The Spirits of El Segundo

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This case was like no other case. Going back that much in time, it was like out of this world.
It's like what you see in the movies. July 22, 1957.
Something has happened. And I asked if he was hurt, is he hurt bad?

And they said, no, it's worse than that.

It was a huge crime.

It hit El Segundo in the South Bay area hard.

What do you remember as a child?

Asking mom questions about what happened to our dad, she would cry and say that, um,

Thank you. do you remember as a child? Asking mom questions about what happened to our dad, she would cry and say that he was killed.
The perpetrator of this crime turned on the officers. Officers who hadn't even had their weapons drawn shot the first officer in the back three times, and then turned his weapon on the second officer who was seated in the police car and savagely shot him three times in the torso, killing both officers.
To have them killed like that, right in cold blood, I was devastated. Back in 1957, everybody was involved, the FBI, state agencies, local agencies, the sheriff's department, and El Segundo.

This case had been haunting the people of El Segundo,

and especially those in the police department,

for almost 50 years now.

How could a guy come out and commit all these crimes

and then disappear all this time?

Guy got away with murder.

Simple as that.

This guy killed two on-duty police officers,

and some 46 years later, he was going to be held accountable for it. The ghosts of El Segundo.
This is Los Angeles County. Ten million people, 4,000 square miles.
And, according to statistics, the most dangerous place in the country to be a police officer. Almost every day of the year, an officer is shot at while on duty.
It's a violent world, especially in Los Angeles County, for police officers. Some of them end up dead.
We begin with breaking news. An officer shot.
Officer Ricardo Lizarraga died today. This California Highway Patrol officer shot down on the steps of this Southland courthouse.
It is dangerous out there. Darren Levine knows the key to surviving in a hostile environment is having the right skills to work with.
I'm the chief instructor of an Israeli hand-to-hand combat system that comes from the Israeli army. About 300 police departments use my system officially.
Now I want it fast. You explode here like a bomb.
But Levine does a lot more than just train police officers how to survive on the streets. Nice, Jesse.
My life has a certain theme to it, I guess. His full-time job as deputy district attorney...
Mr. Levine, do you have any questions? I do.
...with an elite unit set up to prosecute anyone who would dare, wound or kill a law enforcement officer. And I'm saying that this is weak evidence.
My unit is called the Crimes Against Police Officers section. We have to have a unit like this, because in any given week we can have five, six, seven, eight, ten police officers shot at.
Back then it wasn't like that. Back then means back in the days when L.A.
County was a much safer place. Back then is when this story of a cold-blooded cop killing begins.
But what makes this tale all the more extraordinary is the fact that it would be almost half a century before Darren Levine and other investigators could finally put this case to rest. This case was like no other case.
This is my senior year getting ready to go to college. Everything was just going great.
I had a girlfriend here and there and swam on the swimming team. I had dances in the gymnasium.

We would dance to Johnny Mathis and, you know, the Four Tops.

And, you know, all those great songs in the past.

And when rock and roll was really Bill Haley and the Comets.

And everything was just great.

Do you look back fondly on those days?

Oh, yeah, sure. Sure.
Bob Dewart was just 17 back in 1957, an innocent kid living in a much more innocent age, when just being in a car with a girl was a big deal. The Gile.

This is the 49 Ford that we drove that night out on Lover's Lane. Four teenagers driving home from a summer party stopped to watch planes land at a Lover's Lane near a local airport.
Bob Dewar figured he might get lucky, which meant he might get a kiss or two. That was the first time I was ever in a car with a girl in that situation.
And what were you doing, just talking? Listening to music, and we started to kiss one another, and I guess it got pretty involved. I rolled the window down because it gets kind of steamy inside when four people are inside.
And that's when the gun came through the window and said, this is a robbery. That's what he said.
Yeah, this is a robbery. And I thought this was a joke.
I said, got to be somebody pulling a prank. But the gun was real.
This gunman was prepared. He had surgical tape.
He had a flashlight with him. He covered their eyes with tape.
And then he stopped and he said, I don't know what I'm going to do with you. And then he asked us to take our clothes off.
Naked, bound, and blind, Dewar and his buddy and their 15-year-old dates had no choice but to do what they were told. He came over to the passenger side of the car and he approached this female teenager.
Teenager. He came around from the driver's side to the passenger side, opened the car and raped the girl.
What had started as a night of innocent fun had now become a horrible dream from which Bob Dewar thought he and his friends might never awaken. Were you thinking this is it? Yeah, we did.
Yeah. He asked us to get out of the car and he said, I think I'm going to kill you.
I want you to march out into the field. And so we all marched out in the field and the the girls were crying.
I didn't know what to think. I mean, I couldn't believe this was going to happen.
But you thought he might kill you. Well, he had a gun.
I figured that it just takes four bullets and we're all gone. We stood in the field, and then he turned the car so the headlights shined on us.
Then we heard the car door close, and he drove away. One girl raped, three other teenagers robbed and terrorized.
But the gunman's night wasn't over yet. As he made his getaway in the stolen 49 Ford, he made a mistake.
One simple mistake that would add murder to the list of his crimes. At the corner of Sepulveda Boulevard and Rosecrans,

the suspect stopped for the red light at Sepulveda

and then, for unknown reason, proceeded through the red light.

Lieutenant Craig Cleary was just 18 months old at the time of the crime,

but as an investigator for the El Segundo Police Department,

Cleary knows as much about what happened that night

And Lieutenant Craig Cleary was just 18 months old at the time of the crime, but as an investigator for the El Segundo Police Department, Cleary knows as much about what happened that night as if he had been there. There was a marked black and white unit that were parked off the side of the road that obviously the suspect didn't see.
In that patrol car were two young El Segundo policemen in their 20s, Officer Richard Phillips and rookie Milton Curtis, who had been with the department only two and a half months when the two decided to pull over that 49 Ford. Now while officers Curtis and Phillips were dealing with this situation, another black and white rolls by with two other El Segundo police officers in it, correct? We were southbound on Sepulveda when we heard the call and turned the corner and there they were.
Two other young patrolmen, James Gilbert. I was 28.
And Charlie Porter. I was about 37, I believe.
Not knowing what had taken place earlier at the Lover's Lane, assumed that Phillips and Curtis were making just a routine traffic stop. Officer Phillips appeared to be getting ready to start a citation.

And as we stopped and looked the situation over, and he waved a paper at us like everything was all right, so we went ahead. Porter and Gilbert would be the last people to ever see their fellow officers alive.
Just seconds later, a call came on the radio. OFFICER PHILLIPS SA that they'd been shot and needed an ambulance.
They raced back to the scene, but it was too late. Officer Curtis was in the center of the police car, and Officer Phillips was out on the side in the dirt.
Phillips had been fatally wounded, shot three times in the back.

Curtis was already dead, shot three times as well, while sitting in the patrol car.

I reached in and felt of his neck, and there was no pulse or anything.

I hate to say it, but in another circumstance,

it could have been the two of you that had pulled this guy over.

That's true. It's very difficult to be that close to something like that to the fellas you know so well, to have them killed like that right in cold blood.
It was pretty hard to take. The call for help came over the radio at 1.28 a.m.
and in the short time it took for Gilbert and Porter to respond, the killer had simply disappeared. Where'd he go? He went about four or five blocks, ditched the car, parked it on the opposite side of the street and fled from the car.
Hundreds of police officers from El Segundo and the neighboring communities scoured the area all night. They found the stolen 49 Ford, but there was no sign of the

suspect. Someone got away with murdering two police officers.
Someone got away with raping a woman.

The killer might have disappeared, but he left something behind,

something that would trigger one of the longest manhunts in California history. We were high school sweethearts.

The first time I saw him, I thought he was beautiful.

And I said to myself, I'd like to marry that guy.

For Jean Curtis, it's the memory of her husband, Milton Curtis, that will always be closest

to her heart.

He was my first love, and I never got over the first love.

I'm going to go ahead and get it. Curtis, it's the memory of her husband, Milton Curtis, that will always be closest to her heart.
He was my first love, and I never got over the first love. I don't think anybody does, really.
They were just teenagers when they were married in 1952. The next five years, the couple had two children, Keith and Tony, and Milton had a new career as a police officer, a career that would end almost as soon as it began.
This is the plaque that they gave me with his original badge on it. That's all I have left.
Tell me, what do you remember about sending him off to work that night? We had had a little argument. And I've always felt bad about that.
We didn't get to say goodbye. Just a few hours later, Jean Curtis would find out she was no longer a 23-year-old wife.
She was now a 23-year-old widow. They woke me up around 4 in the morning and they told me that he and his partner had been shot and killed.
And I thought, oh, the world, since I went to sleep, the world's gone mad. The morning of July 22, 1957, was a rude awakening for all the residents of El Segundo, when they suddenly found themselves at the center of one of the largest manhunts in California history.
It was the number one story in Southern California for that time. It was rare back then.
It was a crime that would become one of the oldest unsolved murder cases in L.A. County,

a crime that would haunt Deputy D.A. Darren Levine 46 years later.

You can imagine the scrutiny and all the resources that were put forth

to try and solve this case back in 1957.

And everybody was asking the same question. Why? Why did a man who had simply run a red light have to murder two police officers in cold blood? Perhaps he figured the cops were looking for the man who had earlier terrorized those teenagers and stolen their car.
And once they'd run a check on him, it would all be over. But there was just one problem with that theory.
There has been no report of that 49 Ford having been stolen. There's no report out on the airwaves of this rape and robbery that had just occurred.
In fact, at the time of the murders, the teenagers, naked and terrified, had just been found wandering the streets looking for help. their story was finally reported, investigators were already arriving at the scene of this crime.
The only thing that was going through my mind was that I had to be sure and do everything right. Howard Speaks was one of the first to arrive, as a young crime scene investigator with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
The first thing that you do in the homicide investigation is photograph the area. I took some pictures of the back of the car.
Bullet hole in the trunk, two in the rear windshield that shattered the windshield, so we know that the car was hit three times. Lieutenant Craig Cleary and all the members of the El Segundo Police Department are amazed at how those bullet holes got there.
Officer Phillips happened to be one of the top marksmen on the department at the time. After being shot and actually in the process of dying, was able to get off six shots at the fleeing suspect vehicle, hitting the vehicle three times.
Phillips may have marked his killer for life. Two rounds were recovered from the interior of the vehicle.
One was not. And that told the investigators what? The suspect might be carrying a bullet from Officer Phillips' handgun.
That's pretty remarkable. It is.
Investigators knew the stolen .49 Ford might have one more story to tell. Did the killer leave something behind? Something that would lead them in the right direction? Today samples of DNA can point the way to a killer, but back in 1957 they would have to rely on the best tool they had at the time.
This is my fingerprint kit. Howard Speaks searched the car from bumper to bumper for something, anything, that might lead them to a suspect.
You've got this car, you know that the suspect was in it and driving it. Are you hopeful that you're going to get some prints off this? I was very hopeful, knowing that he must have been highly nervous and perspiring.
He had to leave fingerprints on the steering wheel. Tell me exactly what you did.

I just put the powder on the steering wheel and moved it around

and found the ridges that were showing.

I found two latent lifts of the left thumbprint.

Two partial prints.

By themselves, not much to go on.

But when a lab technician decided to put them together, it was the break investigators were counting on. They felt pretty confident they had the suspect's fingerprints.
Now you have to find the person. Investigators needed to put a face on their suspect, and luckily there were several witnesses who would never forget the man they had seen that night.
Were you able to provide them with a description of the man? Well, I did the best I could. Bob Dewar and his friends were held at gunpoint by the suspect for almost an hour.
They tell you, don't look at the gun, look at the man. Well, I think I looked at the man.
This is a picture developed as a result of the accounts that we had of the robbery. I got a very good look at the suspect.
El Segundo patrolman Charlie Porter and his partner saw the man for less than a minute, but that was enough. He was about six foot tall, 200 pounds, short hair, and peculiar way he held his head.
Either he was arrogant or frightened. It looked a little bit of both.
The face of a killer, a clear clue to his identity.

Police now felt it would be only a matter of time until he was brought to justice.

But no one could ever imagine just how much time.

Meanwhile, the residents of El Segundo, frightened and saddened, gathered together as a family to lay to rest two of their own. What this is, is a newscast from 1957, the city of El Segundo, the Douglas Mortuary.
It was the sheriff of LA County at the time. Keith Curtis was just five at the time his father was shot, his sister Tony only two.
That's my mother, Jean. She was very protective of both myself and my sister.
She realized that times are going to change now and she did everything for us. My son kept asking me why doesn't daddy come home and I would tell him he he can't come home you know he can't.
He's sleeping with the God and the angels in heaven and he still couldn't understand why he couldn't come home to sleep. You feel cheated? I feel cheated.
I feel cheated that we never really got to know my father. It would take authorities nearly half a century to find the man who disappeared in the dark that night.
Over the next 46 years, important new clues would be discovered. We were digging up the weeds when I found the gun.
Promising new leads would be investigated.

Could this be the diamond in the rough we were looking for?

And thousands of suspects would be checked out, all dead ends.

Until a new piece of technology came along that would finally catch up with this old mystery.

Some people follow the rules but where's the fun in that i'm soraya and this is rule breakers the podcast where we celebrate the rebels the misfits and the ones who make their own way every week i sit down with the biggest rule breakers in sports entertainment and beyond to talk about the wildest moments, toughest lessons, and why breaking the rules might

just be the key to success.

Follow and listen to Rule Breakers with Soraya, an Odyssey podcast available now for free on the Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. When the killer of two policemen disappeared down those dark alleys that night in 1957, the Curtis family wondered if and when they would ever catch him.
When they said that they had no leads, they meant they had no leads. I think my mom put it the best way.
Over a period of time, you had to have people born to figure out the science and technology to put this thing together. We had to wait.
She was right, for although time is usually the enemy of a murder investigation, this time, the passage of time, 46 years, would be necessary. It would be a different world from the 50s, in which this case could finally be solved.
Two modern-day policemen, L.A. Sheriff's Detectives Kevin Lowe, We were the lead investigators.
and Dan McIlderry, It was a fascinating case. have inherited the coldest case on the books.
Ice cold. Ice cold.
It was colder than cold, yeah. These cards represent over 3,000 individuals that were looked at as possible suspects, and they were all cleared.
But Lowe and McIlderry weren't simply curious about some old files. What got them involved was a phone call to the El Segundo Police Department in September 2002.
Ask the police how may I help you? It was from a woman who said she had some tantalizing new information on the murders. Her uncle had been bragged about being responsible for murdering two El Segundo Police officers.
Were you excited at the possibility of cracking this case after all these years? Absolutely. Absolutely.
Their first order of business was simple. See if the 1957 fingerprint matched up with their new suspect.
We gave the information to the crime lab. They worked it.
They cleaned up the print. The prints were sent here, the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department crime lab, easily the busiest in the country, handling over 70,000 cases a year.
This is the actual latent lift that Howard Speaks lifted in 1957. Dale Fallican and Don Care, top fingerprint specialists, took one look and knew right away.
Their new suspect was no match to the old print, just another dead end. Those prints ultimately did not belong to that individual, and homicide was quickly notified once it was verified.
But now that this old unsolved murder was suddenly on top of the pile again, they thought, why not give it one more try? And would you describe that as kind of fragile after all these years? It has literally fallen apart. This time with the advantage of modern science.
How do you work with something like this? Well, we literally can't work with that. We work with a photograph that fortunately was taken of this.
Using everyday computer technology that wasn't even dreamt of in 1957, the experts were able to digitally reprocess the original photograph. This, in effect, is a really pared-down version of this.
That's correct. So the computer can read it.
That's correct. But even with a new digital image of this original fingerprint, you still have to have some place to search for a match.
And that's what's really new. Following the events of 9-11, the FBI finally created a nationwide computer database.
In it, a copy of every single criminal fingerprint from every state in the entire country. How big a deal is this? It's fantastic.
They loaded a digital copy of the killer's prints into the system. And just like that, a man that had eluded capture for nearly half a century was found.

In a matter of minutes.

If you hit it like this, it really makes you feel good.

They gave us a call and said,

hey, we got really good news for you.

The guy you're looking for lives in South Carolina.

And that's when everything got exciting.

Read the name for me.

It comes back to a Mason, Gerald F. Mason.

Gerald F. Mason, after years of searching, the face of a killer.
This was his fingerprint card from his 1956 burglary or felony larceny arrest in Columbia, South Carolina. Were those the only fingerprints from Gerald Mason in the system? Yes.
He was only arrested that one time. So if he had not been arrested and done jail time in 1956 for that crime? We wouldn't be here today.
Some quick police work easily located Mason, remarkably still living in his hometown of Columbia, South Carolina, and not a career criminal but a retiree living comfortably with his family. We found that very unusual that a guy could come out here and commit that type of crime in 1957,

and he'd only been arrested one time.

We thought we were going to be looking at a guy with a serious criminal history.

So why not just go and get Mason?

The answer is, Lowe and McIlderry would need a lot more than just a decades-old fingerprint match

to prove to a jury that Mason was indeed a cop killer. How do you try to prove that Mason is the killer? The first thing we did is we looked through the file, we found what we had.
What they had was the single largest file in the very crowded Sheriff's Record Library. There were boxes and boxes.
Boxes and boxes of evidence and leads collected over the years, which now had to be re-examined to see if any other clues could be connected to Gerald Mason. In 1960, the actual murder weapon was recovered by a man that was doing some yard work.
We were digging up the weeds when I found the gun. Doug Tooley has lived in this house since 1956, less than a mile from the scene of the murders.
In the same neighborhood police believe the killer used to make his escape. This portion we found first.
The frame. The frame.
Without the cylinder. Without the cylinder.
And then we found the cylinder and the spent shells and the live shells. This was a year later.
This was a year later. That's when we called the police and said, what do we do with it? That gun, the finding of that gun was huge to this case also.
The serial number was traced by investigators back then to Shreveport, Louisiana. Lowe and McIlderry followed the trail of evidence to Shreveport, 1, 1600 miles and 46 years from El Segundo, California.

The gun was sold here in 1957.

They tracked down the salesman at the Sears that sold that gun, a man by the name of Billy Gene Clark.

I pointed out that this was the least expensive one at $29.95, and that's when he decided that's what he wanted.

Billy Gene Clark was just an 18-year-old kid in 1957, working his first real job behind the sporting goods counter at this local Sears. You sold a lot of guns, I assume.
Yes. Back then, we were by far the largest gun dealer in this area.
What exactly is this document that we're looking at? This is a record of firearms sold. This is G.D.
Wilson is the name he gave me. This is your handwriting? That's correct.
Who was G.D. Wilson? That's what they didn't know.
With just the initials, they didn't have much. So what did they do? They started canvassing the areas around the Sears.
This is the YMCA. This is where they tracked George D.
Wilson to. This is the man who bought the gun.
You know he stayed here. Yes.
Investigators had checked out nearly every George Wilson in the country. This is the room that Gerald Mason stayed in.
And none matched the 1957 fingerprint. This window, you can see the back of the Sears.
Obviously, the G.D. Wilson who stayed here had used an alias, but it was an alias written in the killer's own hand.
They were able to locate the register from an actual piece of paper where he signed in to the YMCA as George D. Wilson.
The handwriting jumped off the page at me, and it was something that I'm going, you know, I gotcha. Paul Edholm, formerly of the Beverly Hills Police Department and one of the country's leading forensic experts on handwriting, was enlisted to examine the evidence.
This was written out by the person who checked into the YMCA in the name of George D. Wilson.

And this was an eye examination from the state of South Carolina in the name of Gerald F. Mason.
This is the Gerald Mason G. This is the George Wilson G.
If you put one over the other here, I mean, it's almost identical. identical.
I indicated that I was 99.9% sure that this was done by the same person. When you told them that you were 99.9% sure, what was their reaction? They were ready to go out and get a warrant for his arrest at that point.
And so, confident their case against Mason was solid, detectives made the trip to South Carolina to finally get their man. But it wasn't over yet.
Gerald Mason's comfortable retirement was about to come to an end. And no one knew how he'd react.
There was a lot of anxiety because we didn't know what was going to happen. What did you say to him? Mr.
Mason, we're detectives from Los Angeles, and we're here to talk to you about something

that happened back in 1957.

Two police officers were murdered.

My God. You were here for that reason?

Yes, sir. When Gerald Mason answered a knock on his front door early on the morning of January 29, 2003, It's clear from these police audiotapes that he never expected it would be his past finally catching up with him.
We're investigating a crime that occurred back in 1957. Two police officers were murdered.
My God, you were here for that reason? Yes, sir. When my partner explained to him that we were homicide investigators from LA County, his chin just dropped.
Detectives Kevin Lowe and Dan McIlderry weren't sure who was more surprised when they finally met Mason face to face. He was just shocked, completely shocked.
And he just kept saying, I don't understand. I don't understand why you're here.
You've come here for me? Yes, sir. That's what the arrest was for.
He never denied it. He never reacted.
He just stared off and just shook his head. El Segundo Police Lieutenant Craig Cleary had the privilege of taking Mason into custody.
You think that he thought after all these years he'd gotten away with it? Absolutely.

Even though Mason was almost 70 years old, police still considered him potentially dangerous.

In fact, a search of his house turned up a collection of loaded firearms.

But in the end, Mason gave up not with a bang, but with a whimper.

I don't know, honey. I don't know what this is all about.

Wait, can I sit with him? They're going to put me in jail, honey. They're going to put me in jail.
46 years of searching had turned up a fugitive very different than anyone had expected. For example, there's no record that Gerald Mason ever committed another crime after the 1957 police killings.
He got married, raised a family, and started his own business. To everyone who knew him, he was nothing more than an ordinary law-abiding citizen.
For over 40 years, Jerry has been a loving husband, father, grandfather, and a friend of this community. This has to be a case of a mistaken identity.
When it happened, I said there was no way. I said he just didn't do it.
Betty Wiggins has lived next door to the Masons for the past 10 years and, like many people in this neighborhood, could always count on Gerald Mason when help was needed. He put these floodlights up here for me.
He put the grill together for me. He would light the pilot light on my jacuzzi when I couldn't get it on the heater.
How was he thought of here in the neighborhood? Everyone really did like Jerry. I never heard anyone say anything bad about him.
Like many of the older residents of Columbia, Mason could often be found at the local bowling alley or at a nearby golf course, enjoying his retirement with friends. He was an individual who would give you a shirt off his back if you needed it.
Del Trimble, who counts Gerald Mason as one of his best friends, played golf with him the day before his arrest. He wasn't a hardened criminal.
I mean, he made a mistake. He was a kid that went out and made a couple mistakes.
But at the same token, he changed his life. Was this retired family man really the cold-blooded killer California police had been searching for all these years? Prosecutor Darren Levine would have to prove that he was.
I've had my own friends say to me, but he's been so good for 45 years. He's lived such a good life for 45 years.
He was a nice grandfather. He was a decent husband.
Does that count for anything? Sure it does. We have to overcome that.
The case against Mason was strong, matching fingerprints, handwriting, but there was one piece of evidence investigators always wondered about, One that could eliminate any doubt forever. Three impacts.
Only two projectiles recovered. Where's the third projectile? Question mark.
Did you check Mason to see if he'd been shot or had a scar? We did. He had a mark that looked like a big pockmark on his right shoulder blade.
He was, in fact, hit by gunfire when Phillips shot him. The last thing that officer did before he died was mark the man that killed him for life.
He tried to defend himself the best he could, you know. He tried to defend himself and his partner.
In another sense, the Phillips' children, Carolyn, Dick, and Pat, were also scarred for life. We lived our lives without dad.
He wasn't there. But gee, his murderer was able to have everything that my father wasn't allowed to have.
It's hard to live with. Being sent to prison for the rest of his life is not good enough.
He needs to hear from the families to see and feel what he has done to us. Now the Phillips and Curtis families would have their chance to do just that.
After a judicial hearing in South Carolina, Mason agreed to return to Los Angeles for a trial long overdue. Officers that hadn't been around for 20 years came in walking on canes.
I thought this day would never come. Officers like Howard Speaks, who lifted the fingerprint that solved the case.
I've been waiting for this day a long time, but the wait was well worth it. New police officers, rookie police officers, detectives came to see in this extraordinary case would it have an extraordinary ending.
And to the surprise of everyone, it did. My understanding is that you want to enter a plea today, is that correct? Gerald Mason could have fought the charges, yet for some reason, this time, he did the right thing.
He pleaded guilty. And Darren Levine was more than happy to accept his plea.
On July 22, 1957, do you acknowledge that you murdered Officer Phillips and Officer Curtis willfully, deliberately, and with premedication? Yes, sir. And finally, Mason would have to face up to what he had done and face those whose lives he'd shattered.
This wholehearted individual left the total of five children, fatherless, and four teenagers devastated for many years to come. Your cowardly act shattered our lives forever.
For all of this, we cannot and will not forgive you. But that didn't stop Mason from trying to make some kind of amends.
It is impossible to express to so many people that's how I am. I do not understand why I do this.
It does not fit in my life. It is not the person I know.
I did test these crimes. Did you believe what he said in court? No.
No, as far as I'm concerned, that apology speech went out for himself and to his family. He might say sorry now, but we didn't even look at that because I don't believe it.
Yes, he was remorseful, but I think he was more sad and more sorry for having been caught. It is the judgment of this court that you be sentenced to life in prison.
Gerald Mason will now spend what's left of the rest of his life in prison.

But one question still remains after all these years.

Why?

It wasn't too easy. No, it was a lot of work.

It was draining physically, emotionally, and now it's over. Detectives Kevin Lowe and Dan McIlderry got what they wanted from Gerald Mason, a confession.
But what they also wanted now were answers. After the proceedings, he was willing to sit down and talk with us and answer some more questions that we had for him.
Nagging questions like, why did Mason, after just getting out of prison for burglary, end up in California with a gun? I didn't have a family life. I didn't have any place to go.
And things were not going well for me. And so I took off to California.
I bought the gun at Shreveport with the intention of using it simply as a deterrent in so far as I was hitchhiking. When asked why he attacked the teenagers and raped that 15-year-old girl, amazingly, Mason said he didn't really remember.
But as far as why he killed two cops in cold blood, Mason's answer was shockingly simple. I thought, if I don't get them, they're going to get me.
So when the officer turned away from me, I shot both officers, got back in the car, and drove away. A simple answer for an incredibly senseless crime, an answer that brought little comfort to his victims.
I hope he burns in hell. It made me really feel angry, sick, to the point where I wish I could reach out and smack him up on the side of the head.
He's a murderer, he's a thief, and he's a rapist. That's what he is.
He just got old. But there was great comfort in knowing that after 46 years, the victims were never forgotten.
To know that they didn't give up. There were people out there in the department that still wanted to solve this case, but then to be able to do it, it was phenomenal.
How has solving this case helped you? Peace of mind. That's it.
Peace of mind. They presented these to us, these pocket watches.
It says, thank you. It seems so small.
We carry these with us everywhere we go. And it's just a reminder of these great families that we feel such a part of now.
My man. How are you? Good.
In the end, maybe what it took to solve this case wasn't one clue or one break, but one family, generations of police officers determined to protect their own. There's probably a hundred people that was in on this investigation, and I love each and every one of them.
You can't even begin to thank them. A lot of people put their hearts and soul into it.
There's not much more satisfying thing I've ever done in law enforcement. It's heartwarming that we were able to do a small part in that.
I didn't think I'd ever live to see it. It'll live with me the rest of my days.
This is the culmination of my career in law enforcement. Just the thanks and the praise we got from the families is more than any recognition we could get from our department.
I hope we brought them some measure of comfort knowing that we've got the guy. The town of El Segundo hasn't changed much since that fateful night so long ago.
But one thing has changed. The wounds that were suffered almost 50 years ago

have finally begun to heal.

I'm not his victim anymore.

My son is not his victim anymore.

I am so grateful.

I had to wait this long.

It's worth the wait.

Gerald Mason died in prison in 2017.

Now streaming on Paramount+. Name's Conrad Harrigan, family man.
And if you cross my family, well, you'd better pray. From the underworld of Guy Ritchie...
We shake the right hands, break the wrong ones. ...comes the next great crime series.
And when someone forgets their place, I've got a man for that. For himself.
Starring Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan, and Helen Mirren.

We've got everyone where we want them.