CRIMINAL MIND > FORENSICS & INVESTIGATION

Beverly Hills Cop

Murder By Numbers

Comparison of Sketch and Mason's Mugshot

Once the fingerprint match was made to the partial prints duplicate that had been stitched together, it was compared by three fingerprint experts to Gerald Mason's known prints. All three experts agreed the prints were Mason's. Interestingly, Gerald Mason's prints were part of the database because he had done a short stint in prison back in 1956, merely months before the robbery, rape and murders, for commercial burglary and forgery.

Technology had finally caught up with Gerald Mason.

Armed with this new information, the detectives began watching Mason, who had been living in Columbia, South Carolina, for the past forty years. Detectives found out Mason was a retired gas station owner. He'd been married for over thirty years. He had children and grandchildren. People in the community he now lived spoke highly of him. He golfed and bowled. He was a handyman around his neighborhood, often helping people free of charge. On the surface, Mason seemed like a nice guy. For the most part, save for a run-in when he was a young punk kid in 1956, he'd never been in any trouble.

It began to look as though maybe the El Segundo PD had the wrong guy—regardless what the computer said. Could it be a case of mistaken identity? It was certainly possible. Besides that one arrest in 1956, Mason has not a blemish on his record. He had been a model citizen.

In the grand scope of the case, however, Mason not having a record wasn't so out of character for a killer of his ilk.

"This was confirmed," Paul told me, "by an FBI profiler who stated that the murderer would have had only one contact with law enforcement."

With Mason still walking around a free man (having no indication that he was being watched and suspected in the murders of two police officers, a rape and robbery), the detectives began to worry about their case. After all, Mason could build an "affirmative defense," saying that, as a mechanic all his life, he worked on the victim's car, which would be a great argument as to why his prints were found on the steering wheel.

More of the set of composite sketches from 1957.

Darren Levine needed more substantial evidencebefore the case could be filed. Making matters even more complicated, the 1956 booking photo of Mason was then compared to the composite drawings made in 1957 of the suspect, and ultimately placed in a lineup and shown to the surviving victims (only one of the victims had died).

But none of the surviving victims could identify Mason from the photo lineup.

Gerald F. Mason, younger

What jury would buy any of this evidence, most of which was collected nearly fifty years ago?

Faced with this uphill court battle, Darren Levine insisted he needed more evidence and told El Segundo detectives to keep digging. With the passage of so much time, the DA said it would take more than a "thumbprint to convict" such a seemingly outstanding member of his community in a double murder five decades old.

So the detectives began to look at the case closer—and that's when they realized they had the two handwriting samples that could connect George Wilson to Gerald Fit Mason.

"Let's call Dr. Paul Edholm," Levine told his detectives.

After obtaining the documents from the purchase of the gun in Shreveport, Louisiana, and the YMCA documents, the two detectives began to amass a collection of Gerald Mason's handwriting and hand printing, both old and new.

Edholm's Comparison of 'G'

District Attorney Darren Levine (who specializes in crimes against police officers) had used Paul in the murder of a Los Angeles cop and was able to obtain a conviction in that case.

Starting in October 2002, Paul and DA Levine, working with detectives Lowe and Macelderry, spent the next few months putting together a case against Gerald Fit Mason.

Within several months, especially after he viewed the PowerPoint, Levine was satisfied. It was time to knock on Mason's door. On January 24, 2003, a complaint was officially filed, after nearly a half-century, charging Gerald Fit Mason with two counts of murder, one count of rape, five counts of kidnapping and four counts of robbery. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Wesley issued a no bail arrest warrant for Mason.

The team headed to South Carolina to make an arrest after more than 50 years of trying to find a killer.