Free Slaughter on North Lasalle by Robert L. Snow Page B

between 7:00 and 8:00 P.M. , the woman told the detectives, she had received a telephone call from Barker inquiring about a date they had set up that night at the Sherman Bar. He told her that he was calling from Gierse’s house on North LaSalle Street. She said that the conversation lasted only about ten minutes and that she didn’t hear any noise in the background, as though he was there at the house by himself.
    For more than a week now, even though detectives had worked intensely, the investigation didn’t seem to be going anywhere—but then suddenly a potentially crucial piece of information turned up. The detectives discovered that Jim Barker’s previous address had been burglarized the night before the murders. Had the killer believed that Barker still lived there and hoped to catch him alone? The detectives realized that if the burglary detective could come up with some suspects in that case, it could provide a huge break in their investigation, too. But they also knew they couldn’t just wait on that. It might happen. It might not. They had to keep their own investigation going.
    While in the little over a week they had been assigned to the North LaSalle Street murders the detectives had conducteddozens of interviews, they’d also had to spend a lot of time wading through and examining all of the evidence from the murders. And there was plenty. Crime lab technicians had taken a large number of fingerprints from the house and the victims’ cars. They had recovered fingerprints from beer and whiskey bottles, drinking glasses, door moldings, and a telephone. They also found a good fingerprint on an ashtray but discovered that it belonged to Diane Horton, Gierse’s girlfriend. Likewise, James T. Cole’s fingerprints on the inside glass of the front door were easily explained away because he had attended several parties at the house. The fact that so many people, including a number of the suspects, had been in and out of the North LaSalle Street house while attending one of the many parties held there meant that most of these fingerprints, like the ones found of Horton and Cole, didn’t prove to be of much value.
    In addition, the crime lab personnel and the coroner had taken many other items as evidence, including the clothing the men wore, hair samples, fingernail scrapings, a bloody pillow found on the floor, many blood samples from throughout the house, and even pieces of the tile floor, but again, though the detectives had been hopeful, these items didn’t point toward any specific suspect. The detectives also hadn’t been able to find a suspect with boots or overshoes matching the diamond design left in the hallway.
    During their investigation, the detectives had, naturally, also gone to the offices of B&B Microfilming on East 10th Street. There they took as evidence a considerableamount of paperwork, in the hopes that it might alert them to someone with a serious grudge against the men. But again, though the detectives spent many hours going through the stack of papers, no definite suspect turned up.
    However, something crucial to the case did appear at the offices of B&B Microfilming (adding another layer of complexity to a case that was already unbelievably complex). While there, the detectives discovered that a piece of equipment present—a typewriter used by B&B—had previously been reported to the police as stolen. And as they investigated further, the detectives found that this wasn’t the only piece of suspicious equipment there. Detectives discovered that Gierse had reported a burglary at Records Security Corporation on June 25, 1969, in which $5,500 in microfilming equipment had been stolen. The police officer sent to take the report, however, had felt that the report was very questionable. Not only had there been no signs of forced entry, but only certain pieces of equipment had been taken, while other equally valuable pieces had been left behind. The detective assigned to the case