Cold Cases Solved: True Stories of Murders That Took Years or Decades to Solve (Murder, Scandals and Mayhem Book 8) (8 page)

Victims:
Richard A. Phillips and Milton Curtis

Location:
El Segundo, California

Suspect:
G.D. Wilson /Gerald F. Mason

Date of Crime:
July 22, 1957

Date of Conviction:
March 24, 2003

Backstory:

According to statistics, Los Angeles is the most dangerous place in the United States to be a police officer. Nearly every day of the year in Los Angeles, a police officer is shot in the line of duty.

In 1957, Officers Richard Phillips and Milton Curtis were both police officers at the El Segundo Police Department, a city in Los Angeles County, California.

Richard A. Phillips was born on September 10, 1928 in Muskogee, Oklahoma. He and his wife Carole had three children, Carolyn, Patricia and Richard Jr. He had been a police officer for about 2 years.

Milton G. Curtis was born on January 30, 1932 in Arizona. He had only been an El Segundo police officer for 2 months when he was killed. He was survived by his wife Jean and two children, son Keith and daughter Toni.

On The Day In Question:

It was July 22, 1957. That evening had been a violent one in town. A man had come across four teenagers at a local “lovers lane”. After forcing them to strip to their underwear, he raped one of the girls, and then fled the scene in the teen’s car.

When he ran a red light, he was pulled over by the Officers Phillips and Curtis. At that time, the officers had no idea what the man had just done, and treated it as a routine traffic stop.

A second police car with two fellow officers passed by while they were starting the traffic stop, but Officer Phillips indicated that all was fine and the second unit kept driving. Within moments after they left the scene they heard over the radio that their fellow officers had been shot.

This was 1957, and police cars did not have dash cameras. When fellow officers arrived on the scene they found Curtis already dead, sitting in the patrol car. Phillips was lying on the ground, and was still alive, but mortally wounded by three shots in his back. Medical personnel arrived with the backup, but both officers died as a result of their wounds.

In the short time it took first responders to arrive at the scene, the car that Phillips and Curtis had pulled over disappeared.

Investigation:

The murder of a police officer always invokes a strong response. But when this one occurred, the early investigation was hampered by one major oversight. At that time, there was no report of the stolen car, and so police did not know what they were looking for.

The teenagers had not yet reported the theft. They would soon after be found walking the streets, near naked and terrified. By the time they reported the crime against them, officers were already swarming the murder scene. Perhaps if they’d known about the attack on the teens earlier, they could have put the two together and started looking for the stolen car.

The car was eventually found dumped and empty. One of the first officers on the scene acting as a crime scene investigator was Howard Speaks. He noticed that there were bullet holes all over the car. There were holes in the trunk, and two in the rear windshield, which shattered it.

He noted that only two rounds were found inside the car. Had Officer Phillips managed to actually hit the perpetrator?

To this day officers are amazed at how the rounds must have gotten there. Officer Phillips was an excellent marksman, but managing to get off six rounds at the fleeing car, hitting it three times, all while he lay dying, was incredible.

The car was thoroughly searched, looking for possible evidence. In 1957 there was no such thing as DNA collection, but fingerprints were taken.

One of the teens taken hostage was able to give a good description of the man. He was described as being around six feet tall, about two hundred pounds, with short hair. He mentioned that the man had a peculiar way of holding his head, and appeared frightened but arrogant.

In 1960, a man doing yard work found a gun in his backyard. The man lived less than a mile from the scene of the police officer’s murders. He handed it in to police, and it was identified as the murder weapon of Phillips and Curtis. Investigators traced the gun back to Shreveport, Louisiana.

It had been bought at a sporting goods store in 1957. Store records showed a single name G.D. Wilson. Local records at a YMCA showed a George D. Wilson, but after checking every George Wilson in the county, they found no fingerprint match to the scene. Was the name G.D. Wilson simply an alias?

Despite the physical evidence and description from the teen victims, no suspect had emerged, and the case went cold. It would stay that way for nearly fifty years.

Then, in 2002, police received a new lead out of the blue. A woman called the police department and told them that an uncle had bragged about killing two El Segundo police officers. Out of nowhere, they had a name.

The first thing the police did was to try and match the prints from 1957. Experts from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, Dale Falicon and Don Keir, did the tests. They could tell immediately that the prints did not match the new suspect.

They weren’t beat yet. Using the advantage of modern technology, they were able to digitally reprocess the original crime scene photographs with computer technology that wasn’t even dreamt of in the 1950s. This gave them a fingerprint that could be run through the modern day databases.

They ran the new digitally enhanced fingerprints through the FBI’s nation-wide criminal database. They found a match. His name was Gerald F. Mason. Mason had only one record in the system, for a burglary in 1956 in South Carolina. He had no criminal record from before the murder of the officers or since.

Remarkably, Mason was found still living with his family in his hometown. He was now a retiree. Could this old man who was pushing seventy, with barely a criminal record, possibly be a brutal and cold-blooded rapist and cop killer?

Police engaged a document examiner expert. He compared the handwriting of George D. Wilson from a YMCA sign-in receipt to Mason’s handwriting. It was practically identical.

On January 29, 2003, Mason opened his front door to find a large group of police officers standing on his stoop. Shocked, he asked them where they were from. When he was told they were from Los Angeles, his response was that he thought he needed a lawyer.

When he was searched after his arrest, it was found that Mason had a bullet graze scar across his back. It seemed that Officer Phillips had indeed found his mark.

Confronted with the evidence against him, Mason pled guilty and was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison.

Current Status:

Curtis’s widow was only twenty-three when he died. She says she has never really gotten over his death.

Mason told police that he originally bought the gun for protection, as he was planning to hitchhike from Louisiana. He had no answer as to why he attacked the teens, but he shot the police officers as a result of a split second decision to avoid being caught for his first crime.

After the murder of the two officers, Mason led a life as a law-abiding citizen. He did not even get a parking ticket. When he was sentenced, he gave a tearful apology to the victim’s families. Police believe that he was just sorry to have been caught.

Mason became eligible for parole in 2009, but it was denied. He is next eligible to apply in 2017. Prosecutors vow that he will never be released.

Victims:
Christi Meeks, Christie Proctor and Roxann Reyes

Location:
Northern Texas, United States

Suspect:
David Elliot Penton

Dates of Crimes:
January 1985, February 1986 & November 1987

Date of Conviction:
2005

Backstory:

Christi Lynn Meeks was born June 21, 1979 to parents Michael and Linda. She had a brother Michael, a sister and one stepbrother. Her parents were divorced and both remarried. Christi lived with her father Michael and his wife Lisa. Her mother Linda had married Edwin Peacock and they had a son together.

Christie Dianne Proctor was born Christie Dianne Sherrill on February 29, 1976 to parents Howard and Laura Sherrill. She was an only child. After their divorce in 1977, her mother Laura remarried Cooper L. Proctor and Christie’s name was changed to Proctor.

Roxann Hope Reyes born January 14, 1984 to Sergio Reyes and Tamela Osborne. She too was an only child. After Roxann’s death, her mother Tamela divorced Sergio Reyes and married Jesus A. Lopez.

In the 1980’s multiple murders of small girls occurred in Texas. All three girls had been grabbed, assaulted, and then strangled to death. Christi Meeks was 5 and from Mesquite, Christie Proctor, 9, from Dallas, and Roxann Reyes from Garland, who was just days away from her fourth birthday at the time of her death.

On The Day In Question:

Police believed that all three girls had been abducted and then killed by someone who was a stranger to them. Their families endured months of not knowing what happened to their daughters, as investigators searched for the missing girls. Unfortunately, only their dead bodies were found.

Meeks had been playing hide and seek outside her home, a Mesquite apartment complex, when she disappeared on January 19, 1985. Her body was found in Lake Texoma almost three months later on April 3.

Proctor was last seen walking from her parents’ apartment in North Dallas to a friend’s house on February 15, 1986. It would be more than two years before her body was recovered from a field in Plano, Texas in April 1988.

Reyes was taken from an alley while she was playing outside her parents’ apartment on November 3, 1987. It was six months before her body was found in Murphy, Texas in May 1988.

Investigation:

Although police were disturbed by the kidnappings and killings, none of the girls’ deaths had any significant leads or suspects identified.

In 1996, the girls’ cases caught the attention of a police detective in Garland, Gary Sweet. Along with the case files, the name of a suspect caught his eye, David Elliot Penton. There were many pages of evidence and documentation within the files, but for some reason Penton’s name caught Detective Sweet’s eye. Perhaps it was fate.

At that time, Penton was already in jail in Ohio for the murder of a nine-year-old girl. Detectives made multiple trips between the two states, but were unable to tie Penton to the Texas murders.

In 2000, Sweet received a phone call from a detective from Fort Worth. The detective had received a letter from an inmate in an Ohio prison regarding a child homicide in Ohio. In the letter, the inmate names his cellmate as the killer, and also said that the cellmate told him he was responsible for killing a girl from Garland named Roxann Reyes.

The detective from Fort Worth invited Sweet along to a phone interview with the cellmate, scheduled for the next day. The inmate’s cellmate was David Elliot Penton.

The next day, Sweet questioned the inmate regarding Reyes’ murder, and he correctly reported many details of the case, including what the victim was wearing. The inmate could only talk for ten minutes so Sweet left his own contact details with him.

The Forth Worth detective set up a meeting with every law enforcement agency in Texas who had dealt with the disappearance or murder of a child from 1984-1988. The agencies were invited to come together to compare notes on their cases. Sweet attended the meeting, and was surprised by the sheer number of cases of missing children in Texas.

After the meeting, the detectives in Fort Worth tested the DNA from their case against Penton’s. A few days later they informed Sweet that his DNA did not match their case. They surmised that their contact was unreliable, and stopped talking to the inmate. Something bothered Sweet and he kept contact open with the inmate.

After talking to the inmate again, Sweet requested a copy of the letter be sent to Forth Worth police. The inmate had not actually said that Penton had killed the Forth Worth victim, but suggested that he should be a suspect in Reyes’ murder. The inmate believed that Penton had only bragged about the Fort Worth murder, but his confessions regarding Reyes were the real deal.

The inmate had researched the cases on his own, and based on his own experiences with Penton, believed that it was very possible he was the perpetrator of Reyes’ murder, even though he may have taken credit for others he had not committed.

Along with others he named, he insisted that Penton must be Reyes’ killer because he knew her full name, and many other details about Reyes and the case. Along with Reyes, the inmate also listed Meeks and Proctor as definite victims.

Meanwhile, other law enforcement officers told Sweet that his inmate informant was known not to be trustworthy. They also found out that he had filed open record requests and had received open records on the cases he’d spoken to Sweet about.

The investigator working with Sweet decided to stop talking to the informant, but again Sweet felt he had to keep contact open, even though he did not know why.

When asked why he pulled the open records, the inmate told Sweet that when you lived in a 12x12 cell all day with a man who talks about nothing but killing children, he had to know whether or not he was telling the truth.

Sweet followed up on what the inmate had actually received, and found out that he hadn’t actually gotten all the records he requested, including the file on Reyes’ murder. The inmate also did not have access to the Internet or any other way to get the information.

Therefore, he couldn’t have gotten any of the details he’d told Sweet from any place but Penton. Was it possible that his reports about Penton were true?

Later, the inmate gave Detective Sweet the name of a girl that Penton had allegedly kidnapped in Dallas, but then let go. Penton had told him that he’d been hired by the girl’s father to scare her, but neither the inmate nor Sweet believed that.

Sweet found the girl living in Mississippi and made contact. After confirming she was the true victim by corroborating details from the original police report, she dropped a bombshell on Sweet, telling him that just three days later the same man that took her kidnapped a girl from her school. That girl was not so lucky. Her name was Christie Proctor.

This new victim had been abducted from the same place as Proctor. Could she place Penton at the scene of the crime at the same time as Proctor’s abduction? The victim had previously been involved in creating a composite of her kidnapper, but it did not look much like Penton.

Sweet continued to work the case on his own time, as well as working his usual caseload. In his files he found a statement that had been taken from Penton’s sister. She told investigators that she never wanted to be around him again, and did not want him having any contact with her children.

She believed her brother was responsible for the murders of all three girls in Texas. He noticed that Penton’s sister lived in Oklahoma, Texas, and that Penton would visit his sister. They could now place Penton in Oklahoma.

Sweet contacted authorities and one of the Oklahoma detectives had actually been called out on the Meeks case before transferring to Oklahoma. They joined the investigation, followed by a detective from Plano, Texas. Sweet later reported that the extra manpower made all the difference to the investigation.

Sweet was still talking to the informant, who tells him that Penton told him that if he ever wanted to hide something, put it in the ceiling in the insulation, as the cops will never want to get all dirty searching up there.

The investigators again searched the home where Penton lived when growing up in Columbus. Other evidence, including little girls panties, had previously been found, but none of the finds could be linked to either Penton or any victims.

Up in the roof, under some boards that had been placed over the rafters, they found a big bundle of rags tied up in yarn. At first they thought the bundle would contain evidence, but when it was opened the detectives discovered that it was just a bunch of old rags. Noting some discolorations and stains on them however, they decided to have them tested by the lab.

It took up to year and a half to test all the samples. Tests revealed that semen, blood, and saliva were all found on the rags, but time and the exposure to the elements meant that the samples had degraded. Lab technicians could neither confirm nor deny that any of the DNA matched Penton or any of the girls.

Despite the evidence they were collecting, Sweet and his team decided to wait to interview Penton. According to Sweet, Penton was a pathological liar, and they did not want to approach him until they were sure they could prove the case.

The detectives made five trips to Ohio to interview people related to Penton. On the fifth trip, they made plans to interview Penton himself.

At the time of the interview, other members of the team would be searching his cell. For some time, with co-operation with prison investigators, the team had been receiving copies of all mail Penton sent and received.

Finding their own names in his correspondence, they realized that Penton knew they were looking at him. He had never seen any of the detectives, but the prison grapevine had let him know he was being investigated.

When they first introduced themselves to Penton in the Ohio prison, his face went white and Sweet reports that Penton lost track of his bodily functions. Penton was allegedly almost scared to death by their talk of application for extradition and the attitude in Texas towards the death penalty.

Using their understanding of Penton’s personality, the detectives started the interview by praising how long it took them to find him and stroked his ego. They combined that with telling Penton they were not investigating him, they just wanted to meet him before he was extradited to Texas to face the death penalty.

When detectives mentioned the rags found in the attic in the Columbus house, Penton said “…but I never took any souvenirs”. Sweet realized that this was just about a confession. When he later said that the finding of the rags was a lie, because he never left any physical evidence behind, Sweet called him on it, asking him if that meant he’d used a condom. Penton started rapidly backpedaling, saying he meant he didn’t leave any physical evidence because he was not the one who had killed the girls.

Sweet reports that after his interview with Penton, any lingering doubt he had that he was the true killer was gone. The next day, the other detectives also interviewed Penton, and he continued to slip up a couple more times.

However, he never admitted anything outright, and technology at the time made recording the interviews difficult. Sweet hoped that the testimony of the four detectives in the room against Penton’s would be enough.

Sweet and his team were determined to see the trial through to the end. However, prosecutors approached them and told Sweet he was worried about work records, one of which could place Penton out of state at the time of one of the murders. The prosecution was worried that if one murder were refuted, it would affect all the others.

Prosecutors approached Penton’s lawyers and offered to remove the death penalty from the table if Penton pled guilty. They felt it was better to guarantee he would be in prison for the rest of his life, rather than go to trial and have him potentially go free.

After Penton’s guilty plea was accepted, Sweet found out some time later that Penton’s job where the timecard placed him out of state was for doing the timecards for that business. It would have been extremely easy for him to falsify his own record. He claims they did not have time to investigate that before the guilty plea was entered.