The Thin Blue Line Page #2

or partially in the car...

or just sitting in there with the door closed.

And the thing I think we did then

that really helped...

It didn't really help anything at all.

Let me back up.

But it was interesting,

and it cost a lot of money...

but it was worthwhile.

You got to cover every trail.

A guy out of California...

I don't recall his name,

he was an expert in hypnosis.

He came down,

hypnotized her and questioned her.

What was interesting was...

she couldn't remember anything

particularly about the car.

She remembered getting a malt.

They'd stopped in the fast-food.

It was a Whataburger.

They remembered all that,

and stopping the car.

Got back on the road.

She didn't remember anything.

But she remembered a license number

off a hit-and-run vehicle...

that they had worked earlier in the night.

It was getting awfully close to Christmas.

We'd never gone that long in Dallas

without clearing a murder of an officer.

We'd had several killed,

but we'd cleared them pretty quick.

And this case had gone a month,

or nearly a month...

and we still hadn't cleared it.

We finally got the break that cleared it.

It came out of Vidor, Texas.

Mr. Calvin Cunningham, who lives

in Vidor, had his home broken into...

and his little Mercury Comet stolen.

We felt as though

David had committed that crime.

For several days, though,

he was missing. We couldn't find him.

It was one afternoon, one of our

officers spotted Cunningham's car...

on North Main Street, here in Vidor.

David abandoned the vehicle

and ran on foot.

We started getting

little bits of information, though...

that David had been involved in a

shooting in Dallas of a police officer.

We would always get

third-hand rumor, fourth-hand rumor.

So we went back to a few of his other

comrades in crime, we could call them.

They said,

"We thought he was just bragging.

"We didn't really take him seriously. "

Sitting down, watching the

evening news, well, the night news.

My father was asleep on the couch.

Heard somebody knocking at the door.

It was David Harris.

I let him in. He came in.

He was standing there beside my chair...

and a news broadcast advertised

about a police officer shot in Dallas.

Right then and there he starts

swearing up and down.

He says, "I swear to God,

I shot that f***ing pig. "

He says, "I'm the one that killed him. "

Somewhere around Dallas,

they got pulled over.

I think he said because

they were checking out a stolen car.

He said that the cop had pulled him over...

and walked up to the window.

When the cop came,

he rolled down the window...

and just pulled the gun up and shot him.

He swore up and down.

He made a big scene about it.

Jumped up and down...

trying to get anybody and everybody...

to listen to him.

"Yeah, I shot that son of a gun. "

And everybody said,

"Sure you did, David. Sure. "

"I swear to God I killed that cop. "

I asked him if he'd been to Dallas.

He denied having been to Dallas.

I asked him if he'd been involved

in any shooting...

or knew anything about a shooting,

and he denied that to the end.

Which is fairly consistent with David.

Even if he had some involvement...

his first way that he always treats you,

he would deny.

Then, if he felt as though

you really knew he had done it...

then he would be truthful with you.

He give me a pistol, a. 22 caliber pistol.

He showed it to me. He says,

"That's the one I shot him with. "

He gave me the pistol.

I didn't really consider it that much.

I don't guess I really realized

he did shoot the cop.

He led me to a swampy area...

several hundred yards

behind his residence in Rose City.

There was a sock under water.

He said, "There it is. "

And he had sprayed this sock with boot oil.

When we retrieved the gun...

I said, "I better do something with it.

It's going to rust up. "

Even the time that I saw the gun

at the trial in Dallas...

it looked just as good

as when I'd taken it out of the swamp.

So he had taken pretty good care of it,

even though he did put it under water.

He got to thinking...

"I didn't do that

and I've been saying that I did...

"and I'm in over my head now,

I better tell them what happened.

"Because they are going to send me

to the penitentiary for life...

"if I don't tell them what really happened. "

So he said, "I am just bragging about this.

"I didn't do it, but I was there,

and I know who did do it. "

And, of course, he came clean then.

He tried to hide no facts.

He just seemed like a friendly kid.

I may have talked to him

just to keep him friendly.

We didn't want to make him mad.

But we didn't want him to tell us

something that he thought.

We wanted him to tell us what we knew.

It wasn't very long until I realized

that what he knew...

was the facts of the case,

and it matched with what we knew.

And it had to be right.

The story that I told was...

It was like 12:
00 something.

So it was the next day...

early in the morning. We were stopped.

When we were stopped,

the officer came up to the car...

and asked to see the driver's license,

and he just started shooting.

I don't know why, but it's always

seemed like time just stopped.

It didn't seem like any time passed.

It just seemed like it was, boom!

Time stopped or something.

I don't know what it is.

It's like a flash.

We went back to his room.

He was supposed to ask his brother

if I could stay there that night.

But he said

that his brother don't like to do that.

Anyhow, he went in

and never came back out. So I left.

Ended up pulling into a parking lot.

I slept there I think, for a while.

Then, finally, the next morning,

early or something...

I found my way to Freeway 45.

And went back home.

After riding around with him,

I come to find out he's got an arsenal.

He's got pistols. He's got rifles.

He's got this pistol.

He's waving it around. He's doing this.

I told him, "Hey, why don't you put

those in the trunk of the car?"

We stopped at a restaurant...

and ordered and ate sandwiches in the car.

I bought a six-pack of beer.

He pulled this pistol back out.

And I ask him why he got the pistol out.

And he kind of laughed...

rolled the window down,

and fired the pistol outside the car.

And I asked him to please put it up.

And I think he handed me the pistol,

and I put it under the driver's seat.

He wanted to go to the movies,

so we went to the movies.

We got there probably at about 7:00.

He was the one

that had picked the movie out.

I call them drive-in movies,

beer-drinking movies.

$0.50, put them together

and make a bunch of money...

with a bunch of people

getting drunk at the drive-in.

- Are you going to concede?

- Please, sit down...

What is this, Mr. Brooks?

- Anybody can see it's an ashtray.

- Wrong!

Anybody can plainly see it's a wall-breaker!

I'm trying to speak for you!

I'm trying to speak for all of you!

I am the student body!

The show that was on was half over.

We watched half of the one show...

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