The town’s dirtiest cop was additionally essentially the most colorless, with a forgettable face and a character as imprecise as fog. At 77, he has been in lockup for 38 years, greater than twice so long as he wore a badge. He has been a tame and quiet inmate, simply as he was recognized — till his seize — as a tame and quiet policeman.
At Mule Creek State Jail, he attends 12-step packages and reads fantasy novels. He has a paralegal certificates, a sister-in-law with a visitor home, and a job provide at a legislation agency if he ought to ever get out.
However the individuals with the facility to free him maintain puzzling over his crimes, demanding explanations, psychological perception, the thinnest ray of daylight on his motivations. Give us one thing.
On this sequence, Christopher Goffard revisits previous crimes in Los Angeles and past, from the well-known to the forgotten, the consequential to the obscure, diving into archives and the reminiscences of those that have been there.
William Leasure, killer cop, all the time disappoints. He blames “low shallowness” for his run as an outlaw within the long-ago Eighties. He blames “felony considering” for disgracing his badge. He blames “questionable characters” and “unwise acquaintances” for main him astray. It’s as near self-examination as he comes, a minimum of in entrance of the parole board.
He’s stingy with contrition. He admits to the comparatively minor crimes, just like the serial theft of yachts, insurance coverage fraud and the constructing of unlawful gun silencers. He nonetheless denies the massive crimes, those that put him in jail: orchestrating the contract murders of a magnificence store worker and a jazz bassist.
The sweetness store worker was named Ann Smith. She was 41, shot with a .45 handgun at her mom’s salon in Highland Park in Might 1980.
The bassist was named Tony de los Reyes. He was 63, killed with a shotgun blast to the pinnacle within the parking zone of a Sherman Oaks lounge in September 1981.
Tony de Los Reyes in an undated photograph.
(Courtesy of Anthony de los Reyes Jr.)
The victims had the unhealthy luck of being pitted towards Leasure’s pals in acrimonious divorces. In each instances, the admitted triggerman was a barely literate welder Leasure had met at a gun present.
And in each instances, the shooter would testify that Leasure — a veteran LAPD officer with an unblemished report — deliberate the killings to seem like botched holdups and drove the getaway automotive.
Leasure grew up in Wayne, Mich. with what he described as “great dad and mom” and a “Beaver Cleaver” childhood. He served with the Marines in Vietnam, beloved weapons and boasted of his marksmanship.
As an accident investigator within the LAPD’s Central Site visitors Division, he was generally known as Gentle Invoice. He bragged that he by no means used his service weapon and didn’t draw a use-of-force grievance in 17 years with a badge. A pleasant man, individuals agreed.
He was nearing retirement when police caught him on a stolen pleasure boat in Might 1986 and linked him to a multimillion-dollar yacht-theft ring. The scheme: steal boats from their slips up and down the coast, disguise them and rename them on the market to unsuspecting consumers.
“When he stated ‘Do one thing,’ you do it… I may both do it or I could possibly be killed myself.”
The LAPD launched a job power. They known as their workplace the Leasure Room. Once they searched his Northridge dwelling, they discovered a stolen automotive, unlawful gun silencers and a cache of random yacht booty.
Fellow officers discovered all of it arduous to consider. Gentle Invoice? At worst, he was a slacker who didn’t like to put in writing tickets and dodged radio calls. Some, nevertheless, had seen that he lived bigger than a cop wage allowed. He drove quick Corvettes and owned a number of properties, plus a 42-foot yacht known as Thunderbolt.
Leasure would shrug off questions by saying his spouse, Betsy Mogul, took care of him. She labored as an assistant L.A. metropolis legal professional and made $78,000 a 12 months, greater than twice his wage. Police dug via her life. How a lot did she learn about her husband’s criminality? All they discovered was a case for potential tax fraud, which she beat at trial.
Enter Dennis France, a runty cop groupie who had befriended Leasure at a Pomona gun present and favored to go on trip alongs with him.
“Me and Invoice had carried out plenty of issues collectively,” France would testify. “We’d purchased silencers, we’d stole boats, we’d killed individuals, we’d damaged into locations.” He stated Leasure was the wheelman for the killings outdoors the Sherman Oaks lounge and within the Highland Park magnificence store. “Plus, he paid me and organized ‘em and set ‘em up.”
Ex-LAPD officer William Leasure enters court docket April 15, 1991, for opening statements in his trial on accusations that he arrange murders.
(Larry Bessel)
France appeared to idolize Leasure, however he additionally claimed to be petrified of him. “When he stated ‘Do one thing,’ you do it,” France stated. “I may both do it or I could possibly be killed myself.”
By France’s account, Leasure instructed him to place a sock over the barrel of the .45 that killed Ann Smith on the salon, to catch the shell casing. When the casing tumbled out anyway, Leasure docked $500 from France’s $3,500 charge.
In trade for serving to to nail Leasure, France obtained immunity from the D.A.’s workplace — a deal that may perpetually enrage detectives on the case. Police despatched France right into a bugged jail in hopes of getting Leasure to incriminate himself, a scheme the cautious Leasure foiled by writing his remarks on a bit of paper, then erasing them.
France went in once more, and this time there was a tiny digicam within the ceiling. The pivotal second got here when he requested Leasure what he had carried out with the gun from “Avenue 60,” a reference to the placement of the sweetness store homicide.
Leasure wrote a phrase on a bit of paper. In sight of the hidden digicam, he held it as much as the glass.
“He’s fairly adept at presenting himself as a gentle and meek human being… You’d say, ‘Good man, completely colorless.’ You wouldn’t even know his character.”
“Melted,” it stated.
He wrote one other notice: “Dump all the things unlawful.”
Protection attorneys struggled mightily, and unsuccessfully, to seek out an harmless clarification for the notes when Leasure went on trial in 1991, charged with two counts of homicide and dealing with the dying penalty. They attacked France as a liar who had fingered Leasure to save lots of himself.
By appearances, Leasure was not a believable hit man, and explaining his motives was tough. The cash stated to be exchanged for the killings was just some thousand {dollars}. The prosecutor, James Koller, settled on a portrait of Leasure as a veteran cop who had grown tired of writing site visitors tickets and was hungry for pleasure. He turned to homicide “nearly for the fun — to get away with it.”
The estranged spouses who solicited the killings had already been convicted. In Leasure’s trial, the primary jury deadlocked and a second was being picked when he pleaded no contest to 2 counts of second-degree homicide. He obtained 15 years to life. He claimed to concern the anti-police sentiment that had been rising for the reason that beating of Rodney King eight months earlier, a case which had overshadowed his sparsely-attended trial.
The prosecutor known as Leasure “essentially the most corrupt policeman within the metropolis of Los Angeles in its historical past.”
Leasure known as himself “the nicest, quietest, mildest man you’ll ever need to meet.”
Addison “Bud” Arce is among the LAPD detectives who constructed the case towards Leasure. Now retired, he testifies towards him at parole hearings. He thinks Leasure may have walked free years in the past, if he would have simply come clear. However one thing in his nature prevents him.
“If he went in and did mea culpas, he would have been out,” Arce says. “Extra so now, once they parole anyone for absolutely anything.”
As an alternative, 12 months after 12 months, Leasure sits earlier than the parole board and portrays himself as a person who was railroaded, who copped a plea to murders he had nothing to do with. He tasks an air of befuddled harmlessness. When the questioning grows sharp and his reminiscence for particulars fails, he blames “mind harm” from his ldl cholesterol drugs.
“I had shallowness points,” Leasure instructed the board in 2021. “I had greed points. I believed that by impressing others, that they want me, and I’d be ok with myself. And I realized all that was incorrect via self-help and restoration.”
Ex-LAPD officer William Leasure is incarcerated at Mule Creek State Jail in Ione, Calif.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Instances)
He had a contented childhood, however even then, “I had shallowness points. And as a Marine, I had shallowness points. As a police officer, I had shallowness points.” His marriage to a metropolis prosecutor didn’t assist. His spouse’s fancy pals, the judges and legal professionals, thought he was beneath her. At one level, he nearly broke up along with her, “and it affected my shallowness.”
“What I’ve gotten from you at this time is you had some shallowness points,” stated commissioner Michele Minor.
He continued to disclaim the murders. He was requested concerning the “Melted” notice.
“There is no such thing as a such notice ever,” Leasure insisted. “It doesn’t exist.”
Anthony de los Reyes Jr., 81, the son of the murdered jazz musician, has testified at eight or 9 of the hearings, to verify his father shouldn’t be forgotten.
“He’s fairly adept at presenting himself as a gentle and meek human being,” Reyes stated. “You’d say, ‘Good man, completely colorless.’ You wouldn’t even know his character. He hasn’t modified from the primary time I had the displeasure of assembly him.
“The person’s a born liar, and he says all the things in the identical monotone.
“No emotion. Completely none.”
The ritual has performed out earlier than the parole board 13 instances. Twice, the board determined Leasure was secure to launch, and each instances Gov. Gavin Newsom reversed the choice. The governor discovered he lacked “perception into his criminality and the causative elements.”
Leasure, who turned down an interview request from The Instances, will get to make his case once more in September. Arce, the retired detective, expects to be there to remind the board of the main points of Leasure’s crimes.
He calls him “this little milquetoast LAPD cop” and “Walter Mitty.” He has spent as a lot time as anybody pondering the motives of the meek officer who moonlighted as a success man, they usually stay fuzzy. It’s arduous to consider it was simply cash. In all probability, he thinks, Leasure organized murders so that folks would owe him; he favored that.
“It’s complicated,” stated Arce, now 79. “Folks have requested me through the years, ‘What sort of man is that this?’ I can’t let you know.”
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