The cops told him the kid said otherwise. Tubiolo stuck to his story. All he knew about the Ellroys’ private life was that the parents were divorced and the boy wasn’t allowed to see his father during the week. Mrs. Ellroy was a fine woman—but there was nothing personal between them.
Margie Trawick observed Tubiolo. She got a good close look through the mirror.
She told the cops he wasn’t the guy. They cut Tubiolo loose with apologies.
Ward Hallinen got a tip Thursday night. The West Covina PD had a suspect: a local foul ball named Steve Anthony Carbone.
Hallinen had Frank Godfrey check it out. Godfrey ran a make on Carbone and came back enthusiastic.
Carbone was a white male American of Italian descent. His DOB was 2/19/15. He was 5?10? and 140 pounds, with hazel eyes, straight black hair and a high forehead. He owned a ’55 Olds two-door sedan, polar white over green, license MMT 879.
He hailed from Detroit, Michigan. He was popped three times for indecent exposure: 10/41, 11/41, 8/53. He moved to West Covina in ’57. He ran up a string of three drunk drivings and two assault-with-a-deadly-weapon beefs. His last ADW was notable. He pulled a 30.30 carbine on a cop.
Carbone was foul-tempered and belligerent. Carbone was a well-known cop hater and a sex offender.
Hallinen and Lawton jumped on him.
They had the West Covina PD haul him in. They had his Oldsmobile impounded and photographed in the PD parking lot. A Sheriff’s lab man dusted it, checked it for bloodstains and vacuumed it for fibers resembling the white ones found on the victim.
The lab man came up empty.
Hallinen and Lawton leaned on Carbone. He gave them a vague account of his actions Saturday night. Jim Bruton brought Margie Trawick and Lavonne Chambers in for a show-up.
They both said he wasn’t the guy they saw with the redhead.
Hallinen and Lawton worked straight through the weekend.
They talked to the victim’s co-workers and failed to turn up any leads. They walked through the victim’s house again. They spent hours at the Desert Inn and talked to dozens of patrons. Nobody could put a handle on the blonde or the dark man.
Metro got a tip on a guy named Robert John Mellon—a former mental patient from North Dakota. A deputy checked Mellon out and wrote the tip off as worthless.
A man named Archie G. Rogers called in a tip to the El Monte PD.
He said a guy named Bill Owen had a girlfriend named Dorothy. They sort of matched the description of those people in the paper—the folks seen with the dead nurse.
Owen was a painter and a mechanic. He used to live with Mr. Rogers’ sister. Dorothy frequented the Manger and the Wee Nipee bar. She slept in Mr. Rogers’ car Saturday night, June 21st.
Dorothy’s phone number was ED4-6881. Dorothy said she had a new friend named Jean. Dorothy planned to bring Jean by Mr. Rogers’ sister’s house that Saturday night.
Mr. Rogers found the whole thing suspicious.
The El Monte PD forwarded the tip to Sheriff’s Metro. Deputy Howie Haussner—Jack Lawton’s brother-in-law— handled it.
He got Rogers’ sister’s address and matched Dorothy’s phone number to a Harold T. Hotchkiss in Azusa. He attached the two addresses to the names William Owen and Dorothy Hotchkiss and teletyped them to the Criminal Records Bureau in Sacramento.
The kickback was inconclusive.
The name Dorothy Hotchkiss came back blank: no record, no wants, no warrants, no listing at the Azusa address. “William Owen” came back six times over—various Owens with criminal records dating back to ’39. None of the Owens lived in the San Gabriel Valley.
The Owen-Hotchkiss paperwork was stuffed in an accordion file. The file was marked Z-483-362.
Jean Ellroy was buried on Tuesday, July 1st, 1958.
A rent-a-preacher performed a Protestant service. She was placed in the ground at Inglewood Cemetery—out in southwest L.A.
Jean’s sister and brother-in-law were there. Some Airtek people showed up. Armand Ellroy and a few of Jean’s old friends attended.
Jack Lawton and Ward Hallinen were there.
Jean’s son copped a plea and stayed away. He spent the day watching TV with some friends of his dad’s.
The headstone was marked “Geneva Hilliker Ellroy. 1915-1958.”
The plot was on the west edge of the cemetery. It was inches from a busy street and a stretch of chain-link fence.
4
The L.A. Sheriff’s Office hailed from the Wild West days. It was a modern police agency suffused with 19th-century nostalgia. The LASO embraced Wild West motifs wholesale. It made for brilliant PR.
The Sheriff’s manned county lockups and patrolled county turf out of twelve substations. Said turf ran through the city of Los Angeles and out into the north-, south- and eastbound boonies. Deputies worked the desert, the
