The Laughing Gorilla (48 page)

“I used the money my wife, Lydia, gave me to have my teeth repaired to pay for the trip to San Francisco,” continued Harry. “I was sitting at the bar when Mrs. McCarthy came in. I had known her before down south in San Diego. We had several drinks. I bought a pint of whisky and we went to the hotel. All of a sudden a kind of blue flash came over me and I just had to kill her, that’s all.”

“Did she scream?”

“I guess . . . a little.”

“Did you choke her until she was dead?”

“I guess so, yes, sir.”

“Now that it’s all over, how do you feel?”

“Oh, I feel sorry for myself,” Harry said. “You can see I’m in a real fix.” Harry studied Gannon’s face and paused. He thought hard for a normal response, sorted through his mind and decided on remorse, an emotion he had never felt. “I guess I feel sorry for those I killed,” he ventured. “I just have not allowed myself to think about it too much. I couldn’t think when I was upset like that.” He buried his face in his big hands. “I remember now. I remember! God, I don’t give a damn if I go to the gas chamber! Not much doubt that I’m a menace. Ever since I was a child, I’ve been attracted to the cruel and destructive. I’ve killed women and I’d probably do it again unless they get me out of the way. I expect the worst, and the sooner it comes, the better.”

Engler wanted to know more about the initial slaying in New York. “Why did you really kill the first woman, your wife?” he asked. “What was the real reason? There must have been some reason besides just a fight.”

Harry Gordon studied his muscular hands. In the glare of the light his cupid lips shone wetly. Was that fear in his eyes at last? He shook his head. Tears welled up. “The whole thing started,” Harry said, “when I worked in the basement morgue in a big New York City hospital, Mount Sinai. I’d sweep the floors and clean up around the place and also sew up the bodies. As a hospital morgue attendant my hospital duties included the dissection of bodies for autopsies. I got so I couldn’t get the sight of corpses out of my mind. When that happened, I’d get drunk. Every time I got drunk I felt an urge to kill some dame and take them apart. That’s how it all started.” He looked up at the officers with watery-blue eyes and tried to open his slit of a mouth. It was hard for him to speak.

“You see, officers, I just couldn’t get autopsies out of my mind.”

Dullea stood looking at the Gorilla Man under the naked bulb. He had got it—finally. It came to him now like a ghostly touch on his shoulder, the invisible clue that had been there all along, but hidden away in his subconscious like a fingerprint inside a radio. He had known the name of the Gorilla Man from the very beginning. Harry Gordon and Wilhelm Johannsen were only two of the Gorilla Man’s names. At long last he had found Mrs. Johnston’s missing husband.

This six-year project was made effortless through the moral support and encouragement of Dr. Derek Penn, Dr. Elizabeth Nubla-Penn, J. D. Lester, Diane Nelson, Annie Yuen, Aaron Smith, David Smith, Margot Graysmith, Wilialak “Sow” Prakhe Smith, Rayluk Addison Smith, Harmony Manao Smith, Zoe Briao Smith, Larry and Lillian Abrusci, Steve Mortenson, Mike “Murph” Murphy, Harvey Hodgerney, Melanie Graysmith, Gary Fong, Victor Santos, Andry Muljadi, Kevin Fagan, Rick Romagosa, Brad Garrett, Maria Mendoza, the gang at Kayo Books, Kevin J. Mullen and those at the Penguin Group who made this book a tangible reality: Judy Murello, Crissie Johnson, and Julia Fleischaker.

Most especially I want to thank the professional guides who helped me track the loping stride of the Laughing Gorilla along the path of this thrilling adventure: Jaime Wolf for sage legal guidance, Candace B. Levy for amazing copyediting, Joel Gotler, the most extraordinary agent in America in both film and book, and my brilliant editors Michelle Vega, whom I could listen to all day, and Natalee Rosenstein, who has the vision and imagination of a true artist.

Whenever I choose a story, or more precisely when a story chooses me, I immerse myself in the time period and visit all the sites in the narrative. Sometimes I move to where the crime took place. In the six years it took to write the history of
The Laughing Gorilla
, I moved to within nine blocks of Jessie Hughes’ San Francisco home, close to the former Urbano Drive home of murderous public defender Frank Egan. As I write this, I can see the El Rey Theatre from my window. In April 1932, a young couple left that movie palace to find the crumpled body of Egan’s benefactor. This grim find eventually led to Captain Dullea recognizing the deep corruption within the SFPD, prosecuting the crooked cops, and beginning his battle to become the new chief of police. I still haunt the Ferry Building, which has been restored to its former greatness, and stop at the bulkhead of Piers 26 and 28 nearby where Dullea’s friend, Officer Malcolm, was gunned down. I lunch at the park that replaced the Bay Hotel and have visited Dr. Housman’s former office on an upper story of the Flood Building.

I worked at the
San Francisco Chronicle
for fifteen years where old-timers told me stories of the Depression era and the crooked cops and officials who once ran the city. In composing this never-before-told tale, I consulted blueprints of the Ferry Building and the
Chronicle
, studied streetcar and ferry schedules, daily weather conditions, stock market activity of 1935, city protocol, and a 1935 handbook for the St. Francis Hotel staff. I pored over period photos, books, vintage fashion books and listened to radio drama and commercials of the thirties. I consulted autopsy and police reports, court records, and the 1937 Atherton Report on Graft within the SFPD. For years I attended the Embassy Theatre on Market where Mrs. Hughes went and played Ten-O-Win games with the audience on the same wheel the Embassy used in 1928. The story of the Laughing Gorilla, never before told, is constructed in threes: the three betrayals Captain Dullea endured, the three murder suspects, and the three seemingly impossible tasks he faced: to clean up the corrupt police force, to depose Chief Quinn, and to capture the Gorilla Man.

Badal, James Jessen.
In the Wake of the Butcher. Cleveland’s Torso Murders.
Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2001. An excellent case study.

Bassett, Burton (featuring Sheriff James J. McGrath). “The Case of the Laughing Killer.”
American Detective Fact Cases
(1936), 6, No. 7.

Bayer, Oliver Weld.
Cleveland Murders
. New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1947.

Browne, Douglas G., and E. V. Tullett.
The Scalpel of Scotland Yard.
New York: Dutton, 1952.

Burchill, Detective Sergeant John.
Winnipeg Police Service, History and Museum
. Winnipeg Police Historic Files.

Crimes and Punishment.
Vol. 20. Westport, CT: Stuttman, 1994.

De River, J. Paul.
The Sexual Criminal
. Burbank, CA: Bloat, 2000.

Diefendorf, Fred. “Snaring California’s Sex-crazed ‘Jack The Ripper.’”
Headline Detective
3, no. 6 (1940). May 13, 1939. An important source.

Dullea, Captain Charles, and Harold J. Fitzgerald. “San Francisco’s Dictograph Death Plot.”
Startling Detective
9, no. 53 (1932).

Flamm, Jerry.
Good Life in Hard Times
. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1997.

Forgy, M. Lee. “Passion Slaying of the Nude Red Head.”
Detective World
, Mar. 25, 1950, p. 30.

Fox, Richard H., and Carl L. Cunningham.
Crime Scene Search and Physical Evidence Handbook
. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, 1973.

Fraley, Oscar.
4 Against the Mob
. New York: Popular Library, 1961.

Garvey, John.
San Francisco Police Department.
San Francisco: Arcadia, 2004.

Gilliam, Harold.
San Francisco Bay
. New York: Doubleday, 1957.

Grey, Wilton. “Cleveland’s Headless Six.”
American Detective Fact Cases
6, no. 1 (1936).

Gribben, Mark.
Earle Leonard Nelson
. Court TV’s Crime Library: Criminal Minds and Methods, 2004.

Harper, Hugh D. Letter to Holland Rush. July 17, 1935.

Holland, Rush L. Letter to Hugh Harper. July 15, 1935.

Hoover, J. Edgar. Letter to John Shuttleworth. Aug. 20, 1935. Reprinted
American Detective Fact Cases
, 4, no.6 (1936).

Jackson, Joseph Henry.
San Francisco Crimes: The Laughing Killer of the Woodside Glens.
New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1947. An important source.

Kemble, John Haskell.
San Francisco Bay, A Pictorial Maritime History
. Cambridge, MD: Cornell Maritime Press, 1957.

Lewis, Oscar.
San Francisco: Mission to Metropolis
. Berkeley, CA: Howell-North Books, 1966.

Lehman, David.
The Perfect Murder, A Study in Detection
. New York: Free Press, 1989.

Long, Sheriff Ray, and Frank H. Ward. “Hunting Down Ohio’s Gorilla Man.”
The Master Detective
12, no. 4 (1935).

Masters, R. E. L., and Eduard Lea.
Perverse Crimes in History
. New York: Julian Press, 1963.

Martin, John Bartlow.
Butcher’s Dozen
. New York, 1949. An outstanding book.

McElvaine, Robert S.
The Great Depression
. New York: Times Books, 1994.

McMahon, Inspector William, and Jack De Witt. “The Mystery of the Missing Beauty.”
American Detective
4, no. 6 (1936).

Morland, Nigel.
An Outline of Sexual Criminology
. New York: Hart, 1967.

Malloy, Lieutenant James (as told to Bennett L. Williams). “How We Solved San Francisco’s Most Sensational Crime.”
Famous Detective Cases
3, no. 4 (1936).

Mull, Sheriff Brover C. (as told to Bob McLean). “California’s Music Murder.”
American Detective Fact Cases
6, no. 1 (1936).

Mullen, Kevin J.
The Toughest Gang in Town
. Novato: Noir, 2005.

Nash, Robert.
Murder, America. Homicide in the U.S. from the Revolution to the Present.
London: Harrap, 1980.

———.
Bloodletters and Badmen
. New York: Warner Paperback Library, 1975.

Ness, Eliot, and Oscar Fraley.
The Untouchables
. New York: Julian Messner, 1957.

Newsom, Ted. “Confessions of a Hollywood Gorilla.”
Filmfax
16 (Aug. 1989): 30. The source for Corrigan’s gorilla suit story.

Olmsted, Nancy.
The Ferry Building
. Berkley, CA: Heyday Books, 1998.

Pezet, A. W.
Greatest Crimes of the Century
. New York: Rainbow Books, 1954.

Proctor, Jacqueline.
San Francisco’s West of Twin Peaks
. San Francisco: Ardcadia, 2006.

Redmond, Ian.
Gorilla
. New York: Knopf, 1995.

Rules and Procedures: Police Department.
City and County of San Francisco. 1930, 1940, 1965, 1971.

San Francisco Committee on Crime.
A Report on the San Francisco Police Department
, Parts I-II. Berkeley, CA: Western Star Press, 1971.

Schechter, Harold.
Bestial.
New York: Pocket Books, 1998.

Sifakis, Carl.
America’s Most Vicious Criminals
. New York: Checkmark Books, 2002.

Smith, Bruce Jr. “Report of a Survey of the San Francisco California Police Department.” 1957.

Starr, Kevin.
Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Source for the McCarty/Quinn conversation.

Tatham, Inspector Richmond (as told to Dean S. Jennings). “The Man in the White Mask.”
True Detective Mysteries
, Feb. 1936, pp. 14-19, 66-78.

“The 1937 Atherton Report on Graft within the San Francisco Police Department.” Compiled by the Mayor’s Commission headed by Edwin Atherton, The San Francisco Grand Jury, Assistant District Attorney Leslie Gillan.

Time-Life editors.
Our American Century: Hard Times: The 30s.
New York: Time-Life, 1968-1998.

True Crime: Compulsion to Kill.
Time-Life Books.

Wilson, Colin, and Seaman, Donald.
The Serial Killers, A Study in the Psychology of Violence
. New York: Carol Publishing Group.

Wilson, Colin,
Written in Blood.
Books I-III. New York: Warner Books, 1989.

“Another big shakeup due next week,”
San Francisco Chronicle
, February 17, 1940, p. 1.

“Bandits make off with Market Street Railway strong box,”
San Francisco Examiner
, January 28, 1933, p. 4.

“Board fires 11 police, puts off action on trio as Roche set shakeup,”
San Francisco Chronicle
, July 4, 1936. p. 1.

“Cameras to catch rare sky drama, Scientists set to ‘trap’ eclipse today,”
San Francisco Examiner
, April 28, 1930, p. 1.

“Captain Bunner’s $110,000 wealth,”
San Francisco Chronicle
, May 27, 1936, p.1.

“Car believed used to crush body of Mrs. Hughes found,”
San Francisco Examiner
, May 13, 1932, p. 1.

“Cases against 12 police completed, row livens trial,”
San Francisco Chronicle
, July 2, 1936, p. 8.

“Chilly mountaintop Mecca, Dullea attends Easter celebration on Mount Davidson,”
San Francisco Examiner
, April 21, 1935, p. 20.

“City may sue graft cops for back wages, loss of pension looms
,” San Francisco Chronicle
, June 6, 1936, p. 1.

“City to have flying squad,”
San Francisco Chronicle
, July 10, 1929, p. 6.

“City will postpone replacing ex-cops
,” San Francisco Chronicle
, July 8, 1936, p. 6.

“‘Conscience? I haven’t any,’ Selz says,” “Flattery wrung death stories from Selz, says detective,”
San Francisco Chronicle
, April 13, 1936, p. 8.