The Laughing Gorilla Read online

Wesley Malcolm and

  radio and Quinn

  Randolph, Jennie (victim)

  Rappe, Virginia

  Rawlings, Mrs. Ted

  Readick, Frank

  Redmond, Ian

  Regina, Saskatchewan

  Reid, Joseph M.

  Reilly, Bernard

  religious mania of Gorilla Man

  Remmer, Bones

  Renoe, A. J.

  Renton, William

  Riccardi. Vincent

  Rice, Charles Freeman

  Rice, Harry

  Rice, Margaret

  Richards, George

  Richmond, Everett (victim)

  “riding academy”

  Riedel, Albert

  Rinehart, James

  Riordan, Michael

  “rip job”

  “Roaring Third, The”

  “Roar of the Four”

  Robinson (Judge)

  Roche, Theodore

  Rockwell, Bobbie

  Roderick, Frank

  Rolph, “Sunny Jim,” Jr.

  Romola, Joe

  Roosevelt, Franklin D.

  Rose, Upton. See also Fell, Slipton

  Rossi, Angelo

  Rowan, Mickey

  Rowe, Mary

  Ruef, Abe

  Rum Bribery Investigations

  Russell, Ollie (victim)

  Ruth, George Herman “Bambino,” “Sultan of Swat”

  Rutledge, William P.

  safe mobs

  sailor as Gorilla Man suspect

  Bay Hotel autopsy murder

  Charles Dullea and

  Hotel Irwin autopsy murder

  Kingsbury Run Butcher

  Slipton Fell

  San Francisco. See also corruption within SFPD; Dullea, Charles W. (Captain of Police Inspectors); Egan, Frank J. (public defender); Quinn, William J. (Chief of Police); SFPD

  ferries

  Gold Rush

  hoodlum, originating in

  journalism in

  labor riots

  Mooney (Tom) bomb plot days

  quake and fire (1906)

  streetcars

  total eclipse

  vice in

  San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner

  San Francisco City Guide

  San Francisco News

  San Quentin Prison

  Savage, Thomas S.

  Scalisi, John

  “scarf-skin”

  Schainman, Paul

  seamen murder cases

  second degree murders

  “seek the evidence” mantra

  Selbje (Captain)

  Selchaw, T. L.

  Sells, Ralph. See also Fell, Slipton

  Selz, Anna J.

  Selz, Heinrich Fritz Ralphe Jerome von Braun . See also Fell, Slipton

  Semeria, Rev. Father Walter

  sex crime era

  sexual appetite and perversion of Gorilla Man

  SFPD. See also corruption within SFPD; Dullea, Charles W. (Captain of Police Inspectors); Quinn, William J. (Chief of Police)

  “Bloody Thursday”

  command structure

  detained prisoners

  HOJ “Old Girl”

  “in the business” vs. “on the force”

  “Irish demotion”

  Press Room

  Rules and Procedures

  Shadow, The (radio show)

  Shahati, Eddie

  Shannon, Patrick

  Shaw, George Bernard

  Shaw, Mr. and Mrs. Gerald

  Sheehan, Frank

  Sheehy, Roland

  Shumate, Thomas E.

  Sietsema, Mary (victim)

  Silva (Chief)

  silverback gorillas

  Silverman, Isadore

  Single Latent Fingerprint Section (FBI)

  Sing Sing Prison

  Skelly, Charles

  Skidmore, M. J.

  Skillin, Harmon

  Skrovan, Frank

  Smeins, John

  Smith, Bruce

  Smith, Ed

  Smith, Evelyn

  Smith, George

  “South of the Slot”

  Sperry, Howard

  Spilsbury, Lord

  Spooner, Vince

  St. Francis Hotel

  St. Mary, Lillian (victim)

  Stanton, William

  Starr, Kevin

  Steckel, Roy E.

  Stelzner, John

  Stephani, Fred

  Stidger, Mrs.

  Stitt, Arthur

  Stockdale, May (Harmonica Nell)

  Stone, Elton M.

  Stone, Harlan Fiske

  Storey, Wayne

  Strange, Shelby

  “Strangle Murderer”See also Gorilla Man

  strangulation

  streetcars

  strength of Gorilla Man

  Stubley

  Sudari, Tony

  Sudoni, Tony

  Sullivan, Jack

  Sullivan, Matt

  Summers, Mary (victim)

  Sweeney, Francis Edward

  Sylvester, Richard

  Taaffe, John J.

  Tageblatts

  Taggert (Dean)

  Tardieu spots

  Tarr, Hewlett (victim)

  Tatham, Richard

  Tatoo Identification File

  “tattooing” of Malcolm’s uniform

  Taylor, Nick

  Teapot Dome Scandal

  Teletype system, communications

  Terror Bandits

  Teuber, Louise murder

  Thurmond, Harold

  tire marks analysis

  Torre, Emil

  Torres, Vincent

  Toschi, Dave

  Toschi, Joseph

  total eclipse

  Trabucco, J. J.

  Trabucco, Tony

  tragedies (failures) in Dullea’s life

  Tramutolo, Chauncey

  Traung, Charles

  traveling serial killer (first) . See also Gorilla Man

  True Detective Magazine

  Tyrolean Ripper

  Tyrrell, Edward

  uncontrollable impulses of Gorilla Man

  Undersea Kingdom (series)

  United States. See also Dullea, Charles W. (Captain of Police Inspectors); San Francisco

  criminals (number of)

  Depression times

  fingerprints as evidentiary tool

  Prohibition

  sex crime era

  “Untouchables, The”

  U.S. Secret Service

  Vacher (French Ripper)

  Vanderbilt, Cornelius

  van der Zee, Herman

  Van Horn, Emil

  vara

  vice in San Francisco. See also corruption within SFPD

  victims of Gorilla Man. See also Bay Hotel autopsy murder; Hotel Irwin autopsy murder; Newman, Clara

  Vollmer, August

  Volstead Act

  von Feldman, Otto

  von Selz, Jerome Braun and Ralph Jerome. See Fell, Slipton

  Wachsman, Herbert

  Wafer, George “Paddy”

  Wagner (Senator)

  Wagner, Jimmy

  Waldeck, Adolph

  Waldman, Sam

  Wallace, Rose (victim)

  Walsh, Jane

  Walsh, John

  Walter, Albert

  Walther, Mrs. Fred

  Wanworthy, Dorothy (Winifred Hemmer “Boots” )

  Warren, Earl

  “washerwoman’s skin”

  water and corpses

  Webb, Doug

  Weber, August and Katie

  Weeks, Larry

  Weiner, Lillian (victim)

  Weitzel, Harvey

  Welles, Orson

  Werder, William

  West, William

  Whispering Gunman. See Farrington, Peter M., Jr.

  White, J. E.

  Whitechapel (London)

  White Mask Gang

  end of

  Francis LaTulipe
and

  Frank Egan’s protection of

  “lock shot” method

  nitroglycerin used by

  Phantom

  professional amateurs

  robberies by

  trial

  Wide, Faran. See also Fell, Slipton

  Wiener, Albert

  wild vs. captive gorillas

  Wiley, Ralph

  “Wilkins, Mr. & Mrs. J.”. See also Hotel Irwin autopsy murder

  Wilson, Clarence

  Wilson, Herbert Emerson

  Wilson, Roger. See also Gorilla Man

  Winchell, “Cabbage Head”

  Winters, Ed

  wire taps (Dictograph)

  Withers, Beata (victim)

  Wobber, William

  Wobke, Herman

  Woodcots, Mr.. See also Gorilla Man

  Woodring, William

  Woodside Glen. See Fell, Slipton

  Wren, Bill “Iron Duke”

  Wright Act

  Xaver (Tyrolean Ripper)

  “yeggs”

  Yeiser, Jimmy

  Yelavich, Frank

  Zalewski, Martin

  Zanardi, Louis

  1

  Charles Jr. would later become president of the University of San Francisco; John, a professor of theology at Santa Clara University; and Ed, the partner of famed attorney Jake Ehrlich who called Captain Dullea “one of the city’s toughest, straightest and best cops.”

  2

  In 1932, cops nailed Farrington’s partner, George Berta, in Seattle after a fierce gun battle.

  3

  A prohibition bar that worked under the knowledge of the police by payoff.

  4

  A thief, especially a safecracker, from John Yegg, the first safecracker to use nitroglycerin to break into a safe.

  5

  Arrested on March 4, 1918, while driving a stolen car—case dismissed; 1928, charged with attempted burglary at 1938 Post Street—case dismissed; 1930, charged for concealed weapons—case dismissed; 1932, robbery charge—case dismissed. Frank, first arrested in San Francisco on December 31, 1914, for robbery, served a year in the county jail. Sentenced from one to fifteen years in the Washington State Penitentiary for robbery, he got paroled in October 1919 and in January was sentenced to 180 days in jail at Portland for burglary. Beginning in 1920, in charges ranging from narcotics to assault to murder and battery, every San Francisco case against Frank was dismissed.

  6

  Now Bayview.

  7

  The Old Mint had been the only banking institution to survive the 1906 quake and fire, when employees, armed with only a one-inch hose saved the building and $200 million in gold bars. Ironically, with widespread poverty all around, one-third of the nation’s gold reserve was stored there.

  8

  Frank Buck was an American collector of, and authority on, wild animals. He had collected more than twenty-five thousand specimens of wild animals, including gorillas; in 1931 he wrote the best-seller Bring ’Em Back Alive.

  9

  Plans were already under way to close the Mint and move operations to a new mint. During World War II, Dullea and a skeleton crew of officers would protect the Old Mint and even camouflage it in black paint to conceal it during any air raids.

  10

  Car engine oil, decayed blood, and long strands of black human hair.

  11

  Among the chiefs from forty-seven states set to attend the thirtieth annual convention at Buffalo, New York, on June 11, 1923, were Chief Harper; Joseph M. Quigley, chief of Rochester, New York, Police Department; Michael T. Long, chief of Newark, New Jersey, Police Department; John A. Curry of Niagara Falls, New York; and William P. Rutledge, superintendent of police in Detroit, Michigan.

  12

  By December 1935 the records would swell to 6,292,383. During the previous fiscal year, the FBI had made 304,033 successful criminal identifications from prints, a success rate Hoover gleefully estimated at 47.8 percent. Of the total prints identified 4,403 belonged to fugitives from justice.

  13

  On May 1, 1932, LAPD Chief Roy E. Steckel got his department its first FCC license.

  14

  Gargantua, the Ringling Brothers star ape and the 1933 film King Kong had excited Hollywood about gorillas. Both Republic and Columbia Pictures started off their movie serial production schedules with jungle films featuring gorillas and starred famed wild animal trainers Clyde Beatty and Frank Buck.

  15

  Prohibition began on January 16, 1920, with the Eighteenth Amendment and later reinforcement of the Volstead Act. It was repealed in December 1933, and the country made legally wet again.

  16

  1. Santo Batista: fractured skull, March 1934, aboard the S.S. Susan V. Luckenback. 2. Vincent Torres was hurled to death from a window of the Ship Scalers’ Union in September. 3. Otto Blaczensky, deck engineer aboard the freighter Minnesotan, was drowned in mud. 4. William V. McConologue was murdered on the steamer Cottoneva.

  17

  The Point Lobos would strike a rock in heavy fog on June 22, 1939, and go to the bottom.

  18

  From 1927 to 1937 was San Francisco radio’s Golden Decade, when many nationwide network broadcasts originated there. Both NBC and CBS maintained production centers in the city, and a third NBC network, the Pacific Orange Network, re-created the same programs heard in the east on the Red Network.

  19

  The McDonoughs finally outsmarted themselves when they tried to pass legislation to corner the bail bond market in the state. In 1941 their tiny bail bond brokerage office at Clay and Kearney became just another dusty cigar store after Dullea and the newly-formed state insurance department made it a crime for anyone with a criminal record to run a bail bond operation.

  20

  The standard Mexican land measurement.

  21

  There were a couple of false alarms: On August 24, a man without hands and legs washed ashore onto Gordon Park Beach on the East Side. Strands of rotting rope were entangled around the stumps, but sharp rocks and boat propellers had severed his extremities, not a killer. An amputated right foot found in the city dump turned out to be hospital refuse.

  22

  Ecker had no idea what color G. V. Lyons’s test presumptive had revealed: pink, blue, or green. Reduced phenolphthalein, potassium hydroxide, and zinc produce a pink. Benzidine combines with sodium perborate, glacial acetic acid, and peroxidase to produce a vivid blue. The leuco malachite test makes a bright green. Ecker soaked the material in saltwater, added serum from an animal immunized with human blood to the test tube, and waited in vain for a color and white ring to appear.

  23

  After the October 1989 earthquake, the Ferry Building’s Big Clock would stop at the instant of the quake—5:07. In May 1992 the double-decked Embarcadero Freeway hiding the Ferry Building would be demolished as new ferries began steaming across San Francisco Bay to Marin again. Where the Bay Hotel had been, lush Justin Herman Plaza would stand, becoming a place where families could picnic. Farther down, the Bay Bridge still soared directly above where Officer Malcolm lost his life. Today the roar of cars passing above can be plainly heard, and if one looks closely traces of the great stain still remain.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX


  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FORTY-NINE

  FIFTY

  Acknowledgements

  Author’s Note

  Selected References

  Index