Someone's Daughter by Silvia Pettem

Author:Silvia Pettem [Pettem, Silvia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing
Published: 2012-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

11

The Daily Camera’s crime reporter—probably Bob Looney, but no byline was given—outlined why Sheriff Art Everson considered Glatman “a good suspect in the mystery slaying of 1954.” The sheriff’s reasoning included the following: Glatman was familiar with Boulder, he had previously been arrested for abducting a woman in Boulder, and he had been arrested for “terrorizing women” in Denver, thirty miles away. A further parallel was that the Boulder County victim had been disrobed, as were the three women Glatman admitted to murdering in California.

The articles mentioned that Sheriff Everson had sent a copy of his file on the 1954 homicide to the Orange County, California, sheriff’s office, asking that Glatman be questioned in the case. Then in custody, Glatman had been arrested in Orange County after the last of his assault victims managed to escape from his parked car. Just maybe, I thought, the California agency might still have the long-lost file. If so, it would answer many of our questions. But my hopes were quickly dashed after I corresponded with an Orange County sergeant who told me that even after consulting with the Santa Ana Police Department and the local district attorney’s cold case team, no one could find our file—or anything at all on Glatman. That seemed strange to me, as his arrest had been high-profile. Files on him must have been kept by someone, but where were they?

Without going into any detail, one of the Daily Camera articles mentioned that a lie detector test “apparently cleared Glatman of three Colorado murders about which he was questioned.” If Jane Doe’s murder was one of them, what were the other two? Sheriff Everson emphatically stated, however, that he was not convinced of Glatman’s innocence. The Boulder County sheriff had urged the California authorities to use a “more effective lie detector test,” but if one was found, no one bothered to tell the press.

Sheriff Everson had reason to be leery of lie detectors. At the time, his department probably did not own one, but only a year before, in 1957, Boulder Police Chief Myron Teegarden had purchased the first lie-detector device in Boulder. The fifteen-pound electronic Burns and Wilhelm model cost $330 and originally had been put on the market in 1949. While conducting an interrogation, the investigator placed a curved metal band against one finger on each of a subject’s hands. Electrodes in the bands led to the machine, which recorded changes in the static electricity on the person’s skin. The person giving the test set the dial of the “electronic psychometer” to the number fifteen. A wide swing to the right, up to fifty, indicated that the subject was lying.

To try out Boulder’s new device, the city manager, a radio announcer, and newspaper reporter Bob Looney all showed up at the downtown police station for a “susceptibility test.” Each subject was asked to chose a number from one to five and write it on a piece of paper, then answer “no” each time the operator asked: “Did

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.