Mass Slaughter in the Wealthy New York Suburb

By George Carpozi Jr
Master Detective
February 1980

IN ANOTHER era, the farmers tilling the soil of Bedford Hills were major suppliers of vegetables to the people of Westchester County and neighbouring New York City. These days, however, there are no more gentlemen farmers, for Bedford Hills is now just another suburban dormitory for America's greatest city.

The farms of the gaslight era which became the grand estates of the rich for the first half of this century have almost all been sold or donated to non-profit organizations - or divided by homebuilders into mini-estates occupying anywhere from an acre to four or more.

There are two homes that command our attention for this story - and they are situated virtually within shouting distance of each other in the wealthy and historic section of town known as Succabone Corners.

One of these residences, a huge 16 roomed Georgian Colonial, had been home for many happy years for Corydon and Arden Bondy Sperry and 85-year-old Nellie McCormack, the faithful family governess.

Nellie McCormack emigrated from Scotland when she was a young woman. She carried a thick Scottish burr that never left her for the more than 50 years she served as governess, first in the Bondy household raising, among others, Arden. Then she became nanny to the Sperrys' children, in the order of their birth: Corydon Jr., now 25, nicknamed Corky and an undergraduate at the University of Colorado; Mark, 22, who attends Denison College in Ohio; Christopher, 19, a student at the nearby state university at Purchase; and Cassandra (or Cassie), 17, a senior at the Ethel Walker School of Simsbury, Connecticut - an all-girls boarding school.

The Sperrys had everything going for them. They had a deep and abiding love for each other, their children and the nanny. Sperry himself was a Wall Street investment banker.

For their neighbours, Charles and Helen Frankel, life had real meaning in the seclusion and quiet of Bedford Hills, yet it was only the icing on a far richer existence for this 61-year-old philosopher who was President Lyndon B. Johnson's Assistant Secretary of State from 1965 to 1967. Dr. Frankel, who taught at Columbia University in New York City, was founder of the National Humanities Centre which opened in September, 1968, in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The Frankels lived alone in a sprawling ranch home at 41 Bisbee Lane, about 400 yards down the road from the Sperry residence at the corner of Succabone and Broad Brook Roads.

Thursday, May 10th, 1979, dawned brightly, for the sun on that mid-spring day promised to do its utmost to hurry the blooms on the dogwood trees and azalea bushes that surrounded the Sperry home and the assortment of greenery under glass at the Frankel place.

At 8.30 that morning, a housekeeper left the caretaker's cottage she shared with her husband and walked up the driveway to the huge columned portico. She entered the Sperry house with her passkey. As she stood briefly in the high-ceilinged foyer, an unaccustomed silence greeted the housekeeper, giving her an eerie feeling.

As she climbed the stairs to the second floor, she expected at the least to hear the voice of Christopher Sperry, the only one of the children living at home because he was attending local college, or that of Nellie McCormack, the lifelong governess who was always up and about at that hour tending to Christopher's needs while his brothers and sister were away at their respective schools.

The housekeeper had no reason to expect to find Mr. and Mrs. Sperry at home because she knew they were spending the night in their Manhattan apartment. She'd been alerted to that plan the day before. The Sperrys intended to stay in the city after a benefit in New York for the Ethel Walker School, which their daughter Cassie attended.

In the deafening silence that greeted the housekeeper, it never intruded into her thinking even in the remotest sense to expect what she was about to discover…

First, as she made her rounds, she looked into young Sperry's bedroom. What she saw sent a bolt of shivers up her spine. The room was in disarray - dresser drawers were opened wide, the closet door was ajar and the floor was strewn with personal possessions and clothes, as though rejected by a selective burglar.

But most terrifying was the next sight the housekeeper's eyes took in. Young Christopher Sperry lay on the floor next to the bed in his nightclothes in a state of stillness that left the housekeeper in no doubt that he was dead. A sheet was twirled around his waist and legs, he was gagged - and the housekeeper saw blood on the pillow; later determined to have come from a bullet wound in the back of the head.

TREMBLING WITH shock and fear, the woman stumbled through the hall on her way to the phone to call the police. The she passed governess Nellie McCormick's room - and what she saw there added to her fright. Miss McCormack lay similarly bound and gagged on her bed. And, as authorities would later discover, she had also been shot in the head with a .32-calibre gun.

So terrified now and fearing that the killer or killers might still be in the house, the housekeeper fled screaming to the outdoors and made her way to the home of a neighbour, who promptly summoned the police.

Detective-Sergeant Ted Wyskida and a team of investigators responded to the call and proceeded to uncover evidence that gave them a picture of what had probably happened. They found several doors in the house forced open. It seemed obvious that a burglary was the motivation - and perhaps the victims attempted to resist.

Wyskida phoned Christopher's parents in Manhattan shortly after 9 am, but no mention was made to Mr. and Mrs. Sperry that their son Christopher was dead - only that Nellie McCormack had been murdered. It was shattering news for the couple, yet they maintained their composure.

Out of this preliminary contact with the parents of the slain youth, detectives learned that a 1976 BMW sedan had been parked in the driveway. But the cops hadn't seen the car. Could it have been stolen by the killer, or killers? Undoubtedly, Wyskida concluded. An alert for the missing car was broadcast throughout metropolitan New York.

Shortly before noon, Mr. and Mrs. Sperry arrived home in their blue station wagon. They pulled into the driveway and brought the car to a stop in one of the stalls on the parking apron. Mrs. Sperry was behind the wheel and the cops could see the grief written on both parents' faces.

But this was nothing compared to the shocker the Sperrys were about to be hit with. Wyskida walked to the car and, as the couple got out, he spoke to them in soft, muffled tones. Suddenly, Mrs. Sperry shrieked.

"Not my son!" she cried, lifting her arms in the air in a helpless gesture. Her husband clasped his arms tightly around his wife, her arms wrapped around his shoulders.

THE POLICEMAN escorted the couple to a guest cottage alongside the main house and they remained secluded there for most of the day. But, detectives went into the cottage from time to time to scrounge bits and pieces of information from the Sperrys.

Even as the entire Bedford Hills police force, plus investigators from Westchester County District Attorney Carl Vergari's staff, were digging into this crime, a second shock wave struck like a thunderbolt. It happened late that afternoon, when police received a call from 21-year-old Carl Frankel. He was phoning from New York City to report that his father, the renowned Columbia professor, and mother had failed to appear for a speaking engagement the doctor had promised to keep at the humanities centre he'd founded in North Carolina.

According to Carl Frankel, his parents were to have taken a 7.30 am flight at New York’s LaGuardia Airport to Raleigh. When the Frankels failed to show up, an associate phoned his Bedford Hills home. After he received no answer, he contacted young Frankel in New York City. Carl was immediately alarmed because of the reports he'd heard on radio about the murders of Christopher Sperry and governess Nellie McCormack.

After Carl Frankel's call, the green police cars and unmarked vehicles of the Bedform Hills police sped down the road to the ranch home at 41 Bisbee Lane. The time was a few minutes before 5 pm and only another minute or two was required to assess the situation.

Inside the house, police found the professor and his 61-year-old wife lying dead in separate bedrooms. Both were in their nightclothes and had been shot in the head and body - and bound in a fashion similar to the victims in the Sperry household murders. Mrs. Frankel had been shot once in the back of the head and her husband was hit with .32-calibre bullet wounds in the head, as well as the liver, chest and heart, an autopsy would later disclose.

"Why would a professional burglar kill four people?" asked acting DA Thomas Facelle, in place of his boss, DA Carl Vergari, who was visiting Israel with a group of American lawyers. Facelle was in an angry mood, because the reporters were hounding him with provocative questions about the twin double-killings that he could not answer.

"Let me tell you this," Facelle told the newsmen. "These execution-style murders are the most bizarre I've every witnessed. Among the things that have us stymied is the theft of a safe weighting at least a couple of hundred pounds was taken from the Sperry home…"

Bullets and shells of the same caliber were also recovered in both homes and "we have every indication from the crime scenes that we're dealing with the same people in both double-murders."

Even as Facelle was speaking, police in Brooklyn were beginning to weave the first strand of circumstantial evidence against the Bedford Hills killers.

Less than three hours after the bodies of Christopher Sperry and Nellie McCormack were found and the broadcast went out for the stolen BMW, Patrolman Michael McLaughlin, working out of the Sixth Avenue police station in Brooklyn, responded to a report from an anonymous caller about a "fancy car with the keys in the ignition" parked at the corner of Third Avenue and Warren Street, in the borough's Red Hook district.

McLaughlin later told your reported: "The car was in total disarray. We towed it to my precinct and went over it with a fine-tooth comb. We opened the trunk and found the safe from the Sperry house. It had been torched and burned open. We found a lot of credit cards in Sperry's name - maybe a dozen or more - and some jewellery alongside the safe. But whatever else was in the safe had been taken. The only other thing we found were two bank books showing deposits totaling $80,000 made by Nellie McCormack."

One of the many lawmen working on the investigation with Thomas Facelle, the acting DA, was Peter Liverzani, a New York state police captain. And, less than 24 hours after the four horrendous killings in Bedford Hills, Facelle and Liverzani, were beginning to feel that the probe was heading in the right derection.

"We may by dealing with professionals," Facelle suggested. "There are reports that phone and burglar-alarm wires connected to the Frankels' home were cut. The question confronting us is: Do we go out and round up the usual suspects? I don't think so. We know our burglars and this doesn't look like their work."

Facelle and Liverzani had decided immediately that Bedford Hills' 30-man police force didn't have enough experience to handle such a complicated investigation as the Succabone Corners killings. The last homicide investigated by local officers was back in 1972. Thus a request was made to the Westchester County sheriff's office and the state police for assistance.

In the days that followed the killings, it was suggested that drug-crazed members of the Rastafarian cult were possible suspects in the robbery-massacre in Bedford Hills, particularly as the Sperrys' car had been found a mere few blocks from the sect's headquarters in Brooklyn.

The Rastafarians were known to be militantly anti-white, especially against the rich. Some members were known to use and deal in ritualistic marijuana smoking and other narcotics activity.

Meanwhile, memorial services were held for Christopher Richard Sperry. More than 600 relatives, friends and classmates past and present filled the pews, balcony, rear corridor and side aisles of the Presbyterian Church of Mount Kisco as the Rev. Jack Silvey Miller eulogized the dead young man:

"We do not gather in sanctuary to escape reality, but rather to accept both the evil and the good of the human condition," he said in his sermon.

The memorial service was a bittersweet occasion for many of the congregation who had known the young man and the aged governess. Rev. Miller affectionately recalled their different lives as members of a family that, he said, was as close as any he'd known.

Next day, more than 150 people attended a memorial service for Dr. Frankel at the humanities centre he had directed near Raleigh, North Carolina. Professor William E. Leuchtenburg, who teaches history at Columbia, reminded the mourners about Dr. Frankel's experience with violence, as a member of the Marine Corps for four years during World War II - as well as his membership on a university committee that studied campus unrest in the 1960s.

"He always approached violence and disruption with calm reason," said Professor Leuchtenburg. "It was cruel irony the way he died."

Meanwhile, back in Bedford Hills, a by now very uptight acting DA Thomas Facelle ordered a lid on information to the press about the progress authorities were making into the murders.

"We can't answer all the questions or give all the details!" Facelle snapped. "When we get a suspect, we want to make sure he's the right one. If some nutcase comes in to confess and starts spewing all the details that he has read in the papers, how can we tell if he was really there?"

A fingerprint found in the stolen BMW was trumpeted by police as a "hot clue" and was viewed as a step towards moving in on a suspect. But the suspect "didn't pan out," authorities said later. That prompted another blast from Facelle: "I just wish the police would learn to keep their mouths shut!"

The night of Saturday, May 26th and the early morning hours of Sunday, May 27th, were not memorable for any progress on the investigation into the murders, so far as Bedford Hills was concerned. Yet fate was beginning to shape what would very soon be an electric development in the case.

Again, as when the BMW was found, Brooklyn was to figure in the ultimate outcome of the four murders. But it had the most improbable beginning…

ABOUT 50 revellers had gathered in an apartment at 730 Linden Boulevard, in Brooklyn, to celebrate a birthday. Suddenly, the door flew open and four armed thugs herded the party goers against the walls. Shots were fired and one of the guests was wounded.

"Everybody undress!" one of the gunmen barked.

"Now start handling over money, watches, rings and any jewellery you got on you - and move it!"

Another shot was fired into the ceiling to emphasize that order and underline the urgency the bandits attached to their demands.

Everyone obeyed - and the bandits fled with about $15,000 worth of loot. One of the victims phoned the police and soon detectives were on top of the case like locusts. The victims had vivid memories of their assailants and provided the officers with excellent descriptions.

But that wasn't too necessary because other cops had already seen three men running down the street suspiciously. Alerted to the shoot-'em-up robbery on Linden Boulevard, the police officers seized the three men and brought them to the 67th Precinct in East Flatbush, where they identified themselves as Junius Gray, 40, of Crystal Street, Brooklyn; Jimmy Alen, 40; and Jeffrey Davis, 25, both of Plainfield, New Jersey.

Credit for this collar went to Sergeant John Curry and Patrolmen George Jackson and Al Vitkus, who made what was to be a most significant recovery among an arsenal of five guns the suspects were carrying - a .32-calibre automatic and a sawn-off shotgun.

For the time being, not much thought was given to the weapons, although there was to be a routine follow-up - the weapons would be sent to the police lab. For firing and testing to determine whether they had been used in other crimes, principally unsolved killings.

With Gray, Allen and Davis in custody, the 6 o'clock news went out on TV on the evening of Monday, May 28th. A number of the 100 policemen comprising the murder task force in Bedford Hills were at home watching it. Because it had been a spectacular robbery, the TV cameras had gone to the scene and later to the 67th Precinct, where the cameras focused on the five weapons recovered by Sergeant Curry and Patrolmen Jackson and Vitkus.

One of those off-duty investigators jumped when he saw the .32-automatic with the home-made silencer. He dashed to the phone, spoke to Captain Liverzani, heading the task force - and that was immediately followed by a call to the 67th Precinct.

"We'd like to run a check on that gun," Liverzani said. "It looks like it could be the .32 used up here…"

As the wheels went into motion to test-fire the .32-automatic for comparison with bullets taken from the Bedford Hills victims' bodies, there was more action on the Brooklyn front. New York police were about to have another shining hour, thanks to a tipster who phoned the 67th to report: "If you want Levi Moore, you can find him in his basement apartment… 913 Martense Street. He's got a gun…"

The phone went dead. The 29-year-old Levi Moore was wanted as the fourth member of the shoot-'em-up holdup team."

In minutes, Sergeant Thomas Anderson and Patrolman James Mulligan were outside the door of that basement apartment. Patrolmen Kenneth Monahan and Patrick Adams posted themselves behind the building. Good thing, too - for the instant Anderson rapped on the door, a man leaped out of the window. As the cops moved in, he scrambled to his feet and raced along an alley leading to the street.

"My, my, fella - why are you in such a hurry?" Anderson smiled as he held out his arms to grab the fugitive. There was absolutely no resistance, because Levi Moore felt a chill up and down his spine from the cold steel of the sergeant's revolver pressed against his forehead.

EVEN AS Moore was being brought in, task force detectives from Bedford Hills, armed with search warrants, were swarming over Allen's and Davis' apartments in Plainfield, while other teams were going through Junius Gray's Brooklyn digs for clues.

Nothing much was found in any of those three targets of the searches. But a warrant to examine Gray's gold-coloured Cadillac struck the right note. For, in the trunk, the searchers allegedly found a .35-millimetre Pentax camera, soon identified by its serial numbers as one of the items stolen from the Sperry home.

Later that night, Gray's wife, who was behind the wheel of the 1970 Caddy when the cops intercepted it, was charged with possession of stolen property.

The lode of rich discoveries didn't end there. The detectives made more significant finds when they entered Levi Moore's apartment and gave it a thoroughly going-over. They allegedly uncovered other loot from the Bedford Hills homes, including a stereo, jewellery, silver-ware and a guitar taken from the Frankel home.

The clincher came next day when the ballistics tests were concluded and the experts submitted their findings to Captain Liverzani. The .32-calibre automatic with the silencer was the weapon used in the Bedford Hills murders!

BY NOW, DA Vergari had rushed back from his overseas jaunt and had taken charge of the investigation. He indicated no plan of action to bring charges against any of the suspects - just yet.

"They are suspects. Prime suspects, if you want to use that word," Vergari told reporters. "We're not eliminating anyone who may have been involved in the Brooklyn case. But since the suspects in that robbery are being held in high bail, I see no rush to charge them with the Bedford Hills murders."

After a further six weeks of silence, Carl Vergari finally broke it. He summoned reporters to a press conference in White Plains, the Westchester County seat, and made it known that the grand jury had indicated Junius Gray and Jimmy Lee Allen for the four killings. Both were also charged with possession of the .32 automatic, the alleged death weapon.

Later that day, Gray and Allen were brought in chains from Brooklyn to the Westchester County courtroom.

"It's the same thing as in Mississippi!" cried Allen to reporters. "All they wanted from Day One was someone black! They needed niggers!"

Both men stood in silence before the bench and, with a heavy guard posted behind them, were remanded to their Brooklyn lockup until they could bring lawyers with them to court for their arrangement.

There were many raised eyebrows because Levi Moore, the third suspect, had not been indicted. Could he have decided to give evidence against Gray and Allen at their trial?

"No comment…" DA Vergari said. "We are satisfied that the Bedford Hills crimes were committed by only two persons."

Finally, on August 24th, 1979, Junius Gray and Jimmy Allen appeared before Justice Isaac Rubin in White Plains. Allen stunned the courtroom when he told the judge: "I want you to appoint a female Jewish attorney for me in this case."

"I don't classify attorneys in that way," said the judge.

"I would only accept a female Jewish attorney," retorted Allen. "I'm the defendant. I know who's involved and what's involved. I want someone I can be comfortable with."

When the judge indicated that he would merely appoint a competent lawyer from a pre-determined list of approved volunteers, Allen said that, if his request was denied, he'd go pro se, the legal term meaning he would defend himself.

The two defendants were again returned to Brooklyn, where they must stand trial with Levi Moore and Jeffry Davis for the shoot-'em-up robbery. Then, no matter what the outcome there, they'll be returned to White Plains to stand trial for the Bedford Hills murders.

3 Victims for Laughing Killer

By Martin Lomax
Master Detective
December 1979

AS A narrative on crime and the criminal mind, Dark Secrets is in a class by itself. This short manuscript of just 84 pages does not have the professional polish of the Vincent Bugliosi best-sellers Until Death Us Do Part and Helter Skelter. Nor does the author of Dark Secrets, a 24-year-old ex-marine, have the literary style of a Truman Capote, author of In Cold Blood. A London publisher might well be skeptical of publishing the manuscripts - for, outside southern California, little is known of the author and the rape-murders of two young women.

Despite these handicaps - and the various shortcomings of a manuscript written by a neophyte author - Dark Secrets is undeniably a powerful story. It is a memoir of a young man who became fascinated with torture and death. It is, too, the story of the victims: A 30-year-old secretary; a 28-year-old mother and her young son; a Las Vegas homosexual out on the make. The Diego judge, a "tremendous indictment against the California Youth Authority, Atascadero State Prison and the US Marine Corps."

Dark Secrets is not for the squeamish. When portions of the manuscripts were introduced as evidence in a murder trial, a man requested to do the reading. "I will not have a woman read those chapters to the jury," ruled Judge Earl Maas. "I may be a chauvinist in saying that, but I must insist that a man read them."

And no wonder. Dark Secrets packs a wallop. Members of the eight-woman, four-man jury and spectators in the tiny, windowless courtroom were visibly upset as portions of the manuscript were read.

The only person who remained calm during the proceedings was Billy Lee Chadd, the diminutive young author of Dark Secrets, on trial for rape and murder.

But Chadd's only concern was protecting the copyright to Dark Secrets. He wanted the manuscript published and he hoped it would make the best-seller list. He expressed no remorse for his victims - they represented nothing more than "research material."

Death was not to grieve over. To Chadd, death was a thrill, a sexual kick, something to enjoy. And when Chadd wrote or spoke of death, he did not leave out mention of his own.

"I fully expect a death penalty for my crimes," he wrote in Dark Secrets. And he went on: "If I don't receive one, I will take my own life, my final murder. I don't want to spend the rest of my life in a cage, animal though I may be. I could not ever live that way."

Few criminals have been so in love with death as Billy Chadd. He described creating the fear of death as a "power high. I am alive for the sole purpose of causing pain and receiving sexual gratification."

A demon ruled his life, he wrote. It urged and coaxed him, turned him into an animal. "I should have recognized it as a sickness and sought help. I thought of it from time to time, asking "Why?' But I could find no answer. Perhaps I just lost the ability to keep this ghastly animal in me in check.

"Do you have a monster in you?" Chadd asked rhetorically. "A monster lurking in the dark reaches of your mind? Wanting to spring out and take control of you?"

Chadd wrote that the monster inside him ruled his thoughts, urged him on to kill and kill again. The monster lived on death and human suffering and "it had to be fed again and again." In one murder, "my monster peeked out. He had been awakened and was watching how I was doing. I tried to stop what was happening, but I couldn't. It wasn't me anymore. It was the creature who thrived on fear and death, a creature who had lain dormant for so long that he would not be denied."

No doubt a "monster" had been responsible for the murder of Patricia Franklin, a 30-year-old secretary with the prestigious Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, California. On the night of July 26th, 1974, Miss Franklin returned to her cosy home in Linda Vista and began to get ready for a date she had that night.

She never made it.

The following day, San Diego police found the woman's naked body tied to her bed. The house had been ransacked. Clothing, pulled from bureau drawers, was strewn about the floor. Detective Sergeant Ybarrondo, whose homicide team investigated the case, remembered the Franklin murder as one of the most vicious and savage crimes he had ever investigated.

The woman had been raped repeatedly before her death. One of her nipples had been nearly bitten off during the attack. Detectives counted 15 knife wounds in the neck.

From interviews with friends of the victim, Ybarrondo was able to reconstruct the events which led up to the murder. A boy friend had phoned Patricia about 7.30pm and spoke to her for several minutes. He then called back within an hour, but this time Patricia did not answer. It was during the time between the tow phone calls that police believed Patricia was raped and killed.

Detectives found a bath towel on the floor near the bed and the presence of water on the bathroom floor. They also found scratches on the exterior of the rear door. The house lights were still on when investigators entered the house. From this scanty evidence, Ybarrondo theorized that the victim, having returned home from work and spoken to her boy friend on the phone, entered the bathroom to take a shower. During this time, the killer forced the back door and entered the house. Confronting Patricia Franklin in the bathroom, he forced her into the bedroom. He cut down a Venetian-blind cord and tied up his victim. He then assaulted and killed her.

Investigators learned that Patricia Franklin was a diligent, kind person, not the type to make enemies. When police interviewed the victim's boy friends and acquaintances, they came up empty handed. Workers at Scripp's Clinic were unable to give probers a lead. Neighbours had seen nothing suspicious, heard nothing unusual that night. Police found no footprints outside the house, no physical evidence inside that they could attribute to Patricia's killer. A partial fingerprint was found in the bedroom, but it was not enough for identification purposes. After weeks of painstaking work, the investigators were no closer to finding a suspect in the murder.

Years were to pass before a solid lead developed. On February 15th, 1978, two schoolchildren returned to their Mira Mesa home for lunch and found the body of 28-year-old Linda Hewitt, their babysitter and mother of an infant son, sprawled on the floor, her body punctured by repeated stab wounds.

Detective Bob Quigley of San Diego was one of the probers assigned to the Linda Hewitt murder case. Quigley had investigated dozens of murders during his long career. The Linda Hewitt murder seemed to stand out from many of the others he had worked on. She had not died quickly. The killer had made the young woman suffer agonies before she died.

Her murder reminded the detective of another case he had investigated a few years before. Linda Hewitt and Patricia Franklin had not known each other. They had come from different backgrounds, had lived in different parts of the city and had been killed four years apart. Yet it appeared that the two women shared one thing in common - they had somehow met and been killed by the same man.

Linda Hewitt, like Patricia Franklin, had been savagely raped before her death. The young mother's hands had been stabbed repeatedly with a knife. The placement and repetition of the stab wounds caught the detective's eye. Her throat had been slashed, her spinal cord severe, her kidneys and back punctured several times.

Detectives learned that Linda Hewitt had lived in East San Diego, but had moved a few days before the murder to a trailer park in National City, a blue-collar suburb a few times from the Mexican border. Further investigation revealed that she had broken up with her boy friend only a few days before she moved. Detective Quigley interviewed the boy friend, a sailor, who was able to produce witnesses verifying that he was on board ship during the time the murder was committed.

Quigley next questioned bus drivers in an attempt to learn whether any remembered a passenger matching Linda Hewitt's description. None could. However, Quigley was able to turn up a witness who had seen Linda in Mira Mesa briefly on the morning she was killed.

A box of diapers had been found in the house where the victim had been babysitting. The investigator traced the sales receipt to a Mira Mesa drugstore, where an assistant said he remembered a customer matching Linda Hewitt's description. He said she purchased the diapers, while a man behind her pushed a baby pram. The assistant was unable to remember what the man looked like.

Quigley believed that there was a connection between Linda Hewitt and the man behind her pushing the baby pram. The baby was undoubtedly Linda's. It was unlikely that the mother would leave her baby at home alone while running to the drugstore to buy diapers. Quigley wanted very much to talk to the man. At the very least, he was one of the last person to see Linda Hewitt alive. At most, he could be a suspect in the girl's killing.

The drugstore assistant, although unable to describe the man with Linda, was willing to help in the investigation and agreed to be questioned by police under hypnosis. And it was soon apparent that he had observed more than he was consciously aware of. While in a hypnotic trance, he described the person to be a short man of medium build, somewhere in his early 20s. He wore a tight T-shirt and blue jeans. He was also clean-shaven and wore short hair, such as might be found on men in the military. And although the description was short on details and long on generalizations, it did lead probers to a suspect in the case.

One of the crime-scene investigators had discovered a fingerprint inside the home where Linda was slain. The location of the print indicated that it could have been left by the killer. Though smudged, the print appeared clear enough to be usable for a positive identification if probers located a suspect.

Not until a month later - on March 24th, 1978 - did police come up with a suspect in the two sex-related slayings. On that date, Louisiana sheriff's deputies, acting on an interstate fugitive warrant, arrested a young Marine corporal named Billy Lee Chadd. He was taken into custody in Lafayette, a small college town about 120 miles from New Orleans. The interstate teletype, issued by Chula Vista police, reported that Chadd was the primary suspect in a dual rape case which Chula Vista detectives were investigating.

ON MARCH 2nd, 1978, a Chula Vista woman had awakened to find a man standing in her bedroom, wielding a machete. He'd placed the blade edge of the weapon to her throat and raped her repeatedly. When her 17-year-old daughter entered the bedroom, the intruder assaulted her as well. The disturbance awakened other members of the family, which included the teenager's four sisters and her grandparents. The rapist held them at bay with the machete and herded everyone into the living room, where he directed the eldest daughter to tie and gag her sisters and grandparents.

The mother and daughter were bound and gagged, then forced into a car driven by the assailant. He drove east through Chula Vista and continued until he reached a remote and sparsely-populated section of the county, where he let them out. They were found walking along the roadway by a US Customs officer.

The mother, the wife of the Naval officer, told Chula Vista police that she recognized the man who raped her and her daughter. She told investigators she had visited Balboa Naval Hospital for a doctor's appointment. While waiting to see the doctor, she had talked briefly with a Marine corporal who was on duty at the hospital. The corporal, clipboard in hand, had asked the woman her name and address, saying that he merely needed the information to fill out a benefits form.

The next time she saw the Marine was in her bedroom, holding a machete knife in his hand. The Navy wife said she immediately recognized the Marine. Apparently the rapist was aware that she had recognized him, for on the car trip he kept saying: "You know me, don't you?"

With this information. Chula Vista detectives contacted the Navy, which checked through duty rosters and came up with the name of Billy Chadd, a Marine corporal who had been attached briefly to the hospital. Police rushed to Chadd's home on the small coastal town of Imperial Beach, where the suspect lived with his wife and 6-month-old child. The car was gone from the driveway. And neighbours told investigators that Chadd had been seen packing the car several days earlier, apparently preparing for a long trip. Chula Vista police, suspecting that Chadd was on the run, quickly issued a fugitive warrant.

After Chadd's apprehension, he was brought back to San Diego. The tow rape victims had no trouble in picking him out of a police lineup. After interviewing the suspect, detectives booked Chadd on rape, kidnapping and robbery charges. He was taken to the San Diego County jail to await trial.

Chadd was still awaiting trial when he received a visit from Detective-Sergeant Ybarrondo. The investigator had been tipped off by a prison inmate that Chadd might be responsible for the murder of Patricia Franklin. Chadd, in an expansive mood, had boasted of murdering a woman in Linda Vista in 1974.

Billy Chadd was at first unwilling to discuss the murder. Despite repeated attempts to draw information out of the inmate, the investigator was unable to get the quiet, soft-spoken Chadd to talk.

Then, some months later, in December, Ybarrondo again went to interview Billy Chadd, this time at the inmate’s insistence. Apparently the long months in jail had loosened his tongue, for the accused rapist was eager to discuss the rape and murder of Patricia Franklin and Linda Hewitt.

Under skilled questioning, Chadd detailed the gruesome events that led to the blood-frenzied stabbing death of the Scripp's Clinic secretary.

On the night of July 26th, 1974, Chadd said, he was driving around Linda Vista looking for a place to burgle. He was out of work - he had been fired from his job at a boatyard after he threatened to "rearrange the face of the foreman with a claw-hammer" - and had resorted to robbery to support himself and his family.

He said he saw a light on in a house and sized it up as "a good place to rob." He went to the front door with a 9-mm. pistol in his hand, but suddenly lost his nerve and returned to his car. A short time later, he returned, his courage now bolstered by a few quick beers. He went to the side of the house and forced the door.

"I surprised this chick coming out of the bathroom," Chadd confessed. He said he held the gun on the frightened woman and forced her to the bedroom, where he cut down a venation-blind cord and tied her to the bed. He then started to strangle the woman. When she passed out, he revived her with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Asked why he revived the girl, Chadd smiled. Creating the fear of death was a "high", a "trip" he enjoyed taking. He said he had raped a girl before and had enjoyed the experience. Murder was something new. He said he enjoyed torturing Patricia Franklin. "I brought her back to life so as not to be cheated of seeing her suffer more," he said. After reviving her, Chadd said, he finished her off by plunging his knife into her neck 12 times.

He said he felt no remorse over killing the defenceless woman. He was giddy with excitement when he left the Franklin home. "I laughed on the way home. I wasn't afraid or sorry. I felt good."

AS FOR Linda Hewitt, Chadd said their meeting came about by accident. He had dropped off his car in National City for repairs and was on a bus when he struck up a conversation with the young mother who was sitting near him. He accompanied Linda Hewitt and her 4-year-old boy to Mira Mesa. Chadd said he was attracted to the young mother with the pretty smile - and he became angry when she turned him away at the front door to the Mira Mesa home, where she babysat for the owner's children.

He forced his way into the house and dragged the terrified woman into the bedroom, where he stripped her and sexually assaulted her. Chadd said the woman did not resist him. He held his pocketknife to her throat and threatened to kill her and her son if she did not comply with his animal desires.

After he raped her, Chadd said, he let her get up and get dressed, but then changed his mind. In the living-room, he cut down a piece of cord and tied her hands. Once she was securely bound. Chadd began stabbing his victim.

"I stabbed her in the kidneys, severed her spinal cord, cut her throat," he said with a grin. At one point, he dropped the knife and began to strangle her. Linda's son began to move towards the knife on the floor and Linda cried out for Chadd to move the knife so that her boy would not be hurt. "I had already threatened to break the little bastard's neck," Chadd recalled. He said he picked up the knife and finished Linda Hewitt off, slashing her throat while her startled, uncomprehending offspring looked on.

Again, Chadd was remorseless. "I was laughing as I watched her eyes bulge and her body start to convulse," he recalled.

UNDER YBARRONDO'S questioning, Chadd admitted that the two women were not his only victims. In August, 1975, Chadd said, he was on holiday in Las Vegas and met Delmar Bright, a waiter at one of the city’s hotels. Chadd said Bright propositioned him and paid Chadd to pose in the nude. During the picture session, the waiter asked Chadd cared to engage in. "Bondage," was Chadd's one-word reply.

Chadd, who said he had experienced homosexual lovemaking while an inmate in the California Youth Authority, tied up Bright and stated that he was going to kill him. When Bright screamed for mercy, Chadd grabbed the helpless man and proceeded to strangle and stab him until he was dead. Las Vegas authorities later confirmed that a man named Delmar Bright had been killed in a motel room in the manner described by Chadd.

Chadd also admitted to killing a man in Ellsworth, Kansas, in June, 1974. Chadd related that he got into a fight with an older man and crushed the man’s skull with a rock. He then threw the body into a nearby river.

"I found myself thinking how easy it was to actually kill a person," he later wrote of the incident. "We die quite easily, you know. I wanted to share my new feelings with everyone."

Kansas authorities, however, had no record of finding the body of the man Chadd said he had killed. Though Chadd had no reason to lie, police needed more evidence in order to bring charges against the self-professed murderer.

Following his confession, Billy Chadd was returned to his cell. With time on his hands, Chadd began to write his memoirs, which he titled Dark Secrets - and to plot out his future. It didn't look good. He would be tried on murder, rape, robbery and kidnapping charges in California. If he managed to beat the courts there, then he would stand trial in Las Vegas.

At best, he would end up with a life sentence without possibility of parole. The way Chadd looked at it, a life sentence was a fate worse than death. The cold, grey walls were all he had to look forward to. And he knew he would not last long in that environment.

In the first weeks of December, 1978, Chadd complained of mental depressions and was visited by a county psychiatrist, who prescribed strong tranquillisers for the inmate. Chadd, however, managed to "tongue" the capsules until he had collected 40 pills - enough to literally kill a horse. On January 2nd, 1979, he attempted suicide by swallowing the pills in his cell. Only the quick actions of a sheriff's deputy saved Chadd's life.

THE INMATE'S brush with suicide, however, only whetted his appetite. Obsessed with the torture and murder of others in the past, Chadd was now consumed with the idea of his own destruction. When he first appeared in court, Chadd pleaded guilty to the murder of Patricia Franklin and Linda Hewitt and expressed his desire to sentenced to death.

The plea surprised Judge Charles Snell, who told Chadd that he could not plead guilty to a capital case in Municipal Court. He would have to wait until his case reached Superior Court.

Chadd received the news with little expression. He knew how the courts worked. Three weeks later, he again pleaded guilty to the murders, this time before Superior Court Judge Earl Gilliam. Judge Gilliam, like Judge Snell, refused to accept the plea and ordered Chadd to undergo psychiatric tests.

Two psychiatrists, Dr. Carl E. Lengyel and Dr. Bernard Hansen, gave independent examinations to the slightly-built inmate. On February 7th, they reported to Judge Ben Hamrick in a court hearing that Chadd was mentally competent and very much aware of what he was doing. When one of the doctors asked his why he was trying to plead guilty, Chadd replied: "To save a lot of my time in prison. It will cut the time in prison and bypass some courts. If I get death, I will not stay very long. I prefer death to life imprisonment. I am wanted in three states. One will give me the gas."

On February 16th, one year to the day after Linda Hewitt was raped, tortured and murdered, Billy Chadd pleaded guilty to first-degree murder.

Judge Gilliam listened while the defendant calmly recounted the grisly details of the murder of Patricia Franklin and Linda Hewitt and the rape and kidnapping of the Chula Vista mother and her daughter.

After detailed legal procedures, Judge Gilliam accepted Chadd's plea of guilty. The defendant was then scheduled to appear before a jury, which would decide whether he would get the death sentence former Marine to find pleasure in the torture and murder of three - possibly four - persons and now encouraged him to seek his own death?

Though the answer to that question might never be learned, a clue was provided when an envelope covered with drawings and scribbled Latin phrases was found stuck between pages of Chadd's manuscript.

The envelope showed drawings of a bearded goat's head with horns and a flowing beard, set inside a five-pointed star and a circle. Surrounding the drawing was the inscription: "In Nomine Di Nosiri Satanis, Luciferie Excelsie." The words, translated from Latin, were said to mean: "In the name of our Satan, Lucifer on highest."

A San Diego priest, who has studied cults and lectured on the subject of Satanic worship, said it was his belief that the inscription was a rough translation of Latin and that the writer perhaps meant to say: "In the name of our God, Satan Lucifer on Highest."

The cleric said that the goat's head was the Goat of Mendes, a Santanic symbol since medieval times. He added that the star was also a medieval symbol associated with devil worship.

All of this possibly gives some clue as to why Billy Chadd felt pleasure in torturing and murdering his victims and was able "to laugh on the way home" from the murder of Patricia Franklin.

Perhaps he did worship Satan. Certainly he reveled in the horrors and abnormal lusts that appeal to devil worshippers and other cultists. Or perhaps the trauma of his teenage years, several of them spent in juvenile reformatory, was to blame for his later depraved behaviour. In Dark Secrets, he wrote that he was a wild youth and was frequently in trouble with the police. In 1971, he was sentenced to the California Youth Authority on a rape charge - a crime he maintains he was innocent of. He escaped twice from CYA and "on my second escape, I really did rape a woman, mainly to see what it was like. Later that night, I thought about the rape and I decided it wasn't bad at all. I knew I would do it again."

After his arrest, he was sent to Youth Training School, a facility for juvenile offenders, which young Chadd laughingly referred to as a "Gladiator School." He tried to hand himself, failed miserably, then was sent to Atascadero State Hospital, an institution for the mentally ill.

Therapists and psychiatrists were supposed "to shrink" him back from the edge of madness. Instead, during his stay at the remformatory, Chadd was introduced to heroin use and homosexual relationships.

Such was the early life of Billy Chadd. The jury, however, did not have to determine the difficult question of motivation. Their job was much easier. They had to decide whether the crimes committed by Billy Lee Chadd warranted life imprisonment without possibility of parole - or the death sentence.

Defendant Billy Chadd had expressed his desire for the death sentence. He sat quietly in the courtroom while jurors listened to the evidence. He had refused to take the witness-stand during the penalty phase of the trial.

The evidence, which included portions of Dark Secrets and interviews with police investigators, was more than enough to convince the jurors. They deliberated less than two hours before reaching a verdict. On May 12th, 1979, Billy Lee Chadd was sentenced to die in the gas chamber at San Quentin.

"Death is an erotic experience for him." David Pitkin, the defendant's court-appointed attorney, told reporters after the trial. "He's looking forward to it."

And perhaps he was. As Billy Lee Chadd left the San Diego courthouse, he had a smile on his lips.

The Poison-Pen Murder

By John Mead
Master Detective
December 1979

In the early 1880s, Mme. Lenormand, once a leading Paris hostess and now married to a much younger man, suspected that he was being unfaithful to her. So she got in touch with a private detective agency, one of whose agents - a man called Morin - was destined for a violent death.

It was in August, 1883, that Mme. Jeannette Hugues, the beautiful 28-year-old wife of Clovis Hugues, the Deputy for Marseilles, discovered that Morin was bandying her name about in connection with possible divorce proceedings between the Lenormands.

An incensed Mme. Hugues took a revolver and went to Mme. Lenormand's home, intending to kill her. But her husband followed her and seized the pistol before she could carry out her intention. Then, on September 1st, she was dissuaded from carrying the revolver when, with two friends, she insisted on a confrontation with one Clerget, the head of the detective agency. Clerget was all apologies, insisting that his agency's job was merely to ascertain addresses and it was Morin - who had left the agency - who was slandering Mme. Hugues.

All was quiet for a few weeks - until Mme. Hugues learned that Mme. Lenormand was paying another agency 25,000 francs to implicate her. On October 29th, she tried to visit Mme. Lenormand to insist on a showdown – only to be told that the latter was dying. She did in fact die on November 6th, just as a police investigation into the affair was about to conclude. A few days later, Morin faced his judges and received a two-year jail sentence.

However, his lawyers counseled an appeal. Formalities dragged on - it was not till November 27th, 1884, that he appeared in court again. But for the previous fortnight Mme. Hugues, her revolver at the ready, had been frequenting the central area of Paris, where Morin lived. She couldn't trace him there, but decided to act when she learned the date of his appeal. That day, she waited at the Palais de Justice for him. Only minutes after he emerged from the courtroom, she shot him repeatedly.

The case was a sensation well before her trial opened in Paris in January, 1885. Would she be acquitted, this victim of a long series of poison-pen letters, slanders and gossip? Was she not right to be impatient with the state of the law which seemed powerless to punish her slanderers?

When her trial for premeditated murder opened, the Palais de Justice was under siege from the public, many of whom waited all night to get into court. When the doors were opened, the noisy throng swept in, taking not merely all the public seats, but jostling for places with officials, lawyers and reporters. "It was as though the street and the market had invaded the court," one newspaper recorded.

It took over an hour for the president of the court, M. Bernard des Glajeux, to introduce some sort of order into the densely-packed room. Yet tall, deathly-pale and dressed in black, Mme. Hugues was very much in command of herself - and soon of the court - as she replied in sonorous tones to the president's questions.

He recalled that on November 27th, as Morin was the first to come out of the court, she came up behind him with her husband and her lawyer, Mâitre Gatineau.

Mme. Hugues interjected: "Not at all. Morin followed us. He went by me for a moment and, as he did so, he eyed me up and down in the insolent way he had. Then I seized my revolver which I had hidden under my coat and fired pointblank at him."

The president: "You had planned to strike. On November 13th, you bought cartridges and, on the evening of the 27th, an overnight bag was found packed at your home, in case you went to jail."

Mme. Hugues: "Just so, I'd had enough. I din’t want to be legally investigated side by side with Morin."

"Your hand didn't tremble. A witness has said that you were 'as still as a statue'."

"That's true. I had hesitated several times. But on November 27th, my mind was made up. I was resolved to kill this man – so much so that, thinking that he might have a revolver as well and might kill me, I went on the morning of the 27th to say goodbye to my children.”

"You had an extraordinary calm."

"It was an artificial coolness," replied the defendant. Then she added vehemently: "If I'd had 50 bullets, I would have used them all on Morin."

When the president asked: "Why did you kill this man?" she replied that she was in Marseilles when a telegram from her father brought her urgently to Paris. She found that Mme. Lenormand had involved her in slander, paying witnesses to say that she was once M. Lenormand’s mistress.

Mme. Hugues now told the court: "That's just how it was. I went to Mme. Corbion with my husband and our friend M. Georges Meusy, legal editor of l'Intransigeant. Mme. Corbion told me that she had never uttered the slander that Morin attributed to her. In fact, she had angrily showed Morin the door and said she would help me to nail the lie…

I went to Mme. Lenormand, asking her to repudiate the slander. She refused, then suggested that if I felt aggrieved I should go to law. She laughed at me, saying, 'What's one lover in a woman's lifetime? Lenormand is a handsome chap, so I don't blame you. I fell for him - and I was 15 years older'."

Mme. Hugues went on: "I said I wanted a straight yes or no as to whether she had paid people to slander me. All she would say was that the dossier on the separation proceedings was at my disposal at the office of the legal authorities.

"I had a revolver. But my husband tore it out of my hands."

The president: "So you wanted to kill Mme. Lenormand?"

Mme. Hugues: "If she hadn't given me the satisfaction I demanded, then…" she shrugged her shoulders.

She added that she went to the Parquet (the office of the public prosecutor) in Paris to try to see the "evidence" gathered by Morin. But they referred her to the Parquet of Rouen, who refused to give her details, asking her to wait until the case came up two months later. So she went to Clerget, who told her that Morin was now on his own.

Mme. Hugues added: "I didn't want to spend my life struggling against the plots of Mme. Lenormand. I decided to have done with her and, unknown to my husband, I returned to her place.

"Her son told me that she was dying and tried to stop me. There was a struggle. 'I want to kill your mother' I cried.

And I’ll be back!’ I had my pistol with me. The son snatched it from me with the help of a gendarme.”

When Morin was sentenced, she said she would use her influence to help him - so long as he admitted that he had slandered her. All he replied was, 'To hell with Clovis Hugues and his wife - I'll get out of this by myself! Anyway, I know important people who will say that she was the mistress of Lenormand'."

Mme. Hugues continued: "Meanwhile, my husband kept getting poison-pen letters and filthy postcards about me - so now you can understand my need for vengeance."

The president: "It was the postcard slanders that determined you to kill?"

Mme. Hugues: "Yes."

The president: "The postcards were certainly horrible. Your husband was accused of every natural and unnatural crime. They are so horrible that I cannot read them out in court."

In further evidence, Mme. Hugues said that when she made her offer to Morin, the entire Press - even those most hostile to her husband's political opinions - were united in condemnation of her slanderers.

The president: "Nothing can justify the killing of Morin, nor even explain it. Murder is never justified."

Mme. Hugues: "So you count all my suffering for nothing?"

The president: "You killed him after waiting for 15 months. One would have thought you would have sought immediate vengeance."

Mme. Hugues: "But he had a down on me - he treated me as if I were an insect under his feet. He was at liberty to go on scheming vilely against me. That's why I killed him. If I'd killed him before his case came on, people would have said I was frightened because he knew something about me… I didn't kill Morin the false witness. I killed Morin the persistent slanderer."

The president: "You know that on his deathbed, in that supreme hour when no one lies, Morin saw all the obscene letters sent to you. He couldn't speak, but each letter was shown to him and he was asked whether he knew the writer. He shook his head. Then he asked for a pencil and painfully, with death already paralyzing his hand, he wrote, 'It's not me - I'm innocent, innocent'."

Mme. Hugues: "I know the cards were not in his handwriting. But I'm certain they came from one of his friends."

When the president pointed out that many of the letters and cards were postmarked in Marseilles, where her husband had enemies (and where Morin had never been), Mme. Hugues replied sharply: "Very well - find out their author's identity! Until then, I accuse Morin!"

The president: "Your vengeance was cruel. Morin was tortured for a fortnight, twisting in pain, had a horrible trepanning operation and his hands had to be bound so that he wouldn't tear off his bandages. You suffered, Madame.

But anguish for anguish, moral suffering for physical suffering, which of the two suffered more?"

Mme. Hugues: "I did."

Evidence of the killing was that Mme. Hugues coolly fired six times, "as in a shooting gallery" - and that when she had done so, her husband embraced her, crying: "Bravo, Jeannette, my angel! You've avenged us!"

M. Gobert, a handwriting expert, said that none of the letters and postcards in question were in Morin’s hand. All Morin's private papers had been examined and in none did the handwriting correspond to the poison-pen missives.

M. Bernard, the Advocate-General (prosecutor), argued that Mme. Hugues would have acted more wisely if she hadn't made such a vast stir about an admitted calumny. The Press, he argued, had acted in the public interest in championing her, so surely Mme. Hugues should have been satisfied with such reparation?

M. Bernard contended that no one had the right to take the law into their own hands, especially at a time when so many "crimes of passion" were growing. "A verdict of acquittal," he declared, "would legalise a right to murder."

Maitre Gatineau painted a picture of a deeply-suffering woman pursued by the authors of the filthy vendetta, who had gone so far as to send slanderous cards about her to such public figures as Victor Hugo.

After a two-hour retirement, the jury found her not guilty. As the verdict was announced, the cheering in court could be heard all along the boulevards.

It was a sensational case, but what stayed in the memory of many journalists were the lively scenes when the court was invaded by all and sundry (no less that 40,000) people had applied for official tickets of admission). "It was," said one reporter, "an unheard-of, shameful, disgusting spectacle, with tarts, criminals and riff-raff jostling with respectable citizens to get a glimpse of Mme. Jeannette Hugues."