Conflicting stories on officer’s slaying

Los Angeles Police Sgt. Gene T. Nash died in 1958 after a shootout with robbery suspects at an apartment house on Budlong Avenue just south of Adams Boulevard. The killer was convicted and sentenced to prison, and, in a televised ceremony, Police Chief William H. Parker presented Nash’s widow, Cynthia, with his Medal of Valor.

But that’s only the beginning of a complex story that was mostly ignored by the newspapers -- even though it went to the U.S. Supreme Court -- and exists in conflicting accounts on dim microfilm in the basement of the Hall of Records and in material at the California State Archives.

About 8:30 p.m. Oct. 20, 1958, Nash, 32, and Sgt. Walter F. Bitterolf of the Robbery Division, accompanied by Sgt. Sheril O. “Sam” Eastenson and Officer Charles E. Leonard, went to the two-story apartment house at 2723 S. Budlong Ave., northwest of USC.

The officers had a warrant for suspected robber Bennie Will Meyes, 33, a parole violator and longtime criminal with an eighth-grade education who had a job cleaning out garbage trucks. They also were looking for William Douglas, Meyes’ alleged partner in about 60 holdups. Meyes and Douglas had “a penchant for striking at card and dice games, but they do not ignore business establishments, markets, theaters and even street jobs,” according to a probation report. Several victims had been shot or pistol-whipped, according to prison records.

Eastenson and Leonard waited outside in case the men tried to escape while Nash and Bitterolf went in with their guns drawn. Bitterolf knocked at Apartment No. 2, and a man named Virgil Lee, 24, answered the door. Both investigators showed their badges. Bitterolf said they were police officers and asked for “Bill.”

Lee said there was no one there named “Bill,” so Bitterolf pushed his way into the apartment, explaining that they wanted to look around.

The officers found another man and two women watching TV in the living room. One woman said: “There is absolutely no one in this apartment except my baby, lying on Pappy’s bed there in the front bedroom.”

Bitterolf turned off the TV to question the four people and after about five minutes, Nash left to explore the rest of the apartment. There was a hallway with doors that led to the back bedroom used by Douglas, the front bedroom where the young boy was sleeping, and the central bathroom that connected both bedrooms.

According to Meyes’ account, when the police arrived, he and Douglas had been talking in the bathroom. Meyes had violated his parole by leaving Indio, Calif., without permission, and Douglas gave him a gun to pawn so he could afford a lawyer to straighten things out. Meyes had taken the loaded .38 revolver from under Douglas’ mattress and stuck it in his waistband beneath his shirt.

“While we were talking, the apartment suddenly went quiet,” Meyes said in court documents. “There was no sound coming from the living room or the television set. Then in that areaway of the hall we could not see, footsteps, along with this strange silence, started back where we were. . . . Douglas and I bolted through a darkened bedroom. Douglas got on the floor on his stomach alongside the bed with his head facing the window, and I stood alongside a chest near the door.”

Nash, his gun drawn, tried the door to the front bedroom, but it was locked. He went through the bathroom and into the front bedroom.

Bitterolf heard eight to 10 shots and ran down the hallway. He found his partner lying on the bedroom floor, still holding his gun. Nash had taken several bullets in the abdomen, including one that went through his spleen and cut one of his kidneys virtually in two.

“How is it, Gene?” Bitterolf asked.

“Real bad,” Nash answered. “There were two of them. The one that shot me went out the window, the other one is in the closet.”

Bitterolf found Douglas in the closet, so badly wounded that Bitterolf thought he was dead. According to court documents, the sleeping boy wasn’t injured.

Bitterolf encouraged Nash, telling him, “Take it easy, the ambulance is on the way, you will be all right.”

“Don’t kid me,” Nash replied. “I know I am done for. I know I am going to die.”

His wife, Cynthia, rushed to the hospital but arrived minutes after he died, The Times reported.

Back on Budlong, Eastenson found Meyes on the floor of a car, shot in the thigh and right hand. On the ambulance ride to the hospital, Meyes was questioned by Sgt. Leonard Rafferty.

And at this crucial point of the story, it becomes impossible to reconcile the conflicting court documents.

In one version, Meyes implicated Douglas, apparently assuming that Nash had killed him. In another account, Meyes said he didn’t know Nash was a police officer and that Nash fired first.

One account says Douglas was badly wounded and lost a large amount of blood. He was purportedly given powerful painkillers, and Rafferty allegedly kept tapping him on the forehead so he wouldn’t fall asleep as he gave his statement to a police stenographer.

Another account implies Douglas was fully conscious, and says he and Meyes, both in wheelchairs, were brought together and that Douglas implicated Meyes. “You are going to fry, Bennie,” Douglas supposedly said, “and you are not going to take me with you. Tell them the truth; tell them you pulled the trigger.”

The case was presented to the Los Angeles County Grand Jury, and Meyes and Douglas were indicted on murder charges.

Hundreds of officers attended Nash’s funeral, and he was buried at Rose Hills Memorial Park. In addition to his wife, Nash was survived by a 2-year-old daughter. On Nov. 27, 1958, his widow was presented with his Medal of Valor.

Then the news reports stopped. The Times never wrote a word about any of the trials in the killing.

According to court documents, the first prosecution of Meyes and Douglas ended in a mistrial in March 1959.

On June 23, 1959, Meyes was convicted of second-degree murder and found to be a habitual criminal; he got a life sentence. (In one of the typical conflicting accounts in the case, the Superior Court file says Douglas was found not guilty and the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1963 ruling says he was convicted and sentenced to five years to life).

They first appealed to the California courts. The California Supreme Court denied their petitions for a review without giving them a hearing.

On March 18, 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a state appellate court hearing for the men, who were represented by future “palimony” lawyer Marvin M. Mitchelson and Burton Marks.

Justice William O. Douglas wrote for the majority: “Where the merits of the one and only appeal an indigent has as of right are decided without benefit of counsel in a state criminal case, there has been a discrimination between the rich and the poor which violates the 14th Amendment.”

On June 20, 1964, The Times reported that Meyes and Douglas had been granted new trials.

The Times never followed up on whether the men were retried, although prison records show that Douglas and Meyes were discharged in August 1964.

One of the lingering mysteries is why none of the major Los Angeles papers covered the trials. The shooting and Medal of Valor ceremony were widely reported, and The Times and other papers published photos of Nash, but none of them used pictures of Meyes or Douglas.

In fact, only the California Eagle, a weekly serving the African American community, published Meyes’ photo, showing that he was black (as was Douglas, according to prison records). And in the days of segregated news, the major Los Angeles papers simply didn’t cover such stories -- even if they involved the death of a police officer.

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larry.harnisch@latimes.com