My Dark Places - James Ellroy [131]
They found a file number. They found out the file was destroyed 20 years ago.
Armstrong and Eckler interviewed Bert Beria’s widow and brother. They pegged Bert as a misanthrope and an all-purpose shit. They didn’t think he killed Jean Ellroy.
We found Margie Trawick’s daughter. She remembered the case. She was 14. We asked her for names. She didn’t have any.
We found a deputy who knew computers backwards. His home system featured a 50-state reverse book. He ran Ruth Schienle through it. He got a long printout. Bill and I called 19 Ruth Schienles. None of them were our Ruth Schienle. None of them knew our Ruth Schienle. Women were hard to find. They got married and divorced. They got lost behind name changes.
We went back to the Ellroy Blue Book. We extracted four names. We wrote down “Tom Baker,” “Tom Downey” and “Salvador Quiroz Serena.” They were all exonerated. Serena worked at Airtek. He said he “could have had” my mother. We found the name “Grant Surface.” He took polygraph tests on 6/25 and 7/1/59. The results were “inconclusive.” “Psychological difficulties” fucked up the tests. We ran Baker, Downey, Serena and Surface through the 50-state reverse book and the state DMV and DOJ computers. We got no hits on Surface and Serena. We got a shitload for Baker and Downey. We called all the Bakers and Downeys. We did not find our Baker and Downey.
Bill called Rick Jackson at LAPD Homicide. Jackson checked rape-and-choke and bludgeon-choke murders from the Ellroy/Long time span. He found two LAPD cases. They were solved and successfully adjudicated.
Victim #1 was named Edith Lucille O’Brien. She was snuffed on 2/18/59. She was 43 years old. She was bludgeoned and dumped on a hilltop in Tujunga. Her slacks were turned inside out. Her bra was pushed up. It looked like a sex frenzy job.
Edith O’Brien prowled bars in Burbank and Glendale. She picked up men for sex. She was last seen at the Bamboo Hut on San Fernando Road. She left with a man. The man had a ’53 Olds. The man came back to the Bamboo Hut alone. The man talked to another man. He said Edith was out in his car. She spilled spaghetti on the front seat. The men put their heads together and whispered. The car man stayed at the bar. The other man walked out.
The coroner said the killer lashed the victim’s wrists tight. He probably wailed on her with a lug wrench. The LAPD popped a guy named Walter Edward Briley. He was tried and convicted. He was 21. He was tall and heavyset. He was sentenced to life in prison. He was paroled in 1978.
A man named Donald Kinman raped and strangled two women. The victims were named Ferne Wessel and Mary Louise Tardy. The DODs were 4/6/58 and 11/22/59. Kinman met Victim #1 in a bar. He rented a hotel room and killed her there. He met Victim #2 in a bar. He killed her in a trailer at his father’s trailer park. He left fingerprints at both scenes. He turned himself in and confessed. Kinman was stocky and curly-haired. Kinman fell behind two counts of murder. Kinman went to prison for 21 years.
Kinman jazzed me. He played like a two-time-only killer. He was more volatile than the Swarthy Man. He was purely self-destructive. I saw alcohol as his trigger. The perfect booze intake and the perfect woman came his way twice. He said, “I don’t know what came over me, but it just felt like something I had to do.”
Bill and I debated the Swarthy Man as serial killer. Bill was pro. I was con. We kicked the ball back and forth a hundred dozen times. Bill said we should contact a psychological profiler.
Carlos Avila worked for the State DOJ. He taught profile procedures. He gave seminars. He worked Sheriff’s Homicide for nine years and knew our geographical backdrop. We should commission a profile on the Ellroy and Long cases.
Bill called Carlos Avila. We lent him our files. He studied them and wrote up an opinion.
UNKNOWN SUBJECT;
GENEVA “JEAN