“How did Sims think he could get away with such an outlandish scheme, Jimmy?” a journalist from Newsweek asked.
“Well, he did get away with it for almost thirty years. But I don’t think he planned it that way at all. He just went with the flow.”
“What do you mean?”
“Here’s how Sims told it in his confession: After he bailed out of the B-17 over Germany, he knew he’d be captured eventually. He figured that he’d get better treatment in a German POW camp if he were an officer rather than an enlisted man. When he spotted Raymond Haskell on the ground wounded, he shot him in the head, exchanged uniforms, and stole his dog tags. So of course, when the Germans did, in fact, capture him, they logged him in as Capt. Raymond Haskell. When he was liberated at the end of the war in Europe, he wasn’t reunited with his original group. After a short stay in a military hospital in the States, he was sent to New York, where he received his discharge."
“If you look at the vital statistics, which we included in the fact sheet, you’ll see that Sims and Haskell were similar in size and weight,” Rita added. “And they were even similar in appearance: eye color, hair, and complexion.”
I continued: “When Sims returned to the States and read in the papers the account of his-or rather Haskell’s-heroic return, he found out a little about Haskell’s life. His mother was dead, and his father was in a coma, near death. He had no relatives, except for Charles Jr., who had been estranged from his father for years. Charles had run away from home when he was fifteen. The last time Charles had seen Raymond was when Raymond was twelve years old. The lawyers were looking for heirs. So Sims figured he’d show up-his discharge papers would prove his identity-and pick up as much cash as he could. Then he’d disappear. But when he found out that Charles had died and no one else had come forth to dispute his claim, he decided to stick around. Why settle for small change when so many millions were at stake?
“The only fly in the ointment for Sims, of course, was his sister, Vera.”
“Didn’t Raymond Haskell have any close friends, high school buddies who knew him well enough to spot a phony?” Stan Chambers from KTLA asked.
“Not really. His parents sent him away when he was a kid to a military academy in Roanoke, Virginia, then college at an Ivy League school. When the war broke out, he enlisted.”
“How’d Vera find out about her brother’s deception?”
“We can only surmise. But based on Sims’s confession, and what we were able to put together from what Charles Haskell Jr. had told Al Roberts during the drive across Arizona, we have a fairly good idea of how she knew about her brother’s activities. Vera saw the newspaper article about Raymond Haskell’s return from WW II and must’ve recognized her brother, a small-time crook who had joined the army to avoid prison. At that time she lived in Shreveport, same as Charles Haskell Jr., who was a big-time bookmaker. Vera didn’t know him personally, but she knew of him. After she showed him the paper, they headed off to L.A. together to confront the impersonator. Somewhere along the way they got in a fight. Charles Haskell Jr. kicked Vera out of the car in Arizona. But after he died, Vera saw an opportunity to cash in by blackmailing her brother.”
“My God, Sims murdered his own sister,” Jack Smith of the L.A. Times said.
“Yes, strangled her with his bare hands.”
“What happened after that?” someone from the back shouted.
“Sims got lucky. Soon after the murder the police picked up Al Roberts and charged him with the crime. Of course, Sims wanted Roberts to go directly to prison without a trial so that none of the stuff about Vera would come out. He knew the DA at the time, Frank Byron, would go along because Raymond’s father, Charles Sr., had been in the rackets before he died and had Byron on his payroll.”
“Is anyone going to look into the Byron/Haskell connection?”
“I don’t think so. Rinehart certainly isn’t going to dig up the past. Anyway, all the crimes Byron may have committed are beyond the statute of limitations.”
“How did the murdered woman who owned the motel…” The reporter looked at his notes. “…ah, Ida Hathaway, get involved?”
“Mrs. Hathaway had discovered Vera’s body. But before she called the cops, she scooped up some of Vera’s stuff and hid it in a shoebox. Included in the room were the old newspaper and some obit clippings. But Hathaway didn’t make the Sims/Haskell connection until almost thirty years later. She figured it out when she went through the shoebox retrieving some old phone bills for me. She matched Vera’s name on the hotel register with the name in the paper and deduced what Vera had been up to. That’s when she decided to blackmail Sims.”
“But she got the same fate as Vera.”
“Yeah. Sims sent his goons, a couple of bruisers named Danny and Rollo, to the motel to find the newspaper and the page torn from the old guest register.”
“They killed her but didn’t find the stuff they were looking for,” Rita said.
“Hathaway’s niece had the papers the thugs were after all along,” I added. “Hathaway gave the items to her for safekeeping. And of course, her niece didn’t realize that the 1945 newspaper, which Vera had brought with her from back east, was such a big deal. She gave it to me. Sol Silverman, Rita, and I finally made the connection.”
“That’s all well and good, but an old newspaper article doesn’t prove Sims was impersonating Raymond Haskell.”
“You’re right. It wasn’t proved until Sol Silverman, the world’s greatest detective, asked the FBI to inspect the war records of the B-17 crew. He asked them to check Raymond Haskell’s and Earl Lee Sims’s fingerprints taken when they were inducted during the war, and compare them with Haskell’s prints on his current driver’s license. When the prints matched, we knew without a doubt that the man calling himself Raymond Haskell was actually Earl Lee Sims, and the rest of it fell into place.”
The party, held at Rocco’s a few weeks later, celebrated Al Roberts’s exoneration and improving health. It began in the afternoon and was in full swing by early nightfall. Groups huddled, waitresses worked the room carrying trays of appetizers, and the bartenders’ hands were a blur as they mixed cocktails and poured champagne. The disco hit “Rock the Boat” by The Hues Corporation played and people danced-if you want to call it that. It looked more like the loose-jointed gyrations of the gooney bird’s mating ritual.
But the guest of honor hadn’t arrived yet. Sol had left earlier in his limo to pick up Al Roberts. He said he’d have a surprise for us when he returned. Just like Sol.
After Earl Sims had made a full confession in hopes of getting a reduced sentence, all charges against Roberts had been dropped. Governor Ronald Reagan apologized on behalf of the State, and had even given him a good-citizen certificate, suitable for framing. I’d told Al if he wanted to sue the state for fraudulent conviction, I’d line him up with a good attorney who handled that sort of thing. He shook his head. “You’re my lawyer, Jimmy.”
Mayor DiLoreto was listening carefully to Laguna Beach police officers Sgt. Coleman, Captain John Russo, and the rookie who had accidentally shot Roberts, Officer Scott Bochar. From what I gathered, the mayor was picking up tips on Laguna’s fleet of new squad cars.
Captain Russo had kept his promise and gotten to the bottom of shooting. Apparently Al had left his hotel room in a hurry the night he was shot. He was just sitting down to watch television when he heard the cops outside. Without thinking, he ran out the back still holding the TV remote control. That’s what Bochar saw in his hand when Al turned and faced him on the beach that dark night. On his own time, Russo scoured the area and found the remote. Roberts didn’t hold a grudge. “Shit happens,” is all he said when Bochar apologized profusely.
I stood in a circle of people, munching a canape, Sol’s Delight-cooked lobster, Campbell’s mushroom soup, and a dash of Tabasco, smeared on a Ritz Cracker. In fact, everyone at the party was eating Sol’s Delight. Sol insisted. It was all right by me; I loved the stuff. We weren’t discussing the case. Mostly, the people in the group were asking my advice on legal matters. Since the story hit the papers and snippets of the news conference was shown at least a million times on television, I had picked up a reputation as a brilliant criminal defense attorney. I just hoped some of the publicity would translate into paying clients.