DR. CHARLES P.

LARSON,
WORLD'S FOREMOST
MEDICAL-DETECTIVE, REPORTS
FROM HIS CRIME FILE

JOHN D. McCALLUM

The Writing Works, Inc.

Mercer Island, Washington

Gordon Soules Book Publishers

Vancouver, B.C., Canada
 Foreword

By Frank P. Cleveland, M.D.

President, National Association
of Medical Examiners, 1 976-77

INFREQUENTLY, arising from the multitudes, there

is a person, a leader, an innovator and dedicated worker
who serves as a model and example to others in his field.
Such a man is Dr. Charles P. Larson, of Tacoma,
Washington.
The scientific adventures and the investigative tri-
umphs of Dr. Larson have been excellently captured in
this book by author John D. McCallum for the edification
of his countless friends, colleagues and the general public.
For the past 40 years, Dr. Larson has spent his life as a
Forensic Pathologist. He has performed this public service
as a private practitioner and has never held public office or
a formal appointment in a law enforcement agency
charged in the scientific investigation of death. His per-
sonal success in the scientific investigation of death is
demonstrated through the media of case presentation.
iii
 Dr. Larson foresaw the need for education and devel-
opment of scientific aids in the investigation of violent
death and has spent much of his professional career in this
endeavor. In 1937, Forensic Pathology was in its infancy
in the United States. Dr. Larson, known far and wide as an
expert in this field, carried the doctrine of scientific investi-
gation of death to his community. Recognition of his
capability in Forensic Pathology came from the College of
American Pathologists where he served as president and
also was chairman of the Forensic Pathology Committee.
Similarly, he served as chairman of the Council of Foren-
sic Pathology for the American Society of Clinical Pathol-
ogists and was one of the founders of the certification
program in Forensic Pathology for the American Board of
Pathology.
Forensic Pathology may be defined as that unique
application of medical knowledge to the investigation of
deaths to ascertain whether the death is natural, acciden-
tal, homicidal or suicidal. The medicolegal investigation of
death encompasses a broad spectrum of activities. Dr.
Larson-so-named the "Crime Doctor" years ago by former
Tacoma prosecuting attorney Pat Steele-participates in
the investigation of the scene where death occurs. From
the examination of the death scene there will be derived
evidence that will link the victim to a suspect. The evidence
must first be recognized, secondly collected, identified and
preserved, and then analyzed. The clothing of the victim is
equally as important as the body of the victim, for from the
clothing there will be derived proof of violence and recov-
ery of trace evidence. Alterations of the clothing must be
correlated with injuries upon the body of the victim. There-
after, follows the examination of the body of the deceased
person and from the post mortem examination ofthe body
there is obtained a story of the victim's life and death, his
health, disease and injury, and the cause of death. The
data obtained by the Forensic Pathologist are factual,
objective, unprejudiced and unbiased.
The factual information derived from the scene, the
iv
clothing and the body allows the "Crime Doctor" to reach
a valid medical conclusion as to the cause and manner of
death. The same facts presented to a judge and jury permit
the irrefutable identification, trial and conviction of the
criminal who has perpetrated the crime. The Forensic
Pathologist, Charles P. Larson, as an objective finder of
fact, has applied his skills, knowledge, experience and
intelligence to the discovery of deaths from violence and
has assisted in the successful removal of the criminal from
society.
A cosmopolitan, Dr. Larson was born in Eleva, Wis-
consin, had his early education at Gonzaga University in
Washington, obtained his medical degree from McGill
University in Montreal, Quebec, and pursued specialty
training in pathology at the University of Michigan and
University of Oregon Medical Schools. His professional
affiliations with Pathology Societies throughout the con-
tinental United States and international medical associa-
tions continue today.
Recognition of the qualities of leadership and of his
dedication to this practice of pathology by his colleagues,
eminate from his curriculum vitae. He has served as
president of the major professional organizations in path-
ology. Service to his country as a colonel in the United
States Army culminated in his being appointed patholo-
gist for the War Crimes Investigating Team in the Euro-
pean Theater of Operation in 1945.
Dr. Larson was a founding member of the American
Academy of Forensic Sciences in Chicago in 1948 and in
1966 was a founding member of the National Association
of Medical Examiners. These two active national organi-
zations provide assistance, guidance and leadership for
those engaged in Forensic Pathology. The American
Acedemy of Forensic Sciences has grown from a handful
of founders to the present internationally active organiza-
tion encompassing every discipline involved in the Crimi-
nal Justice System.
Scientific papers published in the Journal of Forensic
v
Sciences, founded by the American Academy of Forensic
Sciences, are disseminated throughout the country to those
practitioners in legal medicine and the related sciences.
The Academy initiated the Forensic Science Foundation
to develop new tools and investigate techniques for the
medicolegal investigation of death.
The National Association of Medical Examiners has
grown to an organization of approximately 400 physicians
engaged in the investigation of death. With Dr. Larson's
advice and support, this group has initiated a program for
the improvement of medical examiners' and coroners'
offices throughout the country by the development of
standards for the medicolegal investigation of death. The
scientific meetings of the National Association of Medical
Examiners are dedicated to the improvement of our sys-
tem of investigating deaths and provide assistance to
those charged with the development oflocal and statewide
systems. NAME has assisted in developing training pro-
grams for young physicians wishing to enter the field of
Forensic Pathology.
Under Dr. Larson's leadership and stimulation, great
strides have been made in providing qualified Forensic
Pathologists to serve many communities in the United
States. In the major metropolitan cities there is still a
shortage of qualified persons in Forensic Pathology.
Dr. Larson' s career as a father is, from a philosophical
viewpoint, far more spectacular than that of the "Crime
Doctor." His wife Margaret has directed the growth of
seven children, four boys and three girls. Three of the boys
are following medical careers in anesthesiology, pediatrics
and rehabilitation medicine. The fourth son provides legal
advice to his family. The girls have followed careers in
education, social science and the arts.
As variety is essential to a full life, Dr. Larson has
pursued an active interest in deep sea fishing and espe-
cially sought that salt-water delicacy, salmon. Physical
condition, being an important element of an active medi-
vi
cal practice, was maintained by early experience as an
amateur boxer and later followed by a few professional
bouts. Dr. Larson's interest and participation in sports are
exemplified by his articles on deep sea fishing for the
"Encyclopedia of Sports Medicine" and his performance
as a referee in a world championship boxing match.
In addition to his professional activities, Dr. Larson
has been active in his community. He has served as a
member of the Washington State Athletic commission
and was its chairman in 1958. He has been a member of
Rotary International since 1940 and served as president of
the Tacoma Athletic Commission in 1955. Being an avid
sports fan, Dr. Larson was vice president of the National
Boxing Association in 1960 and medical advisor to the
National Wrestling Association. He was president of the
National Boxing Association in 1961 and became the first
president of the World Boxing Association in 1962.
Dr. Larson's career as a teacher began in 1939 as
Professor of Anatomy and Histology at St. Martin's Col-
lege in Lacey, Washington and continues today through
his presentation of lectures and papers at professional
society meetings and through his consultative services to
various local and national institutions.
Dr. Charles P. Larson, student, father, scientist, phy-
sician, investigator, boxer and fisherman, has led an
active life dedicated to a higher quality of medical practice
in a highly specialized area, Forensic Pathology, and
today stands forth as a symbol of excellence in medical
practice and community involvement.
Dr. Larson having served his community well in
many avenues of activity is now being honored and recog-
nized through the biographical technique of displaying his
professional prowess to the public.

January 12, 1978

vii
 To
Dr. Larson's
Wife, Margaret,
and
children
 Contents

Forward m
Crime Doctor 1
In This Comer: "Kid Philips" 21
Lady of the Lake 31
War Is Hell 44
The Body in Striped Pajamas 70
Alcoholics, Inc. 104
The Bird That Killed Like a Hawk 113
The Trial 135
Sing Like a Bird 146
Jake's Day in Court 168
Last Ditch Stand 175
Time Runs Out 210
"The Lord Taketh Away" 216
The Phone Rings 220
Summing Up 249
Appendix 255
Index 260
ix
 "Forensic patho/,ogist. Primarily, patho/,ogy is the
science of the origin, nature and the causes of diseases.
But when you put the word forensic before it, you
define the science as pertaining to, connected with, or
used in courts of law, and you automatically include
with the word diseases: poisoning, injuries and the
destruction of parts of the human body incident to the
crimes of assault, mayhem or homicide. A forensic
pathologist is in effect a surgical detective-a crime
doctor."

Dr. Charles P. Larson

1978

x
 Crime Doctor

A 40-watt bulb overhead threw a pale light on the

small doorway. The Merkle Hotel seemed to blend in with
all the other dingy buildings on the block at 26th and
Pacific; a shabby, run-down old structure of two stories, a
miserable-looking place.
Dr. Charles P. Larson and Tacoma Police Chief
Charles Zittle sat in the doctor's car a short distance away,
their eyes glued on the hotel. Two squad cars were parked
strategically behind them, waiting for a signal. Dr. Larson
looked at his wristwatch. "Five more minutes and we're
going in," he told Zittle. He slumped down in his seat and
waited.
Dr. Larson was 46 at the time, broad of shoulder, flat-
gutted, with a fine, steady cock to his chin. He was part
forensic pathologist, part detective, with ice for nerves. Pat
Steele, the county prosecutor, had dubbed him the "Crime
Doctor" in 1947-and the nickname stuck.
The street was quite dark. It was one of those nights
that late spring is supposed to be for, but Dr. Larson did
not like it at all. He shifted in his seat, sucked at a cigarette.
2 CRIME DOCTOR

"We've got plenty of security," Chief Zittle reminded

him. "Don't worry, Charley, everything will be fine."
"We cannot afford to guess wrong," Dr. Larson said.
"We told her we'd give her 10 minutes, and then we're
going in." He checked his watch again. Three more min-
utes.
The object of his concern was Patty Marshall (not her
real name), a recent graduate of the University of Puget
Sound and the first female police officer in Tacoma to
cover a regular beat. She had volunteered to work under-
cover, posing as a pregnant woman seeking an abortion.
Marjorie Smith, operating out of the Merkle, ran the busi-
est abortion mill in the county.
Marjorie Smith. There was the smell of sin about her.
Her annual gross income was up around $500,000, easy.
She was a tough old dame-big, foul-mouthed, with the
disposition of a fighting cock. Her illegal profession ran-
kled Dr. Larson and he, as well as Chief Zittle, wanted her
busted and out of circulation. They had devised a flawless
plan, or so they hoped. It went like this:
The day before the raid, Patty went to the Merkle and
made a $100 deposit with Ms. Smith. The going rate was
$200. Patty promised to pay the balance the next night
when she came in for the operation. It was urgent, she told
Smith, that she have the abortion as soon as possible,
because she was already six weeks along. (Actually, she
wasn't pregnant at all.)
On the night of her appointment, Patty sat in the car
with Dr. Larson and Chief Zittle, listening to final instruc-
tions. She was a good-looking woman, youngish, well-
groomed and attractively dressed. There was nothing to
indicate that she was a cop.
"We'll be timing it right on the nose," Chief Zittle told
her. "We're coming in exactly 10 minutes after you step
through the front door."
Dr. Larson nodded. "That's just enough time for you
to pay her, get up on the table and hav~ your legs ready-
and for the abortion to begin,'' Dr. Larson said.
 CRIME DOCTOR 3
Patty smiled. She was a gutsy gal.
"Don't be late," she said.
Chief Zittle then gave her $100 in small bills. The
money was marked with a fluorescent material for identi-
fication purposes.
Dr. Larson looked at his watch again. One more
minute. It was tough, he thought, to be waiting and
wondering about Patrolwoman Marshall and trying to
read her mind from a distance. And if she got hurt, he
would never forgive himself for not having been at the
scene in time.
Finally, he said to the Chief, "All right, Chuck, that's
it. The 10 minutes are up. Let's go."
Then there was a flurry of movement; the front door
caving in from brute force, and yelling and obscenities (by
Ms. Smith) and Patty asking Dr. Larson, "What kept
you?" That had been cutting it pretty close, at that. Two
more minutes and Ms. Smith would have started giving an
unpregnant woman an abortion!
Today, Dr. Larson can still recall the details: "We
timed our arrival right on the button," he says. "We
smashed through the door just as Smith was ready to
start. That was critical. Patty had lots of nerve to go in
there and submit to an abortion-when she wasn't even
pregnant. The minute we came in, Smith knew what we
were there for. I never heard such vile language in all my
life. She could cuss worse than a Missouri muleskinner.
She was especially mad at Patty. We took the marked
money from her, and, of course, we had her stone cold.
"Marjorie Smith's abortion clinic was very unsanitary.
The floors were dirty-no wonder there was so much
infection among her clients-and she had no means of
properly sterilizing her equipment. She had no medical
training whatsoever. This had led to several deaths. The
way she worked was to put her patients to bed after
spreading newspapers on it. There was a ward with four
beds in it. She had an old gynecological table that must
have been about 1910 vintage. She had rubber drainage
4 CRIME DOCTOR

pads that the patient placed her butt on, and when the
blood started squirting, everything ran down on the floor. I
proved she'd been doing abortions by simply going around
the edges of the baseboard with a pen knife and scraping
material off it. Later, in my lab, I made sections of those
scrapings and found pieces of placental and decidual
tissues from many different women who'd been aborted
there. The place never had been decently cleaned, one
reason for all those infections. The only sterilizing equip-
ment Smith had was an old hotwater sterilizer, which, of
course, was totally inadequate because it didn't kill any of
the real virulent organisms which can cause infectious
hepatitis and all sorts of diseases. ·
"The only lamp she had was a goose-neck office lamp.
There were no operating lights. Anybody can buy this old
secondhand equipment from a medical supply house; cre-
dentials are not necessary. There's a hell of a profit in
surgical equipment. All told, Marjorie Smith's investment
wasn't worth more than $500-yet she was netting thou-
sands of dollars a month. At $200 per patient, she had
eight beds, and, doubling production, I figured she was
performing up to 16 abortions a day. She didn't keep
anybody overnight. That would have been bad for busi-
ness. She kept no records, because she would have had to
pay taxes on a whopping income, ifthe IRS had nailed her.
In those days, abortions were a hush-hush business. They
were carried on in secret. If a woman had an abortion, she
didn't go around telling the world about it. She simply paid
the fee and said nothing. And so people like Marjorie
Smith got rich.
"What did the courts do to her? She was tried and
convicted on two counts: (1) for performing an illegal
abortion, and (2) manslaughter. She was sent to prison-
but it was a relatively light sentence. They should have
thrown the key away."

It is a fact of modern society that before you die, you

may commit murder, you stand a chance of being accused
 CRIME DOCTOR 5

of committing murder, and a very good chance, in the

world's present jungle culture, of being murdered.
In any of these events, a good man to have on your
side would be Dr. Larson; a good man because, as a
forensic pathologist (an M.D. who specializes in crime-
oriented autopsies), he usually helps law enforcement au-
thorities get their man. Once, a year-long survey of his
triumphs vs. his failures was conducted, and it revealed
that of the more than 30 homicides brought to him during
those 12 months, 87 percent of them were solved. This, as
opposed to the less than 35 percent for all of the police
forces the world around.
If you opt for committing murder and want to get
away with it, advises Dr. Larson, do it in hot blood on the
spur of the moment, because unless you kill an old friend,
murders done in quick flares of passion are harder to solve
than carefully planned murders. Intricately planned hom-
icides are the products of abnormal minds that are prone to
make mistakes-that have blind spots-that overplay the
action. But, then, if they were normal, they would not at
the last moment go through with it.
A slight mistake is all that Dr. Larson ever needs;
blonde hair on the jacket sleeve of a black-haired man and
gray stains on his trousers that in the crime lab turn out to
be smears of human brain tissue, for example.
To be wrongfully accused of murder is not so hard to
come by as you might think. In fact, a great many people
have walked right into it, as casually as you please-or as
stupidly. Some of those people are undoubtedly still doing
time. One, of record, isn't. What he did was to leave his
bloody footprints all around a body that had ceased vio-
lently to be active, and all around the adjacent area as well.
The local police didn't have to look twice. As soon as
they looked once, they had their "killer." The Washington
state patrolman happened on the scene first. When Dr.
Larson straightened that one out, he strongly suggested
that the patrolman take a course in Homicide Investiga-
tive Procedure.
6 CRIME DOCTOR

"When they call me," Dr. Larson says, "the first thing
I insist on, before I move in, is that they seal the whole area
off and put tight security on it. I can't work if somebody
has messed up the evidence before I get there."
In the matter of having your own life brought to its
end by a murderer, "the chances are extremely good,"
according to Dr. Larson, "because we have only 200,000
trained policemen in a country of 217,000,000 people whose
mixed cultures and minority belligerence have made a
hobby of homicide in certain sections and big business of it
in others."
In Las Vegas, the last checkout found the price of a
killing to be holding steady at about $50, because there is
the whole desert around to lay bodies out on and they are
rarely found.
"If you are going to be killed, and you want your killer
caught, have a close friend knock you off," Dr. Larson
points out. "Because an impersonal, out-of-town paid gun
leaves damned little spoor. The hit man flies in, has
somebody finger you, pockets the price, squeezes off and
flies out again. No other connection with you at all except
the money. No motive whatever-beyond the money. Two
total strangers-you and your killer. No intertwining of
lives to be carefully unwoven until the motive and the
murderer stand sharply outlined against the white light of
justice. That is the one killer the police fear-the paid
gun~because he usually gets away with murder."
Here is a very easy way to get yourself accused of
murder. Your wife's out of town and you don't care too
much about her even when she's in town. So you go to a
tavern for a few beers and you pick up a girl with yes eyes.
You take her home and have a few more drinks with her
until she begins to look like one of those centerspread girls.
The next morning you reach out for her with a matinee in
mind and find her body as cold and clammy as a haunch
of veal. Her eyes are open, but they don't see you. Nor are
they ever going to see anyone or anything ever again.
 CRIME DOCTOR 7

Now, a No. 9 hangover is not the best equipment to

face a situation of this kind with, but after a fashion you do
face it (as did the Taxpayer to whom this actually hap-
pened). For openers, you reluctantly call the police.
While awaiting their arrival, bits and pieces of the lost
weekend begin to filter back through the alcoholic fog, but
for the life of you (and your life may well be the price) you
cannot remember how the woman ceased to be alive.
But the police start right in probing for reasons. "How
did the body come by so many bruises? She looks as if she
played four quarters against the Green Bay Packers-
both ways!"
A vignette flashes back of the dead woman's deciding
that she was the Statue of Liberty, and of her going up the
stairs, wrapped in a sheet, to hold a lighted candle above
her head at the top.
"She fell down stairs a lot."
"What do you mean a lot?"
"Everytime she went upstairs, she fell down."
"You better get a lawyer, fellow."
They took the body down for a routine autopsy, and a
part of the report was that one blow it had sustained was
massive enough to separate the brain from the spinal cord.
They booked the Taxpayer on suspicion of murder. Strong
susp1c1on.
The defense attorney retained by the suspect to fight
for his life called in Dr. Larson. As he absolutely loathes
doing, Dr. Larson came in late on the case, after everybody
else had been wading through the evidence up to their
knees.
Dr. Larson is a six-foot tall, quiet man with twinkling
eyes, a warm sense of humor, who is alive to living-
probably because his profession is making dead people
talk-and he has never been known to raise his voice in
the process.
On the body of this dead woman, Dr. Larson asked
authority to perform another autopsy himself, a post-
8 CRIME DOCTOR

mortem if you will. He found in the process that the bruises

she had sustained were not all inflicted at the same time;
that if they were a result of falling down stairs, which they
well could have been, she had possibly played Statue of
Liberty quite a few times on different days during the last
week she and the suspect had been sleeping together.
Dr. Larson found that the woman's brain had not
been severed from the spinal cord by a blow but by inept
surgery on the part of the general practitioner who had
been called in by the coroner to perform the original
autopsy.
"This is one of the reasons that people can get away
with murder in the United States," Dr. Larson said. "A
coroner generally is an elected or appointed politician who
in most communities does not have to have any special-
ized training of any kind. He has an office and the title and
the authority to play around at cops and robbers when
someone buys the farm but very little else. If he wants an
autopsy performed, he throws the fee tO a friend who is an
M.D., who by the very fact that he picks up work of that
kind is not necessarily too well qualified or experienced
professionally."
For years Dr. Larson has continually pointed out that
a corps of about 1,500 highly specialized autopsy sur-
geons-trained for postmortem surgery as carefully as
physicians train for any other specialty-would cut the
number of people who "get away with murder" today to
practically zero tomorrow; for there are very few dead
bodies that, under competent investigative procedures,
will fail to "tell" how they came to die. As it is, there are
probably less than 200 full time forensic pathologists in
the whole country.
"It is most difficult to get recruits," Dr. Larson says.
"By the very nature of the medical profession, doctors are
trained to save lives-not to work with dead ones."
With the Statue-of-Liberty woman, as soon as Dr.
Larson had found out what it was that she had not died of,
he went after the cause of her death through all of the
 CRIME DOCTOR 9

bungled work of the first autopsy. It was still there, the

cause of her death, and Dr. Larson found it-a very
common cause of the deaths of drunks-food in her throat
that she had choked upon. She had, drunk, gotten up to eat
and, still chewing, laid down again beside her snoring
companion and, in the prone position, being unable to
swallow freely, she choked to death.
By such simple misadventures, we sometimes die.
And by such matter-of-fact discovery of the real cause of
death, those people who have been picked up on suspicion
of murder are exonerated. To face an irate wife?
Not in this case, for the police, having made a mistake,
agreed to keep Mr. Taxpayer's wife out ofit when she came
back to town. So possibly he did get away with murder.

When the police of any city are successful in running

down a criminal, the public seems to take it very much for
granted. The reason being, I suppose, that in whodunits,
on television and in the movies, the detective always
solves the mystery.
In real life he, doesn't. He fails about as often as he
succeeds. Perhaps oftener. When he fails, the citizenry
screams at him, reviles him, makes fun of him.
How dare he fail! He's got 200 men to run down a
laundry mark for him; 150 more to comb a suberb for a
green paint nerf on the fence post into a driveway. But still
he can fail, and does.
With homicide there is a cut-and-dried formula. The
procedure, theoretically, is so very simple. Examine, pho-
tograph, diagram the scene of the crime without disturb-
ing it. Study the autopsy surgeon's report. This produces
when, where and how. All that is needed now is the
motive-why. Determine that and it should lead to who.
But it doesn't always lead to anything.
Law enforcement is an eternal defensive war. The
attacking force consists of those men and women and
sometimes children who congenitally are unable to live
within the law; or who, balancing the penalty against
10 CRIME DOCTOR

their personal wants, decide to break the law; or who, in

crisis, are unable to control themselves within the law.
In a defensive posture against such people stand the
police forces of the world-the constant firing line ever
since the Code of Hammurabi was established at the
beginning of written history with Babylonian soldiers to
enforce it. Constant warriors, the police, who alone make it
possible for man to live in a continuing pattern of com-
parative safety. Hate the cop or respect the cop, but you
cannot live without him, for when you try, the criminal at
once takes over, because that is the nature of man. He will
not live at peace with himself. He has to hire a policeman
to make him. The police win and the police lose in individ-
ual cases, but the overall result is still victory. Ifit were not
so, the world by now would be nothing but an anarchic
free-for-all.

"If psychiatrists dug into the high emotional level

that police work calls for at times, it would drive them up
the wall," Dr. Larson was saying. "And if a man tried to be
an expert in all the things that a policeman has to do in a
normal day's work, it would take him 50 years of school-
ing."
I once spent a day riding with two police squadcar
men in Manhattan. They had invited me along for a
firsthand glimpse of what their professional lives were all
about. "One shift with us and you'll have enough material
for six stories," they said.
Rocco and Webster, I will call them. We sat in their
police car on lower Broadway listening to the dispatcher's
staccato. The radio never let up. With one ear they listened.
New York City's troubles.
"Two women fighting over a lost garbage can ... "
"That's us," and Rocco rolled the car. Webster located
the garbage can and they left the women laughing.
"Baby dying," and the squadcar rolled. They alerted
Community Hospital, and when they saw the mother at
 CRIME DOCTOR 11

the curb, Rocco slowed while Webster took the baby on the
fly. They floor-boarded to the hospital, Code Three. A
doctor stood in Emergency. He ran with the baby. Two
years old with a jagged splinter of glass in her neck-but
they saved her. They saved that baby.
The car radio crackled on. "Suspected burglary," and
the squadcar rolled. A woman stuttering with fear. She
showed Webster the forced window. They went into the
house, guns drawn, and found the burglar-the woman's
teenage son, asleep in bed. He had forgotten his key.
The radio again-"Bank robbery in progress,'' and
the car rolled again-three minutes away from the sharp-
est gunfight of the year. At 4 o'clock, Rocco died in surgery.
Later that night at dinner, Webster's wife said, "Did
you have a good day, Honey?" And Webster said, "I guess
so-what's for dinner?" He did not want to ruin her meal.
Later, he would tell her about Rocco. And still later, in bed,
he would stare at the ceiling, sleepless, facing it-that his
partner was dead-that his laughter was forever gone into
silence.

Dr. Larson:
"The first time I realized the kind of life I had really
committed myself to was when I got a letter from an
inmate at the state pen vowing he was going to kill me
when he got out. I had helped to convict him. I guess I have
had at least a dozen threats on my life. But in spite of some
hairy moments, I can truthfully say that nothing that ever
happened to me in my whole career has ever made me
wish that I had chosen any other way of life. The going
never gets so tough, investigation work never gets so
baffling or the conditions of the eternal chase so frustrat-
ing that I have ever wanted to turn back. In a lot of ways
I'm probably like that happy policeman who is 80 percent
of any force. Without that 80 percent you couldn't have a
police force. He likes his job. He is dedicated to his job. He is
satisfied with the conditions of his job. In many, many
12 CRIME DOCTOR

cases he doesn't particularly scrabble full-out for promo-

tion. He has a wife and kids usually, and with today's pay
scales he can have a good way of life.
"I would say that the best policeman is the same kind
of a man as a good truck driver. The good truck driver is a
sober man, a trustworthy man, well-grounded in the oper-
ation and routine maintenance of the vehicle he drives. He
is a man experienced and self-schooled in keeping sched-
ules and in carrying out commitments. On the highways
he sets the example of the finest type of driving. He keeps
himself fit for back-breaking schedules, which are routine
with him, and for the crises he must meet eternally without
any warning. He is a truck driver because he wants to be a
truck driver, because he takes pride in driving his truck,
because he likes driving a truck.
"This is not to say that policemen lack ambition,
because there is a challenge to police work that inspires
ambition. Without those policemen who meet this chal-
lenge by acquiring special skills, experience and knowl-
edge beyond the routine of the patrol car, there could be no
organized police forces and no continuing effort toward
crime suppression. Because there are these challenges, the
same challenges that make top-flight diagnosticians out of
some doctors, internationally-respected jurists out of some
lawyers, consultants in far countries out of some engi-
neers, there are no limits in the police profession to which a
man can aspire."

The Crime Doc'tor

A deliberate selling title, if you will-but that is what

his colleagues in the crime-bustin' world call him. The
telephone wilJ. ring at Tacoma General Hospital, and
someone in London or Atlanta or New South Wales or
Alaska will ask to speak to the "Crime Doctor" -and the
call is put through to the Pathology Lab, on the street floor
next to Emergency, to Dr. Charles P. Larson. For 40 years
 CRIME DOCTOR 13

his services have been in demand by police authorities all

over the world. There is no obscure secret involved. No
man can build a stronghold that another man cannot
capture. No man can commit murder without leaving
spoor that a properly trained investigator cannot follow,
until it leads to the killer.
I have known Dr. Larson for about 20 years. He has
it-the tools of his trade-an infallible memory, a sleepless
curiosity, bulldog tenacity.
One of the most infamous criminal cases of the 1950s
involved Dr. Sam Sheppard, who was accused of bludg-
eoning his wife to death in Cleveland. Dr. Larson entered
the investigation about a year after the homicide and prior
to the final conviction.
"This was through a phone call I received from one of
Dr. Sam's defense attorneys,'' Dr. Larson said. "He wanted
to know if I'd be willing to reinvestigate some of the
scientific facts that he knew were going to come up in court
during the trial. I told him I'd do it if he'd pay my expenses,
which he did. So I made a brief investigation of the
incidents and scientific data gathered by the prosecution. I
knew the coroner assigned to the case-Dr. Samuel Gerber,
a very well-known medical legal expert-and I felt that the
work which had been done in the original investigation of
the case on the scene and in the crime lab was adequate,
excellent and impeccable. In my own search I did not find
anything which I could use to aid the defense of Dr.
Sheppard-and so advised his defense attorney. On the
basis of that, I was never called to testify.
"It wasn't my place to decide whether or not Dr. Sam
was guilty, but I had learned enough during my brief
investigation of the facts that I most certainly couldn't
help him. I found nothing to prove his innocence. The jury
decided he was guilty, and that was good enough for me."
At the Sheppard retrial a Dr. Kirk was called in to
testify. He was a prominent criminologist from the Uni-
versity of California and author of a book dealing with
14 CRIME DOCTOR

investigation of physical evidence. He testified that there

had been, actually, two different types of"O" blood at the
murder scene.
"As far as I am concerned, that's an impossibility,"
Dr. Larson said, in reviewing the case for me. "There are
not two types of 'O' blood. There is only one type of 'O'
blood-and that's 'O' blood. But Dr. Kirk testified there
were two different people involved who had 'O' blood, on
a basis of the different titres of the agglutins in the dried
blood spots. But it's a known fact, depending on what
blood dries on-whether it's a firm, hard surface, wood,
metal, cloth, cement, etc.-that the titre of known agglu-
tins and agglutinogens can vary tremendously, even
though the blood is all from the same person. Therefore, I
was convinced that Dr. Kirk's testimony was totally un-
ethical and even untrue. However, on the basis of his
testimony, Dr. Sheppard got a new trial and was eventu-
ally released from prison-to take up a new career as a
professional wrestler, of all things.
"Dr. Kirk was knowledgeable enough to realize he
didn't tell the whole truth under oath; he knew he was
treading on a very thin line between what was possible
and what was impossible. I was so upset by him that I and
several other experts in the field of forensic pathology
testified against him at an ethics meeting of the American
Academy of Forensic Pathologists-and his membership
was suspended on the basis of our testimony."

There was one case Dr. Larson got involved in quite

by accident. It came about by his guest appearance on Earl
Stanley Gardner's old TV program, "The Court of Last
Resort." Afterward, there was a flood of mail, appealing to
Dr. Larson for help. A mother in San Francisco wrote that
her son was serving life in San Quentin on a first-degree
murder charge. He had already spent two years there, she
wrote. "Deep in my heart," the letter read, "I know he
didn't do it." She added that she was employed as a
stenographer, that she did not have much money and
 CRIME DOCTOR 15

would be able to afford only $15 a month if Dr. Larson

would take the case. "But I will pay you for as long as I
live," she stated.
The mother's letter piqued Dr. Larson's interest.
He phoned her and agreed to reinvestigate the facts.
He told her it was vital that she send him a copy of a letter
written by a well-known pathologist who had signed the
autopsy report and had testified at the trial of her son-in
spite of the fact that the actual autopsy had been per-
formed by a resident of his and not by himself personally.
Following Dr. Larson's instructions, the mother, at con-
siderable cost to herself, secured a transcription of the
medical testimony as it had been given in court. The
transcription indicated to Dr. Larson that the conviction
was based largely on scientific medical evidence and not
on other facts of the case. In studying the transcript and
weighing it against what the mother had told him, it
seemed to Dr. Larson that there were possible errors in the
medical testimony.
Dr. Larson:
"The key to the whole case in the medical testimony
was the fact that the pathologist who testified in court
stated that the deceased had been stabbed several times
with a long butcher knife. All these stabs, he said, were
through one wound in the chest, but that the knife was
jerked partially out and moved in different directions, up
and down and sideways, several times, producing several
injuries in both the chest and abdomen. The entrance stab
wound was in the fourth left intercostal space anteriorly.
"It occurred to me that I should look up in a cross-
sectional anatomy book and see if I could determine
whether all of these wounds of different organs as de-
scribed in the autopsy protocol could have been produced
by a single stab wound. The reason for this was that the
son's testimony stated that he and his roommate (male)
had gone out the night before the killing and gotten drunk.
Both boys were the same age.
16 CRIME DOCTOR

"Now, the roommate had been depressed. A month

earlier he'd shot himself in the foot in an abortive attempt
at suicide and was still wearing a cast. Both boys awoke
the next morning with hangovers. The one boy, the ac-
cused, got up first to make breakfast. While he was in the
kitchen, his roommate shouted from the bedroom sud-
denly, 'Gimme a butcher knife! I'm gonna kill myselfl'
Thinking it was only a gag, and going along with it, the
accused tossed him a butcher knife. It landed at the foot of
the bed. The roommate grabbed it and plunged the knife
into his chest.
"In court, the doctor refuted that it happened that
way. He claimed that the blade had been moved in an up-
and-down-and-sideways direction several times, causing
multiple wounds to various organs. The organs he des-
cribed included the tip of the lowerlobeoftherightlung, a
buttonhole through-and-through wound, a buttonhole
through-and-throughwound in the tip ofthe right ventricle
of the heart, a through-and-through wound of the dia-
phragm, a penetrating wound to the liver, a penetrating
wound to the stomach that went through and through,
and a penetrating wound of the duodenum.
"On the basis of all these injuries, he postulated that
the knife had been moved several times after it had been
plunged into the body. At first, I didn't know how to solve
this, even with cross-sectional anatomy, which indicated
that possibly all those wounds to different organs had
been inflicted by a single knife wound. I concluded there
was no way to solve the mystery except to stab human
bodies!
"To prove my theory, I stabbed the next 30 bodies
which I autopsied. They were all dead individuals, of
course; I was going to cut them open anyway. So the fact
that I stabbed them made no difference. I stabbed them
with a butcher knife which was identical with the one
described in the case-the same length, the same blade
width, the same sharpness. I found that in more than 50
percent of the cases in which I made a single through-and-
 CRIME DOCTOR 17

through stab wound in the chest, every single injury

described in court by the pathologist was produced."
That cinched it. Dr. Larson had broken the case wide
open. He testified at a hearing by the California State
Board of Parole, provided them and Governor Edmund
Brown with written reports. Result: The boy won his
:freedom from San Quentin.
What sort of man is Dr. Larson?
He is this sort of man-he never sent the mother a bill.
"Considering what she and her son had been through," he
said, "and taking their financial situation into account, I
preferred to charge that one up to experience."

His Chief in the Army said to him once: "Colonel, you

think like a cop, you work like a cop and there are even
times when you smell like a cop!"
Dr. Larson grinned.
"You run that down for a make, sir, and you'll prob-
ably find it's because I've worked with cops most of my
1i£e. "

Dr. Larson is by no means the only white-coat who

uses a test tube like a butterfly net to capture criminals.
There are toxicologists who can sniff a poisoning halfway
across town and anthropologists who read bones as hand-
ily as most people peruse the morning paper. Any pathol-
ogist worth his sodium chloride can reconstruct for you a
fine murder scene by performing a postmortem. Dr. Lar-
son, though, is a master at all these macabre chores, and
more, mainly because, unlike most of his colleagues in the
scientific-sleuthing arts, he thinks of himself as a detective
as well as a scientist.
Frequently he has helped solve riddles in which his
medical background has been of little or no use and,
through a sort of on-the-job training, he has become wise
enough to be accepted by courts as an expert on such
diverse subjects as firearms identification and handwrit-
ing.
18 CRIME DOCTOR

In a forgery case some years ago the Larson testi-

mony was so skillful on behalf of the prosecutor that a
handwriting expert hired by the defense clomped out of the
courtroom without ever speaking up.

As a free-lancing crime doctor, he works the way any

other physician or any lawyer would do, on a fee-for-
service basis available either to the defense or to the police.
Most often, quite naturally, it is the law side which sum-
mons him. One day, the police department of Olympia,
Washington, called him. The caller said Dr. Larson should
hurry on down there because he thought a woman was
dead. This turned out to be a somewhat conservative
summary of the situation. Alice Imlay was very much
dead. Mrs. Imlay, 80, had been living in an orderly frame
house on an Olympia street lined with great shade trees in
a quiet, middle-class part of town.
When Dr. Larson arrived on the scene and first saw
the victim, she reposed on the floor of her second-story
bedroom. Besides being raped, she had been slugged,
beaten and punctured numerous times with a knife. Ap-
parently as an afterthought, or simply because times were
tough, her killer also had attempted to take a big bite out of
Grandmother Imlay. Imprinted in her left breast was a
neat row of teeth marks near the nipple. The right nipple
had been eaten off. The French call that manger la nipp'le.
To Dr. Larson this was a gesture of cooperation on the
murderer's part practically like leaving a signed note
saying where he might be reached later.
Those teeth marks got his adrenalin flowing, like a
prospector whose Geiger counter starts chattering. As he
combed the room, he then found what he considered at the
time a perfect signpost to at least the kind of person who
might bite Mrs. Imlay. What he found on the floor was a
bloody heel print, not just an ordinary print, but the outline
of a small, narrow, Cuban-type heel. Considerable film
was devoted to it by Ken Ollar, a photographer who
 CRIME DOCTOR 19

frequently was at Dr. Larson's side to record for posterity

and for juries the scenes of his friend's triumphs of mind
over murder.
"I'm thinking of suspects in terms of that heel," Dr.
Larson said, staring down at the print. "I'm thinking of
cowboys, zoot suiters, motorcyclists. All of those people
wear that kind of shoe or boot."
"The kid next door rides a motorcycle,'' one of the
policemen helpfully put in.
"What kid?" snapped Dr. Larson.
"The Howdeshell boy. It was his mother who called
us-though it was odd she hadn't seen the old lady around.
Oh, but the boy's got an airtight alibi. We checked it out.
Funny thing, though, he was outside when we got here
and kept saying, 'You'll find lits of my fingerprints in
there. I do her odd jobs."'
"Yeah,'' said Dr. Larson. "Funny thing."
After he had carefully scrutinized every square inch of
the Imlay house and every pore of the Imlay remains, Dr.
Larson walked outside, lit a cigarette and stood on the
sidewalk, chatting with the bluecoats. He kept staring
wistfully at the house next door.
"Damn it, Doctor, we can't go back in there,'' pleaded
one of the officers. "That's a respectable family. Never any
trouble."
"I'd like to see him anyway,'' Dr. Larson replied. "I've
got a hunch."
A couple of policemen followed him into the Howde-
shell house. The boy's name was Roy. He was 18, clean-cut,
calm and polite, even helpful.
"Roy's never owned any motorcycling boots,'' said his
mother. A search of the house turned up none. But one of
the officers picked a tiny object off the floor in Roy's
bedroom. He handed it to Dr. Larson. "Probably nothing.
Just a button," he said. He was right. It was only a plain
gray button from a sports shirt. As Dr. Larson rolled the
button over between his thumb and finger and peered at it,
20 CRIME DOCTOR

though, he noticed a pin-point-sized brown stain in one of

the thread holes. "Bring Roy along," he told the officer. "I
want to see what this is."
At the Olympia branch lab he maintained, Dr. Larson
put the button through tests and found, just as he sus-
pected, that the speck was a blood-stain. He couldn't prove
it was Mrs. Imlay's blood. But it was her type and not
Roy's.
Dr. Larson began to study scrapings from beneath
Roy's fingernails, and Ken Ollar, the versatile photog-
rapher, was washing the boy's hair over a basin looking
for more blood-which they found both in the head hair
and under the foreskin of his penis. They were still at it
when Roy suddenly blurted, "Okay-okay! I did it!" A
short sentence that was to cost him a long one-life.
Dr. Larson didn't need the dental report which showed
Roy's teeth matched the marks on widow Imlay. And it
was days before they found out who wore those odd-
shaped heels. (It was a state patrolman who'd reached the
scene first.)
"That print was a red herring, all right," Dr. Larson
told the press later. "But you'll have to admit it led us in the
right direction. Prints usually do because even when a heel
is new, it's unlike any other. No two human 'heels' are
alike, either."

After typing up tapes of interviews I had with Dr.

Larson for this book, my secretary, Audrey E. Neil, asked
me, "My god-do people like Dr. Larson actually live out-
side of books?" They do-and around such men books
such as this are written.
 In This Comer:
"Kid Philips"

THE Roaring Twenties suited young Charles Philip

Larson perfectly. It was an age of superlatives. Everything
that was done right was done more right a..-rid bigger than
ever. The same applied to everything that was done wrong.
Hoodlums no longer fought each other with stones and
bats. Now they took each other for a one-way ride in an
automobile.
It was an era of exaggeration, too. Men who had been
casual drinkers now had to get drunk. Women were not
satisfied with the role of attracting the male to marriage
and making a home for him. They had to be his equal on
the public forum, in politics and in bed. It was also a time of
high finance. A smart man saved his money and acquired
$25,000; a clever one played the market and made a
million. In defiance of law, men made alcohol in cellar
distilleries, bottled beer and sold it with an eye against a
slot in the door.Young ladies cut their hair, shortened their
dresses, drank gin, danced the Charleston and read Dr.
Warner Fabian's Flaming Youth.
21
22 CRIME DOCTOR

There were flagpole sitters, cross-country walkers,

marathon dancers and the beginning of air-mail flights
from New York to San Francisco. Everybody was trying to
make Ripley's "Believe It Or Not." Young Larson, 17, did.
He made a hole-in-one the first time he played golf. He quit
the game after that, saying "I can't improve on that."
An insurance company booklet described Moses as
"one of the greatest salesmen and real-estate promoters ·
that ever lived," and Jesus Christ was called "the founder
of modem business."
They called it the "era of wonderful nonsense," and
nowhere was the hysteria more boisterous or the scream-
ing louder than in sports. Throwing off its bush-league
trappings, sports suddenly erupted in the 1920s as big
business and lavish entertainment. The decade witnessed
the first million-dollar prizefight and World Series, and
produced more vital, vibrant performers than any other
decade in the chronicles of athletics. Every sport had a
dominant personality who attracted and held public
attention, for this was the era of Ty Cobb, still slashing
into third, his spikes aglimmer; Babe Ruth standing at the
plate on his thin, matchstick ankles, slowly waving his
bludgeon like a cobra poised to strike; Big Bill Tilden
banging his unretumable cannonball service across the
net; Bobby Jones, waving to cheering thousands-after
winning the golf championships of Great Britain-as he
received a ticker-tape reception down Broadway, an event
previously reserved only for visiting royalty and trans-
atlantic aviators; the death wagons roaring around the
Indianapolis speedway track at 125 miles per hour; Paavo
Nurmi dog-trotting around the running track in a steady,
devasting assault upon Time.
The Jazz Age.
The Golden Decade.
The Roaring Twenties.
Whatever you called it, it was the last big spree be-
tween World Wars, marking a national rite of passage, a
 IN THIS CORNER: "KID PHILIPS" 23

maudlin farewell to the innocence and hope of a childhood

now irrevocably gone. And it was more than just a coinci-
dence that when this age found its poet, F. Scott Fitzgerald
would write longingly of the pads worn for a day on the
football fields of Princeton.

For young Charley Larson, who was born on August

15, 1910 in Eleva, Wisconsin-which took its name from
the first five letters of the word elevator, at the fifth letter of
which some long forgotten sign painter stopped painting a
trackside grain elevator and walked off the job-the 1920s
were largely gold and cheering crowds and gallant heroes
of the prize ring. Boxing-that was his cup of tea.
After the Larsons moved to Spokane, where Charley's
father was president of the Farmers and Mechanics Bank,
the boy joined the YMCA and made the boxing team. At
13, he put on the gloves for the first time-and, at 16, he
had his first professional fight. The way that came about
was this:
"I fought numerous amateur bouts and won most of
them," Dr. Larson recalls. "I was a good amateur.welter-
weight, was never KO' d. I was big for my age, 6 feet tall
and 147 pounds. Leo Lompski, the old heavyweight con-
tender, used to visit the Y and gave us lessons. One of those
who sparred with me was Albert Rosellini-later our gov-
ernor. In 1926, when I was 16, this promoter saw me
sparring in the gym at the Y. He said, 'How'd you like to
make $100 fighting in one of the prelims?' The main event
was Lompski vs. Fred Lenhart, a great matchup. I said,
'Who do I have to kill?' And the promoter said, 'Don't
worry, Son. I'll talk to your opponent and he'll carry you.'
So he nicknamed me 'Kid Philips' -after my middle name
-and I agreed to the terms."
The opponent was a 32-year-old black, a veteran. But
his experience did not dim Charley' s self-confidence one
bit. At the opening bell, he waded into the old pro with
leather flying in all directions and tattooed him good. In
24 CRIME DOCTOR

the clinches his opponent advised him to slow down.

"Take it easy, boy," the black said. "Pace yourself.You're
going to punch yourself out. There's still five rounds to go."
They were in the fourth round, when the black fighter
said, "Well, boy, this is where I'm going to have to put you
to sleep. I hope I don't hurt you."
Then the lights went out. The next thing Charley
remembered he was flat on his back in the dressing room,
being revived.
"I'd opened and closed in one," Dr. Larson smiled,
borrowing an old vaudeville expression. "That ended my
professional boxing aspirations."
But it didn't end his connection with boxing. In 1961,
he served as president ofthe National Boxing Association;
in 1962, he was elected Founding President of the World
Boxing Association.
"When I was a young man growing up in Spokane,"
Dr. Larson told me, "my heroes were Jack Dempsey and
Gene Tunney. I was so crazy about the prize ring that I
even hitchhiked to Shelby, Montana, to watch Dempsey
and Tommy Gibbons go 15 rounds, the only one of Demp-
sey's championship fights to go the distance. I crawled
under the fence to get in.
"I remember still the gloom hanging over Spokane
like dense fog the morning after Tunney beat Dempsey in
1926. I was then in my first year of college at Gonzaga
University-I was three classes behind Bing Crosby-and
I had a part-time job in the insurance department of the
Spokesman-Review, the morning paper. The only form of
radio we had to follow the fight in those days was old-
fashioned crystal sets with earphones. I didn't get to hear
the fight. Newspapers were still the No. 1 way for Ameri-
cans to get their news, and I arranged with the fellows
down in the pressroom to give me the first bundles of the
early edition, banner-lining the fight story on page one.
Then I went out and hired 15 kids to sell papers for me.You
should have been there. Hot off the press, we raced up and
down the main streets of Spokane hawking those papers.
 IN THIS CORNER: "KID PHILIPS" 25

The customers gobbled them up like hot cakes, eager to

read the round-by-round details of Tunney's stunning
upset of the old champ. Some of the fans were in such a
frenzy to 'read all about it,' they shelled out $1 for the
paper. We sold more than 3,000 copies within the first hour
after hitting the streets. I cleaned up. I'll always be grateful
to Dempsey and Tunney for helping me earn money for
my schooling. Now, do you understand why I've always
had such a soft spot in my heart for prizefighting?"
Over the years, Dr. Larson has examined numerous
autopsy reports relating to boxing fatalities. His exhaus-
tive research has included a large number ofreports from
the New York Medical Examiner's Office, as well as many
other state medical examiners' and coroners' offices in the
United States; a similar number came from foreign coun-
tries, principally European. Analysis of these autopsy
studies have indicated that the main cause of death in
almost all cases was subarachnoid hemorrhage.
"This is the result of a contra-coup type of injury
which is caused by the head striking an immovable object,
such as a ringpost, a metal object or the floor," Dr. Larson
explained. "When the object is resilient and movable, head
injuries and contra-coup subarachnoid hemorrhages sel-
dom occur. I know of no instance where death occurred
from a punch on the head if the head was movable. A
straight punch to the head while the head is in motion is
incapable of causing serious injury or subarachnoid hem-
morrhage because the contra-coup tearing of blood vessels
does not occur unless the head is up against an immovable
object."
During some 35 years of medical research on the
subject, Dr. Larson read a great many articles regarding
so-called "punch drunk" :fist:fighters.
"In my opinion," he told me, "the term 'punch drunk'
is a misnomer. I don't think I have ever really seen
individuals, who have gone into professional boxing with
rwrmal intelligence, wind up as so-called 'punch drunk'
replicas of their former selves. Most prizefighters who were
26 CRIME DOCTOR

classified as such really had only low-level intelligence to

begin with. Boxing had little to do with their mental
deterioration. This is not to say, of course, that boxers have
not received injuries which produced neurological symp-
toms, because history is saturated with such examples."
One of Dr. Larson's favorite "punch drunk" stories is
about Lou Nova, another old heavyweight. It concerns the
time Lou was sitting at ringside at a fight in California. A
man came up to him with a small boy and said: "Lou, why
didn't you show up at the house for dinner the other
night?"
Dr. Larson picks up the rest of the story:
"Well, Lou looked at the man and knew he'd never
seen him before, but he got the pitch right away. Sure, the
man wanted to make a big impression on his son, and Lou
had once fought the great Joe Louis for the heavyweight
championship of the world. So Lou said: 'Oh, yes, I'm
sorry. I wasn't able to make it. But the next time you invite
me, I'll be there for sure.' Lou then turned to the little boy.
'So this is the little fellow you were telling me about?' The
man said yes, that was his son. 'He's a fine, strapping boy,'
Lou said. 'Now you take care of yourself, sonny, and some
day you'll be a great football player or even a heavyweight
champion.' Then the father said, 'Well, so long, Lou. Go
ahead and watch the fight and I'll see you later.' 'Right,'
Lou said, and as he turned away he heard the man speak
to the boy. 'See?' the man was saying, 'didn't I tell you he
was punch drunk?'"

Charles P. Larson was 17 years old when he signed up

at Gonzaga in 1927. It was the Horatio Alger time ofluck
and pluck, rags and riches. So much to be seen and heard
and learned in this America of adventurous growth!
When he was a junior, taking prelaw, for some reason
related to balancing his school credits, he attended an
evening class in bacteriology given by Dr. Robert F.E.
Stier. Dr. Stier performed most of the autopsies for the
coroner in the City of Spokane and throughout Spokane
 IN THIS CORNER: "KID PHILIPS" 27

County, as well as in some of the adjacent counties of

eastern Washington.
Dr. Stier was a magnetic man with a natural zest for
his work. He swept young Larson into the net of his
enthusiasm, and Larson switched to premed with the idea
from the beginning of specializing in forensic pathology-
even before he selected his medical school.
As an undergraduate he worked with Dr. Stier, assist-
ing him at many autopsies. Meanwhile, he managed to put
away $10,000, every cent of which he earned himself, to
defray his medical school costs. He was a fully matricu-
lated, full-time student at Gonzaga all of that time. And as
he is emphatic in pointing out, "I missed damned few of
the dances."
Young Mr. Larson was on his own by this time. His
father, the banker, faced adversity in the financial crash of
'29, and the Farmers and Mechanics Bank failed. Larson,
Sr. almost impoverished himself paying off all of his
obligations. Then he and Mrs. Larson moved to River
Falls, Wisconsin and started another bank, leaving son
Charles behind to finish school at Gonzaga. Since then,
some 50 years ago, he has been on his own, supporting
himself, shaping his own destiny. That destiny has in-
cluded seven children, all college graduates. Three sons
have followed their father into medicine, while a fourth
went into the practice of law.
While at Gonzaga, Larson acquired his first surgical
instrument. On a visit to Jantzen Beach Amusement
Park, in Portland, he was attracted to a "digger"-a glass
box full of junky prizes which you tried to lever out in the
jaws of a miniature crane by manipulating the handles on
the outside. A nickel a try and you seldom got anything;
especially you never got the "come-on" prize, which in this
particular "digger" was a hunting knife that looked like a
good one.
"That damn knife cost me pretty close to $15 in nickels
before I finally snared it," Dr. Larson remembers. "But it
was well worth it. It was a beauty.A Swedish knife with a
28 CRIME DOCTOR

magnificent steel blade, which I used for 10 years in

performing autopsies and still keep as a memento. I have
used it on probably 5,000 autopsies, including more than
1,000 I performed as the first Allied Army Medical Officer
to go into Dachau, the Nazi concentration camp."
From Gonzaga, Larson went on to Medical School at
McGill University in Montreal, where on his first day he
walked in on Dr. Horst Oertel, one of the world's most
celebrated pathologists. A crusty bachelor, Dr. Oertel was
completely wedded to his work as Professor of Pathology
and consultant in forensic pathology to the Canadian
Pacific Railway.
"I walked into Dr. Oertel's office with all the confi-
dence of youth," Dr. Larson recollected. "When he looked
up, I said, 'I intend to be a forensic pathologist myself and I
am ready to go to work for you as soon as I settle in.' He
stared at me icily over his spectacles. He looked me up and
down as if I were a disappointing laboratory specimen,
started to say something that ended not in words, but in a
weakened snort of indignation; weakened by my affront-
ery and his own shock over it."
The young medical student from Spokane found out
later that almost everyone at McGill was scared to death of
the elderly German, but Charley must have backed Pro-
fessor Oertel's sails completely, for he put him to work the
next day.
It should be put down right here that Charley Larson
was out of character, or else his youth and enthusiasm got
away from him that day; for Dr. Larson is a quiet, pleas-
antly mannered man, a gentleman with a quick smile that
carries confidence and assurance in its warmth. Like most
of the very great men ofthe world, he is simple in his tastes
and very easy to approach. He builds no hard-to-climb
outer fences about himself.
While he was a medical student at McGill and in
constant need of funds, young Larson sold the Montreal
Herald on the idea that he was a circulation hotshot from
the States and set up for the paper a home-delivery
 IN THIS CORNER: "KID PHILIPS" 29

network. The Herakl never knew he was a would-be M.D.

In a very short time he doubled the paper's circulation,
whereupon he was fired because on a commission basis he
was making in excess of $1,000 a month, which was more
than the circulation manager got. That was enough to
finish college.
At McGill, Larson learned fast enough to qualify
during a pair of Christmas holiday periods as a volunteer
assistant to Dr. Charles Norris, who was New York City's
first chief medical examiner and a pioneer in the field. By
his final year at McGill, he was a part-time but bread-
winning pathologist at a Montreal hospital.
After completing his internship, young Larson-now
Doctor Larson-went on to the University of Michigan
and then to University of Oregon for a residency of special
training.
The medical career of Dr. Charles P. Larson was on its
way. Specialty: the science of pathology.

"There are three main divisions of the science of

pathology," Dr. Larson explains. "Pathologic anatomy is
one. That's the diagnosis of disease in the laboratory from
tissues removed from the body. The anatomic pathologist
is the man who goes into the operating room several times
a day to stand by the operating surgeon to receive small
pieces of tissue that have been excised, or to suggest to the
surgeon what areas to go into for additional tissue that
might facilitate diagnosis. He is the specialist who makes
all the diagnoses from tissue examination.
"The second basic division of the science is clinical
pathology. Clinical pathologists are doctors' doctors. They
are highly specialized laboratory diagnosticians working
in a very wide, very complicated and most sophisticated
field of medical practice. The Pathology Laboratory at
Tacoma General Hospital is equipped with a half-dozen
machines and the service they perform is priceless, for
when they establish the profile of a patient, the resulting
diagnosis may be apparent.
30 CRIME DOCTOR

"One of the subspecialties of clinical pathology is the

prevention of disease. By running a complete laboratory
profile on young, relative well people, the clinical patholo-
gist may ascertain tendencies toward and predict arterio-
sclerosis, coronary disorder, diabetes, cancer and many of
the other disorders of the body. Constraining the patient's
conduct to suitable disciplines in his future living, plotting
diets and supplementing diets can forestall or at least
postpone what would have happened to him had sophisti-
cated clinical pathology not intervened. To such an extent,
the clinical pathologist can, in effect, become God's right
hand-if longevity for all of us is God's will.
"The third division of the science is, of course, forensic
pathology. The practice of forensic pathology is by no
means limited to people who have ceased to be alive. It
covers attempts at poisoning, the physical abuse of chil-
dren, assaults and batteries, product liability and, of
course, the entire field of medical and surgical malpractice.
Medical malpractice suits are on a distinct upcurve, to
such an extent at present that the premiums on malprac-
tice insurance are so astronomical as to cause extreme
hardship to young doctors. I have testified in several
malpractice suits, and in spite of the tradition that physi- ·
cians will not testify against each other, I have found the
truth when I could. I have told the truth on the stand, and
where I could, I have seen justice done regardless of its
result on the medical careers involved.
"In the practice of forensic pathology as it pertains to
criminal acts, it is most important that one comes on the
scene first, before any ineptness smudges the picture.
Called in time, I have the police authorities seal off the
scene until I can get there. The state patrol sealed off 30
miles of freeway for me once, backing up several thousand
cars on both sides of a body with a bullet hole in it-in a
somewhat over-zealous compliance with my request. I
firmly believe that if competent investigators reach the
scene before it is distorted by slipshod procedure, no one
can get away with murder."
 Lady of the Lake

IT is said by the professionals that in every homicide

there is one point in the investigation which is the key to
the solution. But as carefully trained as a man may be-
and as broadly experienced in his job-the very obvious-
ness of that point can trip him. He comes up on it a dozen
times and passes it by. In some subconscious way, it is
possible that he may even blind himself to it, because of
some unknown inhibition in his own makeup. That is why
the work is often done in teams-that is why outside help
is called in with the hope of turning up a new angle; that is
why the CIA developed the formula of "in every step,
follow a pattern oflogic that is acceptable to more than one
person."
Thereby hangs a true tale.
In 1939 Dr. Larson was given an innocent-looking
length of rope. The rope, when followed to its beginning,
led to the bottom of Crescent Lake, more than 5,000 feet
deep in the lushly forested Olympic Mountains. The upper
horn of the crescent that gives the lake its name is 18 miles
from the waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which
31
32 CRIME DOCTOR

separates the U.S. from Canada. At the bottom of the lake

an underground stream flows three miles and empties, still
underground, into Sullivan Lake. The Clallam Indians,
aboriginal to the surrounding country, once believed that
Crescent Lake was inhabited by demons-spirits which
seized anyone who fell into the water-and he/,d them
under forever. Strangely, the nonmythical fact is, up to the
time I'm writing about, the lake never had yielded the body
of a victim of drowning. There were no "floaters." If a body
went down, it stayed down.
Today the glassy mountain waters are endlessly fur-
rowed by the oars of fishermen who don't know about evil
spirits but are sure of trout and landlocked salmon.
One morning in the summer of 1939 the lake silence
was broken acutely by two fishermen in a rowboat. They
had snagged their hooks on an object which one of them
thought was a woman's body-a bundle about five-and-a-
half feet long, blanket-wrapped and roped with a foot
sticking out and a white shoulder visible through a hole in
the blanket. The other fisherman insisted it wasn't a
human body at all. "It's more like a show-window dum-
my," he said. "A manikin." It was not bloated as a human
body would have been had it been submerged until ab-
dominal gases gave it the necessary buoyancy to bring it
to the surface. Nor was there an odor of decomposition,
and the body, or effigy, only weighed 47 pounds.
Turned over to the local authorities, it was discovered
to be the remains of a woman in her early 30s, but the
mysteries of its weight, its nonbloat, its obvious failure to
decompose were not solved. In the matter ofidentification,
the auburn hair would be of help, but not the face, for, by
water action or battering, it had become dehumanized to
an extent that it was barely recognizable as a face.
An Oregon criminologist, Dr. Joseph Beeman, was
called to the scene. Dr. Beeman agreed that it was a
woman's body all right. Crescent's deep-freeze had re-
markably preserved the body, and apparently the lake
also contained an ample supply of the bacillus aerobacter
 LADY OF THE LAKE 33

cl,oacae, the organism that causes the slime on meat which

spoils in water. Between the cold and the bacillus, a sort of
chemical gear-shifting called saponifaction had taken
place, turning the body almost completely to soap. The
press was quick to give the mysterious dead woman a
name: "The Lady of the Lake."
What the sheriff had was a poser even stickier than a
whodunit-a who-is-it? For a long time, they still didn't
know. Finally, Dr. Beeman, who had been chopping away
at the enigma off and on, asked Dr. Larson to come in on
the case.
To help him, Dr. Larson had five meager leads. He
had a few strands of a woman's hair, which hadn't sapon-
ified, a bit of clothing and a scrap of her hose. He had the
rope. And he had a six-tooth upper partial dental plate,
which, if traced to the people who had made it, could
identify the woman. Also, on the neck there were what
were conceded to be ante-mortem (before death) bruises.
Opposed bruises that thumb and fingers might have made
by the act of strangling.
Under Dr. Larson's autopsy all of the interior organs
turned out to be saponified, so that in effect, the Lady of the
Lake was a five-and-a-half-foot, 47-pound bar of soap. And,
yes, death had been brought about by strangulation, be-
cause in support of the evidence of the bruises on the neck,
autopsy found the heart congested and the tissues of the
neck showing evidence of old hemoglobin-positive indi-
cations of death by strangulation.
It was an acceptable conclusion that the body had
originally been at such an extreme depth that there were
no flesh-eating fish to destroy it. To support this conclu-
sion, the rope that had secured the blanket around the
body had a long loose end which was frayed into a "horse's
tail," indicating that it had broken strand by strand from,
quite possibly, a weight that had initially held the body on
the lake's bottom.
Dr. Larson took water samples from the lake thou-
sands of feet down and found the water to contain calcium
 34 CRIME DOCTOR

and alkali, which with animal fat make soap. He also

found that the waters on the bottom remained at approxi-
mately three degrees above freezing, which is the preserva-
tive temperature usually maintained in refrigerators.·
He positioned the body initially in the backwash of
the underground stream that flows from Crescent Lake
into Sullivan Lake, thus accounting for the rapidity of
saponification.
Dr. Larson goes on:
<".·,.
"Crescent Lake is a very deep lake; in fact, so deep in
some places that it's hard to find the bottom. It's well over
a mile deep in many places. It's a big lake and lots of people
have drowned in it because of the sudden storms that come
up.
"I will never forget looking at the Lady of the Lake for
the first time. I'd never seen anything like it, but I'd read
about things like it. Here was a body that had turned
completely to soap. This is called adipocere formation, in
which all the tissues of the body turn to soap. When they
turn to soap, it's like that soap they advertise-it floats. I
examined the body and made a few little incisions in the
skin. I found nothing but soap. I'd take off a piece of it and
put it in water, and it would float. Damnedest thing. I
asked myself why the body hadn't decomposed; why did it
turn to soap? I went up to Lake Crescent and took water
samples. I had to go down in some places over a mile,
letting out over 5,000 feet of line with a heavy lead weight
on the end counterpoised to pull the lid off the bottle to get
water samples. I cultured the bacterial content of the lake
to determine what it was and whether there was anything
there that would decompose a body. There were lots of
organisms at that depth, but none would ferment or pro-
duce gas to bloat and decompose a body.
"Adipocere formation is not the result of bacteria, but
the result of chemical transformation of the tissues of the
body over a long period of time. You make soap out of
 LADY OF THE LAKE 35

animal fat, calcium and alkali, and the water was alkaline
at this dept, and there is calcium in all water.
"What had happened was a chemical change in the
body-it may take several years for this to happen-in
which all the tissues turned to soap. The internal organs
were all intact. We slowly came to the conclusion that this
woman had been strangled because we found hemor-
rhages, the evidence of old hemoglobin in the tissues-the
soap-of the neck-and those ante-mortem bruises. I then
did a complete autopsy on her and determined she had not ~-...
di~ of any natural causes. All of the organs were present
and intact.
"This lead to a long chase. We still didn't know who
this body had belonged to. We did know that we had a
body of a woman who had been in the lake for several
years, but the natives told us that of all the white people
who had ever drowned there, not a one of them had ever
returned to the surface. The Indians also had this in their
ancient folklore. They were even afraid to fish the lake
because, according to legend, there were evil spirits in the
water. Indians who had drowned were lost forever.
"By soundings I found that underground stream
which flows from Lake Crescent to Lake Sullivan. I got my
sounding equipment down there (it was too deep for divers)
and it stuck underneath a ledge where the current carried
it into the stream. If you could ever get down underneath
that ledge, you would probably find from 50 to 100 bodies,
all of which have turned to soap. The water temperature at
5,000 feet didn't vary more than half a degree, summer to
winter; the temperature of the water at that depth was
around three degrees above freezing, the optimum temper-
ature for adipocere formation. If the murderer of this
woman had known these things, he'd never have bothered
to weight her down; he'd have just thrown her into the lake
and she'd never have been heard from again. Those are
the mistakes killers make! That is what my job is really all
about-finding those mistakes."
36 CRIME DOCTOR

While Dr. Larson went about doing his thing, Hollis B.

Fultz, a consulting criminologist from Olympia, beat the
backwoods for clues trying to find out who the Lady of the
Lake really was.
"Hollis was one of the best investigative detectives
I've ever known," Dr. Larson said. "We worked on many
cases together. But none more satisfying than Lady of the
Lake."
One hunch Fultz had was Hallie Illingworth. She was
married to a beer company salesman. They had lived in
Port Angeles, about 20 miles from Lake Crescent. Hallie
had worked as a sometimes waitress. Then, one day, she
didn't show up for work. She just disappeared. That was in
1932. Fultz wondered about that.
Hallie Illingworth was about 36 at the time. Five-foot-
six, 135 pounds. Good-looking, with beautiful auburn hair.
Her husband, Monty, was the jealous type. He also drank
too much. When he got in the booze, he often punched her
out. He was mean to her. She'd show up at work with black
eyes.
Fultz thought about this. He started asking around.
Edgar Thompson, secretary of the Culinary Alliance,
where Hallie belonged to the local union, said she had not
bothered to get a transfer card.
"If she left town voluntarily," he said, "I'd have
thought she would have come and got a transfer card so
she could get a job some place else. She was a good worker.
She could work anywhere. You know," Edgar Thompson
said, "if it wasn't for the fact she's been gone so long, I'd
say she's the Lady of the Lake."
Edgar said, yes, there were relatives. She had a sister,
Lois Latham, a member of the same union. But she'd
moved to Fort Peck, Montana, he said. No, he didn't know
what became of her after that.
At the request of Fultz, Thompson wrote to all the
unions in Montana. Did anyone know the whereabouts of
Lois Latham? There was no success.
 LADY OF THE LAKE 37

In Fultz's search, he ran across Mrs. Nina Carlsen, a

former close friend of Lois Latham. Mrs. Carlsen lived at
Sequim, 19 miles southeast of Port Angeles. She said the
last she heard from Lois she was married to a government
guard and living at College Place, Washington-near
Walla Walla.
The plot was thickening. Lois was located. She said
she hadn't heard from her sister since Christmas, 1932.
None of the family had heard from her.
"Hallie came to the apartment where I lived with
Elinore Pearson, a stenographer, about the middle of the
afternoon," Lois recalled. "She stayed till dinnertime, then
went out when Elinore came home. Later, Monty showed
up looking for Hallie. I told him she'd been there but had
gone. The next morning he came into The Loop, the
restaurant where I worked, and asked if I'd seen Hallie.
The time was 6:30 a.m. No, I told him, I'd not seen her since
yesterday at the apartment. He looked dreadful, like he'd
slept in his clothes. He explained he'd been at an all-night
beer bust at Port Townsend. He said he and Hallie had a
big fight when he got home and he stormed out. His eyes
were bleary and he looked like he was going to cry. I didn't
see Monty for 24 hours. The next day he came to the
apartment and asked if I'd seen Hallie. I told him no. He
shook his head, sadly. Some Christmas, he said, and
walked out. There were tears in his eyes.
"I didn't see Monty again for a week. When he did
show up, finally, he said he hadn't told me everything.
'Hallie's left me,' he said. 'After our big fight, she packed a
suitcase and said she was never coming back,' he said.
'She said none of us would ever see her again. I think she's
gone to that Navy Lt. Commander fella down at Bremer-
ton. I never did trust him.' Hallie had known this Navy
officer since 1931. Monty was always jealous of him."
Lois was asked if she had heard from Monty lately.
"Only through Elinore Pearson,'' Lois said. "She
writes regularly. She and Monty are married now and
38 CRIME DOCTOR

living in Long Beach, California. She often asks if I ever

hear from Hallie."
The trail was growing hotter. Fultz could smell blood.
He next talked to Mrs. James Johnson of Vancouver,
Washington. She was another of Hallie's sisters. Mrs.
Johnson studied the photos of the Lady of the Lake that
Fultz handed her, and said, "That's Hallie's form, all right.
And she had high cheekbones like the photos show. Her
hair was exactly the color of this and she had a partial
upper plate."
After leaving Mrs. Johnson, Fultz drove up to Lake
Pleasant, 50 miles from Port Angeles, and talked to Jessie
Hudson, an old friend of Hallie's who ran a cookhouse for a
mill crew there. She was well-known for her photographic
memory.
"Hallie had a partial upper plate," Jessie said, "but I
never saw it. Once, at the restaurant where we worked the
same shift, she walked in with black and blue marks on
her throat; she often did. 'Monty and I had another fight,'
she said. 'He nearly strangled me to death. He'll kill me
some day. Last night, he broke a tooth out when he hit me.'
I asked her to show me the tooth and she said it was in a
partial upper plate which she had left with the dentist for
repair."
Fultz then showed her the photos. Her eyes filled with
tears when she looked at them.
"Yes," she said, "that's her hair-and that's her body.
And, yes, that's her dress. I sold it to her. I was working at
J.C. Penney in 1932, and she walked in and bought that
dress."
Jessie rubbed her chin, thoughtfully.
"Say,'' she said, "do you notice anything peculiar
about her right foot?"
"What's wrong with her right foot?" Fultz wanted to
know.
"Well, look at it,'' Jessie said. "See that big bunion?
Hallie had a bunion so big she always kidded the sales-
 LADY OF THE LAKE 39

man, saying she wanted a one size larger shoe for that foot.
Yes, sir, that's Hallie's foot, all right."
That settled it. Hollis Fultz was convinced. Hallie
Illingworth was the Lady of the Lake.
The Lady of the Lake was wearing a green wool dress
that still carried J.C. Penney's label. The style of the dress
dated it at about 10 years before the body surfaced. The
nearest J.C. Penney store was in Port Angeles. There the
dress was identified as stock the store had carried approx-
imately 10 years before, but no records of individual names
or purchasers had been kept.
On the body were rayon, not silk or cotton, stockings.
Rayon being wartime stocking material, this fact added
confirmation to the dating profile that Dr. Larson was
drawing. He had cuttings from the stocking analyzed in
the laboratory at the University of Puget Sound, for there
was a period in the process of manufacturing rayon when
lead was used as a filler.
When you burn a piece of rayon stocking of that
vintage, you can see little bubbles of lead in the crumbly
ash of the fibre. Those tiny bubbles were evident, and this
further bracketed the time limit to approximately the same
10 years of the dress. So Dr. Larson and his ace gumshoe,
Hollis Fultz, were now back-trailing a woman who had
been missing for nearly 10 years from somewhere. Port
Angeles? Hallie Illingworth? Fultz was betting on Hallie,
but they still had to be sure.
All leads were tracked down. For example, a complete
chart of The Lady's dental work had been made and
circularized in professional dental journals from coast to
coast. Drs. Larson and Beeman became steady if modest
advertisers. For months, they ran ads picturing the bridge-
work, in the hope that the dentist who made it would
recognize the partial plate.
It was some 20 months before a reply came, because
the dentist who finally responded, Dr. A.J. McDowell of
Foulkton, South Dakota, did not read his journals regular-
40 CRIME DOCTOR

ly, but let them go for long periods and then caught up by a
concentrated spate of intensive reading. He stated that he
had made a partial upper denture like the one advertised-
for a Hallie Spraker-13 years before. He further stated
that Hallie Spraker (Spraker was the name of her first
husband) had no molars whatever in her lower jaw. Nor
did the saponified body.
"Mrs. Spraker later moved to Port Angeles,'' Dr.
McDowell wrote in his letter. The body now had a name
and an approximate date of death by strangulation.
Dr. McDowell thus made life much less confusing for
the doctor-detectives. Many people in Port Angeles remem-
bered Hallie. She had married a beer salesman named
Monty Illingworth. In 1932, she had run off to Alaska with
a sailor, they said, or so her husband had told them.
Shortly thereafter Monty had departed for California in
the company of a town charmer. There were even several
residents who thought they had seen Hallie on the streets
of Fairbanks, which just goes to show that you can't
believe everything people tell you.
And then there was the rope-the rope that had tied
the blanket around Hallie. It was a three-strand, half-inch
rope that had an identifying blue fibre of about the thick-
ness of a hair running through the center strand. A de-
scription of this rope was circularized to manufacturers all
over the U.S. and Canada, and information eventually
came back to the effect that Sears, Roebuck in Port An-
geles was the only outlet in the area that sold that particu-
lar brand.
Among sales of record at Sears, one thousand feet of
this rope was sold to a resort owner on Crescent Lake for
tying up his rental boats. Dr. Larson personally talked
with the fellow and was satisfied he had nothing to do with
the murder.
Dr. Larson was about to leave when the boathouse
man suddenly remembered lending a hundred feet of the
rope to a beer salesman one time when his truck got mired
in some mud. He remembered the loan because the rope
 LADY OF THE LAKE 41

was not returned or ever paid for. That, oddly enough, was
how the dentist in South Dakota remembered Hallie
Spraker. She had left town without paying him.
All beer salesmen in the area at the time were traced
until a "possible" was found. It turned out to be Monty
Illingworth, who had, at one time, a somewhat plump wife,
with auburn hair and the first name of Hallie. His wife was
remembered to have bought her clothing at J.C. Penney
and she had once been married to a man named Spraker.
All the coins now fell into the slot. Illingworth was
extradited from California and indicted. He said that his
wife had gone off to Alaska with another man, but the jury
did not buy the sketchy supporting evidence Monty offered.

Dr. Larson took the stand and with great enthusiasm

put on a demonstration that is still talked about in the
Pacific Northwest by those who saw it. In a saucer he
burned pieces of rayon, silk and cotton stockings to differ-
entiate the odor and ash of one from the others and to show
the jury the tiny lead bubbles in the stockings found on
Hallie Illingworth's body, thus dating her death, because
rayon stockings first came on the Port Angeles market in
1931. He then asked for a glass of water into which he
dropped a small piece of saponified tissue which he had
excised from the body. It went straight to the bottom of the
glass then slowly rose to the top as Hallie's saponified
body had done after the frayed rope released the weight
that had originally held it to the bottom of Crescent Lake.
It took the jury less than an hour to find Monty
Illingworth guilty of murder in the second degree. He was
sentenced to life imprisonment in the Washington State
Penitentiary at Walla Walla.
Postscript:
While researching the Lady in the Lake, I talked to
two members of the cast, Hollis Fultz and Mrs. John
Bayton of Port Angeles. At the time of the investigation,
Mrs. Bayton worked in the Clallam County Sheriff's D&
42 CRIME DOCTOR

partment. She served as the bailiff during the trial of

Monty Illingworth. Mrs. Bayton was 90 when I visited her,
and she remembered the case as though it were the day
before yesterday.
"I remember when Hallie's body was brought to Port
Angeles," she said. "I remember when I touched it, it felt
just like soap. An eerie sensation. When the sheriff opened
up the blankets that were roped around it, there was an
almost perfectly formed woman-from the shoulders down.
The face, of course, from years of submersion, was unrec-
ognizable, but there was her partial upper dental plate still
in place. I didn't know it then, but it was to turn out, after
Dr. Larson came on the case, that I knew that dead woman
as well as I knew members of my own family."
Mrs. Bayton remembered that the trial lasted for nine
days. The courtroom was jammed to overflowing. News-
men from all over the country came to cover the case of the
Lady of the Lake. Mrs. Bayton saw Hallie's sister at the
trial and went over and put some loose coins in her hand.
"What's this?" she wanted to know.
Mrs. Bayton told her, "I took them out of Hallie's
pocket when her body was brought in."
There must have been $5 in change.
The last tips Hallie ever got.

Hollis Fultz was an amazing man. He was not a

doctor or a policeman. He was a special investigator. He
had the same two-and-two-makes-four approach to the
details of a crime as Dr. Larson does to a dead body.
Fultz started life as a newspaper man. From general
reporting he began to be assigned to the police beat. But
long before that, when a crime was in the papers, he would
mull the details over and usually come up with something.
He would go to the police, and almost invariably, if they
acted on his suggestion, they'd hit pay dirt.
One night, several years ago, Dr. Larson and I paid
Fultz a visit. He was then 88 and still serving, unopposed,
 LADY OF THE LAKE 43

as coroner of the City of Olympia. Inevitably, the conver-

sation got around to murders and how to solve them.
"If you can tell me the exact time at which someone
has been murdered, I believe I can tell you who killed him,"
Hollis said. "No mystery. You start checking out all of the
people who were the victim's close friends and ask them
where they were at the time. Sooner or later one of them
will start lying to you. Check out the lies for truth and you
will, nine times out of 10, have the murderer. It's a sad fact,
but true, that usually one of a man's friends murders him,
because only a fool lets his enemies get close enough."
Hollis chuckled. "And if you want the exact time of
death,'' he added, "Dr. Larson can come as close as any-
body."
"Add to that,'' Dr. Larson said, "if a man commits any
crime-that if he's at the scene long enough and the scene
is investigated by experts-invariably they will turn up
some evidence that he has been there. It is impossible for a
man not to leave some evidence behind ifhe has stopped in
any one place long enough. By long enough, let's say two
minutes-or three."
"There isn't any such thing as a perfect crime, because
if you even suspect there has been a crime, it is not perfect,"
Fultz said. "What we are faced with in most cases is
imperfectly trained homicide investigators and poorly
qualified medical examiners. Medical examiners should,
by law, be required to be specialized forensic patholcr
gists-and a good forensic pathologist ought to be more
than half-cop!"
"Like Dr. Larson?" I asked.
"Like Dr. Larson,'' Fultz answered.
War Is Hell

WITH an M.D. from McGill, Dr. Larson went on to

the University of Michigan and University of Oregon for
further study. For two years, he taught at UO as a lecturer
in pathology and in neuropathol,ogy, the study of the
causes of disease and malfunction of the human nervous
system. He then spent a short time in additional study at
the Mayo Clinic. He also took courses in ballistics and
firearm identification and document examination from
the experts at the Chicago Police Department. Against
that background he was appointed pathologist to the
Tacoma General Hospital in 1938.
Like millions of other Americans, life went along
against a background of sad expectancy all around. A lot
of them only walked through the motions. Living was like
watching a film they had every reason to believe was new,
only to realize they had seen it all before.
In Europe the last surviving dynasties were falling,
nations collapsing, politics changing and dictators rant-
ing. Once more the armies of traditional enemies were
marching side by side as allies toward the inevitability of
44
 WAR IS HELL 45

another world war. Germany had started to gobble up

Austria and Czechoslovakia; the day was not far off when
she would join with Soviet Russia, who had already swept
across the tiny Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania, to devour Poland.
Along the western redoubt of the European continent,
Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark braced for the
holocaust that was yet to come, while a self-deluded France
huddled behind the Maginot Line.
On Saturday morning at one o'clock, October 1, 1938,
the Munich crisis reached its climax when 600 gray-clad
German soldiers crossed the border to begin the occupa-
tion of Czechoslovakia. In a few stunned hours the world
came to the realization that war was not only threatening
but imminent. Here in the United States, the knowledge
was forcibly borne home that the nation's detachment
from world affairs had ended. For a lot of college athletes
the drama of the day came down to an even finer point of
tension. Many of them that afternoon were in football
uniforms on campus playing fields, and the world passed
from one period to another almost between the opening
kickoff and the final whistle of their games.
In 1941, immediately after Pearl Harbor, Dr. Larson
volunteered and was given a reserve commission in the
Medical Corps, Army of the United States. After a stultify-
ing base hospital routine of prostatic massage and paint-
them-with-iodine-and-mark-them-duty, he hit Omaha Beach
in Normandy with the advance party of the 50th General
Army Hospital. This unit was set up under canvas at
Carentan, where it stayed until Paris was taken. It then
moved into the Verdun area.
While Dr. Larson was at Verdun, that mysterious
machine in the subcellars of the Pentagon was pro-
grammed to find forensic pathologists. When the wheels
stopped whirring, it came up with the only two that were
serving at that time in the European Theatre. Major
Charles P. Larson, 35, and Dr. Vincent Sneedon, who
46 CRIME DOCTOR

today is Professor of Pathology at the University of Ore-

gon.
"Dr. Sneedon was not primarily a forensic patholo-
gist," Dr. Larson told me recently, "so I believe I was the
only forensic pathologist on duty in the entire European
Theater-which is why I was detailed ultimately to con-
duct the autopsies at Dachau. So whether the authorities
liked what I did or not, they were stuck with the only top-
qualified man in my field and they had to take me!"
Major Larson was thus assigned to the Judge Advo-
cate General's Department, which detail made him a
combatant soldier. He took off his Red Cross armband,
drew a duty belt and holster and stuffed a .45 caliber
equalizer into it.
Ordered into Paris, he was interviewed, briefed and
then detailed to War Crime's Investigation Team Number
6823, covering all of south Germany, under the command
of Colonel David Chavez of the distinguished New Mexico
family. The mission of the team from initially investigat-
ing war crimes only against American personnel was
broadened to include German war crimes against all hu-
manity.
Part of the team made its temporary headquarters in
Seeshaupt, near Munich. About two days before Major
Larson arrived, Allied bombers had had a field day with
key targets in and around the town, and during the raid a
freight train full of concentration camp prisoners was
strafed. "Some were shot by German machine guns as the
easiest way to keep them from escaping in the confusion,"
Dr. Larson recalled.
When Major Larson arrived, all of the prisoners were
dead in the cars. He took pictures with an old 35 mm
Kodak of the evidence showing the dead crammed to-
gether like cattle. He autopsied a representative sample to
indicate that while some had died from shots from above
during the strafing runs of the plane, most had been done
to death by machine gun fire from both sides of the track.
 WAR IS HELL 47

Major Larson's official report of the atrocity follows:

5 May, 1945-Seeshauptlncident-PathologistRe-
port:
On 3 May, 1945, at 1400 hours, I inspected a Ger-
man train at the above location. This portion of the
train consisted of approximately 60 boxcars and flat-
cars in which approximately 1,500 prisoners and slave-
laborers of all nationalities were being transported to
another location in Germany on 26 April, 1945.
65 dead bodies were found in various boxcars of the
train. 38 of these were men who had been killed by gun-
shot wounds and 3 were women who died in the same
fashion; 24 bodies showed no cause of death from ex-
ternal examination. All of these bodies were in a most
pitiful condition, being clothed in rags, the majority
having no shoes and insufficient blankets. There were
no sanitary facilities aboard the train and the flatcars
had no tops, leaving the occupants of these cars ex-
posed to the elements. The flat-tops were covered with
barbed wire which left a space only 3 feet high for those
occupying these cars. All of the bodies inspected were
emaciated, infested with lice and had apparently been
dead for about a week. A few of the bodies in which no
known cause of death was observed had an erthyema-
tous (red) rash which could have been due to typhus.
Practically all of the bodies were filthy dirty, indicating
that the people had had no opportunity to bathe for a long
time. Most of the bodies had either decubitus sores and/ or
infected wounds and ulcers of a minor character on various
parts of the body. Personal effects were practically nil, but
identification was possible by means of numbers tatooed
on arms and chests. Of those who had been shot many had
not died immediately, as there was evidence of attempts at
first aid treatment by means of paper dressings. The ma-
jority appeared to have been shot by .50 cal. machine-gun
ammunition, but others showed evidence of having been
killed by small-arms fire. A .50 cal. machine gun bullet was
recovered, but no small arms bullets were found in the
examination, as most of them had passed entirely through
48 CRIME DOCTOR

the bodies. Many of the flatcars showed evidence of having

been strafed from the air.
On 5 May, 1945, I inspected the Seeshaupt German
Military Luftwaffe Hospital which was caring for the
injured and ill moved from the train. From all appearances
they were receiving excellent care. There were 163 patients
in the hospital, 35 of whom had been injured by gun fire.
The balance were composed of those suffering from severe
malnutrition, tuberculosis and typhus fever; 9 patients had
died since the patients were first received. In questioning
the German military doctors who had performed the sur-
gery on the surgical cases, they stated that the majority of
their cases had been injured by large caliber ammunition,
but that there were some who appeared to have been
injured by small arms fire. The projectiles which had been
removed by surgery had been given back to the patients as
souvemrs.
2. STALTART INCIDENT:
This small village is located approximately 6 km due
south of Seeshaupt, and on the railroad siding there were
about 40 flat-tops and boxcars similar to those described in
the first incident. In fact this was part of the same train
which had been dropped off before reaching Seeshaupt; 17
bodies were found in the cars of this portion of the train, 16
of which showed no external cause of death. The condition
of these bodies was the same as that described in the first
incident. One body had been shot in the head by small
arms fire in two places and also through the right chest.
Witnesses stated that this man had been murdered by an
SS soldier 10 minutes before the Americans arrived in
town.
One woman was included among the 17 bodies found
at this location.

SIGNED: Charles P. Larson, Major M.C.

Pathologist-War Crimes Team 6823
0477636.

Whereas Dr. Larson over 40 years has become inured

to the fact of death-even to the fact of violent death-he
still finds himself strangely reluctant to open up the sub-
 WAR IS HELL 49

ject of the German concentration camps, of the ghastly

crematoriums and the atrocious medical experimentation
on helpless humanity-the brutality, the out-and-out
sadism, the cold-blooded academic heartl~ssness.
"I imagine that this is because I must have a latent
feeling of shock over the whole frightful business," he told
me in 1978. "That I will carry to my grave. I can live with it
as long as it is dormant, but I hate to bring it back now into
remembered fact."
However, most heavily-shot-over combat veterans
have that same reluctance. The rule is that, win or lose,
never revisit an old battlefield. The memory of warfare is
only tolerable because of the outrageously humorous inci-
dents that bubble up through the primeval slime.
In the Seeshaupt area Major Larson's team was bil-
leted in the palatial home of the Baron Rudolph von
Simolon who had owned the Mercedes-Benz plant at Stutt-
gart. The von Simolon family was still in shock when the
Americans arrived, for when they took the town, the
Baron had shot himself. He was a polio cripple and a
friend apparently of Franklin D. Roosevelt, for his study
wall was covered with pictures of the two of them together.
The bereaved hausfrau asked Major Larson to look in
on her 22-year-old daughter who was suffering from a leg
infection. He found the young woman in agonizing pain
and running an alarming temperature. In the way you
learn to do things in wartime, he sent his driver out to
liberate some penicillin. The driver was so successful so
quickly that Major Larson was shortly able to give the girl
10,000 units which cured the infection, lowered the temp-
erature and saved her life. Nor did her mother, the haus-
frau, have any doubt that the American doctor had saved
her daughter, for she told him that he might have any-
thing of theirs he wanted for his fee. Major Larson ex-
plained to the mother that he was no longer in private
practice and that she might therefore consider his services
as a by-product of the American war effort.
In spite of his ineptness with the German language,
50 CRIME DOCTOR

Major Larson realized very shortly that Hausfrau Sirnolon

was very much embarrassed by lack of money, and that
she was construing his refusal of a fee as an act of charity.
When she continued to press him to accept some tangible
gift of gratefulness, he did.
In extenuation of what he did, in order that it may not
be misconstrued, today he will put forth the defense that a
man is only young once and that war is war, so that when
she offered it to him, he took the late Baron's 16 cylinder
red Mercedes-Benz convertible coupe which was then val-
ued at around $35,000.
Only three cars like that had ever been made. Hitler
had one. Goering had one-and now Major Charles P.
Larson, from Tacoma, Washington, USA, damned well
had one. Hausfrau von Sirnolon made it official by signing
the necessary papers over to him.
It was practically a new car, a beautiful maroon and a
magnificent machine to drive. Very shortly thereafter,
however, Major Larson made a tactical blunder. He parked
it at Army Headquarters in Augsburg and an American
general, who shall be nameless except for the names Major
Larson called him under his breath, saw it. He wanted it.
Very generously he authorized Major Larson to go to the
motor pool and pick out any other car he fancied-but he
held out his hand for the papers on the Major's Mercedes-
Benz and said, "I will return it to Hausfrau von Sirnolon
when I am finished with it."
The Major picked out a modest black Mercedes-
valued at about $6,000-as a consolation prize. The gen-
eral was killed in his 16-cylinder job a few weeks later
when at top speed he failed to negotiate a turn on a
mountain road. That story still hurts Dr. Larson to tell-
for that machine was a beauty-and the general totaled it!

Prior to Seeshaupt, Major Larson's Investigation

Team had been ordered to go to the Hammelsburg Camp,
which contained only commissioned officer POWs. The
armies were still moving, and the situations everywhere
 WAR IS HELL 51

were dangerously fluid. It was rumored that General Pat-

ton was broadening one arm of his advance to include
Hammelsburg in order to free his son-in-law. So Major
Larson took his legal officer, Captain Walker, and his
hard-bitten Pfc. Driver Bocock, who also acted as his
interpreter. About an hour and a half out of Augsburg the
road branched right and left. At the intersection there was
a sign, "Hammelsburg," with an arrow, so they took that
road, failing entirely to see a much smaller sign, "Ham-
melsburg Camp," on the other road.
A few minutes later they rolled into the town square of
Hammelsburg, a pleasant little Christmas-card place of
about 10,000 population, completely untouched by the
grimy hands of war. There were a dozen or so German
soldiers in uniform in the square, singly and in twos and
threes, but they were totally indifferent to the Americans'
presence. A dreadful inertia bears down upon combat
soldiers and makes old men of them in very short time.
Add to that the apathy of accepted defeat and you have
men that have gone beyond human awareness. They look,
but they do not see, nor do they care. They listen, but they
do not hear. They eat, but they do not taste. They are alive,
but they do not live. Such were the scattered German
soldiers at Hammelsburg.
Major Larson told Pfc. Bocock to drive slowly around
the square to what looked to be the City Hall. Shortly after
they stopped, His Honor the Mayor came out, a white sheet
in his hand, and surrendered the town to Major Larson.
With that dozens of the townspeople converged upon the
Americans waving napkins, shirts and pillow cases, con-
firining the fact that their mayor had spoken for them, and
they were surrendering.
Under international law Major Larson was in a some-
what anomalous position. Captain Walker was not quite
sure of the legal remifications of the matter. Nevertheless
on the impulse of the moment, Major Larson accepted the
surrender with a few impromptu-if not immortal-words
which Bocock translated. Meanwhile, he kept a tommy-
 52 CRIME DOCTOR

gun across his knees, the muzzle pointed toward the Ger-
man soldiers in the square.
Having surrendered, the mayor said he wanted Major
Larson to meet someone. He disappeared inside the City
Hall and came back out a few minutes later with a chap
who looked to be British. He had an engaging grin, dirty-
blond, crew-cut hair, was medium size and about 30.
"Major," the mayor said, "meet the King ofHammels-
burg."
A very personable chap, "The King." And a very
privileged character. He was a corporal in the British
Army. The Germans captured him early in the war, and he
was sitting out the fighting at Hammelsburg Camp, ex-
cept that he was seldom there. He came and went as he
pleased between camp and town. He was married to a
German woman and had three children. He also had a
wife and children back in England.
"Everybody liked him," Dr. Larson remembers. "Con-
genial, highly trusted, he had a pass to leave Hammels-
burg Camp anytime he wanted to go into town. Everybody
called him the 'King of Hammelsburg.' So as King, he
really took care of us. He had us occupy the City Hall,
made of stone, and then instructed the good hausfraus of
the community to bring us a fabulous home-cooked meal.
That night, he invited me over to his house. There was still
a lot of snipers' fire going on in the nearby woods, yet the
King said, 'Come on, nothing will happen.' So I went off in
the night with the King of Hammelsburg-right in the
middle of a war. Hell, I trusted him as much as the
Germans did. Through back alleys, along dark streets, we
worked our way to the other side of town, where we finally
entered a well-furnished house. I met his wife and children,
and then we got down to the real business. He brought out
. a bottle of fine, ancient bourbon. We toasted the British-
the Americans-ultimate victory. I got smashed. I don't
even remember going back to City Hall. The King walked
me back, and the next day he issued an order to have all
 WAR IS HELL 53

:firearms, and all other weapons in private possession,

brought in and dumped in the square. He then had the
stocks broken from the rifles and shotguns, the revolvers
and auto pistols snapped short at the hilt. The lot was then
burned. Watching those priceless antiques go up in smoke
broke my heart, for I was a collector and some of those
ancestral weapons brought in by the people of Hammels-
burg were book pieces."
The Mayor of Hammelsburg then formally issued a
proclamation (a copy of which hangs framed in Dr. Lar-
son's study today), to the effect that he had surrendered his
Town to Number 6218 War Crimes Team, Major Charles
P. Larson, M.D., commanding.
"Then the King accompanied me out to Hammelsburg
Camp," Dr. Larson recalls. "He was even respected out
there. Everybody liked him. He was very popular, even
though he had special privileges. Even the prisoners called
him the King of Hammelsburg. Damn, what a guy. He
was the most unique character I met in the war."

After Seeshaupt, Major Larson and his War Crimes

Team investigated the Kauffring Camps. When they got
there, Major Larson had an American autopsy assistant
assigned to him by the Army. But after the assistant saw
all the dead bodies, he quit. Major Larson got through to
the highest military command and asked for assistance.
Nobody wanted anything to do with it. But Major Larson
was told of a German prison camp nearby where he might
find some help. So the team drove over to the compound
and talked to the American Army officer in charge. The
officer called in a couple of English-speaking Germans,
and the Germans broadcast Major Larson's call over the
camp loudspeaker for volunteers with previous experience
in performing autopsies. There were about 20,000 prison-
ers in the camp-but only one German volunteered. He
was a college man from the southern part of Germany and
was experienced.
54 CRIME DOCTOR

Major Larson brought him in for an interview. He

didn't speak English, but he did speak French. Major
Larson had fair French but no German, so they talked in
French.
"He's a bad risk," the Camp Commander warned
Major Larson. "He's a hidebound Nazi and will cause you
trouble."
The young man was in his late 20s, with typical
Germanic features. He was strong and healthy, and fit for
the work in hand.
Major Larson asked him, "If I take you, will you gun
me in the back the first chance you get?"
He shook his head. "If you get me out of this couseur
(sewer), I'll gun any man who tries to gun you in the back!"
he said. His first name was Hans and he served as Major
Larson's autopsy assistant for the next two months, in-
cluding the work at Dachau.
At the first autopsy they did together, Major Larson
handed Hans an enormous hunting knife and told him to
get busy. The good doctor always used hunting knives in
his autopsy work because they are easy to keep sharp. He
used them for years, before he started using disposable
blades on Bard-Parker handles. Major Larson brought his
own hunting knives from the United States, with long
handles and big blades. He gave Hans one and he handled
it very skillfully. Together they performed three times as
many autopsies as the doctor could have done alone. In
fact, Hans was so good that Major Larson was able to turn
him loose and let him do the autopsy while the Major wrote
the notes. This was excellent. Their garbled French im-
proved daily, and Hans even learned some English.
One of their first assignments at Kauf:fring was to
investigate the mass graves. It was a suffocating experi-
ence. The Major had seen a lot of death in his time, but
nothing like what he found in those block-long graves.
There were 10,000 bodies lying out there in those death
trenches.
 WAR IS HELL 55

After the first mass grave was uncovered by a bull-

dozer, Major Larson and Hans found there were at least
ten more nearby where thousands more bodies had been
buried-piled up six high like cordwood. Major Larson had
to find out how all those poor people died.
There was no house, no place, to do a proper autopsy.
This was in early May and the southern part of Germany,
near the Alps, was still quite chilly and wet. Major Larson
and Hans found some old lumber, built a table and set it
alongside the first open grave. Then they brought up one of
the bodies and started doing the autopsy. Major Larson
was wearing his steel helmet because he didn't have any
other hat and suddenly-ZING!-a bullet caromed off it.
They'd been in the area for only 48 hours and American
ground troops hadn't had time as yet to clear the surround-
ing woods of enemy snipers.
Major Larson yelled, "Let's get the hell out of here!"
They jumped into their jeep and drove slam-bang until they
came to an abandoned farmhouse below a distant knoll.
The blinds were pulled. There was no sign of life. They
walked in. The Major was ahead of Hans. At the front was
a long corridor with two doors. One door led to a narrow
living room, the other to the bedrooms. Major Larson
chose the door to the left-and walked smack into a living
room jammed full of Nazi soldiers. They were fully armed,
dog dirty and loaded for bear. The instant Hans saw the
Germans, he shouted, "Achtung!" and the room snapped
to attention. Major Larson got his .45 out fast.
The Germans offered no resistance. Hans went around
the room gathering up their weapons, and then he filed
them out of the farmhouse and lined them up in front of the
jeep. They were only about five kilometers from the prison
camp where the Major had originally found Hans, so they
marched their prisoners down the road to the camp. One
shaken American Major behind the wheel of a jeep and 30
Nazi soldiers, hands over their heads, clumping on ahead
of him! What a war!
56 CRIME DOCTOR

Hans turned out to be quite a guy, and Major Larson's

greatest worry was what was going to become of him after
the work was done. Most capturedNazis were be?.ng sent to
prison, and Major Larson didn't want to see that happen
to Hans. He felt the young man deserved a break. Frankly,
he seriously considered bringing him back to the States
and setting him up in his Tacoma office as an assistant.
When their work together was finished, Major Larson
gave Hans all the money he had, along with a personal
letter explaining how much value he had been in the
Major's work and how loyal and trustworthy Hans had
been. Hans departed with this and that's the last Major
Larson ever saw or heard of him. He gave Hans his home
address back in Tacoma, but he never heard from him
again. He believes Hans must have been killed somewhere
down the line.

The first Kauffring Camps that Team Number 6823

investigated were located on the east side of the Rhine,
situated in and around the town of Lands burg, Germany.
There the team ran into a fairly large number of small
prison camps where numerous atrocities had been com-
mitted. It must be pointed out that in all the prison camps
Major Larson investigated there was one basic policy
under the Germans: the prisoners were expected to work
and produce materiel needed by the Army. The prisoners
were all underfed and poorly housed. Barracks were de-
plorable. They all wore similar clothing and were unpro-
tected against the winter weather. They were so closely
packed together that sanitation was practically nonexis-
tent, and consequently they suffered from multiple dis-
eases. They were all very poorly nourished, but the
German people, themselves, had very little to eat in the last
year of the war. With food in such short supply, we can
imagine how poorly fed the prisoners were. It was miracu-
lous any of them lived as long as they did.
These, then, are Major Larson's original reports on
the Kauffring Camps:
 WAR IS HELL 57

Subject: Investigation of atrocities at Kauffring Camp

#4 near Hulach, Germany. (Hulach is near Landsburg).
On May 1, 1945, I inspected 286 bodies lying in the
compound of the above camp. The examination as to the
cause of death was of necessity quite superficial and hur-
ried. The causes of death could be roughly divided into
three categories:
1. 86 bodies were so severely burned that the bums
themselves were undoubtedly the cause of death. Sworn
statements of witnesses indicate that these individuals
were locked in the barracks at the compound and that these
buildings were deliberately set on fire with the attempt to
destroy all these bodies by the Germans shortly before the
American troops liberated this camp.
2. 11 bodies were shot either in the head, chest or
abdomen or in different combinations of the above wounds
sufficient to be the cause of death.
3. 189 bodies showed no gross external cause of death.
All of these bodies, as well as those in the foregoing two
classifications, were extremely emaciated; many of them
had large decubitus sores, and all were lice-infested. Ac-
cording to witnesses, typhus was present in this camp and
some of these could have died of this disease. However,
according to other reliable testimony, these individuals
were murdered by the hypodermic injection of an unknown
poison a matter of hours before the Americans liberated the
camp. The German doctor for the camp-a "Dr. Blanke" -
was seen to have used a large syringe with a needle and to
have injected this unknown poison into these individuals.
The result of the injection was death in from five to 20
minutes. Death was preceeded by generalized convulsions.
In a search of the camp and of "Dr. Blanke's" home and
office, no clue was foundastothetypeofpoison used. From
some autopsies performed, the brain, portions of the liver,
the spleen, the heart and one kidney were retained for
transmission to the First Medical Laboratory in Paris for
toxicological examination to determine the type of poison
administered. (Author's Note: Major Larson later received
reports from the FML in Paris that the organs he had sent
in for toxicological examination on three autopsied cases
were negative for all poisons.) In one autopsied case the
58 CRIME DOCTOR

individual had pulmonary tuberculosis which was bilat-

eral and rather far advanced. There was no gross cavita-
tion, and about 75 percent of the lung tissue contained air
and was not completely replaced by the tuberculosis except
for some recent bronchogenic dissemination. No focal tu-
berculosis was found in other organs of the body. This
autopsy was performed under field conditions with no
water available.
The testimony suggested that some of those poisoned
received the injection into the chest over the heart. No
needle wounds were observed on the heart in the cases
autopsied.
Dr. Blanke committed suicide a few minutes before the
Americans arrived in town and, according to testimony,
his death was due to poisoning self-administered, sup-
posedly the same type used on the prisoners in the com-
pound. He also murdered his wife by the same means
before taking his own life.
Thirty-one additional bodies were found in the woods
lying on the ground in a somewhat scattered position a few
hundred yards from the compound. Superficial examina-
tion of these bodies showed that 17 of them had died as a
result of gunshot wounds; mostly multiple and probably
from machine gun fire as whole extremities were ampu-
tated on some. Fourteen of these bodies showed no visible
external cause of death and were also supposed to have
been poisoned. Numerous photographs were taken to cor-
roborate this report.

SIGNED: Major C.P. Larson, M.C.

Pathologist (50th General Hospital)
D.S. with War Crimes Team 6823.

On the west side of the Rhine, the Kauffring Camps

were in the same condition as what Major Larson had
been hearing about Dachau, except that there was no
evidence of medical experimentation on human beings.
The prisoners had all been on war munitions work-and
on starvation rations. The bodies were unbelievably ema-
ciated. The stench was sickening. To counteract the smell,
 WAR IS HELL 59
Major Larson discovered long ago that by spreading
N oxema inside his surgical mask, all he was conscious of
was a pleasant, cool, mentholated fragrance.
When the Germans realized the Allies were near
enough to liberate those camps, they machine-gunned
some of the remaining prisoners. Mass graves were dis-
covered about 10 kilometers from the camps. In one grave
the bulldozers uncovered an estimated 2,000 bodies, many
of which were subjected to autopsy examination by Major
Larson. All of those autopsied had died of various condi-
tions such as emaciation with starvation, tuberculosis,
typhus or other infectious diseases. The entire living prison
population of some camps had been liquidated in one
brief quarter of an hour prior to the arrival of the Allied
Armies.
Shortly after the fall of Munich, Major Larson went on
to Dachau with his war crimes investigating team. Dachau
was located about 10 kilometers from Munich.
This most horrible of prisons was sealed up tight as a
drum. Inside an American Engineer battalion had gotten
hold of some DDT and was spraying everybody because a
typhus epidemic was spreading like wildfire. Typhus
spreads from one person to another by infected lice, and all
the dead were crawling with lice.
This was in June, 1945. Dr. Larson remembers the
date well, because it was just about that time the papers
came down from high command that he had been pro-
moted to Lt. Colonel. He was now going to earn the extra
pay.
To get into Dachau, you had to have a pass. Col.
Larson's was signed by the Commanding General of the
area. (He still has the original.) For the next 10 days, many
nights with only an hour or two of restless sleep, Col.
Larson worked among the dead. He performed about 25
autopsies a day and superficially examined another 300 to
1,000 bodies. He autopsied only those bodies that appeared
to have died questionably. "Many of them died from
60 CRIME DOCTOR

typhus," Dr. Larson told me recently. "Dachau's cremator-

iums couldn't keep up with the burning ofthe bodies. They
did not have enough oil to keep the incinerators going. I
found that a number of the victims had also died from
tuberculosis. All of them were malnourished. The medical
facilities were most inadequate. There was no sanitation.
Two of my assistants developed TB while working with
me, but apparently I'd been exposed to it so often it didn't
touch me. The only infection I suffered was a cutaneous
tuberculous-ulcer on one knuckle."
There were no professional autopsy rooms available,
so Col. Larson and his two assistants took the best precau-
tions they could. There wasn't even any soap available, no
green soap, no Lysol; most of the time their improvised
morgues were not even heated. There was no way to
sterilize their surgical instruments to stop the spread of
infection. One of the boys who worked with Col. Larson
developed TB of the testicle and later had it amputed. His
other assistant was the son of a New York City undertak-
er. He developed pulmonary tuberculosis and was sub-
jected to years of treatment after the war.
Dr. Larson picks up the story:
"Dachau was a city of the dead when we got there. We
found heaps of bodies outside the crematoriums, 400 to 500
bodies to a heap. Such human waste. They were horribly
emaciated, horribly scarred with infected ulcers. They died
in all sorts of positions: some of the legs were flexed, some
not flexed, there was little muscle tissue left in the legs;
many of them weighed less than 100 pounds. Most of the
bodies were eastern Europeans, civilians from Poland and
Rumania, most of them Jewish.
"Dachau was where they made most of the insignia
worn by the German Army. I personally collected more
than 1,000 Nazi emblems. A rumor going around Dachau
after we got there was that many of the prisoners were
poisoned. I did a lot of toxicological analysis to determine
the facts and removed organs from a cross-section of about
 WAR IS HELL 61

30 or 40 bodies and sent them into Paris to the Army's First

Medical Laboratory for analysis, since I lacked the proper
facilities in the field. The reports came back negative. I
could not find where any of these people had been poisoned.
The majority died of natural diseases of one kind or
another. However, we did probe into such questions as,
'What happened to those prisoners who became psychotic
and developed a serious mental disease after internment
at Dachau? What did the Gestapo do with them?' Well,
they took those people to the crematorium. First, however,
they were taken into a big windowless building next to the
crematorium where the ceiling was covered with false
showerheads. The victims were then ordered to strip and
take a 'shower.' Outside the building, guards dropped in
cyanide pellets, killing everybody inside the so-called
'shower' room. Then they'd blow the cyanide gas out and
remove the bodies next door to the crematorium ovens. I
think this is what happened to most of the truly psychotic
prisoners and those they considered unruly and unman-
ageable and who, in the Gestapo's opinion, were incorrig-
ibles. But, in my opinion, only a relatively few of the
inmates I personally examined at Dachau were murdered
in this manner. Still, medical facilities were totally inade-
quate. When people fell hopelessly ill and death was im-
minent, and they grew so weak they could no longer work
or function, they were taken to the cyanide room for
disposal. The Nazi called them 'mercy killings' because
there was no hope of them getting well. Actually, the
Germans considered them a liability, and extermination
was the answer."

It had been almost impossible for prisoners to escape

from Dachau. In addition to high barb-wire fences and
trigger-happy guards, the Germans patrolled the camp
area with specially-trained police dogs, mastiffs and Ger-
man shepherds. They were stationed around the entire
periphery of the camp. A few of them had been particularly
62 CRIME DOCTOR

trained to inflict punishment upon those who committed

serious crimes within the camp. To make examples of
them, and to deter other prisoners:
"The offender was stripped and tied to crossed boards,
legs and arms spread and the animals let loose to tear the
genitalia off,'' Dr. Larson said. "When I got there, the
cages were still in place but all the dogs had been killed by
the American troops who liberated Dachau. When the
Americans arrived, what they saw seemed to drive them
temporarily berserk. They killed the dogs and every Ger-
man they could find, no matter what his story was. For a
time everything was out of hand and the place was a
vengeful madhouse.
"The evidence of Teutonic brutality was appalling.
Outside the crematorium discarded clothing covered an
area of 2,500 square feet at least 8 to 10 feet high. How
many people would you have to undress to make a pile of
skimpy clothing that large? This mountain of lice-infested
rags was all that was left of thousands of prisoners. None
of our G.I.'s would go near the pile because of typhus. You
couldn't get anybody to shovel it into the furnaces to burn
it up.
"Those prisoners still alive were mere scarecrows.
They had gonefor days with nothing to eat, and yet, right
up to the very end, the German guards were still trying to
march them back and forth to work. This despite the fact
that they were dropping dead from typhus with 105-degree
temperatures. There were few medicines to treat the sick.
They had a hospital, but the Germans couldn't take care of
10 percent of those needing medical attention."
Living conditions were deplorable. Colonel Larson's
investigation revealed that approximately 100 inmates
were crowded into each small barracks, 60 feet long by 17
feet wide, with virtually no ventilation.
From Col. Larson's notebook, circa 1945:
The prisoners were forced to sleep on wooden ledges
covered with straw and lay side by side with no separating
 WAR IS HELL 63

partitions. These ledges were double-decked with a space of

only two feet between the upper and lower decks. There
were two parallel rows of these double-deck ledges, one on
each side of the room, with an aisle three feet wide down
the center. Many of these barracks had no flooring. Latrine
and hygienic facilities were notably inadequate. Only one
small hand towel was issued to each prisoner approxi-
mately once every three months. Blankets were inadequate
in number, averaging only one per person even for the
winter months. Clothes were of a very poor grade of cotton-
wool mixture and no overcoats were issued. Many of the
prisoners had no shoes when they were liberated by the
Americans. Briefly, the average diet, at the end of the war,
was this:
Breakfast: A cup of weak tea or ersatz coffee with a
small slice (75 g.) of black bread. Often nothing but the cup
of tea was served. Dinner: The usual food was 300 to 350 cc.
of a thin watery soup, prepared from potatoes and turnips
with only occasionally a small amount of meat extract
added for flavoring. The potatoes and turnips used in
preparing these soups were of the poorest quality, often
spoiled. The skins and all were utilized. Supper: The usual
meal consisted of another 300 cc. of thin potato soup and
the daily ration of250 g. of German black bread. This bread
was of the poorest quality, often very dry and mouldy. Once
or twice a week a small ration of poor quality sausage or
cooked horsemeat was added to the evening meal. No
supplemental minerals or vitamins were provided. Daily
many prisoners ate grass and other edible greens to supple-
ment their diets. Total average daily caloric intake was
1,000 calories-far short of requirements. Since the average
prisoner performed 12 hours of manual labor daily, his
body required 3,000 to 4,000 calories. Thus, the extreme
degree of emaciation. A very few were not so markedly
emaciated. This can be explained by the fact that they
worked in kitchens; a few others, for one reason or another,
received special favors from the German guards. Then, too,
there were still others who were able to deal on the black
market for food, using as a medium of exchange the gold
they had removed from the teeth of the dead.
64 CRIME DOCTOR

And so there it was, an eye-witness account from

inside man's Hellgates; hollow losers who'd slept with a
hex.

There was one man at Dachau, a German on the staff,

that Col. Larson felt should not have been executed. His
name was Dr. Kurt Schilling. He was an internationally
famous parasitologist (one who makes a scientific study of
parasites). Colonel Larson had several long talks with him
before he was sentenced to death by hanging.
"Dr. Schilling retired from the practice of medicine in
1932," Dr. Larson said. "During his entire professional
career, commencing in 1896, he'd been a specialist in
parasitology. He was for many years a professor at the
University of Berlin Medical School. For 20 years he had
been particularly interested in malaria and made frequent
trips· to Africa, Italy and the Balkans doing research on
this subject. In 1936 he was summoned by Dr. Conti,
German Minister of Health for the Third Reich, to appear
personally before Himmler. He did this. In my conversa-
tions with Dr. Schilling at Dachau, he told me that he was
ordered by Himmler to proceed to the Dachau Concentra-
tion Camp for the purpose ofresearch in an attempt to find
a method of specifically immunizing individuals against
malaria because Germany was going to conquer all of
Africa and it was essential to prevent malaria.
"Dr. Schilling commenced his research project at
Dachau in 1936. After that he carried out experimental
inoculation of healthy individuals with malaria in an
attempt to develop a specific form of immunization against
the disease. He admitted to me that between the years 1936
and 1945 he inoculated some 2,000 prisoners with malaria.
He did not personally pick the subjects, he said, except that
he'd request 30 to 40 individuals at a time and specify they
be healthy. The medical supervisor at Dachau would select
thos_e people to be inoculated, send the list to Berlin to have
it approved by higher authority and, when the list was
returned, those who were chosen were then turned over to
 WAR IS HELL 65

Dr. Schilling at the Dachau Hospital where he'd reserved

two floors specifically for them.
"Two methods of malarial inoculation were used. The
first was by means of human blood infected by malaria,
and the second was by means of using infected mosquitoes
and permitting them to bite the patients. He told me that
he'd used only benign Tertian malaria but that he had
used some 40 different strains of this parasite. The first
group of experiments consisted of inoculating his patients
with malaria, permitting them to have some varying
numbers of chills ranging in number from 2to14, and then
curing them, or attempting to cure them with the available
drugs, Atabrine and Quinine. This was done in an attempt
to determine whether or not the facilities of cure differed,
depending upon the number of attacks offever. The second
set of experiments consisted of inoculating healthy people
with the malaria and when the prodromal symptoms
developed, to start treatment before chills and fever had
occurred. Some of these people were inoculated several
times, and when the initial prodromal symptoms appeared,
they were treated. Dr. Schilling further told me that after
several inoculations treated before the chills and fever
developed, that subsequently he was unable to infect these
people with malaria of the same strain. He believed that he
had produced a latent form of the disease in these patients
which gave them immunity against an acute attack of
malaria, by this particular strain of the parasite. He
showed me his records to substantiate his second group of
experiments.
"The third group of experiments were conducted using
a drug known as 'Pyramidon.' This suppressed the fever in
malaria but did not cure the disease. Here Dr. Schilling
was attempting to develop a therapy which would lead to
immunity and at the same time not subject the individual
to the rigors of chills and fever. Pyramidon had the bad
feature of depressing the white blood cell count and, in my
opinion, ran the risk of causing some deaths due to a
medical condition known as Agranulocytosis. Dr. Schil-
66 CRIME DOCTOR

ling frankly confessed that he did not believe this third

experiment was the answer to the treatment of malaria,
because of the danger accompanied by the use of this drug
Pyramidon.
"On March 14 an order came down from Berlin to
destroy all records of these medical experiments. At the
time the order was issued, Dr. Schilling was in the hospital
himself, recovering from an operation upon his prostate.
He told me that while many of his records were destroyed
by his assistants who carried out the order from Berlin, he
still had many papers intact at his home.
"It was very difficult to know where to draw the line as
to whether or not Dr. Schilling was a war criminal. Cer-
tainly he fell in that category inasmuch as he had sub-
jected people involuntarily to experimental malaria inocu-
lations, which, even though they did not produce many
deaths, could very well have produced serious illness in
many of the patients. He defended himself by saying he
did all this work by order from higher authority; in fact,
Himmler himself.
"In my report, I wrote: 'In view of all he has told me,
this man, in my opinion, should be considered a war
criminal, but that he should be permitted to write up the
results of his experiments and turn them over to Allied
medical personnel for what they are worth. Dr. Schilling is
an eminent scientist of world-wide renown who has con-
ducted a most important group of experiments; their value
cannot be properly ascertained until he has put them into
writing for medical authorities to study. The criminal acts
have already been committed, and since they have been
committed, if it were possible to derive some new knowl-
edge concerning immunity to malaria from these acts, it
would be yet another crime not to permit this man to finish
documenting the results of his years of research.'
"But my attempt to save Dr. Schilling's life failed. Our
High Command felt it had to make a public example of
him-most of the other high-ranking Nazis connected
with Dachau had already been executed-and made his
 WAR IS HELL 67

wife watch the hanging. I did everything I could to stop it. I

implored our military government not to pass sentence on
him until he'd had a fair hearing, because I was just
beginning to win his confidence, to get through to him.
Looking back, I am sure that the execution of Dr. Schilling
deprived the world of some very valuable scientific infor-
mation-no matter how distasteful his research and ex-
perimentation may have been."
There were other medical experiments conducted at
Dachau-stupid, ghoulish experiments which personified
the insane, systematic brutality of Hitler's Third Reich. As
the shocked, uprooted prisoners arrived by rail, the first
person they saw was usually an officer impeccably turned
out in a dress SS uniform. Placing himself between the
rows of new arrivals, he decided their fate: a flick of a thin
metal rod, held by a white-gloved hand, to the left meant
immediate death in the gas ovens; to the right meant life--
but what a life. Most of the prisoners would survive for
only a few more weeks, doing hard labor on starvation
rations or serving as guinea pigs in a series of experiments.
One test was to determine how long a person could survive
in cold water. This experiment was requested by the Ger-
man air force, because their planes were flying across the
North Sea on their bombing runs to England. That water
is like Puget Sound in the State ofW ashington-banker's-
heart cold.
"A Dr. Raschau was in charge of this work and had
escaped from Dachau before we got there, but we found the
record of his experiments," Dr. Larson recalls. "They were
most inept compared to Dr. Schilling's, much less scientif-
ic. What they would do would be to tie up a prisoner and
immerse him in cold water until his body temperature
reduced to 28 degrees centigrade (82.4 degrees Fahrenheit)1
when the poor soul would, of course, die. These experi-
ments were started in August, 1942, but Raschau's tech-
nique improved. By February, 1943 he was able to report ·
that 30 persons were chilled to 27 and 29 degrees centi-
grade, their hands and feet frozen white, and their bodies
68 CRIME DOCTOR

'rewarmed' by a hot bath. According to some reports, the

victims had been rewarmed by animal heat. That is, he
was surrounded with the naked bodies of warm women
until his frozen body responded to his environment suffi-
ciently to have sexual intercourse.
"They also dressed the subjects in different types of
insulated clothing before putting them in freezing water,
to see how long it took them to die. They murdered a lot of
people that way. I never saw Dr. Raschau or got a chance
to interview him. He was a man in his 40s or 50s and a
typical hard-nose Nazi. He was something like Dr. Josef
Mengele, the SS physician, known as the Angel of Death,
who sent millions to the gas chambers at Auschwitz-
Birkenau and killed thousands more in mad genetic ex-
meriments. Dr. Mengele, for example, tried to turn the eyes
of children blue by painfully injecting them with dye.
"On the other hand, Dr. Schilling, who was 72, should
have lived. He never tried to run. He stayed at Dachau and
made a full statement of his work to me; he cooperated in
every way, and was the only one who told the truth and
gave us all of the information on Dr. Raschau."

After 10 days at Dachau, working almost the clock

around each day, Col. Larson reached a state of exhaus-
tion he had never before known. He passed the point of
known weakness and from then on he lived in a sort of
waking sleep. He kept on, however, because the work had
to be done. There were times when he could not remember
accurately when he had eaten last or when he had last
slept. The snatched food sitting heavily on the stomach,
the stench, the flies, the mutilated bodies. Eventually it all
worked itself into indefinable tapestry of yesterday is
tomorrow and today is yesterday. Dachau is Kauffring
and Buchenwald is Landsburg and when will they ever
reach the end of all these starved bodies and, God, he was
so tired.
The result was that Col. Larson finally grew befogged.
He was mentally as well as physically drained. All feeling
 WAR IS HELL 69

had left him. He looked absently out across those fields of

the dead, seeing only faintly and not really wanting to see
at all. The human wreckage. The awful waste and sense-
less destruction of war.
At Dachau Col. Larson's work-the profile of the
prisoner population that his autopsies projected-indi-
cated that only a small percentage of the deaths were due
to medical experimentation on humans. It indicated that
most of the victims died from so-called "natural causes" at
the time; that is, of disease brought on by malnutrition and
filth which are the handmaidens of war.
A team of Army lawyers spent three days with Col.
Larson taking his depositions. He made it perfectly clear
he could not find it in him to indict the whole German
people for the Nazi crimes. Though Dachau was only a
short ride from Munich, Col. Larson sincerely believed
that most of the people in the city had no idea of what was
going on behind the Dachau barbed wire.
"The security around all of the camps I worked in was
so tight that at each one I found German civilians living
less than a mile away who had no idea of what was going
on inside," Dr. Larson said. "The only ones who knew
what was happening were the Nazis and those Nazi
sympathizers who had business inside. The rest of the
German populace was kept in ignorance, possibly to keep
them from rising up against Hitler and his henchmen.
While I was at Dachau, thousands of German civilians
were taken through the prison and shown what had gone
on; they were horrified. I personally talked to many of
them, and I tell you, you cannot fake the reaction they
had!"
The Body in
Striped Pajamas

AMERICANS are people who read millions of who-

done-its a month and never really believe them-because
we, as a nation, make the worst damn spies in all of
history. Watergate?
What we seem to read for is the appearance of a
mastermind who quite unexpectedly stands up and calmly
says, "The button is from Arbutnot's vest-therefore, the
butler did it."
Sophisticated. Smart stuff.
Well, there are no masterminds in the crime detection
business, merely the fact, as in any business, that some
minds are sharper than others. As in international espio-
.nage, crime detection is a matter usually of putting to-
gether the small, puzzling bits and pieces contributed by
many sleuths. In Los Angeles, Chicago and New York it's
a fact that there have been at various times hundreds of
professional detectives detailed to running down one laun-
dry mark.
Dr. Larson is one of a small group of highly qualified
physician-surgeons who can, given a dead body as yet
70
 THE BODY IN STRIPED PAJAMAS 71

undisturbed by other investigators, tell what caused the

death, and he can put the authorities on the road to
identification. With those two basic questions answered, it
becomes a matter of interrogation of all who could have
committed the act-until the only person left is the one
who did it.

On Monday, October 23, 1961 the Atlanta, Georgia

police department put out a call to homicide detectives J.F.
Inman and L.W. Bradley to phone headquarters. When
they phoned back, they were told that a Dr. Lester Rumble
had contacted headquarters asking for someone to check
the residence of Dr. Elmer Lee Fry, at 3645 Peachtree
Road, Apartment 100. Dr. Fry had not been heard from for
a day and a half, and it was unusual for him not to report
in before 9:15 a.m. daily.
"I tried Dr. Fry's apartment but received no answer,"
Dr. Rumble told the police. So Officers Inman and Bradley
went to the apartment and got the residence manager to
open up Dr. Fry's front door with a pass key. They found
Dr. Fry lying face-down on the floor in the doorway
between the living room and the bedroom. His head was
buried in a thick, shaggy-pile rug. He had been dead for
some time. There was no sign of violence, no wounds other
than a bruise on the right cheek. But there was blood and
mucus running from the mouth and nose. Dr. Rumble
arrived and said that the last person to hear from Dr. Fry
was his ex-wife who had talked to him on the phone the
previous Saturday night. Other than that, nothing.
At the Fulton County Morgue an autopsy was per-
formed on the body because when death occurs not under
the care of a physician the law requires autopsy:

EXTERNAL EXAMINATION.
"Clothing-The body was clad in striped cotton paja-
mas which were without remarkable features (tears, stains
or other defects). These garments were removed and the
72 CRIME DOCTOR

body was washed and all areas of the skin were examined
with a hand lens.
Body-The body was that of an adult white male,
normally developed and adequately nourished. The exter-
nal appearance of the body was consistent with the stated
age of 40. Rigor mortis was firmly established throughout
with the arms in a position of partial :flexion. Lividity was
prominent and fixed in the skin of the anterior aspects of
the body. There were irregular areas of pressure pallor in
the regions of the shoulders, thighs and left cheek. There
were no injuries, signs of external violence or marks on the
external surface, except for an irregular pressure mark in
the skin overlying the prominence of the left cheek bone.
This area was dark purple and had a prominent cross-
hatch pattern of the involved skin which was suggestive of
the coarse weave of fabric. The hair of the head was
greying and cut short. The eyes were unremarkable. The
pupils were circular and of equal diameter (approximately
3 mm). The corneas were clear and the orbits were firm. The
oral and nasal cavities contained small amounts of dark-
brown mucinous material. A small amount of this material
was present on the lower lip. The teeth were normal and the
oral mucosa was intact. There was no external evidence of
natural disease, no gross skeletal deformity or other abnor-
mality.

Date 12-6-61
Signed: Tom Dillon.

Now, here's another report by Dr. Tom Dillon made

after the initial external examination:

AUTOPSY OR INTERNAL EXAMINATION OF EL-

MERL. FRY-
The usual Y-shaped incision was made to open the
body cavities and the subcutaneous soft tissues were unre-
markable. The bony thorax was intact. The chest plate was
removed by incising the costal cartilages. The internal
organs maintained their normal relationship one to an-
other. There was no excess fluid in any body cavity.
 THE BODY IN STRIPED PAJAMAS 73

CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM: The heart weighed

278 grams. It was of normal external configuration and
examination of the myocardium, cardiac chambers, valves
and coronary arteries disclosed no gross abnormalities.
The aorta and its major branches were unremarkable. The
blood within the cardiovascular system was cyanotic.
There were numerous small soft blood clots present within
the heart.
RESPIRATORY SYSTEM: The organs of the neck
were removed enbloc and were unremarkable. There was
no obstruction of the upper airway. The hyoid bone, laryn-
geal cartilages and cervical spine were intact. The thyroid
gland was unremarkable. The lungs had a combined
weight of 610 grams. There was congestion and subcrepi-
tence of the anterior segments of both lungs. The remain-
ing segments of both lungs were well aerated and unre-
markable. The larger bronchi contained small amounts of
red-brown mucus, but were otherwise unremarkable.
GASTROINTESTINAL SYSTEM: Unremarkable
throughout. The stomach contained an estimated 100 ml.
of turbid olive-green fluid. The intestinal contents were
normal.
LIVER AND BILLARY SYSTEM: The liver weighed
1300 grams. The external surface and multiple cut sections
were unremarkable except for moderate congestion. The
gall bladder and extra hepatic bile ducts were negative.
PANCREAS, SPLEEN, AND ADRENALS: Unre-
markable.
GENITOURINARY SYSTEM: The kidneys were esti-
mated to weigh 125 grams each. The external surfaces were
smooth and the cut sections of both kidneys were unre-
markable. The ureters and urinary bladder were negative.
There was approximately 75 ml. of clear amber urine in the
bladder. The external genitalia, testes and prostate were
unremarkable.
HEAD: The scalp was incised and reflected in the
usual manner and was negative. There was no hemor-
rhage into the galea. The cranial vault was intact and was
opened with the customary saw-cuts. There was no intra-
cranial hemorrhage. The cerebral blood vessels were unre-
74 CRIME DOCTOR

markable. The brain weighed 1610 grams. It was of normal

external configuration.
Date 12-6-61
Signed: Tom Dillon, M.D.
Medical Examiner

The upshot was that Medical Examiner Dillon was

unable to determine the cause of death and signed his
report to that effect. But there was about $1,000,000 worth
of insurance involved if Doctor Fry's death was found to be
accidental. When the widow brought suit, the insurance
companies opened battery fire calling in Dr. Milton Hal-
pern, the celebrated New York City Medical Examiner
(and an old friend of Dr. Larson's); Dr. Francis Camps, the
Internationally-known Scotland Yard pathologist (another
friend of Dr. Larson's); and Dr. John T. Godwin, Professor
of Pathology at Emory University. The three were called
in ·by the insurance companies to serve as expert wit-
nesses. They had all gone over the Atlanta Medical Exam-
iner's autopsy report, and none of them had come up with
a positive cause of death. They had made sections (pre-
pared tissue to be examined under the microscope) of the
liver and the heart and given depositions that implied that
death had been caused by a ventricular fibrillation affect-
ing the nervous conduction system of the heart (medical
vernacular for a frequent cause of death in chronic alco-
holics). To substantiate this a slide showing a little fatty
infiltration of the liver, to prove that Dr. Fry was an
alcoholic, was placed in exhibit.
Backed by the depositions of the distinguished pathol-
ogists, the insurance companies' position, in summariza-
tion, read like this:
1. Dr. Fry's liver was abnormally fatty.
2. Alcoholics have fatty livers.
3. Therefore, Dr. Fry was an alcoholic.
4. Dr. Fry died.
5. Therefore, he died the death of an alcoholic.
 THE BODY IN STRIPED PAJAMAS 75

Enter Dr. Larson ...

In the spring of '62, he received a long-distance call at
Tacoma General Hospital. His secretary, Esther Short,
said, "Dr. Larson, an attorney from Atlanta, Georgia is on
the line."
Dr. Larson picked up the phone. "Yes?"
A very thick-tongued Southern drawl said: "Dr. Lah-
son, this is Mistah Hah-mon."
"Who?"
"Mistah Hah-mon. Harmon.Nolan B. Hah-mon. May
I come out and see yo-all?"
"What about?"
"If ah tell yoh, yoh won't talk to me."
He really had Dr. Larson's attention now.
"When do you want to come?"
"Ah'll fly out tonight and see yoh in the morning."
At precisely 11 a.m. the following day, Nolan B.
Harmon, attorney at law, a very fine-looking Southern
gentleman, impeccably dressed, walked into Dr. Larson's
office and took a seat in the far corner.
"Why wouldn't you tell me on the phone what you
want?" Dr. Larson began.
"It's a very long story," Mr. Harmon said. "It involves
some professional friends of yours-people I am sure you
wouldn't want to lock horns with in a court of law."
"That doesn't make any difference," Dr. Larson told
him. "I always form my own opinion-and testify on the
basis of what I believe to be the truth."
"Well, I have depositions here I want you to read."
He opened his briefcase and pulled out four deposi-
tions. The first one was from Dr. Milton Helpern; the
second, a letter from Dr. Francis Camps, of London, Eng-
land; the third, a deposition from Dr. Thomas Dillon,
Atlanta Medical Examiner; and the last, a deposition from
Dr. John T. Godwin.
Dr. Larson spent the following hour reading this
76 CRIME DOCTOR

material. When he finished, he turned to Harmon and

said, "Now!!!"
"Before you say you will not accept the case," broke in
Harmon, "please, let me give you my side of it."
Dr. Larson relaxed, sank back in his chair.
Mr. Harmon continued. "I have been informed that
you are a very competent forensic pathologist and I am
here because I believe you can come up with the correct
solution to the case after you've heard and seen all the
facts."
Whereupon Mr. Harmon elaborated in great detail all
of the known facts-as well as his personal investiga-
tion-of the strange circumstances surrounding the death
of Dr. Fry.
"I do not believe Dr. Fry was an alcoholic," Harmon
said. "I do not believe alcohol was a cause of his death. I do
not believe the marks on the body were postmortem or
pressure phenomena. I don't believe, up to now, anyone
knows the true cause of death. But whatever it was, there
must be a scientific explanation-and that this explana-
tion will probably prove accidental death."
Very briefly, that was what Mr. Harmon told Dr.
Larson, who told him to leave the material with him for
more study. They made a dinner date for that evening.
Dr. Larson gave the case a lot of thought and study.
He finally came up with a reasonable solution to the case,
based on the medical evidence, the photographs, and the
police and Mr. Harmon's investigation. All this evidence
seemed to clearly indicate that the cause of death was
postural asphyxiation. He then studied all available litera-
ture on the subject; in addition, he telephoned his son,
Charles Philip Larson, Jr. M.D., at the University of
California Medical School where he was an Associate
Professor of Anesthesiology. After the facts were pr&
sented to him, Dr. Larson, Jr. agreed with his father that
Dr. Fry probably died an asphyxia! death. He buttressed
this opinion by describing a colored motion picture he
 THE BODY IN STRIPED PAJAMAS 77

recently made in the operating room of a patient undergo-

ing haemorroidectomy (the surgical removal of piles). This
operation requires the subject to be face down.
"As the film progresses," Dr. Larson, Jr. told his dad,
"you can see the patient becoming increasingly more
cynotic (getting bluer and bluer) as his posture curtailed
his air intake. He was slowly smothering by virtue of the
position of his body. Had it not been changed, he'd have
died."
Dr. Larson, Sr. went to dinner that evening thor-
oughly convinced that his theory was, in fact, the fact.
He told Mr. Harmon, "I've decided to take the case. I
think I know why Dr. Fry died."
Mr. Harmon was very excited.
"I knew you'd come up with the right answer," he said.
"That's why I followed my hunch and flew all the way out
here from Atlanta. Mrs. Fry and her children are going to
be very happy. They really need the money. Dr. Fry did not
leave them very well off. Dr. Larson, would you be willing
to go to Atlanta to make your own investigation and
testify?"
"Under the circumstances, I feel it's my obligation,"
Dr. Larson said.
When Dr. Larson was called in on the case, approxi-
mately a year after the fact of Dr. Fry's death, he went to
Atlanta and examined the scene, as well as he could at
that late date, through photographs of the body and of the
surroundings and from reports from the initial investigat-
ing officers, J.F. Inman and L.W. Bradley.
Dr. Larson's pencilled notes, made at the time, re-
vealed the following:
"Bachelor apt., but clean, neat. Alcoholics are sloppy.
No drugs or liquor in apt. Bed clean. Peculiar position of
arms (right forearm under chest, left forearm under abdo-
men, indicating they'd doubled under as the body pitched
down). Bruise on left cheek. Bruise on left side of nose.
Tooth mark on left lower lip. Found lying on the floor, face-
78 CRIME DOCTOR

down, between bedroom and bathroom, his knees off the

rug, _his face on it."

When Dr. Larson looked at those old notes recently,

his mind flashed back 15 years-with total recall.
"All the doors of this apartment were locked from the
inside, the windows were all locked and there was posi-
tively no evidence that anybody had broken in," Dr. Lar-
son told me. "The problem was to determine why this man
died. Three eminent forensic pathologists had been unable
to come up with a positive cause of death, so I had to. I
couldn't just go into court with the negative assertion that
he was not a chronic alcoholic; therefore, alcoholism could
not be the cause of his death. You have to be precise with a
jury-factual."
Dr. Larson read the depositions of the defense pathol-
ogists. They had gone over all the work that Medical
Examiner Dr. Dillon had done in Atlanta. They had made
s'ections of the liver and the heart, and on the basis of the
sections, Dr. Milton Halpern gave a deposition that, in
effect, said that Dr. Fry died of ventricular fibrillation of
the heart, due to chronic alcoholism affecting the nervous
conduction system of the heart; this even though there was
no alcohol in Dr. Fry's blood at the time he died. To prove
his point, Dr. Halpern showed a little fatty infiltration of
the liver.
Dr. Larson had a lot of evidence that Nolan B. Har-
mon had gathered which indicated the deceased had not
been a chronic alcoholic; certainly his apartment was not
that of a chronic alcoholic. Obviously the Atlanta police
had given up on the idea of a homicide. Nobody could have
gotten in and relocked all the windows and doors from the
inside, with the bolt shot on the front door, and got outside
again.
"There was a hemorrhagic area (blood congested be-
neath the skin) on the side of the face of Dr. Fry that
bothered me slightly from the beginning-a large bruise
on his left forehead and lesions (bruises) on his knees," Dr.
 THE BODY IN STRIPED PAJAMAS 79

Larson recollected. "But these, I was certain, were impact

bruises.
"Against the healthy coffers of Equitable Life, Metro-
politan Life and Lumberman's Mutual Casualty Com-
pany-all three of which were fighting double-indemnity
liability on contention that Dr. Fry did not die accidently-
there was a cool million dollars to guarantee the future of
Dr. Fry's two small, and otherwise penniless children. And
there was my slowly growing conviction that Dr. Fry did
die accidentally."
Go back, now, with Dr. Larson.
In the sworn statement of the Medical Examiner of
Fulton County who had performed the autopsy, one item
was of particular significance. There had been 75 milli-
liters of clear amber urine in the bladder. This indicated to
Dr. Larson that Elmer Fry had gotten up from bed to go to
the bathroom.
"Now a man who knows his home premises well, does
not need a light to find his way around at night," Dr.
Larson pointed out. "Further, if he has sensitive eyes he
will not put a light on. Dr. Fry had sensitive eyes, hence his
apartment was tightly curtained to admit no light at all.
The body was found on a line between the bedroom and
the bathroom. I worked it out in my mind that Dr. Fry had
gotten up and, on his way to the bathroom, had, in the
darkness, tripped on the loose rug and, in falling, had hit
his head upon the corner of the table. This knocked him
unconscious. With his face and mouth pushed down into
the wadded-up rug, he had died of postural asphyxia
(smothering to death by virtue of the position of his body).
Postural asphyxia is known to a few pathologists, but very
little has been written on the subject-and there are only a
very few authenticated cases. But most anesthesiologists
(doctors of medicine who specialize in surgical sedation)
know about it, because whenever surgery requires a pa-
tient to be upon the table face down, the anesthesiologist
has to be alert every moment to protect the patient's
airways or he'll die on the table of postural asphyxia."
80 CRIME DOCTOR

Ask a fan what the great American sport is, and he

will probably give one of three answers: football, baseball
or basketball. In each case he would be wrong. The true
national sport is the Law, and the contest Americans love
best is the one in the courtroom, where lives are at stake
and vast sums can be won or lost on a lawyer's forward
motion.
The Dr. Fry case went to trial finally and lasted for
two weeks. Dr. Larson was permitted to sit in on all ofit, for
the plaintiff was allowed one doctor to sit in, as were the
insurance companies. They chose Dr. King, the chief medi-
cal director for Metropolitan Life.
Following the reading of Dr. Francis Camps' deposi-
tion, Dr. Halpern was called to the stand. He was one of the
best expert medical witnesses in the world. Going to court
as an expert witness takes a bit of doing. Whereas Dr.
Larson always has had a deep respect for the jury system
in America, he does confess that the ponderosity of a lot of
the procedure amuses him. But as long as he gets enjoy-
ment from it, he usually tries to give some in return. Within
the spectrum of facts, he puts on the best show he can come
up with to stimulate his ingenuity.
"You are aware, no doubt, of how opposing lawyers
snarl and growl and browbeat each other all morning in
court and then, arm in arm, go out to lunch together?" Dr.
Larson said. "Well, Milton Halpern was a close friend of
mine, and I knew his worth thoroughly and his deadliness
on the witness stand. So I pulled his cork. When he was
walking down the aisle to take the stand, Nolan Harmon,
the 'li'l ole Georgia lawyer,' as he first described himself to
me, turned to me and said, 'What shall I ask him in cross
examination? What shall I do? He's a big caliber New
York medical gun. He can snow me under.' On a quick
hunch I told Mr. Harmon not to take on an elephant. 'Ask
him instead,' I told him, 'if he's the New York Medical
Examiner. Ask him where he went to school, how his wife
is, who's the governor of his state. Ask him where he lives,
how long has he been practicing medicine-and then
 THE BODY IN STRIPED PAJAMAS 81

thank him and let him step down.' I don't know how much
of the one year of law I took at Gonzaga University has
stayed with me, and I don't actually believe that study of
the law is necessary to the practice of forensic pathology,
but I did not want Dr. Halpern to go back into the sub-
stance of his deposition and clutter up the record with a
discussion of chronic alcoholism, ventricular fibrillation
and the nervous conduction system of the heart, for a jury
can stand just so much of the technical jargon of expert
testimony in any field-and no more. Besides, Dr. Halpern
was a formidable and most convincing man on the stand,
and I wanted him out of the way."
Which is what Mr. Harmon did. The coast was clear
now for Dr. Larson to be called to the stand as the plain-
tiff's rebuttal witness. His testimony covered two full days.
It went like this:

DIRECT EXAMINATION:
Mr. Harmon: Doctor, would you state your name for
the record, please?
A: My name is Charles P. Larson. La-r-s-o-n.
Q: Where are you from?
A: Tacoma, Washington.
Q: Let me ask you this, Doctor. You have been sitting
at counsel table with us during the trial. How did you
happen to be sitting there?
A: Well, I was sitting there principally because you
asked me to sit there. I arrived here to testify and you asked
me if I would mind sitting at the table, and I did so at your
request.
Q: Other than being a witness in this case do you have
any financial interest in the outcome of the case or any-
thing like that?
A: None whatsoever.
Q: All right, sir. Let me ask you this. I want to ask you
some questions about your qualifications, Doctor. First of
all, where did you take your undergraduate education?
A: I graduated from Gonzaga University in Spokane
with a Bachelor of Arts Degree and a major in chemistry in
1931.
82 CRIME DOCTOR

Q: Where did you take your medical training?

A: I took my medical training at McGill University in
Montreal, Quebec, and I graduated in 1936 with a degree of
Doctor of Medicine and a Master of Surgery.
Q: Now, where did you take your intemship?
A: I took my intemship at the Pierce County Hospital
in Tacoma, Washington.
Q: Did you specialize in any particular branch of medi-
cine, Doctor?
A: Yes. I specialized in pathology and in forensic path-
ology.
Q: And are you certified by any boards in pathology of
the American Medical Association?
A: Yes. I am certified by the American Board of Path-
ology, in the field of Pathologic Anatomy and in the field of
Forensic Pathology.
Q: Now, what are you doing currently, Doctor?
A: Currently I am the senior partner of a group of eight
pathologists who practice in my community, and we serve
a number of hospitals. We have some private laboratories.
My particular specialty, and I spend the bulk of my time in
this, is in the field of forensic pathology, although I still do
a generous amount of general pathology and clinical path-
ology, but the bulk of my time is spent in the field of forensic
pathology.
Q: What is forensic pathology?
A: Forensic pathology deals with the application of the
same principles you really study in pathologic anatomy,
except they deal with the application of these principles to
the law and to the solution of problems of death in which
there is some question about how this individual died or
what the sequence of events was and how a person died.
The work of a medical examiner, for example, like Dr.
Halpern testified here, is the work of a forensic pathologist.
That is what a forensic pathologist is. He is a man who
conducts investigations as to why people die under un-
known, suspicious or circumstances which are not known
clearly to the physician prior to the time of death.
Q: Now, what is the College of American Pathologists,
Doctor?
A: The College of American Pathologists is the largest
 THE BODY IN STRIPED PAJAMAS 83

single organization of pathologists in the world, and it is a

scientific body of pathologists who group themselves to-
gether for scientific reasons and other reasons.
Q: Are you a member of that?
A: Yes, sir. I am a member, and I served as president
for two years.
Q: Well, Doctor, let me ask you this. Were you in service
during World War II?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: Were you in any particular theater?
A: Yes, I was in the European Theater of operations.
Q: Did you do any pathology work at the close of World
War II?
A: Well, I might say, Mr. Harmon, that all I did during
World War II was pathology, but the last several months of
the time I spent in the European Theater was-I was
engaged in investigating war crimes, and I was the chief
pathologist for the War Crimes Team for southern Ger-
many.
Q: Have you ever served in any consulting position?
A: Many of them, yes.
Q: Have you ever served the Armed Forces Institute of
Pathology in any sort of consulting capacity?
A: Yes, as a consultant in forensic pathology.
Q: Have you ever done any work with any police
departments or police department crime laboratories in a
consulting capacity?
A: Yes. This is the only salaried position which I hold
at the present time, and I have held this for many years,
and that is that I am the Consultant and Pathologic
Director of the Tacoma Police Crime Laboratory, and I still
hold this position, and I hold the rank of captain in our
police department.
Q: Have you written any papers?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: Could you give us an idea of about how many?
A: Well, I couldn't tell you exactly, butl made a bibliog-
raphy of them a few minutes ago and at that time there
were over sixty papers I had published in the American
literature.
Q: Have you written any books?
84 CRIME DOCTOR

A: I wrote a teaching manual on the subject of neuro-

pathology which I mentioned earlier.
Q: Now, Doctor, you mentioned a few minutes ago that
a great deal of your time is spent in investigating unusual
deaths. Where, in terms of geographical area, do you go in
investigating these deaths?
A: Well, I have gone pretty much all over the country,
but if you mean personally investigating the death itself, I
have personally investigated unusual deaths in most of the
western states, and this would include the states ofNevada,
Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Alaska.
Q: Now, Doctor, how do you go about investigating?
Just give us an idea of the general procedure, how do you go
about investigating an unusual death?
A: Well, I am kind of a nut on this, Mr. Harmon, and I
have written papers on this, so I feel free to talk about it. I
feel that it is a responsibility of a forensic pathologist or a
person who practices this specialty to go to the scene of
where the body is found, and that you must go there and
you must observe this body before it is disturbed or before
anything is done with the body. This is very important for
many reasons. It gives you a chance to see the exact cir-
cumstances in which the body was found. It gives the
pathologist who has peculiar knowledge about certain
things an opportunity to pick up evidence that might be
missed by police departments, and this is very often ex-
tremely important in criminal cases, pick up trace evi-
dence, minute pieces of evidence that would be missed by
police departments and even by crime laboratories and
organizations such as this.
So, Mr. Harmon, I have made it my practice now for a
number of years, and I repeat, I have written papers on this
and I feel very strongly about it, under the circumstances I
will not accept a case to investigate it unless I am called to
the scene before the body is disturbed and before the body is
moved. I have been called away as far as Alaska in which
they have sealed the house and sealed the place where the
body was found, left it undisturbed until I was able to get
an airplane to go to, say, Juneau, Alaska, and investigate
this case.
I have a very strong feeling that if you are going to do a
 THE BODY IN STRIPED PAJAMAS 85
proper forensic pathologic examination of a body in which
there are found strange or unusual circumstances, that it is
most necessary for the pathologist to be at the scene and to
see and know of his own first-hand knowledge the situation
and also be able to determine and pick up what evidence he
would see at the scene in order to solve this particular
problem. Actually, in recent years I have refused to take
cases where the body has been moved.
Q: All right, sir. Now, I want to ask you some questions
about some of the exhibits that are in the evidence. First of
all, in connection with this particular case have you had an
opportunity, first, to examine Plaintiffs' Exhibit 8?
THE COURT:
What is Plaintiffs' ~xhibit 8, the autopsy report?
MR.HARMON:
It is the autopsy report, Your Honor.
THE WITNESS:
Yes, I have examined this autopsy report in great
detail.
MR. HARMON:
Q: Well, I am going to ask you some specific
questions about it in a few minutes, but have you also
had an opportunity to examine Plaintiffs' Exhibit 9 and
Plaintiffs' Exhibit 11, this one here, and 10 and 13?
A: Yes. I have not only examined these pictures, I have
even placed these pictures under varying degrees of micro-
scopic magnification to study them.
Q: Have you examined the slides which are in evidence
as Plaintiffs' Exhibit 14?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: And have you examined these photographs, De-
fendants' Exhibits 1 and 2?
A: Yes.
Q: Now, would you come down before the jury, please,
sir, just a minute and let me ask you a question about some
of these photographs?
A: Yes. (Whereupon, the witness left the witness stand
and went down before the jury.)
MR. HARMON:
Q: Now, this is, first of all, Plaintiffs' Exhibit No. 11.
Now, let me show you that and particularly the mark on
86 CRIME DOCTOR
the left cheek of the body there, and let me ask you whether
or not you have any opinion as to what that mark is.
A: I most certainly do have an opinion as to what that
mark is, yes.
Q: And what is that opinion?
A: In my opinion this mark is a bruise.
Q: Now, Doctor, tell us-
A: May I explain why?
Q: Yes, sir, please do.
A: My reasons for this are several. You have heard, as I
have heard, in this courtroom the argument as to whether
this is a bruise or a pressure mark. I have many reasons
why I believe this is not a pressure mark. First of all, a
pressure mark would not look to me as it does in this
picture. Before I get to the other reasons why I say this is
not a pressure mark, I do want to preface my remarks to the
jury and be ultimately fair about this and say that the only
way that anybody can look at a picture like this and
determine whether or not this is a bruise or a pressure
mark, it would be pure opinion, really. There is nobody in
the world who can look at a picture like this and say, sure, it
is unequivocally a bruise or it is unequivocally a pressure
mark. The ultimate proof of what this is would have been to
have taken a little piece of tissue here, it could have been a
very thin one, a little tiny thin sliver of tissue out of there
and made a microscopic slide of it, and we wouldn't have
had all this argument as to whether this was a bruise or
whether this was a pressure mark. There would have been
no question. Had we a microcsopic section to look at under
the microscope and see whether or not there was hemor-
rhage, whether or not there were changes in the cellular
tissue underneath this, which would have distinguished
very quickly and very readily between a pressure mark and
a bruise.
Now, I have many reasons for saying this is not a
pressure mark, because I have observed many pressure
marks in people over the years, and I would say this to you,
that if this is a pressure mark, why do we not have a
pressure mark in other places on this body?
Q: You are referring now, Doctor to-
 THE BODY IN STRIPED PAJAMAS 87

A: I am referring to this pressure-this mark here on

the cheek.
Q: But you were just talking about-
A: I am talking about another picture here.You handed
me three pictures. Here I have a full-length picture of the
body, and we have the right arm underneath the body.
Now if you will feel your elbow, you have very little tissues
supporting your elbow. In other words, the bone is right
under the elbow bone, and if a man has all of his weight
lying on the weight of that elbow for a long period of time
when he was alive and he didn't move, why didn't he have
a pressure mark here? If he lay in this position with his
knees, and you can feel your knees have very little protec-
tion, certainly no more than the side of your face, and if he
is lying here with his knees on a hard floor, not even a rug,
why doesn't he have a pressure mark there?
I mean, I have observed many, many pressure marks,
but I have seen in these cases that there is not a single
pressure mark. In order to get a pressure mark, you have to
presume many other things. In other words, you have to
have many other things that have happened to this partic-
ular individual.
Now, a person who lies on the floor like this who had
good circulation, in other words, his heart is beating nor-
mally and the blood is normally flowing through his body,
he doesn't get pressure marks just from lying on a floor.
I am sure you can go to sleep on a floor like this and lie
there all night, if your heart is beating correctly, and you
are not going to get any pressure marks from that. We get
pressure marks when there is very poor circulation, the
heart isn't beating well over a long period of time. This is
what produces pressure marks. In my opinion this man
died rather suddenly. He didn't lie here for a long period of
time. And, secondly, I don't think he had poor heart action
for a long period of time. You have to have these things in
order to get a pressure mark. For that reason I contend that
although certainly from this picture nobody can say what
this is, I contend from the other reasoning I have given you
this is not a pressure mark and that this does, in fact,
represent a bruise.
88 CRIME DOCTOR
Q: All right, sir. Now, let me ask you this. In a situation
like this do you have an opinion, looking at that body there,
as to whether or not the bruise you have testified about was
caused prior to death or caused after death?
A: Yes, sir, I have an opinion about that, too.
Q: What is that opinion?
A: I have the opinion that this is definitely caused
before death. I don't know of any post mortem bruising
phenomenon that would look like this in a picture that
would occur, say, after death. In other words, if somebody
walked in and picked up his head and hit his head on the
floor after he was dead, he would cause post mortem
bruises-but I don't think they would assume this color.
Sometimes they are a little difficult to distinguish, but in
my opinion this occurred before death.
Q: Doctor, if somebody hit me in the face on the cheek-
bone hard with their fist and then, oh, let's say, a minute
later I was killed, somebody put a bullet through my heart,
could a bruise form, could discoloration form in this cheek
after I was dead, or would that be impossible, in your
judgment?
A: You have allowed a minute here. In one minute
there can be hemorrhage, there can be considerable hemor-
rhage if somebody hits you on the side of the cheek. Within
one minute you can develop considerable hemorrhage into
the tissues which, after a period of time, after a few hours
after death, the blood breaks down, whether you are alive
or dead, and this thing would become black and blue just as
it does during life, and the same cycles occur in the blood
which has already gotten out into the tissues from this
blow, whether you are dead or alive after it happens. In
other words, hemorrhages in the tissue will discolor after
death. Did I answer your question?
Q: Yes, sir.
(Whereupon, the witness returned to the witness stand.)
MR.HARMON:
Q: Doctor, I want you to assume the information con-
tained in the-take into consideration the information
contained in the coroner's report, the information con-
tained in the photographs that I have shown you, the
information contained in the slides, and all the photo-
 THE BODY IN STRIPED PAJAMAS 89
graphs, and I will ask you if you have any opinion, assum-
ing all those facts, if you have any opinion as to the cause of
the death of this person.
A: Yes, I do.
Q: What is that opinion?
A: It is my opinion that Dr. Fry suffered a traumatic
injury to his cheek, which is visible in these photographs. It
is further my opinion from the photographs and the posi-
tion of the body that this man fell, the rug is rumpled up,
the head is in a most unusual position, the arms in an
unusual position under the body, so it is my opinion that
this man fell, that either prior to falling or due to falling on
the rug he sustained an injury to his left cheek. It is further
my opinion that because of the position in which the body
was found and because of the extent of this bruise which I
think could well be sufficient to produce unconsciousness,
that this man suffered from what I would call hypoxia or
postural asphyxia, and that this, in my opinion, at least, is
the immediate cause of death in this individual.
Q:Now-
A: I haven't given you all the reasons why I think this
way.
Q: Go ahead, sir, and give us some more, if you will.
A: Well, first of all, this man U. found in a position
which is most unnatural, and in my opinion, after studying
the autopsy, I don't think that we are able to rule out the
obstruction of an airway. I wish I could sit here and tell you
that forensic pathologists could always determine whether
or not the airway is obstructed, but, unfortunately, I can't
tell you this. I don't think it is possible in all instances for a
forensic pathologist or anybody else doing an autopsy,
particularly after a body has been moved, to tell you
whether or not during life this airway was obstructed or
not. Sure, you can move the body back to the morgue and
change the position of the body and change the position of
the things as they were during life, and you might be able to
determine this.
In a circumstance like this where a man is found dead
on a floor, if you are looking for an obstructed airway and
you are going to determine for sure whether this man died
of asphyxia and he had an obstructed airway, the only
90 CRIME DOCTOR

logical method of determining this would be to bring a

piece of apparatus with you and see whether or not you get
air in or out of the lungs before you turned him over and
before you moved him and before you disturbed him. I don't
think there is any autopsy technique in the world that can
establish unequivocally beyond a doubt one way or the
other whether a person has an obstructed airway of the
type that we are talking of here. Now, remember, we are
talking about postural asphyxia which is asphyxia due to
the position of the body and the position of the throat and
the position of the tissues in the mouth and the position of
the tongue. If we could bring a ripsaw in here and go
through this man's head, I think you might be able to
determine this, but unfortunately, such is not the case. This
must be determined, in my opinion, and I am not sure it
could even be determined in these circumstances, in all
cases, how much postural asphyxia there really was for the
simple reason that when a person dies all the muscles of the
bodyrelax and they may change position then.
In other words, even the tongue muscles relax when a
person dies, and, so, consequently, the position of the
tongue, when you examine the body, may not be exactly in
the position it was in at the time this individual dies. And,
therefore, I have to accept the reading and the research and
the investigation that I have done with many of my
colleagues who are in the field of anesthesiology and who
have proven to me beyond a question of a doubt that people
get into postural situations where they are unable to breathe
because their airway is closed.
To finish my reasons, it seems to me that with the
position of the body as we see it here in these pictures, that
there is a logical assumption that there could have been
postural asphyxiation in this case. In the absence of any
other findings, and all the other things I know about the
case, it seems to me that this is the most logical cause of
death.
Q: Doctor, did you notice in the autopsy report or in
any of the facts you had any evidence of pulmonary edema
(effusion of fluid in the lungs)?
A: Well, he has no description of pulmonary edema. He
says there is some congestion of the lungs anterior, but
 THE BODY IN STRIPED PAJAMAS 91

pulmonary edema as such I didn't read anything in the

autopsy report about, no.
Q: What about the weight of the brain given in the
autopsy report?
A: Well, as I remember, the weight of the brain was
quite heavy. I will have to find that here. The brain
weighed 1610 grams. This is certainly heavier than the
usual adult brain as we see it at autopsy. I suppose this
could be within the range of the upper limits of normal for
brain weight, but actually the great majority of brains that
I examine weigh somewhere between, oh, 1200 to 1400
grams, and this is a rather heavy weight, I would say, for a
brain. Maybe he had a big head and a big brain. That is
very possible.
Q: Does it have any significance to you or not insofar
as your opinion as to the cause of death was concerned?
A: Yes. This indicates to me it is possible that this man
had some degree of cerebral edema (effusion of fluid into
the brain). I don't have any section of the brain to examine.
I haven't any basis for making that statement except for
the weight of the brain. I think I asked you to give me
sections of the brain and you didn't have any to show me.
Q: Doctor, let me ask you now about the liver. I will ask
you whether, based on the facts that you have before you,
you have any opinion as to whether or not this man's death
was caused by alcoholism?
A: Yes, I have an opinion about this, too.
Q: And what is that opinion?
A: Certainly nobody could exclude the possibility that
this man was a chronic alcoholic and had died one of these
sudden chronic alcoholic deaths, because I see them fre-
quently and I would have to agree with many of the things
Dr. Halpern has told you here this morning. I see unex-
plained deaths, and I see fatty livers in people, and to me,
also, when you first showed me the section of this liver this
possibility entered my mind that this man might be a
chronic alcoholic and that maybe he did die one of these
unexplained deaths.
I might add for the edification of the jury and also Your
Honor that there has been much discovered even within
the last three months about these sudden alcoholic deaths
92 CRIME DOCTOR

that we didn't know about even three months ago. There

was a very recent presentation in Chicago at a national
meeting of the Cardiovascular Society, a very excellent
presentation bringing out new evidence of the cause of
death in these sudden deaths of chronic alcoholics. This
paper dealt with the electron microscopic changes which
are present in heart muscle in persons who are chronic
alcoholics and who were being treated for chronic alcohol-
ism.
It has been demonstrated that in chronic alcoholics
there are actual physical changes in the muscle of the
heart, and also not only physical changes but also chemi-
cal changes. Now, this in itself may account for these
sudden deaths that I see and that Dr. Halpern testified he
sees in chronic alcoholics. Dr. Halpern told you that this is
a flag or an indicator that a man might be a chronic
alcoholic. I agree with this. I certainly thought of this when
I first saw these pictures, but, again, this liver under the
autopsy is described as a liver that weighs 1300 grams and
showed no lesions. It says it is unremarkable except for
moderate congestion.
Now, the normal weightofaliverofamanofDr.Fry's
size is approximately 1500 grams. In other words, this isn't
even a big liver. This is a small liver. If anything, it is a
couple of hundred grams smaller than the average weight
of a liver for a man of this weight and size.
Now, when you have a fatty liver, a true fatty liver that
I associate with chronic alcoholics, this liver is enlarged
and heavy. It is enlarged because you have got a lot of fat in
it. The sudden deaths that I have seen in chronic alcoholics
who have had liver changes have been in most individuals
who have had a great big liver that was just literally loaded
with fat. There are many areas in this liver that I didn't
think showed any severe degree of fatty metamorphosis or
any degree of fatty infiltration, and this is not the usual
type of liver I have associated with sudden, unexplainable
deaths in alcoholics.
Another reason why I believe it is not a death from
chronic alcoholism is that there are many, many condi-
tions and diseases and abnormalities in a human body
 THE BODY IN STRIPED PAJAMAS 93

which can give you a liver that looks like this under the
microscope besides chronic alcoholism.
To look at this and to show you some of my reasoning
behind this, I might tell you the first hundred and fifty liver
biopsies that were done in my community were done by
myself, because when we first started doing liver biopsies,
the surgeons were reluctant to do them. They were afraid
they might run into the complications of hemorrhage and
getting into bile ducts and causing the death of a patient,
and for this reason and because of my anatomic knowledge
of the liver I volunteered to do them. I wanted to do these
biopsies on living human beings. Since that time I have
examined many, many hundreds of liver biopsies which
have been done by my colleagues, and I have seen livers
like this in people who are ill from all kinds of reasons. I
could make a photograph of those, and I would defy
anybody to distinguish between those photographs and
the photographs you have here in front of you.
So, to me this is not diagnostic of the assumption that
this man was a chronic alcoholic.
Q. Doctor, let me ask you this. This condition here that
you see, these fatty globules here, is this condition perma-
nent or is it reversible, or can this condition be changed into
what appears to be a healthy liver?
A. In my opinion this is a reversible condition. In other
words, if what caused this fat to be in this liver, if the
conditions which caused it, and I really don't know what
caused this in this man, were reversed and he were put on a
proper diet, proper vitamins, and the basic cause of this
was removed, that this liver would revert to normal condi-
tion in a relatively short period of time. I have seen livers
this badly infiltrated with fat, and we have had a second
liver biopsy within a period of three days, and the liver will
be perfectly normal.
Q. You heard Dr. Godwin testify a moment ago, a little
while ago this morning that a diet deficiency could result in
a fatty liver. Do you agree or disagree with that statement?
A. I agree with it completely. As a matter of fact,
during World War II I was charged with investigating
many of the prison camps in Europe, and we had severe
94 CRIME DOCTOR

cases of dietary deficiency of all types that we investigated

in Dachau and in Landsburg, and many of the other prison
camps, and pictures of livers like this were almost routine
in these people who had severe dietary deficiencies. This
type of a picture in the liver is not due to alcohol. This is not
due to alcohol, in my opinion. This is due to other factors.
MR.HARMON:
Your witness.
MR.LOWE:
Q: Dr. Larson, as I understand it, you now devote a
considerable amount of your time to the study of problems
of how people died, is that correct?
A: Yes; I have for thirty years, sir.
Q: Yes, sir. And you have come here to Atlanta at the
suggestion of counsel for the plaintiffs in this case to be a
witness in the case, have you not?
A: That is correct. Mr. Harmon came to Tacoma and
spent a day with me going over this case,· and following
that, I studied it for some time before I agreed to appear as a
witness, sir.
Q: So, the answer to the exact question, that is, counsel
asked you to come, is yes?
A: Yes, yes.
Q: All right, sir. And you have been here since when,
last Friday?
A: No, sir. I arrived here Sunday night.
Q: Sunday night. And during the course of this trial
you have been in the courtroom continuously, have you
not?
A: Almost continuously, yes.
Q: And you have listened to the testimony given by all
of the witnesses for the plaintiffs and for the defendants,
have you not?
A: Yes, I have sir.
Q: Have you seen any other medical witness who has
testified in the case who has been sitting in the courtroom
during all of the giving of the evidence?
A: Would you explain what you mean by that, sir?
Q: Yes, sir. Have you seen any other doctor who has
 THE BODY IN STRIPED PAJAMAS 95

identified himself as such and who has testified from the

stand in thecasewhohas sat herein thecourtroom during
all of the giving of the testimony?
A: Yes, I have seen several of them; yes, Mr. Lowe, I
have.
Q: Well, Doctor, either you are not answering my ques-
tion or you don't understand it, and I prefer to assume you
don't understand it, because I am quite sure that one of us is
under a misapprehension. Let me be direct. You saw Dr.
Halpern while he was on the witness stand and heard him
testify, did you not?
A: Yes, I did.
Q: Now, Dr. Halpern was not here listening while Dr.
Godwin was testifying, was he?
A:No, sir.
Q: He was not in here listening while Dr. Dillon was
testifying, was he?
A:No, sir.
Q: He was not in here listening while Dr. Steinhaus
and Dr. Rumble were testifying, was he?
A:No, sir.
Q: And he was not in here while Dr. Adriani was
testifying, was he?
A: That's correct.
Q: All right, sir. Now, the same thing is true with Dr.
Dillon and Dr. Godwin, isn't it?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: So that you are the only doctor who has testified in
the case who has sat throughout all of the testimony and
listened to all of the testimony?
A: That is correct.
Q: You have said you prefer in all cases to go to the
scene and see the body in an undisturbed position, correct?
A: That is correct, sir.
Q: In this case, of course, you did not have that privi-
lege, did you?
A: No, I did not have that privilege.
Q: And you did not see the body at all?
A: No, I have never seen the body.
96 CRIME DOCTOR
Q: Now, the things that you have learned about the
condition of the body are things which you drew in part
from the report of Dr. Dillon, is that correct?
A: That is correct, yes.
Q: And you have outlined certain other things in your
earlier testimony that you considered and studied, have
you not?
A: That is correct.
Q: All right, sir. Doctor, you have made a comment
about the mark on the left cheek as shown in at least two of
the photographs which have been many times identified
here. Isn't it correct that ordinarily when there is a bruise
caused by a substantial blow that one of the results is a
swelling?
A: That is true. It depends on the length of time the
deceased lived as to how much swelling there will be, yes.
In other words, in an individual who died rather rapidly
there would be little time for much swelling to develop
because the circulation would have ceased.
Q: But the answer to the precise question I asked you is
yes, as you gave it?
A: Yes. I said if there was a sufficient amount of time
for the swelling to occur.
Q: I understand, yes, sir. Now, Doctor, the question as
to the effect of an outer force upon the body depends upon
how that force is applied and the quantity of that force,
doesn't it?
A: Yes, sir. Certainly those are two of the factors that
you will take into consideration, yes.
Q: Now, one of the things that happens sometimes
when a force is applied to the cheekbone of the body is that
the cheekbone may break, isn't that right?
A: This is somewhat unusual in my experience, but it
may happen.
Q: It can happen?
A: It can happen, yes.
Q: One thing which occurs when a force is applied to
the body, if the force is applied to the skull, that is, the bony
part of the skull, is that the skull may break, cause a skull
fracture, isn't that so?
 THE BODY IN STRIPED PAJAMAS 97
A: Certainly this does happen, yes.
Q: One of the things that occurs when there is a
substantial blow to the head, or at least to the upper part of
the head, is that even though there might not be a bone
fracture there may very well be findings on or in the brain
to illustrate the fact that force was applied, isn't that
correct?
A: Yes. This is one reason we do autopsies, sir.
Q: When we find that there is nothing shown in the
brain, then we are able to make a conclusion that the force
applied was not sufficient to make a showing on or in the
brain, isn't that right?
A: Would you repeat that question?
Q: Yes, sir. When we find that there is nothing shown
on or in the brain, then we are able to conclude that the
force was not sufficient to cause anything to be shown on or
in the brain?
A: I think the answer to that would be obvious, yes, sir.
Q: You understand, Doctor, I am asking you some
rather, perhaps, rather basic questions?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: While you feel that it might have been better to take
a piece of the tissue out of the marked area on the left cheek
and preserve it for microscopic study, had you been exam-
ining this body, you are not able, since you did not see the
body, to tell whether you would have determined to do that
or not, is that correct?
A: Well, my answer to that, Mr. Lowe, would be that
in all cases of this kind, even though there is a lesion on the
face where you don't wish to disfigure anyone I would have
taken a section of this. This is my routine procedure.
Q: Doctor, I am being pretty basic now, and I am being
this basic. Since you weren't there and didn't participate in
the examination of the body after death, what you are
saying to this jury is what you believe you would have
done, but since you didn't do it you don't know whether you
would have done it or not?
A: No, I would have-
Q: Isn't that right?
A: Yes, I would have to answer that yes.
98 CRIME DOCTOR
Q: What one does, in connection with a problem, de-
pends on how the problem presents itself, is this not so?
A: Well, I think this is a very fair statement, yes, sir.
Q: I will put it this way: If a person is presented with a
problem and if the person does the best he can do or feels
that he can do under the circumstances, then he has done
the best he can or feels he can do under those circum-
stances, but if later hindsight illustrates something to the
contrary, this is an unfortunate thing in life, isn't it?
A: Yes, it is, sir.
Q: We are not all perfect, are we?
A: No, we are not; above all, not me.
Q: This applies to all of us who are human, doesn't it?
Now, Doctor, you spoke of the weight of the brain reflected
in the autopsy report and you accepted that weight as
being correct, didn't you?
A: Yes. Remembered the weight at 1610 grams out of
the autopsy report.
Q: Yes. And this weight is an indication of a brain that
is somewhat heavier than normal, isn't it?
A: I think I made the statement, Mr. Lowe, that this is
heavier than the usual average brains that I have weighed
at the time of autopsy.
Q: The liver slide which you saw is a slide that does
give reasonable indication to a doctor that this person
might have been an alcoholic, correct?
A: No, I don't think that is correct, Mr. Lowe. I would
say that to those few of us who specialize in this field and
are cognizant of what alcohol can do, I think the real
specialist in this field would recognize that as an indication
that could mean this person was a chronic alcoholic, al-
though I have had a great deal of trouble selling this to my
colleagues even in pathology.
Q: Yes, sir. But it seems to have been accepted by you
and Dr. Halpern and by Dr. Godwin?
A:Oh, yes.
Q: All right, sir.
A: Yes.
Q: I believe that you referred to the phrase "dietary
deficiency," and I believe you also heard Dr. Godwin make
 THE BODY IN STRIPED PAJAMAS 99
some reference to the phrase "dietary deficiency," or some
similar phrase, correct?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: The dietary deficiency that is indicated by this sort
of liver-let me rephrase it. As to the dietary deficiency
indicated by this sort of liver, we have again a flag or a clue
to indicate that there may have been a dietary deficiency,
isn't that so?
A: Yes, Mr. Lowe. In my opinion what we see in this
liver, the primary factor, is, in my opinion, in most in-
stances, a liver like this would be due to certain dietary
deficiency and not due to the alcohol itself. I don't think the
alcohol caused this at all.
Q: The dietary deficiency is an indicator that the per-
son has not been taking in food properly and has not been
making proper use of food, isn't that right?
A: It could be either one or both.
Q: Or a combination of the two?
A: Yes.
Q: Yes, sir. And a person who has gotten into a condi-
tion of this kind can come fairly quickly to a terminal or
death condition, can he not?
A: I think I answered that this morning by saying that
in my experience the ones who are alcoholics that I have
been able to get a good history of had a liver that was much
larger than this and much more seriously infiltrated with
fat than I see in this particular liver here, but I suppose my
answer to your question would have to be yes, it could
happen in a person with a liver that looked like this. Is that
what you are asking?
Q:Yes, sir.
A: Yes, sir, my answer would be yes.
Q: Doctor, you, of course, do not know when the mark
on the left side ofthe cheek of Dr. Fry literally was made, do
you? You weren't there and didn't see it?
A: No, I do not know how it was made.
Q: All right, sir. What you would say about this, then,
is a deduction on your part, isn't it?
A: I would say it is a deduction, yes. Based on what
evidence I have available to me.
100 CRIME DOCTOR
Q: Yes, sir. And what you do is take whatever evidence
is available to you and think about it and come up with a
conclusion as to a possibility or a series of possibilites, isn't
that right?
A: That is correct.
Q: And one of the possibilities that we see here is that
the bruise might have been made when the person came to
the floor, isn't it?
A: Oh, yes. I thought of this. I put this under the
microscope, with the possibility in mind that I could see
some evidence of a cross-hatch mark in this.
Q: Which would indicate the sort of mark that you
would expect from the weave of the rug as shown in other
photographs?
A: I don't know the weave of the rug, but under the
microscope, Mr. Lowe, the front part of this wound here
does show a pattern which very well could be due to a rug. I
don't know this of my own knowledge, but it certainly could
be so.
Q: All right, sir. So that you feel that one of the reason-
able possibilities is that the pattern portion of that mark
could have come from the rug on the floor?
A: Oh, yes, I should say so.
Q: Now, Doctor, a person who suffers from convulsions
will sometimes find that his body is temporarily not subject
to complete control, isn't that right?
A: Yes. I think in a generalized convulsion you can say
that the individual has no control of his body.
Q: All right. So we start with that as a premise. Now, if
Dr. Fry had a generalized convulsion as a result of a
dietary deficiency or as a result of an alcoholic condition,
he might well have gone to the floor without any control
over his physical body, isn't that so?
A: You would certainly have to say this, yes.
Q: Yes, sir. And he could have come to rest on the floor
on his left cheek as well as on any other part of the body?
A: Oh, yes, most certainly.
Q: And he could have ended up with his arms in the
position illustrated but not completely shown by the pic-
tures, couldn't he?
 THE BODY IN STRIPED PAJAMAS 101
A: Yes. As a matter of fact, I feel from the pictures he
really didn't have consciousness when he fell, because it is
a natural thing to put your arms out, Mr. Lowe, when you
fall. This isn't invariably true, but it certainly is the natural
thing for a person to do. I have seen falls where people did
not do this, but, on the other hand, this is the ordinary
thing for a person to do.
Q: Yes, sir. So if we take the ordinary thing, so far as a
fall is concerned, then we would presume he would put his
hands in some other position?
A: I think this would be the ordinary thing to do.
Q: Yes. And then if we say that this was not ordinary
because his arms did not appear to have been put out that
way, then we have to conclude that he came down either
because he was in a seizure of a physical discomfort or
because something else had happened to him rendering
him unconscious while he was on the way down, don't we?
A: I certainly think this is a possibility, yes.
Q: And this is the most likely possibility, that is, that
he was unconscious on the way down, isn't it?
A: I think so, yes.
MR. LOWE:
"That's all, Your Honor."
REDIRECT EXAMINATION
MR.HARMON:
Q: Doctor, assume a man is knocked unconscious by a
blow. Would this blow be reflected in actual damage that
you could see on the brain?
A: Well, I would say in the great majority of the cases
where a person is knocked unconscious by a blow, that
there would not be anything a pathologist or anybody else
could see in the brain or inside the head. Take boxing
matches, for example, I have examined the brains of a
large number of boxers who have been knocked out on
many occasions, and examination of their brains after
they die will disclose absolutely nothing. I think it is a
matter of common knowledge you can be knocked out and
not have a brain hemorrhage or brain lesion that you could
discover at autopsy. The tenn that is used to describe this is
a concussion of the brain. In other words, if you get hit on
102 CRIME DOCTOR
the side of the head, it shakes the brain. The brain is in a
little fluid package inside the head in which it has a chance
to move from one side to the other.
If you get a blow to one side of the head, the brain will
move in this fluid compartment, and this will disturb the
nerve cells sufficiently so that you lose consciousness. If
you are unfortunate enough to tear a blood vessel when you
do this, then you will have a hemorrhage. But certainly
most of the people who get rendered unconscious by, say, a
blow fortunately don't have anything you can see in the
brain, or many of us wouldn't be here today.
Q: Now, did you take the fact into consideration that,
as you testified to Mr. Lowe a minute or two ago, that there
was a possibility that Dr. Fry was not fully conscious at the
time that he hit the floor, did you take that fact into
consideration with the other facts that we gave you this
morning when you reached your opinion that you did as to
the cause of his death?
A:Oh, yes.
Q: No further questions.
RECROSS-EXAMINATION
MR.LOWE:
Q: Doctor, where you have a situation where it is
contended that a blow caused unconsciousness and you
find nothing in the brain, that is, in the examination ofthe
brain after death, all you can really say is that you have
found nothing in the brain, but if there was a blow, uncon-
sciousness is one of the possibilities, isn't it?
A: Yes. I based my opinion, Mr. Lowe, as to the fact
that this man was unconscious by the fact of the way his
body was found.
Q: Well, let me suggest this to you-it may not be
sensible, but there are some marks on my head made in
various ways not material here. Isn't it possible that some
of the marks on my head which may have caused various
injuries could have been made and I not become uncon-
scious?
A: Oh, yes, yes.
Q: Now, a lot of marks, cuts and bruises made on the
head don't cause unconsciousness?
 THE BODY IN STRIPED PAJAMAS 103

A: That is correct, sir.

Q: So the fact that a mark exists does not mean that
there was any unconsciousness just because a mark is
there?
A: Not because of the mark itself, no.
Q: All right, sir. Now, if the mark is bad enough to
cause unconsciousness, we can be sure that it did within
reason do damage to the brain, can't we?
A: Not necessarily. This is a hobby of mine, Mr. Lowe.
I used to be a boxer, and I have been affiliated with the
boxing business since youth. I have seen cases of boxers,
for example, who have had rather severe intracranial
injuries who have gotten up and answered a bell and went
on fighting. So I don't think I could answer your question
"yes." My answer would have to be "no."
Q: But it is pretty good evidence, isn't it?
A: It is good evidence, yes.
Q: That is all, Doctor.

It was about all, at that-except for a wire Dr. Larson

received a few hours after he returned to Tacoma. "DR.
CHARLES P. LARSON, TACOMA GENERAL HOSPI-
TAL, TACOMA, WASHINGTON: WE WON, THANKS
TO YOUR GOOD EFFORTS, LETTER FOLLOWS ...
HARMON."
It wasn't necessary to add that with the victory went
$1,000,000 to the Fry family, but in subsequent appeals
this figure was reduced somewhat.
Oh Lordy, how sweet it was. It called for a celebration,
and that night Dr. Larson celebrated like it was the first
day of the world.
Alcoholics, Inc.

THE writer sipped his tea and listened.

"Alcohol affects all five senses of the human body,"
said the doctor, wiping his mouth with the napkin. "Do
you know what they are?"
"Let's see," the writer said. "There's vision, hearing,
taste, and touch. What's the fifth?"
"Olfactory-the sense of smell," replied the doctor.
"Smell?"
"Yes. Booze depresses it. Get a person drunk enough
and he may not even detect the passing of gas."
"You mean," the writer asked, putting it crudely, "ifl
fart, he won't even smell it?"
"Exactly," the doctor said. "The principal effect of
alcohol on our bodies is on the nerve cells. It always
produces a neurological depression which is probably due
to an interference of oxidation within nerve cells. The
degree of depression is not linear, since twice as much
alcohol does not produce twice as much neurological de-
pression but an exponential increase which is much more
than double the effect."
104
 ALCOHOLICS, INC. 105

"On the other hand, alcohol serves as a social stimu-

lant."
"Yes," the doctor said. "It takes a variety of forms and
varies to a degree which bears no constant relation to the
amount of drink a person consumes. Reactions vary from
hysterical gaiety to 'crying in your beer.' Some people
begin to swing from the chandeliers after only a few
drinks, while others steadily and calmly go at it drink after
drink with little outward effect until they fall flat on their
face."
"Why the difference?" the writer wanted to know.
"A number of factors are involved," the doctor said.
"Environment, mental attitude, personality-they all play
a role in determining how a person reacts to liquor. The
apparent stimulation ofindividuals under the influence of
alcohol is due to a release of the higher brain centers,
leading to euphoria and spontaneity.''
"Does liquor affect a man's resistance to hypoxia?"
the writer asked.
"What do you know about hypoxia?"
"I looked it up."
"And?"
"It means a deficiency of oxygen reaching the tissues
of the body."
"To answer your question, then; yes, alcohol signifi-
cantly reduces a person's resistance to the effects of hy-
poxia. This makes liquor hazardous to mountain climbers,
aviators and anyone who has a cardiac or pulmonary
condition with borderline hypoxia."
"What about the other four senses? Vision, for ex-
ample?"
"Tests have demonstrated that with increasing a-
mounts of alcohol, the acuity progressively diminishes to
the point where vision is obscured to a level comparable to
wearing dark sunglasses at night. Driving a car with 150
mg of blood alcohol might be compared to a person wear-
ing dark sunglasses at night with a pair of binoculars
strapped in front of the eyes. At higher levels, somewhere
106 CRIME DOCTOR

between 100 to 200 mg, ocular coordination is objectively

impaired and diplopia appears."
"Diplopia?"
"Double vision. The driver sees two, four or eight lines
in the center lane instead of the normal single line. The
driver may close one eye so that he can keep the single line
on the road in focus. His vision may then be compared to
that of a man wearing sunglasses at night having a
telescope strapped over the open eye."
"I've heard it said," the writer remarked, "that too
much booze dims an individual's hearing. True?"
The doctor nodded.
"Yes," he said. "To prove this, you only need to ob-
serve the loudness of conversation as a cocktail party
progresses. After most of the guests have had three or four
drinks, someone arriving late, cold sober, would compare
the sound to that of the loud buzzing of a beehive. People
tend to talk louder as the party and the alcohol level
increases. This also explains why so many people fail to
hear the sound of horns or train whistles when drunk."
"How does liquor affect the sense of touch?"
"The drunker one gets, the more it diminishes. This is
probably the origin of the old saying, 'He is in no pain.'
There's a diminished sensation to pain not unlike that
from other anesthetics. This accounts for the frequent
cigarette bums on the hands of chronic alcoholics."
"Does alcohol have much the same effect on taste?"
"Very much so. The sense of taste lessens in accor-
dance to how much you drink. In a pleasant state of
inebriation all food tastes good. This is probably the
reason why cocktails are always served at parties prior to
the meal. We have all attended perfectly 'dry' banquets in
which, although the food was excellently prepared, it did
not please all the guests. I'm sure if alcohol had been
served before the meal, there'd have been no complaints
even if the quality of the food was poor. I have personally
seen people who will drink only one kind of whiskey, but
 ALCOHOLICS, ING. 107
after a drink or two it is possible to switch brands on them
without so much as a peep."

About 30 years ago, Dr. Larson became involved in a

study on alcoholism. Today he is an internationally recog-
nized authority on the subject. He has served on The
Committee of Alcohol and Drugs of the National Safety
Council for three decades. He has written numerous pa-
pers on alcoholism, including a popular chapter ("Alcohol:
Fact and Fallacy") in a medical-legal book (Legal Medi-
cine Annual 1969, edited by Cyril H. Wecht, Appleton-
Century-Crofts, New York) which is still selling after nine
years. Dr. Larson has also lectured extensively from coast
to coast on alcoholism.
To put it bluntly, we are at war on the home front
against the disease. The police are the front line, and over
the years, Dr. Larson has been right up there with them.

Dr. Larson
Approximately 55,000 people are killed in the United
States each year by automobile accidents; 1,700,000 are
injured. This represents billions of dollars a year expense.
Much of the problem is due to alcohol.
Recent surveys indicate that in over 50 percent of the
.one-car fatalities, the driver of the automobile had been
drinking. In over 75 percent of the cases where there is a
two-car accident which is fatal, one or the other of the
drivers was drunk. My own statistics indicate that in over
60 percent of all fatal pedestrian accidents either the driver
of the car or the pedestrian was intoxicated. More recently,
the incidence of the use of alcohol in private airplane pilots
involved in accidents has been alarmingly high, even up to
75 percent.
The National Safety Council has estimated that an
individual with a blood alcohol level of 150 mg is 55 times
as likely to become involved in an accident, and that at 100
mg he is 15 times as likely compared to a sober driver.
Sociological studies indicate that a large group of the so-
108 CRIME DOCTOR

called drunken drivers are comprised of those who are

chronic alcoholics.
It is a common fallacy that drinking coffee will sober
up a person. Only time will produce a sobering effect.
Stressful incidents, such as accidents, arrest by an officer
or emotional shock, may lead to temporary improvement of
the objective signs of drunkenness, but even under these
conditions the average person will revert to the same
degree or objective impairment in a matter of minutes.
Judgment is one of the first mental functions affected
by alcohol. This blunting of judgment is often the factor
which leads to automobile accidents, poor business deci-
sions, gambling losses, fights and injuries.
The faculty of attention deteriorates rapidly with the
use of alcohol. This is undoubtedly one of the principal
reasons why individuals even with low levels of alcohol
end up as traffic victims.
Ability to learn is blunted by the use of alcohol. This is
attested to by such common knowledge as the inability to
recall anything about what a lecturer said after a dinner
preceded by cocktails except that it was a "fine speech."
Recall memory is often markedly disturbed by relatively
small amounts of alcohol in which individuals cannot
accurately recall certain situations or even names of people
whom they have known for years.
Motor skills are also retarded. It has been proven times
without number that the reaction time of individuals be-
comes impaired at relatively low levels of blood alcohol. It
is common knowledge that skill in the performance of
various athletic activities and games involving precision
deteriorates with increasing amounts of blood alcohol.
Expert golfers, bowlers, horseshoe pitchers or dartsmen
can readily attest to the deterioration of their skills when
they drink too much.
Alcohol also affects the emotions. It has been called
the great leveler and in a sense acts as a tranquilizer for
many people.
It is generally believed that moral standards are
blunted and lowered by the use of alcohol. Liquor can
quickly seduce and expand our egos. Impulse becomes
master as restraint blows out, and all barriers-legal,
 ALCOHOLICS, INC. 109
moral and social-melt away. Alcohol partially narcotizes
the nerve centers, leading to the propensity to distort
reality, producing an irresistible sexual image of ourselves.
We are full of ideas, a good many of them carnal, and it is a
waste of time trying to convince anyone at such moments
that liquor is not a true aphrodisiac. This leads to the bar-
and-brothel combination, sex offenses, illegitimacy and
lessened ability of the intoxicated to take proper prophylac-
tic and contraceptive precautions. Fundamentally, how-
ever, the point to keep in mind is the similarity between
drinking as such, and sexual activity as such. Alcohol
increases the desire for sex but markedly impairs the
performance; prolonged intercourse without ejaculation is
often the result. Alcohol unabashes action, drowns the
conscience and murders fastidiousness. Enough booze can
make you see a whore as a Mona Lisa Sample:
Maisie was a London whore on Piccadilly Square. She
picked up a drunk and took him to her bedroom where he
died during the act. Appearing in court the next morning,
the judge asked her: "Maisie, please tell the court exactly
what happened."
"Well, your Honor," she said, "I thought he was a-
comin', but he really was a-goin."'

Alcoholism has been called the No. 1 public health

enemy. It has been estimated that there are some 6.5
million male alcoholics in the U.S. Indirectly this disease
affects 25 to 30 million other people. Many deaths and
diseases are directly attributable to liquor. It is the most
common poison known to man.
One of the most dramatic deaths not infrequently
witnessed by forensic pathologists is that of the youngster
·who on a dare drinks a large amount (6 to 10 ounces) of
whiskey on an empty stomach and dies as a result of a
high temporary blood alcohol level. Various studies indi-
cate that from 25 to 50 percent of all suicides involve
individuals under the influence of alcohol. For homicide
the rate is between 50 and 60 percent. There are thousands
of statistics relating alcohol to crime. Anyone performing
medico-legal autopsies is familiar with the high incidence
110 CRIME DOCTOR
of intoxication in both the victim and the murderer. It has
been estimated that between 50 and 70 percent of all
felons, including those engaged in burglary, armed rob-
bery, theft, forgery, shoplifting, etc., have a high incidence
rate of intoxication or alcohol imbibition prior to commit-
ting the crime.
One of the most common causes of death in alcoholics
is an undiagnosed and untreated pneumonia. Alcohol in
the tracheobronchial tree is a well-proven irritant. This
can be the direct cause of the undiagnosed pneumonia in
the alcoholic.
"Traumatic deaths are extremely common in alcohol-
ics," Dr. Larson states. "Cerebral trauma with its compli-
cations is the commonest cause of death in alcoholics. I
have frequently observed a ruptured spleen with massive
intra-abdominal hemorrhage as the cause of death in an
alcoholic which resulted from abdominal trauma which
the deceased disregarded. Fights involving a customer
and a bartender frequently result in fatal trauma to the
alcoholic.
"Approximately 30 percent of all individuals dying
from accidental burns have either been drunk or were
burned because someone else was drunk. Booze and car-
bon monoxide do not mix. It is my opinion that an
individual who has had too much to drink will die at a
much lower carbon monoxide concentration than will a
sober person. This is probably due to the hypoxic effect of
the alcohol added to the hypoxic effect of the carbon
monoxide. This is often seen in lover's lane or motel deaths
when the intoxicated person will be found dead from
carbon monoxide and alcohol, whereas the sober individ-
ual will survive."
A high percentage of exposure deaths (in some sur-
veys, up to 65 percent) are associated with drinking. All
drowning victims should have a blood alcohol determina-
tion, because in a high percentage of cases the alcohol level
will be moderately or severely elevated. The same is true in
scuba diving deaths.
 ALCOHOLICS, ING. 111

Both malnutrition and obesity are frequently associ-

ated with chronic alcoholism. Severe fatty infiltration of
the heart has been observed in alcoholics.
Many studies have been made on the rate of metabo-
lism of alcohol in the human body. These studies indicate
that humans metabolize alcohol at a rate varying between
12 and 20 mg per 100 ml of blood per hour. The average is
probably in the neighborhood of 15 to 17 mg per hour in a
normal person. This means that the average drinker will
burn up approximately one ounce of absolute alcohol every
three hours. For purposes of rough calculation, it is easier
to visualize that the average individual will burn one
ounce of 85 proof bar whiskey or one 12-ounce bottle of beer
per hour. The average person can only consume and
metabolize about one fifth (26 ounces) of whiskey per day.
There are exceptional individuals who can metabolize
alcohol faster. On the other hand, many chronic alcoholics
develop liver damage and consequently their rate of alco-
hol metabolism is markedly depressed so that a few
ordinary drinks will keep them drunk for hours.
"In most people, it is generally believed that just a few
drinks will bring the blood alcohol level up to 100 mg. Such
is not the case.Years ago, prior to our present knowledge of
how many drinks are required to reach the 100 mg blood
level, my own attorney and I conducted a series of personal
experiments on ourselves,'' Dr. Larson recalls. "Once a
week for several weeks we would meet in my office after
work, divide and consume a pint (16 ounces) of 86-proof
bourbon on an empty stomach in a period of less than an
hour. A standby medical technologist drew our blood at
stipulated intervals. At no time did either of us reach the
100 mg level, although on occasion one or the other of us
would have levels in the 90s. We both agreed that neither of
us was physically nor psychologically capable of safely
driving an automobile. We also discovered that loading
our stomachs with carbohydrates prior to drinking and by
using straight whiskey instead of diluted whiskey, we
could consume approximately twice as much with half the
112 CRIME DOCTOR

effect. So if I were to advise someone how to drink another

man 'under the table,' I would tell him to load up on food,
particularly proteins and carbohydrates, drink nothing
but straight whiskey, indulge only in serious conversa-
tions and control his emotions. Under these circumstances
he could consume an inordinate amount of whiskey and
still be relatively in command of his faculties and on his
feet. However, eventually the alcohol would become di-
luted and absorbed, and the piper would be paid."
There is much dispute in the medical literature regard-
ing the relationship between alcohol and cancer. Some
reports have indicated an increased incidence of mouth,
esophageal and liver cancer in chronic alcoholics. Statis-
tically it is difficult to prove this association because most
chronic alcoholics do not live much beyond the age of 50
and, consequently, have not reached the cancer age. Due to
the premature deaths of most alcoholics, it is impossible to
obtain valid statistics on the incidence of arteriosclerosis,
stroke and many other geriatric diseases in chronic alco-
holics. In the past alcohol has been prescribed by some
physicians to prevent heart disease. There is no valid
evidence that alcohol prevents arteriosclerosis. Certainly
alcohol diminishes the coronary flow and increases the
load on the heart.
Alcoholism is in itself a form of chronic suicide. Some
individuals can actually commit suicide by excessive
alcohol ingestion per se, provided they do not develop
pylorospasm and vomit.
It's a hell of a way to go.
 The Bird That
Killed Like a Hawk

I was a reporter, a John-of-all-trades, for the old

Tacoma Times at the time. I had come to the city's No. 2
newspaper in 1947 under the sponsorship of Elliot Metcalf
to do sports. I did them-but not on Thursdays. Because
we had a very small staff, on the fourth day of the week I
was "loaned" to the city editor, Paul Busselle, to be
available for handyman service.
On October 30, 1947, I was working obituaries. That
is, I'd call up the various mortuaries around town, find out
who'd died in the last 24 hours and then say something
nice about the departed for the afternoon editions. I hated
dead Thursdays. It was not exactly the most inspiring
journalism for a 23-year-old with uncorked vigor. It gave
me the creeps.
Paul Busselle was a modest city editor, respected for
his professionalism and admired for his fairness. At the
same time he was a taskmaster and demanded absolute
perfection. Upon his round, austere face stood an ample
nose, like a blob of putty and a weather vane of his moods.
Its chief attribute was its ability to change expression. A
113
114 CRIME DOCTOR

well-written story found his nostrils dilated, as if smelling

flowers. A poor job ofreporting brought severe lines to his
face, like a fallen frown.
Late that morning, Busselle got the news. There had
been a sensational double murder up on South J Street and
the Tacoma News Tribune had it splashed all over the
front page:

NEGRO CAUGHT OUTSIDE HOME BY POLICE

A mother and her 17-year-old daughter were dead, two
policemen were wounded and a 45-year-old Negro was in
jail facing murder charges this Thursday morning after a
night of horror whose pattern of attempted rape and
bludgeoning police officers spent the night attempting to
piece together.
The dead are Mrs. Bertha Kludt, 52, a widow, and Miss
Beverly June Kludt, beautiful brunette graduate of Lincoln
High School, class of 1947.
Officers Andres P. Sabutis and Evan Davies were
knifed in the capture of burly Jake Bird, transient who is
said to have admitted the slayings ...

Bussell's face turned a million shades of red when he

saw the Trib story. We'd been completely scooped. Our first
edition carried no mention of the murders.
"All right," Paul snapped. "We still have the late
afternoon edition. You-McCallum; you-Herbert. Get
down to the police station and see if there's anything new
on the story."
Frank Herbert was the paper's photographer-reporter;
a crackerjack staff man. He is the same Frank Herbert
who, today, is one of the world's leading science-fiction
novelists (Dune, with 10 million sales world-wide, The
Dosadi Experiment, etc.). He grabbed his camera and,
together, we bolted down the stairs and out the door.
Outside, the rain beat with the persistence of an
unpaid madam. A small wind carried random snorts of
pellets, puddling the streets. The rain made a gutter of my
hatbrim. It trickled inside the collar of my raincoat as we
 THE BIRD THAT KILLED LIKE A HAWK 115

raced for the station house, two blocks down llth Street
hill and several more blocks north on Pacific. I swore at the
weather as we sloshed past the newsstand on Broadway
and heard the newsboy hawking the Trib: "EXTRA!
EXTRA! MURDER CHARGES FILED IN DOUBLE
SLAYINGS. READ ALL ABOUT IT. GET YOUR PA-
PER." Damn that Bill Dugovich. Bill covered the police
beat for the News Tribune like a jealous bulldog. He was a
great reporter-very competitive. In those days the Times
and the News Tribune had a hot rivalry going.
At the jailhouse Jake Bird was under tight security.
When Frank sought permission to take some pictures of
him, he was told no. "No one goes near the prisoner," an
officer said. "He's too dangerous, we don't want you gettin'
hurt."
Frank was persistent, however, and he finally talked
one of the officers into giving him five minutes outside
Bird's cell. He'd take the pictures, he said, through the
bars.
Inside security, Frank was ushered along to Bird's
isolation cell. Through the bars was revealed a black, bald
fellow, six-feet, 185 pounds, who looked like he'd just come
out of a street brawl with the devil himself. There was a
hole in the top of his nose, the skin around his eyes and
cheeks was puffed up like he'd just tangled with a nest of
hornets, and his clothes were splattered with dry blood
stains. He was a mess. He lay like a dissected frog on the
iron bed.
Frank remembers asking Bird, "Do you mind if I take
a couple of pictures? I'm from the Times."
Bird lifted himself to his feet, sucked in his breath,
blinked-and posed. When he smiled, there was a big gap
in his broken front teeth.
"I feel like a beaten elephant after the kill," Bird said.
"What did you do to deserve this?" Frank wanted to
know.
"I did nothing," Bird said. "They got the wrong fel-
low." It was to become one of Jake Bird's favorite lines.
116 CRIME DOCTOR

Meanwhile, I went after Patrolman Skip Davies, one of

the two officers who nailed Bird. He was a mountain of a
man with a man's-man figure; six-feet-three; 250 pounds.
A regular big buster of a fellow-wrestler's muscles, broad
shoulders and a thin, black mustache on a long-jawed,
confident face. Yes, he said, he was one of the arresting
officers. Calmly, he recounted the details.
"Officer Tiny Sabutis and I had been sitting in our
patrol wagon in front of Smitty's Drive-In, down on Puyal-
lup Avenue, listening to the police dispatcher. The radio
never let up. With all ears we listened. Suddenly: 'There's a
woman screaming in the neighborhood of the 2000 block
on South J Street!' I said to Tiny, 'That's us!' and he rolled
the car. We were approximately 20 blocks away and, floor-
boarding it, were there within five minutes. We pulled up in
front of 2018 South J Street, where a Mrs. Steinsiefer was
waiting for us. She said she had heard screaming. It came,
she said, from the house around the comer. Tiny went to
the back door and I went to the front. I no sooner hit the
front porch when Tiny shouted, 'Skip, watch out. There's a
man running around the side of the house-and he's got
something in his hand!'"
Neither Davies nor Sabutis yet knew, of course, what
the story was inside the house, and as the fleeing man
swept past him on the dead run, Davies, a former football
tackle, took off after him. He chased him for a block and a
half over backyard fences. Whatever the suspect was
carrying in his hand, he lost it while vaulting the first
fence he came to.
Finally, at 2122 South J, Officer Davies cornered him.
It was a very black night, drizzling, and 2:20 a.m. Davies
pulled his revolver. The suspect was hidden behind bushes
in the backyard.
"Show yourself or I'll shoot," Davies commanded. Sud-
denly, from out of the dark, the man rushed Officer Davies.
Davies turned and swung his pistol, smashing the suspect
flush on the face. Fiercely-instinctively-the attacker
fought back like a madman. He was screaming curses at
 THE BIRD THAT KILLED LIKE A HAWK 117

the top of his lungs and giving way to personal animosity,

to hysteria-to all those animal reactions that are demon-
strated in hand-to-hand combat. The man had a knife now
and slashed at Davies with it, cutting him on the hand.
While in this desperate squeeze, Davies shouted for Sa-
butis and then clubbed the man to the ground with his
pistol. The man had the strength of a bucking horse. When
Sabutis arrived and leaned over him to put the handcuffs
on him, the wielder cut him up the back, leaving a five-inch
gash. The sight of all that blood infuriated Officer Davies.
Avoiding a kick aimed at his groin, he socked back once,
twice, three times with firmly planted punches. The sus-
pect's face bled like a cut tomato under the impact of
Officer Davies' 250 hysterical pounds. When it was all
over, the suspect lay on the ground, panting.
Dumbly, Officer Davies looked down at the man at his
feet. There was blood oozing slowly down the scalp and
nose and dripping from his chin in bright drops. In a
spasm of blind hatred, Davies yelled at him, "You dirty
sonofabitch! Try to kill me, will you! Nobody can pull that
stuff on me!"
Eight hours later, his hands were still shaking.
All three men required attention at the hospital. The
police officers were treated at St. Joseph's, the suspect at
the County Hospital. The five-inch gash in Sabutis' back
kept him in the hospital for several days, but his partner,
Davies, with no more damage than a bandaged hand, felt
healthy enough to go with Officer Paul Gookins back to
the death scene.
Officer Skip Davies:
Because it was still dark, we got some high-powered
lights and backtracked the course in which Sabutis and I
had chased the suspect. In the rear of 1010 South 21st
Street, we found both his shoes, which of all things, he'd
been carrying while I chased him. We also found an iron
sashweight in the backyard of 2112 South J. As that was
the course he took, he possibly had the sashweight in his
118 CRIME DOCTOR
possession, so we took that in evidence too. Then we went
into the house-for the first time-and found the victims:
Beverly Kludt, 22, and Bertha Kludt, 52, her mother. Their
neighbors thought very highly of them. They were well-
liked. Beverly's body was lying on the floor in a small
dining nook between the kitchen and the passage to the
bedrooms. Her mother was lying in one of the bedrooms.
Both had been beaten with the blunt nose and cut with the
blade of an axe. Both were dead, clothed in disarranged
nightgowns; there were signs of a fierce struggle around
both women. Blood was spattered everywhere. Officer
Gookins and I then put in a call to homicide and remained
at the scene, to secure it against unauthorized persons, and
until photographs had been taken, diagrams made and the
bodies removed.

The suspect had put up such resistance that he had to

be forcibly subdued, both by Patrolman Davies and by
authorities at the County Hospital. AB frantic resistance
can be an indication of guilt, the Tacoma Police started a
"make" on the suspect-now identified as Jake Bird,
Black, Male-and before the night was out answers and
queries began to come in on him.
Before the flood crested, the implications of Jake
Bird's involvement in similar crimes previous to the kill-
ings of the two Kludt women built up as follows:
The Houston, Texas, Police Department wanted him
questioned in respect to the murder of Mrs. Harry L.
Richardson. The Chicago Police Department was inter-
ested in a weighted body dumped into Lake Michigan
about five miles south of Kenosha. The Los Angeles Police
Department asked for clarification of a murder of a "Jew-
ish grocer" on General Avenue and of a young colored by
by the name of "Lively." The New York City Police Depart-
ment had a delicatessen robbery and the murder of the
owner that pointed to Bird.
 CR IME DOCTOR 11 9
Dr. Charles Larson was a colonel in the U.S. Army Medical Corps in
Germany during WW II. The Mercedes-Benz was "traded" (under orders
from the commanding general of the 7th Army) for a red Mercedes
convertible. The 16-cylinder special, one of only three cars built, was a gift
from a grateful German to Col. Larson for attending a daughter. The
general later killed himself when the car ran off a winding mountain
highway.

As the only forensic pathologist on duty in the southern German

!heater, Col. Larson entered Dachau only hours after it was liberated to
find stacks of bodies. This photo taken by Dr. Larson displayed the
horrendous scenes at the death camp. Dr. Larson performed more than a
thousand autopsies at Dachau.
120 CR IME DOCT OR
Major General Freeman pinned the U.S. Army Medal of Commenda-
tion on Col. Charles Larson in 1965.

In 1964 Col. Larson turned over his command of the 359th Reserve
General Hospital lo LI. Col. Clinton A. Piper.
 C RIME DOCTOR 121
"Crime Doctor" insisted on examining a body at the scene of the
crime before any evidence has been disturbed. In 1948 he investigated a
rape-murder in the woods near Olympia, Washington.

Dr. Larson operated

his own independent crime
laboratory in the Tacoma
General Hospital, Tacoma,
Washington. He is now
retired.

J
122 CR IME DOCTOR

As president of the National Boxing Association (1961-62) , Dr.

Larson maintained a continuing interest in boxing that began when he
was a student at Gonzaga and was knocked out in his first professional
fight. Here he is shown with Floyd Patterson and his manager, Cus
D'Amato.
 C RI ME DOCT O R 123

The "Crime Doctor's" laboratory at Tacoma General Hospital was

visited in 1958 by Charles Zittel , former Tacoma Chief of Police (center)
and Dr. Francis Camps, Chief Pathologist, Scotland Yard , London , Eng-
land. The exhibits are part of the Tacoma Police Crime Laboratory
Museum.

Dr. Larson leaving his

office in 1976 sporting his
twin trademarks-a neatly
shaped handlebar mus-
tache and a thin bow-tie .
124 CRIME DOCTOR
Lt. Margaret Kobervig
was a nurse at Camp Car-
son, Colorado, when she
and the then Major Larson
first met. After the war they
were married, and he es-
tablished his famous crime
lab in Tacoma, Washing-
ton.

Family portrait in 1969: Four sons from left to right are Paul , C. Philip,
Charles Palmer, and Larry. Seated are three daughters, Elizabeth at the
left, Lillian and Christine at the right flanking Margaret and Dr. Charles
Larson.
 CRIME DOCTOR 125

Practically at Tacoma's back door is some of the best salmon fishing

in the world. Ken Ollar, a long-time fishing buddy, and Dr. Larson display
their catch of salmon at Neah Bay, Washington . Dr. Larson maintains his
commercial fishing license.
126 C RI M E DOCT OR
In 1955 Dr. Larson won the fishing derby at the annual convention of
the two large national societies of pathology in Miami, Florida. The prize
sailfish weighed 92 pounds. His fishing partner is unidentified.

On a fishing trip with his son , C. Philip Larson , Jr., they caught a 48-
pound king salmon-plus a few other prizes.
~
 THE BIRD THAT KILLED LIKE A HAWK 127

There was indication of the involvement of Jake Bird

in murders in Louisville, Kentucky; Omaha, Nebraska;
Portage, Wisconsin; Orlando, Florida; Cleveland, Ohio;
Evanston, .Illinois; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Kansas
City, Kansas-eleven possible killings all around the
United States before the murders of the two Kludt women
in Tacoma.
At 7 a.m., five hours after the bodies of the two women
had been found, Dr. Charles P. Larson had been retained
and was at the scene of the crime.
From Larson's notes made at the time:
The mother had been hit so hard upon the head that
the skull had fractured and the dura mater (a sack of
membrane which encloses the brain in a cushion of liquid)
had been ruptured, so that brain tissue had exuded and
was in evidence on the floor and in the matted hair of the
victim. The head of a human is like a balloon or a rubber
ball filled with putty; you hit it and the putty doesn't com-
press so it's got to squirt out. Brain tissue is about the
consistency of soft putty; if you produce a large depressed
fracture in the skull, breaking the membrane or dura
mater, then the brain tissue squirts out. I have seen cases in
an automobile accident where a man's skull was fractured
and brain tissue had squirted 30 feet. I once prepared a
demonstration to dramatize this fact to a group of students.
I filled a plastic ball with cooked oatmeal, cemented the two
halves together to seal the oatmeal in, chilled the ball to
make it brittle and then broke into it with the blow of a
hammer. After my audience got the oatmeal out of their
eyes, ears and hair, they seemed convinced.

Dr. Larson high-tailed it from the murder scene to the

County Hospital where Jake Bird was being held in the
prison ward and asked for access to his clothing. There
were smears on his trouser legs resembling brain tissue
and blood on the cuffs that could be human.
At this point in the investigation, Dr. Larson con-
128 CRIME DOCTOR

fessed that he was getting as keyed up as a prizefighter

before a title match. The Tacoma Police had Jake Bird
positioned in the general area in which the Kludt murders
had been committed-but not actually at the scene of the
crimes. He had resisted arrest violently enough to have
been beaten into submission by the arresting and custo-
dial officers to a point of hospitalization, a sometimes
indication of guilt. Eleven police departments around the
country were slowly weaving a web of his implication in 11
other murders. But every bit of it so far was purely circum-
stantial. None of it was evidence and in the face of that
cold fact, there Dr. Larson stood with Jake Bird's filthy
pants in his hands.
"It's possible· to take material from textiles, make
sections of it and see brain cells," Dr. Larson explained.
"That doesn't prove that they're human brain cells; you
have to do a special test for that, using immune serum. By
what's called a precipitin test, you can determine whether
your specimens contain human substance or not. If they
do, then you can say it's human brain tissue."
Dr. Larson took Jake's pants to his laboratory, made
the necessary sections of the stains on the left leg and put
them under the microscope.
"Now, brain tissue, under the microscope, has a very
characteristic appearance," Dr. Larson said. "No other
tissue in the body looks quite like brain tissue. So when you
make microscopic sections and study this material, there
can be just no question in the mind of a competent man
that he's got nerve cells present and that it is brain tissue.
It could be brain tissue from an animal, mark you, such as
a dog or a cat, but it would be no problem identifying it as
brain tissue. But in this case my precipitin test was posi-
tive, and this indicated that what I had was human brain
tissue, or at least tissue from a primate of the same general
species, of which the gorilla is one."
No doubt about it, the stains on the cuffs of Jake Bird's
trousers were dried human blood.
 THE BIRD THAT KILLED LIKE A HAWK 129

Dr. Larson made a Code Three police car run to the

morgue and typed the blood from the bodies of Mrs. Kludt
and her daughter. Some of the stains on the trouser cuffs
were made by the same type of blood as Mrs. Kludt's, and
some by the same type as daughter Beverly. In short,
before the Kludt murders were 15 hours old, Dr. Larson
had enough breaks to pull Jake Bird in out of the cold
general area and put him squarely down at the red hot
scene of the crimes. There is an exhilaration to the success-
ful working out into incontrovertible fact of a hunch like
that. It is comparable to the clout of a double straight
bourbon when your ship is safely on the hook and snugly
coiled down after a hard day's sail. That-is Dr. Larson's
life.
The arresting officers had placed Jake Bird in the area
of the scene of the crime. Dr. Larson had now placed him
close enough to the crime-to be splashed, by two types of
blood, one the type of one dead woman's blood and the
second the type of the other's-and by brain tissue.
Dr. Larson readily admitted that there is no known
way of identifying the previous owner of brain tissue.
Nevertheless, from the head of one of the dead women
brain tissue had exuded, and that is as tight an argument
as a forensic pathologist can hope to come up with.No one
except a pathologist could legitimately have human brain
tissue on his pants. "And a sloppy one, at that!" Dr. Larson
said.
But it was not tight enough, apparently, for the de-
fense attorney at the subsequent trial. In cross examina-
tion he asked Dr. Larson if it was not possible for the brain
tissue he had sectioned from Jake Bird's pants to be brain
tissue from a gorilla. Apparently the defense attorney had
read up on the subject for there is as yet no antiserum that
will define human brain tissue from gorilla brain tissue.
Dr. Larson said, "Yes," and gave the defense attorney
a long theatrical pause and then said, "But as far as we
know, there were no reports of a gorilla running loose in
130 CRIME DOCTOR

the vicinity of 21st and J Streets at 2:30 in the morning of

the night in question-at least, no gorilla who was carry-
ing his shoes in his hand."
Dr. Larson was satisfied that they had their suspect
lashed to the mast, especially when his "make" began to
connect him with similar crimes around the U.S., but Dr.
Larson was short on experience with this sort of criminal,
so he made a study in depth of Jake while the opportunity
offered.
From his talks with Bird, Dr. Larson concluded that
he was a psychopath with a hang-up or fixation on things
that caused him sexual excitation and satisfaction. His
principal hang-up was that he got a gut-kick from seeing
women with expressions of horror and fear on their faces,
and he got his orgasms by killing them. Most of them that
he did kill were either hatchet or axe murders. They were
mostly white women, and they were all women he did not
know. He hated whites-and he hated women of any color.
His thing was to surprise them alone, after watching their
homes, or to break in on them in motel rooms. He was a
"gandy dancer," a man who works on the railroad, at
hard, backslaving work, putting the ties in and repairing
and laying new rails.
Jake Bird traveled all around the country continu-
ously. He would come into a city, and two days beforethe
repair train was due to pull out again, he would go around
in the neighborhood close to the area where he was work-
ing. In the case of the Kludt women it was 20 blocks up the
hill from the railroad tracks, and he would peek in the
windows. That way he cased the area and set up his
marks, usually to be hit his last night in town.
When he entered a house-a house generally with no
sign of men around-he usually entered after the woman
was in bed. Then very quietly he would take off his shoes
and go into the bedroom and axe or bludgeon his victim to
death. Never did he attack them sexually. The axe or club
was his penis as a hand gun, or a motorcycle is to other
mixed-up men.
 THE BIRD THAT KILLED LIKE A HAWK 131

Afterwards, he would tokenly ransack the house-

open the bureau drawers but seldom dump them. He would
take money from pocketbooks, put it on a table-and some-
times leave it. A childish effort, one supposes, to make it
look as if robbery had been the motive, for sex deviates live
in shame and must cover their aberrations. Then, carrying
his shoes, he would leave. Mrs. Kludt, however, was con-
scious enough to scream after he struck her the first time.
That scream woke her daughter, so Jake got two victims
the last time he prowled.
Basically, Pat Steele, the prosecuting attorney, had a
very weak case when he began, and he knew it. All he had
was a battered defendant, Bird, and a one-page confession
which was recorded a few hours after his arrest.
My name is Jake Bird. I am 45 years old and was born
in Louisiana but haven't had any permanent home since
1920. I quit my job as an extra gang worker on the railroad
at Pocatello, Idaho, left there on Wednesday, October 22,
and went to Spokane. I came to Seattle from Spokane on
Sunday, October 26, 1947, and came to Tacoma on Mon-
day, October 27, 1947. Monday night I got a room at the
Elgin Hotel and moved to a different hotel the next day. I
didn't use my right name at these hotels, but I don't
remember what name I did use.
Sometime the morning in question, after midnight, I
left my hotel and went walking, down Broadway, up 17th
Street and into the residential district. I was looking for
some place that would be easy to go into to burglarize. I was
walking up 21st Street and noticed this house at 1007 South
21st and decided to try it. I was going to try the front door
but it was too bright, so I decided to try the back door
instead. I found the back door unlocked and went inside.
Sometime after I went inside, I'm not sure exactly where I
put them, but I took off my shoes. I was carrying an axe
which I had found in a shed nearby. I carried the axe to
bluff anybody off of me that tried to bother me. I set the axe
down inside the kitchen near the door. After taking off my
shoes so I wouldn't make any noise, I started looking
around, and went into a bedroom where a woman was
132 CRIME DOCTOR

sleeping. I knew she was sleeping because I could hear her

snoring. There was considerable light from the street lights
outside, so that I could see my way around, I found a
woman's purse on the dresser, picked it up and went out in
the kitchen with it to open it. It only had a dollar and a half
in it, which I took out and put in my pocket. Correction: I
couldn't get the purse opened at first and while I was trying
to open it I heard a little noise behind me, looked around
and saw a woman standing behind me. I told her that I had
a gun and if she started to do anything or holier, I'd shoot. I
told her to go on back and get to bed and she wouldn't get
hurt. She hesitated and I told her, "You don't have to be
afraid of a rape or attack or anything like that, I am only
looking for money." Just then the girl came up behind me
and grabbed me and I thought it was a boy. The older
woman started screaming and grabbed me too, by the arm.
I told them to help me find my shoes and I'd leave the
house. I broke away and got hold of my axe. They kept on
strugglin' with me and the older woman kept screaming,
and the girl kept spending her efforts trying to hold me. I
finally knocked the big woman down; she didn't fall com-
pletely, she started to set down on the floor. The girl let go of
me and went over and turned on the light and then she
screamed. I was looking around for my shoes. The woman
got up off the floor and came back and grabbed me and the
girl grabbed me again, too. I just kept on swinging and
fighting. After they were down, any blows that I struck was
when it appeared to me that they were trying to get up, but I
don't remember how many blows I struck, and I don't
remember striking any blows after they didn't try to get up
any more. I went on looking for my shoes then and went
out on the back porch to look for them and went back in
again, and finally found them. I took the purse out on the
back porch and took the money out ofit and was starting to
put my shoes on when I saw the police car, or what I
thought was a police car, stop and turn off their lights. I
grabbed my shoes and ran across the street. They caught
me in a yard. I had a knife in my hand and I made a pass at
the policeman with it, figuring that he would shoot me and
kill me, but he didn't do nothing but call his partner. His
partner ran up and I said to him, "Get back, I got a knife,"
 THE BIRD THAT KILLED LIKE A HAWK 133

and I figured he'd shoot, too, but he didn't. They finally got
me down on the ground, and arrested me.
I was beaten up by the police officers, about the head
and face, mouth, side, before I was taken to the hospital.
I make this statement because I want Mr. Mann and
Mr. Lyons to have all the facts and the truth. I have not
been mistreated by them and no promises nor duress have
been used to get me to make this statement. I know that
this statement can be used against me.
Signed: Jake Bird
Actually, Bird's confession did not tell Steele a whole
lot, though it was of some help. He also had psychiatrist
Dr. George Rickie's opinion that Jake was of sound mind
when he signed the statement. But there was nothing to
corroborate the Kludt killings. Steele had all the evidence,
but he had no fingerprints. He had Bird's trousers, jacket,
a pair of shoes-he had a patent leather purse from the
death scene with no fingerprints. He told Dr. Larson, "This
case is in terrible shape. I wish there was something I
could hang my hat on-a fingerprint or a blood type or
something."
By now Dr. Larson was on the case, and six days after
Bird had been captured, Steele received a call from Larson.
"Well, you can quit worrying," Dr. Larson said.
"What did you find?" Steele asked.
"Brain tissue," Dr. Larson said. "I found human brain
tissue on Bird's pants, jacket, shoes and the axe."
While it was a big breakthrough, Steele still had
problems. When he was lining up the police officers to
testify at the trial, he discovered that nobody had marked
any of the evidence. None of the pieces had been properly
identified. There wasn't any question that the articles were
the same, but the officers had not chalked them so that
they could honestly look at them and say, "Yes, this is my
mark; yes, this is the object that I handled."
Steele asked Officer Skip Davies, "How' d you mark
the shoes?" And Davies replied, "I never marked the
shoes." And Steele told him, "Now, listen, Skip, when I
134 CRIME DOCTOR

hand you those shoes, you'd better find something that

tells you these are the shoes you found on the fence across
the street from the Kludt home. Right?" "Right."
Patrolman Sabutis had handled the trousers and
shirt. Steele asked him, "Did you mark· them, Tiny?"
Sabutis said, "No, I'll go put my mark on them right now."
And Steele said, "Don't you dare touch them."

That was the sort of nonsense Prosecuting Attorney

Pat Steele had to contend with.
 The Trial

THE doctor was precise and confident. He clipped

the tips from four stems of asparagus with one stroke ofthe
knife. He chewed in careful cadence and his conversation
was as sharply defined as his shoulders, which are square
and still muscular.
"To win Jake' s confidence," Dr. Larson said, addres-
sing himself more to my tape cassette than to me, "an
attorney had to be able to defend himself."
"Why?" I said. It is a reporter's best word.
"Jake knew a lot of law."
"Where did he learn law?"
"He didn't learn law. He read about the law. In prison
libraries. He had spent 12 years in a Utah prison. Twelve
years in a penitentiary in Iowa. Five more years in the pen
at Jackson, Michigan. Mentally, he was sharp as a tack,
an avid reader, an able conversationalist and witty. I tell
you, he was a very sophisticated burglar. He could talk you
right out of your socks."
"Talkative, then?"
135
136 CRIME DOCTOR

"Oh, yes. He loved to talk. He'd tell you anything you

wanted to hear-and more. He was very calculating."
"Was Jake capable of being remorseful?"
"I don't think so. Killing was second nature to him. He
snuffed out human life the way you'd mash a fly. It didn't
seem to bother him at all. He hated white people. As a ·
young man, he'd been thwarted in some long-ago love
affair with a white girl back in his home town of Green-
wood, Louisiana. Rather than find himself hanging from
a limb of a tree, he joined a carnival as a handyman and
hit the road. After that and for the rest ·of his life, he lived
the life of a man constantly on the move. Along the way he
managed to stuff enough formal education into himself to
amount to what was comparable to a high school educa-
tion. But I can tell you this, Jake Bird was an educated
man. He got a lot ofit all up and down the line, particularly
in prison libraries."
"He seemed to be a man of many personalities."
"You never could tell about him. Pat Steele told me
about talking to a district attorney in Lincoln County in
Nebraska about Jake. The DA's name was Hollister. Jake
had been a witness for him in a murder trial against a
brakeman of the Burlington Railroad who had, according
to Jake, struck and killed this 18-year-old boy on a freight
train. The boy happened to be the son of a very wealthy
Cleveland publishing family-some branch of the Hearst
family. So Jake was the prime witness, and he was given
the red-carpet treatment while awaiting trial. Later, when
Pat wrote to Hollister asking for his recollections of Jake,
he wrote back saying what a mannerly, courteous fellow
Jake had been. Why, he'd even had Jake out to his home
for dinner a couple of times while preparing his case. He
was very impressed with Jake."
"Were you?"
"Oh, yes. Jake was a very fascinating fellow. Danger-
ous as sin, but fascinating."
At lunch the next day, I trimmed the broiled fat from
around my steak. I have always been a patient man; I had
 . THE TRIAL 137

spent 30 of my 53 years trying to locate facts and then to

reduce them to words. I wanted a lot of facts from Pat
Steele.
"Are you the one who dubbed Dr. Larson the Crime
Doctor?"
The former District Attorney of Pierce County sipped
coffee and nodded.
"Yes," Steele said. "I started calling him that during
the Bird trial."
"When did you first meet him?"
"In the fall of' 47, maybe sooner. Anytime there was a
murder we called Dr. Larson. I don't care who you're
talking about, he's one of the most preeminent forensic
pathologists in the world."
"A damned good man to have on your side."
Pat Steele looked up and smiled.
"A perfect witness," he said. "All his career he has
been retained at fairly stiff fees not only to present the
truth but to convince juries that what he tells them is the
truth."
"His testimony made the difference in the Bird trial."
"He never once looked at Jake while he was on the
stand," Steele remembered. "He focused all his attention
on the jury. He has a system of testifying that he has used
for 30 years. He has the conviction that if a scientist is
going to testify to a jury, and he knows his testimony is
purely objective, true and correct, he has an obligation to
educate the jury and to tell the jury, in terms they can
understand, the true facts about the case. Therefore, if he
has something to tell the jury, he approaches them in
somewhat the way a salesman does, opening slowly with
the soft sell first. He feels he has a definite obligation to
portray to the jury exactly what he has done in his investi-
gation, what scientific methods he has used to arrive at his
conclusions, to convince them that he is correct in those
conclusions."
Because I had talked to Dr. Larson about his courtroom
style only 24 hours earlier, I said, "When he faces a jury for
138 CRIME DOCTOR

the first time, he says he makes it a practice to take a good,

long look at the 12 members and size them up during the
time that his qualifications are being reviewed."
"He gets on that stand and you course him along
through the proceedings-and he looks at that jury-he
ponders your question momentarily-and then he lays it
out," Steele said. "He talks to each juror in tum-he goes
up and down the jury box like he's playing a pipe organ. It
takes about a half-hour to establish the qualifications of
an expert witness, and during that time Dr. Larson an-
swers a lot of questions about where he went to medical
school, where he trained, etcetera. During that half-hour
he scans the jury, sizing them up, to see who's really going
to be interested in what he has to say-and who is just
bored. At the same time he is forming in his own mind an
opinion about each juror. So before he is finished being
qualified, he has had a chance to study all 'tried-and-true'
12 of them. When he begins his testimony then, he talks to
one juror at a time, riveting his eyes on his or hers until he
is sure he has him interested and then he moves his
attention to another juror. He skips his attention around,
he doesn't go right down the line, because he doesn't want
what he is doing to be obvious. He talks directly to one
juror at a time, putting his testimony on a person-to-person
basis, until he is sure in his own mind that each one is
thoroughly convinced. Whether this method hurts-or
helps-the defendant is not his concern. His only obliga-
tion is to be sure that the jury clearly understands what
has been done, and what is fact and what is not fact. He
testifies only in fields in which he is an expert."
"Dr. Larson said that when he was very young and
starting out," I said, "he ranged out of his field several
times and got crucified. He said you can't do this, because
when you're proven wrong, your impact upon the jury is
completely lost. They lose all confidence in you."
"In the Bird trial," Steele said, "Dr. Larson told the
jury how both women died. He explained that Bertha
 THE TRIAL 139

Kludt died not from the head injuries but from the fact that
her windpipe had been slashed completely across with a
dull instrument, apparently an axe. She'd been hit on the
head several times and was lying down when the axe was
used to sever her windpipe. The murder weapon, the axe,
was a prosecution exhibit in the jury room."
"Even though he signed a confession," I said, "Bird
changed his story and claimed he didn't kill the Kludt
women. You talked to him numerous times, what did he
say to you?"
"This was the version he gave me," Steele said. "He
went to the house to rob it. This was not a sex murder, let
me make that clear. It was strictly a case of burglary. He
was a house burglar, not a store burglar. That was his
specialty-houses. His style was to prowl the neighbor-
hoods, find an open door and walk in armed with a piece of
pipe, knife or an axe to protect himself. It was something of
a ritual. He'd go into a house, he'd listen for any move-
ment, take a measurement of the area, turn on a light and
look around. Then he'd take off his shoes and set them
against the back door, with his axe leaning against the
back wall of the kitchen.
"At the Kludt home he saw Mrs. Kludt's bedroom off
to the left of the kitchen. She was asleep and he could see
her handbag. He crept in, took the handbag, and then
went back to the kitchen and emptied the contents on the
table. He was standing there sorting out the stuff when
Mrs. Kludt awoke, got up, saw Jake in the kitchen, and
rushed him. In his version of what happened next, he said
he was struggling with the mother when the daughter
Beverly suddenly appeared. She had been asleep upstairs,
heard the commotion, slipped down the stairs and into the
kitchen, and jumped Jake from behind Jake later admitted
to me that between the two of them they almost over-
powered him. He said he had an awful time getting to his
axe. But he managed to get to it, flailed it around and
finally subdued the women. In the melee he crushed Bev-
140 CRIME DOCTOR

erly's skull, with brain tissue flying out of the fracture and
splashing on his pants. Then he turned on Mrs. Kludt and
finished her off."
It was impossible, Steele said, for Bird to explain
logically how he got human brain tissue on his pants. He
neither denied nor admitted he was even at the scene of the
murders, and later rejected the argument that he had
signed the confession voluntarily. He claimed he was
forced to sign it without the benefit of a lawyer.
"But tell me," Steele pointed out, "how could an itiner-
ant worker, a black man-how could he possibly explain
the human brain tissue on his pants? He couldn'.t even
explain the presence of brain tissue, let alone human brain
tissue."
Charles Zittle, then a detective lieutenant, remembers
Jake's trial. He particularly remembers when John Hickey
was put on the stand to testify. Hickey was the police
officer who had beaten Bird to a pulp in the police paddy-
wagon.
"Jake's appearance was a fright,'' Zittle recalls. "There
was no denying that Hickey had worked him over. After
he'd seen what Jake had done to the two women, J ohnjust
seemed to go berserk. At the trial Pat Steele decided to
admit the beating. Jim Selden, one of the two defense
attorneys, tried to make an issue out of it. At one point in
Rickey's testimony, he told Selden he didn't consider Jake
a man. Selden jumped on that fast. 'Well,' he said, 'what do
you consider him?' And Hickey said, 'A beast.' Selden
dropped that line of questioning right now.

"Thank god,'' Zittle said, "for Dr. Larson. If it hadn't

been for his testimony,JakeBird would have been back on
the street killing people again."
In his testimony, Dr. Larson felt it was an open-and-
shut case and told the jury so. The evidence against Jake
was so compelling that they couldn't do anything else but
find him guilty, the doctor said. When he finished testifying,
 THE TRIAL 141

there was no cross-examination. Judge Ed Hodge took a

recess and asked Steele and the two defense attorneys to
join him in his chambers. Closing the door after them, the
judge chuckled. "Well, Jim," he said to Jim Selden, "I
thought you'd probably want another hour of cross-exam-
ination." Selden frowned. "I wouldn't walk into that trap,
Judge," he said.
Dr. Larson had nailed the defense to the cross.
He had left the defense with very little argument.
He had all but wrapped Jake Bird in a coffin.
Without putting Jake on the stand, the only recourse
the defense had was to highlight a review of the testimony.
In retrospect, Pat Steele feels that it was a mistake for Bird
not to have taken the stand in his own defense.
"Had he taken the stand he might have left a question
of doubt in somebody's mind on that jury," Steele said. "He
was a most persuasive, most articulate actor. Several days
before he came to trial, he told Sig Kittleson, chief criminal
deputy, that he wanted to talk to me. It was urgent, he said.
I went right down to the jail house to find out what was on
his mind. He began the conversation with a long, drawn-
out tale about wanting to live. 'Mr. Steele,' he said, 'I don't
want to die. I don't want to hang. I want to live.' He was
bargaining now for his life. He was always bargaining,
sparring for time. He had it figured out that possibly I
would buy his plea of guilty to two first-degree murders in
exchange for consecutive life sentences. I told him, 'I can't
do anything like that.' Unfortunately, the word got out
that Jake was bartering for his life. The rum or led to big
headlines: 'BIRD MAY GET OFF WITH LIFE.' I squelched
that story fast."
The jury of nine men and three women took only 35
minutes to come to a verdict. Bird was found guilty of two
counts of first-degree murder.
Eleven days later, on December 6, 1947, only 37 days
after killing the Kludts, he was back in Judge E. D.
Hodge's court for sentencing. This time the room was
142 CRIME DOCTOR

virtually empty. Only those who had participated in the

trial were present-plus Bill Dugovich, the only news
reporter there.
Selden and Paulsen, Bird's attorneys, must have
known all the way what the verdict would be. Selden, with
cool detachment, told the judge in his final argument that
there was nothing more he could add in his client's
defense. Paulsen was more dramatic. Bound by legal
ethics, he made a final argument for Bird's life.
Judge Hodge listened quietly, and when Paulsen had
:finished, he turned to Bird, who was wearing an old
woolen shirt and faded khaki trousers, and said, "Mr. Bird,
is there anything you have to say before sentencing."
From behind the defendant's table, Jake pulled himself
erect. "Your Honor," he said. "I did not commit any crime.
I am not guilty. I killed nobody. I signed that confession
you have only to save my own life. The police made me do
it."
This was the first time Jake had addressed the court.
During the trial his defense attorneys refused to let
him take the stand. But Jake wasn't through having his
say:
"Your Honor,'' he continued, pointing to his tattered
prison garments, "just look how nicely clothed I am. Just
notice how well I've been taken care of." He seethed with
sarcasm. "Look at the teeth I don't have anymore." He
opened his mouth and revealed one mangled fang above
and below. He fingered the hole in his nose where the
police had punched it out with their Billy clubs. "Yes, sir,''
he told Judge Hodge, "I sure been treated wonderful by the
City of Tacoma-"
Suddenly there was a scream at the back of the
courtroom. A woman jumped to her feet and shouted, "Let
that man go! He is not guilty! He is innocent!" An embar-
rassed hush fell over the room. The woman was quickly
escorted out. Jake continued.
Now he dropped his bomb. "All of you,'' he said,
gazing from face to face, " who have had anything to do
 THE TRIAL 143

with my case will be punished. I am putting the Jake Bird

hex on you. Mark my words, you will die before I do."
The judge slammed his gavel on the bar.
"That'll be enough, Mr. Bird. You've had your say.
Now I will have mine."
Here it came.
"On January 16th, 1948, at precisely one minute past
midnight, I sentence you to be hung by the neck until dead.
The sentence will be carried out at the Washington State
Penitentiary, Walla Walla."
The State wasn't wasting any time.
When the death penalty was read, Jake's only emotion
was to blink. He was perfectly silent. Five deputy sheriffs
surrounded him and ushered him out of the courtroom and
back to his cell down the street. While he said nothing, you
knew his head was spinning.
On January 2nd Bill Dugovich was in the office of
Undersheriff Joe Karpach trying to pry new information
out of him concerning Bird. Karpach made the claim that
Jake had just confessed to several more murders. "About
six or seven more," Karpach said. Bill sensed the story was
growing bigger all the time. The real viciousness of the
condemned man was unfolding daily.
The next day, a Saturday, Karpach admitted to Bill
that the number of confessed murders by Bird had risen to
10 over 20 years. Again, the Tacoma News Tribune had a
page one headline story.
Late that afternoon, Dugovich went to his managing
editor, J. Ernest Knight, and asked permission to call
Olympia to talk to Governor Mon C. Wallgren about a
possible reprieve for Bird.
"I don't think you'll find the governor in," Ernie
Knight said, "but go ahead and try."
Governor Wallgren answered immediately. Bill put
the question to him.
"A stay of execution may be granted to clean up other
murders," Governor Wallgren said. "However, if we see
that the confessions are lies, we will not grant any delays."
144 CRIME DOCTOR

Dugovich tried to talk to Bird several times, but the

sheriff wouldn't allow him near Jake. "He's too dangerous,
Bill," the sheriff said.
"So I never talked to him," Dugovich said. "Later,
others got to him-reporters Jim Faber and Jack Pyle and,
of course, Frank Herbert-but I missed. At first, we were
told by police that Jake was dumb, illiterate and that he
lied a lot. So they didn't want the press near him. Actually,
Jake proved to be an eloquent speaker, a voracious reader
oflaw books and the possessor of a phenomenal memory."

The Jake Bird hex? Was it a hoax? You figure it out.

Judge Hodge, who'd been in excellent health, died one
month after sentencing Jake. Before January ran itself
out, Joe Karpach dropped dead of a heart attack. Chief
Court Clerk Ray Scott was buried in February-also of
heart failure. Six months afterward Police Lt. Sherman
Lyons, who had obtained Bird's confession, died-again
of a coronary. The next one to go was one of Jake's
attorneys, J. W. Selden. He died on the anniversary of
Jake's senfoncing. Assigned to defend Jake against his
own wishes, Selden had told the jury during the trial: "My
heart does not beat in sympathy for this man, who fixed
his life as more important than that of others." The sixth
man to die by Bird's so-called "hex" was Arthur A.
Stoward. Arthur had been one of Jake's guards at Walla
Walla.
The only two that Jake's hex didn't affect were Pat
Steele and Dr. Larson.
"Jake didn't put his so-called hex on me personally,"
Dr. Larson remembers. "The way I found out about it was
from Pat Steele. Pat walked into my lab one day and said
that he and I, among others, were hexed; that Jake had
predicted we were going to die within the year. We both
laughed and went out and had a drink on it. The fact that
Pat and I were the only two out of eight who survived is a
matter of pure coincidence. Those six men who did die
didn't die of Jake Bird, they died of coronary occlusions."
 THE TRIAL 145

In his practice throughout the years, Dr. Larson has

helped convict in courts of homicide, he estimates, about
100 men. A number of these men have threatened to kill
him in reprisal. It never occurred to him to remember their
names or when they would get out, or to take any precau-
tionary measures if he happened to be told when they did
get out. "The desire for revenge is a very immature
reaction,'' he says, "and whereas your average murderer is
seldom a very mature, well-rounded character, he is never-
theless subject to the cooling process-the changes that
come with the passage of time. Come to think of it, that's
what our penal system is all about, isn't it-to put people
on the shelf until they cool off?"
Dr. Larson chuckled softly. "I like the thought, any-
way."
Sing Like a Bird

IT took me a little while," Dr. Larson said, "to see

Jake Bird as a complex person." He reached for the sugar
for his coffee. "Now there was a bright boy," he said
earnestly. "I mean really bright. And yet, he chose a life
that cost him more than half his life in jail."
"And finally his life," I said. "How many people did
Jake actually kill?"
"The estimates went as high as 44," Dr. Larson said.
"He got what he deserved."
The death sentence was read in Tacoma on December
6, 1948. The following day he was whisked away to the
state penitentiary at Walla Walla, where he was scheduled
to die at midnight, January 16.
"On the way to prison," the doctor said, "Jake strung
out Joe Karpach, from the Pierce County sheriffs office,
about all those unsolved murder cases he could clear up.
Joe, of course, envisioned himself in the role of hero; he
didn't realize that Jake was just sparring for time. Sure,
there was a lot Jake could talk about that was authentic-
a lot he could talk about that could excite your interest if he
146
 SING LIKE A BIRD 147

thought it would buy him time. So he'd spin off a lot of

stories."
"Who was the warden at Walla Walla at the time?"
"Tom Smith. He told Pat Steele that Jake came into
the prison talking a blue streak. The first thing he wanted
was pencil and paper and stamp, and he wrote back to
Judge Hodge: 'I appeal my conviction,' and he signed it
Jake Bird. That was his appeal. However, Judge Hodge
ruled that the clerk didn't have to accept Jake's notice of
appeal."
In the shadow of the noose Bird took a long look at the
calendar, and with but a few weeks before he was to die, he
sent word to Warden Smith that he wanted to talk "to clear
my conscience." He said he could solve for authorities at
least ten murders, maybe more.Warden Smith phoned Pat
Steele and Detective Lieutenant Sherman Lyons of the
Tacoma Police Department and invited them to come over
and listen.
Before leaving Tacoma, Steele told the press: "I want
to give Jake a chance to tell what he knows, but I don't
intend to permit him to use what he might have withheld
as a means to add a few days to his life. I won't ask for a
stay of execution unless it seems absolutely necessary."
Pat Steele, accompanied by Lt. Lyons and a court
reporter, sat across a table from Bird at the state prison
and looked him straight in the eyes.
"Okay, Jake," he said, "where do you want to start?"
"Well," Jake said, "I told the warden this morning
that I have never backed down on a deal in my life, and I
do not intend to back down on this one. I told him that ifhe
appointed me a lawyer to try to appeal my case and get me
a stay of execution, I will tell all. The warden told me to
proceed with cases I though should be cleared up."
"Where do you want to start, Jake?" Steele repeated.
"Well," Jake replied, ''let's begin with a fellow named
Clarence Lukehart. He was convicted for murder in 1928.
148 CRIME DOCTOR

Actually, it wasn't a murder at all, even though he pleaded

guilty; it was an accidental death, caused by me. It was on
a Sunday morning about 10 a.m. I was crossing the
railroad tracks near a little place called East Omaha,
Iowa, when this kid, about seven or eight, came up behind
me and started shouting, 'nigger, nigger, nigger!' I picked
up this rock and threw it at him. I did not realize I hit him
until I heard him groaning. I went back anci picked him up
and carried him about 20 feet offthe road. Well, there was a
clump of bushes growing there, but they wasn't tall enough
to hide behind; anybody passing by could see me standing
up, so I had to lay down with the kid, who remained
unconscious. I tried all day to revive him. At night it
rained, and I went and got a blanket and covered him up.
The next morning, he was dead."
"What did you do with the body?" Steele asked.
"I had stolen a gun several days before," Jake said,
"and when I realized he was dead, I took off all his clothes,
hid 'em in this old can I found, and then I hit him over the
head a couple of times with the gun. I did that in order to
make people think that some kind of fiend did it."
"Where'd you put the body?" Steele asked.
"I just left it there."
"Where did you go?"
"I joined a carnival that was in town and went to
Denver. I returned to East Omaha in two weeks and saw in
the paper where this convict had confessed to killing the
kid. I simply couldn't believe it. He was brought back from
Anamosa Reformatory to stand trial. I went to the hearing
and I think I would have confessed if the man had gotten
the death penalty; that is what he demanded, but the
Judge refused and, naturally, I felt better. I tried to figure
out some way to say I done it without being caught, but I
couldn't figure nothing. Soon after that I got in trouble
again and was sent to Ford Madison."
"Let me review your story," Steele said. "You said that
 SING LIKE A BIRD 149

you returned to where the boy was in the evening on

account of the rain, and you brought a blanket to cover
him. Where did you get the blanket, Jake?"
"I didn't say that," Jake said.
"Well, maybe I misunderstood," Steele said. "What
did you say?"
"I said it rained that night and I went and got a
blanket."
"Where did you get the blanket?"
"I got it out of my room. No, I got it out of a boxcar. I
took all my belongings the morning I met this boy, because
I was going to join the carnival, and I had all my belong-
ings, including this blanket and two suitcases, and I had
left them in a boxcar over there where they don't use the
Union Pacific."
"Now, you said that you returned the next day with
this stolen gun and hit the boy in the head several times
with it."
"That is right."
"What color hair did the boy have?"
Jake shook his head.
"I don't know," he said.
"You don't know?" Steele said.
"Would you pay any attention to anybody's hair?"
Jake said. "I didn't know what color yours was until you
mentioned it."
"If I hit somebody in the head, I would know what
color the hair was," Steele said. "You returned the next
day, broad daylight and hit him several times."
"Oh, you are just assuming things now," Jake said.
"You can't tell me that if you hit a man in the head you
would know what color his hair was, because you would
not be interested in a man's hair. I was out there all night
trying to bring the kid to, trying to keep him from dying. I
just couldn't believe he was dead. I wouldn't be looking at
the color of his hair."
150 CRIME DOCTOR

"Okay," Steele said. "Now, you said you attended the

trial of Lukehart, is that right?"
"I didn't go inside," hedged Jake. "I was over around
the courtroom, yes."
"You didn't go in, you didn't listen to any of the
testimony?"
"No."
"You don't know who testified?"
"Well," Jake said, "I think that the warden of the
penitentiary and some reporters testified, if I make no
mistake."
"Did the boy's mother testify?"
"I did not hear anybody testify. I told you I merely
went over around the courthouse to see what the outcome
of the judg~ 's sentence was going to be."
"You say that you carried the boy about 20 or 30 feet
back into some bushes. Well, when you carried him that
distance, was there anybody or anything coming down
the road?"
"There was several cars going back and forth," Jake
recalled. "And there was a man and a woman coming,
walking down the road. I didn't want to be found with the
gun on me so I threw it into this low, weedy, watery
swamp. It is down there yet, I guess. Then I stopped and
looked back to see what this man and woman would do,
because the boy was groaning. When they got close to
where the boy was laying, they both paused and appar-
ently was trying to find where the noise was coming from,
but they finally walked on."
After another hour of routine questioning about the
boy's death, Pat Steele called for a recess to lunch. At 2 p.m.
the interview was resumed. Jake was still in good form.

"You see, naturally I understand the position you're

in," Jake said. "I know none of this in the record is
personal, because I don't think you care that much about
 SING LIKE A BIRD 151
something that happened 20 years ago. People are saying
I am not doing a damn thing now but trying to stall for
time, which is true in a way. I am not stalling for time, but
still I want time. Regardless of what I say about another
case and another state, it has no bearing on what I am
convicted on here. A lot of people don't realize that, it
seems. But I got letters from lawyers that I would like to
hear from further before I die, and I got some things I want
to say, because I don't think I got a fair deal."
"Is there anything else you want to tell us about the
boy's death?" Steele asked, anxious to move on.
"If you are going to check on what I told you, if you
think that is worth me putting down and signing a sworn
statement to it, I will do it," Jake said.
"I asked you this morning if you would swear to this
statement, and you said no," Steele reminded him. "We are
now having it typed up as fast as we can type it, and we
will appreciate your signing it if you want to. We can't
force you to sign it. But in view of my instructions from the
governor, I advise you to tell us fully and completely
everything you have to say about it, make it a sworn
statement and sign it so that ifit is going to get action from
the governor, it will just be that much quicker to accom-
plish the action, either for a stay or reprieve or commuta-
tion, whatever it is."
Steele knew of at least eight other crimes involving
Jake, and he wanted him to talk about those.
"It is easy for you to pry questions," Jake said.
"I am not trying to pry you, Jake," Steele said. "I am
merely giving you an opportunity to relate in toto."
"Well," Jake said, "there is one thing I want to say. If
you had not got in such a big hurry to get me hung and
over with-well, you will just have to go and do it. You
must remember I am not represented at all in none of this.
You all have thousands of millions of dollars to back you
up; I have not even got a lawyer or nothing. I just got to say
152 CRIME DOCTOR

what I think is best for me, and I have told you that I
committed ten crimes and could prove every one of them,
and that is exactly what I will do if given time."
"Well," Steele said, "we would like to clean up those
cases so you can get your conscience clear."
"My conscience don't hurt me. I wish you would quit
putting in the papers that my conscience is hurting me,
because I ain't got no conscience."
"I didn't put it in," Steele said. "I've been too busy with
other burglaries to even talk to the papers."
At that point, all but Steele got up and left the room,
leaving him alone with Jake.
Jake looked into Steele's face.
"I want you to give a report to the governor." he said.
"This is my report, Jake," Steele said, fingering a large
folder of papers. "It comes from my court reporter, who has
been taking everything down. I am not trusting my mem-
ory about a thing."
"The thing I want you to tell the Washington gover-
nor," Jake said, "is that regardless of what has been said
about other crimes in other states, I am just not free to talk
now as I want to. As slim a chance as I've got for commut-
ing my sentence, I have got to ask the governor to do it, and
I want to tell him further that there has never been a man
in the history of Washington who has been given the
runaround without benefit of counsel, without a chance of
having his day in court and I am asking for my case to be
appealed, and counting on lawyers to represent me; one
that would at least plead for my life and not get up and tell
them to bring in a count of guilty, and tell the judge I
should tell the governor-that as bad as my case is in
Tacoma, that nobody ever mentioned the statement that I
said I would go to the gallows for it, and tell him that I still
feel I should have counsel in this case. Tell him about the
stay of execution that I am trying to get, about a represent-
ative of the law who will represent me. Tell him I appreci-
 SING LIKE A BIRD 153

ate anything he can do for me, that I should have a day in

court, and I got to presume that is asking for mercy. I want
to tell him also that when Selden argued for a new motion,
argued for a new-"
"Motion for a new trial," Steel interposed.
"Yes,'' Jake said, "arguing for a motion for a new trial,
told the jury that I should hang and showed no sympathy
for me. Tell the governor I don't think that is hardly the
way to argue a motion for a new trial. Tell him when they
sentenced me, before I could get my equilibrium and balance
and ask the court to appoint me another lawyer, that they
rushed me right over here to Walla Walla. Tell him that on
the 9th of December I wrote the trial judge and asked for
counsel. Tell him the answer was, 'I don't feel at this time
that I could grant your request.' Tell him that on the 9th of
December I wrote a written motion up there, notice of
appeal, a written notice of appeal. Tell him I got no answer
from them. Tell him that on the 19th I wrote another letter
to the clerk of the court. Tell him that on the 29th of
December I got a letter from the clerk telling me if I signed
a pauper's oath I could get the necessary records of my
trial in order to go ahead. But tell the governor that al-
though I signed the pauper's oath on December 30th and
sent them to the court, I still do not have the records in my
hand on this, January 6th. Then, I want you to tell him
whether, in your opinion, you think that is fair or not.
"You say you are here to represent the governor and
see that fair play takes place. I am not going to tell you
what to tell him. In your own words tell it to him. Tell him
that I also think whether the court is forced to appoint a
lawyer for an appeal or not, that I think any place where
the death penalty is inflicted, and where there might be
errors in therecord, and whereaman'scounselquithimat
the bar, that the State should be ashamed to talk about
what little money it would take to hire a lawyer for him to
appeal. And tell him that this execution be stayed to
154 CRIME DOCTOR

investigate further these murders, that he grant this ex-

ecution stay, that some of it ought to be take up to see
whether or not I got a square deal in this matter.
"I want you to further tell the governor that I have not
claimed an accomplice in no case where I did not have an
accomplice. Tell him that nobody in Tacoma and in the
State of Washington will listen to me when I say I had an
accomplice in the Tacoma case, because they are not
interested in it. They are convinced that I am the murderer.
Tell him that is a lie. I feel if I could get my case appealed or
a new trial, or some lawyers to argue my case, that I may
get clemency. But tell him that ifhe is only interested in me
hanging because the public is clamoring for it and not
interested in clearing up all these other cases, then after I
am dead I certainly cannot clear them up."
"For the record, Jake," broke in Steele, "those com-
munications you mentioned having sent up there, I re-
ceived none. I received no communications or any copies.
Did you send anything to me or to my office?"
"I did not," said Jake.
"There is another point in there," Steele continued.
"You say that at the time you were talking, or something
up there, you would go to the gallows with a statement of a
certain kind."
"That's correct," said Jake.
"Well," Steele said, "what was that statement? I don't
recall you mentioning it."
"Well, I went out the night before the Tacoma killings
with a boy from Seattle," Jake explained. "I paid his fare to
Tacoma. We went out that night to burglarize some places.
The next night we went out again, and I took one side of
the street and he took the other. He met me at the Kludt
home. When I heard screaming in the house I ran into the
house and stumbled over this girl's body in the dining
room, and I asked my buddy what took place. He said,
'Hell's broke loose!' But as I was coming up to the back
door, he was rushing out of the house and throwed the
 SING LIKE A BIRD 155

pocketbook and an axe, and then went back in the house.

When I got in the house he was in the parlor, and I said,
'What is going on here?' That's when he said, 'Hell's
broken loose!' And I said, 'Hell certainly has broke loose.
I'm gettin' the hell outta here!' I went outside, put on my
shoes, just as the police car drove up and stopped down the
street. I seen two flashlights sweeping around, and my
friend took off. I hollered at him but he ran. I believe that's
why the police did not grab him, because I hollered. They
ran right by him. And that's the truth. I don't care what
was on my pants. I don't care if the officers said they saw
me running out of the house. The only thing that matters is
the truth."
"Did you go out the front or back door, Jake?" Steele
asked.
"I ran out the back door when a woman first screamed,"
Jake said. "I thought it was on the same street that I was
on, so a light went on down the street in the upper story. I
tried to see around there. I said, 'Well, I can't see a thing, no
way.' I looked up at this little house, the lights was on in
the back of it, and I started to approach it cautiously, but
when I got about 30 feet from the back door, my friend
hurried out the back door with the purse and axe in his
hand and throwed 'em outside. Now, I don't care whether
you believe me or not, but that is the truth. It would be
senseless for me to try to involve anybody that is not
involved."
At that moment, Warden Smith walked in and joined
the discussion. It was plain he had little sympathy for
Jake. His patience was running dry.
"Take a look at it this way," he told Jake. "I mean,
here are these crimes that have happened over the last 20
years. You say men have gone to prison for offenses you've
committed. Some of these cases we want to know about
have not been solved after all these years, but if we are
going to be sparring around trading back and forth from
now on, why it is not going to make too much difference to
156 CRIME DOCTOR

our governor, to Mr. Steele, or to me whether they are ever

solved or not. We just can't drag this thing out forever. I
will be honest with you in saying that I don't think that
you can possibly get any commutation unless you can
make some showing, give us something concrete to work
on, involving these other cases. It's your only hope, Jake."
"Come on, Jake, let's get to some of these other things,"
Steele added. "Let's have the date, the city and the disas-
trous things."
"Okay," Jake said, "let's begin first with the ten
episodes I said I would clear up."
"Start with Colorado," Steele urged. "Jake, how about
Pueblo, Colorado?"
On the night of October 1, 1942, Jake confessed, he
robbed an old woman of $47 and then choked her to death,
after first clubbing her with a wrench. At Ogden, Utah, he
recalled, while breaking into another house in the pre-
dawn hours he stabbed an old man to death while the
victim was sound asleep in bed. Total net for the caper $3.
"I don't know why I killed him," Jake said. "It just seemed
like a good idea at the time." Next, South Bend, Indiana,
1942. Mid-October, day unknown, between 1and2 a.m.
"I had hooked up with a colored kid named Smith,
about 27, and we'd burglarized some houses in South
Bend," Jake remembered. "We didn't meet no opposition
or nothing and we didn't do anything; that is, we didn't
hurt nobody. So on this night we decided to hit this two-
story house. We cut a hole through the backdoor screen,
found the door unlocked and walked right in. There were
two people, a man and a woman, sound asleep in the lower
floor bedroom. I told my accomplice to kill them. I went
upstairs to see what I could steal and, while prowling
around, found a small boy fast asleep in the bedroom up
there. I was armed with a piece of pipe and, not wanting to
be discovered, I hit the boy across the head a couple of
times, smashing his skull. The blow killed him instantly.
Counting the two downstairs, that wiped out the family.
 SING LIKE A BIRD 157

All we got for our troubles was a couple of pieces of cheap

jewelry."
As Jake spilled his guts, Warden Smith suddenly
stopped him. "Jake," he said, "we don't want you to be
telling us that you did a lot of things or that you didn't do
them. You might take credit for every unsolved murder in
the United States."
Jake stiffened. How dare the warden question his
integrity.
"I'm not making this up," Jake said. "You will just
have to believe me."
"Okay, all right," the warden said. "Go on."
"Well, I have an interesting account from an investi-
gator who wants to know if you killed a priest down out of
Centralia, Missouri, in 1942."
"There is one thing you can go to bed with tonight and
rest assured of, and that is I will never tell you that I done a
crime that I haven't, or that I have an accomplice when I
did not," Jake said.
"How about this priest in Missouri?" persisted the
warden.
"Well," Jake said, ''that is getting way off the course."
"Ever been in Centralia?"
"You see, every case you ask me about you think I am
lying," Jake said.
"I don't think you're lying," the warden said. "I am
asking you about this one. I am telling you a priest was
killed and robbed in Centralia, Missouri, during the time
you were not in prison."
"I said you might think I am lying. I meant that you
might think I am lying about the statement I was going to
make of meeting the father. When I say it you might think
I am lying."
"How's that?"
"Well," Jake said, "I could say, 'Oh, yes, that was me, I
killed him,' because I have been reading up on the case in
detail from old files; in fact, every major case that has
158 CRIME DOCTOR

happened in the United States. Now, when you say about

this priest being killed, I remember it well. I know the
details."
"Were you in on that deal?" the warden asked.
"You will have to give me more time," Jake said.
''Let's get back to the original ten cases he agreed to
discuss,'' Steele said.
"No," the warden said, "I am trying to get something
here. Frankly, Jake, I'll be honest with you. I was cheating
on you a little bit there. Actually, the priest wasn't killed in
Centralia when you were serving time in Fort Madison. He
was not one of your victims. But I am interested in what
you did between the time you had that trouble with that
prominent citizen in Benton Harbor and the time you got
arrested there on the morning of October 23. I mean, did
you kill somebody every night or just certain nights of the
week that you felt like it."
"I wouldn't go so far as to say I killed somebody every
night," Jake said.
"Did you carry a gun?"
"I never fooled with a gun. But some of my accomplices
did."
"What kind of guns did they carry?"
"All kinds," Jake said. "Everything-38s, 45s, German
Mausers."
"You never went much for guns yourself?"
"No, never."
"Ever take anything besides money?"
"When I was young, I did."
"Did you ever go for jewelry?"
"When we had a 'fence,' we went for anything-jewelry,
dope, money."
"How about furs?"
"Them, too-when we had a 'fence'."
"Did you have an outlet for furs and jewelry?"
"Yes, in Chicago,'' Jake said. "There's always a 'fence'
in Chicago."
 SING LIKE A BIRD 159

"How about women, Jake?"

"Oh, a little bit,'' Jake said. "I was not much on
women."
"Did you go out with the girls?"
"I fooled around with them somewhat, but not much. I
ain't willing to waste too much money. I lost all mine
gambling mostly."
"You never got into prostitution or pimping or that
bracket of the trade?"
"No,'' Jake said, "I never believed in that."
"What did you do between the time you left Fort
Madison and the time you showed up in the Chicago
area?"
"Got a job,'' Jake said. "That was only for a couple of
months. I was a pretty rough character. I'd done a little of
everything."
"Tell us about those incidents in Omaha,'' Steele said.
"Well,'' Jake said, "one night I went out and I killed a
man. The next night I killed two women. And the next
night I beat this Stribling fellow up, and that I went to the
penitentiary for."
"Did you get anything out of the house where you
killed that man in Omaha?"
"Not a thing,'' Jake said.
"How did you get into that house?"
"Walked right through the back door."
"How many people appeared to live there?"
"Maybe two or three."
"Was the man the only one at home at the time?"
"Yes."
"What time of night was that?"
"You can believe this or not,'' Jake said, "but it was in
the wide open daytime."
"What time of day?"
"Sunup."
"Sunup?"
"Yes."
160 CRIME DOCTOR

"He was in bed?"

"Yes."
"Did he get out of bed?"
"No."
"YOU killed him in bed."
"Yes."
"What did you hit him with?"
"A hand axe I found in the house."
"How many times did you hit him?"
"Several times is all I remember."
"What did you do with the axe after you struck him?"
"Hid it in a pile of lumber behind the house."
"Did you take anything from the house?"
"Not a thing," Jake said. "I was not even looking."
"Did you rummage through the house at all?"
"I tell you I was not even looking for nothing, I don't
know why I did it, I can't explain. You can call it what you
want. Say I'm crazy or whatever you want, but as I recall,
when I got arrested, I had around $50 on me, and they
never even took a penny of it. They did not charge me with
robbery. While I was there, a little girl came in and I
managed to slip out without her even seeing me. All this
happened in wide-open daytime. I walked right through
the room she was in."
"Did you see the girl?"
"Sure," Jake said. "She was about 11 years old."
"Eleven years old?"
"Sitting near the bed reading a book. I walked right by
her, walked right out the back door. Craziest thing."
"You said you got a job," Steele said. "With the paper
company. Were you out murdering and carrying on these
burglaries all that time?"
"Sure," Jake said. "That is all I was doing."
"That was a good dodge on that job,'' Steele said. "The
job was just a dodge, then."
Jake said, "Working was a stall. We-my accomplices
and me-were stealing every night."
 SING LIKE A BIRD 161

"What did you do with all your loot?"

"Run all of it down at the N orthshore and blew it,
throwed it all away."
"In the crap joints?"
"Yes."
"What about those two women you killed? Why did
you do it?"
"It started out as pure burglary," Jake said. "I got into
the house through a basement window. The only weapon I
had was a ballpeen hammer I'd stolen from another house.
I did not find anything in the basement worth picking up
so I went upstairs into the kitchen. Then I came out right
by the front room and then over the side bedroom where a
woman was sleeping and I killed her. A baby was asleep in
a crib but I never touched it. I killed the woman, though,
and then went upstairs and killed another woman in bed
up there. She also had a kid with her, three or four years
old, but I left the kid alone. Then I went outside and run."
"You did not harm either child?" Steele wanted to
know.
"No."
"How old were the women you killed?"
"Young," Jake said. "Both were young."
"Where did you hit them?"
"Over the head."
"With this ballpeen hammer?"
"Yes."
"Did either woman scream?"
"No, they didn't know I was even in the house. Element
of surprise."
"The children did not wake up?"
"The little boy did."
"The three-year old?"
"Yes."
"What did you do?"
"I picked him up and put him to bed in another room."
"Did he stay awake, did he scream or cry?"
162 CRIME DOCTOR

"No, not a peep," Jake said. "He gave me no trouble at

all."
"What did you do with the hammer?"
"Th.rowed it away on my way up the street to a place
called the Dreamland Club, where I had a few drinks."
"Then what did you do?"
"I left the area that night," Jake recalled. "I went back
to the Northside and got $75 and that is why the police did
not push me very hard on them murders because they
admitted when I came back that I had lots of money, and
then one of the women's husbands admitted there was no
money in the house, that I could not have gotten it from
them. Therefore, they did not crowd me too much on the
murders after they caught me in the Stribling affair."
"Jake," Steele said, "did you ever consider going
straight?"
"Sure," Jake said. "I even got a job working for a coal
company in Chicago. I was out there in the dark pitching
coal at 4 o'clock in the morning at 8 below zero for $10, $16
and $18 a day. You know I would not have been doing that
kind of slave labor if I had any intention in the world of
stealing anything. I had actually decided to give up my old
ways and live a good, clean life when, one night, I was
walking down the street in Chicago and a police car pulled
up alongside and throwed an automatic on me. I told' em
exactly who I was and everything, but they took me down
to the station anyway; they did not have a thing on me,
nothing, but then they found my prison discharge paper in
my coat pocket and spent the next hour talking to me
about it. Naturally I did not tell them I just got out of the
penitentiary. If I told them that I would be sure to be
bumped, but I told them I was working, where I had been
that night, and they checked my story out and found I was
telling the truth. Still they wouldn't let me go. They seemed
to think I was up to some crime.
"Finally, one of the officers reached inside my coat
pocket and pulled out No. 14314; that is, a letter from the
prison with my number on it. That did it. They said, 'Book
 SING LIKE A BIRD 163

him.' Well, they hauled me down to the Bureau of Identifi-

cation but they couldn't get nothing on me, so they took me
to the Stock Yards Court and set my bail at some ridiculous
figure I could not make, and then took me down to the
house of detention for a trial. They kept me in the pen for
three weeks-and still couldn't get nothing on me. Finally,
they brought me back to court and fined me $1 and costs
and no commitment.
"When they turned me loose, some officers went out
ahead of me to the place where I boarded with these
colored people and told everybody I had a prison record. So
one fellow took me off to the side and told me I'd better
leave. He said the police said they were coming out and
pick me up every day or two. The cops also told them, 'That
nigger killed three or four people.' Then I went to the office
of the company I worked for and the man told me it was up
to me whether or not I quit. The cops had told him the same
story, and he told them, 'We don't give a damn how many
people he's killed, just so he don't kill nobody here,' but the
treatment I got from the fellows at work, I just couldn't
take it, so I just pulled out. That was in January of 1942. I
was going straight until then. I was really serious about
giving up all that stealing and killing. But those god-
damned cops in Chicago is what started me on the road
back to crime."
Jake Bird's conf~ssional at Walla Walla lasted for
three days. He was verbose, always fencing, always reach-
ing for time. Listening, Pat Steele had to wonder how
much sadistic pleasure Jake got out of murdering another
human being. He wanted to ask him, "How long can you
go without cutting a throat?" and then answering his own
questions, he could envision Jake's reply: "Sometimes, a
long time." "You mean," Steele told himself, imagining the
dialogue, "you have the urge under control? You can take it
or leave it alone? You can cut two or three throats with a
friend of an evening and then taper off by going home and
only cutting one more before getting into bed?"
By now, Jake was front-page news across the country.
164 CRIME DOCTOR

The papers played him up big. Sample, this from the

Chicago Tribune:

Walla Walla Wash., Jan. 9-(AP)-Warden Tom Smith

of the Washington State Prison announced late today that
Jake Bird, condemned negro axe slayer, had said he could
"clear up" 10 more slayings over the country, including the
unsolved killing of Lillian Galvin and her maid in Chicago
in 1942.
The 45-year-old black transient, sentenced to hang
Jan. 16, asked for an attorney, the warden said.
The warden thereupon named attorney Charles Luce,
of Walla Walla, to represent Bird. Luce joined Bird and
prison officials in conferences at the prison.
Bird has already admitted complicity in 12 slayings
over the U.S. the past 20 years.
Warden Smith emphasized that Bird did not say he
committed the additional 10 killings, but only that he could
clear them up.
In the Chicago case, Mrs. Lillian Galvin and her maid,
Edna Sibilski, were killed Oct. 22, 1942, and $28,000 in
jewelry and three fur coats valued at more than $3,000 were
taken from their home, prison officials said.
Rewards totaling $16,000 were offered for solution of
the case and nearly 1,000 persons questioned. Preliminary
questioning today, Warden Smith said, showed that Bird
was a three-hour drive away from the slaying scene the
next day.
State's Attorney William J. Tuohy of Cook County, Ill.,
had called upon investigators to question Bird about the
Galvin case.
Earlier today, W.L. Welch, South Bend, Ind., police
officer, one of numerous officials from over the country
here questioning Bird, said that Bird had given additional
details about the slaying of a retired watchman, his wife
and son there. He said Bird admitted a part in the crime.
A special investigator for the State of Iowa, Dwight
Bender, also questioned Bird about the slaying of Jack
Winfield at Davenport, Iowa. Bird had commented that
 SING LIKE A BIRD 165

authorities had the "wrong man" when shown a picture of

the accused man in that case.

Upon his return to Tacoma, Pat Steele called Dr.

Larson in and told him about his talks with Bird.
"Jake's singing like a bird," Steele said.
"But is it the truth?" Dr. Larson wanted to know.
"I believe him," Steele said. "He has nothing to lose
getting it off his chest."
"For example?"
"Well," Steele said, "he told about the time in Cleve-
land. He was sitting in this tavern, making no bones about
the fact he was flat broke. He needed some walking-around
money. All he had in his pants pocket was 13<1!. So he hit
the street."
"Was that the time just after he got out of Utah State
Prison? Rooming with a former convict?"
"Yes," Steele said. "They'd heard over the radio about
a slasher who was always cutting up people in Cleveland.
So, in April they decided to go up there and prowl some
houses. They figured that if they got caught they'd just cut
up some people, making it look like this crazy guy, the
slasher, did it. So they rented a little shack and settled in
for a lengthy period of prowling."
"Wait a minute," Dr. Larson said. "Did you tape what
Jake told you?"
"Every bit of it," Steele said.
"May I read it?"
"Take it with you," Steele said. "But don't keep it for
long. Governor Mon Wallgren is waiting to look at it."
"I'll bring it back tomorrow."
That night, Dr. Larson scanned the transcript. It
confirmed what he had suspected about Jake Bird. Jake
seemed to enjoy his work. In the transcript, Jake talked
with great enthusiasm about the Cleveland capers:
"The first person we caught was a man," Jake said.
"We nailed him in this little shack and robbed and beat
 166 CRIME DOCTOR

him to death. No, I take that back. We did not beat him to
death. We robbed him-and then we stabbed him to death.
We cut his head off. I can't say just what part of the body I
disposed of or which part my partner disposed of. I think
he took the torso an' I got the legs. I took mine in a sack to a
creek called Bull Run and pitched'em in there; he throwed
. his here an' there; sometimes in an alley, all around."
According to the transcript, the victim was 40 years
old. He was bald. Jake said it was the first time in his life
he was fascinated by a bald head.
"The slashing took place in a very rundown, shabby
part of Cleveland's colored district called Little Harlem,"
Jake said for the record. "We had a Dodge sedan and
hauled the body to Bull Run Creek. The guy was white. We
took $67 off him. He also had a pocket watch, but we
refused to take it. We didn't want to get caught with it. We
threw it into the creek.
"We then stripped the guy of his clothes. We burned
them in the stove in his shack. A couple days later, when
the papers came out, we saw plenty about the murder. Just
as we figured, it was blamed on the Mad Killer, the guy
we'd been reading so much about."
In the transcript, Steele had asked Bird what the
weapon was he killed the man with. Bird said it had been a
jackknife. Had the victim been stabbed in the head? Yes,
Jake said, and then they sliced him up. He said they were
very careful not to hit their victims, because that wasn't
the way the Mad Killer worked. "Stabbing, cutting 'em
up-that was his style," Jake told Steele. Pat wanted to
know if his partner was still alive. Jake didn't know. "I'm
the poorest man on names in the United States," Jake
said. "All I know is that at the time he got out of prison he
invited me to join him after I was released. The only name
I had for him was Slim."
"Only Slim? Is that the only name you have for him?"
Steele said.
 SING LIKE A BIRD 167

"One night we put on this show at the penitentiary,"

Jake recalled. "The name of the play was 'Dan Chain
Lightning.' This guy I'm tellin' you about played an old
lady's part with a dress on. Everybody called him Slim
There were only two or three blacks in the joint, so prison
authorities should remember him easily.''
Jake' s Day in
Court

BACK in Tacoma again, Pat Steele's face was hag-

gard from the rigors of the Jake Bird interrogation. Across
from his desk sat Dr. Larson.
"We have a strange one here, Charley," Pat said. "He
never gives you a straight answer."
"I know what you mean," Dr. Larson said. "He talks a
lot in bits and pieces."
"Yes," Pat said. "I went over there firmly convinced I
had an inside track-that he would come clean."
"Don't let it get under your skin," Dr. Larson told him.
"Listen to him closely. I believe that out of all Jake's
verbiage you'll eventually be able to determine the truth."
"Jake never talks in sentences," Steele said. "He talks
in whole paragraphs. Here, listen to this."
Steele had a copy of the transcript and he started to
read:

ME: Jake, what I am trying to get at is to put this last

hour to good advantage for your own soul. Confession is
good for the soul, as your preacher would say.
168
 JAKE'S DAY IN COURT 169
BIRD: You don't think I believe that, do you?
ME: Yes, I do. When you talk to the preacher, you're
talking to the Lord through him.
BIRD: I say, do you really think I believe that?
ME: I think you do. You claim to be telling the truth.
BIRD: I am. Anybody else wouldn't even question it.
You don't think I gotta spill my guts to you just to square
myself with the Lord, do you? You sound like a preacher.
Don't snow me, brother. I ain't got but one thing to do-
that is, to tell you all I been saying is a lie-that I ain't
signin' nothing-that I was just bluffin' -and then go in
there to the chapel, get down on my knees an' ask God to
forgive me. An' he'd forgive me, too. You cannot intercede
in God's business. We gotta seek our own salvation. There's
no use of a preacher fella tellin' me I gotta confess I kilt a
man. But right is right. A little right don't hurt anybody.
ME: Why then, Jake, did you tell us about all those
murders? What was your purpose?
BIRD: Because everybody is sayin' I ain't connected
with them. That's the big reason I told you. I kilt those
people-and a lot more."

"Then you're assuming that Jake is guilty of all

those homicides?" Dr. Larson said.
"Guilty as sin," Steele said.
A couple of days after Dr. Larson and Pat Steele
talked, Jake Bird was back on the front pages again:

Olympia, Wash., Jan. 12-(AP)-Attorneys for Jake

Bird, transient who has admitted to the slaying of at least
12 persons, today filed papers with the State Supreme
Court requesting:
1. A Writ of Habeas Corpus in the case Bird has an
appeal pending.
2. If no appeal is pending, a Writ of Certiorari.
3. A restraining order preventing Warden Tom Smith
from carrying out Bird's scheduled execution Friday morn-
ing.
170 CRIME DOCTOR

The high court took no action on the petition today.

The petition, filed by John Tuttle of the Walla Walla
law firm of Tuttle and Luce, said Bird allegedly wrote a
letter from the penitentiary at Walla Walla to the Clerk of
the Pierce County Court, purporting to appeal his con-
viction of slaying two Tacoma women.
It was not clear whether the letter arrived within the
statutory time for making an appeal or whether it was a
proper method of making an appeal.
If it were ruled that an appeal is pending as a result of
the letter, Bird's execution would automatically be stayed
until the appeal was disposed of.
If it were ruled that no appeal is pending, the attorneys
request the high court for a Writ of Certiorari, which, if
granted, would bring records in the case from the Pierce
County Court to the Supreme Court for review to determine
whether the purported appeal was good or not.
A copy of the action was served on Prosecutor Pat
Steele this afternoon for the Walla Walla attorneys who
say they entered the case "as an act of charity for a man
who may have been deprived of important constitutional
rights" and at the request of Warden Tom Smith.
On the morning of January 16, Bird got his stay of
execution from Governor Wallgren. That night, instead of
hanging at the end of a rope, he was accusing two Chicago
prisoners by long distance telephone of participating with
him in a double slaying.
Newspaper details of the hookup follow:
Walla Walla, Wash., Jan. 16-(AP)-Talkative Jake
Bird, oft-times assuming a belligerent tone, charged two
prisoners from Chicago by phone tonight of helping him
kill two persons. He admonished one of the men curtly:
"I'm trying to get you to act right. If you don't shut up,
you're going to get everyone hung."
An argumentative response from the accused man on
the other end of the unprecedented long-distance hookup
from the Washington State prison prompted the con-
demned axe slayer's sharp retort.
 JAKE'S DAY IN COURT 171
Bird, who was saved from hanging early today by a
60-day reprieve, reviewed many details of the killing of
Mrs. Lillian Galvin and her maid in Evanston, Ill., in 1942.
Acting Evanston Detective Chief Harry Engstrom directed
prison arrangements for the unique chapter in the bloody
Bird case, and the accused men were in the office of the
Chicago Herald-American.
Bird told the two Chicago prisoners, identified as
Lovell Boykins and William (Sugar Man) Hockett, to "tell
the truth about the whole affair and make the best deal you
can."
Bird talked first with the man identified as "Sugar
Man" Hockett. He had told officers previously that "Sugar
Man" was only 17 at the time the crime was committed and
that he felt responsible for the youth.
Bird's opening words were:
"Hello, is that you, Sugar Man?"
On the other end of the line, Sugar Man denied
knowing Bird or anything about the case. Bird argued with
him, at times getting tough in his conversation.
Bird described the crime. He said that the two women
were killed by Sugar Man and a man who is now serving
time in the Michigan State prison on another murder
charge. Bird then talked with the other man. "Lovell, this is
Jake." Boykins had had no connection with the crime
except going along with them and helping dispose of the
loot, Bird said. "I got acquainted with you in your gam-
bling joint," Bird told Lovell. "I just call you to tell you what
happened that night and what you could do to help the
situation. Your part wasn't very heavy-you got scared
and ran."
A third man Bird also talked with was described as
"Shaky Jake." Bird said that a brother-in-law of "Shaky
Jake" had been given all the jewelry and furs from the
Galvin robbery except for two pieces of jewelry. Frequently
during the conversations in which he talked with each of
the three men twice, Bird became argumentative, and
occasionally profane. He pleaded with them to do what he
thought was right. There were two sets of earphones used
and all present took turns listening in. The three men at the
172 CRIME DOCTOR

Chicago end seemed frightened and excited and occasion-

ally stuttered.
Engstrom said he was convinced that one of the men
on the Chicago end of the conversations would break down
and confess. He said he was satisfied that a solution of the
case had been obtained.
During most of the conversations, Bird asked leading
questions, which the men in the Chicago jail were forced to
answer.
After Governor Wallgren granted Bird a stay, the
prisoner was returned to his cell at the Pierce County jail in
Tacoma. There he drafted two trusties to type out his
appeal documents and began bombarding the state Su-
preme Court. With boundless energy he kept dictating
appeal briefs on an around-the-clock basis. He hammered
away at the admission of one of the Tacoma police officers
that he'd beaten him unmercifully on the night of the
Kludt killings. What actually happened, claimed Bird, was
that he was shoved into a patrol wagon and driven up and
down the streets while the police kicked, punched and
slugged him around "till my teeth flew like popcorn."
When they finally got around to taking him to the County
Hospital, he said, a doctor came out, looked at him and
said, "Why, the bastard isn't dead yet," and went away.

Jake finally won his day in court. On May 20, 1948, he

appeared before the state court after "firing" his court-
appointed lawyers, Selden and Paulsen.
Dr. Larsen recalls the details: "Talk about bizarre
appearances. Jake put on a show such as the solemn
Temple of Justice chambers in Olympia had never seen-
and probably never will see again. The handcuffs and leg
irons, which had shackled him for the trip from the Pierce
County jail to Olympia, had been removed before Jake
entered the chambers. He then strolled in, took it slowly
and coolly up the aisle. He was very confident, trim as a
dancer, and he was dressed quite attractively in a brown,
 JAKE'S DAY IN COURT 173

conservative suit, a white shirt, and a dark tie. The point of

a maroon handkerchief protruded from his breast pocket.
"Special pains were taken to clarify the waiver-of-
immunity business: That Jake had asked to make a state-
ment, and that his statement there would subject him to
the state's cross-examination; that questions would be
asked and had to be answered; that anything he said could
be held against him later. Did he understand all that? He
did. 'All right,' he was told, 'then you may begin. And
make it loud and clear.'
"Jake was armed with a score of law books. He'd
borrowed them from the prison library in Walla Walla.
Gesturing with both fists, kicking one foot and then the
other, he shouted: 'Your Honors wantta know how the po-
lice got that confession outta me? They opened the cell
door and they yelled at me, "Get in there, you black sonofa-
bitch!" and he illustrated his words by swinging both fists
and kicking the air. Then, he went on, "They yelled at me,
"Get outta there, ya black bastard!" And again he feinted
with a left hook, a right cross and a deft kick. 'Your
Honors,' he told them, 'are going to ask why I committed
that crime. But I ain't sayin' I committed that crime. Even
if I did it, I'm entitled to a fair trial. I don't know nothin'
about no habeas corpus or state ex rel, but I know about a
fair trial. How do I know? 'Cause Warden Tom Smith told
me so. And Warden Smith ain't lied to me yet.'"
The hearing lasted for a full hour. Afterward, Robert
C. Cummings, who covers the political scene in Olympia
for the Tacoma News Tribune, bumped into one of the
Supreme Court judges, a close friend, as he was going
home.
"That was quite a performance by Bird today," he
said.
"Yes," agreed the judge. "But he talked too long."
"Too long?" Cummings said. "There's no time limit on
appeals in a capital case."
"He still talked too long," the judge insisted.
174 CRIME DOCTOR

"How so?"
"Well," the judge pointed out, "he described that room
-the murder scene-which he said he'd never been in."
Jake Bird had unwittingly put a hex on himselfl

Unlike conventional prisoners, condemned men are

not subjected to a work routine; they can do with their time
what they like-sleep all day, or, as was Bird's habit, read
all night. He averaged a dozen books a week. His quench-
less interest was restricted to one theme: law literature. He
consumed hours each day leafing through law books,
compiling research that he hoped would help reverse his
conviction. This thirst soon depleted the shelves of the
prison library.
Bird continued writing letters protesting his convic-
tion and asking for a new trial. He charged that he had not
had a fair trial. According to the way he figured it, the
"hostile atmosphere" in Tacoma had made it impossible to
empanel an unbiased jury, and therefore, a change of
venue should have been granted.
But the bulkiest of Bird's claims was aimed at the
arresting officers and his two defense attorneys, J. W.
Selden and Arthur W. Paulsen. He insisted that the police
had wrongfully beaten a confession out of him, forced him
to sign an illegal statement; as for Selden and Paulsen, he
shrugged them off as "incompetent and inadequate." Fur-
thermore, he said, they had not prepared any real defense
for him in the original trial, and this lack of effort, he
implied, had been deliberate-an act of collusion between
the defense and the prosecution.
These were grave assertions, reflecting upon the in-
tegrity of two respected lawyers and a distinguished judge.
 Last Ditch Stand

ON May 23, 1949, four days before his latest appoint-

ment with the hangman was to be carried out, Jake was
back in court. He had successfully won a hearing "on order
to show cause in the matter of the application for a Writ of
Habeas Corpus" before Judge Sam M. Driver, of the Dis-
trict Court of the United States for the Eastern District of
Washington, Southern Division, at Walla Walla. There
was no jury and Bird, at his own request, acted as his own
counsel. C. John Newlands, assistant attorney general of
the State of Washington, and Pat Steele represented the
state.
This was the only knownoccaswnthatJakeBirdwas
ever on a witness stand and under oath.
The hearing, in part, went like this:
"Are you ready, Mr. Bird?" asked Judge Driver.
"Yes, sir, your Honor."
"Are you ready, Mr. Newlands?"
"Ready for respondent," N ewlands said. "I might say,
this case has recently gone through the courts of the State
of Washington and the United States, being handled by
175
176 CRIME DOCTOR

the prosecutor's office of Pierce County, and I have asked

them to asist me in this matter. Mr. Patrick M. Steele is the
prosecuting attorney, and I have asked him to argue, and
present some of the evidence in this case."
"Well," Judge Driver said, "he may be admitted for the
purpose of appearing in this case. Mr. Bird, you are present
here acting in your own behalf as petitioner without coun-
sel. I might say that the Court did not appoint counsel; I'd
like to have the record show that the court did not appoint
counsel for Mr. Bird because it appeared from his petition
there were no complex or difficult questions of fact which
the Court felt it could pass upon without the aid of counsel
so far as Mr. Bird is concerned. Now, I believe from reading
your petition, Mr. Bird, that at least your principal con-
tention is you were deprived of your rights under the
federal constitution in your trial and conviction was
brought about by a confession which you were forced to
make, an involuntary confession, isn't that your principal
point?"
Jake said, "Well, no, sir, your Honor, that is one of the
principal points."
"What are the others?" Judge Driver wanted to know.
"The next principal point is that a fair hearing of the
change of venue motion will convince this Court that a fair
trial could not be had in Pierce County, and to put a man
on trial in an atmosphere where he can't get a fair trial is
denying him due process of law," Jake said.
"Yes," Judge Driver said, "I remember you had that
point also."
"Okay," Jake said. "Now, the next point is, even the
argument that I took to the State Supreme Court about the
counsel would ordinarily solely be a state question. I
understand fully that all it needed was that they appoint
counsel that was a member of the bar and so forth, but in
view of the fact what this man did, and the Judge forcing
him on at a hearing that I wasn't present at, that in itself is
saying that the State of Washington isn't enforcing the
law."
 LAST DITCH STAND 177

"You mean on your appeal?" Judge Driver asked.

"No, at my trial," Jake said. "Now, on this appeal to
the State Supreme Court, as this gentleman stated, he puts
me in a little difficult position. The points I brought up to
your Honor in this writ was the points that I'm fully
prepared to prove. Now, if they wants to present any part
of the record, your Honor, they can present all the record
they want, because there's nothing in it but this so-called
confession, and I can prove that."
"I merely want a statement of your points now,"
Judge Driver told him.
"Well," Jake said, "the statements of my points briefly
is that I was arrested about 2:15 in the morning. I was
taken... "
"Well, don't go over it in detail," Judge Driver said.
"You claim that you were mistreated and beaten and
forced to confess, and that confession was used in your
trial?"
"Yes, sir."
"Another one is you were improperly denied a change
of venue, and it was impossible for you to have a fair trial
because of the inflamed condition of public opinion in
Pierce County," Judge Driver said. "Now, what is another
point?"
"That I paid for testimony I didn't get," replied Jake.
"I'm not concerned with your appeal at all," Judge
Driver said. "All I'm concerned with is whether you had a
fair trial in the Superior Court. If you had a fair trial, then
I'm not concerned with whether or not your appeal was
properly conducted; that's a matter for the Supreme Court
of Washington to decide."
"Well," Jake said, "then my point is, in the Superior
Court they beat this so-called confession out of me, that I
did not have proper counsel ... "
"Now, I don't quite understand that," Judge Driver
said. "Was counsel appointed for you?"
"Counsel was appointed for me."
"Two lawyers?"
178 CRIME DOCTOR

"Yes, sir."
"In what way do you claim that you weren't properly
represented. Were they incompetent?"
"They was incompetent, and besides that they created
so much adverse publicity, along with the prosecutor's
office, that it deprived anybody of the possibility of think-
ing they was trying to conduct my defense. Further, they
knew and had a list of witnesses that knew I had broken
ribs, the skin beat off both my legs, several teeth knocked
out, sprained back, and injured chest, they knew I had all
this at the trial, and after having a doctor to examine me
just three days before the trial, they didn't even call this
doctor, but on the other hand ..."
"They didn't call you either, did they?"
"No, sir."
"And that was because you had a number of prior
felony convictions that they didn't want the jury to know
about?"
"Well, that was the excuse, but my contention was to.
tell the jury about it."
"You wanted to testify, but your counsel decided it was
best not to?"
"Yes,'' Jake said, 'but after all this, this counsel filed
an affidavit to withdraw from the case. Now, your Honor,
in talking to the jury, one counsel demanded an outright
acquittal. He says, 'This man is not guilty of nothing-you
seen him over in that alley an' you don't got a thing on
him.' The other counsel says, 'We find ourselves in a
difficult position. We have no legitimate argument to make
for this man."'
"Mr. Bird, I'm not inclined to go too deeply into the
question of how good a job a lawYer in a state court did in
defending an accused," Judge Driver said. "Ifl did that, I'd
retry probably every case tried in state court, because
every defendent convicted is dissatisfied with the way his
lawYer handled the case, and I can't sit here and say such
and such should have been smarter, should have used a
 LAST DITCH STAND 179
better argument. I can't go into those questions. I must
assume that attorneys appointed by the Court were capa-
ble and conscientious men. If one of your lawyers was
incompetent and letting you down and actually trying to
convict you, the judge would have replaced him in a
minute; so where an attorney appointed by the Court
conducts himself to the satisfaction of the Court, I must
assume his services were such as at least not to violate the
constitutional rights of the accused."
"But your Honor, the facts is on record. The attorney
filed an application saying I had committed a dozen or
more murders, and he didn't want the case," Jake said.
"They go into court and argue this behind my back. If it's
like your Honor says, if you assume this attorney wasn't
going to do anything that would deprive me of getting a
fair trial, then tell me, how could, after this attorney-why,
that's a solemn... "
"I'd suggest you proceed to put on your proof, I think I
understand your contention," Judge Driver said. "All I'm
asking you to do now is tell me why you think I ought to
release you on Writ of Habeas Corpus. I think I have that
in mind. Now, proceed to put on your proof, your evidence,
your testimony."
"Well, is the witnesses here?" Jake asked.
"I don't know," Judge Driver said. "You have yourself
here, haven't you?"
"Yes, sir."
"All right, do you want to testify?"
"Yes, sir."
"All right, be sworn."
"Well, just a minute," Jake said, "there's some wit-
nesses here I called, anyway."
"All right, if there are other witnesses, you may call
them," Judge Driver said.
Jake looked around the courtroom and said, "I want to
know is Officer Hickey here?"
"Apparently not," Judge Driver said.
180 CRIME DOCTOR

"Well, in other words, it's not your duty to summon

witnesses on a Writ of Habeas Corpus?" Jake asked.
"It's my duty to hear this case. I'm hearing it, Mr.
Bird," Judge Driver replied. "You proceed with your proof,
whatever you have here."
"Well," Jake said, "is Mr. Earl D. Mann here? Is Dr.
Larson here?"
There was no response.
"Well," Jake said, "I guess you can see, now, that's just
about the way it was in the courtroom. They testified to all
this stuff in the courtroom, and now they are running
away from me."
Whereupon John Newlands spoke up for the first
time: "Your Honor, we have the certified copy of the
transcript of the testimony taken by the reporter at the
trial of the evidence of Dr. George L. Rickles; Officer
Hickey, we have his testimony, and we have an extensive
affidavit of Earl Mann, who was then deputy prosecuting
attorney, who, of course, could not testify at the trial. So far
there's just one man we haven't anything about."
"Well, now, your Honor, as I told you in that Writ, I
didn't file that Writ for delay of any kind," Jake said. "I
filed it because I know that Pat Steele and everybody that
knows the case in Tacoma knows exactly what took place
to Jake Bird, and they know, talking about what those
people testified to, and all, and they was cross-examined.
Now you get up on the stand, please, Mr. Steele, and I want
to cross-examine you."
"But Mr. Bird," protested Judge Driver, "these men
you asked to summon here are the very people you claim
mistreated you."
"Absolutely."
"They testified at the trial that they didn't. What could
you possibly hope to gain by bringing policemen here, who
would testify to the same thing they did in your trial? Now,
if you want to prove you were mistreated, the only way I
 LAST DITCH STAND 181

can see, you'll have to testify, and then see whether I

believe you or not."
"Well, just a second, please, Mister-your Honor,
please."
"Yes, I think it would be better to say your Honor
rather than Mister. Proceed."
"I made a mistake."
"All right."
"I've got two briefs missing," Jake continued, "but in
one of those briefs, you asked me what I expect to prove by
those witnesses that said after this young officer just out of
the Navy lost his temper and struck me, that I got a single
bit of abuse in that record. If your Honor hears this case,
after I get through with Mr. Steele, I'll show you there is
abuse from 2:15until11 o'clock, and I wish to question Mr.
Steele now, if your Honor please."
"Mr. Steele?"
John Newlands explained, "He would like the pros&
cuting attorney to take the stand and be examined."
"Do you have any objection to that?" Judge Driver
added.
"Not as long as Mr. Steele may still participate as
assistant counsel here," Newlands said.
"Yes, he may have that privilege, of course," Judge
Driver said.
For the first time, Pat Steele spoke: "Ifl can assist and
establish something I will, your Honor."
"All right, proceed."
Pat Steele took the stand and Jake Bird began his
direct examination.
"Will you state your name to the Court, please?" Jake
said.
"Steele-Patrick M. Steele."
"And your occupation?"
"Prosecuting Attorney of Pierce County, Washing-
ton."
182 CRIME DOCTOR

"And was you the prosecuting attorney along about

October 30, 1947?"
"Of Pierce County, I was."
"And at that time you sent a deputy over to the county
jail to take a confession from me, didn't you?"
"No, sir, I didn't."
"Well, one of your deputies did come over there, didn't
he?"
"I was away on business in California. I learned about
it later when I returned to Tacoma."
"My question, Mr. Steele, is did he come over?"
"I wasn't present when he came. I understand that he
did."
"You understand that he did. And when you came
back from California, he presented to you a so-called
confession, or a confession, whichever you want to call it,
didn't he?"
"There was available a writing which had been signed
by Jake Bird and recounted the events of the night of
October 30, 1947."
"And of course," Jake said, with a hint of sarcasm, "in
this so-called confession you saw that I made those state-
ments of my own free will and knew they could be used
against me?"
"You mean," interrupted Judge Driver, "that was
stated in the writing?"
"We have the confession here, if you want to examine
it," offered Steele.
"Have I missed something?" John Newlands asked.
"Is this concerning something at which Mr. Steele was
personally present, or is he being asked to testify to some-
thing he knows his deputy did?"
"Mr Steele is being asked to testify was he the prose-
cuting attorney, and did he accept this as a confession and
introduce it into the evidence, and what I'm solely trying to
prove to Mr. Steele, and what I'm leading up to, your
 LAST DITCH STAND 183

Honor, is this: I'm leading up to show that Mr. Steele has

said that the record don't show a single bit of abuse except
Mr. Hickey's mistreatment, and I'm out to show that the
record, according to Mr. Steele's own witnesses, does show
other abuse."
"Is that a copy of the confession in your hand?" Judge
Driver asked.
"Yes sir," replied Jake.
''I wonder if we shouldn't have it in here?" Judge
Driver said, whereupon he asked for a pause in the hearing
while the original confession was marked by the clerk and
admitted in evidence as Respondent's Exhibit No. 1.
Finally, Jake went on with his direct examination.
"Mr. Steele," he said, "did you read this document that
your deputy presented to you?"
"I have read it on several occasions."
"You've read this particular document?"
"That's right."
"And do you remember the statement, 'I make this
statement because I want Mr. Mann and Mr. Lyons to
have all the facts and the truth. I have not been mistreated
by them, and no promises nor duress have been used to get
me to make this statement. I know that this statement can
be used against me.' Do you remember reading that stat&
ment?"
"I recollect there's something to that effect in there,''
Steele said.
"Mr. Bird,'' broke in Judge Driver, "I think that ques-
tion is a little unfair, because as I understand, this witness
wasn't present when the statement was taken, so he
wouldn't have any occasion to advise you of your rights,
would he?"
"But your Honor," Jake replied, "the confession shows
-in other words, your Honor, here is the thing about it;
now, I've been in this position ever since I've been fighting
this case . . .''
184 CRIME DOCTOR

"Well, now, let's talk about this particular document,"

Judge Driver said. "This man wasn't present when you
signed it?"
"That's true," Jake said,
"All right, how could he advise you of your rights?"
"I'm out to show I was not advised of them at all,"
Jake explained.
"Well, if he knows about it, he can testify,'' Judge
Driver said. "Mr. Steele, do you know whether he was
informed of his rights before he signed the statement?"
"I have no personal knowledge, your Honor,'' Steele
said. "As a matter of fact, I was not in the city, did not
return until the following Monday."
"Well,'' Jake said,'' should I have been advised of my
rights?"
"Oh, yes, yes, of course,'' Judge Driver said. "But that
isn't a fact question."
"All right,'' Jake said. "Now, Mr. Steele, did you not
say in your briefs and the various courts since we've been
fighting this case, that my mistreatment by Officer Hickey
in the patrol wagon was the only abuse that I could show?"
"In connection with what?"
"I object, your Honor,'' John Newlands said. "We
have certain points in issue. One of them is the constitu-
tional procedure which was followed in obtaining this
confession. Now, I think Mr. Bird should confine his
questions to the time of obtaining this confession, and not
search through everything that has happened to Jake
Bird since he was apprehended, for something to argue
upon here. If he can pin his question down to the taking of
this confession, and can show something was improperly
done at the time of the confession, then I think this
question could be proper, but not this general question."
"Well,'' Judge Driver said, "I think he should be per-
mitted to show what has happened from the time of his
arrest until his confession, because if a man is beaten and
intimidated one night, and is afraid it would be repeated
 LAST DITCH STAND 185

and subsequently signs a confession, obviously it would be

involuntary, and he should be permitted to show what
leads up to it. Mr. Bird, I'm allowing you more latitude
than I would if you had an attorney, but I don't want you to
go too far afield. What do you want to ask Mr. Steele next?"
"I'm trying to make it clear what I'm trying to bring
out, that the record shows abuse from the time I was
arrested up till the time I made the confession," Jake said.
"When you say the record, you mean the testimony at
the trial?" Judge Driver asked.
"I mean the testimony at the trial, your Honor," Jake
said. And then turning back to Pat Steele: "Now, Mr.
Steele, you put an officer on the stand by the name of Mr.
Hickey, didn't you?"
"That's right."
"And Mr. Hickey testified that he lost his temper in
the patrol wagon and struck me several times, did he not?"
John Newlands leaped to his feet. "I object to that
question," he said. "We're now not concerned with the
confession. We do have the sworn testimony of Mr. Hickey
which we can submit. I don't think Mr. Steele should be
asked to answer that when we can present the testimony
of Mr. Hickey."
"Do you have all that testimony?" Judge Driver in-
quired.
Steele answered for Newlands. "Your Honor," he said,
"we have the direct, cross, redirect and recross."
Jack Bird was plainly flustered.
"These people are not trying to do nothing but cover
up," he told the judge. "If I'm not supposed to show where
that man beat me half to death ..."
"Wait a minute, what you're asking is for this man to
tell what somebody testified," Judge Driver said. "If we
have the written testimony, that will be more reliable and
more direct than for Mr. Steele to tell it from memory."
"I can say at this time my objections are not designed
to keep Mr. Steele from admitting any evidence which is in
186 CRIME DOCTOR

issue, and I will relax my objection on that point," John

Newlands said. "But I want to keep this from getting into a
circus."
"Your Honor,'' Jake said, "the only circus that they
are afraid is going to take place ..."
"Let's just keep on the track here,'' Judge Driver said.
" ... is that I'll bring out that I was abused for eight
hours, as I claimed," Jake continued.
"Well, you can very easily bring that out by taking the
stand and testifying," Judge Driver told him, "and you can
tell just exactly what happened to you."
"Your Honor, please, I would like to ask you one
question for advice, if you'll advise me on that score," Jake
said. "If those people beat me up and abuse me and force
me to sign a confession, is that confession any good?"
"No, it's not, but that's the very question we're in-
quiring into," Judge Driver said. "I want you to prove
that."
"I'll prove it," Jake said.
After more questioning of Pat Steele, then cross exam-
ination by John Newlands, and finally redirect examina-
tion by Jake, Steele was excused.
Jake looked up at Judge Driver.
"Your Honor,'' he said, "I wish to take the stand,
please."
"All right."
"Shall I ask myself questions?" Jake wanted to know.
"No, you just tell your story in your own way," Judge
Driver instructed him.
"Well,'' Jake began, "my name is Jake Bird, and I'm
an inmate of the Washington State Penitentiary. I brought
a Writ before this Court that said I was mistreated and
abused. At the trial the state put an officer on the stand by
the name of John Hickey to testify that he lost his temper
in the patrol wagon, and that he beat me, and after he beat
me that he snapped out of it in disgust and took a seat in
the back of the patrol wagon. Now, this officer testified
 LAST DITCH STAND 187

further that he didn't think Jake Bird was a man, he

considered him a beast. He wouldn't say Jake Bird was
severely injured, even though Jake Bird was lying on the
sidewalk at the time. He further testified that he took Jake
Bird to a hospital, and a nurse came out and looked atJake
Bird and said Jake Bird don't look so bad and they hauled
him away without treatment."
"You mean Officer Hickey?" Judge Driver asked.
"Officer Hickey," Jake said. "He further testified that
Officer Skattum was needed back at the scene, was the
reason they hauled me away without treatment. He fur-
ther went on to say that there was Officer Skattum,
himself and the driver, and that I was handcuffed at the
time of the attack. He says he didn't care where he hit me.
He says he didn't count the blows that he struck. In other
words, he says at the time he attacked me he wasn't
thinking. Now, the only other question after this, he says I
told him that Leroy did it. He asked me did I commit the
crime, and I told him that LeRoy did it, and he says I said I
was looking at the house."
Jake paused, took a deep breath, continued.
"Now," he said, "the state's main contention in fight-
ing me all the way up to the United States Supreme Court
is, look at the four witnesses' testimony about this so-called
confession. Well, here is their testimony. Hickey says I
said LeRoy did it. Lyons said I told him it was light in the
house, and I could see, and that I had an axe an that I did
it. Dr. Wright said it was dark in there, and when I went ID.
there I didn't know what I had anyway. When I was taken
to the county jail they got Sig Kittleson to say I went in the
room and killed them. In this confession they say I was
talking to another person and grabbed them, until the
State Supreme Court asked Mr. Steele, 'What are you
going to do about these four versions?' I want to know
what makes their four versions so important. I'm not
trying to get you confused, your Honor, because these are
four direct controversions that can be nothing but lies,
188 CRIME DOCTOR

they cannot be the truth: it happened one way or the other

if I did it. Now they've got five versions."
"Please the Court," John N ewlands pointed out, "we're
arguing the case now. I'd like to get just the facts beforethe
Court now."
"Yes," agreed Judge Driver, "what you're on the stand
for, Mr. Bird, is the purpose of testifying what you know
about this case."
"Well, I'm telling you what I know about it," Jake said.
"You're arguing about what somebody else said, and
what the Supreme Court did and so on," Judge Driver said.
"That's argument. You're supposed to tell me what hap-
pened to you."
"Well, what happened to me was this. After Officer
Hickey says that he beat me up at 2:15 in the morning, he
says he hauled me to the hospital ... "
"You're discussing again something that's in this testi-
mony here," Judge Driver said.
"Yes, sir."
"That isn't anything you know about. You're on the
stand to tell what you know about this. What did they do to
you? You claim they forced you to confess. How did they do
that? You may argue afterward. I'll give you a reasonable
time to argue from this record and from circumstances and
what somebody else said, but now you're on the stand for
the purpose of testifying. You've seen trials enough."
"Yes, sir I've seen trials enough, but none like these."
"All right, go ahead."
"The point I can't get clear, I told you in my Writ that
the record was reeking with perjury. Now, if we're going to
take what those officers testified at the trial and try to say
that those officers testified to the facts as they were, we're
admitting it's been testified to ... "
"You're arguing again, Mr. Bird. That isn't testimo-
ny,"Judge Driver reminded him.
"Well, my testimony is this. I'm going to show you
where I got other abuse that night.
 LAST DITCH STAND 189

"After Mr. Hickey took me to the hospital and hauled

me to the Kludt home three times, they proceeded to the
police station with me."
"Where were you arrested?" Judge Driver wanted to
know.
"Out in an alley, a backyard, about a half-block from
the Kludt home, on the other side of the street."
"One of the officers chased you?"
"No, sir, he was on his way to the home, and said,
'There's a man over in the alley.' They made up the story
because they thought that justice was going to catch up
with the so-called confession."
"They knew when they arrested you that they were
going to force you to confess?"
"No, when they arrested me, they said they had a call
to go to the Kludt home."
"Well,'' Judge Driver said, "what I'm trying to do is get
an orderly sequence of your story. I want to get you started,
if I can, so that you'll keep off of all this stuff that isn't
doing you any good or me either. You were arrested a block
from the home?"
"Yes, sir."
"All right, then what happened."
"Well,'' Jake continued, "they took me to the Kludt
home, they took me to the hospital, they brought me back
to the Kludt home..."
"Why did they take you to the hospital?" Judge Driver
asked.
"Because I was severely wounded."
"How did you get wounded?"
"I got wounded when they took me to the Kludt home
the first time, right after my arrest,'' Jake said. "Officer
Hickey went into the house an came out and got in the
patrol wagon with me, along with Officer Skattum, and he
said, 'Nigger, you killed two white women!' I said, 'I
haven't killed anybody.' He said, 'Well, who did it?' And I
said, 'I don't know.' He said, 'Anybody else out here with
190 CRIME DOCTOR

you?' I said, 'Yes.' He said, 'Who is it?' I said, 'LeRoy.' He

asked, 'Where's LeRoy now?' I said, 'With all this shooting
and running around, where do you think he is?' He said,
'Did LeRoy go in the house?' I said, 'I don't know. I seen
somebody come out of the back door and throw something
away that looked like him.' He said, 'You're not sure that
LeRoy committed the crime?' I said, 'No.' He said, 'You
black sonofabitch, you're going to show me that LeRoy is
down in the poolhall someplace, there's no LeRoy here!'
And then he said, 'You're going to tell me about killing
these women right now,' and he busted me across the
bridge of the nose, and that's where I lay in the patrol
wagon until they took me to the hospital on the second trip.
No, they proceeded to the police station after taking me to
the Kludt home three times and the hospital twice. They
testified at the trial that I said when I was brought into the
station.. .''
Judge Driver said, "I'm interested only in what ac-
tually happened and what you said, and not what they
said, not what you said they said at the trial. The record
will show what they said. I want to know what happened
from your standpoint. Go ahead.''
"Well," Jake said, "they took me to the police station,
and they said I said at the station, 'Yes, I did.' They said
they asked me did I do it, and I said, 'Yes, I did.' They said I
asked for water and rest."
"But you didn't say yes, you did it, or did you, at the
police station?"
"You want to know whether I said, 'Yes, I did it,' is
that it?"
"Yes.''
"Yes, sir, I said, 'Yes, I did it,' but I said I did it only
because they done tortured me and put all manner of
torture to me, and I had to say yes or get killed. I told them I
wouldn't sign anything, and when I told them that, they
proceeded to beat me some more. Then they gave me some
water and said I had two hours ofrest coming and took me
to a cell. By now I had four teeth knocked out, I had my top
 LAST DITCH STAND 191

lip cut clear through on both sides, I had several stitches in

my head and face, I had my ribs cracked, and skin beaten
off both legs down to my feet, and the scars is here today if
you want to see them. That's the condition I was in. I rested
from 5 o'clock till 7:45 and then was ordered back to the
hospital."
"How long were you at the hospital?" Judge Driver
asked.
"About an hour."
"And then where did they take you?"
"Back to the detective bureau making this confes-
sion," Jake said. "Lt. Lyons was there, and then in walked
some officer who said, 'There's the damn niggerthat killed
the white women and raped one of them's dead body,' but
still there's no other abuse in the record, according to them.
The record shows what they did, and what happened is
Jake Bird never had one wink of sleep from the time they
arrested me until the time this so-called confession was
made."
"How much time elapsed in between?" Judge Driver
said.
"Well, 2 o'clock in the morning until 11 the next day."
"Was that the time you signed this confession?"
"Yes."
After more sparring around, during which Jake re-
peated how he had been cuffed around on the night of his
arrest, Judge Driver asked, "Mr. Bird, how long was the
trial after your arrest?"
"Twenty-four days, even though I was still wounded."
"Do you have any further testimony as to what hap-
pened there that you want to tell the Court, anything else
you want to tell about what happened to you?" Judge
Driver asked.
Jake shook his head.
"No," he said. "That's what happened to me."
"I see,'' Judge Driver said. He turned to John New-
lands and said, "All right, cross examination."
"How old are you, Mr. Bird?" Newlands asked.
192 CRIME DOCTOR

"Forty-seven," Jake replied.

"Where were you born?"
"Louisiana."
"When?"
"December 14, 1901."
"How long did you live in Louisiana?"
"Oh, about 20 years."
"Then where did you go?"
Impatiently, Jake suddenly turned to the judge and
asked, "Has I got a right to object to it?"
"Yes, you have a right to object," Judge Driver said. "I
think, though, he has a right to ask it; rather broad
limitation in a case of this kind. Go ahead, you may
answer if you can."
"Well," Jake muttered, "I just simply can't see how an
immaterial thing like that matters, yet every question I
asked off the record to prove my point, it don't matter. I
don't know where I went from there, I can't truthfully say.
I went somewhere, I just don't know."
"Did you go to school in Louisiana?" Newlands asked.
"Yes."
"What was the town you lived in?"
"It wasn't much of a town, just a place out in the
country."
"It was a country school?"
"The nearest place was called Plummer," Jake recal-
led.
"How many years of schooling did you have?"
"I started when I was six and quit at 18," Jake said.
"That would be about 12 years of school, I guess."
"And after that you worked?"
"If I may," Jake said, "I'd like to add a little something
to that."
"All right, surely," Judge Driver said.
"Well," Jake said, "at that time they was giving school
three months a year to colored people, and we had to walk
about four or five miles to and from school every day, so
 LAST DITCH STAND 193

you didn't learn very much.''

"Then you went to work after you got out of school?"
"Yes. I was working before I got out of school."
"What kind of work?"
"Oh," Jake said, "I waited table, and common labor,
just practically anything I could do."
"That was in Louisiana?"
"Well, some of it, and wherever I was and got a job."
"Where were you? Where did you go after you left
Louisiana?"
"I went to New York, I went to Maine, I went to
Boston, I went to Philadelphia, I went to St. Louis."
"Did you live in those places, or just visit them?"
"Well," Jake said, "I was there and didn't die. I lived
everywhere."
"Did you work there?"
"Oh, I works a little bit some places, some places I
didn't."
"Have you ever been convicted of any crimes before?"
"I object to that as immaterial," Jake said.
Judge Driver said, "You may show a prior conviction
of felony only in this court, to affect the credibility of the
witness."
Newlands said to Jake, "Have you ever been con-
victed of any felonies in any courts in the United States
before?"
"Yes," Jake said.
"Where? Any in Illinois?"
"I think the record is plain on that," Jake said, evad-
ing the question.
"Well, this record isn't plain," Judge Driver said.
"When a witness takes the witness stand, it may be shown
if he has been convicted of felonies, and what the offense
was."
Newlands asked, "Were you ever convicted in courts
of the State of Utah?"
"Yes."
194 CRIME DOCTOR

"Of what crime?"

Jake turned to Judge Driver. "Your Honor," he plead-
ed, "I again object to that as immaterial."
"Overruled," Judge Driver said.
"The objection is overruled," N ewlands said. "Will you
answer the question?"
"Do you want me to tell what crime it was?" Jake
asked.
"Yes,'' Judge Driver said.
"Second degree burglary," Jake said.
"Were you ever convicted in the State of Iowa?"
"I was."
"Of what crime?"
"I object to that as immaterial," Jake said.
"Overruled," spoke up Judge Driver. "Mr. Bird, I might
say that the only purpose of this, if you had taken the
stand in your trial in Tacoma, these very questions would
have been asked you. The theory is, when any witness
takes the stand, whether he's the accused or not, it may be
shown that he's been convicted of a felony, and that's in
order to determine what weight should be given to his
testimony. It goes to his credibility, and they may show
that you've been convicted of felonies, and what the of-
fense was; not any of the circumstances, of course."
Jake asked, "Now that I am on the stand is it proper
for me to make a statement to your Honor?"
"I think it would be more orderly if you answer coun-
sel's question, and then you will be permitted to testify
again in rebuttal," Judge Driver said.
"The point is," Jake told him, "I wanted to ask your
Honor about a particular question."
"All right."
"In order to aid me, you must remember I'm alone, I
haven't got counsel. You said I've been around and in
courts quite a lot. Well, all the courts I've been in ruled that
it didn't make any difference what a defendent has been
 LAST DITCH STAND 195
convicted of, all they may show is he's been convicted of a
felony."
"That is the rule in some courts," Judge Driver said,
"but my ruling has been in order to know what effect to
give to a conviction it's necessary for a trier of the facts to
know what the difference was. If a man is convicted of
perjury, that would very vitally affect his credibility. Ifhe
had been convicted of something else, a crime of violence
or lost his temper and hit somebody, that wouldn't affect
his credibility very much, so my ruling has been and will
continue to be, until I am reversed, that the felony may be
shown, and what the offenses were."
"Well, then," Jake said, "I was convicted of assault
and attempt to commit murder."
"Were you ever convicted in the courts of the State of
Michigan?" Newlands pressed on.
"Yes," Jake said.
"Of what crime?"
"Of... "
"Was it burglary?"
"They have a new name for it there," Jake said. "It
was only an attempt, the crime wasn't carried out."
"Did it correspond with the crime of burglary in the
State of Washington?"
"I think so," Jake said. "In fact, just a second, I told
you I was convicted in all those places, didn't I?"
"Yes."
"Well, that's a little bit wrong. I pleaded guilty in two
cases and was convicted in the assault and attempt-to-
commit murder case."
"Well," Judge Driver said, "I think the term 'con-
victed' would cover either a plea of guilty or finding of
guilty by the jury or the court."
"Now, Mr. Bird," went on Newlands, "when did you
come to the State of Washington?"
"October 27, 1947."
196 CRIME DOCTOR

"That was three days before the offense of which you

were convicted?"
"Yes, sir."
"Where did you enter the state?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Into what city did you come? Did you come in through
Vancouver, Spokane-how did you come into the state?"
"Oh, well, the first city I stopped at was Spokane, I
think."
"And you came directly to Tacoma?"
"No, I think I came to Seattle first."
"What were you doing there?"
"What was I doing?"
"Yes."
"Well, I didn't have very much time to do anything. I
just got there."
"Were you on a trip, a vacation, what were you doing?
Were you looking for work?"
"Well, I just quit work, so if I got another job I would
have certainly wanted to work."
"Now on the night of October 30, 1947, at 2 a.m., you
state that the officers saw you climbing over a fence into
the alley, is that correct?"
"No, sir, that is not."
"When did the officers first see you?"
"When I was standing up in an alley across the street
from the Kludt home."
"Were you just standing there?"
"Yes."
"Did you have a gun on you?"
"No."
"Did you have a knife?"
"Sure, I did."
"The officers saw you?"
"Yes."
"What did you do then?"
 LAST DITCH STAND 197

"Nothing, until they said, 'Let's see what this man

done over in the alley.'"
"You just stood there and waited for them?"
"No."
"Did you run?"
"No."
"Did you hide?"
"No, I didn't have a chance to hide.''
"You saw them first, you said. Why didn't you stay
there?"
Jake was growing flustered.
"Well, listen, you say... " he stammered.
"You were either running or hiding or standing there
waiting," N ewlands said.
Jake turned to Judge Driver once more. "Your Honor,"
he complained, "nobody is going to give me a chance to
prove my case. I never committed that crime, that's the
reason I didn't run. If I had been, the officers never would
have seen me."
"Were you running, then?" Newlands asked.
"No, sir."
"Were you standing there?"
"I was standing there, just like I'm sitting here."
"Was this in the alley?"
"Yes, sir."
"Were you carrying an axe?"
"An axe?"
"What about a knife?"
"Don't you want to know about the axe?"
"All right," Newlands said, "what about the axe? Did
you have an axe with you? You said you didn't have a gun,
did you have a knife? Did you have the axe?"
"Mr. Newlands," Judge Driver said, "he said he had a
knife, but he hasn't answered about the axe."
"Oh, your Honor," Jake said, "who would be standing
in the alley with an axe? No, I never had no axe.''
198 CRIME DOCTOR

"When the officers came toward you, what did you do

with your knife?"
"It was in my pocket."
"When did you take it out?"
"When Officer Sabutis said you is a-I should tell
what he said-black nigger."
"Were they trying to arrest you?"
"Absolutely."
"And you resisted?"
"I'd resist you right now if you walked up an said
that."
"Why did you resist them?"
"Because he said, 'You is a black dirty nigger bastard,
and if I'd known it, I'd have shot you down,' and I told him,
'I'll give you a chance to shoot me down now.' Had he not
called me that, nobody would have got hurt."
"Did you attempt to cut the officers with your knife?"
"No, I didn't."
"What did you take the knife out for, then? Didn't you
attempt to cut both of them?"
"No, I didn't attempt to cut them; I cut both of them. I
cut Sabutis in the fight. The other one ran up and struck at
me, and I threw my hand up, and he cut his arm, but I wish
to add right here ..."
"How did you lose your teeth?" cut in Newlands.
"In the patrol wagon, when Hickey and Skattum and
all those people knocked them out."
"Going back to the knife," Newlands said, "what
happened to it? Did the officers take it away from you?"
"Your Honor," Jake said, "is he proceeding legally?"
"Well, yes, Mr. Bird," Judge Driver said, "You can
answer that, can't you?"
"All right," Jake said, "I throwed it down on the
ground."
"Mr. Bird," Judge Driver said, "why do you think he
isn't proceeding legally?"
"Well, simply this, your Honor. I cannot see, now, I put
 LAST DITCH STAND 199

in a Writ of Habeas Corpus, and I put down the witnesses I

want called, and I solemnly swear that I haven't got
money to prosecute this Writ ..."
"Now you're on the witness stand as a witness, and he
has a right to cross-examine you,'' Judge Driver said.
"Well, your Honor," Jake said, "I just want to know if
he's proceeding legally."
"It's perfectly legal cross examination," Judge Driver
said.
"I threw it down on the ground," Jake said.
"Was that after you cut the officers?"
"Yes."
"Where did Sabutis get cut? Did you stab him in the
back?"
"I don't know where I stabbed him," Jake said. "All I
know is when he run up and said what he did, that me and
him got fighting. They said I had him around the neck and
had him bent over there, what Sabutis said up on the stand
at my trial. I'm telling you what happened. All I know,
Sabutis said what he said and I took a knife and swung at
him. What position he got in, or whether my knife went
around his neck or not, or hit him in the face, all I know, he
said what he said, and I said, 'If you feel that way, I'll give
you a chance to kill me right now.'"
"Where did they take you in the patrol wagon?"
"Took me to the Kludt home, then to the hospital. I
stayed in the wagon and a doctor came out and looked at
me and said, 'He's not dead yet.' Then we went back to the
Kludt home."
"Officer Hickey and this other officer were in the
wagon with you?"
"Part of the time. You see, they'd stop all along the
street and take relays."
"Your first contact with Officer Hickey was when you
were put into the patrol wagon?"
"Well, I don't know,'' Jake said. "It seems to me that
two officers came back where I was sitting and handcuffed
200 CRIME DOCTOR

me. Now, whether Officer Hickey was one of them, I can't

truthfully say, but the first time I remember coming into
any direct contact with him was when he started out to the
Kludt home. He cuffed me around good. He'd exhaust
himself and then let another one come in and exhaust
himself."
"At the hospital, what did the doctor do for you?"
"He put stitches in my lips and stitches in my head
and bandages on my leg. He told me it's best not to disturb
the ribs, because if I'd bust them out of place, they didn't do
anything to that, and he said the back would be all right,
and the chest would be all right, so they bandaged my legs
and stitched my head and lips."
"When you got back to the police station from the
hospital, what did you do then?"
"About three or four uniformed officers took me over
in a little dining room and asked me was I ready to confess,
so I told them yes, an they told me to give them briefly
what happened. When I told them this fellow was with me
and he might have done it, they knocked me down in there
and kicked and stomped me and kicked the skin."
"That wasn't the occasion, then, that you dictated this
confession you signed?"
"I don't want that in the record no way. I didn't dictate
nothing. Deputy Prosecutor Mann dictated it."
"Was that the time that you made a statement?"
"No, sir, that's the time they asked me questions, an
after each question Earl Mann would tell the reporter what
to write. I'd sit there and say yes, or no, or shake my head,
an they dictated what they wanted to write."
"And that is the confession that we have before us
now as it was typed out, that is the same confession that
you say Mr. Mann asked you questions and you answered,
and it was written out, and that's the confession you
signed?"
"Yes."
"No further questions, your Honor," Newlands said.
 LAST DITCH STAND 201

Judge Driver stared down at Jake. He had some

questions of his own he wanted answered.
"Mr. Bird," he said, "were some changes made in the
confession after it was written out?"
"Yes, sir."
"Did you initial the changes that were made?"
"Yes, sir."
"Were they made at your request?"
"No, sir. They were made when they was reading the
confession over, and said that I said in two places where I
took money out of the purse, and asked me which one was
correct, and I said either one, to suit your taste, so they
initialed them out and told me to put 'J.B.' there."
Judge Driver had a copy of the confession in front of
him, and he said, "Well, they lined it out, but this is your
handwriting there, the 'J.B.' where you initialed it?"
"Yes, sir."
"All right, that's all then.''
It was now time for redirect testimony and Jake went
back to attacking his two lawyers who had defended him
at his trial. Judge Driver had read excerpts of the testi-
mony and he said it seemed to him that both Selden and
Paulsen had fought hard for Jake, especially Selden.
"Did Mr. Selden continue to do that throughout the
trial?" Judge Driver wanted to know.
"Well," Jake said, "he made objections and excep-
tions. I think I said that in the record it was littered with
objections and exceptions."
"I thought you made some point that you didn't have
effective representation by counsel," Judge Driver said.
"Well, do you want me to tell you that in my own
way?"
"All right.''
"I said it was a constitutional right for me to be
represented by counsel," Jake said. "I said that this court
nor no other court can say fairly, and I say so without
trying to insult anyone, if anybody says a lawyer can go
202 CRIME DOCTOR

into court, and one lawyer get up and demand an outright

acquittal, and the other one tell both judge and jury, 'You
go ahead and hang that man, he should be obliterated.'
What was that but a farce and a circus? That's no trial at
all, despite all the records. I don't think they've got that in
there."
"You mean one of your lawyers actually asked the
jury to find you guilty?" Judge Driver asked.
"Well, he didn't say so in so many words," Jake
replied, "but I'll tell the Court what he said, in so many
words. He said, 'We find ourselves in a difficult position. It
is our time to put in argument, and I know of no legitimate
argument to make, and that there was evidence put in
against this man that shouldn't have gone in the record,
and there was evidence the state should have produced
here that the state didn't produce; however, you find him
guilty of anything you want to, that's all right with us,'
speaking for both of them. Later, when we got before the
judge, one argued for an hour, at least, for a new trial. After
he sat down, the second one got up and told the judge I
should be obliterated, that he had a motion before him for a
new trial, but he was not going to put himself in a position
to argue it. And so, your Honor, where was I truly repre-
sented by counsel, when this man filed a big affidavit in
Court to quit the case just 12 days before my trial? He did
this behind my back, but the judge forced him to stay on
the case to protect my rights, and yet I never seen him no
more until the case come up in court. Now, what kind of
counsel is that? I say I was not properly represented by
counsel. The same thing with the records. The state wasn't
in a position to deny me the records, because, your Honor,
you know it's a joke, where a judge can sit up an say, 'It's
within my discretion,' but they didn't give me the record I
paid for : .. "
"Well, that is not a matter for testimony here, Judge
Driver said. "You're getting off into argument.''
 LAST DITCH STAND 203

"But I'm getting into argument because I come in as a

pauper to prosecute the Writ," Jake pointed out.
"All right, now, that's enough, unless you have some
testimony," Judge Driver told him.
"I'm ready to submit my evidence if he's through
putting in his evidence," John Newlands said.
"Mr. Bird, you're arguing from the witness chair,"
Judge Driver said. "Of course, I've told you not to do that,
but you keep on doing it. If that's all the testimony, you
may retire here."
"Could I say something after I step down," Jake said,
"or do I have to quit now until they get through?"
"You will be permitted to argue when it comes time for
argument, Mr. Bird. Now, step down."
After Newlands had finished submitting a number of
documents as his "controverting evidence" to the Court,
including evidence that Jake's application to the U.S.
Supreme Court for certiorari was denied, Judge Driver
asked Jake: "Do you have anything else to offer, Mr. Bird,
other than argument now, I mean? I'm going to give you a
chance to argue, of course."
"I asked you could I call Mr. Steele again, and you
ignored me," replied Jake.
"Your Honor," Newlands said, "Mr. Steele does not
feel anything can be gained by getting on the stand again.
If the Court desires it again, we'll be glad ..."
"Just a minute, your Honor, this man sitting here ...,"
pointing to Pat Steele.
"What do you want to prove by Mr. Steele?" Judge
Driver asked. "I'm not interested in any hot arguments
between you and counsel."
"I'm not either, but I can't understand no such pro-
ceeding," Jake said.
"What do you want to prove by Mr. Steele?." Judge
Driver asked. "You can understand the English language."
"I wants to question him about did he say the law
204 CRIME DOCTOR

requires all the circumstances to be given to the jury about

a man's mistreatment."
"You want to ask him if the law requires all the
circumstances of mistreatment to be given to a jury?"
"Yes."
"Well, that isn't proper cross examination," Judge
Driver told him. "That's a question of law. Just because
he's a lawyer, you can't call him and ask him what the law
is on a question like that. That isn't anything that would
help you out."
"In other words," Jake said, "he don't know how to
enforce the law as a prosecutor."
"I don't care whether he knows any law, or knows it
all. The question we're inquiring into is a question of fact,
whether your confession was voluntary or whether it was
coerced, and Mr. Steele's idea of what the law might
require as to putting facts before a jury has no bearing on
that question that's helpful at all. Now, is there anything
else you want to prove by him?"
"Well, it seems I have a chance to prove nothing. I
can't prove ..."
"Well, all right, let's put it this way," Judge Driver
said. "The Court will take judicial notice of what you're
attempting to prove by Mr. Steele. I'll take judicial notice
that the circumstances surrounding a confession should
be disclosed to a jury when a confession is put in evidence.
Now, I'm assuming it's correct, whatyou'retryingtoprove
by Mr. Steele. Now, do you have anything else to offer?"
"Well, if you'll take judicial notice of that, that's suf-
ficient to me," Jake said.
"All right," Judge Driver said. "Now, do you have
anything else?"
"Why, no, sir, I can't call no single witness I asked for.
They're not here, and I'm a pauper, I haven't got a penny."
"The officers you wish to call are the police officers
whose testimony is in evidence here in the record for your
 LAST DITCH STAND 205

use and for my consideration," Judge Driver told him.

"The Court didn't consider it necessary to bring them over
here from Tacoma again for this hearing at somebody's
expense, since we have the testimony already. If that's all
the testimony, we can proceed with the argument, and I'll
allow counsel for the respondent here a half an hour,
and allow the petitioner an hour for argument. Because of
his not being an attorney and the others being attorneys,
I'll give him twice as much time as they. Can you cover the
subject in half an hour?"
"Yes, your Honor," Newlands replied, "that's satis-
facrory with us."
"And you, Mr. Bird, would you prefer to argue first
and then reply to them, or how would you like to use your
time? Would you rather they'd go ahead first?"
"To tell the truth," Jake said, "I can't argue in an hour.
I come down t,o prove a case, so if you simply want to shut
it off and not hear the case ..."
"How much time would you like to argue?"
"I come down here t,o argue what I intend to prove."
"Well, how much time do you want to argue?"
"Well, I certainly wouldn't impose on you."
"I think that an hour is ample time. I've considered
what the issues are. These gentlemen can argue in a half
an hour, you should be able to argue in an hour. The Court
has already read all the testimony. I read the new testi-
mony during the lunch hour. It's about two inches thick
that you submitted with your petition, and then the exhibit
put in evidence here, and it isn't necessary to read that over
t,o me again. All you have to do is comment on the various
things and what the Court should consider in connection
with it."
"That's true enough, your Honor, but now your line of
talk up there is just the same as every judge I've been
before," Jake said.
"I don't care to hear that, Mr. Bird, but I'll let you
206 CRIME DOCTOR

argue. Even though you are in your present situation, I'm

not going to let you stand there and lecture me about what
my duties are."
"I'm not lecuring," Jake said. "I'm lecturing that I've
got no help, no laWYer."
"I know you haven't. If you want to take advantage of
that and argue, all right. If you don't, we'll close the
hearing right now."
"Naturally, I want to argue the hour. I still protest that
isn't enough."
"The petitioner protests that an hour is not sufficient
time to argue his case, and exception is allowed in the
record. Proceed," ordered Judge Driver.
"I'm sorry that the Court thinks that I tried to lecture
the Court and tell the Court its duties," began Jake.
"Well," Judge Driver said, "I think you're trying to put
on a little show here, Mr. Bird, and I think we'll both get
along better if we just stick to the issues."
"No, sir, I'm only trying to apologize. I'm sorry if my
manner caused you to make that statement."
"Oh, I see. Well, that's all right."
"And I feel bad about it. That's why I brought that
up."
"Your apology is accepted. That's quite all right. Pro-
ceed."
Whereupon, Jake presented his opening argument to
the Court, then Pat Steele presented his argument to the
Court on behalf of the respondent and, :finally Jake pre-
sented his final argument.
In handing down his decision, Judge Driver pointed
out that as in so many cases that came before his Court,
the Jake Bird case originated and was prosecuted entirely
in the state court. Jake was prosecuted for violation of the
laws of the State of Washington, namely murder. He had
been tried with the benefit of two laWYers appointed by the
Court to assist him before a jury. The jury had found him
 LAST DITCH STAND 207

guilty, and it was appealed to the Supreme Court and was

before the Supreme Court of the State three times. It was
also before the Supreme Court of the United States on
petition of certiorari and on petition for rehearing.
"I mention all that merely to point out that it's a very
heavy responsibility that this Court has in cases of this
kind, particularly where there's a serious offense com-
mitted," Judge Driver said. "I have no power to grant this
man a new trial. I can't send him back to Pierce County to
be tried again. The only alternative I have is to deny his
petition or order his release unconditionally from the pen-
itentiary where he's in custody, and that being the case it's
not only a rule of law but common sense that this Court
shouldn't interfere with the processes of a state court
unless it clearly appears that the constitutional rights of a
defendant have been invaded somewhere during the course
of his trial, and the burden is on the petitioner to show by a
preponderance of the evidence that his constitutional
rights have been violated in such a way that his trial was
fundamentally unfair and he's been denied due process of
law in the state courts.
"I might say I don't believe that the burden of proof
has been sustained in this case. I don't believe a showing
has been made here which would justify my releasing this
petitioner, and I'll not spend very much time discussing
my reasons. I think he was represented by counsel. I
haven't the whole record here, but I have a number of
excerpts, quite a substantial portion of it, and I think that
his counsel, Mr. Selden, was competent and serious and
alert in guarding the rights of this man and cross-examin-
ing the witnesses, particularly Officer Hickey, very vigor-
ously, and I thought showed that he was doing a laWYer-
like job in the defense. As I intimated in discussion with
Mr. Bird, I can't believe that a judge who appointed
counsel to defend a man would permit him to get up and
try to help convict him and let that sort of thing go on.
208 CRIME DOCTOR

"As to the change of venue, I have very little here to

show that a fair trial was impossible in Pierce County. I
know that the prospective jurors would be examined; they
would be examined as to what they knew about the cir-
cumstances of this offense, what they had heard on the
radio or read in the newspapers, and they would have to
say, at least, that they had no preconceived opinion as to
the guilt or innocence of the defendant, or have any
prejudice against him. It's true that there is a good deal of
feeling when an offense of this kind has been committed,
but if the change of venue had been granted the case would
have gone, under the state law, to an adjoining county,
Thurston or King, and a case as widely publicized as this, I
think the public would have known about as much about it
in Seattle or Olympia, and whatever prejudice there may
be against a man of the colored race, and I don't think that
is very pronounced out here in the State of Washington,
but whatever it might be would be just as existent in
Thurston and King Counties as it would be in Pierce.
Furthermore, the question of change of venue was fully
argued to the Superior Court on arguments of counsel and
affidavits and was one of the questions considered by the
Supreme Court of the State, and the Supreme Court de-
cided the motion had been properly denied.
"Now, as to the matter of the confession, I have
carefully read all of the record that has been submitted
here. Officer Hickey did admit that he physically mis-
treated this accused shortly after his arrest. It's an unfor-
tunate incident, one that shouldn't occur in the adminis-
tration of American justice, but Officer Hickey did offer an
explanation for it, and it seems to me that it wasn't a part
of a concerted scheme to coerce this man into making a
confession. It was rather the sporadic and impetuous
action of a man who was perhaps not too experienced in
police work, and had been unduly influenced by a very
ghastly sight that he had just witnessed and lost control of
himself. That was the explanation given and it seems to
 LAST DITCH STAND 209

me Hickey' s testimony was frank. While he was reluctant

to testify to what he had done, he did admit it, and it seems
to me that if it had been a part of a police scheme, it would
be easy to say, 'All the wounds were incurred while we
were trying to arrest him,' and a number of them were. He
was more severely injured, according to the police testi-
mony, than he's said.
"I have tried to keep an open mind. I have tried to
listen impartially to Mr. Bird's testimony, but the fact
remains I do not fully credit his story that he was beaten
for eight hours by a relay of police officers who were
kicking him, stamping him and beating him with their
clubs. He couldn't possibly have been in the condition in
which Dr. Rickles found him at 11 o'clock the next morn-
ing. He would have been at the hospital in a hospital bed, it
seems to me.
"Of course, the thing I'm concerned with here is
whether or not the confession was voluntary or was
coerced as a result of fear and intimidation at the time it
was made, 11 a.m. the next day, and as against the
testimony of the defendant that it was induced by fear and
as a result of intimidation brought on by these beatings,
we have the testimony of five other witnesses-Dr. Ric-
kles, Lt. Lyons, Peterson, Deputy Prosecutor Mann, and
Notary Public Anderson-that the confession was wholly
voluntary, and as against the testimony of Mr. Bird I'm
inclined to credit their written testimony and affidavits.
And so the petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus will be
denied, and the motion for stay of execution likewise is
denied."
Time Runs Out

BY now, time had just about run out on Jake Bird.

With one foot in the courtroom and the other in the
grave, his execution was penciled on the hangman's calen-
dar for May 27, just five more days.
Playing it for all it was worth, Jake had one more legal
maneuver up his sleeve. It was called a "Certificate of
probable cause for appeal to the Court of Appeals in San
Francisco."
On the fifth day, only 12 hours before he was to die, the
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco granted
Jake a 30-day stay to determine whether or not an appeal
could be heard. This marked the third time since his
conviction that he'd been spared. "The gods are on my
side," Jake said, self-righteously.
An AP news dispatch out of San Francisco explained:

Judge William Denman of the Ninth Circuit Court

granted the stay after receiving a petition from Bird. The
brawny black contends his confession in the Tacoma
slayings was forced from him by third-degree tactics.
210
 TIME RUNS OUT 211
Judge Denman said the Circuit Court will hold a
hearing in 10 days to determine whether a certificate of
probable cause shall be issued. Such a certificate must be
issued before the court can entertain an appeal.
Previously, Bird had steered his case to a dozen courts,
including the United States Supreme Court-twice-in an
effort to gain an appeal.

On June 8, Chief Judge William Denman of the Ninth

U.S. District Court of Appeals handed down his decision:
Appeal denied.
Back in his cell at Walla Walla, the normally loqua-
cious condemned man was strangely silent. When told of
the judge's decision, all he said was, "Well, that's too bad."
Judge Denman held with three previous courts that
there was no basis for Jake's complaint that police had
beaten a confession out of him.
"I find no exceptional circumstances," Judge Denman
wrote, "since the federal issue before the State Supreme
Court and the U.S. Supreme Court was determined on the
same evidence of claimed coercion as before the district
court in Washington State."
There went the ball game. Jake had taken his case as
far as it would go. He'd exhausted all the courts on his plea
of coercion. Unless-miracle of miracles-he was able to
gain new hearings on some other argument, his days in
court were over.
Except for one.
He still had to appear once more in the original trial
court in Tacoma to have his execution date fixed for the
third time. All told, it would mark the 14th appearance in
court for Jake in connection with his various appeals.
Deputy Sheriff Dave Ward, of Pierce County, was sent
to Walla Walla to pick up Jake and drive him back to
Tacoma. Davey was a former welterweight boxing con-
tender-winner of 44 of 45 professional fights before World
War II-and protege of World Middleweight Champion
212 CRIME DOCTOR

(1936-38) Freddie Steele. Jake had better not get slippery

with him.
From Walla Walla to Tacoma, the distance is about
300 miles-in 1949, a five-seven hour drive, depending on
the driver's speed. Deputy Ward was bent on bringing
Jake back as quickly as possible. Floorboarding it, he hit
speeds of 80 and 90 all the way.
What was Jake's mood coming back?
"Talkative,'' Davey told me. "He talked up a storm."
About what?
"I asked him if he had any regrets about the people he
killed. Only one, he said. He regretted having snuffed out
that little boy back in Omaha who called him a nigger. He
lost his head, he said. He confessed he shouldn't have done
that. It was the only one of his murders he seemed re-
morseful about. He also told about a fight he had with a
train detective in a boxcar. The door flew open, Jake
pushed him out; he rolled underneath the wheels-and
was cut in half.
"Death was old hat to Jake. He showed very little
conscience. There was no predicting how many more
people he'd have killed had he not been caught in Tacoma.
However, he did say he wished he'd used his life in a more
useful way. He was born and baptized a Catholic, he said.
'I didn't pay any attention to the teachings, though,' he
said. 'I should have. My life would have been different.' I
asked him about his family. He wouldn't talk about them.
But he did want to talk about his hex magic. He said he'd
put a hex on both Dr. Larson and Pat Steele. A double
whammy. They'd die soon, sure as hell, he said. Just like
the others. I said Steele was Irish and that you can't hex an
Irishman. Jake said, 'Well, he's one Irishman I can hex,
'cause his ass is on backwards.' Jake hadn't lost his sense
ofhumor.
"Every once in a while, Jake asked me to slow down.
This was his last trip to Tacoma, he said, and he wanted to
enjoy it. Every restaurant we passed, he'd say, 'Please, let's
 TIME RUNS OUT 213

stop and get some chicken.' At Yakima, I stopped to gas up

and go to the restroom. I asked Jake if he wanted to relieve
himself. He said no. But when we got on the other side of
Yakima, in all that sagebrush country, he asked me to stop
the car.Nature was calling, he said. I ignored him. I sensed
what was going on inside his head. Despite the shackles
binding him, he was planning to make a break for it,
hoping I'd shoot him in the back and end it then and there.
He'd have preferred that to hanging. I didn't give him a
chance."
Deputy Ward asked Jake if he thought he would go to
hell.
Jake said, "There is no such place. If there's a God, I'll
get my punishment-but it won't be forever."

The signing of the death warrant was held in Judge

Hugh Rosellini's court. The judge looked down atJake and
said, "Mr. Bird, do you have anything to say before I
sentence you to hang and sign this death warrant?"
Jake rose from his seat. There was an air of dismay
about him. What an actor, what a superb performance! He
shuffled around in front of the bench and looked up at the
judge with disbelieving eyes.
"Do I have anything to say?" he said. "You're asking
me, do /have anything to say? Your Honor, I have quite a
bit to say."
He let that sink in, then-
"First, I'd like to point out to your Honor that this
affidavit you had me file-you had me file this affidavit-
you said you would consider it. Well, the least you could've
done is taken a recess and gone and read it. But, no, you
didn't."
Jake turned to the crowded courtroom.
"And to you the people," he said, "I want you to know
that this is just part of the road blocks barring my way to
Olympia and all the way to the Supreme Court of the
United State. This is the sort of thing-"
214 CRIME DOCTOR

Judge Rosellini came alive.

"Mr. Bird-Mr. Bird!" he cried, gavelling for order.
Jake plunged right on.
"Mr. Bird-Mis-ter Bird!" pleaded the judge. "Address
the Court, Mr. Bird! Address the Court!"
Jake was thoroughly enjoying himself. He was hav-
ing a ball. Dr. Larson and Pat Steele were on the verge of
cracking up. Pat had attempted to save Judge Rosellini
from Jake, but he had insisted on letting Jake have his day
in court. It was no contest. Jake had the ball and wasn't
letting go.
After a briefrecess Judge Rosellini's chambers opened.
He strode to the bench. He sat down. He took a pen. He
signed the death warrant (the third time he'd signed one
for Jake). Then, finishing with a flourish, he said, "God
hath mercy on your soul!" With that, he disappeared back
into his chambers-before Jake had an opportunity to
continue with his act.
Jake had been standing alongside Pat Steele. He
turned to Pat and said, "Is that in accordance to Reming-
ton's Revised Statutes?"
Pat fought back a smile.
"Well, Jake," he said, straight-faced, "that's the way it
goes."

In the disposition of capital cases in the United States,

the median elapsed time between sentence and execution
was for years approximately 17 months. In 1965 in Texas,
an armed robber was electrocuted one month after his
conviction; but in Louisiana that same year, two rapists
had been waiting for a record 12 years. The variance
depended a little on luck and a great deal on the extent of
litigation. Jake Bird? The elapsed time between his orig-
inal sentence and execution was about 20 months.
One crime reporter asked, "Has Jake Bird's travels
through the many courts been an example of democracy at
work-or a travesty on justice?"
 TIME RUNS OUT 215

At least one jurist in the case was inclined to take the

latter viewpoint. In writing a dissenting opinion thatJake
had filed a valid note of appeal, Judge Millard of the State
Supreme Court said: "The majority opinion in effect says
the more atrocious the crime, the more lax will be the rules
of practice and procedure in favor of the criminal. Bird was
entitled to a fair trial. He had a fair trial. The people are
entitled to expeditious administration of justice in criminal
cases."
Superior Judge Hugh Rosellini offered a broader view.
In sentencing Bird to death, he urged Bird to find his
salvation in God and then added: "Many persons not
familiar with the legal workings of this case have been
critical of its long delay. This has been to enable you to
have every recourse to law. Despite the fact you are a
member of a minority race, despite the fact you are penni-
less and unable to afford counsel, you have been before the
state Supreme Court three times to argue your case. Unfor-
tunately, Mr. Bird, the truth is not in you."
Jake Bird tugged at his neck.
The noose was growing ever tighter.
 'The Lord Taketh
Away"

PAT Steele was among the 50 or so witnesses who

· attended the hanging of Jake Bird, truly a gallows bird
("n: a person who deserves hanging"-Webster).
Dr. Larson did not go.
In France and Germany during the war, he had
officiated at a few hangings. The way with that was this:
"I was stationed under the platform, which was cov-
ered with a black crepe cloth material," Dr. Larson said. "I
stayed there waiting for the doomed man to drop through
the trapdoor. God, it was awful. I mean, this terrible
cracking noise of broken neck bones-like a leg of mutton
mashing through a grinder. I'd wait for a few moments,
letting him swing, then walk up and put the stethoscope to
his chest. In hanging cases, the heart doesn't stop beating
immediately. Sometimes it'd be five to ten minutes before I
pronounced a body dead. A body goes through the damned-
est contortions-like when you cut off a chicken's head,
it does some wild things before dropping over. Well, aman
who has just dropped and is dangling at the end of a rope
216
 "THE LORD TAKETH AWAY" 217

goes through the craziest contortions. It's no fun to watch,

I can tell you."
But for Steele, this was his first hanging-and he'd
never forget it.
When Pat entered the death room at Walla Walla and
saw the gallows, with its pale noose attached to a cross-
beam, his heart skipped a beat.
"The room was quite large, like an auditorium," Steele
told me recently. "The scaffold was in the forward part of
the room with the traditional trapdoor. Howard Apple-
gate, a stringer for United Press, was with me; so was
Harold Stribling, one of Jake's earlier victims at Carter
Lake, Iowa. Harold still carried a metal plate in his head
where Jake had clubbed him. For 22 years, he had waited
to watch Jake hang. He had lived all those years in fear
that Jake would get out of prison and come back and kill
him. At the trial, Jake had warned Stribling: 'I'll get you
wherever you go.' And Stribling and his wife believed him.
So there stood Harold alongside me at the Walla Walla
gallows to watch Jake drop through that trapdoor."
At one minute past midnight, July 15, 1949, Jake Bird
walked out of a side door directly onto the scaffold. He
appeared calm. Any nervousness during the day had been
disguised by a steady stream of conversation to almost
anyone who would take the time to listen. He had still held
out hope that his execution would once more be stayed by
some official action. But that hope began to dwindle as
night approached. First, the rejection from the United
States Supreme Court, then the board of prison terms and
paroles' hands-off attitude and finally word from Gover-
nor Arthur Langlie that he would not intervene. Toward
evening, Jake told his attorney, Murray Taggart, that he
could be a good loser if he knew everything possible had
been done. And in all the records of criminal cases in the
United States, no man probably had had access to more
courts than Jake Bird.
During the afternoon, Jake had made out the menu
218 CRIME DOCTOR

for the traditional last meal. It included fried chicken, two

bananas, strawberries, ice cream and some orange soda
pop. He al!:lo· asked for two "black cigars."
His final requests were few. In a moment of irony he
discussed a little black box but left his worldly possessions,
$6.15, to his court-appointed attorney, Murray Taggart.

Accompanied by Warden Tom Smith and a prayer-

murmuring Lutheran. minister, Jake entered the death
place handcuffed and wearing an ugly harness ofleather
straps that bound his arms to his torso. Warden Smith
tried to help Jake as they walked out, and while his arms
were pinioned, Jake shook the warden's arms loose. He
could walk to the death place by himself, thank you. He
took his position right on the trapdoor and waited for the
noose to be slipped around his neck. His face was as blank
and bland as ever.
Then the warden read him the official order of execu-
tion, a two-page document; and as the warden read, Jake's
eyes, enfeebled by almost 30 years of cell shadows, roamed
the little audience. As was customary, the warden, having
finished his recitation, asked the condemned man whether
he had any last statement to make. Jake remained silent.
"I have Mr. Bird's last statement," the minister said,
and he began reading from a prepared paper. "The Lord
giveth, the Lord taketh away. Blessed is the name of the
Lord," the chaplain intoned as the noose was fitted and as
a delicate black mask was tied around J ake's eyes. "May
the Lord have mercy on your soul." The trapdoor suddenly
opened, and Jake Bird hung for all to see a full 14 minutes
before the prison doctor at last said, "I pronounce this man
dead." A hearse, its lights blazing, drove up to the back
door, and the body, placed on a litter and shrouded under a
blanket, was carried to the hearse and out into the night.
Staring after it, Pat Steele shook his head: "I hate to
see an old adversary go. But it's about time. I've seen all of
 "THE LORD TAKETH AWAY" 219

him I want to see. He was a tough old boy to put down. I'm
glad it's over."
Howard Applegate, the U.P. reporter, never saw Jake
hang. Oh, he was there, all right, but he had been standing
engrossed in his notes as the Lutheran minister read
Jake's last statement, and when he looked up, there was
Jake swinging by the neck. He never even heard the
trapdoor spring open, so lost was he in his notes. He turned
to Steele and said, "Pat, what happened?"
Pat Steele pointed to the swinging body and said,
"There he is right there, Howard. You missed the hanging
of Jake Bird."
The Phone
Rings ...

WHEN a forensic pathologist first starts working on

homicide cases, it is understandable that he will have
moments of queasiness. All of us, except undertakers I
believe, have an instinctive negative reaction to death.
The fact of death in its simplicity, however, is not what a
forensic pathologist dealing in homicide must face. He
must face the fact of death in all of the brutal horror of
dismemberment, violation, decomposition and mutilation,
for the bestial fury of man lashed to the point of killing
knows no bounds.
Before one's breakfast it is somewhat unsettling to be
called to a bus station or a railroad station to extract a
dismembered body from three lockers-the legs and arms
in one, the torso in a second and the head, carefully
wrapped in newspaper, in the third. Especially when the
attention of the transit authority who called had been
generated by the heat of an early August morning. Also, a
torso will swell as time goes on, quite filling the locker and
annealing itself to it until pried loose with, let us say, a flat
shovel.
220
 THE PHONE RINGS 221

Down the years there have been times when Dr.

Larson has found his mind drifting from a death scene
and wondering if he was really looking at what he was
looking at; in one case, a man in women's panties with a
brassiere strapped tightly to hold two tennis balls against
his chest. He was hanging dead from a ceiling with a
rubber tube connected in series, by the aid of pipettes in
rubber corks, through a bottle of brandy, a bottle of ether
solution and a bottle of soda water-to the urethera-the
passage through his penis. With the other end of the tube
at his lips, he had been blowing the mixture into his
bladder when death took him.
A little investigative reading will straighten out the
matter for you. Dr. Larson (and he has photos he has
personally taken to prove it) has had cases where deviates
have discovered that an almost hanging-that is, a sus-
pension of the body by the neck not quite to the point of
inducing unconsciousness-intensifies the pleasure of or-
gasm. Of course, some never lived to tell about it. In the
case of the man in the brassiere and panties, was it murder
or suicide? Neither. It was accidental death. The noose had
slipped and strangled him before he could get himself
stoned-and to the point of climax.

In the larger cities ofAmerica, homicides occur almost

every day, although some of them are not highly publi-
cized. The Dr. Larsons of the profession always have a
backlog of cases. Dr. Larson could be busy all the time, if
he wanted. Homicide investigation requires discussion
and imagination and sometimes 24 hours of work a day,
seven days a week. When a detective is working a case,
there is no such thing as hours. The overtime buildup is so
fantastic that it is almost ridiculous to keep track of it.
A good forensic pathologist, therefore, must be com-
pletely in control of his life, as far as working hours are
concerned. Like Dr. Larson, he must be a man with highly
developed curiosity. He has to like puzzles. A puzzle has to
222 CRIME DOCTOR

bother him. Some people can look at a crossword puzzle, or

problem, fool around with it until it bores them and drop it.
A good homicide man like Dr. Larson can't. He must have
a nature wherein the puzzle itself captivates him, wherein
it finally gets so far under his skin that he can't eat, he
can't sleep. He has to know the answer.
He must have an orderly and a disciplined mind. He
must not get ahead of himself, for if he does he is liable to
miss a trick-a small but important movement in the
game. For that is exactly what the working of a homicide
is: a five-movement game. First, by a very thorough exam-
ination of the murder scene when, where and how are
partially established. Those three elements are then frozen
into the record for continual future reference by diagrams
and dozens of photographs before the body is moved. How
is completed by the autopsy report, and identification of
the victim should begin to answer why. When you deter-
mine why, you have the motive. When you have the
motive, you begin slowly to reach out for who.

The phone rings ...

Some 120 miles. west of Tacoma General Hospital,
while investigating an untended bonfire on the beach near
Ocean Shores, Washington, local police smelled gasoline
in the night air. Within the burning driftwood, a deputy
spotted. a foot sticking out. Closer inspection revealed the
badly charred body of a young woman. Weight was esti-
mated, under preliminary examination, as approximately
110 pounds, height 5 feet 2 inches, about 23 years of age.
Her face had been burned virtually beyond identification.
Her clothing was mostly gone, burned, so there were no
labels or laundry marks to help find out who she was.
Dental examination disclosed only two ordinary amal-
gam fillings and three missin,g teeth. Unremarkable pos-
sibilities for identification.
The mystery called for a specialist.
 THE PHONE RINGS 223

The local police chief put in a call to Tacoma General

and asked to speak to the Crime Doctor ...
Dr. Larson's autopsy of the woman came up with five
knife stabs in the body, two of which were undoubtedly the
cause of death-one cutting into the heart and then going
through and through the left lung. There were no soot
stains in the mouth or the tracheobronchial tree (the throat
and lung tops) which indicated that the girl had been dead
before her body was placed in the fire.
"This was a very interesting case, a very unusual
case," Dr. Larson said. "It's a classic illustration of how
careful a forensic pathologist must be, or he'll never iden-
tify a body. But getting down to the examination, I did a
very meticulous autopsy on the girl. There is no body so
badly decomposed or burned that it does not deserve an
autopsy. The tiniest clues often will pop up as important
leads. I have had severely burned bodies-in fact, when
practically nothing was left-and I was still able to deter-
mine, in some instances, the cause of death and even who
the victim was. Once, just such a case led us to the killer,
who was arrested and sent to prison. So it pays to be
painstaking in the autopsy room.
"Actually, it's quite simple for a pathologist to deter-
mine the cause of death. That isn't the important factor in
medical-legal cases. The important factor is to determine
. the circumstances surrounding a violent death. The man-
ner of death. How did it occur? This will usually lead you to
the murderer. Now, in the case of a shooting, any damned
fool can tell you that a bullet went through the heart. That
doesn't tell you very much, unless you know the direction
of the slug, how far away the gun barrel was when fired,
whether it was suicide or homicide, the elevation of the
weapon when fired-all the hundred and one ancillary
factors that a forensic pathologist understands and can
pinpoint. Caliber of gun, type of gun the bullet was fired
from, which is the bullet wound of entrance and which is
224 CRIME DOCTOR

the bullet wound of exit; all these things are determined by

the forensic pathologist. On the other hand, an ordinary
pathologist could probably tell you that the victim died of a
bullet wound through the heart, but really, what does that
tell you? It doesn't solve the murder for you.
"Well, you are probably thinking, what about finger-
prints? In the case of the charred girl, her hands were
practically burned off. No fingerprints could be obtained
from the left hand, but the right hand gave us a scant few.
However, most women in their twenties are not finger-
printed. Did you know that? There's no file kept on them.
Consequently, we had no prints of her either at city or state
identification departments. The FBI files didn't have any.
That's one of the weaknesses in our system. There is no
national fingerprint law. People have advocated such a
law for years, but Congress has been reluctant to pass
one-something about invasion of rights and privacy.
Therefore, not everybody in the U.S. is fingerprinted. Only
about half our country's population has fingerprints regis-
tered.
"Feeling that her fingerprints would only lead to a
dead end, I next looked for fingernails. Sometimes you can
make out a body from fingernail clippings. They never
change and they're almost as accurate a form of identifica-
tion as fingerprints. When you put them under a micro-
scope and look at them in cross section, the lines and
striations will match up identically with the fingernail
from which they were clipped-even 10 years later, be-
cause no two people have exactly the same fingernail lines
and striations.Yes, fingernails are very important. Unfor-
tunately, the body I had was wearing false fingernails,
which wasn't much help in tracking down the identity of
their owner.
"With a body before you, you have, in most cases,
every piece of the puzzle that is to be solved. A forensic
pathologist must not fail to examine every possibility; to
run down every indication until the truth is plain. Careless
 THE PHONE RINGS 225

work on the part of investigators is the cause of failure to

solve most of the backlogs of homicide cases that are piled
up in every police department in this country.
"To the outsider, performing a thorough and careful
autopsy is quite possibly not the tastiest dish of tea, but to
me, it is always a silent challenge, and each one offers a
completely new problem which it is my business to solve.
Performing an autopsy is completely impersonal; reduced
to a discipline that has, with the years, become so all-
inclusive with me as to eliminate most of the possiblilities
of failure. Personality disappears entirely with death, and
all that remains is a laboratory specimen to be clinically
examined with complete objectivity."
It dawned on Dr. Larson that the girl's death might
have been sex-related. He examined her vaginal tract to
see if she had been raped or assaulted. She had had recent
intercourse, but there was no evidence of rape and she had
no intact hymen. The doctor concluded that the fact she'd
recently had intercourse was really insignificant. What
was significant were the five stab wounds in her chest.
One of them had slashed through the left ventricle of the
heart, cutting across the septum. She had died very sud-
denly. The burning was all postmortem. The girl was dead
before being stuffed in the fire. All the killer was doing was
trying to destroy the evidence.
As Dr. Larson worked over the body, he remembered a
snatch of something he had read once: "Murder is an
abhorent crime from which God turns his face."
Nothing was more abhorent than what he had here.
Then it all opened up very fast. The charred lids of the
girl's closed eyes were parted, revealing the fact that she
was wearing contact lenses.
"The lenses were a bit disfigured by the heat of the
fire," Dr. Larson remembered, "but clear enough to be
examined. The fact that her eyelids were closed had saved
the lenses from total destruction. Finally, we had our first
big lead."
226 CRIME DOCTOR

Under close scrutiny, Dr. Larson noted that the left

lens had a blue dot in it; there was no such blue dot in the
other but when examined under ultraviolet light a distinct
"J" appeared. Curious, he started calling some ophthal-
mologists he knew in the area. He also phoned several
optical supply houses specializing in contact lenses. He
learned from them that the lens with the blue dot was
manufactured by the Wesley Jensen Company, a Seattle
firm. No supplier in Tacoma sold that particular brand,
but there were a few Seattle outlets that did.
Dr. Larson again:
"I took the lens to an ophthalmologist who had all the
proper equipment to measure them, and together with an
occulist who worked for him, they did a thorough job. They
measured the bevel on the lens, they measured its thick-
ness, they determined all its features. On the basis of their
answers, I started phoning every optician in Seattle-but
to no avail. Then I started in on Burien. Bull's-eye! I found
an optometrist who handled Wesley Jensen contact lenses.
I gave him the prescription, he went through his files and
came up with a name: a Burien ophthalmologist, Dr.
Underwood, had prescribed just such lenses a year and a
half before. I was certain I was on the right track."
Dr. Larson contacted Dr. Underwood, whose prescrip-
tion for the contact lenses was compared to the wear-
distorted lenses found on the eyes of the body. The manu-
facturing tolerance (that degree to which the actual lenses
may vary from the prescription) for the magnifying power
of the lenses was 0.125. Wear and exposure to heat will
change certain factors in contact lenses. These were the
factors which actually differed most between the prescrip-
tion and the actual lenses. Finally, the lenses from the eyes
of the body were studied by the technician who had made
them-and identification became positive.
"So now we had the girl's name," Dr. Larson said. "We
phoned her family, and yes, their daughter was missing.
 THE PHONE RINGS 227

She was married, no children. Roughly the body approxi-

mated the young woman's description. The daughter's
husband was a prime suspect. We arrested him, and after
an extensive investigation of all the physical facts, he
broke down and made a full confession. This, then, was a
case of assault, with very little evidence to lead us. What
made it so special was that it marked the first time where a
murder was solved on the basis of positive body identifica-
tion from contact lenses."
Dr. Larson and Hollis Fultz working together found
that 95 percent of the murders of wives prior to 1945 were
committed by husbands. When husbands are murdered,
the wife, in some cases, has done the job, but murder, in
spite of Women's Lib, is not a general occupational hobby
of the female.
"She gets back in other ways," Dr. Larson says. "But
again I must point out that the majority of homicides have
a sexual connotation. That may range all the way from a
Krafft-Ebing distortion of normality to a strong desire to
change partners in midstream."

The phone rings ...

In the Tacoma area some years ago, a householder
was digging into the floor of his cellar to prepare a concrete
base for a new staircase when his shovel began to turn up
bones and fragments of disintegrated cloth. The police
boxed the exhibits, including a skull with the lower jaw
still in place, and brought them in to the Tacoma General
Hospital lab for examination by Dr. Larson.
The top of the skull was fractured by a through-and-
through bullet wound of entrance and exit. It was esti-
mated by the extent of damage it had done that the bullet
was either a .25 or .257 or a 30-30 caliber rifle bullet.
Pelvic examination bones indicated that the remains
were those of a male, and examination of the arm and leg
bones indicated that he had been a muscular individual,
228 CRIME DOCTOR

probably a laborer, and that he had, in life, been about 5

feet 5 inches tall. X-ray examination disclosed that he was
between 30 and 45 years of age at death.
A picture of the victim was now beginning to form so
clearly that at least an outline of the deceased could be
drawn. To frame the picture, it was estimated that the
bones had been buried at least 10 years, but no maximum
date of internment could be set.
Armed with what Dr. Larson could give them, the
police traced all previous owners of the house where the
bones had been found and eventually reached a woman
who 27 years before had moved out of the house and into
another one two blocks away. According to neighbors, she
had had at the time a common-law husband who'd gone to
Alaska and had not returned, so far as was known. She
had a son presently serving with the army in Korea. With
the cooperation of federal authorities, her son was inter-
rogated. At the age of six, he told investigators, he remem-
bered his "father" coming home one night "as drunk as a
skunk,'' as he put it, "and whaling the living daylight" out
of his mother. In a lull in the action, his mother had told
him to go to the closet and get the rifle. He had done so and
his mother had shot the man. Together they had buried
him in the cellar.
Thus, under careful and well-qualified examination,
murder will out-even after 27 years.
Understandably, the woman got off with probation.
"I once had a case up at Neah Bay, Washington,
where the bones of ten complete bodies were stumbled
upon by hikers,'' Dr. Larson recalled. The sheriff up there
wanted to know if it was a mass murder. After piecing
together all the facts, I came to the conclusion they had
died in an Indian war-that the bones actually were
between 300 and 500 years old. I found antique weapons
around the bones. The evidence indicated an Indian burial
ground, and most of these people had been killed in battle.
Of course, there was no dental work to help me in identifi-
 THE PHONE RINGS 229

cation-they didn't have dentists in those days. The shape

of an Indian's skull is slightly different from that of a
white man's. In fact, a skull often will tell you whether it
belonged to an Oriental, Indian, black or white. That's not
always totally true, but almost, because the configuration
of the skull differs from group to group. Teeth are another
indicator. Indians, for example, wear their teeth down. An
X-ray of the choppers will also give you an accurate
estimate of age. At N eah Bay I found that one of the skulls
had been fractured by a bone spear made out of animal
bone.
"The ten skeletons went on record as victims of an
ancient Indian war. We never could be positive about who
they really were. Today, however, I could send such dis-
coveries away to a lab and have them tested by Carbon 14
radioisotope studies. The technicians could probably come
within 25 years of telling us how old those relics really
were."

It must be borne in mind that Dr. Larson is not a

mastermind detective, such as the fictionalized Perry
Mason or Monsieur Poirot. Rather, he is a scientist whose
work is performed mainly in the laboratory and whose
conclusions are drawn scientifically from physical evi-
dence gathered from and around a dead body.
Andso-
The phone rings ...
Backpedaling, some years ago the police up at Everett,
Washington asked Dr. Larson for assistance. They had a
head-scratcher on their hands. They had a body but no
identification.
Dr. Larson:
The opening facts of the case were these: The body
was female, about 26 years of age, 160 pounds, 5 feet 3
inches tall. She was found in the garbage dump by the
garbage superintendent at 5 a.m. He was a natural suspect.
230 CRIME DOCTOR

What in hell was he doing out there at 5 o'clock in the

morning? She was dressed expensively but with conserva-
tive taste. Everything came, I'm sure, from the most fash-
ionable shops in Seattle. Her shoes were off. They were
found near the head of the body. Her girdle was pulled
down, her dress was pulled up. The labels had been ripped
off her garments. Semi-obese, there was blood oozing from
her mouth. Acne covered her arms and face. When I
arrived on the scene, her body was still warm. I estimated
that she had been dead from six to eight hours; probably
died between 10 p.m. and midnight.
Any time somebody tells you-or you see on TV or
read in a James Bond novel-that whozis died at 11:10
p.m., don't you believe it! Nobody can be that accurate.
Over the years I have learned through mistakes to leave a
pretty wide margin when estimating how long somebody's
been dead, especially if they've been dead more than 24
hours. After 24 hours and longer, you've got to take all the
known facts into consideration-and then what you come
up with is only an educated guess.
With the Everett girl, that wasn't the case, because she
had only been dead a few hours.
We have many ways of telling how long a body has
been cooling. One of the best means is to take fluid out of
the eyes. The fluid is called aqueous humor, and you get it
by putting a needle in the comer of each eye and drawing
out about two milliliters.
This fluid can then be tested for various chemicals,
including potassium. We normally know what the potas-
sium level is, and we know how it increases each hour after
death for at least the first 24 hours. We have a number of
chemical tests that help us tell how long a person has been
dead-fairly accurate tests, too. You can then measure the
drop in body temperature and compare it with the temper-
ature outdoors, and by knowing the clothing a person had
on, you can make a pretty close guess as to how long ago
the body stopped breathing. This can be done within
 THE PHONE RINGS 231

reason, but after 24 hours it becomes a very difficult

problem. Fortunately, most bodies are found before they
have been dead 24 hours, so you don't face that baffling
problem.
We noticed a lot of suffusion on the front of the young
woman's neck-a lot of darkening of the skin-and that
was due to the collection of blood from compression below
that point. Usually that is a sign of strangulation, and I
was almost certain she had been strangled to death. She
had fingernail scratches on her neck. There were also
marks where her girdle had been pulled down. They were
fresh-and they were hemorrhages. That convinced me
she hadn't removed or replaced the girdle herself. But
somebody had-and forcibly.
The identification of this woman was fascinating.
External examination showed widely dilated pupils, a
protruding tongue, and there was an old surgical incision
slightly to the right of the midline of the lower abdomen.
There was blood coming from the vagina, and surgical
scars were prominent on the outer sides of both big toes.
An abdominal scar does not necessarily lead to an
identification. You may circulate all the hospitals in any
city and find dozens of abdominal operations listed, with
nothing outstanding to indicate upon whom the surgery
was performed. But surgical scars on the outer sides of
each big toe indicate bunionectomies, that is, the surgical
removal of bunions. If you question hospitals on bilateral
bunionectomies in young women, you'll find them not too
common.
Within hours after I identified those toe scars for what
they were, the Everett police had the name of a young
woman of 25 who, the year before, had gone through a
double bunionectomy operation. Investigators turned up
the fact that she was, at present, missing.
McCallum:
Dr. Larson' s autopsy revealed not one but three causes
232 CRIME DOCTOR

of death. The first was fatal air embolism. The initial post-
mortem incision showed bubbles of air in many of the
superficial and deep abdominal veins. Air was aspirated
(sucked out by syringe) from the right auricle and right
ventricle of the heart. The blood still in the right side of the
heart was laced with foam and air bubbles. Thus death
could have been caused by an air embolism (the introduc-
tion of air into the blood stream so that when it reaches the
heart, it acts in interrupting the blood flow precisely like a
solid body does in blocking the blood flow).
Incidentally, the woman had large breasts with deeply
pigmented nipples which suggested pregnancy. Dr. Larson
concluded that air had been introduced into the uterine
cavity (the womb) and from there into the bloodstream by
means of a catheter. His immediate secondary conclusion
was that an inept attempt at abortion had been tried. This
was supported by the discovery that the uterus held a male
fetus of about six and a half months' fetal age, as indicated
by the crown-rump measurement (from the top of the head
to the buttock).
A second probable cause of death was suggested by
those scratches and hemorrhages in the neck area. This
was confirmed by the discovery of hemorrhages in the
strap muscles of the neck. She had been throttled.
A third probable cause of death was a large bruise on
the forehead with hemorrhage over the surface of the
brain.
Dr. Larson:
The reason· women having an illegal abortion get air
embolism is because the veins of the uterus are markedly
dilated, enlarged and under negative pressure, so it's easy
to open up some of these veins in the performance of an
abortion and air is sucked into the circulation. Air is
compressible. Like the air in your automobile tire, you can
put a lot of air into one tire by air compression.
Air is compressible, whereas blood is not. When the
 THE PHONE RINGS 233

heart beats, it forces liquid blood into the circulation. When

you get air in your heart, the heart contracts and the air
compresses. It doesn't go anywhere, so no blood gets into
the system. That, of course, is why people die. It takes
about 200 milliliters of air in the vascular system to cause
death in a human being.
Small amounts of air do not cause death. There have
been many medical-legal cases where people have been
tried in court-there was one back in Illinois, where a
doctor was accused of killing a lady patient who had
terminal cancer. He admitted injecting 20 cc's of air into
her because she was hopelessly ill. Twenty cc' s of air
probably wouldn't even cause the heart to miss a beat. I
went back and testified at the trial for the doctor. He was
acquitted. There were some noted pathologists who testi-
fied that she died of air embolism, but they were not forensic
pathologists. They were not genuine experts. The doctor
probably would have been convicted had he not secured
real experts to tell the court what air embolism really does
and how much air it takes to kill a person.
In Everett I sucked about 150 cc's of air out of the
victim's veins, so I knew that was what caused her death.
When I opened her heart, it was filled with tiny air bubbles.
Three causes of death. How in hell do you explain
three causes of death? I don't think anybody but an expert
could have figured it out. I was able to because of some
previous experiments on dogs. The purpose of the tests was
to determine how much air embolus it takes to kill a dog.
The experiments were conducted in Tacoma General
Hospital surgery. An anesthesiologist assisted me. On one
occasion a dog that wasn't properly anesthetized got away
from us after being injected with air and went berserk. We
were able to see what an unanesthetized dog does when
injected with enough air to kill it. The animal lived for
about two minutes and went absolutely crazy. He was
barking, squealing and howling. He ran all over the
surgery, defecating and urinating. It took us hours to clean
234 CRIME DOCTOR

up. The chief surgical nurse came in the next morning,

threw up her hands, and cried, "What in hell happened
here? Don't ever bring another damned dog into my
surgery."
Knowing what that dog did, I was able to reconstruct
what had happened in the case of the Everett woman. A
catheter had been put into her to produce an abortion, and
the air got into her system. She probably rose up off the
bed, screamed and hollered at the top of her voice, and
went wild. Everybody got so frightened they panicked.
Somebody grabbed her by the neck to control her, while
somebody else hit her on the head. She'd have died of air
embolus if they hadn't done this, but it really didn't make
any difference. That explains the bump on her head. She
got that when they slammed her back on the bed. Some-
body knocked her out with a club of some sort to quiet her
down. She was also strangled.
After we finally identified the woman, it didn't take
long to crack the case. We learned that she had been going
with a wealthy married man, a next-door neighbor. She
·lived in a very fine part of town with her parents-a very
respectable family. We had our lead. We started investigat-
ing him and discovered that he had a friend with a
camper. The two of them and a hired practical nurse took
off in the camper for the garbage dump to perform the
abortion. When the girl friend went into the frenzy and
died, they got scared, dumped the body and beat it.
Some of the inequities of justice are illustrated by this
case. Before the wealthy boy friend was brought to trial, he
was released on bond. He was finally tried and, believe it or
not, received a suspended sentence. He had hired a team of
very good attorneys. I was very upset when I heard the
outcome of the trial, because I had had a similar case the
week before in Olympia. The same sort of death, too-of a
girl who was married to the accused. The young man had
hired a practical nurse, and together they had attempted
an abortion. The nurse told him to blow in the catheter.
 THE PHONE RINGS 235

She explained it would kill the baby. He blew in the

catheter, all right, but killed his wife instead. He rushed
her to the hospital emergency room, but it was too late. The
jury brought back a second-degree murder conviction, and
the judge gave him a 20-year sentence.
The inequity of these two cases made me mad. I was
extremely unhappy with the judge for giving the young
man such a stiff sentence, and I protested to him in
writing. The man in the almost identical Everett case got
off practically scot-free. Because the Olympia man didn't
amount to anything, didn't have any money or influence,
he vvas given a harsh sentence; whereas the wealthy boy
friend in the Everett case got a suspended sentence. That
made no sense to me at all, especially in view of the fact
that the Olympia man had brought his dead and legal wife
to the hospital, while the other guy left the dead girl in a
garbage dump.

McCallum:
Dr. Larson feels he was lucky in the Everett case. He
was able to go straight to the scene. As we have tried to
stress in this book, he sometimes will not accept a police
case if he isn't called immediately. At the scene he can do
many things that police officers, as good as they are, are
not qualified to do. Dr. Larson will think of all kinds of
angles that other investigators often miss. That's not
because he wants to hog the whole show. An investigation
of a homicide is a cooperative business.You must have the
teamwork of well-trained policemen, well-trained identifi-
cation officers, well-trained criminologists and a forensic
pathologist. Then you have an almost unbeatable team.
Dr. Larson:
When a body is found inside a house, I instruct the
police to lock up the place, phone me, and the wheels roll.
Once on the scene, we work from periphery inward. We
236 CRIME DOCTOR

look for evidence as we go. The last thing we do is look at

the body. When we finally do get to the body, we handle it
very carefully, because we might want to come back and
look for something around it that might help solve the
case. We are always picking up trace evidence of one kind
or another.
In my opinion, it is virtually impossible to enter a
house, commit murder and then scram without leaving
trace evidence behind. If you look hard enough, you'll find
it: a strand of hair, a fiber of clothing, a fingerprint,
something. It may only be a tiny, microscopic bit of trace
evidence, but the killer will leave something to connect him
with the crime.
And that's all we need.

In his quiet and modest way, Dr. Larson is leaving his

mark on crime investigation. Even upon Scotland Yard, so
fabled in whodunits, but actually as old shoe a police
department as any. In the previously described Dr. Fry
case, I mentioned Dr. Francis Camps, for many years
Scotland Yard's forensic pathologist. Sir Francis had been
called upon for a deposition by the insurance companies
and so was on the other side of the fence. Nevertheless, he
and Dr. Larson,.laboring professionally in the same vin-
yard, so to speak, were good friends.
When Dr. Camps, after the first International Con-
gress of Forensic Pathology in Belgium in 1957, showed
Dr. Larson through the Laboratory at Scotland Yard, the
Tacoman was appalled at the antiquated equipment with
which the Yard was working. The appropriation for the
Laboratory was about 1,000 pounds ($2,600) a year. In
contrast, Dr. Larson's crime lab in Tacoma had items not
available to Scotland Yard. They didn't even have an
atomic absorption spectrophotometer or a modem gas
chromatograph.
Medicine changes very rapidly, and equipment has to
be replaced just as fast. A few years back, approximately
 THE PHONE RINGS 237

ten years elapsed before techniques and procedures be-

came completely outdated. Now, there is less than a five-
year gap, and the time is rapidly approaching when that
gap could be reduced to 12 months. This means that the
techniques used last year could be horse-and-buggy proce-
dures this year.
It was strongly suspected by the British Parliament
that what happened in London was the result of a benign
conspiracy between Drs. Larson and Camps. At Heathrow
Airport, just before takeoff for the United States (so that he
could say it all once and suffer no backlash), Dr. Larson
held a press conference and blew the lid off, to headlines of:
"SCOTLAND YARD OUT OF DATE, SAYS AMER-
ICAN"
"BRITISH UPSET"
"TOOLS TOO OLD, U.S. EXPERT SAYS"
"SHADES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES-JARRING,
WHAT?"
"SCOTLAND YARD CRITICISM WAS PLANNED
MOVE"
An Associated Press dispatch out of London reported
the story this way:

An American expert set sparks flying today by des-

cribing Scotland Yard, Britain's police headquarters, as
out of date.
Dr. Charles P. Larson, president of the College of
American Pathologists, said the Yard is in danger oflosing
its reputation as the world's most efficient crime squad.
His criticism, voiced before leaving for New York after
an extensive tour of the Yard, was immediately taken up in
British newspapers. The Daily Mirror demanded a govern-
ment investigation into Dr. Larson's charges.
Dr. Larson said: "I was abslutely amazed to see how
outdated the Yard's scientific equipment is. My own pri-
vate equipment at home is better. Despite the fact that it
has first-class men who know their job inside out, its
reputation is going to be lost unless it gets more and better
238 CRIME DOCTOR
equipment. It is shattering to find the best crime squad in
the world with such outdated tools ... "
The Mirror asked: "Is the British government mean to
the world's most famous police force? It is outrageous if the
world's finest detectives have to work with old and blunted
tools."
The paper called for a government probe to establish
whether the Yard needs more money to modernize its
equipment.

"I was the first president of the International Society

of Forensic Pathology," Dr. Larson recalls, "and after the
meeting in Brussels, was flying back to the United States
by way of England. At the invitation of Dr. Camps, I
visited Scotland Yard. I was told about the problems the
Yard was having getting appropriations from the British
government for the laboratory. On my tour of the Yard, I
spent two days talking with the lab people. I asked them
what they needed to bring their equipment up to stand-
ards. I encouraged them to talk about their special prob-
lems. They were very candid; no doubt about it, their lab
had fallen behind the times. The government simply
wasn't funding them enough to keep up with modern
cnme.
"Dr. Camps asked me to talk to the British press. I
said I would, on one condition. The press conference would
have to be held at the airport, just before I flew back to the
States. The rest is documented history. At Newfoundland,
where we stopped briefly for refueling, the front pages of
all the London papers had played up my interview in bold,
black type: WORLD FAMOUS PATHOLOGIST SAYS
SCOTLAND YARD OUTDATED. The stampede was on.
"When I walked into my house 24 hours later, my wife
said, 'God, what did you do in London? The phone has
been ringing off the hook. You must have had a thousand
calls. Parliament members, lawyers, prosecutors, report-
ers, transplanted Englishmen living here in America have
been phoning. Everybody suddenly wants to talk to you.'
She was really hot, because the phone kept her up all night.
 THE PHONE RINGS 239
"I started taking the calls. Pro, anti, or neutral, they
all wanted to comment on my remarks about the Yard.
Some of the Britishers felt I was pretty hard on their grand
old police force. Others got much more personal. One
shouted into the mouthpiece, 'You cawn't defame the Yaad
like that! Why, for two bob, I'd come 'ight over tha' and
show you what's for!' They blistered the hide off me,
making me feel like the late Abe Pollock, who used to
referee prizefights. One spring, Abe thought he'd combine
refereeing with baseball umpiring. He started in the bush
leagues and didn't survive the first season. 'I stood for
everything,' Abe mourned. 'They stepped on my feet with
spikes, they kicked me on the shins and they bumped me
around. One day, in Fort Wayne, the crowd was after me. I
didn't mind what they said or did, how many pop bottles
they threw or anything. But right in the middle of the
game this big dame walked down the aisle carrying a bull
terrier on a shawl strap, dropped it over the front of the
grandstand railing and yelled, 'SIC HIM!' That's when I
quit.'"
But Dr. Larson had his cheerleaders, too. Like this
letter from William B. Dolan, Jr., M.D., of Arlington,
Virginia:

Dear Charlie: You sure gave them hell in England! I

thought you might be interested in this clipping from the
Paris newspaper. I first heard it (your interview) being
discussed by two Englishmen in a cocktail bar in the
Excelsior Hotel in Rome. They agreed with you.

On Dr. Larson's next visit to Scotland Yard, it was

more than mere coincidence that the lab sparkled with
modern new equipment.

New Year's Eve celebrations do not always end on a

happy note.
On the last day of 1959, Dr. Larson received a call from
the police about a hit-and-run accident. The victim was a
240 CRIME DOCTOR

woman who was coming out of a tavern, and as she

started across the street at 1 a.m., a car traveling at high
speed hit her, carrying her half a block. No witnesses.
That was when Dr. Larson became involved.
"My first act was to perform an autopsy," Dr. Larson
began. "That was what really cracked the case. It demon-
strated once more why autopsies must be done on accident
victims. The woman's death was due to a fracture of the
skull and massive injuries to the brain. In examining the
body for clues, I found a tiny chip of green paint which
proved to be very important. Miniscule paint chips can be
examined microscopically and spectrophotometrically.
This may tell you precisely what kind of paint it is-even
the make and year of car it came from. If the car had a
repaint job, even that can be determined."
Dr. Larson took that paint chip, which had been
embedded in the skin just below the victim's breast, and
came up with the answer: It was from a 1956 Plymouth.
In less than a week, police detectives located the death
car. The driver, a teenage boy, had attempted to cover up
his tracks by replacing the smashed front headlight. He
had even tried to fix the dented fender himself.
"The boy made a full confession,'' Dr. Larson recalls.
"It was New Year's Eve. He was full of booze, in a hurry
and didn't stop. The courts call this negligent homicide.
The fact that he was drunk and probably didn't know
what he was doing was no valid excuse for not stopping.
"Police blotters have sucked up a lot of ink on cases
like this. It is important that they be solved. Negligent
homicides should be punished. This acts as a deterrant to
those who blatantly think they can get away with it. It is
damn difficult to get away with a hit-and-run homicide.
Often the car will leave telltale evidence on the victim-
and, by the same token, the victim will leave evidence on
the car, such as weave patterns, fragments of clothing or
human tissue.
"I have had any number of cases where a pedestrian
 THE PHONE RINGS 241

has been hit, caught under the car and then dragged. The
trick here is to find the hit-and-run vehicle quickly. You
can always find human tissue or other evidence under-
neath the car which will help reconstruct what really
happened. A thorough examination will prove that the car
ran over a human body. That doesn't mean we will be able
to prove necessarily whose body it was the hit-and-run car
hit, but it is a beginning. Once we have linked up the death
car with the body, we have our killer.
"Conversely, sometimes a person is accused ofhit and
run, when, in actuality, he is innocent. As an example,
some years ago I was called to Stanford University to
investigate a hit-and-run negligent homicide. Both the
suspect and deceased had been living in a fraternity house
on campus. The body was found on the street in front of the
frat house. The suspect' s car had a broken headlight.
When questioned, he said he broke it weeks before. There
were no witnesses. The police did not buy his story and
arrested him. They took him to the county seat at San Jose
and booked him.
"Lowell Bradford, the eminent criminologist who runs
the lab at San Jose, had the suspect's car lifted on a hoist
and examined underneath. He found blood. Unfortunate-
ly, that was as far as he went.
"When I was called into the case by the attorney for
the parents of the accused boy, the first thing I did was to
put the car back on the hoist. I found some blood and tested
it in the lab. It was not human blood. It was rabbit blood.
The suspect had been driving on the desert-jackrabbit
country-and had hit a rabbit, splattering blood on the
car's underbelly.
"If you use the correct antiserum, it is possible to
establish what species of animal that unknown blood
comes from. I have antiserums for most kinds of animal
blood. There's a horse antiserum, for instance. Often the
Health Department's meat inspectors call me in to deter-
mine if hamburger has been mixed with horsemeat. It's
242 CRIME DOCTOR

possible to tell even if only a tiny bit ofhorsemeat has been

added.
"I love the story about the World War I soldiers who
complained to their mess sergeant about the horse meat
rations. The mess sergeant was unmoved. 'It's 50-50-
chicken and horse,' he said. 'Yeah,' said the men. 'One
horse and one chicken.'
"I have had several cases where two or three cars ran
over a body. Say the body is prone in the road, having been
struck down by car No. 1. It's a busy highway and car No.
2 comes along, strikes the body and doesn't bother to stop,
either. He's afraid he'll get in trouble if he stops, :figuring
that the body was still breathing when he hit it. So he
panics and speeds on. Then car No. 3 comes along and also
runs over the victim.
"I had a case just like this, with three cars involved.
The driver of car No. 3 braked his wheels just in time,
however, to avoid hitting the body. He stopped, examined
the body, and then called the police. Autopsy disclosed
that two different cars had run over the deceased-at two
different times. An examination of the cars told us which
car hit the pedestrian first and which car had actually
killed him. The impact of the first car hurled the victim into
the air. He suffered all his fatal injuries when he hit the
hood ornament and the windshield. Car No. 2 then ran
over and pulled the body along. Legally, the second driver
was not the killer because the body was already dead-
from the impact of car No. 1. Both legs were broken at
bumper-height.
"Driver No. 1 was convicted of negligent homicide,
and Driver No. 2 was set free. This case demonstrates why
automobile manufacturers have stopped embellishing the
hoods of their cars with all those deadly weapons."

Police work differs radically in different parts of the

country. Just as do criminals. Old cons, for instance, who
 THE PHONE RINGS 243

have done Big House time in Arizona, Oklahoma and

Florida will seldom pull a second job-at risk of a second
stretch-in those three states, for the punishment there
seems to be preventive.
There is a continual flow of outlander criminals
through Los Angeles, Palm Springs, the Arizona sun
towns and Las Vegas, but they use those places as resorts,
not necessarily for capers. Ride the Sunset Strip in the
nightly Intelligence car and you'll spot them from all over
the country-the world sometimes-d.~king, relaxing,
wenching. These people have to be watched, reported upon
to their home areas of activity and, as it were, shadowed
off the premises.
Back in the late 1950s, Dr. Larson received a phone
call from the Nevada State Patrol. It seems the NSP had a
murder on its hands in Reno and had failed to come up
with the answers. There had been three autopsies per-
formed on the body-one by a pathologist-and still they
were unable to list the cause of death. The police were
stymied. Pkase, was Dr. Larson available? Dr. Larson
made arrangements with the NSP as to what approach to
the case he would take, adding that his fee would be $100 a
day (in those days, that was considered a steep price). His
terms were met and when he arrived in Reno, one of the
local newspapers greeted him with these headlines: "OUT-
SIDE EXPERT CALLED IN-FEE $100 PER DAY." His
fee had made the front page!
The case involved a young woman of 22, a Philadel-
phia heiress, worth about $5,000,000. By the time Dr.
Larson took over the investigation, her estate had already
hired a battery of Philadelphia lawyers.
Dr. Larson started slowly back over all of the informa-
tion given to him by the NSP-picking holes here and
building onto it there-but at second hand now-not with
the fresh opportunity a properly trained homicide expert
has if he is first on the scene.
244 CRIME DOCTOR

Dr. Larson:
The girl was found murdered in a Carson City motel
A fascinating part of the case was her history. She had
been a very well-known debutante. Her coming-out party
had cost her parents upwards of $100,000 and was given a
six-page spread in Life magai:ine. When she was 18, she'd
married a lawyer from Philadelphia and four years later
came to Reno for a divorce. She moved into a very posh
place called the Happy Valley Ranch. It catered to wealthy
ladies who were getting Nevada divorces.
I began my investigation there. It was everything the
advertisements said it was-and more. Not only was it
luxurious, with beautiful rooms and a lovely swimming
pool, but the management had loaded its payroll with a
good supply of handsome young men-studs. The guests
were given their picks. Each woman had her choice of at
least 20 young men, who would line up in front of her and
let her choose which one she wanted for a roommate. It
was all included in the $100-per-day package.
Our Philadelphia heiress selected a tall, bronzed, ath-
letic chap-a typical love-for-sale Romeo. He moved in
with her, and she quickly fell in love with him. That was
her first mistake. The second was marrying him.
It turned out that the guy was a "paper-hanger" by
profession. You know, a person who forges checks. He had
a jail record. I think she knew this, but she married him
anyway. Obviously, she was head-over-heels in love with
him. In an attempt to reform him, she bought him a ranch
north of Carson City and stocked it with fancy horses. She
pampered him, gave him whatever he wanted. But still the
guy was not satisfied. He still longed for his old profession.
Paper-hanging was still in his blood, like a disease. It's one
of those few crimes in which there's a tremendous recidi-
vism. Consider the facts: He had all the money he needed,
a new house, a new ranch and horses, a garage full of
fancy cars-but he had this disease. Inevitably, he was
arrested in Vegas for writing bad checks, and his wife
 THE PHONE RINGS 245

bailed him out. He landed in jail a second time, and again

she put up the bail. Then he went across the state line into
California-supposedly on a "business trip"-and was
nailed once more. This time his wife threw up her hands
and told him, "To hell with you! I've bailed you out of jail
for the last time! You can rot in there! I'm getting another
divorce!"
Now the plot begins to thicken. She returned to Happy
Valley Ranch and selected another stud out of the lineup.
That proved to be the coup de grace. The next thing her
friends knew, her body was found in a motel room in
downtown Carson City. The room was registered to Stud
No. 2. He was married, had two small children living in
Massachusetts, and his wife had an arrest order out for
him for nonsupport. He was a prime suspect. We could
forget about Stud No. 1, because he was still in jail when
the murder occurred.
You probably find it strange that the police didn't
know why the heiress died, after three autopsies. Well, they
didn't know because the autopsies were performed by
people who weren't medical-legal pathologists. Conse-
quently, they didn't know enough to do a careful dissection
of the neck organs. So when I first saw the body, that's the
first step I took.
According to the police, the body was found stuffed in
a closet at the motel. A horrible stench indicated that it had
been there for several days. The body was badly bloated
and decomposed. The police showed me a sash cord which
had been cut and had a knot in it. Incidentally, I should
explain that during the fourth autopsy I found hemor-
rhages in the neck organs. X-rays also revealed a fractured
bone in the neck. I was convinced that the cause of death
was strangulation by a ligature.
I then took a sharp scalpel and scraped the sash cord. I
found nothing, at first, but this was right after I started
doing what is known as cytology, for the diagnosis of
cancer, where we take a so-called pap smear of a woman's
246 CRIME DOCTOR

cervix and study it to decide whether or not a woman has

cancer or is predisposed to cancer of the cervix or uterus. It
was also right at that time we discovered you could take
epithelial cells (found on the surface of the skin and the
cervix), and with special staining, followed by microscopic
examination, if the cells are from a female, you'll find what
is called a Barr body in each one. Nobody but a female has
Barr bodies.
I took this material off the sash cord, stained it, and lo
and behold, I found cells very definitely with Barr bodies
and very much female. I had proof, now, that the sash had
been around a female's neck. That was a big break in
solving the case. We also had the name of the fellow who
had rented the room.
By now, Stud No. 2 had run off with the victim's car.
We advised police across the country to be on the lookout
for him. His wife in Massachusetts was also contacted.
Damned if he didn't show up in her little town a week later
to see her and the children. He was easy to spot, because he
was still driving the victim's station wagon. The local
police arrested him, and he was extradited to Reno, where
he made a full confession and was sentenced for second-
degree murder.
What made that case so special? Well, it was the first
case that I know of that was solved on the basis of cytol-
ogy, a brand new technique. It was a big boost for forensic
pathology and just went to show that with· the proper
education anybody might solve such murders. An f.p.'s
biggest assets are his imagination and perceptiveness. Of
course, it helps if he has plenty of time to mull over a puzzle
and think things out. You don't just rush into a tough case,
because there is a danger of destroying evidence.You must
have ample time to think a case out and use your imagina-
tion. There's really something to this Sherlock Holmes
business, make no bones about that.
The best forensic pathologist is not necessarily the
 THE PHONE RINGS 247

most highly trained man. Rather, he's the man who uses
logic and common sense. I very frequently let the police
watch an autopsy, because with their curiosity and intelli-
gence they often give rise to questions I don't think of and
which are important. I've gotten a lot of education from
inquisitive police officers peering over my shoulders in the
autopsy room. I like having them there. In fact, I like to
have them help conduct the whole investigation. When I
first begin a case, I call in the police officers assigned to me
and we have a conference. We review all the particulars
and decide our strategy. Then we all begin to work as a
team. At the scene we start at the entry door; we study it. If
there's a screen on the door, if it's been cut-if there's been
any disturbance, any marks of entry on the outside of the
house-this is all recorded. We work our way in through
the rooms of the house, examine everything as we prog-
ress, take pictures as we go, and collect trace evidence. I
have a portable vacuum cleaner with a filter in it to pick up
hair and particles so tiny you can't even see them with the
naked eye. I later take the filter to my lab and examine all
the contents. Attention to such detail often leads to impor-
tant clues. A forensic pathologist is trained to know what
to look for and what the evidence means. But if he fails to
go to the scene, he is licked. I always insist on going to the
scene.
After an inspection of the body and collection of the
trace evidence, I have the victim removed to the mortuary,
where a complete and exhaustive autopsy examination is
conducted. Depending on the complexity of the case, this
can take from one to ten hours.
At this point, everyone who has worked on the case
retires to a place with a pleasant atmosphere, such as a
bar-restaurant where we hold a post-autopsy conference
and summation. I carry a dictating machine with me and
record everything. I encourage all members of the team to
express their opinions, ask questions and make sugges-
248 CRIME DOCTOR
tions as to how the case can be solved. What evidence do
we have? What does the evidence mean? Everybody has
an opportunity to get in his two-bits' worth.
One to three hours later I finish by telling the team
what I will be doing in the laboratory. When the confer-
ence is over, we all have a pretty good idea where the case
stands-what has been done and what is going to be done.
Teamwork is so important! That's why we are able to solve
so many cases, and why we have such a high percentage
of solutions to homicides.
 Summing Up

WHENEVER Dr. Larson uses the word "we," you

are justified in reading it "I"-for the doctor is a personally
modest and self-effacing man, dedicated to the "team"
concept of investigative work. "A man never does the
complete job alone," he says.
There is one hidebound rule, he stresses, that must
govern a sleuth when he proceeds toward the solution of a
crime: In every step he takes, he must follow a pattern of
logic that is acceptable to more than one person. "It is a
fact," he says, "that many men acquire this habit of mind
through instinct, but the technique as a stipulated basis of
procedure comes from the CIA in the beginning days:
'Don't work for yourself-be sure another mind is in agree-
ment.'"
Because he has worked so closely with them for 40
years, the police have a special place in Dr. Larson's heart.
"Policemen, by and large, are a very special breed," he'll
tell you. "The average intelligence is far above the old
days-and more honest. A dishonest cop is as rare today
as a dishonest doctor. Straight out of the academy, I find
249
250 CRIME DOCTOR

them dedicated, eager to learn. Meet them halfway, and

they'll work with you right down the line. They are good
people to have on your side."
Dr. Larson isthefirsttotellyou that when a man joins
a police force, puts on the uniform, straps on the gun, this is
in his mind: "Whatever you pay me, a hundred dollars a
month or a thousand and a half, you now have a claim on
my life. I am your gun, your big stick."
The early settlers along the frontier used to hire "guns"
by their previous reputations. "Here are our laws-this is
how we want our lives ordered. Come in and make it so."
So the marshall and the western sheriff came into being-
often starting their own lives elsewhere as outlaws-and
as often as not redeeming themselves by ultimately losing
their lives in defense oflaw and order at 20 paltry dollars a
month.
"It isn't entirely the money that attracts a youngster
to police work, even at t.oday's relatively high-wage scales,"
Dr. Larson points out. "The motivating factor is notsolely
the pay. It couldn't possibly be. Remember, please, that
unlike other men, the policeman leaves his home in the
morning, kisses his wife goodbye, but each time he does it
he knows by statistics that it may be the last time. Your
efficient policeman, like your combat soldier, however,
cannot be a brooder. He takes the risk in stride. He wasn't
drafted, he asked for it, and a part of the asking was to
dedicate himself to the proposition that anywhere, any-
time that day, if a situation demands it, he will put his life
on the line-for law and order-without the slightest hesi-
tation. So in talking about the qualifications of a police
officer, you have to go far beyond the mental, the physical
and the medical tests. You have to get inside your man to
find out whether he's the kind who can commit himself
totally to such dangerous work. Fortunately, I have been
able to attract people with that total commitment."
"Like Dr. Burton?" I asked.
"Yes," he said.
 SUMMING UP 251

Until his recent retirement and move to Mercer Island

in suburban Seattle, John F. Burton, M.D., was chief
deputy medical examiner of Detroit and the County of
Oakland, Michigan. Certified in 1949, he is the first black
forensic pathologist in the United States-the only one in
the country's history.
Drs. Larson and Burton first met in 1958 at a forensic
pathology conference in Chicago. They have been good
friends since.
Recently, during a visit at Dr. Larson's home, I asked
Dr. Burton how he got started. He threw back his head and
laughed heartily.
"Dr. Edward Zawadski, chief medical examiner of
Detroit, told me that if I'd go down to the Detroit River and
collect all the bodies that came to the top, he'd pay me $25
apiece," he said. "That was in 1949. There was an extra $5
per in it if I'd autopsy the heads."
Dr. Burton noted my eyes popping out like hard-boiled
eggs.
"Listen," he said. "I was as poor as a church mouse. I
needed the work-and the Detroit River was crowded with
bodies. It was a popular dumping spot for the Mob."
Since it was his territory, Dr. Larson wanted to know
what happened to Jimmy Hoffa.
"That's the most perplexing case I've ever had," Dr.
Burton told him. "I got a call saying Hoffa had disappeared
and for me to be prepared. Then I telegraphed five consul-
tants and told them to get ready. We alerted all those
people-got their plane fares ready-and then nothing.
That's the end of the story. Oh, we spent thousands of
dollars around his neighborhood in Pontiac, digging,
scraping and excavating, trying to find Hoffa's body. But
we got nowhere. Zilch. After a week everybody went home
-and that, sir, ended the search for Jimmy Hoffa.
Damnedest case I've ever known. His tracks ended at a
restaurant. From there he just disappeared in thin air.
Those people play rough. Every time I turned around,
252 CRIME DOCTOR

somebody from the Jimmy Hoffa clan was missing. He

had a lot of enemies."

We were alone once more, wrapping up the loose ends

of this book.
"I enjoy it all," Dr. Larson said. "The medical part, the
police part. I even enjoy studying and researching mal-
practice cases. I'm curious to know whether there really
has been malpractice, whether the treatment which a
physician gave to a patient was really as poor as charged.
If the answer is yes, then I'll testify for the plaintiff. I do a
lot of case studies for the major malpractice insurance car-
riers in our state. A pathologist is peculiarly qualified to
render a rather impartial opinion of the performance of
another doctor, because he knows so much about the end
results-what has happened, what can happen. His broad
education in the medical-legal field is very helpful, espe-
cially if he specializes in medical-legal work, as I do. So in
cases of malpractice, you can be a big boost to all parties-
the insurance company, the accused doctor or the plaintiff.
Very often you can advise the plaintiff and her physician
that, in your opinion, there was no malpractice; that the
accused doctor did a good job-that they are misinterpret-
ing the whole thing. On the basis of that sort of consulta-
tion, very often they will drop the case."
He really enjoys going to court, he said. Being an
expert witness, that's his cup of tea. But he doesn't go to
court, he said, unless he is positive of his facts. He does not
testify for the money, it goes deeper than that.
"It's like a game of chess," he said. "It's wits against
wits-yours against an attorney's who is trying to upset
you, to make you explode, to disqualify you and to make
you look foolish in front of a jury. He may play every dirty
trick in the book to win his case. But I have no fear when I
get on that stand. I am not jittery. I love the challenge of
cross examination. It's all part of the game."
There was once a well-known attorney in Tacoma
who put Dr. Larson on the stand in an important case.
 SUMMING UP 253

"Well, Dr. Larson," he said, "the prosecution con-

sulted you on this case, isn't that true?"
"Yes," Dr. Larson replied.
"The prosecution is paying you-true?"
"Yes, sir."
"How much are you getting?"
"I charge by the hour. If you wish my standard rates,
I'll be glad to give them to you."
"Well," continued the attorney, "when you investigate
a case, you try to help the people who are retaining you,
don't you?"
"Yes, if they deserve help."
"That's not exactly what I mean. I mean, you lean
over backwards, and you try to find all the facts that will
help the side that is employing you. Isn't that true, Dr.
Larson?"
Dr. Larson straightened, leaned forward.
"Sir," he said, calmly, "I'mafraidyou'reconfusingmy
profession with your profession."
End of cross-examination.
All through this book, there was a question I was
burning to ask Dr. Larson. Is the perfect homicide possi-
ble?
"With a good forensic pathologist and a good investi-
gative team working with you," he said, "I don't think
there is such a thing as a perfect crime. The perfect crime
only occurs when there's a poor investigation. In places
where there is a qualified medical-legal investigative sys-
tem, it's damned difficult to get away with murder. Unfor-
tunately, more than 60 percent of the U.S.'s population is
not served by a good medical-legal investigative system.''
Dr. Larson has helped to establish the medical-legal
investigative system in many states via the lecture plat-
form. He even lectured to state legislators who were in hot
debate over the question of adopting a medical examiner
system. He has talked to community groups, doctors and
all kinds of law enforcement organizations. After a lecture
sweep through Texas, all the major cities of the Lone Star
254 CRIME DOCTOR

State voted in the medical examiner system-Houston,

Dallas, Galveston, Forth Worth and San Antonio.
"Shortly after a swing through Michigan,'' Dr. Larson
said, "the legislature passed a law permitting counties of a
certain size to have a medical examiner system. That
included Detroit, which has had it for about 25 years now.
California also has a good system. The coroner system.
Actually, the coroners are appointed. Most of them are well
qualified forensic pathologists. Florida has endorsed a
similar program. New York has medical examiner sys-
tems in the major cities, but not in all the rural areas.
Chicago has been noted for its inadequate medical-legal
investigative system. They've never been able to get a
good forensic pathologist to work there permanently be-
cause of politics. Pennsylvania has a permissible system,
whereby the counties make their own rules and regula-
tions."

And so we come to the end of the book.

"You got a good ending for it?" the doctor asked.
"Well, how's this?" he said. "There was this guy we'll
call Artie. He was having a couple of beers with his pal
Jules one night. Bolstered by the liquor, Jules told Artie he
was damn sick and tired of his wife and sure would like to
get rid of her. He said he'd pay Artie $1,000 if he'd choke
her to death. Artie said, 'I don't like your wife, either. I
never have liked her. Hell, I'll be glad to do it for a buck.' So
Jules told Artie how to get into the house, the time to be
there and how to choke his wife without getting caught.
Artie followed the plan to the letter. He choked the wife and
then, just as he was leaving the bedroom, he ran into the
maid. To avoid leaving any witnesses, he choked her, too.
Then the butler appeared-and he had to choke him, too.
The next morning the newspaper headlines read: ARTI-
CHOKES-3 FOR A DOLIAR!"
 Appendix
Curriculum Vitae of Charles P. Larson, M.D.

Born: Eleva, Wisconsin, August 15, 1910.

Graduate: Gonzaga University, A.B. Degree, 1931; McGill
University, Montreal, Quebec, M.D., C.M. Degree, 1936.
Interns hip: Pierce County Hospital, Tacoma, Washington.
Postgraduate training in Pathology: University of Michigan
and University of Oregon Medical Schools.
Certified: in Pathologic Anatomy, Clinical Pathology, and
Forensic Pathology by the American Board of Pathology.
Certified by American Board of Legal Medicine.
Currently: Director Emeritus of Laboratories of Tacoma
General Hospital, and co-owner of private laboratories in
Tacoma, Washington. Five partners.
Member.of following professwnal societies:
1. College of American Pathologists
2. American Society of Clinical Pathologists
3. American Academy of Forensic Sciences
4. Pacific Northwest Society of Pathologists
5. Pacific Northwest Society of Neurology and Psychiatry
6. American Psychiatric Association (Life Member)
7. American Medical Association
255
256 CRIME DOCTOR

8. International Academy of Pathology

9. International Association for Identification (Life Member)
10. Law-Science Academy of America (Founding Member)
11. Law-Science Foundation (Founding Member)
12. Military Surgeons
13. Aero-Space Medical Society
14. Northwest Check Investigators Society
15. Inter-Society Cytology Council
16. La Asociacion Espanola de Medicos Forenses (Honorary
Member)
17. Society of Medical Consultants to the Armed Forces
18. Association of Clinical Scientists
19. American College of Legal Medicine (Honorary Fellow)
Professional offices held:
1. Past President of Pacific Northwest Society of
Pathologists, 1949.
2. President of North Pacific Society of Neurology &
Psychiatry, 1949.
3. Member of Executive Committee, Washington Division of
Mental Health Association, 1953-56.
4. Member of Executive Committee and Assistant
Chairman of Executive Committee of Washington
Division, American Cancer Society, 1940-58.
5. President, Washington Division of American Cancer
Society, 1958-59.
6. President, College of American Pathologists, 1957-59.
7. Chairman of Council on Forensic Pathology for the
American Society of Clinical Pathologists, 1957-63.
8. Chairman of Forensic Pathology Committee of College of
American Pathologists, 1955-58. Developed certification
program for American Board.
9. President of International Congress of Forensic
Pathology, 1957-60.
10. Pathologist for War Crimes Investigating Team No. 6328,
European Theater of Operation, March 1, 1945 - July 1,
1945.
11. Colonel, United States Army Reserve (Retired).
12. Commanding Officer, 359th General Reserve Hospital,
1949-64.
 APPENDIX 257

13. Vice-President, International Congress of Clinical

Pathology, 1960.
14. President, Washington State Society of Pathologists,
1947.
15. President, McGill Graduates Society, 1952.
16. Board of Directors, National Committee for Careers in
Medical Technology, 1953-59.
17. Member, AMA Committee on Legal Medicine, 1957-59.
18. Member, Executive Committee, Committee on Chemical
Tests for Intoxication, National Safety Council, 1948 to
present.
19. Vice-President, International Society of Clinical
Pathologists, 1960-64.
20. Member, International Inter-Society Committee on
Pathology for World Health Organization, 1956-62.
21. Forensic Medicine Editor, Medicolegal Digest, 1960.
22. Member, AMA Committee on Nuclear Medicine, 1962.
23. Consultant to American Board of Forensic Pathology.
24. President, Pierce County Medical Society, 1966-67.
25. Member, Board of Trustees, American Society of Clinical
Pathologists, 1966-68.
26. Official representative of College of American
Pathologists to AMA meetings, 1956-64.
27. Member, Board of Turstees, Pierce County Medical
Bureau, 1965-67.
28. Vice-President, Washington State Medical Association,
1967-70.
29. Chief ASCP Councillor, World Association of Pathology
Societies, 1969-72.
30. Member, Pierce County Hospital Council, 1971 to 1974.
31. President, Board of Governors, Lakewood General
Hospital, 1970-76.
32. President, National Association of Medical Examiners,
1972.
33. Treasurer, Affiliated Hospitals of Pierce County, 1972 to
present.
34. International "Inform" award in Forensic Pathology,
1967.
35. Distinguished Service Award, ASCP, continuing education.
258 CRIME DOCTOR

Teaching positions:
1. Professor of Anatomy and Histology, St. Martins College,
Lacey, Washington, 1939-41.
1. Instructor, Pathology Department, University of Oregon
Medical School, 1940-42.
3. Assistant Clinical Professor of Pathology, University of
Washington Medical School, 1948 to present.
4. Lecturer, Biology, University of Puget Sound, 1959.
5. Professor of Forensic Pathology (Visiting), University of
Texas, 1959-63.
6. Assistant Professor of Biology, University of Puget
Sound, 1959 to present.
7. Director of Approved Residency training program in
Pathology.
Consultant positions:
1. Madigan General Hospital, 1946-77.
2. Western State Hospital, 1946-63.
3. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, 1956-75.
4. Columbia University, Western consultant to Pathology
Department, 1959.
5. M.D. Anderson Hospital and University of Texas,
Department of Pathology, 1959.
6. Rayonier Marine Research Laboratory, Hoodsport,
Washington, 1958-63.
7. Tacoma Police Department Crime Laboratory, 1946-75.
8. Veterans Administration Hospital, American Lake,
Washington, 1958-77.
Scientific exhibits:
1. American Medical Association, 1939, 1940, 1947, 1954,
1955, 1956, 1957, 1958.
2. Numerous State and Regional Medical Society meetings.
Scientific papers: Sixty original papers written and
contributed to American medical literature.
Civic activities:
1. Member, Board of Freeholders, City of Tacoma, 1954.
2. Chairman, Washington State Athletic Commission, 1958.
3. Member, Washington State Athletic Commission, 1959-65.
4. Rotarian (Since 1940).
5. Member, Board of Directors, Tacoma-Pierce County Blood
Bank, 1946 to present.
 APPENDIX 259

6. President, Tacoma Athletic Commission, 1955.

7. Chairman, City of Tacoma Armed Services Committee,
1948.
8. Member, Washington State Advisory Committee on
Mental Health, 1957-59.
9. Past President, Footprinters Boysville, 1952-55 (Branch of
International Law Enforcement Association).
10. Surgeon General, Washington State AMVETS, 1949-53.
11. Medical Advisor, National Wrestling Association, 1960-63.
12. President, Washington State Junior Sheriffs
Organization, 1961.
13. Reserve Officers Association, 1946 to present.
14. President, National Boxing Association, 1961-62.
15. First President, World Boxing Association, 1962-63.
16. Member, World Boxing Council, 1963.
17. Distinguished Service Medal, U.S. Army, 1968.
Index

A Bradford, Lowell, 241

Abortion clinic, 3 Bradley, L.W., 71
British Parliament, 237
Alcohol, metabolism, 111
Burton, Dr. John F., 250
Alcoholism, 104
Busselle, Paul, 113
crime, 110
exposure deaths, 110
suicide, 109
c
American Board of Camps, Dr. Francis, 74, 75,
Pathology, 82 123, 236
Armed Forces Inst. of Carlsen, Nina, 37
Pathology, 83 Chicago Police, 44
Arteriosclerosis, 112 Circuit Court, Ninth, 210
Autopsy, 7, 8 Clallam Indians, 32
College of Amer.
B . Pathologists, 82
Bayton, Mrs. John, 41 Committee of Alcohol and
Beeman, Dr. Joseph, 32 Drugs, 107
Bird, Jake, 115 Court of Last Resort, 14
confession, 131 Crescent Lake, 31
hex, 143, 144 Crime laboratory, 121
Bocock, Pfc., 51 Cummings, Robert C., 173
Boxing Assn., National, 122 Cytology, 246
260
 INDEX 261
D Hickey, John, 140, 186
Hit and run, 242
Dachau, 28,46,59,69
Hockett, "Sugar Man," 171
autopsies, 54
Hodge, Judge E.D., 141
D' Amato, Cus, 122
Hoffa, Jimmy, 251
Davies, Skip, 116
Howdeshell, 19
Dempsey, Jack, 24
Hudson, Jessie, 38
Denman, Judge William, 210
Hulach, Germany, 57
Dillon, Dr. Tom, 72, 75
Hypoxia, 105
Diplopia, 106
Dolan, Dr. William B., 239
Driver, Judge Sam M., 175
Illingworth, Hallie, 36
E Illingworth, Monty, 36, 40
Eleva, Wisconsin, 23 Imlay, Mrs., 18
Inman, J.F., 71
F International Soc. of
Faber, Jim, 144 Forensic Pathology, 238
Farmers and Merchants J
Bank, 23, 27
Fingerprints, 224 Juries, 138
Fishing derby, 126 K
Freeman, Major General, 120
Fry, Dr. Elmer Lee, 71 Karpach, Joe, 146
Fultz, Hollis B., 36, 42, 227 Kauffring Camps, 53, 56
Kid Philips, 21
G King of Hammelsburg, 52
Gallows bird, 216 Kirk, Dr., 13
Galvin, Lillian, 171 Kludt, Bertha, 114
Gardner, Earl Stanley, 14 Kludt, Beverly June, 114
General Army Hospital, 50th, Koberrig, Lt. Margaret, 124
45 L
Gerber, Dr. Samuel, 13
Gibbons, Tommy, 24 Langlie, Gov. Arthur, 217
Godwin, Dr. John T., 74, 75 Larson, Dr. C. Philip, Jr., 76,
Gonzaga, Univ., 24, 26, 27 126
Larson family, 124
H Latham, Lois, 36
Halpern, Dr. Milton, 74, 75 Legal Medicine Annual, 107
Hammelsburg Camp, 50 Lompski, Leo, 23
Hammurabi, Code of, 10 Louis, Joe, 26
Hans, 54
Harmon, Nolan B., 75 M
Herald, Montreal, 28 Malaria research, 64
Herbert, Frank, 114 Malpractice, 252
Hex, Jake Bird, 143, 144 Manger la nipple, 18
262 CRIME DOCTOR
Mayo Clinic, 44 Rosellini, Judge Hugh, 213
McDowell, Dr. A.J., 39 Rumble, Dr. Lester, 71
McGill Univ., 28
Medal of Commendation, s
U.S. Army, 120 Sabutis, Tiny, 116
Medical Corps, U.S. Army, Salmon fishing, 125, 126
119 Saponification, 33
Medical examiner, 72, 74 Schilling, Dr. Kurt, 64
Mercedes-Benz Scotland Yard, 123, 236
convertible, 50 Seeshaupt, Germany, 46, 49
16-cylinder, 119 Selden, Jim, 140
Merkle Hotel, 1 Sheppard, Sam, 13
Michigan, Univ. of, 29 Short, Esther, 75
Simolon, Baron Rudolph von,
N
49
National Boxing Assn., 24, Smith, Marjorie, 2
122 Smith, Warden Tom, 164, 218
National Safety Council, 107 Sneedon, Dr. Vincent, 45
Nevada case, 244 Spokesman-Review, 24
Newlands,C.John, 175 Staltart, Germany, 48
Norris, Dr. Charles, 29 Stanford Univ., 241
Nova, Lou, 26 Steele, Pat, 1, 131, 181
Stier, Dr. Robert F.E., 26
0
Suicide, alcoholism, 109
Ocean Shores, WA, 222 ·
Oertel, Dr. Horst, 28 T
Ollar, Ken, 18, 125 Tacoma General Hospital, 12,
Oregon, Univ. of, 29 75, 121, 233
p Tacoma News Tribune, 114
Tacoma Times, 113
Pathology, divisions, 29 Taggart, Murray, 217
Patterson, Floyd, 122 Thompson, Edgar, 36
Paulsen, Arthur W., 174 Time of death, 230
Pearson, Elinore, 37 Tunney, Gene, 24
Perfect crime, 253 Tuttle, John, 170
Piper, Lt. Col. Clinton A., 120
Policemen, 249 w
Punch drunk, 25 Walla Walla, 41, 143, 163
Pyramidon, 65 Wallgren, Gov. Mon C., 143
War Crimes Team, 46, 83
R
Ward, Dave, 211
Raschau, Dr., 67 World Boxing Assn., 24
Reserve General Hospital,
120 z
Rosellini, Albert, 23 Zittle, Charles, 1, 123, 140