day off. The detectives had already interviewed over six hundred people, and had many more people left to be interviewed. As might be imagined, numerous theories had been proposed during these interviews, from jealousy to the Mob, and from envious business concerns to the men’s involvement in secret documents.

The local news media had also presented a number of theories. The
Indianapolis Star
, for example, put forth the idea that the killer or killers had only been after one of the men, and that the others had just gotten caught up in it. Many of the people who subscribed to this theory believed that the target was most likely Hinson. Witnesses had said that he had seemed very worried about something lately. Also, he was the one who had gotten into most of the fights.

The North LaSalle Street investigation, along with the problem of a large number of suspects and motives,
also suddenly ran into another serious handicap. Lieutenant McAtee reported this problem in a memo to his captain and deputy chief on December 12, 1971. He said that several of the people they interviewed, whose names the news media printed, had, like the Cole family, begun receiving threatening telephone calls. Because of this, potential witnesses had become reluctant to talk to the police.

Those who didn’t live during the 1960s and ’70s might find it strange that individuals unrelated to the case would call and threaten someone who had talked to the police about what appeared to be the murder of three men who didn’t deserve the death they received. But during this time period, because of the civil rights and antiwar movements in the United States, many people looked unfavorably upon the police, seeing them as an occupying army whose purpose was to suppress the rights of those involved in or supporting those movements. Consequently, during this time, anyone cooperating with the police was seen by many people as conspiring with the enemy.

Despite these difficulties, and while they hadn’t made a lot of progress in the previous two weeks, the detectives were not even close to giving up yet. They had already talked to several of the women on the men’s scorecard. However, because this list contained only first names (or in some cases, just nicknames), the detectives were having some serious problems finding many of these women. Also, a lot of the women had apparently been one-night stands, and so friends of the three victims couldn’t help
the police identify them. The detectives realized, though, that a solution to the case could come from any name on this list. And so, the detectives knew they couldn’t give up. They had to find as many of these women as they could.

On December 13, 1971, Captain Raymond Koers, head of the Indianapolis Police Department Homicide Branch, said to reporters, “I am confident we will make an arrest, or arrests, in this case.”

This statement, of course, was meant to reassure the public that the police were on the job, and that there was no reason for them to fear becoming the next victim of the North LaSalle Street murderer. However, despite Captain Koers’s public optimism about solving the North LaSalle Street case, it didn’t reassure those actually working on the investigation. The detectives assigned to the case were still putting in long hours without any solution in sight. Deputy Chief of Investigations Ralph Lumpkin was considering assigning additional detectives to the investigation because the original detectives would often work twenty to twenty-four hours straight on the case.

“Because we didn’t have a solid motive, this became a really tough case to solve,” said Detective Sergeant Michael Popcheff. “We worked around the clock on it. We were going home, laying down for a couple of hours, and then coming back to work. It was that intense. I even missed my sister’s wedding because of it.”

After two weeks of questioning witnesses and suspects, of examining evidence, of chasing down one false lead after another, and of continuously turning up more and more suspects rather than eliminating them, the original exhilaration and certainty of solution had begun to fade. Still, the detectives hadn’t given up the hope of solving the triple murder. No one thought it was unsolvable; it was just much tougher than they had anticipated. This case had turned out to be much more complex and difficult than it had appeared to be at the murder scene. The detectives assigned to the case knew that they simply needed to find that one witness or one piece of evidence that would lead them to the right suspect. None of the detectives doubted that such a witness or piece of evidence existed. It was there. They just hadn’t found it yet.

At the start of the third week of the investigation, the detectives finally did manage to narrow the investigation a bit. McAtee and his team told reporters that they felt they had at least eliminated the possibility of a connection between the North LaSalle Street murders and the murders of John Terhorst and Bobby Atkinson. Although the police had looked into the possibilities that Atkinson had sold some stolen equipment to Gierse and Hinson when they started up B&B Microfilming, that
Atkinson and Terhorst had been murdered by the same person, and that the victims on North LaSalle Street had had some knowledge about the Terhorst and Atkinson murders, they hadn’t turned up any evidence to support any of these theories.

The detectives talked to a friend of the three victims who told them that he had stopped by the North LaSalle Street house on Sunday morning, November 28, and was met at the door by Hinson, who handed him a glass of scotch. The man said that when he walked inside the house he encountered two women in the living room with two children in tow, and that the women were making a scene. He said he didn’t know why, but the women were extremely angry and upset about something. In the bathroom, the man went on, Gierse sat in the tub while a woman in her bra and panties scrubbed his back. Gierse and the woman had paid no attention to the commotion in the living room. Although the police questioned many friends and acquaintances of the victims, they were never able to identify or locate the two angry women.

The detectives also learned from witnesses that at around 8:00
P.M.
on the same Sunday, a woman had pulled up to 1318 North LaSalle Street in a yellow Oldsmobile, got out, and pounded on the front door. The witnesses said that the woman was crying profusely. Even though Gierse’s and Hinson’s cars sat parked on the street in front of the house, no one answered the door. The woman, still crying, finally stormed off of the porch and went back and sat in her car. Concerned neighbors called the police, who came and spoke with the
woman. She told the officers that she was all right, that she had just had a fight with her boyfriend was all. She didn’t say which of the men on North LaSalle Street was presumably her boyfriend. The officers, who dealt with many such minor domestic disputes every day, sent her on her way but didn’t think enough of the incident to take down her name. Though they later searched, the detectives were never able to locate this woman.

On December 15, 1971, Detective Sergeant Pat Stark, still assisting in the North LaSalle Street investigation, traveled to Chicago to conduct a background investigation on the three slaying victims. Sometimes murders can be committed by individuals who were wronged a long time ago, and who have let their emotions boil and fester until they finally burst open into rage. Detective Sergeant Stark hoped to find some evidence of this, and if not, at least some evidence that could give a direction to the investigation.

Sergeant Stark met with the Chicago chief of detectives and the homicide commander but found that the Chicago Police Department had no record of the three men ever being arrested or involved in any major investigation by the police department there. Next, Stark drove to the office where all three victims had been employed before coming to Indianapolis. Stark talked with several men who had been Gierse’s, Hinson’s, and Barker’s immediate supervisors, and all of them said that they had only known the victims through their work at the plant and had never gone out socially with them. All of the supervisors said that the three men were very hard
workers who had seemed to want to learn all they could about the microfilming business. All of the supervisors Stark talked to agreed, however, that of the three men, Barker seemed to be the one with a temper problem. They said he could get angry very easily.

When he checked the men’s personnel files, Stark found that Gierse and Hinson had left Bell and Howell employment on good terms and were eligible for rehire. Several of the people there told Stark that Gierse and Hinson returned to the plant for a visit whenever they were in Chicago. The two men would tell their former fellow employees how well they were doing in the microfilming business in Indianapolis, and how much better they expected it to be in the future. Barker, at the time of his death, had still been employed by Bell and Howell, in Indianapolis.

Since James Barker’s ex-wife, Paula Palmer, still lived in Chicago, Stark thought it would be a good idea to pay her a visit. Among the best sources on a man’s background, the detective knew, were ex-wives. Most exes feel no need to protect the man’s reputation and will often tell police secrets they certainly wouldn’t have shared if they were still married. Stark knew that if there was any dirt to be had on Barker’s life in Chicago, his ex-wife would know and would probably be willing to talk about it. Many, many crimes have been solved by talking to ex-wives.

Chicago Police detective Robert Friedman accompanied Stark to visit Barker’s ex-wife (a common courtesy police departments typically extend to officers from other
jurisdictions investigating a crime). Paula Palmer told the two detectives that she and Jim Barker had been married from December 1966 to February 1970. She said that they’d often had disagreements because he had never been satisfied with what they had, but had always wanted something better, even if they couldn’t afford it. She also told the detectives that, despite this desire to have better things, Barker would never take her to nice places when they went out, but had instead preferred “hillbilly taverns,” where, she said, he could feel that he was better than everyone else. There had been some serious insecurities in his personality.

She also told Stark and Friedman something startling and unexpected, considering the sexual conquest scorecard the detectives had found in the North LaSalle Street house, and particularly since Barker had held the lead in the contest: She said that Barker hadn’t seemed interested in having sex with her. Paula Palmer told the detectives that she discovered Barker would rather read pornography and masturbate than have sex with her, even though she said she tried to get him to have sex on numerous occasions. She told them that she had tried everything, including wearing sexy nightwear, but that he would tell her “to get the hell away from him.” In his report, Stark, apparently puzzled by this revelation, added the comment: “Mrs. Barker was not an ugly woman!”

Palmer then added that her ex-husband had had a really bad temper and was not afraid of confrontation, and that he had always wanted to start a fight with anyone he felt had offended him. He wouldn’t be afraid, she said,
to jump out of the car and run over and punch a driver who’d done something to irritate him. She also said that he liked to be obnoxious and a smart aleck. He seemed, for some reason, to enjoy offending people. Stark could begin to see part of the reason the three men had been involved in so many bar fights.

Paula Palmer said that, as the detectives might imagine, their marriage had not been a happy one, and that she had tried unsuccessfully to get Barker to go to counseling. She said, however, that after he beat her several times, she filed for divorce. She told the detectives that the last time she had spoken with Barker was by telephone on October 27, 1971, when he told her that Bell and Howell was going to cut his salary and so he was thinking about leaving them and going into business with Gierse and Hinson at B&B Microfilming. She also added that whenever she saw Barker and Gierse together, her ex seemed very jealous of Gierse’s clothing and car. Before the detectives left, Paula gave Sergeant Stark a stack of letters that Barker had written her, in the hopes they might contain something of value to the case. Sergeant Stark thanked her but knew he was returning to Indianapolis without much new information that would help in the investigation. While Palmer had given the officers all of the dirt she knew about her ex-husband, none of it had really assisted in the search for the murderer.

On December 19, 1971, almost three weeks after the murders, Lieutenant Joe McAtee and Detective Sergeants Mike Popcheff and Jim Strode submitted a thirty-eight-page progress report on the North LaSalle Street case. In
the report they requested approval to add two more detectives full-time to the investigative team. Detective Sergeants Pat Stark and Bob Tirmenstein had been assisting part-time, but now, upon approval, would work full-time to help the three already full-time detectives assigned to the case. What McAtee, Popcheff, and Strode didn’t say, but was implied by this request, was that what had looked like a case that would close quickly had turned out to be anything but.