status 000.sta.0002 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

When investigators revealed the facts about what was found on Eddie Gein’s farm, the news quickly spread. Reporters from all over the world flocked to the small town of Plainfield, Wisconsin. The town became known worldwide and Eddy Gein reached celebrity-like status. People were repulsed, yet at the same time drawn to the atrocities that took place on Eddie Gein’s farm.  Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Psychologists from all over the world attempted to find out what made Eddie tick. During the 1950s, he gained notoriety as being one of the most famous of documented cases involving a combination of necrophilia, transvestism and fetishism. Even children who knew of the exploits of Eddie began to sing songs about him and make jokes in an effort to, as Harold Schechter suggests in his book Deviant, “exorcise the nightmare with laughter.” These distasteful jokes became known as “Geiners” and were quick to become popular around the world.

Back in Plainfield, residents endured the onslaught of reporters who disrupted their daily life by bombarding them with questions about Eddie. However, many of them eventually became involved in the mania surrounding Eddie and contributed what information they had. Plainfield was now known to the world as the home of infamous Eddie Gein.

Most residents who knew Eddie had only good things to say about him, other than that he was a little peculiar, had a quirky grin and a strange sense of humor. They never suspected him of being capable of committing such ghastly crimes. But the truth was hard to escape. The little shy, quiet man the town thought they knew, was in fact, a murderer who also violated the graves of friends and relatives.

Eddie in Court

After Gein spent a period of thirty days in a mental institution and was evaluated as mentally incompetent, he could no longer be tried for first degree murder. The people of Plainfield immediately voiced their anger that Eddie would not be tried for the death of Bernice Worden. Yet, there was little the community could do to influence the court’s decision. Eddie was committed to the Central State Hospital in Waupun, Wisconsin. Soon after Eddie was sentenced to the mental institution, his farm went up for auction along with some of his other belongings.

Thousands of curiosity seekers diverged on the small town to see what possessions of Eddie’s would be auctioned. Some of the things to be auctioned off were his car, furniture and musical instruments. The company that handled the business of selling Eddie’s goods planned to charge a fee of fifty cents to look at Eddie’s property. The citizens of Plainfield were outraged. They believed Eddie’s home was quickly becoming a “museum for the morbid” and the town demanded something be done to put it to an end. Although the company was later forbidden to charge an entrance fee to the auction, residents were still not satisfied.

Eddie Gein’s Farmhouse

In the early morning of March 20, 1958 the Plainfield volunteer fire department was called to Eddie’s farm. Gein’s house was on fire. The house quickly burned to the ground, as onlookers watched in silent relief. Police believed that an arsonist was responsible for the blaze because there was no electrical wiring problems with the house. Although police carried out a thorough investigation, no suspect was ever found.

When Eddie learned of the destruction to his house he simply said, “Just as well.”  Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Although the fire destroyed most of Eddie’s belongings, there were still many things that were salvaged. What was left of Eddie’s possessions would still be auctioned off, including farm equipment and his car. Eddie’s 1949 Ford sedan, which was used to haul dead bodies, caused a bidding war and was eventually sold for seven hundred and sixty dollars. The man who purchased the car later put it on display at a county fair, where thousands paid a quarter to get a peek at the Gein “ghoul car.” It seemed to the people of Plainfield that the publics fascination with Eddie would never end.

dots 66.dot.002 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Two days later, August 8, Chamberlain and Intervallo called Detective Salvesen to tell him about the Craig Glassman event and the letters that Glassman had received. One of the letters was amazingly confessional: “True, Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire  I am the killer, but Craig, the killings are at your command.” Salvesen promised to inform the task force immediately, but the information didn’t get to the task force for days.

In the meantime, several traffic tickets that had been written the night of the Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire  shooting, outside witness Davis’ apartment, were at last found. All but one were investigated and yielded nothing. One final ticket was yet to be investigated — one belonging to a Yonkers man named David Berkowitz.

Detective Jimmy Justus called the Yonkers Police Department and talked to Wheat Carr, the daughter of Sam Carr, who had lost her dog. She gave him a real earful about David Berkowitz and everything her father had tried to impress upon the police days earlier. Officer Chamberlain called Justus shortly afterwards and told him everything he knew. They compared notes.

Then after the Carr family and officers Chamberlain and Intervallo had connected all the dots repeatedly for the New York City Police, the latter were more than anxious to go in for the collar and the glory that went with it. On August 10, Shea, Strano, William Gardella and John Falotico put 35 Pine Street under surveillance. The number of cops grew as everyone wanted to be in on the arrest.

Just after 7:30 P.M., a heavy-set Caucasian male walked out of the apartment building and seemed to head towards Berkowitz’s Ford Galaxy. The police started to close in on him. Falotico pulled his gun and stopped the man. “David, stay where you are,” he warned him.

“Are you the police?” the man wanted to know.

“Yes. Don’t move your hands.”

It was not David Berkowitz, but Craig Glassman, the part-time deputy sheriff who realized that these men surrounding him were not the Yonkers police but New York City’s “finest.” Glassman figured it out fast that Berkowitz was a suspect in the Son of Sam murders.

Several hours later another figure emerged from the apartment building, carrying a paper bag. The man was heavy with dark hair and he walked slowly toward the Ford Galaxy. This time, the police waited for the man to get into the car and put the paper bag on the passenger seat. “Let’s go!” Falotico yelled and the officers advanced. The man inside did not see the approaching figures. Gardella came from the rear of the car and put the barrel of his gun against the man’s head. “Freeze!” he yelled. “Police!”

The man inside the car turned around and smiled idiotically at them. Falotico gave him very explicit instructions to slowly get out of the car and put his hands up on the roof. The man obeyed, still smiling.

“Now that I’ve got you,” Falotico said, “who have I got?”

“You know,” the man said politely.

“No, I don’t. You tell me.”

Still smiling his moronic smile, he answered, “I’m Sam. David Berkowitz.”

David Berkowitz arrested

simpson 2.sim.0003 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Davis was the youngest of the ten children of Samuel Emory Davis (Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, 1756 – July 4, 1824) and wife (married 1783) Jane Cook (Christian County, (later Todd County), Kentucky, 1759 – October 3, 1845), daughter of William Cook and wife Sarah Simpson, daughter of Samuel Simpson (1706 – 1791) and wife Hannah (b. 1710). The younger Davis’s grandfather, Evan Davis (Cardiff, County Glamorgan, 1729 – 1758), emigrated from Wales and had once lived in Virginia and Maryland, marrying Lydia Emory. His father, along with his uncles, had served in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War; he fought with the Georgia cavalry and fought in the Siege of Savannah as an infantry officer. Also, three of his older brothers served during the War of 1812. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire  Two of them served under Andrew Jackson and received commendation for bravery in the Battle of New Orleans.

During Davis’s youth, the family moved twice; in 1811 to St. Mary Parish, Louisiana, and in 1812 to Wilkinson County, Mississippi near the town of Woodville. In 1813, Davis began his education together with his sister Mary, attending a log cabin school a mile from their home in the small town of Woodville, known as the Wilkinson Academy. Two years later, Davis entered the Catholic school of Saint Thomas at St. Rose Priory, a school operated by the Dominican Order in Washington County, Kentucky. At the time, he was the only Protestant student.

committees 99.com.0001 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

After the last attack, the citizens of Austin discussed forming vigilance committees to keep watch over the stricken neighborhoods at all hours.   More criticism was leveled at the marshal and his unfruitful attempts to track and apprehend a perpetrator.  Some people wanted every stranger in town to explain his presence, indicating that residents could not bring themselves to believe that a fellow townsperson was responsible.  They wanted suspicious persons run out.

Marshal Lee invited a team of detectives from Houston to assist him, and relied on several eye witnesses to make an arrest in this latest crime.   Two, in fact: Dock Woods and Oliver Townsend, both black men from the area.  Saylor indicates that Lucinda Boddy had implicated the first man, and she was the person who got the best look at the killer.  She said she had seen him that night and it was known to the marshal that he sometimes harassed Gracie.  Another witness said he’d overheard Townsend, Wood’s friend and a known petty thief, threaten to kill Gracie.  Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire In addition, when arrested, Wood was in possession of a bloody shirt.  It seemed to the marshal to be just a matter of inducing these men to confess.

Saylor indicates that during this time, the two professionals from Noble Detective Agency had tried extracting confessions from another suspect, Alec Mack, as well, for the murder of Mary Ramey.   The entire shameful affair was printed in the newspapers.  They even threatened to string him up unless he admitted to murder.  They may also have tried extracting confessions from the other two men, but in the end, none was tried.  The marshal explained in an interview with the Statesman that the bruises found on Mack were the result of his own desperate struggles to resist imprisonment.  Eventually his statement would be questioned and his practices condemned.  Yet Lee returned his focus to Walter Spencer, who had been assaulted with the first victim, Mollie Smith, and an indictment against him was issued later in November.  He was tried over the course of three days, based on a far-fetched theory, and acquitted.

From one case to another, it seemed like the same story was being repeated: black servants living in cabins behind the homes of their well-to-do employers were coming under attack.   All of them had been bludgeoned in some manner, and all of the female victims were raped.  Black men had been arrested and let go.  There were now five dead and three survivors, for a total of eight victims.  Prosecutor E. T. Moore speculated that the murders had all been committed by a single perpetrator who hated women, but his ideas were mocked by his colleagues.  The white community, while fearful, believed that this fiend was interested only in black women, but they were in for a terrible surprise.

ordered 3.ord.002 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Fred West came from a long line of Herefordshire farm laborers. He was born in 1941 in the village of Much Marcle, approximately 120 miles west of London, to Walter and Daisy West. Fred began life as a beautiful baby with huge piercing blue eyes and blond hair. Despite the war and the poverty in which the Wests lived, they had six more children, one after another within a ten-year-period. Fred and his mother enjoyed a very close relationship. He was her pet and did everything she asked. Fred also had a reasonably good relationship with his father, who he admired as a role model.  Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

The beautiful baby grew up into a scruffy-looking boy. His blond hair turned to a dark brown and became curly and unkempt. He had inherited some of his mother’s less attractive facial features: an overly large mouth and a gap between his large teeth. He looked distinctly like a Gypsy. Fred West. age 7 Fred was not a promising student and was constantly in trouble for which he was caned. Daisy, seriously overweight and dressed unattractively, would go to the school to yell at the teacher for disciplining her favorite son — an action that made Fred the butt of many jokes. He was a “mamma’s boy.” He left school at age fifteen almost illiterate and went to work as a farm hand.

By the time he was sixteen, he cleaned himself up enough to be attractive to girls. He was extremely aggressive with the opposite sex and went after any girl that caught his fancy. Fred claimed that his father had sex with his daughters, using the logic, “I made you so I’m entitled to have you.” But then, Fred was a notorious liar. It’s hard to say if his father ever was ever guilty of incest or that Fred made his sister pregnant as he later claimed. Fred on his motorcycle (South West News Service) When Fred was seventeen, he was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident which left him in a coma for a week and resulted in having a metal plate put into his head. His leg was broken and was permanently shorter than the other leg. Some thought that this head injury made him prone to sudden fits of rage and that he seemed to have lost control over his emotions. After his recovery from the accident, Fred met the pretty 16-year-old Catherine Bernadette Costello, nicknamed Rena, who had been in trouble with the police since early childhood. By the time she met Fred she was an accomplished and experienced thief. They became lovers almost immediately, but the affair ended when she went back home a few months later to Scotland.

Fred quickly turned his attentions elsewhere and stuck his hand up the skirt of a young woman standing with him on a fire escape at a local youth club. She was impressed enough with the gesture to knock him off the fire escape. In the fall, he banged his head and lost consciousness. The lasting impact on Fred’s behavior suggested that between this incident and the motorcycle accident, he had suffered some brain damage. In 1961, Fred and his friend stole a watchstrap and cigarette cases from a jewelry store and were caught with the merchandise on them. Fred and his colleague were both fined. This was just the beginning of his troubles. A few months later, he was accused of impregnating a 13-year-old girl who was a friend of the West family. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire Fred was surprisingly uncooperative and didn’t see that there was anything wrong with molesting little girls. “Well, doesn’t every one do it?” This attitude and the ensuing scandal caused a serious breach with his family. Fred was ordered to find somewhere else to live. Distanced now from his family, he went to work on construction projects. It wasn’t long before he was caught stealing from the construction sites and having sex with young girls. At Fred’s trial for having sex with the 13-year-old girl, his physician claimed that he was suffering from epileptic fits. Consequently, he got off without a jail sentence, but the die was cast. At age 20, Fred West was a convicted child molester and petty thief — and a total disgrace to his family.

fuhrman 88.fuh.99929 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Bloody Sunday in Brentwood

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Front view of the Brentwood estate

The dog kept barking late on this foggy Sunday evening, June 12, 1994. Pablo Fenjves, a screenwriter, thought he heard it the first time at about 10:15. Elsie Tistaert, who lived just across the street, also heard it, and when she looked out of her window, she saw the dog, a white Akita, pacing up and down outside the front of 875 South Bundy Drive. Louis Kaupf, who lived next door to 875, returned late from the airport and went out to clear his mail at 10:50. The dog was still barking and trotting up and down in an agitated manner. Just before 11:00, Steven Schwab, who was walking his own dog, came across the distressed animal. It followed him home. There, he noticed that the dog’s belly fur and paws were matted in red.

Police photo of the crime scene

Schwab asked his neighbor, Suka Boztepe, to care for the dog overnight. He agreed, but as the dog persisted in his restless behavior, Boztepe and his partner, Bettina Rasmussen, decided to walk the dog and try and calm it down. The dog dragged them back to number 875, where it stopped and gazed down a dim, tree-shaded pathway. Following the dog’s stare, they saw a shape of someone lying at the foot of some steps, part of the body sprawled under an iron fence.

At 12:13 a.m., the first LAPD black and white patrol car arrived on the scene in response to a call from Tistaert. In it were Officers Robert Riske and Miguel Terrazas. They went through the entranceway of the off-white stucco, three-level condominium and made their way cautiously up the pathway.

They were walking into a drama that a screenwriter or novelist would have given his eye teeth to dream up. In the early hours of this summer morning, the discovery of two savagely mutilated bodies would spawn a series of events that would obsess the American and world media, Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire exert a stranglehold on the attention of the American public, destroy more than one professional career and,  perhaps most importantly of all, change the way people looked at race in America.

That morning however, Officer Riske was mainly concerned about not stepping in a small lake of blood as he proceeded up the tiled walkway where he reached the first body, which lay about 15 feet from the sidewalk. It was a woman, sprawled face down, left cheek pressing into the ground, her right leg jack-knifed under the gate frame to the left and her buttocks pressed up against the first riser of the four steps that led up to the path leading to the front door of the condominium.

She was wearing a short black dress, drenched in the blood that had poured out of wounds to her upper body and throat. To her right, just beyond an agapanthus bush in a small garden enclave off the walkway, lay the body of a man. He was crumpled over on his right side, sprawled against a garden fence. His eyes were open and his light brown shirt and blue jeans were saturated in blood.

After establishing that both victims were dead, Riske and Terrazas radioed for backup. Within minutes, Sergeant Martin Coon and officers Edward McGowan and Richard Walker arrived and went about securing the crime scene and controlling the traffic flow on South Bundy, which was busy even that early in the morning.

 

Nicole Brown Simpson

At 12:45 a.m., paramedics from a nearby fire station arrived and confirmed that the man and woman lying in the grounds of the condominium were indeed very dead. By then, Riske and another patrol officer had established that the woman was probably Nicole Brown Simpson, the owner of the building and the ex-wife of O.J. Simpson, the retired football player and sports newscaster. Upstairs in their bedrooms, they found her two young children, 9-year-old Sidney and 6-year-old Justin, fast asleep. The officers awakened them, got them dressed and arranged for them to be taken to the West Los Angeles Division to await formal identification by a family member. An animal control officer arrived and picked up the Akita, which was taken to a pound in West Los Angeles. At this point in time, the identity of the dead man had not been established.At 2:10 a.m., West Los Angeles Division Homicide Detective Supervisor Ron Phillips, accompanied by Detective Mark Fuhrman, arrived at South Bundy and carried out a visual inspection of the area, without approaching the bodies or getting too close to the immediate crime scene. By then, Fuhrman’s partner Brad Roberts had arrived, logging in at 2:30 a.m., on the sign-in sheet set up by Officer Terrazas. He was the 18th police officer on the scene by this time.

Shortly after, Phillips was notified that the investigation had been handed over to the Homicide Special Section (HSS) of the LAPD’s Robbery/Homicide Division. Made up of only a dozen investigators, HSS was considered the top murder squad in the Los Angeles law enforcement community.

Detective Tom Lange

Division Head Captain William O. Gartland assigned Detectives Third Grade Tom Lange and Phil Vannatter as the lead investigators.They arrived at the crime scene and logged in at 4:05 and 4:25 a.m., respectively.

Detective Phil Vannatter

By this time, no one other than the responding officers had come close to the bodies or the area of their containment. Phillips had summoned a police photographer who had arrived at 3:25 a.m., but his function was restricted to general area photographs because police department policy prohibited him taking shots of the bodies or evidence except under the supervision of a lead detective or a Special Investigation Division criminalist. These are civilian employees of the LAPD engaged in the scientific analysis of physical and chemical evidence materials. Their essential functions are to collect, test and analyze evidence such as drugs, blood, paint, glass, explosives, hair, clothing and other crime-related materials. They are also expected to compile data, maintain records and reports, and present testimony in court as required.Detective Phillips briefed Vannatter and walked him through the crime scene. Without physically disturbing the bodies, which could only be done by a coroner’s investigator, the two police officers could not be certain of the cause of death of the two victims. The two men never got closer than six feet to the two crumpled figures. They did however see a number of objects adjacent to the dead man.

There was a set of keys, a dark blue knit cap, a beeper, a blood-spattered white envelope and a bloodstained left hand leather glove lying under the agapanthus plant only a few inches from Nicole Brown’s body. There seemed to be a trail of bloody footprints leading away from the bodies towards the back of the property and alongside these, drops of blood trailing in the same direction.  Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

As Phillips, Fuhrman, Lange and Vannatter discussed their strategy, they were told that Commander Keith Bushey, chief of operations for the LAPD West Bureau, wanted them to contact O.J. Simpson in person to make arrangements with him in order to collect Simpson’s children. Fuhrman mentioned that when he had been a patrol officer he had visited the Simpson residence, which was situated about two miles to the north, across Sunset Boulevard. Lieutenant John Rogers, the supervisor of Lange and Vannatter, agreed to manage the crime scene until they returned.

Being the ex-husband and therefore closely connected to Nicole, O.J. Simpson was a potential suspect from the very beginning; however as there was no evidence at this time that directly linked him to the scene of the crime, he was not an actual suspect. There would be much made of this subtle difference in the months ahead.

Within the next 60 minutes, the four detectives would instigate the first in a series of actions that would come to have a major impact on the outcome of the murder investigation that they were just beginning.

improve 4.imp.0002 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Jan. 14, 2005: Fate Patterson, 39, claimed to have been trying to improve his cardiovascular health by airing his private parts when he jogged past an Arkansas police car with his lower half uncovered. This wasn’t Patterson’s first disrobed run — neighbors had been complaining about him for months. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
When Patterson failed to heed cops’ warnings, he was tasered and arrested, charged with indecent exposure, fleeing and resisting arrest
Click Here to Read the Police Report.

against 3.aga.9992992 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Nov. 16, 2005: Indecent exposure was relatively low on the list of charges against Julianna Torreyson, 18, charged in Stafford County, Va., with assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest and underage drinking. All without any clothes.  Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

tampa 3.tam.000300 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Two days before Halloween 2008, John Huffman of Tampa was caught green-faced and green-handed – besides allegedly driving under the influence with a child in the back, Huffman was also found to be carrying three baggies of pot.  Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

eyes 4.eye.000200 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

When 23-year-old D.C. intern Chandra Levy (right) disappeared in May of 2001, all eyes were on Congressman Gary Condit. The California Democrat, (pictured at left with his wife Carolyn,) admitted to having been involved in an affair with Levy. Though Condit was not named a suspect in Levy’s disappearance, police believed that he held information regarding her whereabouts. Levy’s remains were discovered a year later in a wooded area outside of Washington, D.C. The coroner ruled her death a homicide, and in 2009 a prison inmate named Ingmar Guandique was charged with the murder. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Carolyn Condit remained by her husband’s side throughout the ordeal. The Oklahoma native fought to clear her family’s name. In early 2002, she filed a $10 million libel lawsuit against the National Enquirer, which published a story describing a phone confrontation between Condit and Levy, an event that never took place. The suit was settled in July 2003. Condit also sued USA Today for a similar story, but that suit was dismissed. In 2002 Condit demanded an apology from NBC for an episode of Law & Order in which a politician’s aide disappears and the politician’s wife is found to be the killer.