Erle Stanley Gardner

Murder Comes in Threes: 3 Tales of Gruesome Homicide

The Case of the Invisible Circle

A beautiful coed is raped and murdered. Only one clue is found, and that so small that it is invisible to the naked eye. Here, Erle Stanley Gardner recounts how one tiny lead enabled the police to bring a murderer to justice.

Mercury Mystery Book-Magazine, July 1956

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Any veteran investigator will tell you that it’s very easy to overlook the most significant clue in a murder case.

I remember one such case where the most significant clue was a circle on the naked right hip of a beautiful young coed. This girl had been murdered in a sex crime.

The significant thing about that circle on her hip was that no one ever saw it.

That is literally true. The body was found lying on the snowy ground. It was naked from the waist down. Expert police officers and a skillful pathologist inspected the scene of the crime and the body. The body was later removed to a morgue where a careful autopsy was performed.

Yet no one of these trained observers saw that telltale circle. The reason they failed to see it was that it was invisible.

The question of how an invisible circle could become the most valuable clue in an entire case is a story in itself.

On November 11th, 1948, I was in New York City. I had just completed one of Captain Frances G. Lee’s seminars on homicide investigation. These seminars are held in the Harvard Medical School in Boston, and immediately after the close of the seminar I had dashed to New York for a conference with my publisher.

It was just getting dark and I was about to go out to keep a dinner engagement when the phone rang. The City Editor of the Denver Post was on the line. He wanted me to fly out to Denver immediately so I could be there before daylight to work on the case of a murdered coed. After a brief talk I accepted the assignment and dashed out to catch the first available plane.

The Denver Post also secured the services of Dr. LeMoyne Snyder, the famous medicolegal specialist, and the author of the book “Homicide Investigation.”

As it turned out that murder case had all of the weird, bizarre facets one could well imagine. There were clues so utterly perplexing, there was a mystery so completely baffling that it would make the wildest fiction tale seem tame in comparison.

Dr. Snyder and I were commissioned by the newspaper to help the authorities. We looked up Hatfield Chilson, the district attorney, who was in charge of the case. We found him to be a shrewd lawyer, a competent investigator and, above all, a fair man. He wanted to prosecute the guilty party — but he wanted to be very, very certain that he didn’t prosecute anyone who was innocent.

The facts were grim and stark. There were no real clues. On the evening of November 9th, the young coed had left a religious social gathering and started walking down the wind-swept street. She had never reached home.

Early the next morning a cattleman had found evidences of a terrific struggle in the snow at the border of his cattle ranch. There were strands of hair; there was a lot of bloodstained, trampled snow; there was a flashlight; there was a part which had been broken from a .45 automatic which had apparently been used as a club.

The cattleman had been suffering from the depredations of cattle rustlers and he naturally assumed that here was where someone had killed a calf and had dragged it into the automobile. The tracks unmistakably showed the dragging of a body and the tracks of a car which had driven away.

The next day the body of the missing coed was found some eleven miles away, down at the bottom of a snow-covered barranca where she had been dropped from a wooden bridge.

How had the body been transported to that place? Had it been in a truck, in a touring car, or in the trunk of a car? Had it been a one-man job, or had the body been held between two men in an upright position until it had been dumped from the bridge?

On the speedy answering of those questions a great deal depended. Were we looking for one man or two or more? What kind of a car had they been driving?

Photographs of the body had been taken and we asked to see those photographs.

I have said that Hatfield Chilson was a careful man and a thorough man. When we asked him for those photographs he studied them carefully before presenting them to us, and when he studied them he noticed for the first time this peculiar circle on the girl’s hip.

I remember that we were at lunch when Chilson produced the photographs and said, “Now, gentlemen, there’s something here which puzzles me. This photograph shows a circle on the girl’s naked hip, yet every officer who saw that body knows there was no circle there.”

It was Dr. Snyder who pointed out the significance of that circle. The camera film had been sensitive to certain rays of light which hadn’t registered with the naked eye. That circle represented the beginning of a phenomena similar to that which investigators call “post-mortem lividity,” It meant that the body of the coed must have been transported to that place in the trunk of an automobile, that the automobile had contained a spare tire on the floor of the automobile and the body had been dumped in on top of that spare tire. The rim around the hub had left that circle.

It is a privilege to work with a prosecutor of Chilson’s fairness, intelligence and thoroughness. Slowly, bit by bit, he worked with the authorities and with us, piecing together the bits of evidence, listening to the technical advice that Dr. Snyder could give him and, above all, never once yielding to, the clamor of public pressure, never once striking,a pose or seeking publicity.

It is unfortunate that so few people realize the high character of lawyers generally. I doubt if more than a handful of people in Chilson’s county had any real concept of the combination of ability and intellectual integrity which comprised Chilson’s character.

Yet he is not at all unusual. Today there are thousands of district attorneys who can measure up to the highest standards.

Here was a country district attorney suddenly plunged into a challenging mystery, with the spotlight of publicity focused sharply on him. And he measured up to the responsibility.

As a citizen I only wish the bulk of the public could know more of the true character of the men who comprise the lawyers of this country of ours.

The publicity given the case was terrific.

Gene Lowall, at that time City Editor of the Denver Post, moved temporary headquarters out to a hotel at Boulder, Colorado. He had some fifteen trained reporters with him and he kept those reporters busy on assignments, co-ordinating their activities so they could be fitted into a pattern. We were, of course, all of us working at hectic speed and under the most trying conditions.

The authorities were forced to admit that they had run out of clues. After a week a move developed to try and curtail the front page publicity, but Hatfield Chilson sat tight. He felt sure that the assailant had received some injuries in the fight and he felt that by continually exerting pressure through the channels of publicity someone would come forward with a key clue.

The reason the district attorney knew the man had probably been injured was because of Dr. Snyder’s deductions in connection with that invisible circle on the dead girl’s hip. Chilson felt reasonably certain that only one man had been involved in the crime. The evidences of a prolonged struggle indicated that the girl had put up a terrific battle for her life and her honor.

She was at the time wearing a class ring. Friends of hers said that the ring was so tight on her finger that she couldn’t get it off. Yet when her assailant had tried to imprison her hands under her body on the cold frosty ground she had struggled so hard she had literally scraped the ring off and scraped ribbons of flesh from her fingers along with the ring.

The modern car usually carries the spare tire standing upright at one side of the trunk. Dr. Snyder felt that the murderer had used a car which had a big turtleback with the spare lire on the floor of the car.

Clues came in by the dozen — only they turned out not to be clues. There were numerous perplexing coincidences which can so easily throw an investigator off the track.

I personally became convinced the wounded murderer must have gone up a certain barranca to hide some of the girl’s school books and personal belongings. I suggested to the district attorney that if this assumption was correct we would find drops of blood on the rocks, probably about every twenty feet apart.

Searchers were dispatched to that dry stream bed. Sure enough they found the drops of blood, a whole trail of drops, about twenty-two feet apart.

Dr. Snyder tested the bloodstains. They had been made by a wounded rabbit.

And then finally the steady, relentless pressure of publicity paid off. The wife of a man who lived only a few miles from where the body had been discovered came to the authorities in an almost hysterical state. She knew that her husband had committed the murder.

Neighbors told a very peculiar story. The day after the crime the suspect had washed his car inside and out. Then he had raised the turtleback of the car and had given that a good scrubbing. After that he had left the hose running in the car for hours and hours, washing it out thoroughly. Then he had dried the car, and when the interior of the turtleback was completely dry he had given it a good thick coating of red lead. Afterwards he had put on a second coating of red lead.

The gravel guard of chrome steel had been taken into the kitchen and scrubbed and scrubbed with a polisher until it shone like a mirror.

Yet Dr. Snyder had the answer to all that. He knew of certain scientific tests for the detection of bloodstains, tests so delicate that a cotton shirt stained with blood could be sent to a commercial laundry for seven successive times and the stain still be detected.

Officers who worked on the case told me they had never seen a car inspected for evidence the way Dr. Snyder inspected that car. He scraped away the red lead from around the bolts of the automobile, then with a wrench he carefully loosened those bolts and underneath the heads of the bolts he was able to find faint traces of blood.

He dug up the soil under the place where the automobile had been standing all the time the water was running out from the turtleback. In that soil he was able to find traces of blood. He was even able to find the telltale blood reaction on the car’s polished gravel guard.

During the course of that investigation there were half a dozen false leads. There was one individual who could have been taken into custody and perhaps his entire life ruined. There were bizarre coincidences.

It was a pleasure to work with the district attorney who realized so thoroughly the responsibilities of his office, who marshalled such a deadly array of facts that the murderer was convicted despite the fact that his wife could not-be called as a witness under the law of Colorado.

Yet the most important clue in the case was invisible to all human eyes. Only the lens of the camera and the super-sensitive panchromatic film picked up that circle on the girl’s hip and enabled the authorities to deduce that the girl had been attacked by but one man. Knowing that fact, authorities deduced that in the terrific struggle which had ensued this man had probably been injured.

That invisible circle was really the key clue in the case.

The Case of the Knockout Bullet

Almost everyone knows that Stanley Ketchel was one of the great boxing champions of all time, but many have forgotten that he was murdered — and under baffling circumstances. All the evidence pointed to a gambling syndicate yet the case was obscured by a missing diamond stickpin, a lucky bracelet, and a pretty cook. Here Erle Stanley Gardner relates how this strange case was solved by not following the logical clues.

Mercury Mystery Book-Magazine, September 1956

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By a twist of irony, the famed sports celebrity destined for death at the hand of a murderer, that autumn morning long ago, had been known to millions as “The Michigan Assassin.”

It was an appellation in no way related to the crime of murder, in its customary meaning. Sportswriters had created it as a tag for a brilliant young boxer as he fought his way in the prize ring to a world’s championship title.

So, oddly, in this case it was to be the “assassin” who would be the victim. And it was a bullet instead, of the fist of an opponent that delivered the knockout that ended forever the career of Stanley Ketchel, world’s middleweight champion of his day.

This case always has intrigued me, for a number of reasons.

First, it is a murder yarn right down the alley of any writer of mystery stories. Second, in my youth I was greatly interested in boxing and for a time fancied myself a fighter of some promise. Ketchel’s career was one that would appeal to any American youth.

Approximately my own age, Ketchel had proved himself an athlete of great personal integrity, with the exceptional skill and fighting heart that has characterized true champions. Virile and handsome, with a magnificently chiseled physique, he was not only the idol of the boys of the land but, wherever he went, he found himself the target of starry-eyed women who fancied him as the answer to their romantic prayers.

But perhaps the most unusual element of all is the fact that today almost no one appears to be aware that murder wrote the final chapter in the record books of one of the greats in the history of boxing — murder that lashed out from far beyond the ropes and canvas of the ring.

It was a crisp fall, morning — October 15, 1910 — in the Ozarks of Southern Missouri. Stanley Ketchel, middleweight champion of the world, rose early to take his accustomed road work along the by-ways of a cattle ranch to which he had quietly withdrawn a few weeks earlier. The ranch was owned by R. P. Dickerson, Ketchel’s close personal friend and financial advisor. It was in Wright County, 42 miles from the city of Springfield.

Ketchel, upset and deeply annoyed by furtive but persistent overtures that had been made to him in New York by a Broadway gambling syndicate that he throw a fight, had gone to the ranch after publicly disclosing the efforts that had been made to draw him into the gambling conspiracy. He had been extremely bitter in denouncing the gamblers.

He left the ranch house shortly after 4 A.M., returning some two hours later after completing his exercise. The 20-odd hands on the place meantime had risen and gone about their duties.

Ketchel called through a window to the cook, requesting that a breakfast of ham, eggs and a glass of milk be served him on the porch. Then he went to his bedroom and thence on to the ranch wash-shed to bathe.

In the bedroom, it developed later, he put on a dresser a mysterious object that was to inject an almost occult touch into events about to occur.

Not far from the house, the foreman, Charles E. Bailey, and another employe, John Nolen, were piling logs in a woodshed. Shortly after 6:30 o’clock they heard a gunshot. Because the noise had seemed to come from in or near the house, Bailey and Nolen hurried to investigate.

The porch was unoccupied. Silverware lay on the floor. The tablecloth was in disarray. The glass of milk had been overturned. The ham and eggs were untouched. On the floor the two men discovered several small spots of blood. These formed a trail leading inside the house. In his room, sprawled face up across the bed, lay Ketchel. He was breathing but obviously dying.

As the two men bent over him, the champion gasped: “...got me!” Then he was gone.

Sheriff C. B. Shields was notified of the tragedy, as was also the fabulous Wilson Mizner, noted wit, story-teller and Ketchel’s business manager, in New York. News of Ketchel’s death stunned the sports world. Almost at once it appeared virtually certain the killing was an outgrowth, in some manner, of Ketchel’s enraged denunciation of the Broadway gamblers.

Meantime Sheriff Shields, a methodical investigator and one of the outstanding law enforcement officers of his day in that part of the nation, took note of several odd circumstances at the ranch.

Ketchel customarily wore a bolstered pistol while hiking in the woods around the ranch. The holster was on his belt, but his pistol was missing. Also mysteriously vanished was a .22 rifle Ketchel had received a few days earlier from his brother, Leon, in Michigan. Shields determined that Ketchel had cashed a substantial check — in the neighborhood of $1,000 — the day before. But there was no money in his pockets. Also gone was a diamond stickpin, valued at $800, which the champion always wore.

But the most fascinating discovery at this stage of the inquiry was a bracelet Ketchel wore habitually, both in the ring and elsewhere, as a luck charm. The sheriff found it on the bedroom dresser. It was fashioned out of tail-hair from a sacred elephant in India, mounted in gold. It had been given to the champion by a fan who had acquired it from a fakir in Calcutta.

According to its mystic legend the bracelet was supposed to have strange powers of protecting its wearer from bodily harm. Ketchel had prized the trinket immensely and always wore it. Apparently he had put the charm aside when he prepared for his morning bath. The bracelet and the legend about it aroused much curiosity.

A posse was assembled and a search was launched throughout the ranch and its surroundings. No one could be found who had seen anyone or anything untoward. Sheriff Shields questioned Daisy Johnson, the cook, but she was unable to shed any helpful light. She said Ketchel had appeared in excellent spirits when he called his breakfast order through the window. She had set out his food while he was bathing and then returned to her cook shack, a short distance from the central house. She said she had not heard the shot.

The wound which brought death, the sheriff determined, was caused by a small-caliber slug — apparently a .22 — that had pierced the champion’s lungs, severing a major artery. It had been fired at close range from the back. From the angle of the wound and position of the table and chair, Shields deduced the killer had stood six to eight feet behind the fighter, at the entrance of the porch. The evidence supported the conclusion that the mortally wounded fighter had grappled with the killer after the shot was fired. The struggle then had moved on to the near-by bedroom.

In New York and throughout the nation, Mizner and top sports editors of the country were developing scores of leads that focused attention on affairs of the gambling syndicate. From Chicago it was learned that the “fix mob” had taken a terrific financial beating on a fight in which one betting faction had assured another that Ketchel had been “reached.” This was utterly preposterous, for it developed that the champion had, as a matter of fact, gone to considerable personal expense and effort to clean up the fight game, which at that time was shot through with double-crossings and shady dealings that threatened boxing’s future.

Word was passed mysteriously that in retaliation for this a hired killer had been sent from St. Louis to “take care” of Ketchel before he had further opportunity to expose the racketeers.

In Missouri, Sheriff Shields had interviewed dozens of persons. Among these had been everyone even remotely associated with the ranch operation. All but one gave full and complete accountings of their movements at the time in question. The one exception was a farm hand who had disappeared on the day Ketchel was killed. The disappearance gave rise to no particular concern, however, since many of the help were transients and frequently went their way without troubling themselves with the formality of resigning.

Dickerson, who had felt keenly a sense of responsibility in the case through having invited Ketchel to move to the Ozarks, posted a $5,000 reward for apprehension of the killer of his friend. Posters were circulated throughout the nation. The amount — an almost unheard-of reward for the purpose at that time — reignited interest in the case across the country. A flood of fresh leads poured in, but none produced any evidence of value.

It was disclosed that Ketchel, although he had hinted strongly he was retiring permanently from the ring though only 23 years of age, was secretly, through Mizner, arranging a match — which would have been worth a fortune — with popular Billy Papke. This disclosure led to conjectures that certain forces were out to block the champion’s career.

Then suddenly the ranch cook, Daisy Johnson, came forward with some information that put a new twist in the mystery. The attractive blonde revealed that the farm hand who had vanished had been her ardent admirer and had berated her for being even pleasant to the champion, whose romantic reputation made him jealous. This man was known on the ranch as Hurd, but Daisy Johnson said his true name was Walter Dipley, an ex-sailor and adventurer. Questioned further, she said that on his arm he bore a singular tattoo acquired in Hong Kong. It was a romantic design featuring the name of his sweetheart... “Daisy.”

Shields swiftly had this information appended to the Dickerson posters. But as time went by the case remained as far from solution as it was when the ranch hands had found the dying champ. The elusive “gunman from St. Louis” evaporated. The mob from Broadway was grilled by experts, but nothing developed beyond the facts already known. The famous Wilson Mizner used all his ingenuity to dig up evidence.

It was to be a storm in the Ozarks that produced the key.

A man named Thomas Haggard, living alone in a modest cottage in the back country, was roused late one night by a knock at his door. A rain-drenched stranger, a rifle under his arm, stood on the porch appealing for shelter. Haggard took him in. The stranger was uncommunicative. As he sat before the fire, he removed his dripping shirt, exposing heavily tattooed arms. When Haggard showed his visitor to a bunk, he was puzzled and alarmed to note that the man slid the rifle under the blankets. Haggard waited until his visitor appeared to be asleep. Then he slipped out and raced to the cabin of his brother, a short distance through the woods. They discussed the peculiar actions of the wayfarer. Both brothers had seen the posters. They notified the sheriff.

A posse surrounded the cabin in the clearing. The arrest was without incident. The man with the rifle was sound asleep.

Sheriff Shields found a large amount of money on the suspect — much more than the man could account for. But of far greater significance was the discovery of a diamond stickpin in his purse. Then, through a check of serial numbers, it was established that the rifle he carried was the weapon Stanley Ketchel’s brother sent from Michigan a few days before the champion died.

Walter Dipley admitted his identity and that he had harbored an overpowering rage at Ketchel, whom he believed a rival over the affections of Daisy. Evidence continued to mount to a point where there could be no question of what had happened — Dipley had ambushed the champion with his own gun, shot him, robbed him and fled.

The gambling conspiracy had played no part whatsoever in the murder, but had Sheriff Shields allowed himself to put all else aside in pursuing that “obvious” motive, the murder of Stanley Ketchel most likely never would have been solved.

Dipley was indicted and found guilty of first degree murder. He drew a sentence of life imprisonment in the Missouri State Penitentiary — for a knockout blow inspired by jealousy that ended the career of a world’s champion.

The Clue of the Onyx Ring

The pretty, fair-haired little girl showed an unusual black onyx to the Inspector. It had been treasured by her mother, and the frightened. Kathleen was sure that her mother was dead. In this true story, a child’s intuition bypasses clouding evidence to strike at the core of a vicious crime.

Mercury Mystery Book-Magazine, November 1956

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The perceptions and powers of deduction in a child can be tricky factors in a criminal investigation.

Frequently, as almost any criminal lawyer or experienced enforcement official has ample reason to know, the element of imagination can run riot in a youngster’s mind. It can create a set of fancied circumstances that may easily lead a case into a perfectly plausible tangle that requires an expert to detect and unsnarl.

On the other hand, it is foolhardy for anyone in the field of crime detection to underestimate the keenness of mind in an observant child.

Take the “Case of the Onyx Clue,” which occurred some ten years ago in Providence, Rhode Island. It came to my attention last spring, after I had participated in a conference on legal matters there of state attorneys general from the northeastern sector of the United States.

Chief Inspector Thomas F. Rattigan of Providence had attained, over the years, a reputation for being not only a police officer worthy of note in his profession but a shrewd expert, as well, in the art of weighing human nature. No piece of information that might have bearing on a crime — or to clarification of circumstances that might indicate one had occurred — is too seemingly trivial ever to be brushed aside by the quiet, unassuming Chief Inspector.

So, when a 13-year-old girl — shy, embarrassed and frightened — appeared at his office on September 12, 1945, Inspector Rattigan put her at ease and listened with fatherly understanding while she fumbled for words.

The child was pretty, fair haired Kathleen Newcomb, older of two daughters in a family of modest means in the New England community. She had come, she said, to talk with Rattigan about her mother.

Kathleen sat with her hands in her lap, nervously fidgeting with a ring of unusual design. It was a ring, Rattigan noted, slightly too large for the finger on which she wore it.

“My mother,” she said slowly, “is dead. I am sure of it.”

Rattigan gave no sign, either of his mild astonishment at the girl’s announcement or his natural incredulity. Carefully, he questioned Kathleen and drew forth some strange fragments of childish apprehensions. Kathleen’s mother, Mary Ann, had disappeared some five weeks earlier. No report of her disappearance had been made to police. She had vanished without a word even to her eldest daughter with whom the mother always had been extremely close. It had been presumed by the family that Mary Ann, motivated by some minor domestic quarrel, had gone to visit relatives in Massachusetts. Hence no alarm had been spread. But weeks had passed and there had been no word.

“What makes you believe that she is dead?” Rattigan asked.

“This,” Kathleen said, pulling off the ring and handing it to the startled officer.

It was a ring set with a black onyx stone of unusual design and cut. As she handed it over, the child burst into uncontrollable tears. Rattigan found himself unable to comfort the girl or to elicit any further information. He promised he would try to help her and sent her home. After she had gone, Rattigan sat for some minutes eyeing in fascination the dull glow of the onyx ring lying on his desk blotter. That ring could make him appear either fatuous or fame-worthy.

True to his promise to the child, but reluctant to make a full-dress investigation of so trivial an incident, Rattigan undertook some quiet inquiries. They bore strange fruit.

He dropped in casually on Gordon Newcomb, father of Kathleen, and determined that his wife, Mary Ann, truly had disappeared, as the child had said. From other sources he learned that the onyx ring had been a betrothal gift from Gordon to Mary Ann back in 1931, when she had seen it in a store window and ecstatically told her fiancé she would much prefer it to a diamond.

The ring, Rattigan was to learn, had become a symbol of happiness to golden-haired Mary Ann.

The Inspector then devised ways to talk casually again with Kathleen. From the child’s responses to his questions he put together still more pieces. Kathleen, even as a little girl, had developed a fascination for the ring almost as great as that of her mother. To her, too it was a symbol. She had asked on several occasions to be allowed to wear it. Each time the mother had refused.

“It will be yours to keep, dear, when I die,” she said.

“That is how I know she is dead,” the child told Rattigan.

But when he tried to press her as to how she had come by the gem, Kathleen again burst into tears and was unable to proceed further in the interview.

Meantime, Rattigan’s inquiries were turning up curious developments. Mary Ann Newcomb, he learned, had become in later years a most unhappy woman, despite the onyx talisman from happier times. There had been domestic strife and bitterness. Rattigan called in the husband, to determine whether he could shed any further light on the mystery of the missing Mary Ann.

Newcomb was distraught, but could offer nothing beyond the fact that Mary Ann had departed abruptly on an August night after a quarrel. Then Rattigan reached into his pocket and pulled out the ring. He laid it on the desk between them.

“Where did you get that?” Newcomb said.

“From your daughter,” the Inspector said quietly. “You gave it to her, didn’t you — after you killed your wife.”

Newcomb paled. Vigorously he denied the accusation. Then he finally admitted he had given Kathleen the ring a week after Mary Ann disappeared. He said he and his wife had a violent quarrel. He accused the child of building” fantasy because her mother had deserted her.

But Rattigan, remembering the look in the eyes of the little girl when she first had visited him, left the ring lying, its dull black glow winking at Gordon Newcomb, on the desk between them as he pressed question upon question on the nervous father.

At midnight that night, Gordon Newcomb broke. He admitted he had choked Mary Ann to death at the climax to a violent quarrel. He led Rattigan to a grave under the floor of a garage in Cranston, Rhode Island, where they found her body.

Newcomb was tried and convicted of murder. A trained and experienced policeman had decided the incredible deductions of a little girl who loved her mother never should be brushed aside as fantasy without full investigation. He tested that decision with an onyx ring.

Content

Erle Stanley Gardner
Murder Comes in Threes: 3 Tales of Gruesome Homicide

The Case of the Invisible Circle

The Case of the Knockout Bullet

The Clue of the Onyx Ring