Jail Inmate Says He Lied in Role as Informant

Jailhouse informant Leslie White said Wednesday that he has committed perjury “in one or more cases . . . in my capacity as an informant for the district attorney’s office.”

In one case, he said, he “did so with the knowledge of a deputy district attorney.”

White, who is in jail awaiting sentencing for purse snatching, refused to name the prosecutor or identify the cases in which he said he lied, demanding that the district attorney’s office first provide him with protection and immunity from prosecution.

Death Row Cases

In an interview from a jail telephone, White identified three cases in which he said men were sentenced to Death Row partly because of false testimony by other Los Angeles County jailhouse informants.

He said the three convicts are Harold Memro, Robert Gibson and a man whose name he could not recall but who, he said, was convicted in a trial known as the Rolling 60s case.

White is the central figure in an extraordinary review by the district attorney’s office of jailhouse informant cases. It followed White’s recent demonstration that he could gather enough information by telephone from law enforcement authorities to convincingly fake the confession of a murder defendant whom he had never met.

Told of White’s most recent assertions, Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Gregory Thompson promised to review the three cases.

But he said authorities regard giving immunity to White as preposterous because of his demonstrated lack of credibility.

Thompson, however, did not rule out a future grant of immunity. He said “the time to consider (immunity) is when we are in court and we’re in front of a judge and there is a real defendant, not a theoretical defendant.”

Role in Murder Case

The district attorney’s office has previously given White immunity from prosecution for perjury, it was learned. That alleged perjury occurred early this year before a judge presiding over a murder trial.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Lonnie Felker said that White admitted perjuring himself when he told the judge details of how he planned to testify as a defense witness.

The Los Angeles County Grand Jury later indicted the defense attorney in that case for soliciting White to lie. The district attorney’s office granted immunity to White so that he would testify about the alleged solicitation before the grand jury.

The defense attorney, Rayford Fountain, is awaiting a preliminary hearing. He steadfastly maintains his innocence.

White now insists that he set Fountain up. “I was a jerk,” White told a Times reporter. “When I ran into Ray Fountain, I said to myself, ‘Here’s an attorney. I’ve never had an attorney before.’ . . . It was like a hunter. . . . Ray Fountain was my trophy.”

White, 31, has been in and out of jails and prisons for much of his life and has been an informant since 1977.

He said he failed a polygraph test last year when he answered no to a question about whether he had committed perjury at least 10 times. That test was administered by the state attorney general’s office.

Files Reviewed

Chief Deputy Atty. Gen. Nelson Kempsky said Wednesday that White’s account of that test is “fully consistent” with his review of the polygraph examiner’s file.

Despite his reputation as a liar, White continued to be used as a prospective prosecution witness until late October, when he demonstrated for sheriff’s deputies how easily he could fake another inmate’s confession.

In a related development, defense attorney Harry Weiss provided The Times with a copy of a tape that sheriff’s deputies made of White demonstrating his information-gathering abilities by using a jail phone and posing, in turn, as a bail bondsman, police officer, sheriff’s deputy and prosecutor.

The tape shows that sheriff’s deputies provided White with the name of Weiss’ client, William Cockerham, who is accused of murder, and asked White to prove to them that it was indeed a simple matter to gather enough information from law enforcement to fake a confession.

Plenty of Help

After gathering basic data with a few calls to a jail information bank used by bail bondsmen, the district attorney’s records office and the sheriff’s homicide bureau, White had his most meaningful conversation with Deputy Dist. Atty. Mary Ganahl, who was assigned to prosecute Cockerham.

“Hi, Mary Ganahl,” he said in a cheery voice. “This is Sgt. Williams of the Los Angeles Police Department. . . . The situation I’ve got is I’ve got a couple of informants that have come to me that I’ve worked with in the past. They gave me a few information on this, and before I go over (to the jail) and even talk to them I just wondered if you could maybe give me a couple of ideas if you need any help on this or whatever.”

After a few minutes of conversation, Ganahl said, “I’ll tell you anything you want to know about the case” and proceeded to do so in great detail.

White concluded the conversation and told deputies that he had “enough information to put a story together that’s a very believable, accurate, detail-filled (and) that, as I said, any homicide detective would go for. He’s going to think that the only way I can get these facts is to get them from the suspect.”

White then posed as a deputy district attorney and called a bailiff in Van Nuys to arrange transportation to that courthouse for himself and Cockerham so that he could later claim that they had been together when Cockerham confessed.

Constructing a Story

White told the bailiff he wanted to interview the two prisoners away from the Central Jail downtown.

“I now have the defendant ordered out to a court where I can say that I was with him,” White told deputies. “And the only thing that will happen at the court tomorrow is the bailiff will see that no interview occurred and he’ll go, hum, and he’ll (send them) back to (Central Jail). . . . At that point I’d call homicide, say I was in court with this guy in a certain date, that he told me, laid it all out--so full of details--and they’ll believe it. Happens all the time.”

In his statement Wednesday, White said he and other informants commit perjury “because we have learned that the rewards, the privileges, the favors and the freedom offered by the district attorney for jailhouse informant testimony far outweighs any reward for the truth.”