Once more the C.O. bore out Berger’s story. There was nothing for Shepard and Morris to do but accept his story, especially when the commanding officer guaranteed that he would be available at all times if wanted. They returned to Los Angeles and located the clerk who’d taken the Wooton message on Monday morning. She recalled, dimly, the man who had sent it.
“He was a big guy,” she said, “and sorta good looking in a long-hair kind of way. He wore big horn rim glasses. He acted pretty nervous and looked like he hadn’t had much sleep. I’d say he was an inch or two over six feet and weighed two hundred pounds or more.”
Back in Fresno the officers returned to Werner’s apartment. They seized his typewriter and turned it over to the police laboratory for the purpose of comparing its type with the telegram. When the results appeared identical, the officers were ready for a thorough casing of the Werner rooms.
With three uniformed officers, Shepard and Morris returned to Werner’s rooms. It was apparent that he had taken some clothing with him in a suit roll and a hand grip. But there was considerable clothing left in the apartment, along with two items which aroused more than passing interest: a shirt and a pair of slacks, obviously belonging to Werner, dug from the bottom of the clothes hamper in a closet, both bearing unmistakable blood spots.
Came now another report from the police laboratory. The note found on Benny’s door ostensibly had been written on Werner’s typewriter. The conclusion was that he had prepared it before going to his wife’s apartment for the last time, an obvious indication of premeditation. When Werner’s fingerprints were taken from the door upon which the note had been tacked, the authorities were then entirely certain that they had now identified their quarry.
Shepard now asked for a murder indictment against Werner. When it had been granted, he sent out an all-points bulletin, with a description of Werner and the car he was driving, asking for his arrest. Then, with Morris, he began checking Werner’s movements and his past.
All trace of the hunted man ended in Los Angeles. That he had gone directly there, was admitted. There were vague clues placing him at the Mexican border, at Tijuana, but no reason to believe that he had remained in Mexico. Shepard now checked his background at Fresno State College.
The records showed that he had spent a year at Oklahoma A. and M. at Stillwater, Oklahoma. From there he had gone into the service. He had been born near Kinderhook, up the Hudson River from New York City, a small town chiefly distinguished as the birthplace of President Martin Van Buren.
When a search of Stillwater and surrounding country failed to reveal any trace of the fugitive, the FBI was brought into the case by means of a fugitive warrant. The federal agency at once instituted a search of New York City, at the same time setting up a check on Kinderhook, where Werner still had relatives. The mails to and from Kinderhook were placed under particular observation. So, too, were the telephone lines and the telegraph wires.
Meantime, Morris developed a new angle. At Fresno State, Werner ostensibly had prepared himself for a life of dubious emergencies by specializing in Criminology and the Psychology of Crime. In his examination of Werner’s school records, Morris came upon a thesis in which the fugitive had written that the homing pigeon instinct in first-time criminals, while almost unconquerable, was not completely uncircumventible. It was natural for a man in trouble, he wrote, to want to be in friendly, or at least, familiar environs, but he could achieve this, not by such hazardous maneuvering as returning to his regional beginnings, but to a similar environment reasonably near (or as near as would be prudent) to his home.
When Morris communicated this information to the FBI, Federal Agent Edward Scheidt in New York set up a check of the Hudson River littoral, but carefully avoided Kinderhook. Newburg, Peekskill, Poughkeepsie, Hudson, Kingston, et al, fell under his scrutiny.
Then, one day, his peregrinations took him to Garrison, the little town that clings to the east bluff of the broad river just across from West Point. Here was a town somewhat smaller than Kinderhook, but in much the same pattern and atmosphere. Here was a hideout where communications were readily accessible, but in which strangers attracted little notice, since it was the United States Military Academy on the other side of the stream.
With one agent working beside him, Scheidt began to comb the little river community. At the end of 36 hours the two had checked every male resident of the town between the ages of 28 and 35, and were ready to strike.
Together, they waited at a restaurant a few yards off the main street. Dinner time came and the usual flow of men in working clothes arrived for their evening meal. One or two women ate alone, a family appeared, more men in working clothes, and finally a tall, burly man, his myopic eyes blinking, edged up to the lunch counter and Scheidt gave the signal.
With his partner, he waited for the man to finish his dinner. As he quit the counter, the two preceded him to the door and waited just outside on the sidewalk. The big man stepped through the door and Scheidt and his aide fell in on either side.
“Take it easy, Werner,” Scheidt said evenly. “We’re FBI. We want you for the murder of your wife.”
For the moment it seemed that Werner would sink to the sidewalk in complete collapse. Scheidt and his partner supported him by the arms.
“Let’s walk on over to your lodgings,” Scheidt said. “Act like nothing unusual was happening and we’ll all do better.”
Werner obeyed. The three reached the fugitive’s cheap rooming house. Werner volunteered the information that he had been living in similar places since leaving California. Asked why, he replied that he felt it was better to escape detection.
“I heard that Benny was dead,” he said, “and since I’d fought with her, I knew they’d be after me and that I’d never be able to prove I didn’t do it. That’s why I hid out.”
“But you did do it, Ted,” Scheidt said. “They’ve got all the proof they’ll ever need out there in California.”
“No,” Werner said, quietly, “I didn’t do it. I loved her too much to harm her.”
“But you slugged her a couple of times,” Scheidt said. “I wouldn’t call that love.”
“Maybe not, but I didn’t kill her,” Werner insisted.
“Who did, then?”
“I don’t know. There was a fella visiting her... her cousin, she said. Why don’t you ask him?”
“They did,” Scheidt said. “He knew plenty.”
Werner steadfastly refused to admit the slaying. He also refused to return to California without due process of law. Back in New York, working with Fresno authorities, they took up the task of obtaining extradition papers.
The Fresno authorities were in no mood to temporize. Even as Werner fought extradition, Shepard and Morris were building their case against him, convinced that no conceivable alibi available to Werner could save him.
Eleazar Lipsky
Eleazar Lipsky was the assistant district attorney of New York County, and for a time his star shone brightly, in the literary world and in Hollywood. His first novel, The Kiss of Death (later published as The Hoodlum) attracted the attention of all the major Hollywood studios. Director Henry Hathaway brought it to the screen. A smash hit starring Victor Mature as a noble stool pigeon who smashes the racket led by crazed gunman Richard Widmark, it is generally thought to be a masterpiece of late-1940s realism. On the heels of its success, Lipsky quickly published two uneven novels, Murder One and The People Against O'Hara. After that, he turned to true crime. This story about a perfectly normal, harmless man who faced death for a crime he didn’t commit appeared in the premier issue of Detective: The Magazine of True Crime Stories. Founded in 1951, publisher Lawrence Spivak declared his magazine would be “characterized by accuracy, restraint and an intelligent literate approach,” one that would “leave the gory photographs, the lurid illustrations and the sensational exaggerations to others.” Readers accustomed to getting their murder straight up and bloody responded indifferently to this classy publication. It folded less than two years later.