Desert Run (6 page)
There it was. Sunday or not, I simply couldn't keep my mind off the Erik Ernst case.
Giving up my attempt to celebrate a day of rest, I headed for the Scottsdale Public Library and its impressive periodical files. The library sat behind a swan-filled lagoon on the big Civic Center complex, nestled between City Hall and Scottsdale South Police Station. The doors opened just as I arrived, and I joined the line of patrons streaming through the big glass doors.
***
The
Scottsdale Journal
had long stopped allowing non-reporters access to their morgue, but the library had archived the entire eighty-eight years of
Journal
issues onto microfilm. With the aid of a helpful librarian, it didn't take long for me to find what MaryEllen Bollinger had been hinting at. No Bollinger was listed in the December 25, 1944, edition, but the next day's issue told me everything I needed to know.
FAMILY FOUND MURDERED
ScottsdaleââChristmas ushered in tragedy for one Scottsdale family. Late Christmas night, Edward Bollinger, 40, his wife Joyce, 32, daughter Jennifer, 12, and sons Robert and Scott, 10 and 8, were found dead by a relative in their remote farmhouse. Edward Bollinger was shot to death near the barn with his own shotgun. His wife and children were found in the kitchen, beaten about their heads. The house was ransacked and the family's cream-colored 1939 Oldsmobile convertible was missing.
“If anyone has any information as to the whereabouts of Chester Bollinger, 15, the family's oldest son, please let the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office know,” said Sheriff Leroy Jeakins.
When asked if it was possible if Chester Bollinger himself might have some knowledge about the murders, Sheriff Jeakins refused further comment.
The killing of the Bollinger family came amid rumors that numerous German POWs, who were stockaded at Papago Park, have somehow managed to escape. At press time, this could not be confirmed, although there have been complaints in the past about Camp Papago's lax security.
Neither Sheriff Jeakins nor Camp Papago officials would comment whether there was any connection between the Germans' reputed escape and the Bollinger murders. However, Scottsdale residents are advised to lock their doors and to report anyone acting suspiciously, especially if he speaks with a German accent.
I sat back from the microfilm reader and began to think.
“The name âBollinger' will never be cleared,” MaryEllen had said. “The damned Nazi saw to that sixty years ago.” Was this what she meant? She was, at the most, in her late twenties, not born when the Bollinger family was slaughtered, although given her last name she was no doubt related to them. Had the escaped POWs been connected to the murders? And if so, why was no mention of the murders being made in Warren's documentary?
As I continued to read through the Journal's old issues, I discovered the answers.
December 27, 1944
GERMAN ESCAPEES NOT MURDERERS, FBI SAYS
ScottsdaleââIn a meeting held yesterday in downtown Phoenix, FBI Special Agent Ronald Adlow and Maricopa Country Sheriff Leroy Jeakins issued a joint statement saying that the German POWs who escaped on Christmas Eve from the stockade in Papago Park were not involved in the murders of the Bollinger family.
“While we understand the community's fears, be assured that none of the twenty-eight men who tunneled out of Camp Papago on Christmas Eve killed the Bollinger family,” said Sheriff Jeakins.
“The evidence we've gathered points away from the Germans. A single pair of bloody footprints leading away from the bodies show that the killer was a small-statured person, perhaps a teenager. We have reliable information that a teenage boy was seen driving a car resembling the Bollingers' Oldsmobile through the outskirts of Scottsdale during the late hours of Christmas night.
“Camp Papago has given the Sheriff's Department complete physical descriptions of the escapees, and all twenty-eight were large men who wore shoe sizes much larger than the footprints we found. I would like to point out that Chester Bollinger is small in stature, and he has not yet come forward to tell us what, if anything, he knows about the murders. If anyone has knowledge of young Mr. Bollinger's whereabouts, they are urged to contact the police immediately. But do not attempt to apprehend him. According to those who know him, he once attacked his father with a hammer.”
FBI Special Agent Ronald Adlow said that it was possible the Germans came across the farmhouse either before or after the Bollinger family had been killed, but if so, all the Germans did was remove food, some clothing, and a few blankets.
“We have assurances from Camp Papago officials that none of the POWs has a reputation for violence,” Adlow said.
That last quote made me shake my head in disbelief. The Germans didn't have a reputation for violence? Why in the world did Agent Adlow think that the U-boat crews had been imprisoned at Camp Papago in the first place?
Another thing about the article bothered me. Sheriff Jeakins had come so close to accusing Chester Bollinger of the murders that it bordered on libel. Same for the
Scottsdale Journal
itself. Granted, in the past sixty years there had been curbs put on the information law enforcement agencies could release about juveniles, and even more curbs on the way newspapers could report crime. But the inflammatory language used in the article still bothered me.
My eyes tired from the glare of the microfilm reader, I stood up and walked into the ladies' room to splash some water on them. While I leaned across the sink, a major Scottsdale celebrity came in, clutching a big stack of books on eighteenth-century England. Diana Gabaldon, silk scarf fluttering, hip-length brunette hair swinging as she walked. Her time-travel adventure novels had put her on the
New York Times
best-seller list several times. I'd read them all. We'd exchanged pleasantries: I'd once helped rid her of a stalker. Eyes refreshed, I returned to the microfilm reader.
The next few issues of the
Scottsdale Journal
reported the capture of several Germans, three near the Mexican border, one in Mesa, one in Tempe, and a couple on nearby Indian reservations. But a week after the escape twenty-two of them remained at large, including Kapitan Ernst and two members of his U-boat crew. In one article, the unknown reporterâat the time, newspapers apparently didn't identify an article's writer by nameâcalled the search for the POWs “the greatest manhunt in Arizona's history.” Photographs of the remaining escapees were printed over the fold, with the headline, “$25 reward per Nazi!” I stared at the young Ernst, who was almost unrecognizable from the shrunken, wheelchair-bound man he'd become. He glared at the camera from underneath a thick thatch of pale hair, and the cold look in his eyes made me believe that he was perfectly capable of murder. The
Journal
reporter seemed to believe so, too, because he included the following paragraphs at the bottom of his article.
One of the most notorious of the escapees is Kapitan zur See Erik Ernst, who was one of the POWs originally implicated in the murder of fellow POW Werner Dreschler. Dreschler, who had been suspected of giving the Allies information about U-boat deployment, was found hanged in a shower stall March 12 at Camp Papago mere hours after his arrival in the camp. His body bore the marks of more than 100 cigarette burns and knife wounds, all inflicted before death. In the following inquiry, Ernst was cleared of the charges.
Also troubling are the persistent rumors that a month before Ernst's capture in the Mediterranean, his U-boat torpedoed a civilian ship bound for Palestine from Europe. However, this was never proved and all non-German witnesses to the events are dead.
I let out my breath in a slow whistle, causing several nearby library patrons to raise their fingers to their lips in protest. I ignored them. Torpedoing civilian craft was against international law, even in wartime. Furthermore, judging from the ship's destination, there was a good chance it had been filled with Jews fleeing the Holocaust. I'm not much of a believer in coincidence, and I felt deeply uncomfortable about Ernst's connections to so many crimes within such a short period: the civilian boat sinking, the torture-death of a fellow Camp Papago inmate, and the fact that he had been on the loose in the same area where an entire family was slaughtered. But after searching through the microfilm for a few more minutes, another article led my suspicions in a different direction.
January 6, 1945
MURDER SUSPECT CAPTURED
ScottsdaleââThe last surviving member of the murdered Bollinger family was discovered last night, hiding in the attic of a friend's house only two miles away from the murder scene.
When taken into custody, 15-year-old Chester Bollinger told sheriff's deputy Harry Caulfield that after a family argument early Christmas morning, he left home to go to a friend's house and therefore knew nothing about the murders which took place later that day. The teenager was charged with his family's murder.
“The community can rest easy now because we believe we've solved this heinous crime,” said Maricopa County Sheriff Leroy Jeakins.
I stared at the headline.
murder suspect captured
. No “alleged” to soften the accusation. How times had changed.
Further
Journal
articles stated that by the end of January 1945, twenty-five of the German POWs had been caught and returned to Camp Papago. Three of themâErnst and two of his former crewmen, Gunter Hoenig and Josef Braunâremained at large. Fast-forwarding the microfilm to early March, I found the article celebrating Ernst's capture by the two Apache Junction farm workers who had walked in on him while he was stealing food from the shed where they'd been bunking. But nowhere could I find anything on the subsequent capture of Gunter Hoenig and Josef Braun. The two had been swallowed up in the Arizona desert.
Chester Bollinger's trial for the murder of his family was covered extensively by all the Arizona newspapers. He was found not guilty. A neighboring farmer testified that he had seen the Bollinger family alive on Christmas Day, hours
after
Chess turned up at his friend's house. A school friend of his further drove a stake through the prosecution's heart by testifying that for the entire day and night of the murder, the two had been playing card games in the friend's attic. The jury accepted this unlikely alibi, but it hadn't been good enough for the
Scottsdale Journal.
The day after the “Not guilty” verdict was handed down, the newspaper ran the following editorial:
June 12, 1945
ScottsdaleââIn what appears to many to be an astounding miscarriage of justice, 15-year-old Chester Bollinger, known as Chess, was released from jail today and sent to live with a cousin. Although acquitted of the murder of his family, most Scottsdaliansââespecially those who know the young man personallyââbemoaned the fact that he was once more free to continue his violent career.
“I don't know what this country is coming to when decent people can be murdered in their beds by young punks like Chess,” said elderly Horace Stanton, who owns a grapefruit orchard not far from the Bollinger farm. “I can bet you that his father was too lenient with him, and that's why he's turned out like this. It goes to show you the Bible knows what it's talking about: spare the rod and spoil the child.”
Not everyone agrees with Stanton's assessment. One of the teenager's staunchest defenders has been Deputy Harry Caulfield, Chess' arresting officer.
“Chess is no angel but the jury found him innocent and we have to accept their verdict,” said Caulfield. “As for the talk that the boy was undisciplined, it simply isn't true. The story I hear is that the kid frequently showed up at school covered with bruises from beatings administered by his father. We should let young Chess get on his with life. If he commits more crimes in the future, we will deal with them then.”
Other
Scottsdale Journal
articles showed that Chess Bollinger's troubles did not end with his not guilty verdict. At the age of seventeen, he served four months in jail for beating a grocery clerk. At nineteen, he knifed a man on a downtown Scottsdale street and pulled a deuce at Arizona State Prison. After his release, he married a woman who had been writing to him while he was in prison, and for several years he vanished from the
Scottsdale Journal'
s pages. The honeymoon ended in 1963, when the
Journal
reported that Chess was arrested for breaking his wife's arm because she undercooked the Thanksgiving turkey. At that point Chess' former pen pal divorced him. Two weeks after being released from jail on the domestic violence charge, he was arrested again, this time for car theft. He served three more years in prison.
None of this stopped him from re-marrying or beating more women. Once he'd done his time for the car theft, his arrests for domestic violence began again. The worst incident happened in 1988, when he was sent back to Arizona State Prison for battering his second wife and their ten-year-old daughter. The wife escaped with a few bruises and scalp lacerations, but the daughter was hospitalized with two broken ribs.
The daughter.
After looking at the dates again, I finally figured out MaryEllen Bollinger's connection to the Bollinger family. And to Erik Ernst.
She was Chess Bollinger's daughter.
The last time Chess made the pages of the
Scottsdale Journal
was in 1993, when he was arrested once more for domestic violence. This article, written by my friend Fay Harrisâthe paper had started printing its reporters' namesâstated that Bollinger's wife refused to press charges. Chess went home, where the family supposedly lived happily ever after.