Slaughter on North Lasalle (28 page)

Watson told West that he and Uland had discussed the case a number of times, with Uland proposing several theories about what had happened. Uland told Watson that Gierse and Hinson had been involved in buying stolen goods from a burglary ring, and that might have been what got them killed. Also, Uland offered the theory that the men might have messed around with the
wrong man’s girlfriend or wife. That could certainly have gotten them killed.

Watson then said that Uland told him the police in Indianapolis had wanted him to take a lie detector test, but since the police wanted to do it themselves and his lawyer had insisted it be conducted by an independent operator, as far as Watson knew Uland had never ended up taking the test. Watson also told West that eventually he received a telephone call from Lieutenant Joe McAtee, telling him that Uland was no longer a suspect in the murders. Once the police department had dropped Uland as a suspect, Watson said, his company finally paid the claim in December of 1972, and he delivered the check personally to Uland.

As West was wrapping up the interview, he said in his notes that Ed Watson expressed concern about how this investigation would impact the Uland family if it was discovered that Ted Uland had been involved. It certainly wouldn’t be a good legacy for Ted Uland, Watson said. West replied that he had a responsibility to the families of the victims to find out the truth about what had happened. His job was simply to investigate the case, and he couldn’t worry about how the outcome affected someone’s legacy.

By this point, Detective Roy West felt that he now had a pretty good idea of what had happened in the North LaSalle Street murders, but he had to be absolutely certain. So on March 28, 2001, he returned to talk again
with Joyce Harbison. West wanted to be positive that the letters he had in his possession were the letters she had given to Palma. He needed to be assured that these were the letters she had seen years before, the ones that her husband had given her instructions about. Joyce verified that they were. She also said again that she thought it was possible her husband might have committed the murders because of the kind of things he would do for Ted Uland back then. He had done a lot of Uland’s dirty work, she said. She also told West that her husband had talked a long time ago about burying his boots one night in a groundhog hole. She didn’t know why, and probably hadn’t wanted to. West left Joyce Harbison’s house feeling that he no longer had any doubt of Uland and Harbison’s involvement.

“Well, there’s been so many different theories about how it happened and who was involved,” said West. “I think that logically this is the only theory that makes sense. When you look at the business angle of the crime, the whole motive lies within that aspect. I know there’s theories about the men’s game of dating all of these women and such, and theories about organized crime being involved. None of it fits. This does.”

On the same day he spoke to Joyce Harbison, West also spoke again with Angel Palma. Palma had contacted him with information about a possible accomplice, George Smith,
¹
who might have assisted her father in
the North LaSalle Street murders. She told West that she hadn’t said anything about it before because Smith still lived nearby and she was worried about the safety of her family. But now that she had given him the letters, she felt she had to tell him everything.

Palma said that Smith had worked with her father and had also been friends with him. She said she suspected that he might have helped Fred Harbison on North LaSalle Street because her father would do things for Smith that he would never do for anyone else; Harbison would go out of his way to accommodate this man. Whatever Smith wanted, he got. Palma told West that she knew it was dangerous to give him this information, but she felt it was important that he know about it.

“Angel [Palma] was fearful of saying anything because the man lived in the next town, and he knew all of her family members,” said West. “She was afraid if she said anything he would hurt her or her family because he would know where the information came from.”

On April 8, 2001, West talked with George Smith, who confirmed that he had lived in the Jasper, Indiana, area in 1971, and that he had worked with both Fred Harbison and Ted Uland. Smith said he had worked first with Harbison digging water wells, but then Rural Water arrived in the county and pretty much put them out of business. He described Harbison as having been a big, strong man who could be very intimidating if he wanted to be. He said that Harbison could be in your face screaming at you one minute, and then patting you on the back the next. It was very unsettling, because a person
never knew which way it would go. When asked about the cars Harbison had driven, the man recalled the yellow Road Runner. He added that Harbison often carried a .38 caliber revolver, and always had a knife that he kept extremely sharp.

After Fred Harbison’s water well business went under, Smith said that he started working for Ted Uland in his oil well business, and that he was working for Uland at the time of the North LaSalle Street murders. When asked about Uland, Smith didn’t offer a very high opinion of him. He said that Uland had had a reputation for trying to skip out on paying bills and for screwing people over every chance he got. No one, he said, would take Ted Uland’s checks. He also told West that the guys he worked with at the oil well business used to tease Uland that they were all going to get big bonuses when the insurance money from Gierse and Hinson came in. Uland never responded, he said, but would just shrug it off. Smith also told West that he had always thought Uland had something to do with the North LaSalle Street murders. He said he had no proof, just his belief.

Finally, West got to the reason he had come. He asked the man about his own involvement in the North LaSalle Street murders. George Smith denied any knowledge of them. However, West wrote in his notes that he looked directly at Smith when he asked him about being involved in the murders, and that Smith paused and looked up to his left before answering. (For those detectives who have attended the Kinesic Interview and Interrogation School, this is a sign of deception.) The man also told
West that he had been to Indianapolis before, but never with Harbison or Uland, and never to the North LaSalle Street address.

Was George Smith involved in the North LaSalle Street murders or did he have some knowledge about them? Possibly. But there’s no real proof to connect him with the murders; just Angel Palma’s suspicion and Detective West’s belief that he was lying. However, at the end of the interview, West asked Smith if he would be willing to take a lie detector test. Smith shook his head and said no, under no circumstances would he take one. West wrote in his notes that it was likely Smith knew about how Uland never took a lie detector test and about how everything against him was ultimately dropped. Still, since the man did have a police record, West was able to obtain a copy of Smith’s fingerprints, and had them compared to the unidentified fingerprints from North LaSalle Street. The Identification Branch found no match.

Once back in Indianapolis, Detective Roy West began to gather all of the notes he had taken, and all of the transcripts of the interviews he had conducted. It was time to put them together into a report to send to the Prosecutor’s Office.

¹
Denotes pseudonym

Detective Sergeant Roy West sat at his desk in the Homicide Office in the early months of 2003. Although he’d had to work on many intervening murder cases in the little over two years since he had received the first call from Deputy Borchelt, he had finally finished with the North LaSalle Street case. After combining all of the evidence he had recovered and all of the interviews he had conducted, West felt that he had enough information to request that the case be exceptionally cleared.

To this end, he had sent to the Prosecutor’s Office all of the information he had gained from his investigation and interviews. West had also prepared a forty-two-page report in which he explained his reasons for deeming the evidence convincing enough to show that Fred Harbison had been hired by Ted Uland to commit the murders
on North LaSalle Street. This evidence included the following:

• Fred Harbison would have no reason, other than the fact he had been cheated out of his money, to write the letter if it wasn’t to be mailed until after he died. This certainly wouldn’t have been a great legacy for him. And he obviously wasn’t looking to falsely boast about it, as he never told his wife what he had done, let alone what was in the letter. Harbison took a tremendous risk writing this letter—though he had not signed his name to the letter, he
  had
  typed it, and if the letter had become known to the police before he died he would have come under strong suspicion. Clearly the police hadn’t suspected him. He had gotten away with murder. But exposure of this letter would have seriously jeopardized that. Therefore, the only logical reason for writing the letter was what it appeared: He had been cheated out of his money, and this was the only way he’d apparently felt he could get back at Ted Uland.
  
• The letters from Harbison and the envelopes they had been in were aged and yellow, not something that had been recently produced. Also, the ink was faded—which, even if old paper and envelopes were used, an amateur forger likely wouldn’t have been able to duplicate. Additionally, Harbison’s widow had confirmed that she had seen the sealed envelopes years before
  and that her husband had talked about the letters a number of times. Joyce Harbison had also confirmed to West that the envelopes her stepdaughter had given West were the same ones she herself had given to Angel Palma, and that they were the same ones she had gotten out of the lockbox and brought home. West could see no reason for Joyce Harbison to want to lie about it. She wasn’t going to profit by the exposure of her husband as a murderer. If anything it would be shameful and embarrassing.
  
• Fred Harbison’s daughter, Angel Palma, had been the one to initiate the new direction in the North LaSalle Street case. As far as West could see, she had nothing to gain by making the letter public. Joyce Harbison and others told West that father and daughter had had a very close, special relationship, and that when Palma found the letter she had been looking for remembrances of her father. She had been in the process of looking for
  good
  memories; this letter certainly wasn’t what she’d been seeking. And so, revealing publicly that her father had been a cold-blooded killer must certainly have caused her pain. To believe that she would make up something like this about a man she loved dearly just didn’t ring true. Also, Jeff Pankake and others said that Palma, after finding the letters, had had a very difficult time dealing emotionally with it. Pankake had said that the disturbance in which Palma had ended up breaking out several of his car windows had been over her trying to cope with what
  the letter said. Also, there was the suspicion that no one had really taken the letters from Palma’s purse while she was at the hospital, but that she had had them the whole time. She had likely simply been wrestling with the dilemma of what to do, perhaps wishing she had never said anything about them in the first place.
  
• Fred Harbison had known about the bloody boot print left in the house on North LaSalle Street, and wrote in the letter that he had buried his boots afterward to keep them from being identified. Joyce Harbison had also confirmed that her husband had told her many years ago about burying his boots one night in a groundhog hole.
  
• During the original investigation in 1971, the detectives received information that a car had been stolen from Scott Graphics just before the killings on North LaSalle Street. Scott Graphics had sold microfilm supplies to both B&B Microfilming and Records Security Corporation. This meant that Ted Uland would have been acquainted with this company. The police found the car a couple of miles south of the North LaSalle Street house the day after the murders. But more important, they found blood in the backseat. The blood was type O. All three victims on North LaSalle Street had type A blood. Fred Harbison, West discovered, had type O blood. Had that car been used as a backup transport? Had Harbison realized he would likely get bloody during the murders
  and didn’t want to get any of the victim’s blood in his own car, so he had planned to ride in this one until he got cleaned up? Possibly. Of course, the blood in the car wasn’t from the victims since none of them were type O, but it could very easily have been Harbison’s. The police often find that when an assailant uses a knife or some other sharp object to assault someone with, the more violent the assault and the more the victim struggles, the more likely it is that the assailant will cut himself. The North LaSalle Street murders had been particularly violent, and evidence showed that the victims had struggled against their assailant. Also, the stolen car was found south of the North LaSalle Street house, which is the direction Harbison would have been going to return home. It could all be just a coincidence, but it seems a little pat.
  
• A light-colored car with a 26A prefix license plate had been seen by a witness at the murder scene on the night of the crime. This prefix meant that the car came from Gibson County in southern Indiana. Fred Harbison lived in Gibson County and owned a yellow Road Runner, which would have had a 26 prefix license plate. This is also close to the area where Ted Uland lived. (It is still unclear why this information didn’t bring more of a response from the original investigative team, at least one of whom still holds to the belief that it was the sex contest that got the men killed.) A car from southern Indiana, close to where
  Ted Uland lived and worked, and seen at the crime scene, should have pushed the other suspects aside and put Uland up front and center.
  
• Witnesses also reported that the light-colored car at the murder scene had had three men sitting in it. Would Fred Harbison have brought along help? Very likely. The victims were all big men who had a reputation for liking to fight. Therefore, Harbison had to realize that there would be the possibility of a struggle. So, it is very likely that Harbison would have brought along help.
  
• Many of the people West talked to about Fred Harbison said that he was the kind of man who could have committed the North LaSalle Street murders, and that he had bragged about committing other murders. Even Harbison’s wife hadn’t doubted that her husband could have been involved in such a crime. She confirmed that Fred had done a lot of Uland’s dirty work.
  
• The detectives in 1971 had found the remains of a cigar at the murder scene. None of the three victims smoked cigars, but Harbison, according to those who knew him, occasionally did. And of course, if Harbison had brought along help, any one of those men could have smoked the cigar. While DNA evidence today could make a clue like that crucial, in 1971, a cigar butt wasn’t the kind of evidence the police could use to identify anyone.
  
• In 1971,
  the detectives had noticed something unusual about the knots used to tie up the three men. They even sent the knots off to the FBI Laboratory to have them analyzed. When West spoke with Harbison’s widow, she told him that her husband had been able to tie special knots that he used in the oil well business. She said he used to like to show off knots that got tighter if someone struggled against them.
  
• In the letter, Harbison said that he was only supposed to kill two of the men, but that a third had shown up unexpectedly. This coincided with the theory the police in 1971 had developed. They believed that Jim Barker had arrived last and was killed simply because he showed up at the wrong time. The way the victims’ cars had been parked in front of the house had shown the detectives that Barker hadn’t come to the house with Bob Gierse and Bob Hinson, but had come from the opposite direction. The police believed that Gierse and Hinson had come home from their office on East 10th Street, Gierse first and Hinson at least several minutes later. Barker, they believed, had come sometime after this from his house on North Rural Street.
  
• A theory proposed often in the news media in 1971 was that the killings had been the work of a jealous husband or boyfriend, or that of an enraged father. At least one of the original investigators still believes this. However, to do this, the killer would have had to somehow gain entry into a house that showed no signs of forced entry, and to gain control of three big
  men who liked to fight and who would have known what was in store for them if they allowed themselves to be tied up. It is extremely doubtful that they would have meekly submitted.
  
• Consequently, with this scenario there would have to have been a struggle, probably a violent one. However, with this kind of fight, the blows to the men’s heads would have been to the front, and not the rear. Also, while this scenario would have certainly involved a fight, the house showed no signs of a struggle. The police found no broken or overturned furniture.
  
• Another theory proposed in 1971 was that the murders had been committed by several jealous husbands or boyfriends who had teamed up to commit the murders. This doesn’t ring true because it’s hard to believe that two or more amateurs would agree to commit such a brutal crime, and then never talk about it. One of them would have told a future girlfriend or wife. Also, it’s hard to believe that two or more amateurs could truly have agreed to commit such a grisly crime. And again, the lack of any signs of struggle causes problems for this theory, too.
  
• As for the idea of a jealous husband or boyfriend enlisting the help of a professional killer, this stretches credibility considerably. How many people would know where to find a professional killer? The people who try usually end up talking to a police informant
  or an undercover officer. Also, if a jealous husband or boyfriend had found a professional killer, it’s very likely that this killer would have eventually been caught for another crime. Murders like the North LaSalle Street killings would have been one of the first things this professional killer would want to talk to the police about and use as a bargaining tool.
  
• The more likely scenario is that the murderer hid in the house, sneaked up behind the victims as they came home, and then hit them in the head with a metal object, like a tire iron, knocking them unconscious. This would explain the severe lacerations to the rear and side of each man’s head (Barker’s so severe that it fractured his skull). This would also explain how the men ended up being bound and gagged without any signs of a struggle in the house. The fact that the men had shown some indication of attempting to struggle after being bound means that they likely came to, knew what was going to happen to them, and fought for their lives. And how did the killer get into the house in order to hide when there were no signs of forced entry? Ted Uland had a key.
  
• Why were the men killed so brutally? Very likely Uland wanted the crime to look like the work of a jealous husband or boyfriend. He likely wanted it to look like the work of someone enraged because another man had seduced his wife or girlfriend. The way the men were killed certainly didn’t look like an insurance killing. Supporting this idea, witnesses had said
  that Harbison had bragged of killing a man and then cutting off his penis in order to make the murder look like the work of a jealous husband. If this was Uland’s plan, it worked. Many people in 1971, including some of those in the news media, believed that, because of the brutality of the crime, it could only have been committed by someone enraged by the men. And the sex contest certainly lent support to this idea.
  
• Many of the people West talked to didn’t have a very high opinion of Ted Uland. Almost universally, people who knew him said that Uland was not a model citizen. A number came right out and said that he was a criminal. Even Bob Gierse and Bob Hinson had expressed a certain fear of Uland after their meeting with him in Bloomington, Indiana, because they knew he would eventually find out how they were ripping him off. The two men told Ilene Combest that Uland was capable of anything if it involved money.
  
• Ted Uland had very conveniently telephoned the men from southern Indiana the night of the murders. This gave him an alibi that could be verified by the phone company. He also made certain to be seen in southern Indiana that night. Again, like the brutality of the crime, this seemed to push the investigation away from Uland and toward other suspects who didn’t have such a good alibi. When asked about Uland calling on the night of the murders, West said, “I can see him doing that. He just distanced himself from the crime.”
  
• According
  to the
  Indianapolis Star
  , at a court hearing in May of 1996, retired lieutenant Jim Strode said that Ted Uland had been a major suspect in 1971, even though the investigation eventually dropped him as a suspect.
  
• Insurance agent Edward Dean Watson told West that his old friend Uland hadn’t seemed very upset at all about his former employees being murdered, but had hounded him for months about getting paid off for their life insurance policies, as he’d apparently needed the money desperately. The insurance policies had been within their grace period but soon would have become worthless. Uland had had to do something quickly or the $150,000 would have been gone.
  
• This is quite a different picture from the Ted Uland who told the staff in the Prosecutor’s Office how close he had been to Gierse and Hinson, how much they’d respected one another, and how he’d hoped the policies wouldn’t be paid off because it would make him look bad.
  
• Uland managed to avoid taking a lie detector test, even though he had agreed to several dates. He and his lawyer had placed so many conditions on the test that the police finally gave up. (While this in itself doesn’t prove guilt, it is another element that adds to it.)
  
• In any murder case, the investigators must decide: Who had the best motive for the murder? In the
  North LaSalle Street case, Ted Uland had an excellent motive for wanting at least two of the men dead. Actually, of all the people investigated in the case as suspects and persons of interest, Uland had the best motive. His business was going broke and he faced multiple tax liens and lawsuits. He needed cash badly. In addition, Gierse and Hinson had stolen some of his best customers, had stolen microfilm equipment from him, and had also reportedly stolen approximately $10,000 in cash from him. He had a very good reason to want to kill these men. Not only could he get revenge for the wrongs they had done him, but he could also recoup all of his losses and much more.