Book summary “Murderer with a badge”: summary

Introduction

You trust law enforcement officers to protect you and uphold the law. Discovering that a protector can actually be a predator shakes your fundamental sense of safety. Edward Humes explores this dark reality in Murderer with a badge. You will learn the true story of William Leasure, a seventeen-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department who operated a secret multi-million-dollar maritime crime ring and executed contract murders. The book traces his hidden crimes, the intricate police investigation led by dedicated homicide detectives, and the complex legal battles that followed. You will examine how the criminal justice system confronts corruption within its own ranks. The following questions guide this exploration:

• How can a police officer maintain a double life of violent crime without detection?
• What methods do rogue officers use to exploit law enforcement databases for illegal profit?
• How do investigators pierce the blue wall of silence to build a murder case against one of their own?

1. The Arrest at the Marina

An ordinary yacht delivery in Northern California uncovers a massive stolen boat ring and links an active-duty LAPD officer to a firearm found on board.

The La Vita Trap

You step onto the deck of a 42-foot yacht, unaware that law enforcement is watching every move. Bill Leasure and Robert Kuns sail the vessel La Vita into Marina Bay Yacht Harbor on Thursday, May 29, 1986.

This journey marks the 12th trip of yacht sales for Leasure. He uses sick leave from his traffic patrol job to crew boats up the coast. They bring the yacht to a broker in Richmond, California, hoping to complete a sale for 45,000 dollars.

The Investigation Begins

Local police have already uncovered a massive stolen boat ring involving luxury vessels. Stolen watercraft are laundered by altering hull numbers, applying fresh paint, and obtaining legitimate registration papers.

The scam comes to light when a West Coast boat distributor crosses the Oakland Estuary and recognizes a stolen vessel named the Coruba. That boat was originally stolen from Long Beach as the Wildcat while docked for repairs.

Oakland police deploy a helicopter, a Coast Guard cutter, and a SWAT team to secure the area. Detective Sergeant William Godwin boards the La Vita and checks its altered transom numbers.

Inside a green canvas bag on the boat, Godwin finds a loaded .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol. He calls the LAPD watch commander and learns that Officer Leasure is on sick leave for a hiatal hernia.

Robert Kuns is a paroled bank robber who cannot legally possess a handgun. As officers make the arrest at the marina gate, Kuns begs Leasure to claim the gun. Leasure acknowledges that the weapon is his, believing his status as a police officer will protect him.

2. Mild Bill and the Double Life

Corrupt officers can hide behind an unassuming public persona and strict compartmentalization, keeping illicit wealth and activities entirely hidden from colleagues.

Bill Leasure cultivated the persona of Mild Bill, an unaggressive traffic cop who avoided confrontation. You could spend seventeen years as a traffic officer with an unremarkable personnel record while operating a major crime ring.

Sergeants routinely yelled at roll call to kick some ass except for Bill, viewing him as a harmless civilian who had wandered into the station. Leasure averaged one or two traffic citations a week on his daily recap, compared to the six or seven considered appropriate by his sergeants.

The Mild Bill Persona

This mild demeanor made it impossible for fellow officers to believe Leasure was capable of major crimes. When Leasure was arrested aboard a stolen boat, his sergeant Jim Berg refused to believe it.

Secrets and Accomplices

Leasure maintained an elaborate double life, hiding extensive assets even from close social partners and fellow officers. You could own twelve to thirty sleek, expensive Corvettes at any one time without your coworkers noticing.

Officer John Balicki, Leasure's close friend and sometime partner, never knew Leasure owned a yacht or a secret bank account until reading about it in news stories after the arrest. Leasure paid thirty thousand dollars for a souped-up North American T-6 military trainer airplane while bringing only forty dollars cash for a weekend of gambling in Las Vegas.

Irene Wong met Leasure when he helped recover her father's stolen car. She subsequently dated him for seven years, moved into an apartment he paid for, and unknowingly handled bank deposits linked to his criminal partners.

3. Tortillas and Contract Killings

A corrupt officer hides a predatory personal life behind an outwardly respectable marriage and a career on the force.

Betsy Mogul earned a reputation as a relentlessly strict prosecutor who opposed plea bargains and sought maximum penalties for all offenders. Working as an assistant city attorney supervising the L.A. County Jail annex, Mogul required defendants to plead straight up to charges or face trial, showing deep moral outrage over any violation of the law. Co-workers at the City Attorney's office dubbed her Straight-up Betsy because she refused to reduce charges and treated petty criminals with extreme moral severity.

Bill Leasure developed a pattern of emotional detachment and silent resentment as a defense mechanism against a painful and insecure childhood. Growing up as a shy middle child in a blue-collar Michigan family, the third of five children faced social rejection and internal humiliation, responding by bottling up his anger and withdrawing into silence. He harbored decades-long grudges against schoolteachers who mocked him or cast him as a weak character in a school play, refusing to show open protest.

Leasure habitually sought out young, vulnerable, or dependent partners who looked up to him, allowing him to play the role of a savior while hiding his actions. Following his 1966 enlistment in the Marine Corps and his 1969 discharge from active-duty service, he used his badge and position as a policeman to form numerous extramarital relationships with defenseless women.

Leasure maintained strict secrecy and financial deception within his marriage to Betsy Mogul to conceal his assets, affairs, and purchases. The couple earned one hundred thousand dollars combined income by the early eighties. He kept his briefcase locked at all times, used a friend's telephone credit card to avoid home phone bill scrutiny, and registered assets in other officers' names.

The Tortilla Factory Conflict

A bitter divorce and power struggle over a family tortilla business drew Paulette de los Reyes into a closer alliance with Bill Leasure. Paulette and her musician husband Tony engaged in a destructive cycle of separation, lawsuits, and corporate warfare over El Sol Tortillas, pulling in Leasure and his police partner after they met in 1975. Paulette took over El Sol Tortillas, replacing old workers with her own loyalists, while Tony fought back through the courts and complained to internal affairs.

Prompted by the escalating conflict and threats against custody, Leasure provided a practical demonstration of his alleged Vietnam demolition skills to frighten Tony Reyes. On October 7, 1976, a dynamite bomb planted under Tony Reyes's station wagon exploded in a Hollywood apartment building garage at 4:00 in the morning, flattening its tires and destroying the transmission.

The Murder of Gilberto Cervantes

A looming threat to disinherit family members over control of property and business assets united warring spouses against a common patriarch. The elderly and miserly owner of the tortilla factory land, Gilberto Cervantes, threatened to cut Tony out of his will to punish his lifestyle, endangering Paulette and Tony's financial settlements. Gilberto kept boxes of cash and cases of decades-old vinegar in his cluttered home while neglecting his terminally ill wife Natalia when she fell ill in early 1977.

Faced with escalating business and machinery troubles, Paulette accepted Leasure's offer to bring in an experienced welder with an Oklahoma background. As El Sol Tortillas fell into disrepair and financial ruin, Leasure introduced one of his peculiar associates to assist Paulette with factory repairs and other problems. Leasure brought a scruffy man with flat eyes named Dennis Winebaugh to meet Paulette at the factory.

4. Maritime Theft and Insurance Fraud

Criminals launder luxury yachts and execute elaborate insurance scams by exploiting gaps in government vessel registration and abusing official police database access.

Bob Kuns developed a system of exchanging phony bills of sale for genuine registration cards. He altered hull numbers, changed boat names, and created fictitious boat-building companies to mask stolen vessels before reselling them. You can execute such a theft if you follow a precise method:

• Select a boat whose owner lives far away so it will not be missed immediately.
• Break in using bold confidence or a cracked window.
• Replace the ignition switch and start the engine.
• Strip the old name from the transom using paint stripper and sandpaper.
• Affix pre-prepared teak plaques with the new name in gold-leaf lettering.
• Replace the railing's serial number plate with a new one registered through a dummy corporation.

Kuns stole the 51-foot Morgan sailboat Juliana, renamed it Poor Little Urchin, and sailed it to British Columbia. The boat was valued at 200,000 dollars. He also stole the Shori Ryu and changed its identity.

Officer Bill Leasure used LAPD computers during his shifts at the Central Traffic Division to check motor vehicle and boat registration files. This access helped Kuns verify whether target yacht owners lived close enough to protect their vessels. The thieves targeted boats in Newport Beach and Long Beach marinas owned by weekend boaters. By selecting distant owners, they created a critical time lag that rendered standard searches ineffective.

The Mechanics of Maritime Crime

Displaying absolute confidence helps criminals blend in and avoid suspicion from bystanders. The thieves operated under the premise of looking like they belong. You must act as if you completely own the marina and belong on the vessel. You should turn on cabin lights and move about openly during break-ins. You can even wave pleasantly to local police officers if encountered to avoid drawing scrutiny.

While Kuns and Leasure disposed of a victim's personal belongings in a Long Beach parking lot bin, local police squad cars sat nearby drinking coffee. The thieves simply waved to the cops, who waved back.

Financial Laundering Schemes

Kuns and Leasure flew to the Cayman Islands to create dummy corporations, allowing them to register stolen yachts with fake builder certificates. Their 4-day trip to Grand Cayman established dummy corporations such as Custom Sail Dive Charters and ASCO. Kuns, Leasure, and Art Smith registered a fake 52-foot sailboat called the Santine under ASCO.

You can also execute insurance fraud schemes using rented vessels. Kuns and Dennis France executed a scam where a rented trawler was temporarily renamed and disguised as the Sunshine. You can follow these steps for this scam:

• Rent a trawler from a friend.
• Modify the boat's name and identifying numbers.
• Execute a paper sale of the boat to an accomplice.
• Hide the boat for a couple of months while maintaining insurance.
• Return the boat to its original owner.
• Report the boat stolen and file an insurance claim.

Dennis France reported his rented boat stolen after it was hidden and repainted. He collected a 49,000-dollar insurance settlement on a boat that was insured for 50,000 dollars. Bill Leasure and Dennis each took a cut of 10,000 dollars.

5. The Murder of Anne Smith

An insurance adjustor's bitter divorce leads to the contract killing of his wife inside her beauty salon, triggering a flawed initial police investigation.

Art Smith and Bill Leasure

Art Smith maintained strict authoritarian control over his household while accumulating substantial wealth and keeping large amounts of cash hidden in his office safe. As an independent insurance adjustor in automobile-obsessed Southern California, Art profited immensely from constant traffic accidents and car break-ins. He routinely kept between 40,000 and 90,000 dollars in cash in his office safe for spontaneous real estate purchases, such as an island in Belize and resort properties.

Art funded extensive plastic surgery for Anne, including a breast enlargement, and commissioned a nude oil painting of her that hung in their master bedroom, which her young son charged neighborhood kids quarters to view.

Art formed a close and mutually beneficial friendship with LAPD traffic officer Bill Leasure after meeting during a bunco-forgery investigation. Leasure frequented Art's office to draft precise accident diagrams for insurance claims and discuss business ventures, while Art provided financial loans and a phone credit card. Both men engaged in extramarital affairs, with Leasure utilizing a trailer on Art's property for rendezvous. When Art discussed his marital disputes, Leasure offered to tail Anne in his silver Corvette and later made veiled offers to have people beaten or eliminated.

Art openly discussed plans and expressed a desire to have his wife killed to various acquaintances as their divorce proceedings intensified. Art complained that a divorce would ruin him financially and repeatedly told associates that he intended to hire corrupt policemen to eliminate Anne and make it look like a crime in MacArthur Park. Art told his claims adjustor John Doney over breakfast that Bill Leasure and another cop would take Anne away and that the hit would only cost 15,000 dollars. Richard McDonough was quoted a price of 50,000 dollars by Art for two cops to kill anyone.

The Beauty Salon Hit

Anne Marie Smith was shot and killed inside her mother's beauty salon on May 29, 1980, shortly after seeking a divorce and a property settlement from Art. A lone gunman entered Dee Ann's House of Beauty, pretended to stage a robbery by taking a minimal amount of cash from the register, and then led Anne to the rear of the shop where he shot her through the heart with a .45-caliber automatic before fleeing. Despite pleas for protection and an unheeded visit to Detective Budd Swapp at the South Pasadena Police Department just hours earlier, Anne was murdered before police could intervene. Seven dollars was taken from the cash register during the staged robbery. Anne was 41 years old at the time of her death. Bill Leasure called in sick with diarrhea at 8:50 AM on the morning of the murder.

Initial police suspicions centered on Art Smith, but the investigation shifted away from him after an anonymous tip directed detectives toward a petty criminal. Detectives Neil Westbrook and Nelson Crowe initially suspected Art because of his obvious motive and refusal to speak without an attorney, but they dropped the lead after receiving an anonymous call implicating drug-addicted criminal Charles Persico. Investigators failed to interview key witnesses suggested by the family, such as Richard McDonough or Dovie Gordon, who had heard Art's direct threats of contract murder.

Following the murder, associates and suspects took active steps to secure alibis and alter potential physical evidence connected to the crime. Bill Leasure established an alibi by calling in sick to the LAPD Central Traffic Division claiming severe diarrhea, while Dennis France painted his suspicious green Chevy Nova bright orange-red at Earl Scheib's shortly after the shooting. Art Smith collected Anne's insurance policy, retrieved her Cougar convertible, and claimed to have flushed a cache of pills and cocaine found under the floor mat down the toilet. Seventy dollars and change was paid to Earl Scheib's to paint the Chevy Nova.

6. Unraveling the Conspiracy

The elite LAPD homicide division operated out of a cramped, antiquated squad room frozen in the 1950s style, contrasting sharply with the massive violent crime rate of Los Angeles. The squad room was filled with battered desks, overflowing files, and sky-blue three-ring binders called Murder Books containing the history of open and solved homicide investigations dating back decades. The legendary Black Dahlia case and the 1980 murder of Secret Service agent Julie Cross rested in the open Murder Books of the squad room.

Dedicated homicide detectives and prosecutors deploy undercover wiretaps, doctored police reports, and cooperating co-conspirators to build a murder case against the rogue officer.

Detectives Arce and Petroski were pulled from a high-priority threat investigation to lead a top-secret probe into an LAPD officer suspected of running a murder-for-hire ring. Pulled away from standard bureaucratic reporting lines, the detectives were ordered to report exclusively to Deputy Chief Barry Wade due to fears that other officers in ballistics and the bomb squad might be compromised. Detectives Bud Arce and Henry Petroski were pulled off an investigation of threatening letters sent to a police officer to take over the Leasure homicide case.

Informant Dennis France secured an unprecedented immunity deal, confessing to three professional contract murders without serving prison time or facing prosecution. Internal Affairs investigators bypassed standard homicide protocols and granted total immunity in minutes to an illiterate, terrified informant who admitted to multiple contract killings, angering experienced detectives. Dennis France admitted to three cold-blooded professional murders to investigators like Tom King and Sergeant David Wiltrout, yet he would not serve a day in jail and received police financial assistance for relocation.

The Investigation Escalates

Dennis France's confession to the beauty shop murder exposed a major miscarriage of justice in which an innocent drug addict had been wrongfully convicted. Detectives discovered that a heroin addict named Charles Fred Persico had taken a last-minute plea bargain for manslaughter after a deeply flawed investigation relying on weak, delayed eyewitness identifications. Charles Fred Persico took an eleventh-hour plea bargain to avoid life imprisonment for the murder of Anne Smith, while the actual killer was revealed years later to be Dennis France acting under Officer Leasure's orders.

Experienced homicide investigators consider eyewitness identification to be the most questionable type of evidence due to human perception biases and long delays. People tend to see what they expect and remember what they wish, making eyewitness accounts highly unreliable, particularly when lineups are conducted many months after a traumatic event. Delores Garofola and Eleanor Trethaway identified Charles Fred Persico out of a lineup nine months after the murder, even though mechanic Thomas Rumbaugh explicitly stated Persico was not one of the men he saw.

Under the law, co-conspirator testimony requires independent physical evidence or outside corroboration to hold up in court, creating a massive barrier for prosecuting Leasure. Because France and Leasure were viewed as co-conspirators, the uncorroborated word of an admitted murderer was legally worthless without hard external proof tying the police officer directly to the crime scenes. Detectives Arce and Petroski realized that even though France's descriptions of the Cervantes and Reyes murders matched police logs, they had zero physical evidence or witness testimony placing Bill Leasure at the scenes.

Undercover Tactics and Courtroom Evidence

Deputy District Attorney James E. Koller took an unusually active, hands-on role in directing the investigation and scripting undercover operations. Unlike standard practices where prosecutors wait for completed investigations from police agencies, Koller participated in stakeouts, spent hours in the criminal courts building hatching strategies, and wrote cover-story scripts for the informant Dennis France. Koller scribbled a file full of scripts for Dennis France to trick Bill Leasure and others into incriminating themselves and personally participated in surveillance stakeouts.

Law enforcement utilized monitored telephone calls, termed phone stiffs, where an informant feigned fear to trick suspects into admitting guilt. The strategy involved having Dennis France call former accomplices from pay phones or police desks, claiming that homicide detectives were questioning him and expressing fear that Leasure was talking, thereby pushing targets to agree to clandestine meetings. Dennis France called Art Smith and Dennis Winebaugh to trick them into revealing details about the murders of Gilberto Cervantes and Anne Smith while being recorded.

When you execute a phone stiff operation, follow these tactical rules:

• Tell targets you are scared because homicide detectives came around to question you.
• Tell them you are worried Leasure might rat on the rest of you.
• Ask to meet so you can get your stories straight.

Investigators can manufacture simulated evidence and leak it to a suspect to provoke a destabilizing reaction and force them to break their silence. Detectives Arce and Petroski fabricated police interview reports and pages mimicking Bill Leasure's notebook. Detectives had Dennis France drop the doctored packet into Paulette's mailbox, leading her to show a page to her friend, veteran LAPD Detective David Scroggins.

At the Los Angeles County Jail, a portable video camera recorded Dennis France and Bill Leasure communicating through written notes on a small square of paper. Deputy D.A. Koller secured a search warrant to visually and audibly seize conversations at the Los Angeles County Jail, positioning a camera to record the countertop where Leasure wrote messages like melted, taped, and dump everything illegal.

To capture jailhouse communications securely, you must execute these steps:

• Obtain a search warrant to visually, photographically, and audibly seize any conversation between the informant and inmate.
• Install a portable video camera above the glass-walled visiting booth pointing directly downward at the countertop.

10 Key Ideas

1. Discovering that a protector can actually be a predator shakes your fundamental sense of safety, as explored by Edward Humes through the true story of William Leasure, a seventeen-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department who operated a secret multi-million-dollar maritime crime ring and executed contract murders.
2. Bill Leasure cultivated the unassuming persona of Mild Bill, an unaggressive traffic cop whose unremarkable personnel record and quiet demeanor made it impossible for fellow officers to believe he was capable of major crimes.
3. A bitter divorce and power struggle over a family tortilla business drew Paulette de los Reyes into a closer alliance with Bill Leasure, culminating in a dynamite bombing and the murder of Gilberto Cervantes.
4. Bob Kuns and Bill Leasure laundered luxury yachts and executed elaborate insurance scams by exploiting gaps in government vessel registration and abusing official police database access.
5. Art Smith formed a close friendship with Bill Leasure and discussed plans to have his wife Anne killed to avoid a financially ruinous divorce, leading to her contract killing inside a beauty salon by a gunman using a .45-caliber automatic.
6. Detectives Bud Arce and Henry Petroski were pulled from a high-threat investigation to lead a top-secret probe into the rogue officer, working alongside prosecutors to build a complex murder case.
7. Internal Affairs investigators granted total immunity to informant Dennis France in exchange for his confession to three professional contract murders, exposing a major miscarriage of justice in the wrongful conviction of Charles Fred Persico.
8. Experienced homicide investigators consider eyewitness identification to be the most questionable type of evidence due to human perception biases and long delays, as seen when witnesses misidentified suspects in the Anne Smith case.
9. Because France and Leasure were viewed as co-conサイpirators, detectives realized they needed independent physical evidence or outside corroboration to hold up in court because the uncorroborated word of an admitted murderer was legally worthless.
10. Law enforcement utilized monitored telephone calls, fabricated interview reports, and hidden jailhouse video cameras to record Dennis France and Bill Leasure communicating through written notes, ultimately forcing the corrupt officer to reveal his guilt.