Born to Lose (29 page)

In the interim, Start and Corcoran hung around with some of the local cops and jail officers who, over evening beers, told what they could of Hoss. On Tuesday, the Waterloo Kiwanis Club held a formal luncheon to honor the city policemen for their part in capturing the “Most Wanted Man in America.” In their tribute, the Kiwanians laid the butter on with a trowel. Detective Tom Matzen hoped their kind but excessive remarks didn't make it back to the squad house, “for we'd be in for years of ribbing.”

Finally, on Wednesday, October 8, Captain Start and Detective Corcoran were permitted their time with Hoss. In the jail cell, Hoss lingered over his wieners and beans, saying nothing. Seated on either side of him on the bunk, the detectives feared they'd have to suffer through Hoss dawdling over the big apple too, but the prisoner put it aside.

“Stanley, we've come in from Pittsburgh to ask you some questions,” Start opened. “Are you ready to give answers?”

“I guess,” answered Hoss, dripping indifference.

“Stanley, we've told you we are here about the policeman back home,” said Start.

Hoss had already confessed to shooting the cop, but during his time with these two detectives he got the impression they knew nothing of what he'd said to the feds only the day before. Don't these people talk to each other?

In fact, they didn't know he'd confessed. The feds hadn't bothered to inform the Pennsylvania detectives of anything. “When in Waterloo,” Start recalled, “neither Marty nor I had any decent relationship with the FBI. They never talked to us at all, and heck, I knew Danny Dunn. He flew out to Waterloo right away, too, but got there ahead of us. But that doesn't mean you don't share information. The FBI even tapped the phone in our motel room.”

In the dark about anything Hoss had said to the FBI, Start began at square one, leaving Hoss free to toy with the state as he had with the feds.

“Patrolman Zanella?” Start began again.

Hoss spoke in the broadest of terms, now and again using phrases like, “Yeah, yeah, what the hell,” or “You do what you have to.” This was tantamount to a confession, but with an eye toward a trial the detectives persevered for words that could not be misconstrued by any juror. After more minutes of Hoss talking in every direction, he was with effort led back to Verona on that late afternoon …

Q. Stanley, we know you were in the yellow Chevy when you drove into Verona. What happened?

A. I came into town on the way to see my girl. I see a cop behind me and he flashes his lights, so that was it. I took off through town but he's right on me now. I pulled off on a side road. I was ready for him. I saw his door open and him coming up to my car from the side. I had my gun in my hand.

Q. What happened next?

A. I showed that dumb bastard.

Q. What, you what … ?

A. I
said
I showed the dumb bastard. I shot him. I saw him fall. I didn't know he was dead right there but … him or me, ya know.

After these impenitent words, Hoss segued to the Peugeots. He admitted to kidnapping and murdering both females, putting two bullets into Linda and “nine shots into the little girl.”

Working homicide, Start's and Corcoran's business was to see and hear bad things, terrible things, yet they were still unprepared for Stanley Hoss. When a suspect is nabbed, usually the first words out of his mouth are, “I didn't do it.” Later, after a wheelbarrow of evidence is dumped on him, his tune changes to, “I didn't mean it,” and a thousand variations thereof. Once caught dead to rights, any criminal knows the best avenue is to show a little contrition, keep hammering away that it wasn't really his fault, and refrain from speaking ill of the victim. Scrubbed up and looking sorrowful in view of a gullible jury while an oily defense attorney muddies the waters … well, who knows? But Hoss showed no concern about any of this.

In the latter part of their interview, Start and Corcoran were shocked speechless when “out of the blue Hoss went into a rant, slandered Zanella and used profanity against the mother and child, saying such things as ‘fuck them in the ass.'”

Of this experience, Start said, “That was the first and only time I felt I had talked with a man who had lost his soul.”

Linda and Lori Mae were dead. A select few federal and state officials knew this, but everyone else was left to pray for a miracle. The FBI had clamped a lid of silence over details of the fate of the Peugeots. The burdensome secret would soon be revealed, but at the moment those who had interviewed Hoss, as well as their superiors, had little choice but to accept Hoss's conditions for his revealing the location of the bodies. Nothing could bring back the mother and daughter, but the utmost had to be done to retrieve the bodies for a Christian burial, together. If that meant making a “deal with the devil,” so be it. And now that the deal had been struck, one could only hope for divine grace that the sanguinary and soulless Hoss would show a spark of chivalry and abide by his word.

Legal bodies and law enforcement agreed that Hoss should be returned to Pittsburgh without delay. The disunity arose over who would do the honors. On behalf of the feds, Evan Hultman, U.S. attorney for northern Iowa, declared that since “Hoss was initially arrested in Waterloo on a federal charge, there is no question who's had jurisdiction from the start.” Representing Pennsylvania, Captain Joe Start disagreed, asserting that his state had dibs on Hoss: “Hoss was captured on a federal UFLAP [Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution], but the
origin
of the UFLAP warrant lay in Pittsburgh due to the Zanella case.”

Shortly after Zanella's murder, Start himself had gone before a grand jury in Pittsburgh and presented the particulars of the Zanella case; the jurors had brought in a true bill, another name for an indictment. This
true bill was taken to the FBI. “It was only then,” reported Start, “that the FBI issued the UFLAP warrant. Ours should trump theirs.”

The lines were drawn. The federal government wanted Hoss for the Peugeots, Pennsylvania wanted Hoss for Zanella, and both powers wanted to stick the dagger in first.

“While in Waterloo,” said Start, “we were told that the FBI had first choice in custody of Hoss and they'd take him back to Pittsburgh.” With this news, Start knew he had to call his boss, District Attorney Robert Duggan, to get authorization to relinquish the state's bench warrant. Start may have been piqued at how the FBI was throwing its weight around but, in general, Start was “all right with the FBI having possession of Hoss. If they were getting the information out of him, fine. I felt we'd get Hoss soon enough for Zanella, after the Peugeots were taken care of.”

If Captain Start could be this generous, DA Duggan could not. “At the time,” explained Start,

there was a young U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh, who of course represented the feds. His name was Dick Thornburgh. Both Duggan and Thornburgh were capable men in big office; still, they had bosses too, and I don't know how high this custody battle went but I've heard J. Edgar Hoover and Pennsylvania Senator Hugh Scott had something to say. But with Duggan and Thornburgh, I don't know what it was between them. I wasn't privy to all the politics involved, but when I called Duggan from Waterloo to lift our bench warrant, he was stern, emphatic, saying, “No, no, you serve the bench warrant on them, you do what you have to … don't you let them get Hoss from us!”

Through a friend in the Waterloo Police Department, the Pittsburgh duo learned Wednesday evening that the FBI planned to move Hoss out early the following morning, Thursday, October 9. The same source also provided the flight plans. Certain of their inability to wrest custody of Hoss from the FBI, at least while in Waterloo, Start called his boss with the details of the flight plan. “Maybe something could be done on that end,” Start figured, “but Duggan was still telling me, ‘I want that warrant served. You are to follow my orders.'”

The FBI agents made their plans. From what they understood of Stanley Hoss, transporting him by automobile was too risky. Then, too, Hoss had promised to pinpoint the locations of the Peugeots' bodies directly after speaking with his parents and mistress, so time was of the essence.
Upon orders from Ian MacLennan in Pittsburgh, Special Agent Dunn was to maintain legal and physical custody of the captive and to exhibit extraordinary caution, for the FBI had learned that some citizens from the heartland states, and doubtless from Pennsylvania and Maryland, wished to see Stanley Hoss dead. Threats of this inimical nature were funneled to the FBI, which kept them quiet to avoid escalating such public sentiment. Still, the death threats were plentiful.

A warrant of transfer was issued Wednesday afternoon for Hoss to vacate Iowa under federal custody. Transportation for so special a prisoner posed a problem, and it wasn't until 9:00 P.M. that evening that a private charter five-seater Piper Aztec was arranged through Niederhauser Airways in Waterloo. In addition to the pilot, Denny Otto, the prisoner would have the close company of two Waterloo policemen and two U.S. deputy marshals.

At 4:00 A.M. on Thursday, the Black Hawk County Jail was eerily quiet. Corrections officers and FBI agents awakened Hoss to prepare him for the flight. Aside from Hoss, the segregation unit held only one other forlorn prisoner, and he slept through the whispered words and the gentle clinking of chains. There were enough beefy officers present in case of resistance, but Hoss complied with instructions and barely spoke.

Captain Start again called District Attorney Duggan, who remained adamant that the state bench warrant be served. “Marty and I were in between,” said Start. “We knew the Zanella case was wrapped up, so why continue this tug of war between the state and the feds, which was, really, Duggan and Thornburgh. Again, Duggan had some hard feelings and he just didn't want Thornburgh to have any success. But we were under orders. You're making a living and got to do what you're told.

“We were up at some ungodly hour and got to the airport a half-hour before the plane was to take off. It would be our last ghost of a chance to stop it with our warrant.”

The experience at the airport would never leave Corcoran or Start, who recalled

We saw them bring Hoss out of the car and walk him toward the plane. He was trussed up and shackled, could barely shuffle along and was surrounded by a cluster of uniforms, and thirty more officers formed two rows to keep Hoss flanked at all times on his way to the plane. This was amazing security.

We hurried over to where Hoss was to serve our warrant but the police stopped us. We were dumbfounded. How could the police stop the police
from lawfully serving a warrant? They said, “We got orders to halt you here,” then took us into a type of loose custody in the hangar. This was highly irregular and I've never heard anything like it before or since.

The Waterloo cops in the hangar, several of whom Start and Corcoran had previously met and even had a beer with, were highly apologetic. They were almost as astonished by what was going on as the Pennsylvania lawmen. Start mused, “Ian MacLennan [of the Pittsburgh FBI office] was thick in this. I knew Ian and liked him enough—he was a friend of mine … but ‘friend' is maybe too … I mean, how close can you get to one of those people?”

Foiled and frustrated, Start and Corcoran watched the Piper Aztec take off at 6:05 A.M. Only then was Start allowed to make a call to his boss to tell him what happened.

After a final briefing from his detectives in Iowa, a displeased Robert Duggan waited at a county airport near West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, east of Pittsburgh. He was the district attorney of Allegheny County and would not be bullied by the feds. He, personally, would see to it that he controlled the Hoss case. In a pocket of his expensive brown tweed sports coat was a habeas corpus writ granting him legal custody of Hoss. Standing beside Duggan was Allegheny County's police chief, Walter “Monk” Ketchel. Neither of these high officials was accustomed to hanging around airports to pick up suspects, but this was different.

Duggan, the handsome, blond-headed, legal powerhouse, had his admirerers and his detractors. His office prosecuted offenders vigorously, “like hounds after a fox,” as Duggan liked to say. But too, Duggan could be brusque, speaking without thinking. He could rub people the wrong way. It was Duggan who had smeared the county jail operations and had declared guilty the guards who'd been charged with the beating of inmate “Georgia” Buoy—and this before any investigation had been completed or a single hearing aired. A bachelor, Duggan was not infrequently spotted in the wee hours, strolling in fine haberdashery along Pittsburgh's Liberty Avenue, a rough and seamy part of town where anything could be had for a price.

Chief Ketchel bumped Duggan's arm and pointed to the west sky, where a dark speck gradually emerged as the small two-engine prop they'd been waiting for. Duggan checked his Rolex: 10:33 A.M. He and Ketchel moved toward the runway. So did some FBI agents and other police officers, along with a corps of photographers and reporters who'd been waiting at the terminal building.

Pilot Denny Otto eased the plane down. It traveled only a hundred yards before coming to a stop, but it remained at the end of the runway instead of taxiing to the main ramp. Almost before Duggan had mused to Ketchel, “Why's he staying way out there?” three carloads of U.S. marshals were seen racing to the plane. Duggan and Ketchel bounded for their own car. Ketchel had floored it for several hundred yards, but as they neared the Piper Aztec, Duggan, writ in hand, could just glimpse the surrounded prisoner being put into one of the cars. “Pull up beside it!” he yelled at Ketchel. As Ketchel screeched to a halt, both prepared to get out, but just then the cavalcade began to move out.

Ketchel followed suit, waving and blowing his horn. With an effort, he drew even with the left side of the trailing car, which had its windows open. With Ketchel matching the speed of the marshals' trailing car and staying close to it, Duggan managed to toss the writ into the backseat so that it landed on a marshal's lap. In the next instant, the writ was hurled back out. Duggan grabbed for it reflexively, but the envelope caught a gust of wind, then flip-flopped to the roadway. As Ketchel stopped his car to retrieve the writ, Duggan watched the federal caravan head off at high speed. To Duggan, the events at the West Mifflin Airport constituted a personal and professional indignity. He wouldn't forget.