By Reason of Insanity (35 page)

Oates let that pass. He believed it himself, at least most of the time.

He had only one more question.

“Would the husband have mentioned it to the boy at any time? Was he like that?”

The other spinster sister snorted her disapproval of the dead man.

The grandmother stared with vacant eyes.

“He could have,” said the aunt finally. “Yes, he could have. He— changed later on.”

Oates thanked them. At the front door he turned, smiled warmly. “By the way,” he said disarmingly, “did the mother ever think the man could’ve been Caryl Chessman?”

Not that any of them knew about. The aunts remembered reading of Chessman years before, but his name never came up in connection with their sister.

Outside, Oates grinned in satisfaction. The pieces were all coming together at last. Mungo’s stepfather, probably bitter at the mother, had told him he was the offspring of a rape. He had no real father. Somewhere along the way Mungo had found out about Chessman. The dates were the same, the location the same. It had to be. Caryl Chessman was his father. He determined to avenge his father’s death. He hated women, was always surrounded by them at home. But girls his own age didn’t like him. Why didn’t he kill the women in the house? That type of nut doesn’t kill relatives, only strangers. Then the women had him put away for good. One day he escaped, killing the other nut who got in his way. Or maybe he was the one who told Mungo about Chessman. If he did, then he had to die. Sure, it all fit. It was Mungo all along and he was crazy and he was a devil or a magician. Either way he was out to kill a lot of women unless somebody got awfully lucky and killed him first.

By late Saturday afternoon the news media had the story. All the metropolitan Sunday editions carried lead articles on the MungoChessman link. Twentyfive years after his trial and conviction, thirteen years after his execution, Caryl Chessman was again front-page news.

In Sacramento, home from an astoundingly successful lecture tour, Jonathan Stoner was happy to read about Mungo being Chessman’s son. He had been saying that for months. Merely symbolically, perhaps, but it amounted to the same thing. People would remember he had tied them together.

He was hot now. Everything he touched turned to gold. He could do no wrong.

BY SUNDAY morning people in the western states knew that the maniac had struck again. Not just once but twice. And in the same city. Texas authorities were frantically circulating thousands of posters of Mungo, secured from California. Police were keeping a sharp eye on all strangers in the smaller Texas towns. In Austin a $20,000 reward was announced for the killer, dead or alive. Posted reward money for Vincent Mungo now totaled over $100,000.

Sheriff Oates was not surprised by the new killings, nor was John Spanner. Both men expected, dreaded, just such an occurrence. Spanner even more than Oates felt that Mungo was beginning to lose control. The intervals between murders were shortening, the horrific brutality increasing, if that were possible. The lieutenant thought that Mungo might even go all out in one gigantic suicidal bloodbath if he could get his hands on something like a machine gun. What a madman could do with such a weapon in a crowded place terrified the normally placid policeman, who now accepted that it was indeed Vincent Mungo being sought. Weary, discouraged, Spanner had discarded his instincts and settled for the obvious.

Not so Amos Finch. With each killing he saw the shadowy character of a monumental mass murderer emerging more clearly. He still clung to the two-killer theory, with Mungo simply retired after his escape and the unknown California Creeper the real homicidal genius. But he brooded over Spanner’s original idea, If it was the Willows maniac, which one? Spanner swore the body was that of Mungo’s partner. But without the face, who really knew for sure?

ON SUNDAY evening Derek Lavery got a call at home. New York wanted a quick story on the MungoChessman connection for the next issue. With the El Paso killings Vincent Mungo had hit the big time. Newspapers would headline anything about him, television would schedule special reports. From now on, every bit of sensationalism would be squeezed out of Mungo to meet the insatiable public demand.

At nine o’clock Monday morning Lavery told Adam Kenton to get busy on the assignment. Keep it short and simple. Run through the murders, the letter addressed
From Hell
, Mungo’s birth, his discovery that he was probably a rape case, the two notes, his picking Caryl Chessman as his father, the possibility of it being true.

As always, there wasn’t much time. New York wanted it fast. Meanwhile Ding would be working on another segment of the same story.

Capital punishment was a sure thing. The people seemed to want it, if for no other reason than that it made them feel safer. The politicians would soon be jumping on the bandwagon. Within three to five years California would restore the death penalty, Lavery was certain of that. All of which meant the issue was a good one for the forseeable future, just as he had predicted.

But it was time to move on to the next level. The insanity plea. He would again steal the thunder from Stoner and the rest by publishing a series of articles blasting the whole concept of an insanity defense.

Legal insanity still followed the old McNaughton rule, which required proof that a defendant did not know the nature and quality of the act and did not know that the act was wrong. Basically it was a matter of determining if the defendant could distinguish between right and wrong. If he could not, then he was declared innocent by reason of insanity. Furthermore, if a judge found that the accused was mentally incompetent, meaning he was not able to participate in his own defense, he would not even be brought to trial, no matter what crimes he might have committed.

Lavery believed that both parts of this concept of criminal insanity—the idea of mental incompetency and the McNaughton rule as used in criminal trials—were foolish and dangerous. Or at least he believed that he was very good at spotting trends in mass thought.

He saw it coming as the next important step in the capital-punishment issue, and he intended once again to be there in the beginning.

The opening position would be that the whole concept of legal insanity should be abandoned. Discarded, wiped off the books. There would be no such thing as a legal-insanity defense. Every person accused of a crime, no matter how mentally ill, no matter how obvious the illness, would stand trial for the act itself. Afterward, if the defendant was found guilty, the judge would take appropriate action in sentencing the convicted person to a mental institution rather than prison.

Criminal law would thus be protected from the present hysteria and confusion surrounding an insanity defense. More importantly, as Layery saw for his own purposes, it would correct the growing alienation of the public over the great injustice in the criminal-court procedure. People were becoming enraged as confessed murderers were declared not guilty and given a few years in a rest home.

Derek Lavery intended to pick up these people as readers, as many of them as possible. He believed they numbered in the millions, and their numbers were growing each year.

The MungoChessman piece would kick off the campaign. Mungo’s psychopathology would show. But the story would also list the murders in gory detail and catch the reader emotionally.

Then, the angle: A boxed article showing how an insanity defense could be used to thwart justice. Mungo would be found not guilty by reason of insanity and returned to Willows or the like, as though nothing had happened, as though at least five people, and God only knew how many more to come, had not been butchered, were still alive. Meanwhile Vincent Mungo would be planning his next escape and his next series of human slaughter …

STONER WAS not amused. He had gone through various stages of disbelief before the truth dawned on him. The letter was genuine. It had really been written by Vincent Mungo and sent from El Paso. The son of a bitch had taken time out from his killing to write a stinking letter, for God sake! The senator had been given an account of what was done to the bodies of the El Paso women. He still found it hard to believe. And the same went for the letter in his hand.

He read it again: “My Master—We do your bidding. The streets will run with blood from my knife but it is your voice that commands. The demons are everywhere around me but I will win and the people will rise up at your destruction and laugh and scream. You are the devil. My knife is sharp and ready for work so you will hear from me. They cannot catch me when you can. I will live forever.”

Stoner glanced at the signature, “V. M.” But the initials were crossed out.

Underneath was scrawled one word: “Chessman.”

The man was crazy. Stark raving mad. A homicidal lunatic was stalking the cities killing at will. No one was safe. No one.

He wondered if Mungo could hold out for one more month, all he needed was another month and he’d be on his way. Then Mungo could go to hell where he came from, and where he belonged.

The senator told his secretary to get Roger in Chicago. He intended to use the letter to whatever advantage he could before turning it over to the police.

TWO DAYS later, on September 20, Margot Rule was officially reported missing to Las Vegas police by worried friends. It was soon learned that she had withdrawn $24,000 from her bank on September 1. Her car was found in the garage. None of her clothes seemed to be missing from her apartment.

Nobody knew of her brief affair with David Rogers of Florida. Nor of her planned marriage to him. She had told no one.

THE FOLLOWING day in Los Angeles the will of the late Velma Adams was filed for probate. It was found in a desk drawer in her apartment and named her good friend and manager of her beauty parlor as sole heir.

ON SEPTEMBER 25 Dr. Henry Baylor was removed as director of Willows State Hospital and reassigned to another post. Officials termed the move routine and denied it had anything to do with the celebrated Mungo case. The reassignment was duly noted by the Hillside
Daily Observer
and picked up by several metropolitan newspapers.

Dr. Baylor was reported on vacation and unavailable for comment.

THAT FRIDAY, September 28, a credit clerk in San Francisco called the home of Daniel Long in northern California near the Willows hospital. Long knew nothing about any trouble with his credit rating and had indeed been born on November 12, 1943. No, he never made a call regarding his credit and had not spoken previously to the clerk. There must be some mistake. The clerk thanked him and afterward reported the incident to his supervisor, who told him to note it in Daniel Long’s file.

Long discussed the strange call with his wife. They agreed it might have something to do with the time a thief broke into their home and police had suspected the notorious Vincent Mungo.

After five days of not wanting to become involved with the police and maniacal killers, Daniel Long finally phoned the sheriff’s office in nearby Forest City. He decided it was the right thing to do.

IN FRESNO on the evening of October 1, Lester Solis was shot to death as he stepped into his car. His brother knew the bullets were meant for him. The next morning he found out why. Police arrested a thirtysix-year-old religious freak from Los Angeles who believed that Caryl Chessman was the son of God. A member of a fanatical desert sect that believed all prisoners were latter-day saints, he hated Solis for bearing false witness against Chessman, the son of God, who came down to earth to release all prisoners but was betrayed by his own people. All men were brothers, the religious freak believed, who must rise up and kill those who do evil. Unfortunately he had killed the wrong brother.

BY OCTOBER 2 the issue of
Newstime
with the MungoChessman story was already sold out. People were fearful, and they were angry. They wanted fiends like Mungo punished and they didn’t understand about mental illness or insanity when a person could walk around in society and feed himself and pay rent and function day after day. That was all
they
were doing. So what made him so special that he was crazy and able to get away with murder? They didn’t want to hear it. They wanted him dead.

ON OCTOBER 3 a court order was secured to open Margot Rule’s safedeposit box in Las Vegas. Inside was found a note saying she had withdrawn money and planned to marry David Rogers of Florida. Police in that state were notified,

DURING THE last two weeks of September and the first days of October 1973, David Rogers, alias Daniel Long, alias Vincent Mungo, alias Thomas Bishop, was extremely busy. His unholy activity caused a reign of terror unequaled before or since in a half dozen states. In San Antonio he left behind a female body almost totally eviscerated. In Houston, two more.

In New Orleans he struck down three women. The police pathologist reported them to be the worst violations he had seen in thirty-five years. A quiet man given to understatement, he suggested that whoever had done the mutilations had lost all human feeling.

Police well knew the identity of the satanic killer. A
V
or
C
had been carved somewhere on each victim. In addition, the MM.— method of mutilation—was the same in all cases. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the fiend was Vincent Mungo. His work became so well known that the new term M.M. joined the standard M.O. in the police lexicon. As did the word “mungo-maniac.”

From New Orleans Bishop turned suddenly north. Straight up to Memphis and then St. Louis. Afterward three more victims were found.

In those horrific weeks calls were made from Los Angeles to all the cities he had passed through, but the mob was having no better luck than the police. Railroad and bus stations were watched but Mungo’s face was not seen anywhere. Besides the contract that had to be honored, the mob had received unofficial requests for help from various law-enforcement authorities. A nut like that? They were happy to oblige, if only he could be found.