We got a hot tip. A woman read the
She left a provocative message. Bill called her and set up an interview. We drove out to her house. She lived on Embree Drive off Peck Road. It was due north of my old house.
Peggy Forrest was rangy and in her late 60s. She sat us down in her backyard and told us her story.
They found the nurse on a Sunday morning. It was on the radio. Willie Stopplemoor knocked on her door. She wanted to talk about it. “Willie” was short for “Wilma.” Willie was married to Ernie Stopplemoor. They had two sons named Gailard and Jerry. Gailard went to Arroyo High. Ernie and Wilma were 35 to 40. They came from Iowa. They lived on Elrovia. Elrovia was near Peck Road.
Willie was agitated. She said the cops were looking for Clyde “Stubby” Green. They found Stubby’s overcoat on the nurse’s body. The nurse was selling Stubby dope.
Stubby Green lived across the street from Peggy Forrest. He worked at a machine shop with Ernie Stopplemoor. Stubby was 5?11? and stocky. He had a butch haircut. He was about 30 then. Stubby was married to Rita Green. They came from Vermont or New Hampshire. Rita was blond. She wore a ponytail. Stubby and Rita were barhoppers. Stubby was an “El Monte legend” and a “well-known bad boy.” Stubby and Rita had a son named Gary and a daughter named Candy. They went to Cherrylee Elementary School. They were about six or seven years old in 1958. Peggy saw Stubby sneak home one morning. He was carrying some suits and sports jackets. It just didn’t look right. Willie Stopplemoor did not mention Stubby or the nurse again. Peggy forgot about the whole thing. The kicker to the whole thing was this:
The Greens split for parts unknown a few weeks after the murder. They pulled their kids out of school. They blew off their mortgage and their house. They never returned to El Monte. The Stopplemoors did the same thing. They split unexpectedly. They did not tell a soul that they intended to move. They just up and vanished.
I asked Peggy to describe Ernie Stopplemoor. She said he was very tall and gangly. Willie Stopplemoor was chunky and plain-featured. Bill mentioned the machine shop. Peggy said she didn’t know the name. It was somewhere in the San Gabriel Valley.
I asked her for names. I asked her to link some names to the Green incident. She said her father told her something. He said Bill Young and Margaret McGaughey knew the dead nurse.
Bill ran Peggy Forrest through her story again. She told it in the same precise manner. I wrote down all the names and ages and physical descriptions. I wrote out a priority list and underlined four things:
El Monte Museum—check ’58 directories.
Check ’59s—see if Greens & Stopplemoors really left El Monte.
Check school records—Green & Stopplemoor kids.
Run Greens & Stopplemoors nationwide and attempt to locate.
It felt like something. I liked the tight local vibe.
I showed Bill my list. He said it was good. We discussed the Green/Stopplemoor story. I said the coat bit was bullshit. The cops found my mother’s coat on her body. Bill said the dope bit was bullshit. Jean probably had no access to salable narcotics. I said I dug the geographical angle. Elrovia was one block from Maple. I started to theorize. Bill told me to stop. We had to get more facts first.
We hit the El Monte Museum. We checked the directories. We found a Clyde Greene on Embree in 1958. His wife was listed as Lorraine, not Rita. We checked the ’59, ’60 and ’61 books. There were no Clyde or Lorraine Greenes listed. We found the Stopplemoors on Elrovia for all four years.
Bill called Tom Armstrong. He ran the story by him and gave him the names and approximate ages of the four Greene and Stopplemoor kids. The Stopplemoors probably stuck around El Monte. The Greenes might have booked out quicksville. Armstrong said he’d check the appropriate school records. He’d try to determine if the Greenes and Stopplemoors yanked their kids.
Bill called Chief Clayton and Dave Wire. He dropped the names Ernie Stopplemoor and Clyde “Stubby” Greene —the “El Monte legend.” The names didn’t ring any bells. Clayton and Wire promised to call some old cops and report back.
They called some old cops. They reported back. Nobody recalled Ernie Stopplemoor or Clyde “Stubby” Greene.
We ran the Greenes, the Stopplemoors and their kids through the state DMV and DOJ computers and the 50- state reverse book. We ran the name Rita Greene and the name Lorraine Greene. We got precious few Greenes altogether. We called all of them. None of them acted suspicious. None of them said they used to live in El Monte. None of the Clydes copped to the nickname “Stubby.” None of the Garys and Candys copped to daddies named Clyde or mamas named Lorraine or Rita.
We tagged three Stopplemoors in Iowa. They were blood kin to old Ernie. They said Ernie and Wilma were dead. Their son Jerry was dead. Their son Gailard was living in Northern California.
Bill got Gailard’s number and called him. Gailard did not recall the Greene family or the Jean Ellroy snuff or anything but hot rods and chicks in El Monte. He did not come off suspicious. He came off somnambulant.
Armstrong got us the school records. They proved that the Stopplemoors stayed in El Monte. They proved that the Greenes pulled their kids out of school in October ’58. Stubby did not rabbit in July. Peggy Forrest had that wrong.
We tried to find Bill Young and Margaret McGaughey. We failed. We kissed the whole tangent off.
We met the
Bill resumed his trial preparations. I went back to the file. The file was an access road to my mother. I was going into hiding with her soon. The file was preparing me. I wanted to meet her with established facts and rumors synced to my imagination. The file smelled like old paper. I could turn that smell to spilled perfume and sex and her.
I holed up with the file. My apartment was un-air-conditioned and summertime hot. I stared at my corkboard displays. I had my meals delivered. I talked to Helen and Bill on the phone every night and nobody else. I kept the
