The Laughing Gorilla (47 page)

And this time the police would be there.

—E. A. POE, “THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE”

 

 

 

 

 

IN
Los Angeles on July 8, 1940, Lieutenant Jerry Gannon gathered together his strongest men. “Which route should we take?” he asked as they prepared for the raid on the San Pedro hiring hall. As the electric wall clock in the squad room ticked, a map was drawn up, and the final plan laid. At 6:00 P.M. the two recent shipping commission photos of Harry Gordon arrived from San Francisco. “O.K.,” Gannon said, “here’s what he looks like now.” The men gathered around the two pictures. They weren’t very clear. “All right, let’s get started.”

 

 

SIREN
wailing, Mitchell and Engler raced south by car. Engler was at the wheel. As he weaved in and out of a line of produce trucks, rain began to fall and winds began to buffet them. An irrigation ditch rushing with cold water along the pitted road ran alongside them for some miles. On the first stretch of asphalt Engler pushed the throttle wide open. Cars around them were moving as fast. In the 1940s autos were capable of ninety mile per hour speeds, though many drivers were unlicensed and poorly trained. Mitchell was sure that Gordon was at the hall by now and they were missing the final act of the tragedy.

IN
San Francisco, Chief Dullea stared at the black candlestick phone, willing it to ring. He intended to stay at his desk until the arrest was accomplished. But his eyes were heavy from lack of sleep, and he had to fight to keep awake in spite of his keen excitement.

 

 

IN
San Pedro, the unmarked car containing Gannon and his men pulled up across from the hall’s dimly lit entrance. The night was muggy and still. “Double up and watch closely,” said Gannon.

Two of his men walked down the south side of the street. Two others flanked both sides of the building. Gannon consulted his watch. It could be a minute. It could be five minutes. The Gorilla Man might not come at all. From the shadows, he scrutinized each man entering. There was no sign of Harry Gordon. He studied the photo again. Harry’s hunched shoulders and huge hands made him look formidable. Had he brought along enough men? It was now long past 8:00 P.M. The night was sinister, dirty. It began to rain.

 

 

AS
the heat broke and the first fat drops of warm rain struck the pavement, an apelike figure appeared at the top of an incline. His shadow extended along the cracked sidewalk for a remarkable length. He stopped as if sniffing the hot wind and thrust his hands in his jacket. A trickle of sweat ran down his bronzed face. In spite of the heat he shivered. The blue neon of a cafe across the street had transfixed him. Head down, he crossed to the eatery. It was hot inside, so he had a beer, then another. He lost track of time in the glow of the blue neon. Finally, he remembered to look at his watch, rose unsteadily and, puppetlike, continued on to the hiring hall. Always cautious, he entered by the rear door in the alley.

 

 

OUTSIDE
the San Pedro peninsula, traffic was heavier and slower moving. Engler crossed some rough pine boards that served as a bridge, saw lights ahead, and decided to use the siren a little longer, then shut down as they entered San Pedro. He passed lines of palms and slowed for a Pacific Electric big red car headed for the barns. He slammed the gears into place, stepped on the gas, skidded on the macadam, and shot forward. They mustn’t miss the capture.

 

 

GANNON
approached the hall entrance and crept up to a small window cut into the double doors and peered inside. The room was crowded. Gannon looked from face to face. A burly merchant seaman in the front row attracted Gannon’s attention. He could see a little of his cheek now, a sloping forehead and, as the head turned—the low brow, dirty blond hair, and hooded eyes. Unmistakably, the man was Harry Gordon.

“He’s here,” Gannon hollered. He flung open the door shouting, “Harry Gordon, we have a warrant for your arrest on a charge of murder.”

The Gorilla Man’s head jerked up. His huge fists knotted and his eyes flew back. Gannon got to his side and wrestled him to the floor, but Gordon threw him off and began battling toward the front. If he made the street, he still might escape. He knocked two of Gannon’s men coming up the stairs into the street. Harry was going to elude the police again.

 

 

ENGLER
crossed the darkened Vincent Thomas Bridge over San Pedro Bay and covered the last blocks at high speed. He killed the siren and eyed the sawed off shotgun. They might need it. It had been a long trip to reach this spot—a maze of blind alleys, three strong suspects who were copycats yet killers, and two Gorilla Men who might just be one. They had relived the horror of Earle Nelson. They had interviewed wharf rats and b-girls and relatives, searched through a crisscross of south of Market bars, and quizzed a hundred saloon keepers. They had thumbed shipping line registers and canvassed every Pacific Coast port except this one. Finally, they were there. Ahead a terrific battle was in progress. It had spilled out onto the street and fists were flying.

 

 

GANNON
and his men had finally surrounded Gordon under a streetlight. “Hit him, throw him,” Gannon said. The circle of cops tightened. Harry was strong, but their sheer numbers overwhelmed him. As Engler and Mitchell pulled to a stop, Gannon had the Gorilla Man on the wet pavement and was putting cuffs on his big hands. Mitchell was in time to help hustle Harry into the back of a growler as Engler raced to find a phone to call San Francisco.

 

 

IN
San Francisco, Dullea snatched up the receiver in mid-ring. “We’ve got him,” Engler gasped when he caught his breath. “It’s over.” Though Dullea had been up all last night and tonight, he felt momentarily refreshed. Then exhaustion stole over him. He slumped back in his chair, let the receiver slip back on the cradle, and gave a long sigh of relief. His eyes closed. In a few minutes he roused himself and was calculating how long it would take him to reach San Pedro.

 

 

AT
the San Pedro Police station Dullea joined Gannon, Mitchell, and Engler as they studied the manacled man under a naked bulb. As it had five years before, heavy rain pummeled the streets outside. Nothing had changed for Harry Gordon. It was as if he were still caught in the long shadow of the Ferry Building Clock Tower as it swept over the Bay Hotel like a scythe. He was breathing heavily and had been since his arrest. An hour earlier, he had been calling for officers and rattling his cell door with his huge hands. They were as weighty and muscular as Dullea knew they would be. Huge as an ape’s and even more striking in contrast to his baby face. Harry’s bow-shaped lips quivered like a child’s. There came the dull rumble of thunder; his pale eyes widened. Dullea knew his face from somewhere. It would come to him.

All crimes have a motivation and Dullea was anxious to learn Harry’s. But a real understanding lay decades in the future when such Gorilla Men would be more commonplace. In 1940 no one could say they understood the type with any certainty, only that they were individuals who directed their efforts to satisfying their own selfish desires. Cleveland’s Coroner Pearce surmised that their Gorilla Man had committed murder as the result of his “delusions of persecution and schizophrene during some period of disassociation when the urge strikes him.” Whatever the answer, they belonged to the borderline group of insanity, the constitutional psychopath such as Earle Nelson had been diagnosed.

As a matter of amenity, Dullea leaned back against the far wall and allowed Gannon to conduct the questioning. They had waited for him. In the circle of light Gannon spoke persuasively, asking several general questions about Harry’s youth and getting several honest responses. Harry admitted he often flew into rages on shipboard, but insisted his life on shore had been exemplary.

“I’m pretty sure I don’t go around killing women,” he laughed.

“Could you have done it and not remembered?” asked Gannon.

Harry paused and rubbed the cuffs against his cheek as if scratching an itch. “I admit there are times when I can’t remember where I was. I sort of feel like I may be forgetting at times. I get nervous. I get dizzy. I’m dizzy now. I’m nervous now. I’m forgetting now. When that happens I usually take a drink of water.”

“Not alcohol?”

“Well,” he said and licked his lips, “sometimes when I go into a bar, I can’t remember doing that until somebody tells me that they’ve seen me there.”

“How long have you had trouble remembering?”

“I can’t say, but in San Francisco I would get nervous a lot.” He grew rigid. “I’m remembering now.” He lowered his head, then began to speak in a conspiratorial tone.

Now Gannon learned that Harry Gordon was not the suspect’s real name.

The Gorilla Man’s name was Wilhelm Johannsen.

“Wilhelm Johannsen?” thought Dullea, standing just outside the circle of light. “Why did that name seem familiar?”

“My father had brought me to New York City from Denmark in 1903,” said Harry.

“New York City?” thought Dullea. That rang a bell, too, some connection with the Bay Hotel murderer. A New York murder case was the only one in the 1930s
exactly
like Bette Coffin’s. Dullea remembered the facts. Florence W. Johnston, a New York City housewife, had been murdered on October 21, 1933, in a Washington Heights apartment building. She had been strangled, stripped, and horribly mutilated with razor blades and a knife. The murder had ended in crude autopsy fashion—precisely like Bette Coffin’s in the Bay Hotel. At the time Dullea concluded that the same fiend had absolutely committed both crimes. He recalled the unsuccessful search for her husband’s body. The poor bastard! And Harry Gordon had been in New York at the same time.

“In New York I got married,” Harry said. “I came home drunk one night and we argued and she bawled me out. Then she threw a flower pot at me. It hit me in the forehead and I bled like a pig. I saw a kind of blue haze.” Harry spoke at length about an “irresistible impulse,” a colored tide that swept over him and compelled him to do things. “I grabbed her by the throat and held her awhile, then she got limp. There wasn’t any pulse any more, so I put her on the bed and autopsied her with a boning knife and a razor.

“When I came to my senses she was killed and all cut up, so I took a powder, went to Baltimore and changed my name. Ever since then I get blue hazes or flashes when I’ve been drinking and I get to thinking about the time I worked in the morgue. In Baltimore, I met my present wife, Lydia. Two years ago [at the same time the Butcher vanished from Cleveland forever], I persuaded her to sell her coffee shop in Brooklyn and come to California. Lydia currently operates a flower shop at Long Beach. She worked hard to build up the trade at her flower shop.” The crushed roses and gardenias at the crime scenes now made sense to Dullea. In the closed room he could almost smell the flowers. “But I was out of work and last month I borrowed $250 on the car Lydia had bought and came back to San Francisco again to do my work.” Matter of factly, he told of stalking San Francisco streets late at night, picking up unsuspecting Bette Coffin and taking her to the Bay Hotel.

“Why did you strangle Mrs. Coffin?” Gannon asked. Records showed that Gordon’s ship had arrived in San Francisco in April 1935, and sailed right out again. “And why did you kill that McCarthy woman in San Francisco?” It was sultry in the room. All the men were sweating while Harry Gordon’s skin was cold and dry. He blinked before he answered. He ground his hands together (there was a jangle from the cuffs) and puckered his lips before he began to explain. His bow-shaped mouth glistened. “Geez, I don’t know,” he said.

In Europe one of the Ripper ilk once exulted of the “unspeakable delight” he had in strangling women, experiencing erections and real sexual pleasure. “It satisfied me to seize the woman by the neck and suck their blood.” Did this explain the scant amount of blood in Bette Coffin’s hotel room; had he drunk it? “As soon as I had grabbed her by the neck, I felt sexual sensations. It did not matter the attractiveness of the woman. Choking them satisfied me. If I did not have sexual satisfaction I continued choking until I did. I choked them until they died.”

LaTulipe had laid it out for Dullea: A sexual pervert derives erotic gratification from murder. A sadistic, antisocial being, he is cynical, coldly indifferent toward the horrible and derives sexual pleasure from sadistic mutilation. Sexual desire left unsatisfied can completely alter its nature. Sadistic rape is sadism, only secondarily rape. Unbridled sadism becomes in itself an object of sexual gratification; as erotic anxiety is replenished it constantly requires new fulfillment. “My God,” thought Dullea, “the Gorilla Man has desires that sex can never satisfy.”