Lieutenant Craig Cleary
Appearances
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Two partial prints, by themselves not much to go on, but when a lab technician decided to put them together, it was the break investigators were counting on.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Investigators needed to put a face on their suspect, and luckily there were several witnesses who would never forget the man they had seen that night. Were you able to provide them with a description of the man? Well, I did the best I could. Bob Dewar and his friends were held at gunpoint by the suspect for almost an hour.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
I got a very good look at the suspect. El Segundo patrolman Charlie Porter and his partner saw the man for less than a minute, but that was enough.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
The face of a killer, a clear clue to his identity. Police now felt it would be only a matter of time until he was brought to justice. But no one could ever imagine just how much time. Meanwhile, the residents of El Segundo, frightened and saddened, gathered together as a family to lay to rest two of their own.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
It was the sheriff of LA County at the time. Keith Curtis was just five at the time his father was shot, his sister Tony only two. That's my mother, Jane.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
It would take authorities nearly half a century to find the man who disappeared in the dark that night. Over the next 46 years, important new clues would be discovered. We were digging up the weeds when I found the gun. Promising new leads would be investigated. Could this be the diamond in the rough we were looking for? And thousands of suspects would be checked out. All dead ends.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
until a new piece of technology came along that would finally catch up with this old mystery. When the killer of two policemen disappeared down those dark alleys that night in 1957, the Curtis family wondered if and when they would ever catch him.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
She was right, for although time is usually the enemy of a murder investigation, this time, the passage of time, 46 years, would be necessary. It would be a different world from the 50s, in which this case could finally be solved. Two modern-day policemen, L.A. Sheriff's detectives Kevin Lowe... We were the lead investigators. ...and Dan McElderry... It was a fascinating case.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
...have inherited the coldest case on the books. Ice cold. Ice cold. It was colder than cold, yeah.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
But Lowe and McElderry weren't simply curious about some old files. What got them involved was a phone call to the El Segundo Police Department in September 2002. El Segundo Police, how may I help you? It was from a woman who said she had some tantalizing new information on the murders.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Absolutely. Absolutely. Their first order of business was simple. See if the 1957 fingerprint matched up with their new suspect.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
The prints were sent here, the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department crime lab, easily the busiest in the country. handling over 70,000 cases a year.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Dale Falican and Don Kerr, top fingerprint specialists, took one look and knew right away their new suspect was no match to the old print, just another dead end.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
But now that this old unsolved murder was suddenly on top of the pile again, they thought, why not give it one more try? And would you describe that as kind of fragile after all these years? It has literally fallen apart. This time, with the advantage of modern science.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Using everyday computer technology that wasn't even dreamt of in 1957, the experts were able to digitally reprocess the original photograph. This, in effect, is a really pared down version of this. That is correct. So the computer can read it. That is correct. But even with a new digital image of this original fingerprint, you still have to have some place to search for a match.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
And that's what's really new. Following the events of 9-11, the FBI finally created a nationwide computer database. In it, a copy of every single criminal fingerprint from every state in the entire country. How big a deal is this?
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
They loaded a digital copy of the killer's prints into the system. And just like that, a man that had eluded capture for nearly half a century was found. In a matter of minutes.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
He was only arrested that one time. So if he had not been arrested and done jail time in 1956 for that crime? We wouldn't be here today. Some quick police work easily located Mason, remarkably still living in his hometown of Columbia, South Carolina, and not a career criminal, but a retiree living comfortably with his family.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
The Ghosts of El Segundo. This is Los Angeles County, 10 million people, 4,000 square miles, and according to statistics, the most dangerous place in the country to be a police officer. Almost every day of the year, an officer is shot at while on duty.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
So why not just go and get Mason? The answer is Lohan McElderry would need a lot more than just a decades-old fingerprint match to prove to a jury that Mason was indeed a cop killer. How do you try to prove that Mason is the killer?
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
What they had was the single largest file in the very crowded Sheriff's Record Library. There were boxes and boxes. Boxes and boxes of evidence and leads collected over the years, which now had to be reexamined to see if any other clues could be connected to Gerald Mason.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Doug Tooley has lived in this house since 1956, less than a mile from the scene of the murders, in the same neighborhood police believe the killer used to make his escape.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Lowe and McElderry followed the trail of evidence to Shreveport, 1600 miles and 46 years from El Segundo, California.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Billy Jean Clark was just an 18-year-old kid in 1957 working his first real job behind the sporting goods counter at this local Sears. You sold a lot of guns, I assume.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
This is the man who bought the gun. You know he stayed here. Yes. Investigators had checked out nearly every George Wilson in the country. This is the room that Gerald Mason stayed in. And none matched the 1957 fingerprint. This window, you can see the back of the Sears. Obviously, the G.D. Wilson who stayed here had used an alias, but it was an alias written in the killer's own hand.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Paul Edholm, formerly of the Beverly Hills Police Department and one of the country's leading forensic experts on handwriting, was enlisted to examine the evidence.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
When you told them that you were 99.9% sure, what was their reaction? They were ready to go out and get a warrant for his arrest at that point. And so, confident their case against Mason was solid, detectives made the trip to South Carolina to finally get their man. But it wasn't over yet. Gerald Mason's comfortable retirement was about to come to an end, and no one knew how he'd react.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Detectives Kevin Lowe and Dan McElderry weren't sure who was more surprised when they finally met Mason face-to-face.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
El Segundo Police Lieutenant Craig Cleary had the privilege of taking Mason into custody.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
You think that he thought after all these years he'd gotten away with it? Absolutely. Even though Mason was almost 70 years old, police still considered him potentially dangerous. In fact, a search of his house turned up a collection of loaded firearms. But in the end, Mason gave up not with a bang, but with a whimper.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Forty-six years of searching had turned up a fugitive very different than anyone had expected. For example, there's no record that Gerald Mason ever committed another crime after the 1957 police killings. He got married, raised a family, and started his own business. To everyone who knew him, he was nothing more than an ordinary, law-abiding citizen.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Betty Wiggins has lived next door to the Masons for the past 10 years and, like many people in this neighborhood, could always count on Gerald Mason when help was needed.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Darren Levine knows the key to surviving in a hostile environment is having the right skills to work with.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Like many of the older residents of Columbia, Mason could often be found at the local bowling alley or at a nearby golf course, enjoying his retirement with friends. He was an individual who would give you his shirt off his back if you needed it. Del Trimble, who counts Gerald Mason as one of his best friends, played golf with him the day before his arrest.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Was this retired family man really the cold-blooded killer California police had been searching for all these years? Prosecutor Darren Levine would have to prove that he was.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
The case against Mason was strong, matching fingerprints, handwriting. But there was one piece of evidence investigators always wondered about, one that could eliminate any doubt forever. Three impacts.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
In another sense, the Phillips children, Carolyn, Dick, and Pat, were also scarred for life.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Now the Phillips and Curtis families would have their chance to do just that. After a judicial hearing in South Carolina, Mason agreed to return to Los Angeles for a trial long overdue.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Officers like Howard Speaks, who lifted the fingerprint that solved the case.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
gerald mason could have fought the charges yet for some reason this time he did the right thing he pleaded guilty and darren levine was more than happy to accept his plea on july 22nd 1957 do you acknowledge that you murdered officer phillips And finally, Mason would have to face up to what he had done and face those whose lives he'd shattered.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
But Levine does a lot more than just train police officers how to survive on the streets.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
But that didn't stop Mason from trying to make some kind of amends.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Gerald Mason will now spend what's left of the rest of his life in prison. But one question still remains after all these years. Why?
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Detectives Kevin Lowe and Dan McElderry got what they wanted from Gerald Mason, a confession. But what they also wanted now were answers.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Nagging questions like, why did Mason, after just getting out of prison for burglary, end up in California with a gun?
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
I do. With an elite unit set up to prosecute anyone who would dare wound or kill a law enforcement officer.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
When asked why he attacked the teenagers and raped that 15-year-old girl, amazingly, Mason said he didn't really remember. But as far as why he killed two cops in cold blood, Mason's answer was shockingly simple.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
A simple answer for an incredibly senseless crime, an answer that brought little comfort to his victims.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
But there was great comfort in knowing that after 46 years, the victims were never forgotten.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
In the end, maybe what it took to solve this case wasn't one clue or one break, but one family, generations of police officers determined to protect their own.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
The town of El Segundo hasn't changed much since that fateful night so long ago. But one thing has changed. The wounds that were suffered almost 50 years ago have finally begun to heal.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Back then means back in the days when LA County was a much safer place. Back then is when this story of a cold-blooded cop killing begins. But what makes this tale all the more extraordinary is the fact that it would be almost half a century before Darren Levine and other investigators could finally put this case to rest.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Do you look back fondly on those days? Oh, yeah, sure. Sure. Bob Dewart was just 17 back in 1957, an innocent kid living in a much more innocent age, when just being in a car with a girl was a big deal.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Four teenagers driving home from a summer party stopped to watch planes land at a lover's lane near a local airport. Bob Dewar figured he might get lucky, which meant he might get a kiss or two.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Naked, bound, and blind, Dewar and his buddy and their 15-year-old dates had no choice but to do what they were told.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
What had started as a night of innocent fun had now become a horrible dream from which Bob Dewar thought he and his friends might never awaken. Were you thinking this is it?
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
One girl raped, three other teenagers robbed and terrorized. But the gunman's night wasn't over yet. As he made his getaway in the stolen 49 Ford, he made a mistake, one simple mistake that would add murder to the list of his crimes.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Lieutenant Craig Cleary was just 18 months old at the time of the crime, but as an investigator for the El Segundo Police Department, Cleary knows as much about what happened that night as if he had been there.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
In that patrol car were two young El Segundo policemen in their 20s, Officer Richard Phillips and rookie Milton Curtis, who had been with the department only two and a half months when the two decided to pull over that 49 Ford. Now while officers Curtis and Phillips were dealing with this situation, another black and white rolls by with two other El Segundo police officers in it. Correct.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Two other young patrolmen, James Gilbert... I was 28. ...and Charlie Porter... I was about 37, I believe. ...not knowing what had taken place earlier at the Lover's Lane, assumed that Phillips and Curtis were making just a routine traffic stop.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Porter and Gilbert would be the last people to ever see their fellow officers alive. Just seconds later, a call came on the radio.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Phillips had been fatally wounded, shot three times in the back. Curtis was already dead, shot three times as well, while sitting in the patrol car.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
I hate to say it, but in another circumstance, it could have been the two of you that had pulled this guy over.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
The call for help came over the radio at 1.28 a.m., and in the short time it took for Gilbert and Porter to respond, the killer had simply disappeared. Where'd he go?
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Hundreds of police officers from El Segundo and the neighboring communities scoured the area all night. They found the stolen 49 Ford, but there was no sign of the suspect.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
The killer might have disappeared, but he left something behind, something that would trigger one of the longest manhunts in California history.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
For Jean Curtis, it's the memory of her husband, Milton Curtis, that will always be closest to her heart.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
They were just teenagers when they were married in 1952. The next five years, the couple had two children, Keith and Tony, and Milton had a new career as a police officer, a career that would end almost as soon as it began.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Tell me, what do you remember about sending him off to work that night?
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Just a few hours later, Jean Curtis would find out she was no longer a 23-year-old wife. She was now a 23-year-old widow.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
The morning of July 22nd, 1957 was a rude awakening for all the residents of El Segundo when they suddenly found themselves at the center of one of the largest manhunts in California history. It was the number one story in Southern California for that time. It was rare back then.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
It was a crime that would become one of the oldest unsolved murder cases in LA County, a crime that would haunt Deputy DA Darren Levine 46 years later.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
And everybody was asking the same question. Why? Why did a man who had simply run a red light have to murder two police officers in cold blood? Perhaps he figured the cops were looking for the man who had earlier terrorized those teenagers and stolen their car. And once they'd run a check on him, it would all be over.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
In fact, at the time of the murders, the teenagers, naked and terrified, had just been found wandering the streets looking for help. When their story was finally reported, investigators were already arriving at the scene of this crime.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Howard Speaks was one of the first to arrive as a young crime scene investigator with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Lieutenant Craig Cleary and all the members of the El Segundo Police Department are amazed at how those bullet holes got there.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Investigators knew the stolen 49 Ford might have one more story to tell. Did the killer leave something behind, something that would lead them in the right direction? Today, samples of DNA can point the way to a killer, but back in 1957, they would have to rely on the best tool they had at the time. This is my fingerprint kit.
48 Hours
The Spirits of El Segundo
Howard Speaks searched the car from bumper to bumper for something, anything that might lead them to a suspect. You've got this car. You know that the suspect was in it and driving it. Are you hopeful that you're going to get some prints off this?