Richard Comerford - Double Play

DOUBLE PLAY

By Richard Comerford

DOUBLE PLAY: A play in Baseball by which two players are put out. Also known as a Twin Killing.

What the eyes see and the ears hear, the mind believes.

Harry Houdini

FOREWORD

This is a work of fiction, but many of the people depicted really did exist (and some still do), and some of the events happened, although not all exactly as I tell them. However, in that my starting point is long ago 1960! please bear with me while I set out briefly what really happened. I know memories fade, and a lot of you were not even born in 1960, 1963 and even 1968, so dont think I am patronising you. I hope this brief Introduction will help you enjoy what follows.

Caryl Chessman was convicted in 1948 of a series of armed robberies and sex attacks carried out by the so-called Red Light Bandit in Los Angeles. Although not guilty of murder, he was sentenced to death for kidnapping two of the Bandits female victims and was executed in the San Quentin gas chamber on Monday, May 2 nd , 1960. He had evaded the executioner for at that time a record twelve years. On that day, just before the fatal 10am deadline, his lawyers, Rosalie Asher and George Davis, prevailed on Judge Louis Goodman to grant yet another stay of execution. The Judge directed his secretary to call San Quentin, but she misdialled the number. By the time she got through to the prison the procedure had begun and could not be stopped. There was a strong possibility that, before another execution date would come around, Chessmans death sentences could have been commuted to life imprisonment. Chessman was a best-selling author on Death Row, and did write the first four books attributed to him here.

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on Friday, November 22 nd , 1963. The official version was that he was shot from a high building, the Texas School Book Depository, by a disaffected Communist sympathiser and returned defector from the USSR, Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald then fled and shot a police officer, J.D. Tippit, on the street, before taking refuge in a movie theatre, The Texas Theatre. After a struggle Dallas police arrested him, eighty minutes after the President was shot.

In his possession when he was arrested were two Selective Service cards. One was in the name of Lee Harvey Oswald; the other in the name of Alek James Hidell. Each carried a photograph of the same man.

A rifle was found on the sixth floor of the Book Depository soon after the assassination. Police originally identified it as a German 7.65 Mauser, and this was publicly announced several times by law enforcement officials and the media. Hours later the identification was changed to an Italian 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano, which was linked to Oswald, as was the Smith & Wesson .38 revolver found on him when arrested.

Oswald was in police custody for two days, during which he strenuously denied both killings, several times on television.

On Sunday, November 24 th , in the basement car park of Dallas Police Headquarters, defenceless while handcuffed between two large Dallas detectives, he was marched through a short corridor of newsmen and police officers into the glare of television lights and was shot by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby. The single bullet mortally wounded him, and he died in Parkland Memorial Hospital some 48 hours after President Kennedy passed away there. His murder was captured on live TV.

Ruby was tried, convicted and sentenced to the electric chair. He won a retrial, but died in custody, of an aggressive form of cancer, in 1967. He went to his grave protesting that the truth of the assassination had not been revealed, that he had a story he desperately wanted to tell.

Within days of the three murders, new President Lyndon Johnson established a Commission under Chief Justice Earl Warren. Its aim, amidst fears of an international conspiracy, was to convince the public that Oswald had acted alone and was not part of a conspiracy. The Warren Report, issued in late 1964, so concluded. It found Ruby also had acted alone and that he and Oswald did not know each other.

Reports of multiple Oswalds being seen before the assassination, and of Oswald being known to Ruby, were dismissed for lack of credible evidence.

On June 4 th , 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy won the California Primary election, which made him a near-certainty to secure the Democratic Partys Presidential nomination. Minutes after midnight on June 5 th he was shot in the pantry of The Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles. He died 26 hours later. A young Palestinian, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, was convicted of his murder and sentenced to the gas chamber. A moratorium on executions in 1972 resulted in commutation to life imprisonment. He still resides within the Californian prison system. He claims to have no recollection of the incident. There have been suggestions he may have been hypnotised.

Charles Manson was convicted of orchestrating the 1969 murders in Los Angeles of actress Sharon Tate and six others, including wealthy store-owners Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. These were branded the Tate-LaBianca murders and Manson and three female followers were sentenced to death in 1971. The same moratorium which spared Sirhan saved Manson and he, too, enjoyed Californias hospitality until his death, aged 83, on November 19 th , 2017.

Some minor points.

J. Edgar Hoover did not retire, either voluntarily or otherwise, as Director of the FBI. On May 8 th , 1964, President Johnson extended his tenure for life, and he died in office.

On September 5 th , 1975, Lynette Fromme, a former acolyte of Charles Manson, made an assassination attempt, with a gun, on President Gerald Ford. She failed, and was imprisoned until 2009, when she was granted parole. Ford had succeeded Richard Nixon when Nixon resigned the Presidency in disgrace over Watergate in 1974; otherwise Nixon would have been President when Fromme made her play.

Fromme was known in the Manson Family as Squeaky.

Charles Manson did learn to play guitar from Alvin Creepy Karpis in prison, and he knew Dennis Wilson, the Beach Boys, and music producer Terry Melcher. He hoped Melcher would help to further his musical career. The Beach Boys even recorded one of Charlies songs (after a bit of tweaking by Dennis Wilson).

The reference to Lucas McCain is to the rifle-shooting character played by Chuck Connors in the TV series The Rifleman.

Tinker to Evers to Chance, referred to briefly early in the book, is a quote from a 1910 poem entitled Baseballs Sad Lexicon which sings the praises of the Chicago Cubs shortstop (Joe Tinker), second baseman (Johnny Evers) and first baseman (Frank Chance), who formed a legendary and lethal double play combination between 1902 and 1912. The phrase became associated with high-quality teamwork or smooth efficiency generally, but this books title refers to what the three Cubs did best taking out two opponents in one operation.

My reason for this brief summary is that I tried out bits of the book on family and friends, and the most common initial comment was they were not overly familiar with the real events and people I have used to provide a framework for my fiction (one male acquaintance, in his forties, told me he believed John Kennedy had been shot at his inauguration!).

Finally, your patience, please. There is one individual in here who has a number of identities, and what I call him at any one time depends upon with which character(s) he is interacting.

I hope you enjoy.

SAN QUENTIN PENITENTIARY

MONDAY MAY 2 nd , 1960

The shrill scream of the telephone shattered the tense silence.

For a moment no-one moved; the witnesses, guards, the Warden all looked to the black handset on the pale green wall. Only the man strapped to the metal chair, rendered deaf by the thick glass of the chambers windows, remained impassive.