Captain Robert L. Snow is a serious man. I met with him a few weeks ago, perhaps appropriately, in the underground studio beneath Bookmamas bookstore in Irvington. Captain Snow is a cross between detective Joe Friday and private investigator Jim Rockford. Pragmatic, no-nonsense, drama free; in short, “Just the Facts Ma’am.” Author of 13 books and countless articles/short stories for well-known publications like Playboy, Reader’s Digest, and National Enquirer, Bob has a way of clearing the fog and conjecture surrounding important events to get straight to the heart of the matter.
Snow’s latest effort solves the mystery surrounding one of Indianapolis’ most gruesome unsolved crimes; the triple murder at 1318 N. LaSalle Street on December 1, 1971. It would be hard to find a Circle City crime shrouded in more intrigue and mystery than the LaSalle Street murders. The gruesome, throat-slashing killings of Robert Gierse, Robert Hinson, and James Barker had it all: sex, secrets, jealousy, infidelity and rumors of underworld ties. You say you’ve heard these platitudes before and you’re not impressed?
Did I mention the murders involved dozens of local women, both single and married, who were the unwitting contestants in a sex contest between the three men? That the men were involved in the business of recording and securing sensitive personal classified information of businesses and individuals on the new medium of microfilm? That the case remained unsolved for two decades, relegated to the cold case files before being flamboyantly reopened and erroneously “solved” by a former Indianapolis news writer short on facts? And that the rumors surrounding the crime linked the mob, the government, the teamsters, and even the Nixon White House to the murders?
Well, Captain Robert Snow puts all that to rest, once and for all, in his new book Slaughter On North LaSalle. Retired Indianapolis Police Department officer Robert L Snow will be at the Irvington library this coming Tuesday (April 23) to talk about the crime and sign copies of his book at 6:30 p.m.
During our recent visit, I asked Snow why he thought the LaSalle Street murders had failed to resonate in the memories of Hoosiers the way other crimes like the Sylvia Likens tragedy had. “Well, it was because the case was never solved. Likens was solved. They knew exactly who did it and they put them all in prison. With the LaSalle Street murders, nobody knew. There were just too many suspects. These three guys led a lifestyle that made a lot of people hate them. They had tons of enemies; they had dozens of people who wanted to see them dead. The idea of homicide is that you always want to narrow the suspect list down. With this crime, every time they talked to one person, they got two new suspects.”
Captain Snow reports that the three men couldn’t help but make enemies. In his book, Bob relates how all three victims were large in size, stature and attitude and liked nothing better than to visit east side Indianapolis bars on Friday nights to start fights and pick up girls. The men didn’t care if the women were there with their boyfriends (or husbands), they delighted in hitting on them and, if need be, literally hitting on the male companions in the inevitable fights that would ensue. Once the three men added the name of their latest conquest to their individual contest list, they dumped them. Snow reports that every one of these breakups resulted in hard feelings from the girls, the husbands, the boyfriends, the brothers and fathers of these jilted lovers. To top it off, Snow reports, that when the microfilm office on East 10th Street was searched after the murders, it was discovered that most of the equipment they were using had been stolen from their previous employer. Needless to say, it wasn’t hard to formulate a motive or speculate about a perpetrator. “They had all kinds of people that hated them.” says Snow.
While it would be hard to find anyone who could furnish the names of the LaSalle Street murder victims, many Hoosiers can easily recall the name of the detective placed in charge of the crime back in 1971. Joe McAtee was a relatively unknown I.P.D. Lieutenant when he got the call to head up the homicide team that would investigate the murders. McAtee would eventually become the Chief of Police and Sheriff of Marion County. The author of Slaughter on North LaSalle worked for several years as Joe McAtee’s administrative assistant. Bob Snow used his 38 years of experience as a police officer to gain access to the original documents and parties involved to solve this case.
“I came on in 1969, I was a brand-new cop.” says Snow “I was just a two-year street officer when this happened.” Bob says he was lucky because all of the detectives that originally worked on the case were still alive when he began writing this book over a year ago. Snow notes that this case is unusual because it was investigated three different times. “There was the original investigation in 1971, then the case got resurrected in the early 90s by a woman reporter from the News who claimed that Teamster boss Jimmie Hoffa ordered the murders of the three men at the direction of the Nixon White House and then in 2000 when my detective solved it,” Snow reports. The author confirms that at one time in the early 1970s, the detectives on the case considered the idea that the murders were ordered by the Mob. “They thought the Mafia was trying to muscle in on the microfilm business. There was a lot of money involved in the microfilm business and it was all in cash,” says Snow.
“These guys were killed in a brutal way. They were bound hand and foot, their throats were cut so bad that if there was just one more cut they would’ve been decapitated. There was blood everywhere in the house. Your carotid artery shoots blood out, their hearts were still pumping for 20 seconds after their throats were cut.” Snow reports, “Two of the victims actually came to and one actually worked the gag out of his mouth before he was killed. They were definitely struggling.”
Snow reports that police received hundreds of tips almost every day. “It was on the front page of every newspaper and on every TV newscast for a month after the crime… There were all kinds of theories, there was the Mafia theory, jealous husbands, boyfriends, competitors in the microfilm business…there were dozens of theories. When you read the book you see that … what happened was the most likely scenario. In homicide, often times, we believe the simplest explanation is the right one. For example, if a woman is killed, 80 percent of the time it’s a husband or boyfriend. Now with men it’s different, men get killed by everybody. Then you start from motive and go forward. You always have to develop a flexible tentative theory on any crime and work to prove or disprove it. You don’t want to get tunnel vision in a homicide investigation.”
The original 1971 investigation went on for about a year. Officer Snow states “I was in charge of homicide for 6 years, we had an 83 percent clearance rate, which is exceptional, but it still means that 17 percent of cases went unsolved. Eventually you run into a time when you say, that’s it, there’s no more evidence and you don’t have a good suspect and you have let it go.” It’s easy to imagine how hard it was for Captain Snow and his detectives to let that 17 percent go. However, Snow is quick to report that “there is no statute of limitations on murder. We can get you for murder if you’re 100 years old.”
I asked the author how the killer got into the house and if there was any sign of forced entry. Robert Snow starts to smile before I even get the question out of my mouth and wryly replies, “I don’t want to give that away, that’s in the solution to my book. When you read it, in the end, you’ll see that it all makes perfect sense.”
As an old eastsider, I always wondered about the lack of attention paid to the LaSalle Street murders. Since reading Robert Snow’s excellent book, Slaughter on North LaSalle, I’ve come to realize why. The crime was terribly brutal in nature and the details nearly unspeakable. The victims were unsympathetic hard-drinking, hard-partying young playboys whose thuggish ways were difficult to sign off on. Although apparently hard-working in their business life, their amoral attitude led them to succeed by any means necessary. The way they treated women and the details of their sex contest were morally repulsive. But perhaps most importantly, none of the three men had ties to Indianapolis. They had only been in town for a few months before their death and all three were buried out of state. Author Robert Snow answers all these questions and more. I suggest you go and visit him at the Irvington public library this coming Tuesday evening at 6:30 p.m. and see for yourself.
My interview with author Robert Snow can be heard on Dave “The King” Wilson’s website http://indyradioondemand.wordpress.com/page/2/ Give it a listen for more insight into the LaSalle Street Murders.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
