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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 9, No. 44 |
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THE NEW JEFF TURNER MYSTERY
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of TheColumnists.com
"You've got to
see this one," Carter told me one Saturday morning about
6 a.m. when I was already seriously considering going back to
bed and pulling the covers over my head. "This guy is trying
to tell us something, but nobody can figure out what it is."
Lt. Carter was talking about the latest serial killer who was driving the cops in Beverly Hills nuts. His victims were murdered quietly and almost antiseptically. There were never any signs of a struggle and the victims, all young women, were then cleaned up, arranged as if on display in a department store window and "tagged" with some sort of "props" that apparently were brought in by the killer. Clearly, he was "signing" his victims, but detectives were stumped as to what sort of message he was trying to convey.
"Are you saying you'll let me enter the crime scene and take a look?" I asked Carter.
"Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Most of us agree we need a fresh perspective from somebody we can trust to keep all the details confidential."
Okay, that was unusual, coming from a high-ranking officer in the detective bureau. No, make that extraordinary. You see, I'm Jeff Turner and I work for Investigative Features, more commonly known around the U.S. as IF, Inc. I write for our online tabloid magazine and frequently go on camera with my stories, if they're big enough to warrant a spot on our nationally syndicated half-hour TV show. As you probably know, cops don't much like tabloids or the TV shows that they spawn.
But I pride myself on restraining my sensationalism, so the cops haven't had it in for me for a long, long time. What's more, I've exposed a lot of white collar crooks in show business and even led them to a killer not long ago, so the D.A.'s office has happily followed my lead and taken them to jail. If the D.A. likes you, it helps a lot down at the station, whether it's the L.A.P.D., the sheriff's office or one of the other departments, like the Beverly Hills P.D., where Carter works.
And then there's the fact that Bob Carter and I go back a long ways together. We met at San Jose State University where I was taking a beginning journalism class that police majors were required to take. The future cops in the class were supposed to learn something about writing more accurate police reports. I'm not sure those classes helped Carter much, but we'd been pals ever since those days in class together, grousing about what a cheeseball course it was.
Anyway, I got the location details from Carter and tooled over to the crime scene--one of those cozy little luxury cottages on the grounds of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Most of the dick squad in Beverly Hills knew me by sight and Carter must have told them I was coming because they waved me through the lines and past the uniformed cop at the door to the cottage. I nodded to Bob as I entered the place and looked around.
"Deja vu all over again," I said. "I think I've been in this one before. I think I did an interview here with Cherie Lunghi, the British actress, back in the 1980s," I told him.
"Never heard of her," said Carter, "but I doubt the place was decorated like this the last time you were here."
He was certainly right about that. I followed him into the bedroom, which I smelled long before I saw anything. Crime scenes aren't always good places to take a deep breath--and neither was this one, but not for the usual reasons. It smelled like a flower shop with a busted air conditioner. There were two dead women, both stark naked, both covered with blossoms. They were young and good-looking and both were holding what appeared to be maracas in each hand.
"Jesus," I said. "This is too weird. Who are they?"
Carter looked at his notebook and said,
"The blonde is Gale Sullivan and the brunette is Doris Holly.
They're both music majors at UCLA. Both have good reps, no criminal
records and were doing well in their classes. Sullivan's from
Whittier and Holly from Santa Monica. They both died from asphyxiation.
They were suffocated."
I felt especially creepy about this setup because the girls'
eyes were closed, there was no blood, no sign of trauma. They
looked as if they were just taking a nap together on the queen-sized
bed. The blonde was covered with pink blossoms up to her chest,
the brunette with white blossoms in the same manner. When I looked
closer, I could see the little gourd-like maracas were fixed
to their hands with rubber bands.
"Kander, the cop at the door, is a garden freak and says these are cherry and apple blossoms," said Carter.
As I stared at the bizarre scene, a tune began to run through my head. That was weird, too, because I hadn't heard that tune in maybe 40 years.
"Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White," I said.
"What?" said Parker.
"The song: 'Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White,'" I repeated. "It was a big hit back in the Fifties. Big Latino band charted the record--The Prez Prado Orchestra."
Carter looked at me funny, then wrote down what I'd said in his notebook. As he did, I realized the maracas sort of fit with the song title, too.
"You think..." I began.
"Better than anything the rest of us came up with," said Carter. "Tell me more."
I didn't really know much more off the top of my head. The song came from the score of a "B" movie called "Underwater!" that John Sturges made at RKO before the studio went bankrupt. It starred Jane Russell and was in one of the early widescreen processes called SuperScope, which was RKO's belated answer to Fox's CinemaScope. I think it was about undersea treasure hunters and all I could remember about it was that it wasn't very good and that they'd used a body double in a swimsuit in the ad for the movie and attached Russell's head to it.
So, I went back to the department with Carter, went online to the Internet Movie Database and pulled up the movie, which had come out in 1955, more than half a century earlier. He seemed fascinated by all the stuff about the movie and took a lot of notes off the screen, then printed out a lot more.
"I've read a little about this guy," I told Carter, "but I don't remember reading anything as weird as these 'clues' or whatever you want to call them that he leaves behind. You really think he's trying to deliver some kind of message?"
"That's the consensus," he said. "But the reason you haven't read about these things is that we haven't let any specifics about them come out so far."
I knew it was standard procedure to hold back some crucial details that only the killer would know if they questioned suspects and wound up getting some jerk who made a habit of confessing to crimes he didn't do.
When I asked Carter if the victims were linked in any way, he said the only two who may have known each other were the two dead college girls on the bed. They at least were on the same campus and were music majors. They had turned up no links between the other victims, except that the bodies all were found within the city limits of Beverly Hills. Other than that, the "signature clues" were the only things any of the victims had in common so far.
I was about to ask Carter about some of the other "clues," but he was way ahead of me. He brought four file folders and placed them on a desk in front of me. Each file had the names of the victims on them and the word "Markers." He explained that these files contained photos and information about each crime scene involved.
The first one I pulled out contained a photo of another young, very beautiful woman who was completely naked, but for a large rose that covered her vaginal area. The photo was black and white.
"What color was the rose?" I asked.
"Yellow," he said.
I started to speak and he cut me off.
"That's why I was so interested in your song title idea," he said. "One of the guys reminded us there's a song called 'Yellow Rose of Texas.' Maybe we're onto something here."
I held up my hand to him, asking him to hold that thought while I rambled around in my own memory. Then something clicked.
"That's an old song," I told
Parker. "Maybe even a traditional American song from the
old days. I know Roy Rogers, the singing cowboy, did a movie
in the early 1940s called 'Yellow Rose of Texas' and sang it
in the film. But Mitch Miller had a big hit record of it when
I was a little kid. Let me look it up."
I went back online and quickly came up with the Mitch Miller
record, which was one of the Billboard magazine top 10
hits of 1955.
"Bob, that's two 'clues' that are linked to the year 1955. Let me run through the rest of these files quickly."
I saw nothing that clicked in my mind in the next two folders, but the last of the four photos showed a dead girl sitting in a chair with a large coil of chain piled up between her feet. I went back to the PC and printed out a list of the Top 40 pop music hits of 1955. Sure enough, there was the title I hoped to find: "Unchained Melody."
After I'd finished studying the photos, Carter passed them around to some of the other detectives in the office and told them to think about 1950s "oldies, but goodies" for links. Pretty soon one of them picked up a photo of a dead girl whose body had been tied to a large grandfather clock. He pointed out a circle of stones around the clock that I'd missed.
"What year did 'Rock Around the Clock' come out?" he asked.
"You nailed it," I said. "That was 1955, too."
In fact, that hit by Bill Haley and the Comets was the clarion call for the new age of Rock 'n Roll--and it came from the MGM movie "Blackboard Jungle." I didn't even have to look that one up: I knew it came out in 1955.
That left only one remaining folder--the one for the killer's earliest victim, a teenager named Julie Moroni who'd been poisoned and her body found nude in a plastic bag of yard clippings at a dump site last September. She was the only victim who hadn't been "displayed," according to Carter. They had found no set-up "clues" like the others and had kept her on the list only as a possible tie-in because of the "clean" way she was killed.
But when I picked up the crime scene photos, I had to disagree with him. The "clue" stood out like a thumb in your eye.
"Maybe this one wasn't set up quite like an exhibit, Bob, but it sure ties in," I told him. "These aren't just mixed up yard clippings. There's nothing here but leaves--great big ones. Do you have that printout of the 1955 hit parade handy?"
He handed it to me and I scanned it quickly. Sure enough, there it was on the list: The hit piano instrumental by Roger Williams: "Autumn Leaves."
Carter introduced the concept of a link to the 1955 Hit Parade at a press conference the following morning and asked the public to call in any tips that might relate to that topic. He very kindly cited me as the source for this lead, which made my bosses at IF pretty happy. I wasn't so sure it was that big a favor, though. If it didn't pan out, Carter could always blame me and the media for screwing up the investigation.
Now I know I told you I'm not very big on sensationalism, but I do work for what amounts to a tabloid, so I wasn't surprised to learn IF had started calling this "The Case of the 'Oldies But Goodies' Killer." I was stuck with it--and, worse yet, I was also stuck with answering hundreds of phone calls and emails from the public with "tips" about where to find the killer. I'd never heard such a bunch of hooey in my life, but then, two days later, I got a call from a guy I knew who worked for an FM station in Long Beach. He had the first tip that seemed the least bit credible.
"We have an 'Oldies, but Goodies'
call-in show on Sunday nights at 10," he said. "I remember
this crazy guy yelling and screaming because one of our callers
had claimed the rock and roll era began in 1956 and he insisted
it was 1955.
He wouldn't calm down and we had to shut him off. He called the
station for days, bitching and griping about the bum information
we were putting out."
"Do you know who he was?" I asked, trembling a little with eagerness.
"Well, we know who he said he was," the radio guy said. "But we register the callers' phone numbers when they call the station and I'm sure we have it on record. If you want to come by the station in an hour or so, I'll try to have it ready for you by then."
Okay, now here's the point where you might ask why I didn't call Carter right away and pass the clue on to him. In retrospect, that would have been the smart thing to do, but don't forget what I do for a living. This could be a big story for IF, proving we'd been on the scent of the killer from the start. So, I figured to play the thing out just a little further before calling the cops.
It took me just about an hour to get to the station in Long Beach. The radio guy who called me--his name was Teddy Rains--handed me a sheet of paper with the name T.A. Bethune on it, along with a phone number and a street address in West Hollywood.
"You wanna hear the guy's call?" Teddy asked. "We saved that, too, for reasons I think you'll understand."
I understood, all right. The guy sounded like a total nut case. He ranted about some obscure r&b records from 1954 and "Sh-Boom" by The Crewcuts, but argued that 1955 was the year the new music was first called "rock and roll." He cited a whole bunch of references from magazines and books, but he talked so fast he sounded like an old record turntable spinning too fast to stay comprehensible. He was shouting "idiots" and pounding on something when they finally cut him off.
"Jesus," I said, "he sounds like he was calling direct from the rubber room at the asylum."
"Our thoughts exactly," Teddy said. "Do you think he might be the killer?"
"Even if he isn't, he sure as hell sounds like he needs a net over him," I said. "Thanks for this. I'll take it to the police right away. And keep this quiet, will you? If it pans out, we'll let the station know ASAP."
Naturally, I had no intention of taking this directly to the police, but I didn't want the station guy telling their news department about it and going on the air with the fact the police were checking out their caller.
Switching on my car's GPS system, I quickly located the address in West Hollywood and drove there. It turned out to be a beat-up looking duplex with a 1955 Chevy Malibu parked in the driveway. Whoever this Bethune guy was, he was certainly obsessive about 1955. I walked up to his side of the duplex and knocked. A moment later, I heard the little view port open and a rheumy eye peered out at me. Suddenly, the little door slammed and the big door opened.
"Jeff Turner!" the man said. "I recognize you from TV. What are you doing here?"
"Yes, that's me," I said. "Are you Mr. Bethune?"
"Terry Bethune," he said, shaking my hand. and motioned me inside.
He was a tall man who looked to be in his late 60s or early 70s, still reasonably fit, his gray-blond hair combed in a wavy style that was reminiscent of the late 1950s. I wondered if "Kookie" Byrnes ever loaned him a comb. In fact, he looked like somebody who might have hung out on the beach with Gidget in his youth.
"Are you here about my collection?" he asked.
I had no clue what "collection" he was talking about, but it seemed like a better excuse for my visit than any of the ones I had in mind.
"Yes," I said, grinning. "Any chance I could get a look at some of your stuff? I think it might make a good story for us."
"Sure, sure, you can," he said. His elation was impossible to conceal as he led me quickly into the master bedroom of the duplex and over to a door in the wall. "I keep most of it in the other duplex unit. I bought it just to store my collection."
The room he led me into was the twin to his own master bedroom--only there was no bedroom furniture there. One wall was festooned with posters for horror and sci-fi movies: "This Island Earth," "It Came From Beneath the Sea," "Conquest of Space," "Revenge of the Creature" and so on. Another wall had 45 rpm records in framed wall hangings with fan photos of the singers. A large poster from TV's "The $64,000 Question" dominated the room. It didn't take me long to figure out every item on display was from the year 1955.
We went into what had been the other bedroom, where Bethune had the walls decorated with framed life-size photos of all the 1955 Academy Award-winning actors: Ernest Borgnine, Anna Magnani, Jack Lemmon and Jo Van Fleet plus posters for all the nominated films--"Marty," "Picnic," "The Rose Tattoo," "Love Is A Many Splendored Thing" and "Mister Roberts." He had an enormous book shelf loaded with DVD copies or video cassettes of all the movies of 1955.
But the real treat was what used to be the living room. Bethune had carefully arranged life-sized models of the legends of Rock and Roll who began their march to fame with charted hits in 1955: Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Bill Haley, Bo Diddley and so on. They all looked like stiffs, ready to go into their acts.
"Hey, this is really impressive," I said. "What's the theme behind all this 1950s nostalgia?"
"The theme?" he asked, looking almost offended. "Isn't that obvious? The entire direction of American pop culture was changed forever in 1955. This whole exhibit is my tribute to 1955. I've spent most of my life in meticulous research just to permanently establish the exact year in which the rock revolution took hold. The publicity your show could give me might be the final push I need to finally make the world believe what I've accomplished."
I thought about that for a beat or two and then said, "I'm sure one question my producers will ask me is why you think that matters, Mr. Bethune? Do you think the world will really care if it was 1954 or 1955?"
"Do I think..." he began, his eyes dilating with obvious anger. And then he chuckled. A sense of calm seemed to come over him. "Say, Jeff," he said. "I hope you don't mind me calling you Jeff, but why do we want to do The Stroll around this issue when we both know why you're really here?"
I felt a chill at the sound of those words. His eyes had squinted down and he was smiling at me like that big game hunter in "The Most Dangerous Game," showing me his trophy room and watching my reaction when I saw the human heads among the lion and tiger heads.
"What do you mean?" I asked. 'I don't follow you."
"Sure, you do, Jeff. I'm not stupid. I know what you do for IF. You're their investigative reporter, not a feature man. You're here about the 'Oldies, but Goodies' murders, aren't you?"
I swallowed hard. He not only had made me, but I noticed he now had a sawed-off shotgun in his hands.
"That's one of the stories I'm working on," I managed to say, "but why would I come to you about that? And, more importantly, why are you pointing a gun at me?"
Bethune laughed out loud this time and shook his head at me as if I'd just said something totally idiotic.
"Because you're on to me now and that's where the clues wer supposed to lead," he said. "I have to say I had no idea you'd be the one to show up first, of course, but it took the cops forever to figure things out--and then it took you to put them onto the 1955 music angle, didn't it?"
"Are you telling me you did the murders?" I asked, sweating more by the minute.
"Of course I did the murders," said Bethune. "I've tried every possible way to draw the world's attention to what I've established about the importance of 1955 to the history of American pop culture, but nobody would let me do a book on it or a TV documentary or even do a special on me. The rock magazines all keep turning me down. But this event today should get everybody's attention, shouldn't it?"
Now I was really getting nervous. "What exactly do you mean by 'this event'?" I asked.
"Well," he said, "here's how I see it going now: The killer's identity finally comes out after the shooting death of the famous show business sleuth Jeff Turner during a police standoff with the killer. Then the killer commits suicide and the cops discover the killer's museum with all its exhibits and his accumulated research on the birth of rock and roll in 1955. I see big headlines, don't you?"
"Sure," I said, "but wouldn't you rather have me doing the story, so you know it'll be done right?"
"Oh, it'll be done right," he said. "You're not the only show biz reporter, you know. You're just the most famous one, which is why your death is so important to the story."
The idea of taking a blast from that wicked little shotgun of his definitely wasn't all that appealing, but he clearly had the drop on me. And there wasn't anything anywhere near me that I could hide behind. My only option was to stall him, but until what? Hell, he even seemed to want the cops to show up, so he could pump up the news value of this incident as big as possible.
"I don't understand why you'd want to take your own life," I said. "Don't you want to be part of the debate and see how this all turns out?"
He chuckled again. "I'm way ahead of you, Jeff. I've recorded on video everything they need to know about the murders. It amounts to my confession, but with all the information about the importance of 1955 included. Every news agency will be playing my tapes. You know it and I know it."
He was right, of course. He was a nutcase, but he knew how tabloid journalism worked and he was going to make as big a splash as he thought he would.
"Do you tell why you picked these young women to die?" I asked him.
"Naturally," he said. "And I must say I'm very disappointed in you for not figuring that out for yourself. Each victim's first name corresponded to the name of a female pop singer on the 1955 charts. The first one, Julie Moroni, was for Julie London, who first recorded her 'Cry Me A River' in 1955. Georgia Ebersol, the 'Unchained Melody' girl, was for Georgia Gibbs, who had 'Tweedle Dee' and "Dance With Me, Henry' on the '55 charts. And so on up to the last two--Doris Holly and Gale Sullivan for Doris Day and Gale Storm. And I hope you noticed how little they suffered. I chloroformed them, then smothered them with a pillow. They never felt a thing."
I was appalled. This freak had sacrificed the lives of six young women simply because of their first names. And for what? To prove some arcane point that nobody but a halfwit would care about anyway.
"But I don't get why you felt you had to turn to murder to get the publicity you wanted," I said. "Couldn't you have just blown yourself away in some spectacular fashion and achieved the same ends?"
"Don't be silly," Bethune snarled. "People don't care how many lunatics jump off tall buildings or set themselves on fire. And that's what they'll call me--a lunatic. Only in this case, everyone will want to know how and why I murdered the girls, so my story will get much longer mileage."
His instincts were correct again. This guy had everything worked out to his own absurd sort of logic. I assumed my only chance of surviving this was to rush him at any sign he was directing the muzzle of the shotgun away from me. But he hadn't wavered a second so far.
"Well, I suppose the time has come to get the final act in motion," said Bethune and took his cellphone out of his pocket. "I just need to call the police and let them know who I am and who I have at gunpoint in West Hollywood."
And that's when the phone rang in his hand. He looked as shocked as if Jesus himself had just rung him up. I guessed Bethune wasn't a very social guy and rarely got any phone calls. He pushed the button to take the call and his eyes grew wide when he heard whoever was calling. He also dipped the shotgun toward the floor, so that's when I made my move and tackled the bastard right at the knees. The gun went off and blew out the front window of the house, then went skittering across the hardwood floor. I scrambled with him for a moment, then got my hands around his throat and started choking him. A moment later, the front door crashed in and police were all over the room. I got slowly to my feet as Bethune was yanked out from under me, slammed against a wall and cuffed. I saw Lt. Carter standing in the doorway, shaking his head at me.
"Well, can't you even say 'Thank you, Lt. Carter,'" he said.
"Thank you, thank you, for sure," I said. "But what the hell just happened, Bob?"
"You can thank the radio news director out in Long Beach," said Carter. "He saw you come into the station, recognized you and jumped on your friend Teddy Rains as soon as you left. When he found out what you were up to, he called us right away and tried to cut you out of the story."
"So, how did that result in you and an army of cops saving my ass in the nick of time?"
"That was the easy part. Once we had Bethune's name, we ran a system check on him and turned up an assault conviction, several bar brawls with charges of battery against him and a commitment to Atascadero on a mental. The guy's been out less than a year--and obviously not taking his meds. When we learned all his troubles were over this 1955 obsession of his, we decided to respond in force."
When they saw my car parked in front of the duplex, they decided to surveil the place before pounding on the door. With a listening device, they heard enough of our conversation to figure he was armed and holding me at gunpoint. Taking a shot at him through the drapes was out, so they counted on distracting him long enough to gain entry and take him out before he fired on me.
"So was that you who called him on his cellphone?" Carter nodded and grinned. "So what did you say to him?"
"I told him I was Dick Clark, that rock and roll started in 1954 and that he was a dickbrain for saying it started in '55," said Carter.
As it turned out, Bethune's master plan didn't wear so well. I broke the story on IF-TV, but IF let the Long Beach radio station have a simulcast at my urging. I mean, after all, their attempt to screw me probably saved my life. The publicity was as enormous as Bethune had hoped for, but even before the papers could carry the story, thieves broke into Bethune's house and cleaned out virtually every item from his fabled "collection," including the life-size models. That was only a temporary humiliation for the P.D. for not securing their crime scene properly and didn't hurt the court case because Bethune never was formerly prosecuted. As soon as he learned his stuff had been ripped off, he slit his own throat with a shank some other inmate had made from a part of a jail bedframe and bled out before anybody knew he had cut himself. He was history before the paperwork even cleared the D.A.'s desk.
Later, we learned Bethune's one moment of glory came in 1955 when he was elected president of the senior class at his high school. He was crazy about pop music and was hired right out of high school as a disc jockey for a local radio station, where he was determined to help usher in the new age of rock and roll. But it seems the station owners had a mania against what they called "monkey music" and forced him to play nothing but Big Band stuff and middle-of-the-road records. He rebelled and was fired. He never got back on track in his career, never married, never had a serious career after that. He was working as a grocery checker when he was committed to the state hospital at Atascadero and had been unemployed, living off a small inheritance from his parents when he bought the duplex and began his string of murders.
Carter called me about three months after Bethune's death to ask if I had ever visited Bethune's grave. Some distant cousin had handled his estate and arranged for Bethune to be cremated and his remains buried in his parents' family plot in Van Nuys.
"Visit his grave?" I asked. "And the point of that would be what, Bob?"
Carter chuckled and said, 'You'll see. Just do it," and gave me the location.
So, the following Saturday morning I had nothing better to do and decided to find out what Carter thought was so funny. I found Bethune's grave without too much trouble. The flat marker just said, Terrence Bethune, 1937-2008, but it had a one line inscription below it. I had to smile. The distant cousin must have had some sense of humor because the inscription was the title of two big hit records from 1955, one by Fats Domino and the cover recording by Pat Boone.
I think Bethune would have approved his epitath from the 1955 Hit Parade, even though the song title was "Ain't That A Shame."
©2008 by Ron Miller. The drawing of "Terry Bethune" is by Jim Hummel and is ©2001. The other illustrations are from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted Nov. 17, 2008.
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JEFF TURNER? IF SO, CLICK BELOW: THE MAN WHO WATCHED THE LEGENDS DIE |
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
You can comment on this column online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or Ron Miller. To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention Ron's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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