Long Beach police hope reward will help solve 1975 slaying of officer
Denis Gitschier remembers almost everything about the night a Long Beach police officer saved his life in 1975.
The Fountain Valley teacher was headed home to Torrance from a party when he became drowsy. Rather than drive exhausted, he pulled off a freeway near Long Beach and turned onto Cantel Street to sleep.
Gitschier dozed off with his car door unlocked. Around 3 a.m., Gitschier said, he awoke to find himself under attack. Someone struck him in the head, he said, and that’s when everything went black.
Around the same time, Officer Franke Neal Lewis was returning to his Cantel Street home after a night on patrol. As Lewis parked his car, he noticed the commotion and ran to help Gitschier.
But as Lewis approached, police said, the person or people attacking Gitschier opened fire on the 28-year-old officer, killing him.
Gitschier said he came to “covered in blood,” unaware that Lewis had come to his aid, or that the father of two had been shot during the attempted rescue.
Unfortunately, Gitschier said, he couldn’t remember anything about who attacked him either.
“I remember everything except something that would be helpful,” he told reporters Monday.
The Long Beach Police Department has spent 40 years trying to solve Lewis’ slaying. Several persons of interest have been questioned, and one man was arrested just days after the killing, but no one has ever been charged. Now the department is hoping the promise of a massive cash reward and some new information might help finally make someone answer for Lewis’ death.
Standing in front of the city’s memorial to fallen police officers and firefighters Tuesday, Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna said the department will offer a reward of at least $50,000 for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for Lewis’ death on Dec. 13, 1975.
The department and Mayor Robert Garcia are also asking the City Council to add to the reward fund, possibly boosting it to $75,000.
“It’s our hope that a witness or someone who knows anything, anything, about this case will come forward,” Luna said.
Lewis’ service weapon, badge and police identification card were stolen the night he was shot. Long Beach police found the badge and ID card inside an abandoned Compton home in March 1976, but Lewis’ gun was never recovered. Police also received anonymous tips that a 24-year-old Culver City resident may have been the triggerman in Lewis’ death, but he was ultimately cleared as a suspect by homicide detectives.
The case has been handed from detective to detective for the last four decades, and investigators were recently able to uncover descriptions of two suspicious vehicles that had been spotted in Lewis’ neighborhood the night of the shooting.
Long Beach Deputy Chief David Hendricks said a mid-1970s blue four-door Fleetwood Cadillac and an early 1960s white four-door Fleetwood Cadillac occupied by people who did not live in the neighborhood were spotted in the area that night.
Police have also resubmitted Lewis’ badge and ID card for forensic testing, but Hendricks declined to disclose the results of those tests or say when police learned the information about the suspicious vehicles. Citing the ongoing investigation, Hendricks would not say what, if any, additional information detectives had learned in recent months.
Lewis was married with two young children at the time of the shooting. His widow, Linda, his daughter Erica and father Carlton attended Tuesday’s news conference but declined to speak to reporters. Luna said Lewis was one of three Long Beach police officers shot and killed during a 77-day span, but his death is the only one that remains unsolved.
Gitschier said Tuesday that he firmly believes he would have been killed if Lewis had not intervened that night. But he remains haunted by the fact that his survival may have come at the expense of Lewis’ life.
“It’s a little bit like a serviceman that, you know, somebody jumps on a grenade and is killed. But you survived,” Gitschier said. “That’s how I’ve kind of felt for the past 40 years.”
@JamesQueallyLAT
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