Sergeant Stoker, LAPD’s Gangster Squad, and the Abortion Ring
CAUGHT IN A WEB OF Machiavellian intrigue and systemic corruption within the highest ranks of the LAPD that eventually ended his career as a police officer, Sergeant Charles Stoker wound up unwittingly documenting the information that would, fifty years later, become the nexus linking LAPD Gangster Squad detectives and their superiors to a willful and deliberate cover-up of the Black Dahlia investigation and the other sexual serial homicides committed in the 1940s and beyond. Stoker never learned the true extent of his influence or effectiveness as an honest cop trying to fight corruption inside the police department. In his book Thicker ’n Thieves he provided a powerful record of his personal Investigation that ultimately helped me unravel the mystery surrounding my father’s escape from justice. In particular, his chapter “Angel City Abortion Ring” showed me what the motives were for the LAPD’s cover-up of the Dahlia case and explained why the department chiefs made their decision to aid and abet the efforts of George Hodel, a known, identified serial killer, to flee the country rather than prosecute him.
Sergeant Stoker was an idealistic, no-nonsense, by-the-book vice squad officer, who believed that the LAPD was the finest police department in the world. However, in the spring and summer of 1949 his naiveté earned him a crash course in realpolitik that not only toppled his beliefs in the efficacy of the system he’d come to rely on, but took away his job and security, permanently tarnished his good name, and left him tragically disillusioned about people and government. He died without ever being publicly vindicated.
Charles Stoker had joined LAPD in May of 1942, worked briefly in uniformed patrol, and was then transferred to administrative vice. Stoker was a smart, perceptive, and honest cop, surrounded by partners with their hands out, reaching for a crooked buck within a system that not only tolerated corruption but fostered it. Stoker kept his hands in his pockets, which was not an easy or a popular position to take in the plainclothes units, especially in vice, where money greased the skids for felons at all economic levels, particularly purveyors of illicit sex operations run by L.A.’s organized crime cartels. While it worried many of his partners that Stoker remained squeaky clean, they treated him as an oddity and were careful not to do or say anything around him that would force him to report any corrupt activity.
What those officers and the rest of LAPD did not know, however, was that Stoker was more than an honest cop: he was a crusader, for whom police work—and specifically LAPD police work—was above politics. His zeal for the job and the organization, coupled with a tenacious personality, quickly put him on a collision course with his corrupt superiors all the way up the chain of command to an assistant chief of police and his counterparts in city hall. Stoker’s refusal to back down also made him a target of many of the top-echelon politicians in the mayor’s and district attorney’s offices.
Stoker’s troubles began with the 1949 arrest of Hollywood vice queen Brenda Allen, whom newspapers referred to as “Hollywood Madam” and “the Queen of Hearts.” Allen ran a stable of 114 prostitutes and was paying off Hollywood vice officers as well as officers from the centralized Administrative Vice Unit, which conducted city-wide vice investigations. Hollywood Division needed to be paid off, as that was the division in which Allen lived and from which she based her operation. Brenda’s monthly income generated plenty of juice for the policeman’s fund and her friends at city hall. Corrupt police and city officials had come to rely on a steady stream of income from graft and payoffs.
In addition to Stoker’s arrest of Allen, the newspapers revealed that LAPD had surreptitiously—and without a court order—listened in on telephone calls coming from gangster Mickey Cohen’s Hollywood residence. So brazen was the LAPD command that in 1948 several officers experienced in audio electronics donned old clothing and, posing as construction workers, installed bugging devices at Cohen’s home as it was being constructed. For over a year, LAPD officers maintained audio surveillance on Cohen’s operations, tape-recording the comings and goings of his henchmen as well as many of his guests, which included state agents, police officers, and investigators and staff from the district attorney’s office. After gathering a year’s worth of covert “intelligence,” several enterprising LAPD vice officers in 1948 approached Cohen with a shakedown, demanding $20,000 for some “campaign contributions.” All of this would be revealed the following year, and that investigation threatened to topple the entire police department.
In May 1949, Stoker testified in secret before a grand jury to everything he had discovered about internal LAPD graft and corruption by high-ranking police officers. He blew the whistle, even though he had been told that it would ruin his career and probably the rest of his life. But he persisted. The newspapers picked up the scent of scandal, and for months he and the story made local headlines. Stoker’s testimony resulted in indictments and perjury charges against then chief of police Clemence Horrall, his assistant chief Joe Reed, a lieutenant, and several sergeants. Many more were expected to follow, with the prospect that L.A.’s best-known gangster, Mickey Cohen, was rumored ready to talk to the 1949 grand jury. It was anticipated that Cohen would reveal high-level LAPD police corruption, as well as corruption within the ranks of the DA’s office and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, which had a shared jurisdiction with the LAPD on Brenda Allen’s bordello. Cohen’s testimony would confirm all that Stoker had testified to and much more.
Cohen was persuaded to rethink his position about testifying. At 3:00 A.M. on the morning of July 20, 1949, he and his entourage—which included Neddie Herbert, a New York gangster and Cohen’s number one man; state attorney general’s investigator Harry Cooper, who had been assigned to bodyguard Cohen after rumors circulated of a planned assassination; newspaper columnist Florabel Muir; and actress Dee David—walked out the front door of Sherry’s cocktail lounge onto Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Sherry’s, a notorious meeting place and hangout for local gangsters, was owned and operated by colorful retired New York detective Barney Ruditsky. As the group was saying its goodnights on the sidewalk in front of the bar, shotgun blasts were fired from across the street into the crowd. Cohen, Neddie Herbert, Harry Cooper, and Miss David were all hit. Agent Cooper and the actress, though seriously wounded, survived. Herbert died two days later. Though Cohen received only a minor wound to his right shoulder, it apparently affected his vocal cords. After the attempted hit, the usually forthcoming Cohen refused to make any statements relating to police corruption and provided no information or fuel for the grand jury investigation.
When Cohen backed down, anyone else who might have come forward fell silent as well. And with no one at a high level willing to corroborate the charges the outspoken Stoker had made, he stood alone. Now it was his turn to feel the heat. A policewoman, Stoker’s former partner, was quickly brought forward to testify that she had been with him when he committed a burglary of an office building. She alleged he stole back a personal check he had written for some construction work. He was arrested, booked, and charged with a felony count of burglary. Fortunately, Stoker had an airtight alibi for the time the policewoman claimed she had been with him, and a jury speedily found him not guilty.
LAPD regrouped, charging Stoker with “conduct unbecoming a police officer” and secondary allegations of insubordination. The former is an administrative charge so nebulous as to involve almost anything imaginable, a catch-all that permitted the department to get rid of anybody, anytime, for anything—for example, for driving your city car six blocks to your home to share a forty-five-minute lunch with your wife. “Conduct unbecoming” was a ground for dismissal.
The hearing board, comprised of LAPD captains and above—the senior chair being held by Deputy Chief of Detectives Thad Brown—quickly convened, refusing to allow Stoker’s case to be continued until after the burglary trial could be heard. The board found him guilty of administrative violations, and the case was then submitted to the newly appointed chief of police, W. A. Worton, who would decide the penalty, which could range anywhere from a one-day suspension in pay to termination. Chief Worton reviewed the case and immediately fired Stoker. After Stoker’s acquittal on the false and perjured burglary charge in the criminal case, in which most jury members concluded he had been framed, Stoker attempted to be reappointed as a police officer, but his request was denied.
Immediately before he was fired, and three months prior to my father’s arrest for incest, Sergeant Charles Stoker was subpoenaed by the sitting 1949 grand jury to testify about all aspects of police corruption that he had discovered while assigned as a Hollywood vice operator. His revelations included firsthand information that went beyond the Brenda Allen scandal and the wiretapping and attempted extortion of monies from gangster Mickey Cohen.
Sergeant Stoker’s secret testimony, some of which was leaked to the press, also included his discovery of an abortion ring within the City of Los Angeles, run by medical doctors who were paying protection money to members of the LAPD Gangster Squad, the specialized unit within the Homicide Division.* Stoker learned that this ring of abortionists included only M.D.s; each member paid regular “dues,” which entitled him or her to operate freely and conduct abortions without fear of arrest.
Stoker became aware of the activities of the abortion ring when he was approached by a retired LAPD lieutenant, now an inspector for the California State Medical Board, who informed him he had heard about Stoker’s good work and ability, admired his courage, and needed to talk to him. In checking out the inspector’s reputation. Stoker learned that he had a solid reputation for honesty and would not connive, play ball, or cut corners.
The investigator told Stoker that he and others in his unit believed that members of LAPD’s Gangster Squad, the unit responsible for making the arrests on the referrals from the medical board investigators, were protecting the abortionists, either by informing the medical doctors that they were under investigation, or if an arrest was actually made, smothering it before any charges could be formally filed with the DA. This occurred only in the cases of those doctors suspected of being within the ring of protection of the Gangster Squad detectives. All others—non-M.D.s, midwives, and chiropractors—were arrested and successfully prosecuted.*
The inspector told Stoker that the suspected leader of the abortion ring was a Dr. Audrain, whose office was located in downtown Los Angeles at 6th and St. Paul. The investigators had an informant who had received an abortion from Dr. Audrain, and they wanted Stoker to conduct an undercover operation, using a policewoman as an operative. Stoker was informed that the medical board investigators’ supervisor, who was also on the take, was on vacation; with him away, it was unlikely the LAPD Gangster Squad would receive word about the planned investigation and forewarn Dr. Audrain. The medical board inspectors asked Stoker to investigate the doctor in secret, which would circumvent the standard operating procedure of notifying the Gangster Squad detectives.
Stoker went to Lieutenant Ed Blair, his vice-supervisor, told him what he wanted to do, and explained that he had learned that the state investigators had requested his assistance because they suspected the Gangster Squad detectives of taking payoffs and protecting doctors performing illegal abortions. Lieutenant Blair, recognizing that the operation was far afield of Stoker’s normal assignment as a vice squad officer, still approved Stoker’s request, but ordered him to “take it easy and keep me out of it.”
A policewoman posing as a “girl in trouble” made an appointment at Dr. Audrain’s office, located at 1052 West 6th Street. She was examined and told by the nurse the “test came back positive for pregnancy.”* An appointment was scheduled late the following week. The policewoman was advised to bring $250 in cash and return to the office at 7:30 in the morning the day of the operation. Normal abortionist working hours were from midnight until 9:00 A.M.
The day before the scheduled appointment, Stoker was contacted by the medical board investigators, who were, in Stoker’s words, “down in the mouth.” They advised him that their supervisor had returned from his scheduled vacation early, and they were left with no choice but to inform him of Stoker’s pending investigation. Although their supervisor had told them to go forward with the plan, they were sure he would warn the Gangster Squad, who would in turn warn the doctor.
Ever confident and optimistic, Stoker decided to go ahead with the plan anyway, and the following morning the policewoman, backed up by Stoker and his partner, Officer Ruggles, went to Audrain’s office. The state investigators had surmised correctly. The doctor had indeed been tipped off; the office was locked tight and remained closed for a full week following the anticipated arrest. The investigation having ended in failure, Stoker returned to his normal duties, putting the abortion ring concerns out of his mind.
In the spring of 1949, the subject of this protected abortion ring resurfaced. This time, the same medical board inspector approached Stoker with a new case, involving a female M.D. (her name was never revealed by Stoker) believed to be connected with the abortion ring, who was performing abortions to well-recommended customers out of her expensive office in the movie colony district on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks.
The state investigators had obtained the name of one of the doctor’s former clients, which they could use as an entrée and reference. This time they asked Stoker to operate on his own, without involving their office, which would obviate the necessity of their having to inform their supervisor, thus effectively bypassing LAPD Homicide and its Gangster Squad.†
Stoker agreed, and the same undercover policewoman who had attempted to obtain the abortion at Dr. Audrain’s office again posed as a pregnant woman seeking help. She met the woman doctor at her office, who informed her that “she was not doing abortions as she could not find a dependable assistant.” The doctor said she would personally contact another doctor who would perform the abortion. The policewoman was advised to call back the following morning and the doctor would provide the other doctor’s name. The following morning, the woman doctor told the undercover policewoman that she had spoken with another doctor, Eric Kirk, who had agreed to perform the abortion. She gave her Kirk’s phone number.
Sergeant Stoker immediately contacted the state medical investigator, who told him that while Eric Kirk was a suspected abortionist, he was a chiropractor, therefore not a member of the ring. A decision was made to proceed anyway, to see if an arrest could be made on Kirk.
The policewoman made an appointment, was examined at Kirk’s office on Riverside Drive in the North Hollywood area, was again, per standard operating procedure, found to be pregnant, and was given an appointment for an abortion for the following Saturday. She was again advised to bring $250 in cash. I checked the 1949 Los Angeles telephone directory for a listing of chiropractors and found Eric Kirk’s office listed at that time at 2157 Riverside Drive. In the same directory, Kirk advertised his specialty as “Obstetrics and Gynecology.”
On the day of the scheduled appointment, the cash was marked and the policewoman was driven to Kirk’s office by Stoker and Officer Ruggles, where they maintained surveillance a block away. The policewoman entered the office and within five minutes exited the front door and was observed to enter a large sedan that had pulled up in front of the office. Stoker and Ruggles, on foot and out of their unmarked police car, ran back to it and quickly searched the area for the sedan, but could not locate it. Now fearful for the policewoman’s safety, they entered the office and found a receptionist inside. Initially, the woman denied any knowledge of the appointment with a pregnant woman seeking an abortion, but when confronted with arrest as an accessory, she identified herself as Eric Kirk’s wife, breaking into tears. “I knew it,” she said. “He’s done it again. I hope you catch the son-of-a-bitch and send him to jail for life!”
Stoker contacted his vice unit, reported the police officer missing, and put out a broadcast for all units to be on the lookout for the vehicle and the missing policewoman. At that point, the policewoman walked into the medical office accompanied by Dr. Eric Kirk, who, upon learning that his patient was an undercover police officer, related the following story to Sergeant Stoker, Officer Ruggles, and the policewoman.
Two days after he had scheduled the appointment with the policewoman, Kirk said, two officers from LAPD Gangster Squad came to his office and arrested him for soliciting abortions. Stoker asked Kirk to identify the detectives and he complied. In his book, Stoker referred to them as “Detectives Joe Small and Bill Ball”—not their real names.
Since Dr. Kirk had not completed a solicitation for abortion with Stoker and the policewoman, Stoker lacked enough reasonable cause to make an arrest and was therefore forced to call the Gangster Squad detectives and inform them of the circumstances. Stoker contacted the two detectives and advised them of his own investigation and what had transpired that morning. He was told by them to “keep his nose out of their business and stop conducting unauthorized abortion investigations.”
A few months later, the third and final incident involving Stoker, the California state medical investigators, and the Gangster Squad detectives took place. This one involved a nurse who was arranging for abortions for young girls at a cost of $500. The suspected doctor was one of the protected M.D.s, and again the state investigators asked Stoker to operate without the knowledge of their supervisor. This time they added another twist: he would have to obtain the $500 from his own department, in order not to tip off their connection to the investigation. Stoker went to his supervisor, Lieutenant Blair, who again said, “I’ll try and get the money for you, but keep me out of it.” Blair obtained the $500 from a vice slush fund, Stoker signed for the cash, and all was ready to proceed. The following morning at eight o’clock Stoker’s phone rang. It was detective “Joe Small” from Homicide. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked, reminding Stoker that he had “already been told once to stay out of abortion investigations.” Small informed Stoker that an officer would be by to pick up the $500 and would give him a signed receipt for the cash. Stoker signed over the cash to this officer: that ended his involvement in the abortion ring investigations. Eric Kirk was convicted of performing abortions and speedily sentenced to prison at San Quentin.
In May 1949, behind closed doors, Sergeant Charles Stoker was called before the grand jury and testified to everything he had learned about the abortion ring and the involvement of Gangster Squad detectives “Joe Small and Bill Ball.” As a result of this testimony, the information he provided about the Brenda Allen scandal, and other testimony from LAPD officers, grand jury indictments were secured against Chief Clemence B. Horrall, Assistant Chief Joe Reed, Captain Cecil Wisdom, Lieutenant Rudy Wellport, and Sergeant E. V Jackson.
After Stoker’s testimony, Kirk, who remained behind bars in San Quentin, submitted, through his attorneys, a written affidavit to the Superior Court in an attempt to get a new trial based on the evidence provided by Stoker. In his affidavit, Kirk stated that he had been told by three separate Los Angeles attorneys that “some politicians, or the Los Angeles Police Department, were out to get me, but that they [the attorneys] could not identify the interested parties or give their reasons for wanting me out of the way.” In his affidavit. Kirk said that immediately after his initial arrest, a co-defendant by the name of Tulley (no additional information was provided by Stoker) informed him that $2,500 would “square the beef.” The Monday following his arrest, Kirk and Tulley, out on bail, met with a seventy-one-year-old man named Dan Bechtel at his office in downtown Los Angeles. Upon receiving $2,500 each from Tulley and Kirk, Bechtel immediately called a man by the name of “Joe,” spoke with him, and then told both defendants that the charges “had been quashed by Joe.” Both Tulley and Kirk left Bechtel’s office, but several days later were contacted and told to return. Both complied, and their monies were returned, whereupon Bechtel explained, “the deal could not go through, as too many people were involved.” Bechtel made a final contact with Kirk, where he advised the chiropractor that “he could get the charges dismissed but it would cost Kirk $16,000.” Kirk could not raise that amount of money and, after his conviction, was remanded to custody and sent to prison. According to Stoker, in 1950 Dan Bechtel was indicted by the grand jury “for accepting large sums of money from abortionists on the pretense that this money would be utilized in paying off law enforcement officers whose duty it is to arrest and prosecute abortions.”
From the moment that Sergeant Charles Stoker walked in and testified before the 1949 grand jury, his fate was sealed. He lost his job, lost his good name, and was publicly ridiculed. Ignoring warnings and threats to his life, he did ultimately publish a book about what had happened to him, which concluded:
Villains in the story books always get their just desserts, and we—the members of the 1949 county grand jury, and I—can only hope that justice and virtue will triumph in the future. In the words of the poet Young, “Tomorrow is a satire on today, and shows its weakness.”
Ironically, on the same day a Superior Court jury was hearing testimony in the incest trial of my father—Wednesday, December 14, 1949—the following article appeared in the Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express:
OUST STOKER AS LONE VICTIM OF VICE PROBE
Charles F. Stoker, former vice squad sergeant, who touched off the lengthy grand jury investigation of police protected vice, wound up today as the only victim of the much-publicized purge.
He was discharged from the police force by Chief W.A. Worten, who approved the recommendation of a police board of rights, which found Stoker guilty of insubordination and conduct unbecoming an officer.
The article went on to note that, although five other police officers, including former Police Chief C. B. Horrall and former Assistant Chief Joe Reed, were also indicted on perjury and bribery charges, all were cleared.
Twenty-five years later, on March 10, 1975, the following article appeared in the back pages of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner:
STOKER, EX-OFFICER, DIES AT 57
Former Los Angeles Police Sgt. Charles Stoker, who was a central figure in a 1949 department scandal, has died of an apparent heart attack.
Stoker, 57, died yesterday morning in Glendale Memorial Hospital, where he was taken after suffering chest pains, while working in the Southern Pacific railroad yards. He was employed as a brakeman.
Stoker played a key role in exposing corruption in the LAPD vice squad, but was later accused of a burglary, which led to his dismissal from the force. Stoker contended that he was framed on the burglary charge.
Dr. Francis C. Ballard, the Beverly Hills physician to whom Father paid $500 for performing Tamar’s abortion, was in all likelihood a member of the abortion ring Charles Stoker was trying to expose. As a matter of record, despite the strong case surrounding his October 1949 arrest for the abortion performed on Tamar, criminal charges against him were ultimately dismissed in 1950 after attorneys Giesler and Neeb successfully branded Tamar as “a pathological liar and a young girl in need of psychological treatment, who should be in a hospital, not a court of law.”
Dr. Walter A. Bayley
In January 1997, Los Angeles Times staff writer Larry Harnisch, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Dahlia murder, wrote an article entitled “A Slaying Cloaked in Mystery and Myths,” which provided a very good overview of many of the known facts relating to the fifty-year-old unsolved case.
Several years later, his search for a suspect would develop into a lengthy Internet article promoting his theory that the Black Dahlia killer was a Los Angeles physician by the name of Walter A. Bayley.
Harnisch based his theory on several points: first, that Bayley was a prominent surgeon, which was in keeping with LAPD’s premise that the murder and bisection of Elizabeth Short had to have been performed by a skilled surgeon; that Bayley’s wife—from whom he was separated—lived at 3959 South Norton Avenue, less than a block from the Black Dahlia crime scene; that Bayley’s daughter knew Adrian West, Elizabeth Short’s sister, and indeed had been a witness at her marriage; and, finally, that Bayley had left his wife for a woman colleague, Dr. Alexandra von Partyka, who worked in the same office with him. Harnisch speculated that she had discovered his “crime” and was blackmailing him.
In fact, Dr. Walter Bayley had no connection whatsoever with Elizabeth Short, or her murder. For one thing he had developed Alzheimer’s disease, and had neither the mental nor physical capacity to either commit such a crime or taunt the police about it. No, his legitimate fears that Dr. Partyka would ruin his reputation arose from another source: she was undoubtedly blackmailing him with her knowledge that he was a member of the L.A. abortion ring.
My search of the 1946 Los Angeles–area telephone book showed that Dr. Walter Bayley’s private practice was located at 1052 West 6th Street, the same address as that of Dr. Audrain, Stoker’s head of the protected abortion ring. It is very likely that the name of the warned abortionist, contacted by the Gangster Squad detectives the night before Stoker’s pending arrest, and who closed his office for a week following, was indeed Dr. Walter A. Bayley.
My research revealed a coincidental connection that seems to have gone unnoticed by police and press in the early days of the Dahlia investigation. Mrs. Betty Bersinger, who first discovered Elizabeth Short’s body, told reporters that in notifying the police, she “ran to the closest house,” which she described as “the second house on Norton Avenue from 39th Street,” and said that it belonged to a doctor. It is highly probable that this house was the residence of Dr. Walter Bayley and his wife Ruth, out of which Dr. Bayley had moved the previous year.
I suspect, too, that my father knew Dr. Bayley, and probably Dr. Partyka and Dr. Audrain as well. All had worked for Los Angeles County, and their downtown medical offices were within six blocks of each other. If George Hodel knew or worked with active members of the M.D. abortion ring, which I believe he did, the probability that they were acquainted would be very strong. Although I don’t believe George Hodel performed abortions, because he was opposed to them in principle—except in the unusual position of being coerced by his own daughter under an implied threat of disclosure—it is almost certain that he not only associated with the doctors inside the ring but knew they were being protected by the LAPD’s Gangster Squad.*
As a result of this inside knowledge and the people he could incriminate were he to have been prosecuted for any of the murders he committed, he was himself protected by the very same Gangster Squad that protected and profited from the work of the abortion ring that Charles Stoker sacrificed his career to expose.
Abortion Ring–Spangler Connections
It is my further contention that the Spangler note, related to the fact that Jean Spangler needed to obtain an abortion.
Kirk,
Can’t wait any longer, Going to see Dr. Scott.
Will work best this way while Mother is away.
I believe that “Kirk” is not a first name, as LAPD chief of detectives Thad Brown tried to suggest when he personally interviewed actor Kirk Douglas, but a surname. Kirk, I submit, was Dr. Eric Kirk, Sergeant Stoker’s chiropractor, abortionist, and informant. I further submit that Jean Spangler was initially planning to have Kirk perform her abortion. Her note was directed to him! Because he was suddenly and unexpectedly arrested and incarcerated by Detectives “Bill Ball and Joe Small,” and because time was of the essence, she was forced to find a replacement for “Kirk,” either through or with the help of “Dr. Scott.”
On September 17, 1949, just twenty days before Jean Spangler’s kidnapping and murder, an article appeared in the Los Angeles Mirror over the headline “Wife of L.A. Abortionist in Hiding.” The story carried a picture of Dr. Eric H. Kirk, captioned: “He’ll testify.” The article said that Kirk’s wife, Mrs. Marion Kirk, “a key witness in a huge abortion-payoff-ring probe, was in hiding after it was learned that she received numerous telephone threats to ‘keep her mouth shut.’” The article indicated that Dr. Kirk would testify to what he knew, with the following caveat: “I’m not going to name other doctors. I’m no stool pigeon. If all the doctors who perform abortions in Los Angeles were cleaned out, there wouldn’t be many doctors left.”
As a matter of procedure, it’s likely that the Gangster Squad detectives involved in the Spangler investigation, in a fox-in-the-hen-house type of scenario, were assigned the task of trying to locate and identify the “Kirk” and “Dr. Scott” in the Spangler note. This would be logical because of their familiarity with abortionists city-wide. It of course permitted them to protect themselves, and their operation, by keeping the identities of both men secret. As we know from newspaper reports, despite these detectives’ “exhaustive search,” neither “Dr. Scott” nor “Kirk” was ever located or identified.
It is inconceivable to me that the LAPD was unable to make the obvious connection between the abortionist Kirk and Spangler’s handwritten note, addressed to him. Kirk’s identity should have been obvious to the investigators, because “Bill Ball and Joe Small” arrested him for performing illegal abortions just three weeks prior to the discovery of the Spangler note. Their failure to identify the real Kirk was all part of the abortion ring cover-up. As we will soon discover, these same Gangster Squad detectives were subpoenaed and forced to testify in secret before the 1949 grand jury. Their testimony would be labeled “evasive” and “contradictory” and they would publicly be accused by both the grand jury members and the district attorney’s Bureau of Investigation of “covering up” facts and destroying evidence relating to “the Wealthy Hollywood Man” (Dr. George Hodel) named in secret before the grand jury as the prime suspect in both the Black Dahlia and Red Lipstick murders.
Thanks to Sergeant Stoker’s detailed explanation of how the L.A. abortion ring operated, we are able to connect the dots not only to Dr. Bayley and his role as an abortionist, but, more importantly, to “Bill Ball and Joe Small.” With Stoker’s help, we see them as they were: active ringleaders in a LAPD high-stakes money-for-protection racket. By successfully silencing Dr. Eric Kirk, and speedily sending him to prison, the Gangster Squad detectives prevented any linkage between Kirk and Jean Spangler, who had likely sought him out to perform her abortion in the weeks preceding her disappearance. Then with his arrest and incarceration, she wrote the note, which remained undelivered in her purse, and was found only three weeks later, after she was kidnapped and murdered.
It was October 1949. In the previous two years, more than a dozen lone women had been found savagely murdered in the streets of Hollywood and downtown L.A. Two other socially prominent Hollywood women had disappeared and were suspected to have met the same fate. Gangsters were firing away at each other in open gun battles on Sunset Boulevard, wounding government officials and nearly killing a member of the press. An LAPD chief of police, an assistant chief, a lieutenant, and two vice squad officers were under indictment. My father had just been arrested for incest in a sex scandal that was making the front pages of the local papers. Sergeant Stoker, after testifying in secret before the grand jury as a whistle-blower, along with his partner, Officer Ruggles, had been fired. Corruption in the city and throughout its administration was so pervasive that even sexual predators were able to prey on women without fear of arrest.
Who was actually governing the city and why were the police powerless to stop crime?
* The organizational structure of the Gangster Squad and their duties and responsibilities within the Homicide Division have been explained at length in an earlier chapter. This is the same detective unit that had, in January 1947, “assisted” in the investigation of the Black Dahlia murder and had discredited two key witnesses, the Johnsons, and their positive identification of the probable killer, “Mr. Barnes,” who had checked into their Washington Boulevard hotel with Elizabeth Short.
* Correction 2014: The gangster squad did not conduct abortion investigations when loaned to homicide. Rather, a separate abortion squad unit conducted them.
* While a sample was taken, no real test was ever completed, as was standard operating procedure. At $250–$500 for a half-hour’s work, it was an excellent financial decision to inform all women they were pregnant.
† Abortion squad.
* My 2003 statement that my father “was opposed to abortions in principle” I now realize is incorrect and has no basis in fact.