Gerald Fit Mason

Gerald Fit Mason (born January 26, 1934 in Columbia , South Carolina ; † January 22, 2017 , Los Angeles ) was an American criminal who committed a series of serious crimes in 1957, including the murder of two police officers, and only after almost Has been arrested for 46 years.

Murder night

On the evening of July 21, 1957, two young lovers, aged 15 to 17, were in a 1949 Ford Sedan on Lover's Lane in Hawthorne , a suburb of El Segundo , California . The place known as Lover's Lane was often visited by couples in love to spend a few undisturbed, romantic hours there. While the young people were talking, a young man suddenly appeared at the driver's side of Robert Dewar's car, the older of the two young men, and threatened them with a revolver through the open window. After robbing her, he forced them all to undress, handcuffed them, and raped the 15-year-old girl. Then he got into her vehicle and drove away. In the early morning hours of July 22nd, about 8.8 km from the crime scene, he ran over a red light and was stopped by the two police officers Richard Phillips (28) and Milton Curtis (25) who were on patrol there. Since the car had not yet been reported as stolen and the previous crimes had not yet been reported, the two officers waived the help of two colleagues James Gilbert and Charlie Porter in a second patrol car, which came from the opposite direction, stopped briefly and then drove on , since they assumed a routine use. When Phillips turned to go back to the police car, the perpetrator drew his revolver and shot him three times in the back. Immediately afterwards, he also shot the Curtis in the patrol car, who was also hit by three shots but was still able to call the operations center. The perpetrator then jumped back into his stolen vehicle and fled, with Phillips still able to pull his service weapon and fire back six times, three of which were shot. When the reinforcements, including the other patrol car, and the ambulance arrived at the scene after about 15 minutes, the two officers had already died.

The fugitive was now wanted by a large contingent for serious robbery, deprivation of liberty, rape, car theft and double murder of police officers.

First investigation

The perpetrator's getaway car was found four blocks away in a garage. Two projectiles from Phillips' weapon and two left thumb prints of the perpetrator on the steering wheel were seized. Since there were no computers available at that time, the thumbprints had to be compared with thousands of prints from registered criminals in weeks of manual labor, but this did not lead to any result. Since one of the young victims testified that the perpetrator had spoken a different accent, fingerprints of all soldiers at nearby military bases were also taken and checked, but again without result.

The first hot lead did not emerge until March 1960. A resident near Manhattan Beach notified the El Segundo Police Department and testified that they found a revolver drum in his garden. In addition, it fits exactly into the revolver frame, which he had also found on his property in April 1959. This revolver was identified as the murder weapon. In the drum were also the six cartridge cases from the six shots that the perpetrator had fired at the officers. Using the serial number, the gun was traced to a gun shop in Shreveport , Louisiana , bought by a non-local young man four days before the crimes. Since this man had signed with George D. Wilson , also in the youth hostel opposite, almost 1,000 people with this name were unsuccessfully checked within the next two years.

Transfer and arrest

The turning point in the case came in September 2002 when a woman called the police and said that her uncle Gerald Mason had bragged about killing two police officers in the 1950s. Investigators drove to Mason in South Carolina to question him, but he vehemently denied the crime. However, the officers managed to get a handwriting sample from Mason from 1999, which was compared with the signature from the 1957 arms purchase. Experts found that the letters were exactly alike, especially the "G" and the final "n" with a long stroke. Since this alone would not have been enough for an indictment, let alone a conviction, the thumbprints from 1957 were used again and entered into the computer program AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System). Virgina had entered his fingerprint data into AFIS a few months earlier. This compared the print in a very short time with more than 44 million prints from known criminals. At first there was no hit, the old print first had to be professionally revised. The system now landed a hit named Gerald Fit Mason . This had already been recorded for theft before the double murder.

The officers then went to Mason again on January 23, 2003 and took him away for interrogation. Since the third projectile from Officer Phillips' weapon could not be found at the time, Mason was asked to free his torso. Indeed, the scar from a gunshot wound caused by Phillips' weapon could be seen on his back. He never had to go to the hospital because of this injury, as the projectile had been significantly weakened by the trunk lid, back seat and driver's seat of his getaway car and had not penetrated deeply. This was never disclosed to the public in order to prevent cosmetic surgery. The now retired police officer James Gilbert, who was behind the wheel of the second police car in 1957, was able to clearly identify him even after 46 years. When confronted with the evidence, he made a full confession and was sentenced a few months later to two life imprisonment for aggravated robbery in four cases, imprisonment in four cases, rape, car theft and the murder of two police officers, to be served in a prison in Los Angeles. Because of the confession and the fact that Mason had never committed a criminal offense in the 46 years leading up to his arrest, he escaped the death penalty.

Mason, who had also started a family before his arrest and was described by neighbors as friendly and helpful, said that he had wanted to volunteer for a long time. However, his family would then have become aware of the rape of the 15-year-old, which he wanted to prevent in order not to be seen as sex offenders.

Trivia

The case is dealt with in the 104th episode "Hot Traces" of the television documentary Medical Detectives and in the third part of the 115th episode "The dead murderer / Murderous memories / Death on duty" of the documentary series Autopsy - Mysterious Deaths .

Web links

• Reported March 25, 2003 in the Los Angeles Times
• Report for Medical Detectives
• Report for Autopsy - Mysterious Deaths