Who Killed Betty Van Patter? (part 6)
Betty discovered ‘kick-back’ payments to Jimmie Ward.
On December 20, 1974, one week after Betty went missing, the Berkeley Police Department issued the following APB:
MISSING PERSON. BETTY LOUISE VAN PATTER, AKA BETTY LOUISE BALTAR, WFA, 10-12-29, 5-3, 116, GRN, BRN, 2009-HASTE ST. APT-E, BERKELEY, CALIF. LAST SEEN WEARING DARK CLOTHING, POSSIBLY DARK COAT AND DARK GLASSES. HEAVY DRINKER. REPORTED MISSING ON 12-19-74.
The BPD also conducted an extensive search for Betty’s whereabouts. One of the investigating officers was named Dave Frederick. In his first report, dated December 20th, Frederick stated that he had checked all of the apartments in and around Betty’s building at 2009 Haste Street, “with negative results.” He also visited four nearby hotels, and found no trace of her.
Officer Frederick filed his second report the next day, December 21st. In it he described having conducted a further check of houses in Betty’s neighborhood, as well as calls to five taxi companies, Highland Hospital and Alcoholics Anonymous. He also interviewed two people who were associated with Betty professionally, and learned, apparently for the first time, of David Horowitz.
In his next report, Frederick described what he learned from interviewing Horowitz, which was that Elaine Brown claimed that she had fired Betty. But, Frederick added: “Horowitz stated to this officer that Elaine Brown and several other people were not telling him the complete story and that he is extremely upset over the matter.”
Later in the report, Frederick wrote: “He (Horowitz) states that she (Betty) is basically an honest person, but if she found some shady or underhanded dealings with regards to the Lamp Post or the EOC organization, she would probably have quit or requested to have a different job with the organization. He stated that probably the last thing she would do would be to expose the organization to any police agency.”
Finally, there is this: “I asked Horowitz point blank if Van Patter might have come to some harm within the organization. He stated he did not believe so and Elaine Brown was desperately trying to run for Oakland City Council. He states that the last thing she would need would be any sort of implication in the disappearance of a white female.”
Throughout the rest of December and January, the Berkeley police continued their extensive search for Betty Van Patter. Besides routine steps like dusting her car for fingerprints, putting stops on her bank accounts, and obtaining her telephone records, they continued to interview people, sometimes multiple times, about what they knew.
On January 3rd, they noted information from a confidential source (labeled CS-3) that Betty had “discovered irregularities in the form of ‘kick-back’ payments to Jimmie Ward…CS-3 stated that the victim had arranged to get an appointment to see Elaine Brown on 12-13-74 [the day of her disappearance] and that the issue to be discussed was the victim’s reluctance or refusal to misrepresent items on the Lamp Post account.”
Three weeks later, on the 20th, the BPD heard from Foster City Police that a Jane Doe whose body had been floating in the bay a few days earlier was Betty’s, based on positive identification from 34 points of comparison of “bite-wing” dental x-rays.
The missing person case now turned into a homicide investigation.
(Part Seven will appear tomorrow.)
HEADLINES:
Police ID 15-year-old girl as Abundant Life Christian School shooter in Wisconsin (ABC)
Trump sues Des Moines Register, vows to pursue more defamation claims (Reuters)
‘Your poll made Trump mad’ is not a valid basis for a lawsuit (WP)
Judge denies Trump’s request to advance suit against Bob Woodward (The Hill)
Scoop: Top editors stiff the Washington Post (Axios)
Trump Is About to Betray His Rural Supporters (Atlantic)
In online drone panic, conspiracy thinking has gone mainstream (WP)
An important party panel picked Rep. Gerry Connolly over Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to lead fellow Democrats on the House Oversight Committee when the next Congress takes over in January. [HuffPost]
Luigi Mangione indicted on murder charges for shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson (CNBC)
German Government Collapses at a Perilous Time for Europe (NYT)
Honda and Nissan to start talks on potential mega-merger (Guardian)
Kyiv behind killing of Russian general in Moscow, Ukrainian official says (WP)
Assad’s Fall Upends the Middle East’s Largest Drug Empire (WSJ)
Nuclear bunker sales increase, despite expert warnings they aren’t going to provide protection (AP)
Panel warns against vitamin D, calcium use to prevent falls in older adults (WP)
I pitted ChatGPT search against Perplexity to see which was the best AI search engine, and the results surprised me (TechRadar)
What are AI ‘world models,’ and why do they matter? (TechCrunch)
Google’s new AI tool uses image prompts instead of text (CNN)
Where the US-China trade war meets AI hype (Financial Times)
FEMA Administrator Resigns After Accidentally Playing Porn On Emergency Alert System (The Onion)