Robbery Division kept us informed of these incidents, but as there was no further violence, the case was gradually being taken over entirely by Robbery. As Harold Green was now reported out of danger, the case became of less and less concern to Homicide Division. With Marty Wynn and Vance Brasher working on it, there was no point in tying up a Homicide team also. Frank and I became involved in a couple of murder cases and virtually forgot the bandit.
Friday, June 28th, Frank and I checked in at 4:30 p.m. Frank checked the message book while I looked in my mail box. There was nothing there but a couple of bills. “Anything?” I asked Frank.
“Captain wants to see us.”
I stuck the bills in my pocket, and we crossed the anteroom to Captain Hertel’s office. He looked up from the report he was reading and said, “Friday, Smith. Come in.”
Frank said, “Hi, Captain,” and I said, “What’s up, Skipper?” He pointed at chairs, and we seated ourselves. Captain Hertel is a solidly built man with a square, calm face and stubby gray hair cut close to his head. He waited until we had cigarettes going, then said, “About this lovers’ lane bandit. Not doing much on it, are you?”
I said, “Well, Robbery’s got a team doing all it can. The guy hasn’t killed anybody, and the boy he pistol-whipped is well on the way to recovery. Doesn’t seem much point in duplicating Robbery’s effort.”
“Yeah, I know,” the captain said. “But I had a talk with Chief Brown today. He’s concerned about this joker, and wants an all-out effort to get him.”
I hiked my eyebrows. “What’s so important about a minor stickup man?”
“You’ve questioned some of the victims,” Captain Hertel said. “And have seen Wynn’s reports on the others. What’s the one characteristic that stands out in all of them?”
I thought this over, finally said, “Well, they all describe him as polite and unassuming. He doesn’t scare anybody much.”
“That’s exactly the point,” Captain Hertel said. “Every male victim so far has stated that the guy impressed him so little, he was seriously tempted to try taking him. Remember what happened to the only one who did try it?”
“Yeah,” I said slowly. “He got a cracked skull for his trouble.”
The captain nodded. “Somebody’s going to get brave again one of these nights. The guy’s appearance and manner seem to invite resistance. I think Chief Brown’s right in his prophecy of what’s going to happen if we don’t net him fast.”
“What prophecy’s that?”
“That he’s going to kill somebody.”
* * * *
5:02 p.m. We got together with Sergeant Marty Wynn and Vance Brasher of Robbery in order to outline the strategy of an all-out effort to take the lovers’ lane bandit. Chief Brown had passed down the word that we could call for whatever extra help we needed.
We were going to need a lot of it. The suspect had struck over a wide area of the Santa Monica Mountain district. Twice he had hit couples parked on Mulholland Drive, which starts west of Cahuenga Pass in the Hollywood district and follows the rim of the mountains past Beverly Hills clear to Ventura Boulevard, and the two robberies had been nearly ten miles apart. The other three robberies had each been along a different canyon road crossing Mulholland Drive.
The area of operation was too large to attempt the decoy system. The only stakeout system that had a chance of success was to cover the area with cruising undercover cars and hope one would spot him in the act. We requested and got six undercover teams from Chief Brown. The teams of Wynn and Brasher and of Frank and me brought the total to eight. We arranged to have all eight cars cruise the bandit’s area of operations from 9 p.m. until 1 a.m. nightly, the hours during which all previous robberies had taken place.
Despite these precautions, the bandit hit twice more over the weekend.
* * * *
Monday, July 1st, at 11:26 p.m., Frank and I were cruising along Nichols Canyon Road in a 1955 Chevrolet undercover car. There had been a hard summer rain earlier, unusual for this time of year, but now the night was clear and warm.
Dozens of couples were parked alongside the road, taking advantage of the nice weather.
Frank said, “This would be a good night for him to hit. For us, I mean.”
“How’s that?” I asked.
“Rain softened up the ground. Might leave some footprints.”
I grunted. “Way things are going, we better bring in more than footprints soon. Captain’s getting a little short of patience.”
“Well, we’re doing the best we can,” Frank said. “It’s a pretty big area.”
Up ahead our lights picked out a new Ford sedan parked alongside the road. As we neared it, I noticed that the door on the right-hand side hung wide open, and that no one seemed to be sitting in the car.
“Slow it down,” I said to Frank.
He braked to a crawl as we passed the Ford. I peered in and saw that both the front and rear seats were empty. I motioned Frank to pull up on the shoulder in front of it.
I lifted a flashlight from the glove compartment as we got out of the car. We walked back, staying on the concrete, and I flashed the light into the car’s interior. It was still empty.
I walked around behind the car and shined the light on the ground near the open door. There were clear impressions of both a man’s and a woman’s shoes, showing where they had stepped to the wet ground from the car. A churned-up area, halfway between the car and a drainage ditch that paralleled the road a few yards away, suggested that some kind of struggle had taken place. A man’s footprints led away from this spot around the front of the car onto the concrete.
I walked over to the edge of the drainage ditch, being careful not to disturb any of the footprints. The ditch was only about three feet deep, and had a bare trickle of water in it. When I turned my light downward, I saw that it also contained something else.
“Frank,” I called softly. “Chief Brown was right.”
“Huh?” Frank said.
“He finally got around to killing somebody. Two of them.”
Frank came over to the edge of the drainage ditch, carefully stepping in my footprints, and gazed down at the two figures lying there. The man seemed to be about twenty-five. He wore a Marine uniform with sergeant’s stripes. He lay on his back, his eyes gazing sightlessly straight upward. The top of his head had literally been beaten fiat. It was nothing but a red, pulpy mass. Even at the distance of several feet, there was no question that he was dead.
The girl lay on her side, half across his chest. She was a slim redhead of about twenty. She wore a white-and-green summer dress, and the top right corner of it was stained with blood. I slid down into the ditch and felt the girl’s pulse.
I called up to Frank, “She’s still alive. Get an ambulance rolling.”
He moved away toward the undercover car, while I bent over the girl to give her a closer examination. The bullet seemed to have passed entirely through her shoulder, and though she had shed considerable blood, both the entry and exit wounds had now stopped bleeding. She was unconscious, but breathing regularly.
The first rule of first aid is to do nothing that isn’t necessary. Making injured persons “more comfortable” as often as not only aggravates the injury. Since the