The Laughing Gorilla (29 page)

Until four weeks earlier a peddler lived with her until he threatened to “cut her all up.” Mrs. Ford last saw Flo on Friday at 8:30 P.M. “Sawdey was a heavy drinker and argued a lot when she was drunk,” she said. “Her only bad habit was that she would occasionally get a quart of liquor and drink it all by her lonesome in her room. When she was drinking she was pecky—quarrelsome. But Saturdays she usually stayed home and ironed.”

Upstairs in a tidy furnished room Nevel and Hogan found a dozen smiling dolls arranged on the davenport, bed, and chairs. Each had her own name neatly printed on a card. Hogan fingerprinted the clock, kitchenette stove, even the grinning dolls.

On Tuesday, Flo’s ex-husband, Andrew Polillo, a mail clerk, drove in from Buffalo to identify the torso. He hadn’t seen her since she walked out on him six years earlier, but he knew about an old abdominal scar from the removal of a tumor “It’s her,” he said.

At 5:45 P.M., February 7, a Bennett Trucking Company employee passed behind a vacant house at 1419 Orange Avenue SE and stumbled over a heap in a slight depression strewn with chicken feathers, coal dust, hay, and charcoal. Beneath were Mrs. Polillo’s lower legs and left arm frozen to the ground. Police never found her missing head. Chief Matowitz said, “There is nothing for us to do but wait. Some day he will make some little slip.”

His worst fear was that the butcher had chosen his victims indiscriminately. But the seemingly random victims
were
linked—Matowitz just didn’t know it yet.

—CRIMES AND PUNISHMENT

 

 

 

 

 

ONE
Friday neighbors saw Fell looking refreshed and strumming his mandolin on the lawn. Wherever he had been, he had taken along his multiple personalities like well-worn luggage and probably opened each at least once. He stretched in the vaporous evening and began his exercises: a series of jumping jacks, thrusts, and deep knee bends. Yet, Fell still could not bring himself to sleep inside the house. All would be remedied if he could convince someone to move in with him. He asked his co-workers at the San Mateo gas station, but no one was interested. This stung the likable Fell because it indicated a lessening of his powers of persuasion and charm. It was for the best. He feared what he might say in his sleep that someone might overhear. It was an impossible situation—alone he couldn’t sleep and with someone he dared not sleep.

Fell, under the nickname “Bromo,” was now a full-time student at San Mateo Junior College. First he charmed Dean Taggert of the University of San Mateo to enroll him “in order to complete a geology course to be financed by an oil executive.” The boisterous freshman was so popular, students nominated him as a candidate for class president (he would be defeated by a female student). “At one of our highjinks,” said a class-mate later, “everyone wanted Bromo to enter a hog-calling contest because he was so brilliant at it.”

The handsome weightlifter, now twenty-seven years old, was truly not himself these days. A year ago he’d been smitten with Wilma Heaton, a pert girl at Vallecita Place in Berkeley. Wilma’s mother recalled that her daughter met Fell while he was working in a Richmond auto plant. “He impressed me as quite gentlemanly,” she said, “but he seemed a little too mysterious.”

On Valentine’s Day, Fell appeared at the Alameda County Hospital where Wilma was a waitress. “I have an appointment to meet with Ben after work,” she told him, “and I can’t keep our engagement this evening.”

“Who’s Ben?” Fell ran to his car and returned with a gun under his coat. One moment he was threatening Wilma; the next moment he was begging for forgiveness. “I wouldn’t hurt you, Wilma” he cried. “I couldn’t bear the opportunity of hurting anyone or anything. I’d like to hunt you with a camera, not a gun.” To prove this he dashed outside again and stowed the pistol away. He returned with pictures of a yacht floating before an island. “I promise you,” he said, “we’ll go on a tropical cruise.”

Another lie. For weeks Fell had been attempting to trade the Woodside bungalow for a powerful cabin cruiser, though he knew conflicting claims on the property made such an exchange illegal.

When Oakland fireman Benjamin Larsen arrived for his date with Wilma, Fell shouted, “I’m going to kill you.”

When Larsen phoned the police, Sergeant Herman Bernstein and Patrolman Vince Spooner responded. “That man has threatened to kill Miss Heaton whom he is waiting to see and who has spurned his attention,” Larsen said. He pointed out Fell lurking at the entrance.

“He said he would kill me,” Wilma said, “and then kill Ben if I didn’t go out with him. I don’t want to prosecute. I just want him out of here.”

After a brief struggle, Bernstein and Spooner wrestled him into another room. While Spooner kept him covered, Bernstein searched Fell’s car.

He popped open the glove compartment and discovered a .38-caliber revolver. Fell only grinned. He produced a badge, deputy’s credentials, proof he was a night watchman, and a permit to carry the gun signed by San Mateo County Sheriff James J. McGrath, the fattest sheriff in these parts. All the cops could do was escort him to the city limits and warn him not to return to Alameda County. Fell laughed as he sped away, but his ears were burning. He was not used to being rebuffed by any woman and it made him angrier than he could remember.

On February 17, he drove to the Redwood City public library. “I’m looking for this book on poisons,” he told librarian Clara P. Dills, “
A Manual of Toxicology
by Albert Harrison Brundage.”

“We’ll have to request that particular book from the state library in Sacramento.”

“Well, hurry! I’ve got to have that book before March 15.”

“I’ll see what I can do to expedite it.” Dills put a rush tag on it.

Fell had urgent use for that book, but for whom? Did he intend to poison Wilma Heaton who had spurned him? Or was it for someone he had yet to meet?

Ten days later Fell took one of his frequent nighttime rides at a point above El Camino Real near San Jose. As he turned round a wide bend his lights framed a lovely young woman down on her knees. Her travel-worn suitcase had burst and scattered her belongings. She stood as he pulled over, shielded her eyes and studied the handsome man in the headlights. He was tall and perfectly made. She was twenty-five years old (though she looked nineteen), petite (about 112 pounds), with mousy dark brown hair, high cheekbones, long eyelashes, big eyes, and a ready smile with a little too much lipstick. She wore blue denim, bell-bottom hiking pants instead of a skirt. The bicycling craze two years earlier had given California girls an excuse to wear trousers like Marlene Dietrich’s. She had rolled her white cotton socks over the tops of black dancing shoes, and Fell could hear their taps click on the pavement. Across her scoop-neck sweater she had a picture of the Bambino, “the Sultan of Swat,” slamming a ball out of the park. George Herman Ruth had hit 714 homers in his twenty-two professional seasons. In 1930 and 1931, when everyone else was out of work, “The Babe” was making $85,000 a season. Fell loved the Babe, even though he had been in a slow decline since 1927. “Roots still in there,” Ruth once said on live radio. “He breezes the first two pitches by—both strikes. The mob’s tearing down Wrigley Field. I shake my fist after that first strike. After the second I point my bat at those bellerin’ bleachers—right where I aim to park the ball. I hit that fuckin’ ball on the nose—right over the fuckin’ fence for two fuckin’ runs.”

“That’s odd apparel for thumbing a ride,” Fell said. “More like a stage costume.”

“I wear this outfit when I compete in walkathons,” she said.

“I’m Jerry,” he called as he flashed a fake card that said he was a deputy sheriff. That relaxed her.

“I’m Boots,” she said, though she used different monikers during her wanderings: Dorothy Farnum, Dorothy Farmen, and Dorothy Wanworthy. Like Fell, her names were as interchangeable as hats. Boots’s real name was Winifred Hemmer, though from age two to fourteen she had lived in a Grand Rapids, Michigan, orphanage as “Dorothy Hemmer.” “I’ve three brothers and sisters, but I don’t know where to find them,” she told Fell. “I know nothing about any other members of my family, or if there are any at all.”

“That’s my story too. What’s the rest of yours?”

For the previous two years, Boots had been hitchhiking around the country living in hobo jungles and riding the railroad brake beams from Michigan to Florida to California to Washington State and back down to California. She eked out a meager living as a walkathon champion and itinerant marathon dancer. In December, Boots had taken third prize at the North Bend, Oregon, walkathon and so had a little money. “I have to conserve it,” she said, patting the cash in her breast pocket. Fell was intrigued. He had been scratching around for money like a chicken after feed and not only that she was cute. Boots, a stage performer of specialty songs and dances, was headed for San Francisco to enter a dance competition and talent show.

“Look,” said Fell, “I can get you a new suitcase so you can make your trip in comfort. Hop in.”

He had a nice smile so she got in. Boots was always able to find a man who could give her a room for the night or a bite to eat. “He seemed to feel sorry for me,” Boots said, “and offered to give me a better suitcase for my things. I thought I was safe when he invited me there. Jerry was a bona fide cheerful friend.” He cracked jokes as they drove to Woodside Glens. At the bungalow, he invited her inside to change clothes while he got down a replacement suitcase from the penthouse. Boots dragged the bag over to the hearth and in the flickering light read an engraved name: Ada French Rice. Now who was that? Jerry didn’t say.

“Why don’t you stay with me for awhile?” he asked. “I work nights. Why don’t you get rested while I go back to work.” Boots was agreeable. Fell left the Bungalow, but instead of going to work, he spent another uncomfortable night in the Burlington garage. The next morning, he returned to the bungalow. “I’ve got some time off,” he told Boots. “Tonight I’ll sleep here.”

When he awoke, he asked, “Did I say anything in my sleep?”

“No, of course not. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, no reason. Are you sure you didn’t hear anything?” She shook her head. “Well, that’s good.”

“He treated me all right,” Boots said, “and was very much a gentleman. I am sure he would never have harmed me. Why, there wasn’t a thing improper in our relationship. I slept on the davenport near the fireplace. I wasn’t afraid of Jerry, but I was afraid of his bedroom. There was a side door and I didn’t know whether I could lock it. I was just a guest.”

Mrs. Rice’s money finally ran out. Fell, with the added expenses of attending college, travel, paying the bungalow mortgage, keeping up two cars and now feeding a guest, would have to resort to other means. That night he discussed his finances with Boots in front of the fire. The winds on the road above were howling and they both felt cozy. “Guess I could go to Hollywood and try out for the movies.”

Fell had often fantasized about turning his movie star looks to advantage on the silver screen. Boots knew all about making movies. “With his looks, gee, who wouldn’t hire him,” she thought. “He is so athletic and strong, I just have to encourage him.” “I could see you in Gower Gulch,” she said aloud.

It wasn’t really a gulch. The corner of Sunset and Gower in front of the Columbia Drugstore was where all the aspiring actors hung out waiting for a call from the single booth there. A cowboy actor had once been shot down there, “dry-gulched,” and that’s why folks called it a gulch. “With those arms you could play a gorilla,” she said. A number of actors made excellent livings portraying apes in movies.
¹⁴
Emil Van Horn, who did the “gorilla stuff” for Republic Pictures, assumed the characteristics of an ape even off camera. George Barrows and Janos Prohaska portrayed gorillas too, but Charlie Gemora, “a little Filipino guy,” did the best impersonation. Ray “Crash” Corrigan was the most successful.

At six feet, eight inches, the handsome lead of Republic’s serial
Undersea Kingdom,
not only had the athleticism for the role but a hand-sewn horsehair costume. His head-to-foot suit (bushy padded shoulders, coarse matted fur, and a headpiece with functioning oversize teeth) had cost him $5,000 to make. But it was so heavy that every time Corrigan took a few swipes with his paw he’d have to sit down, remove the articulated gorilla head, and catch his breath. “How much does that thing weigh?” asked Buster Crabbe.

“About a hundred pounds too much,” Corrigan gasped. “I didn’t ventilate it properly. It’s hotter than hell in this get-up.”

He kept passing out under the hot lights. Finally director Fred Stephani, incensed at the constant delays, walked over, stared down at the unconscious Corrigan and snapped, “Why the hell couldn’t we have hired a real gorilla?”

When stuntman Steve Calvert drove to Corriganville Ranch he got a crash course in the psychology, mannerisms, and walk of the great ape. “Human posture ruins the animalistic effect,” Corrigan told him. “To be a Gorilla Man you have to reverse your human instincts and thought patterns. You don’t walk around, you lumber. You act ferocious—not because you’re antagonistic, but to scare the humans away.” “I actually became a gorilla,” Calvert said later. “Not too many people can say that. I guess it was just in me.” But Calvert could only exhibit his animal nature while wearing the headpiece. “If I tried it barefaced, I’d just freeze up.”

Boots was convinced Fell would be able to submerge himself completely in the personality of an ape. He slept well that night, dreaming of stardom and content because he had a companion at last. He didn’t say a word in his sleep.