A fellow found an old gun in his yard in California the 1960's and called the cops.
Cold case workers eventually used the gun to arrest a two-cop killer in the 2003 in S. Carolina. Now that's a cold case!!
Good thing that fellow turned in the found gun.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/07/05/48hours/main706303.shtml
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Excerpts:
"In 1960, the actual murder weapon was recovered in Manhattan Beach in a back yard," says Macelderry. "It was uncovered by a man that was doing some yard work."
"We were digging up the weeds when I found the gun," recalls Doug Tuley, who has lived in the same house since 1956. His house was less than a mile from the scene of the murders, in the same neighborhood police believe the killer used to make his escape.
"The finding of that gun was huge to this case also," says Macelderry. "The serial number was traced by investigators back then to Shreveport, La."
Officers Lowe and Macelderry followed the trail of evidence to Shreveport, 1,600 miles and 46 years from El Segundo, Calif. They found out that the gun was sold there in 1957, and sold by Billy Gene Clark.
"I pointed out that this was the least expensive one, at $29.95, then that's when he decided that's what he wanted," recalls Clark, who was 18 at the time and working his first job behind the sporting goods counter at a local Sears.
Investigators found one name, G.D. Wilson, in a record of firearms sold at the store. Lowe says they started canvassing the area around the Sears and tracked George D. Wilson to a nearby YMCA.
The case finally went cold in 1960, after investigators checked out every George Wilson in the country and didn’t find a match to the 1957 fingerprint. Obviously, G.D. Wilson was an alias. But Officers Lowe and Macelderry knew that one piece of evidence found here would close this case.
"They were able to locate the register from the actual piece of paper where he signed in to the YMCA as George D. Wilson," says Lowe.
Paul Edholme once worked at the Beverly Hills Police Department, and was one of the country's leading forensic document examiners. He was enlisted to examine the evidence. "The handwriting jumped off the page at me, and it was something that I'm going, you know, 'I gotcha.'"
He matched the handwriting of the George D. Wilson who checked into the YMCA to a South Carolina eye examination report in the name of Gerald F. Mason.
"If you put one [handwriting] over the other, I mean, it's almost identical," says Edholme. "I indicated to the sheriff's department that I was 99.9 percent sure that this was done by the same person."
Now confident that their case against Gerald Mason was solid, California detectives moved to South Carolina to finally get their man. But it wasn't over yet.
When Gerald Mason answered a knock on his front door on the morning of Jan. 29, 2003, he never expected that his past would finally catch up with him.
"He was just shocked. Completely shocked," says Lowe. "And he just kept saying, 'I don’t understand. I don’t understand why you’re here.'"
El Segundo Police Lt. Craig Cleary, who took Mason into custody, said he never denied committing the crime. "He never denied it. He never reacted," says Cleary. "He just stared off and just shook his head."
Even though Mason was almost 70 years old, police still considered him potentially dangerous. A search of his house turned up a collection of loaded firearms. But this 46-year manhunt had turned up a fugitive very different than anyone had expected.
There's no record that Gerald Mason ever committed another crime after the 1957 police killings. Instead, he got married, raised a family and started his own business.
But the case against Mason was strong. Investigators had matching fingerprints and handwriting, but there was one piece of evidence investigators always wondered about, one that would eliminate any doubt forever.
When he was examined, it was discovered that Mason had a bullet-shaped scar on his back. "He was in fact hit by gunfire from [Officer] Phillips, shot," says Macelderry.
"The last thing that officer did before he died was mark the man that killed him for life," adds Levine.
After a judicial hearing in South Carolina, Mason agreed to return to Los Angeles, to answer for his crimes. "Officers that hadn't been around for 20 years came in, walking on canes," says Levine.
He was referring to officers like Howard Speaks, who lifted the fingerprint that solved the case. "I've been waiting for this date a long time, but the wait was well worth it," says Speaks.
Mason pleaded guilty to murdering officers Phillips and Curtis, and he tried to make amends before being sentenced to life in prison: "It's impossible to express to so many people how sorry I am. I do not understand why I did this. It does not fit in my life. It is not the person I know. I detest these crimes."
The usual Jennings or Phoenix arms or unrecognizable .22 revolver seems the standard. I can't seem to run across a Grizzly in .45 mag, or a .475 Wildey or even an Automag laying in a gutter or out in the woods somewhere.
