'We don't forget': Suspect arrested in 1957 cop killings
Six shots rang out, mortally wounding the young officers, one of whom managed to gasp a dying request into his patrol car radio: "Send ... ambulance." The killer drove a few blocks in a stolen 1949 Ford, then slipped away into the darkness, never to be found.
At least, that was how it seemed until yesterday, when authorities knocked on the door of Gerald Fiten Mason, a retired 68-year-old businessman in Columbia, S.C., and arrested him on charges of murdering officers Milton Curtis, 25, and Richard Phillips, 28, more than 45 years ago. Mason also was charged with robbing four teenagers at gunpoint, and raping one of them, on a lover's lane a short time earlier.
Mason, who is being held without bail, was described as a pillar of his community who had enjoyed a round of golf the day before his arrest, and apparently had no idea of the net about to encircle him.
"He said he was very stunned," said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Detective Kevin Lowe, among the arresting officers. "We explained to his wife why we were there and what the charges were. She was also very shocked at what we had to say. She lived with this man for over 40 years and apparently never knew that part of him, that hidden past."
At a news conference in El Segundo, Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley expressed the satisfaction of law-enforcement officers at apparently cracking the case after so many years: "The message is, when it comes to killing a police officer, we don't forgive. We don't forget. We don't give up."
On the contrary, investigators largely had given up after an intense but frustrating manhunt. Evidence was scanty; leads led nowhere; suspects were arrested and freed.
"Everyone in El Segundo was shocked at the time," said John Booterbaugh, a retired officer. "We worked this case night and day for two years."
Phillips, a laid-back Oklahoman who was a Korean War veteran, managed to fire three shots before he died, and one early clue came from a woman who said a man matching the description of the killer had come to her door, complaining of an injured shoulder and asking for a glass of water.
Eventually, Booterbaugh said, police decided the suspect must have died.
Detectives, however, still had one prize — a vivid fingerprint left on the door of the Ford. Without a finger to match it with, though, the print was no more useful than the dust in which it was etched.
Then, in the past two years, two developments — one a fluke, the other a forensic leap forward — brought the case back to life.
In September, El Segundo police received a tip about a possible suspect. Police investigators, with help from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, checked out the tip, which turned out to be another dead end. But the case piqued the interest of two sheriff's detectives, Lowe and Dan McElderry.
The Sheriff's Department in February had become linked to a national FBI fingerprint database. McElderry and Lowe ran the old print. It had a match: Mason's.
Mason had been convicted of burglary in South Carolina in 1956, according to Sheriff's Capt. Frank Merriman. Mason had been routinely fingerprinted, and his prints eventually found their way into the FBI database.
With that link, it was relatively easy to track down the retired gas-station owner living in a three-bedroom brick home in an affluent subdivision of Columbia.
Detectives began trailing him while they assembled their case. They interviewed three of the four who were robbed as teenagers and found the forensic expert, now 88, who took the fingerprint off the Ford.
Merriman said they watched Mason on Tuesday as he played golf — a regular pastime, according to neighbors. They pounced yesterday.
"This is oldest homicide I am aware we've ever solved," Merriman said. "And it's especially important because it's the murder of police officers."
Mason's attorney, Chris Mills, said it was too early for him to discuss the case. "This is the first the family has heard about this," he said. "We'll take a look at the charges and take a look at what's appropriate, but we're still assessing documents and the situation."
Cooley said Mason faces a maximum possible sentence of life without parole. Prosecutors cannot seek capital punishment because the death-penalty statute in effect in 1957 was overturned, although it subsequently was replaced.
Curtis left behind a widow and two young children; Phillips, a widow and three children. Phillips' son, who asked not to be identified, said yesterday that he was shocked but grateful that the case apparently had been solved.
"This many years later, we had resigned ourselves to the fact that the guy got away with it," he said. "Whether it's justice for the family or for police officers, I was glad they were able to stick with it. Hopefully, people in the future won't have to wait 45 years to have a person who changes a family's life forever brought to justice."
Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.