NINE

When Alan got home that night, Judy told him about the woman in the window. Alan brought out old pictures of Katherine and asked Judy if it were she. Shaking her head, Judy said there was no resemblance at all.

“No,” Alan agreed, “I didn’t think Katy would do something like that.”

April 18, Alan kept a promise he had made to Judy. He leased for her a sleek, new, yellow Jaguar XKE convertible. The next day, a Friday, Judy phoned Lisa and suggested her sister come over on Saturday and spend the day with her at the pool. They had not seen each other in a while and had a lot of catching up to do. Judy arranged to pick Lisa up in the new Jaguar the next morning—“just to show off a little, sis,”—and bring her back to the apartment.

When the day turned out to be overcast, they decided to forget the pool and instead drive out to the mall at Topanga Canyon for some shopping.

It was a typical April day in Southern California, warm and moist. A white sky, thick as unspun cotton, hung low over Los Angeles. Judy and Lisa rode with the top down, the wind flapping their blouse sleeves. Before going to the mall, they detoured a bit and drove out to Malibu for some lunch.

Lisa could not figure her sister out as they drove around together that afternoon. She thought Judy would be an unstemmable flow of talk about married life, but instead Judy’s mind seemed far away. Lisa tried to start conversations and Judy gave one word answers. Her brow was tight, her lips anxiously pressed. Lisa soon fell silent as well. She was a little afraid to pry. She had always believed her sister was clairvoyant.

A buzz on the walkie-talkie from Alan did not lighten Judy’s dark mood. He was more concerned about the condition of the Jaguar than how Judy was feeling.

On the way home, Judy stopped for a couple of errands. She picked up a pair of Alan’s shoes that were being resoled, and afterward stopped at the stationery store to pick up his personalized memo pads.

When she dropped Lisa back at the Davises’ apartment around four o’clock, Judy for the first time that day became her animated self again. The two daughters and their parents got into a lively conversation about marijuana. Judy had tried it a couple of times a few years ago, she said, and was adamant that “the police should just leave those people alone.” After half an hour of good-natured debate, Judy suddenly grew quiet again. She excused herself, saying she had to go home and change and then meet Alan for dinner.

Susan Peters arrived for work at the Grand Duchess at 7:00 P.M. that Saturday night, April 20. Theresa Condi was the other barmaid on duty that night. Also there when Susan arrived were Gary Deaton, the bouncer, and Gus Pilich, who had been elevated from the Grand Duke’s bouncer to the manager of the Grand Duchess.

Alan tramped into the bar around 7:30. Susan tried to stay out of his way. Alan had not been himself the last two weeks, much testier with his employees than usual.

When Judy arrived about forty-five minutes later, Alan and she left to go out to dinner. They came back an hour and a half later, and what they saw was a sorry sight for bar owners. It was 10:00 P.M. on a Saturday night and the place was nearly empty. With little to do, Susan Peters was sitting on a barstool.

“Can I get you anything, Susan?” Alan asked sarcastically as he passed to go behind the bar. “A glass of water? A beer maybe?”

Susan shrugged, got up from her stool and circulated among the few scattered customers at tables, asking if anyone needed a refill. Getting no takers, she sat back down next to Judy at the end of the bar.

“What’s gotten into Alan lately?” she asked beneath her breath. Judy shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve almost been tempted to go back and live with my folks.”

She sighed. “But you want to know something? I love the guy.”

A little after 10:30 P.M., Alan turned to his wife and told her with a curt nod, “It’s time for you to go home now, Judy.”

Obediently, Judy slipped her belted, houndstooth coat over her sleeveless dress and tied a white silk scarf over her head. Susan had always been envious of Judy’s long, rich auburn hair. She wore it in a ponytail that night, augmented by a fall. Taking Alan’s arm, Judy and he walked out to her car.

Susan Peters would later say Alan came back into the bar ten to fifteen minutes later, and that about five minutes after that, as he played a game of pool with bouncer Gary Deaton, the pay phone behind the bar rang. Susan answered and called over to Alan that he was wanted. Alan spoke on the phone for only a couple of minutes and returned to his pool game.

According to Susan Peters, the caller was a woman.

A young man named Robert Jenner was the weekend night attendant at the Standard Station at 8700 Foothill Boulevard on April 20. Shortly before 11:00 P.M., Judy drove in for gas. Jenner would later recall having a pleasant conversation about cars with her. Jenner drove a Dodge Charger and so did Judy’s husband, she told him.

Judy was still wearing her scarf, Jenner later recalled, and had a blanket across her legs. The young station attendant wondered why she had the car top down. The day’s cloud cover had lifted, and the night air was sharp.

When she pulled away, Robert Jenner did not see anyone following her.

Driving home, Judy would have had to continue along another stretch of Foothill past the Sunland Playground with its picnic tables and Little League fields, its wooden bandstand painted chalky white as if only to stamp the behinds of kids who sit on it—like the old sagging bandstand that Judy, as a little girl, used to climb around and sit on when her mother and father took Lisa and her to the park on warm summer afternoons.

At the junction where Foothill becomes California Highway 118, the road climbs off into the rolling hills. At that junction, the road sign reads: San Fernando 8 Miles; Sun Valley 5 Miles; Burbank 9 Miles. Judy would necessarily have had to swing left at that intersection and drive down Sunland Boulevard to either the Golden State Freeway or to broad, easily traveled Glenoaks Boulevard. Judy usually took the freeway.

As she listened to soothing FM music on the car radio, someone was inserting copper-coated lead bullets, each a sixth of an ounce in weight, into the magazine clip of a .25 caliber automatic.

Alone in her car, and wanting to get home, Judy accelerated.

It was around 11:15 P.M. when Judy pulled into the parking lot of Nick Tagli’s Hearthside Inn across the street from her and Alan’s apartment. Her reason for stopping at Nick Tagli’s was to tell their restaurateur friend that Alan and she would be in Monday to pay the $250 tab for their wedding reception.

“No sweat,” Nick assured her. Although Judy did not order a drink, she continued to chat with Nick inside the restaurant for ten minutes or so. Karen, a waitress, thought Judy appeared on edge, glancing about as she sat on a barstool. After saying goodnight, Judy walked back out to her Jaguar and drove the short hop across the street to her apartment’s assigned car stall, number 17.

Donald and Margaret Benn, tenants in apartment 2 of the Castillian, had just come in from the carport and were waiting for an 11:30 television show to come on when they heard shots.

Margaret Pruitt, in apartment 11, first heard a loud “thump,” then shots, three of them. And then a wailing, a terrible wailing like that of a wounded animal.

In apartment 38, Marion Wood, Jr., his wife, and another couple were also waiting for an 11:30 TV show to come on when they all heard three distinct shots. They commented to each other about it, but hearing nothing more, they did not look out the window.

Larry Beauregard was in bed with his wife in apartment 12 when the three sharp reports echoed up from the driveway. Having been in the army, Beauregard had spent enough time on rifle ranges to know the difference between a car backfiring and the sound of gunshots.

“Did you hear that?” he asked his wife. “It sounded like a twenty-two.”

“Mm,” she replied sleepily.

Because of a couple of recent carport thefts, the Castillian manager, John Miller, had made a practice of checking the parking area each night before turning in. Thinking that Miller might now be in trouble, Larry Beauregard slipped on a pair of Bermuda shorts and went outside.

All was quiet in the carport area. The overhead lights creaked from their chains, their arcs swaying slowly on the asphalt pavement. A prowler, Beauregard thought, might still be hiding in the darkened pool and patio area or, even more likely, might be fleeing down the street. Beauregard ran out to Grismer Avenue. He saw only parked cars, no people. Surveying the scene for only a moment, he began walking back toward the pool and patio.

As he did so, Judy Palliko sat in her car, unconscious and gasping, blood spilling from her breast and from the side of her head.

Shortly before 11:30 P.M., John and Evelyn Miller came back from their Saturday night out. The couple they were with dropped them off in the carport area. As John Miller got out of his friends’ car, he was seized by a moment of fear as he saw a man peering over the gate to the pool and patio. The man whirled around. It was Larry Beauregard. Miller relaxed and waved to him.

Beauregard waved back, and convinced now that the night’s peace had been shattered probably by just some mischievous kids, he went back to his apartment.

In walking to his own manager’s living quarters, John Miller passed the yellow Jaguar that was parked in stall 17. The car’s motor was running, its headlights on. The radio was playing softly. As he walked past the rear of the car, it appeared to Miller that no one, strangely, was inside it. Miller continued toward the pool and patio area to see if perhaps one of the Pallikos was there. Everything on the other side of the locked gate was dark and quiet. As he walked back toward the Jaguar, he heard a terrible sound, a low and guttural moan.

Miller ran to the side of the car and found Judy. She was sitting upright in the driver’s seat, her head thrown back. Her right hand was still on the gear shift, her left hand in her lap. Judy’s eyes were closed, her mouth open. She was gulping for air. There was so much blood running from the left side of her head, Miller did not see the blood flowing from her breast as well.

Miller shouted to his wife to call an ambulance and the police. He turned off the car’s engine and radio, but not the headlights, and for some reason he could not later explain, he looked at his watch. It was exactly 11:30 P.M.

Miller ran to Larry Beauregard’s apartment, panting, “Come and help. The girl in seventeen has been beaten up real bad.”

As they raced out of his apartment, Beauregard corrected Miller: “You mean she’s been shot.”

It was 11:37 when Officer George Wood of the Burbank Police Department received the radio message to proceed to 2021 Grismer Avenue to meet an ambulance that was already en route. While Miller and Beauregard waited for their arrival, and while other tenants who had heard the commotion outside began venturing out of their apartments, Evelyn Miller called the Grand Duke Bar in an attempt to reach Alan. Pete Morris, the Grand Duke’s manager, answered and told Mrs. Miller that Alan was at the bar in Sunland.

“Have him call me at the Castillian right away,” she said frantically. “His wife’s been in an accident.”

When Officer Wood first arrived and was led back to the carport by John Miller, he saw that Judy was bleeding profusely from two bullet wounds in the head, one above her left ear, the other just to the side of her left eye. The streams of blood that ran down her face were already thickening in the cold night air. Wood held a compress to the wounds until the ambulance arrived at 11:44. Judy was still unconscious and gasping. The ambulance attendants worked hurriedly to get her onto a stretcher and hooked up for a plasma transfusion.

While Mrs. Miller waited for Alan to call back, she learned that Judy had in fact been shot and that they would be taking her to Burbank Community Hospital. She could hear the siren of the departing ambulance as she talked on the phone with Alan.

“What’s happened?” Alan asked. “Judy was in a car accident? What happened?”

Mrs. Miller told him that Judy was shot and what little more she knew. Alan said he would leave immediately for the hospital.

Patrolman Wood questioned the various tenants who had seen or heard anything. While his partner, Officer Phillips, insured that the crime scene was not disturbed until the arrival of an investigating officer, Wood searched the pool area and grounds for a gun or other evidence. Nothing was found.

Robert Wells, a Burbank Patrol Division investigator, arrived at 12:17 A.M. It was now Sunday, April 21.

The yellow Jaguar sat in stall 17, its headlights still burning. It was a stark picture of life halted in midmotion. Wells observed a bloodied woman’s hairpiece overturned on the console between the driver’s and passenger’s seats. Fallen inside the hair piece were Judy’s Chevron credit card and the gasoline receipt from an hour earlier. Also on the console was a green leather wallet with approximately $35 in it. On the passenger’s seat was an open purse. Inside it was a .32 caliber Llama automatic pistol. The gun was loaded with five rounds in the clip and one in the chamber. The hammer was on half cock, the safety in the “on” position. While it was conceivable the purse had been open during the car ride home, if it had not, it appeared Judy Palliko had perhaps been desperately trying to reach that gun when she finally succumbed to her attacker.

Also on the passenger’s seat was a white blanket as well as a white scarf. The scarf was so drenched with blood it was stuck to the purse.

The carport to the right of the Jaguar was empty. A tenant’s 1967 four door Oldsmobile was in the carport to the left.

In and around the Jaguar were three spent .25 caliber shell casings and two unfired .25 caliber live rounds (cartridges). One of the spent shells was on the floor behind the passenger’s seat. A second was on the pavement of the empty car stall next over, four feet, nine inches from the Jaguar’s right rear tire. The third shell was in the same area, eleven feet, one inch from the Jag’s right rear tire. It appeared odd to Wells, in that the description given to him of the victim indicated she had been shot from the left side, and yet the spent shells were well to the right of the car. The presence of empty shell casings at the scene indicated that the murder weapon was not a revolver but an automatic, which ejects its shells.

Of the two unfired rounds—even more curious at the scene of a shooting—one was behind the passenger’s seat and the other was atop the Jaguar’s trunk. Investigator Wells collected and tagged them as evidence along with the spent shells.

Even after the police had departed, bystanders lingered, speaking in hushed voices as they gazed at the sports car and its bloody, black leather interior. None stepped forth to turn off the car’s headlights.

When the Snyder Ambulance team arrived at Burbank Community Hospital, a Dr. Compher gave Judy a fast looking-over and, shaking his head, ordered that she be immediately transported to L.A. County General Hospital. He called ahead to have a neurosurgeon stand by.

Alan arrived at the Burbank hospital just after Judy had been transferred, and was directed to L.A. General. There he was told by nurse Kathleen Egan, “I’m sorry, Mr. Palliko, but your wife isn’t expected to live.”

“No . . . no, that can’t be,” Alan said, dropping his hand to his side.

He paced the waiting lounge, speaking to no one.

Judy died at 1:35 A.M. She was being prepared for surgery by Drs. Haravey and Cohen at the time. Nurse Egan and a young intern were present when one of the surgeons informed Alan of his wife’s death. Alan nodded and looked at the floor. When friends of his who had heard the news of the shooting arrived a few minutes later, Alan slammed his fist down on the coffee table in front of him and shouted, “I know who did it! I swear I know who did it!”

The friends, Paula Boudreau and her husband, Thomas, offered to drive Alan home. Alan refused, and drove home by himself.

Burbank detectives were called in: Lt. Ernest Vandergrift, Lt. Warren King, Sgt. William Nylander, and Detective Harry Strickland. When they arrived at L.A. General, they were informed that the attempted murder case they had been called in on at 12:35 A.M. was now a case of murder.

The detectives viewed the body. Besides two gunshot wounds to the head and a slash across the left breast, they also observed the damage done by what comes under the police catch-all “a blunt instrument.” On the top and back of Judy’s head were seven long gashes—seven ugly, half-inch-deep rents in the skull.

It was one of the most vicious murders the officers had ever seen. Two bullets in the head had not satisfied the perpetrator of this crime. Seven times the murderer had brought something—perhaps the butt of a gun—smashing down into Judy’s skull. As the detectives left the hospital, unable to get that battered, sickening picture out of their minds, they thought they knew a little more about the person they were seeking. He (she) was no slick professional. But was the excessiveness of the murder the result only of inefficiency—or hatred as well?

The team of men split up. Vandergrift and King went to the Grand Duke Bar in Burbank and there interviewed Pete Morris, who told them of getting the call from Mrs. Miller and of relaying the message to Alan at the bar in Sunland. A half hour later, he said, Alan called back, asking Morris to close the bar for him at the end of the night and adding that he had asked Gus Pilich to do the same at the Grand Duchess.

At 2:00 A.M., Sergeant Nylander and Detective Strickland found Alan at his apartment. He was quiet, seemingly numbed. The questioning went along standard lines. Alan told them what he knew of Judy’s activities that day, and that he had given her a $50 bill that morning for shopping. Robbery had already been tentatively ruled out as a motive in that money was found in her purse, and Judy was still wearing her wristwatch as well as her diamond engagement and wedding rings when she was found. Judy sometimes parked in the carport, but sometimes she parked on the street, Alan said. Concerning the blanket, Alan explained that it was always kept in the car because they had not received their tonneau snap cover yet and therefore used the blanket to cover the seats at night.

When asked about possible suspects, Alan did not draw a blank. “That German fellow” Judy had dated and who lived a few blocks from the Davises was Alan’s guess. Another possibility, he said, was Tod Glenn. A big strapping Texan recently paroled from the Oregon state prison, Glenn and his girlfriend Sissa Kolovik had caused a commotion in the Grand Duke the night before and Alan had had to call the Burbank Police to cool him off. Glenn, the detectives would later discover, was the friend who had accompanied Alan to Del Cook’s barber shop.

Nylander and Strickland looked over Alan’s collection of guns and rifles, and found among them a .25 caliber Colt Junior B/S semi-automatic. They asked if they could take it with them and Alan offered no objection. They told him that if he wished, he could come to Burbank P.D. headquarters the next morning and accompany them to the Davises to tell them of Judy’s death. In the meantime, they suggested Alan try and get some sleep.

For their part, Nylander and Strickland did not go home and sleep. Upon returning to headquarters around 3:00 A.M.. they ran a routine check on the victim’s spouse with the LAPD and found that he was a suspect in the Stockton murder case, a wifebeater, and possibly involved in hit-and-runs. At eight o’clock in the morning, the Burbank detectives were again on the phone in a back office with the people at Parker Center, while Lt. Warren King kept Alan occupied in the Burbank headquarters’ waiting room. For about fifteen minutes, King made small talk with Alan, all the while looking for clues in his demeanor. Alan was stoic, looking around the waiting room or back down at the floor whenever his and King’s eyes met. By the time Nylander and Strickland emerged from their phone conversations with the LAPD to take Alan over to the Davises’ apartment, they knew a great deal about Alan Palliko.

Franklin Davis, a picture of retirement, was sitting out on the front steps fixing a broken chair leg that Sunday morning. As Alan walked over to him, Nylander and Strickland remained in the car.

“I have terrible news,” Alan said. “Judy was shot last night.”

The frail wispy-haired man looked up for a moment, hesitating, and touched a trembling hand to his brow.

“Is my daughter dead?”

Alan nodded.

Staring at the pavement, Franklin asked, “How? . . . How?”

“Out in the carport. Nobody knows.”

Franklin Davis sat paralyzed. Slowly, he stood up. With barely any voice in him, he said, “You better wait here while I tell the girls.”

His hand shaking on the railing, he moved with slow steps, head bowed, up the front porch to his apartment.

“Where’s that old boyfriend, Felix?” Alan called after him.

As if he had not even heard Alan, Franklin Davis continued inside his apartment. After a few minutes, he came to the doorway and motioned for Alan and the detectives to come in.

Ethel and Lisa sat on the living room couch, Lisa’s face buried in the folds of her mother’s arms. “Oh God, no. Please, no,” she sobbed.

Alan sat down on the couch next to Judy’s mother, and asked Mr. Davis if he could have a drink. Franklin brought him a bottle. At one point Ethel Davis, her knees only inches from Alan’s, looked her son-in-law in the eye and said. “You wouldn’t know how this could have happened, would you, Alan?”

Their eyes locked in a long cold stare before Alan shook his head and looked back into his glass.

Ethel Davis informed the detectives that Felix Zimmer could have had nothing to do with Judy’s murder. At eight o’clock the previous night, Felix had walked over to the Davises’ apartment and asked if he could tag along to a Moose Lodge party the family was planning to attend. All three of the Davises—Ethel, Franklin, and Lisa—could verify that Felix Zimmer was in their presence until approximately 2:45 A.M.

Ethel Davis mentioned a former boyfriend of Judy’s by the name of Prescott Nelson. Nelson, she said, had written Judy many letters trying to convince her to return to New York. As a nosy mother she had intercepted the letters and had torn them up. As far as she knew, Nelson still lived in Flushing, N.Y.

Even in front of Alan, Ethel did not mind telling the police she never could understand why Judy had had to carry a gun. Judy, she said, had told her it was because Alan now and again had to throw some rough people out of the bar that he insisted his wife be armed. Listening to his mother-in-law’s version of it, Alan nodded.

Franklin Davis put his head in his hands and began to cry. Nylander and Strickland excused themselves after only twenty minutes of interview. They dropped Alan back at his apartment and proceeded to the Orange Street apartment of Alan’s former wife Katherine. They arrived there at 10:00 A.M.

Katherine quite literally shook at hearing the news. She could not get her hands to be steady. It was as if a two-thousand-pound crate had fallen out of a window and had landed three feet from her. Katherine was convinced she had come that close to being the one. She told the Burbank detectives the whole history—the hit-and-runs, the beating, the threats, in sum, her life with Alan Palliko. Although Nylander and Strickland hardly assessed Katherine to be the kind of woman to seek revenge against Alan’s second wife, they asked her for her whereabouts the previous night as a matter of formality. She related that her boyfriend, Steven Arbogast, and she had gone to the Roxy Theater for a show that had started at 10:00 P.M. and not let out until 12:45 A.M. Afterward, they went for a drink and then retired to Katherine’s apartment. Steven Arbogast, who was still at the apartment when the police arrived, produced the ticket stubs.

If Franklin and Lisa Davis found it difficult to talk to the police that Sunday morning, Ethel Davis did not. Detective Strickland received a phone call from her when he returned to Burbank headquarters at 11:30 that morning. There were things she wanted to tell them she had not been able to say in Alan’s presence.

Alan, she related, was a strange and secretive man. He had recently even hired a mammoth friend of his named Tod to “watch over Judy,” Alan claiming she needed protection. Ethel Davis told Strickland that the man who knew the most about Alan’s backdoor life, perhaps the only person Alan had ever trusted—the man they should interview without delay—was Michael Brockington.

Bitter accusation in her voice, Mrs. Davis went on to tell Strickland that although she had known Alan had taken out a life insurance policy on Judy before they were married, naming Judy’s father Franklin as the beneficiary, it was only recently she had learned that on March 20, Alan had Judy change the beneficiary—from Franklin to himself.

The Burbank detectives had already begun to suspect that Alan Palliko was involved in his wife’s murder. The evidence that would emerge, however, in the long months ahead would melt into an amalgam of contradictions. A mystery, if you will, as dark as the criminal mind.