with us in the back seat of Unit 7K10, while the Robbery unit followed.
A couple of hundred yards from where Laurel Canyon Road crossed Mulholland Drive, Wilma Stenson told us to slow down. I plugged the cord of the hand spotlight into its dashboard socket and directed the beam at the shoulder. Frank let the car creep along at five miles an hour while Mrs. Stenson and I examined the ground alongside the road. Behind us the other car also switched on its spot.
At intervals along the road, cars were parked with dimmed lights—couples taking advantage of the romantic moon. As soon as our spots went on, engines came to life and the cars hurriedly pulled away. Within seconds we had the road to ourselves as far as we could see.
We had moved at this snail’s pace about a hundred yards when Wilma Stenson said dubiously, “I don’t think it was this close to Mulholland Drive.”
Frank halted the car, and behind us Vance Brasher halted the one he was driving. Ahead we could see the lights of an occasional car moving along Mulholland Drive.
Swinging in a U-turn, Frank started back the way we had come, driving on the left side of the road and turning on his red blinker to warn any oncoming traffic, even though there wasn’t any at the moment. The other car swung around also and continued to follow.
Only a few yards beyond where Mrs. Stenson had first told us to slow down, I suddenly spotted the leather wallet lying next to the road. Simultaneously Wilma Stenson said, “There it is!”
Frank pulled over to the right and parked on the shoulder. The Robbery unit parked behind us.
All six of us crossed the road and stood looking at the wallet without stepping off the concrete. Marty Wynn and I both illuminated the scene with flashlights. Tire marks showing where the car had been parked were faintly visible in the dirt of the shoulder. Six gold-tipped cigarette butts lay on the edge of the concrete, where they had been tossed from the driver’s side of the car. Six untipped butts lay near the wallet, where they had been dropped from the other side.
Wilma Stenson flushed when she saw me looking at the butts. In a faint voice she said, “Maybe we were here a little longer than I thought.”
“Yeah,” I said.
Marty Wynn and I stopped at the edge of the road and carefully examined the ground. While the tire marks, though faint, were clear enough, the ground was too hard and dry to show footprints. There wasn’t an indentation in it other than the tire marks.
Rising, I instructed the photographer in what pictures I wanted, and he shot several of the scene from different angles. Wilma Stenson looked on puzzledly while this was going on.
When he had taken the last picture, she asked, “Why are photographs necessary?”
I didn’t tell her that policemen are naturally suspicious, that tentatively we accepted her story at face value, but that on the off-chance that the holdup man was pure fabrication on her part and she had actually fractured Harold Green’s skull herself, we wanted pictorial evidence of the scene. I just said, “Routine, ma’am.”
Marty Wynn said, “Guess there isn’t any evidence to disturb,” stepped off the concrete, and lifted the wallet by thrusting, a pencil inside it.
“Why is he doing that?” Mrs. Stenson asked.
“Fingerprints,” I said succinctly.
When we had collected the butts and dropped them into a plastic bag, we were finished.
We requested Wilma Stenson to meet us at the Police Building at 1 p.m. the following afternoon in order to look at mug shots. She said she would. We then drove her back to the Central Receiving Hospital, where her car was parked, and let her go home.
* * * *
The next day, Thursday, June 20th, I arrived at the Police Building at a quarter of one. Before going up to 314, I stopped on the second floor to see what R & I had come up with. I learned that on the basis of our description and MO, the Stat’s Office had pulled a hundred and forty-three possibles. By weeding out those known to be in jail, out of town, or impossible for other reasons, R & I had reduced this to twenty-two. I took the mug shots of these twenty-two up to Homicide with me.
Frank was on the phone when I walked into the squad room. I raised my hand in a general salute to the day-watch men present, then sat on the edge of the table and waited for Frank to finish his phone conversation.
When he hung up, Frank said, “Hi, Joe. Just talking to Latent Prints. They brought out a couple of sets of prints they think must belong to the owner of the wallet. Plus one partial print that doesn’t match any of the others. Think maybe it was left by the suspect, since it’s superimposed over one of the others.”
I grunted. This was as much as we could have hoped for, but it wasn’t very helpful. It would be helpful if we ever got a suspect whose prints we could compare with the partial, but it was useless for comparison with the thousands of sets of prints in the fingerprint file. It takes the prints of at least three fingers to make a search of records feasible. Theoretically it’s possible to match a single print against a similar one in the fingerprint file, but it would take the entire staff a year to do it.
I tossed Frank the R & I report. “Twenty-two possibles,” I said. “Maybe we’ll be lucky enough to have Mrs. Stenson identify one of the mugs.”
“Bet a Coke?” Frank asked.
I looked at him. “Against a case, maybe. I was just doing wishful thinking.”
Vance Brasher came in then, bringing Mrs. Wilma Stenson with him. She was chatting animatedly into his ear as they entered the room, and Vance was replying with polite monosyllables. Last night Mrs. Stenson had been too upset to pay much attention to Vance, but today she seemed to have become aware of his charm.
He wasn’t reciprocating very well. He was polite, but his expression indicated their relationship was going to stay strictly one of witness-police officer.
When Vance led her over to us, Wilma Stenson reluctantly tore her attention from him long enough to say, “Oh, hello, Sergeant Friday. And Officer Smith.”
Frank said, “Afternoon, ma’am,” and I said, “How are you, Mrs. Stenson?”
After this exchange of greetings, she was all set to return her attention to Vance, but I distracted her by saying, “Like you to look at some pictures, ma’am.”
“Of course, Sergeant,” she said, without much enthusiasm.
I showed her the mug shots of the twenty-two possibles R & I had come up with first. She stated positively that none was the man who had held up her and Harold Green. Then we brought out the mug books, and she spent a full hour going through them.
When she closed the last book, she shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Some of the faces bear a faint resemblance, but I’m sure the man who held us up isn’t here. I’m quite certain I’d recognize his picture.”
That was that. We thanked her for her time and told her we’d call her if there were any developments in the case.
“Any time at all,” she said enthusiastically. “Phone me any time you wish.” She was looking at Vance when she said it.
After
