Free The Laughing Gorilla by Robert Graysmith

my high Christian ideals”), he was sentenced to hang on Friday, January the thirteenth as the thirteenth man ever hung at the Vaughn Street Jail, which was across the street from the Patterson family home. “I am innocent,” Nelson said. “I stand innocent before God and man. I forgive those who have wronged me and ask forgiveness of those I have injured. God have mercy!” Earle Nelson’s insatiable habit of strangling landladies was finally broken.
     
     
    “ THAT’S odd,” Dullea had said as he perused the San Francisco papers. No mention anywhere of the Gorilla Man’s execution in Canada. He could not be sure he was even dead. In Chicago, where there was a corrupt police force, criminals bought their way off death row or faked their executions. Perversely, Dullea hoped the Gorilla Man was still alive to return so he could have a second chance to catch the murderer.
    Elsewhere the Gorilla Man stirred. His huge hands opened and closed. He was coming back to life. His eyes turned west.

SEVEN
    “Gorilla” actually meant a hairy, tough man before it meant the ape; the ape gets its name from the man and not the other way around as one might think.
    —IAN REDMOND, GORILLA
     
     
     
     
     
    THE second anniversary of Officer John Malcolm’s murder, Friday, April 29, 1932, was exceptionally cold. Inspectors Jim Malloy and Bart Lally were bundled up and parked on Fairfield Way where it curved over to intersect Lakewood Avenue and continued north to dead-end at Kenwood Way. Lally, cigar clenched between his teeth, scanned the road for the hundredth time. Malloy had been combing his wavy, silver hair straight back. Each time the thick shock had sprung back as curvy as Fairfield Way. There was scarcely a straight line in the Ingleside Terraces or in nearby St. Francis Woods’ shaded, winding ways. It was as if their architect had only a French curve with which to draw his plans.
    Because all the streets were curved and steep, it made a stakeout difficult and concealed any potential attack on Josie around the corner. The roads were built wide to accommodate big automobiles like the 1926 sable black Phaeton Lincoln custom touring car in front of Josie’s house. Its engine was running smoothly. In those days you could get eight good years out of such a model with a radio and a speaker set into bird’s-eye maple.
    Mrs. Walter Bowers, a neighbor, saw the touring car at 4:30 P.M. “A man drove up in the car—owl lights, a low tonneau and extra-thick trunk,” she said, “and appeared to conceal his face with a hand and his cap pulled down over his eyes.” She also sensed there might be a second man sitting in the rear seat. Fourteen doors down Mrs. G. E. Little of 55 Lakewood also scrutinized the unique sedan and its driver. “A horse-faced young man, about twenty-three, with a close-cropped mustache was sitting in it,” she said. “He tried to shield his face, but I got a real good look at him. I would recognize him if I saw him again. He was Verne Doran, you know, Mr. Frank Egan’s chauffeur.”
    At 4:35 P.M., Josie rang her friend Mrs. Joseph Dennis. “It’s gotten so I’m afraid to leave the house at night,” she lamented. As they chatted Mrs. Dennis heard Josie’s doorbell sound. “It might be someone trying to get me,” said Josie, and hung up.
    An hour later Mrs. Albert E. Jacks, sixteen doors up, saw Frank Egan walking within a block of Josie’s home. That was not unusual because he lived so nearby. Shortly after, the Lincoln started up and came cruising north along Fairfield at twenty-five miles per hour. As it turned into Kenwood Way, Malloy adjusted his little spectacles and noted the uncommon Phaeton trunk and unique spotlight that hung from the median of its radiator, which was very unlike a Packard’s jutting radiator (gangsters commonly took their victims for a last ride in a Packard sedan). Within two years, except for Fords and Chevys, the square radiator would be replaced by the