Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

across the country from San Diego. Just after Thanksgiving 1960, the FBI and New York City Police had located him and arrested him on the grand larceny warrant and other charges.
    Sergeant Herb Swindler booked a flight to New York immediately. He believed that if he could engage Muldavin-Rockwell in a conversation, he would be able to elicit a confession that would tie up the double-murder investigation successfully. Although Swindler would be involved in any number of high-profile investigations throughout his long career in law enforcement—including the Ted Bundy case—no one who knew him would deny that tracking “Raoul Guy Rockwell” was the most important case in Swindler’s life.
    “I met him in unfamiliar territory,” Swindler told me. “The New York cops were anxious to talk to him, but they gave me an interview room and some time alone with him. He came so close to telling me what I needed to hear.”
    It was December 2, and the Christmas lights were glittering on the tall tree at Rockefeller Center when Herb Swindler was at last only a few feet away from his clever quarry. He built up to the hard questions slowly, aware of the big-city detectives waiting their turn in the hallway beyond the small room where he sat with the fugitive.
    Swindler spread out the 8-by-10 glossies that his team had taken during their many searches of Rockwell’s property.
    “What happened?” Swindler asked. “Can you explain what happened? It’s had us baffled for months now, and you’re the only one who can tell us.”
    Swindler was deliberately playing to Rockwell’s massive ego, giving him yet another chance to pontificate—to be the expert, the man with the key to an intricate maze of facts. He could see that Rockwell-Muldavin was tempted to reveal long-held secrets but that he was trying to censor his comments.
    “I’m morally guilty of Manzanita’s and Dolores’s deaths,” he said slowly. “I was the only person living with them, and the only person who might have had an opportunity to commit these crimes.”
    Swindler waited, but Rockwell stopped talking.
    The bulldog detective laid out another photograph; it was a close-up of Manzanita’s severed leg.
    Rockwell’s whole body shuddered as he stared fixedly at the terrible picture. “I know what Manzanita’s leg looked like,” he said. “And I know that Manzy and Dolores are dead.”
    “You told a lot of stories after they disappeared,” Swindler said. “They didn’t match up that well, but it seems as though you know what really happened to them.”
    “Let’s not be coy,” Rockwell said sarcastically. “How could those stories be true? You know, too, that they’re both dead.”
    Now Rockwell became somber, his face changing into a mask of despair. “I want to die, you know,” he said sadly. “I have nothing further to live for, and I am willing myself to die. I would never allow myself to be in a position to hang. Never.”
    Swindler felt he was the only audience for a performance by a consummate actor, a complete con artist. Rockwell told him that he would reveal the entire story of what had happened the prior April, but not during his lifetime. “I will write it all down in my will.”
    “Why won’t you tell me now?” Swindler pressed.
    “I need advice on several moral issues that are involved.”
    It would have been laughable, Swindler thought, if the situation wasn’t so serious. Raoul Guy Muldavin-Rockwell discussing what was moral. He had conned and robbed and undoubtedly killed to get what he wanted, sometimes hurting people for no reason at all except to prove how clever he was. How could he now be discussing morals?
    The prisoner dropped tidbits of confessions, doling them out like small prizes, enjoying the power he had to stop talking whenever he chose, knowing that Swindler was so eager to hear the truth. He admitted that he had forged his wife and stepdaughter’s names to endorse the paychecks that came in the mail after they disappeared. Swindler knew that was true from the handwriting expert’s report.
    “I sealed the septic tank with cement,” Rockwell said. “After they vanished, there was a terrible, foul odor coming from it.”
    Herb Swindler felt they were right on the edge of a full confession when there was an impatient knocking on the door of the interview room.
    “We were so close,” he said a long time later. “And those New York cops said they needed the room—right then. I had no choice but