How an LAPD Captain Solved a 30-Year-Old Cold Case Murder

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Hidden Third

Episode: How an LAPD Captain Solved a 30-Year-Old Cold Case Murder

Host: Mariana van Zeller
Guest: Tom Elfmont (Retired LAPD Captain & Cold Case Investigator)
Date: July 8, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the career and worldview of Tom Elfmont, a former LAPD captain with deep experience in gang, narcotics, and homicide investigations. Mariana van Zeller guides listeners through Elfmont’s personal journey—from small-town Long Island to the turbulent streets of 1970s Berkeley and the heart of South Los Angeles, to his eventual retirement in Montana. The main focus is Elfmont’s recent breakthrough in the cold case of 15-year-old Daniel (Danny) Houchens, a murder unsolved for nearly three decades in rural Montana. The conversation delves into police culture, violence and reform, the 1992 LA Riots, and the painstaking work that finally cracked a 30-year-old mystery.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Early Fascination with Policing and Firearms

[02:11]

• Tom grew up in Long Island, NY, in a medical family, but was drawn to firearms and policing from a young age.
• Recalls formative experiences learning firearm safety from a local hunter, Tressler, at the encouragement of his medically-inclined father.
• “Nobody in my family ever owned or shot a gun. But for some reason, my genetics must have gotten mutated by nuclear dust or something.” (Tom Elfmont, 02:11)

2. From ROTC to Military Police in Vietnam

[05:28 – 14:50]

• Chose ROTC to avoid being drafted as an enlisted private; instead became an MP and later civilian advisor for the CIA-run CORDS program in Vietnam.
• Gained fluency in Vietnamese, up-close knowledge of the war’s counterinsurgency programs, and a critical perspective on US involvement.
• “I saw the lies... pacification doesn’t work. I don’t care whether you go to Iraq, Afghanistan…” (Tom Elfmont, 12:59)

3. Policing in Berkeley: “Unbelievably Violent”

[16:03 – 22:05]

• Joined the progressive Berkeley PD, regarded as pioneering in police education, but soon found himself in a frontline role during a time of bombings, direct attacks on police, and intense civil unrest.
• Recalls attempts to bomb the police station with dynamite (saved by an anonymous tip), and a period of frequent violence against officers.
• “They placed a bomb under one of the police cars and set it off as officers are going through the parking lot. ...He had a sliced femoral artery. ...They put their thumbs and kept him alive.” (Tom Elfmont, 19:08)

4. Police Brutality, Reform, and the Perennial Media Challenge

[24:39 – 34:51]

• Discusses persistent concerns about police brutality, both historically and presently.
• Elfmont believes excessive force usually results from lack of confidence and poor supervision, not recruitment of “bad apples.”
• Expresses frustration with persistent media narratives, particularly LA Times coverage:
  “Since I joined LAPD, there has never been a time when the LA Times doesn’t have one, two, three, four writers ...that are unbelievably anti-police.” (Tom Elfmont, 27:22)
• Describes the impact of public scrutiny and the abandonment of certain use-of-force tools (like nightsticks) to avoid bad optics post-Rodney King.

5. Transition to LAPD and the Heyday of Gang Crime

[36:44 – 43:58]

• Left Berkeley for LA as the city council moved to reduce/de-fund the police.
• Assigned to “Crash” (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums), he witnessed endemic violence and attributes decreased crime rates to “three strikes” laws and other factors, while acknowledging deep social causes like poverty and racism.

6. Cases and Cops: Anecdotes from the Field

[45:18 – 49:01]

• Shares stories of unusual criminals—including a man who impersonated a parole officer to exploit others.
• “A lot of police work is lucky. That was luck. I happened to be in the parking lot, and something just struck me wrong about the deal. That’s luck.” (Tom Elfmont, 48:40)
• Notes the importance of intuition and on-the-job experience.

7. The 1992 LA Riots and the 39th & Dalton Controversy

[49:47 – 77:49]

• As LAPD captain during the riots, Elfmont recounts the moment he realized police had lost control and details how he assumed command, instituted citywide lockdowns, and coordinated with mutual aid and the military.
• “I told [my officer], ‘Take all your business cards, go to every rental car agency at the airport. Take all their cars and leave the business card behind.’” (Tom Elfmont, 65:46)
• Discusses the 39th and Dalton raid, cited as an emblematic case of police overreach and property destruction, for which he was indicted but acquitted; reflects on leadership responsibility and the “buck stops here” nature of command.

8. Consulting for Hollywood: The Making of “Heat”

[78:51 – 87:14]

• Michael Mann shadowed Elfmont for research, witnessing street police work firsthand; Mann even carried a gun on ride-alongs (albeit “illegally” on Elfmont’s say-so).
• “If you’re going to ride with me ...you’re going to carry a gun. Because ...God forbid, if something happens and I get shot, they’re going to try and kill you or you’re next.” (Tom Elfmont, 83:20)

9. Cold Cases in Montana: The Daniel Houchens Story

[89:08 – 123:49]

• Retired to Montana, but was drawn back into policing when asked to consult on the 30-year-old murder of Daniel “Danny” Houchens.
• Details the case: 15-year-old Danny was found asphyxiated, originally declared a drowning by local authorities; Elfmont suspected murder.
• Fought through local resistance, navigated evidence access issues, and initiated advanced DNA testing with Astria Forensics (a female-led lab).
• “You have the real police and then you have the police. And I was always the real police.” (Tom Elfmont, 93:05)
• Pieced together background evidence, tracked the likely suspect (Paul Hutchinson), orchestrated a non-custodial interview, and obtained discarded DNA from a coffee cup.
• Hutchinson, confronted, killed himself the next day; his DNA was a “three trillion to one” match to the crime (00:00, 117:25).
• “I would wake up at two, three o'clock in the morning and I would say, Danny, I got you, Danny, I got you. I'm gonna get him. ...So it was a big deal for me.” (Tom Elfmont, 119:42)

10. Reflections on Policing, Justice, and Purpose

[120:26 – end]

• Critiques Montana law enforcement’s “laissez faire” attitude and contrasts it with the LAPD’s standards.
• Stresses the importance of emotional commitment and leadership in police work: “Like I told you in the beginning, you have the real police and then you have the police.” (Tom Elfmont, 120:32)
• Shares intention to keep working—to bring justice to another cold case involving a Montana rancher.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the Vietnam Experience:
  “If you look at Iraq or Afghanistan, there’s no way you can go into a third world country... and say, now you love America, right? ...Pacification doesn’t work.” (12:59)
• On Riots Command:
  “It was about midnight, the whole city’s burning, planes weren’t landing at LAX. ...They’d lost control. ...But with Gates’ backing, I could do anything I want.” (57:49 – 61:00)
• On Solving Cold Cases:
  “The investigator... he tried everything he could to stonewall me on the case. ...One of the things you need to do when you have cold case especially is you need to see the physical evidence.” (100:53)
• On the “Real Police”:
  “There’s real police and there’s police. And I was always the real police. ...If you gave me something to do where I could help people or get a bad guy, I did it to the best I could.” (93:05)
• Closing Reflection:
  “I would wake up at two, three o'clock in the morning and I would say, Danny, I got you, Danny, I got you. I'm gonna get him.” (119:42)

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Important Timestamps

• 02:11 – Tom’s introduction to guns; family background
• 10:25 – CORDS, CIA & Vietnam experience
• 19:08 – Specific violence & bombings in Berkeley PD
• 27:22 – On hostile press and media narratives
• 38:25 – Early LAPD gang work (“Crash”)
• 49:57 – 1992 LA Riots: taking command
• 66:15 – 39th & Dalton: scandal, fallout, and lessons on leadership
• 78:51 – Hollywood consulting for “Heat”
• 89:08 – Retirement, transition to cold case work in Montana
• 96:11 – Step-by-step investigation of the Houchens case
• 117:25 – Suspect suicide and case closure
• 123:39 – New cold case, continued sense of mission

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Flow and Tone

Elfmont speaks in a pragmatic, conversational tone—by turns gruff, reflective, and story-driven. He uses plain language, sometimes dark humor, and is unflinching about both structural faults in American policing and his own missteps. Mariana steers the dialogue with sensitivity and persistent questioning, especially regarding leadership, accountability, and the emotional dimensions of police work.

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Overall Takeaways

• The episode presents a vivid, insider portrait of law enforcement’s past and present, bridging eras and attitudes.
• Elfmont’s career arc—from “gung ho” cop to embattled captain to tenacious cold case volunteer—underscores the interplay of personal character, leadership, and institutional culture in the quest for justice.
• The detailed reconstruction of the Houchens case highlights the power (and limitations) of dogged investigative work, advances in forensics, and the emotional stakes for families and investigators alike.
• The episode challenges listeners to think critically about police reform, media influence, and what it means to be “the real police.”

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This summary covers all major content, offers key moments, and preserves the candid, streetwise tone of the speakers. Timestamps and quotes provide clear guideposts for deeper exploration.

Transcript

[Tom Elfmont]

They drove his lab, his DNA to the lab. And three days later, the lab said that the DNA in the semen on Danny's underwear matched Paul's DNA. Something like the ratio was three trillion to one.

[Interviewer]

Right. So 100% it was him.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Tom elfmont spent over 25 years with the LAPD, including as a captain running some of the department's most hard hitting gang and narcotics operations in South Los Angeles. He's become a key Voice on the 92 Los Angeles riots, the most destructive period of civil unrest in modern US History. He also spent months with Michael Mann. Actually, Michael Mann spent months with Tom Elfmont while he was consulting on the greatest crime film ever made, Heat, starring Pacino and De Niro. After retiring from the lapd, he moved to Montana where he now volunteers his time helping to solve cold cases. And he just helped Crack A nearly 30 year old mystery, the 96 murder of 15 year old Daniel Houchens. But before we start this episode, a quick note. This show exists because of people like you. If you want to help us keep making episodes like this, which I hope you do, you can support the Hidden Third on [e-mail] the hidden third. There you'll get access to bonus content, lots of behind the scenes, and much, much more. And if you haven't already, please follow or subscribe to the show wherever you listen or watch and leave us a rating or review or a comment, anything, it all really just helps us over here. Thank you so much.

[Interviewer]

Tom Elfmont, welcome to the Hidden Third.

[Tom Elfmont]

Thank you very much for having me here.

[Interviewer]

Um, it's great to have you. And wait, before we start, actually, you just mentioned you just came from Montana yesterday, right? And you walked into our studio carrying a little bag. Can you tell us what's in the bag and what you told me why you brought it?

[Tom Elfmont]

Okay, so in the bag there's two protein bars, a pair of sunglasses, and a Glock 9 millimeter. Now, I go in everywhere with a gun and it's just, it's been a habit of mine since I was a kid. Nobody in my family ever owned or shot a gun. But for some reason, my genetics must have gotten like, mutated by nuclear dust or something. But I always had an interest in guns. I did. And so my mom and dad, they bought me my first rifle when I was nine years old. And ever since then I've owned guns, carried guns, shotguns and everything.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

And you're allowed to travel with it

[Interviewer]

on a plane as long as you have a special permit or how did you get here?

[Tom Elfmont]

No, it used to be, back in the day, law enforcement, as long as they notified the gate agent and the pilot could travel if they were on duty with a gun. But nowadays you can't. So what I do is I have a gun that's here in la, because I still have a residence in la. And so when I travel on a plane, I don't have a firearm with me on the plane.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, that's what I was wondering. But you have one here. And so even when you just get out of your house every day, you just carry a gun with you at all times?

[Tom Elfmont]

I do.

[Interviewer]

And you've been fascinated by guns, I guess, since you were very. Since you were young. Can you tell me about. Yeah.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Where.

[Interviewer]

Where did you grow up? You mentioned your parents.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah, I. I grew up in eastern Long Island, New York, about 100 miles from New York City, in West Hampton beach and the adjoining town, Riverhead. My father was a family doctor. And he was the typical family doctor back in the day. He had a black bag. He made house calls. Our home had an office attached. He had office hours in the afternoon, in the evening. And then he would go out and go to your home if you had a sick kid, a sick mom or whatever. And my mom was a homemaker. And I showed an interest in guns because I was reading back in the day all these outdoor magazines like Outdoor Life, Field and Stream, Sports Afield. And so my father had a patient, and the patient. His name, I don't remember his first name, but his last name was Tressler. He was a technician at rca. RCA had a factory nearby. And my father knew that he was a big shooter and also a hunter. So my father asked me, will you teach my son? Or ask Tressler, will you teach my son about firearms? And so on Sundays when he would go to the range, he would pick me up and we'd go to the range, and then he would shoot his different rifles. Talk to me about rifles safety, shotgun safety, handguns, and just all kinds of different things. So he was my trainer.

[Interviewer]

And that's how you got interested in it, because it wasn't part of your family at all.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Okay, so you. And then eventually.

[Interviewer]

So you grew up in Long island, and then eventually you ended up going to the Vietnam War. Right. And you were part of the military police there.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah. So what happened was. So when I was at college, which was New Mexico State University, they had a ROTC program my junior and senior year, ROTC and get commissioned as a lieutenant, and the Vietnam war was cooking 100%, full bore. And I said, well, do I want to be a private or a lieutenant? Because I knew they were going to draft me. So I said, well, I'd much rather be a lieutenant. And so I got commissioned as a second lieutenant and they put me in the military police. But then what happened was I went to Fort Lewis, Washington, and I wasn't even there six weeks. And I got orders to go to Fort Bragg to the Special Warfare School and then to go to Fort Bliss, Texas to the Language Defense Language school there. And so they told me I was going to be an advisor and to the Vietnamese National Police. And so I, I went to Fort Bragg for eight weeks. Then I went to Fort Bliss for 12 weeks and I had Vietnamese lessons. It was six hours a day, five days a week. And it was a, you know, native person from Vietnam and it was really pretty fascinating and the way they taught you language. And I was surprised because I didn't know much about the Vietnamese language and it wasn't that difficult. It was almost strictly in the beginning. It was all about memorizing everything. And so I did that and then they sent me to Vietnam.

[Interviewer]

Wait, at this point you were fluent?

[Tom Elfmont]

I wasn't fluent.

[Interviewer]

But you spoke pretty well under the speech.

[Tom Elfmont]

I was conversational.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. That's great.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah, no, it was, it was great. I really. Yeah, I really like that part of it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

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[Tom Elfmont]

then they send me to Vietnam. I walk in the tent, and there's three guys all. Now, I was at the time 20, 22, 23, and there's three guys sitting there, and they're all about 50, and they're all white guys. And they sit me down, they got my military personnel records, and they said, how would you like to work with us? I said, who's us? And they said, well, we're part of the CORDS program, but we're run by the CIA. And CORDS was called Civil Operations for Revolutionary Development Support, like all government acronyms. And the deputy ambassador in Vietnam was William Colby, who went on to be the chief of the CIA, and he ran the program nationwide. And the program was basically to fight the Vietnamese, the vc, North Vietnamese Communist infrastructure in the rural areas, in the villages, because they had their own tax collectors, their own mayors. You know, if. If USAID came in and built a school, they would come into the town the next day and they would burn the school to the ground with. Same thing with a. Well, kill the village chief, kill his wife, maybe his kids. And so the whole job of the CORDS program was to try and, you know, they. It was a Big word during Vietnam was pacification was to pacify the rural villages and so they would support the government in Saigon. So I did that for about. It was actually a great job because I got to know the Vietnamese very well. I learned to speak Vietnamese better. So I was involved with some of the Vietnamese police field forces and small unit tactics things, but. And of course, we would get, you know, rockets. They were 122 millimeter rockets, Russian rockets, and where they would rocket you and rocket your base and your FOB and everything, but nothing like direct action combat like a lot of American troops were in.

[Interviewer]

How long were you there for?

[Tom Elfmont]

A year.

[Interviewer]

And when you came back, what was your feeling about the war? What did you think about?

[Tom Elfmont]

Well, I was pretty gung ho when I got over there, but because of what we did, I saw. I saw the lies. And the lies were about pacification programs. And, you know, they'd have villages that were pro government on the map. Not pro government, this and that. And I saw what they were trying to do. But you couldn't do it. You couldn't do it. I mean, it was like, if you look at Iraq or you look at Afghanistan, there's no way you can go into a third world country, America, and go to a village and build a well and say, now you love America, right? And they all go, yeah, we love America. And then the local insurgency comes in that night, kills the people that are the leaders of the village and says you never to use that well. And so you can't protect it all the time unless you had millions and millions of troops. And so I basically, I started reading up on Vietnam and I just developed a very strong dislike for Henry Kissinger, McNamara, who else was in. In the White House? LBJ. Because they lied. Westmoreland, they lied and they prolonged the war which resulted in the deaths of all these American kids. And so if you asked me today, I said pacification doesn't work. And I don't care whether you go to Iraq.

[Interviewer]

Afghanistan being a great example of another failed attempt. Yeah.

[Tom Elfmont]

Trillions of dollars in Afghanistan. Trillions. And my son served in Afghanistan and Iraq as an army infantry officer, and pacification doesn't work. But I mean, I make a joke, you know, about. You got all these old white guys that run America. You need to let some women run America.

[Interviewer]

That's not a joke. That's.

[Tom Elfmont]

No, but I mean, should be. Yeah, but I mean, I think the psyche would change. What. We have this, like, we have this incessant worship of everything we do. We do the Best. And it's just not possible some places. I mean, I've traveled a lot to see that. No, it doesn't work that way.

[Interviewer]

But, yeah, money and power can't fix everything. Right?

[Tom Elfmont]

Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

[Interviewer]

Our strategy is all wrong. I agree with you. Absolutely. And you came back to the US and then how did you end up. You first were at the Berkeley Police Department?

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah. So how I ended up was. I was married at the time, and we went to Europe for about three, four months, and we rented a car, spent a lot of time in Portugal drinking red wine in farming villages.

[Interviewer]

That's amazing.

[Tom Elfmont]

That you could buy for $2 a bottle. And it tasted really good.

[Interviewer]

This was what year?

[Tom Elfmont]

1970. 71.

[Interviewer]

Okay, so it was still under the dictatorship.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah, it was still a dictatorship, and it was still a very rural.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Tom Elfmont]

Unexplored country.

[Interviewer]

Absolutely.

[Tom Elfmont]

But everybody underdeveloped, you know, it was like Europe. Everybody was super friendly, you know, Very, very friendly.

[Interviewer]

I'm happy to hear that.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah. So I. Then I went back and I applied to a couple police agencies, and Berkeley was one of the places I was interested in because I had a professor at New Mexico State University, and he had been a cop in Berkeley. And Berkeley was the first police department in America to require cops to have a bachelor's degree. And UC Berkeley had a big criminology department. So a lot of the cops had gotten bachelor's degrees in criminology. And then they joined Berkeley PD As a result. Berkeley PD had a lot of firsts back in the day. Not. Not so much now. They. They lost their cachet in the 70s because of all the issues. And the bombings.

[Interviewer]

Right. The violence existed. Yeah.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Well, I want to get there, too. But you knew. You knew that you wanted to be a cop.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah. I tell you, you know, my jeans with the guns.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Tom Elfmont]

I don't know where that came from. And, you know, my father wanted me to be a doctor. I mean, all doctors want their kids to be doctors. And I didn't want to be a doctor, but I knew I always wanted to be a cop.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Huh.

[Interviewer]

Wow, that's so interesting. Was your. Do you think your dad was disappointed

[Tom Elfmont]

in that for a long time? He was. I mean, really was. I would say once he. I think it might have been in Berkeley or it could have been in LA when he. He came out and he did a ride along with me at night, and he saw all the things that cops were doing. He had a. He had a change of heart. He didn't think, oh, they just write tickets and you know, arrest housewives for shoplifting. And he did have a change of heart. And after that he was extremely proud and like to hear about everything and all that.

[Interviewer]

As he should be. Yeah, yeah. Your time in Berkeley, a lot was happening at the time. And tell me about that. There was, it was a very disruptive time, very violent time.

[Tom Elfmont]

Oh, Berkeley was unbelievably violent. And you know, people, you know, this

[Interviewer]

was after the Harvey Milk shooting, right? And yeah, tell me about that time in Berkeley. So there was. Harvey Milk was killed and.

[Tom Elfmont]

Well, yeah, and they, they raided the Black Panthers, raided a police station in San Francisco and killed some police officers. They killed this police officer in Berkeley. He was standing talking to a citizen on a traffic stop at about 2 in the morning, walked up to him and executed him. Shot him in the head. And then, you know, even today, the legend about the Weather Underground, the sds, the Vence Ramos Brigade, which was formed in Folsom Prison and all that is like, oh, they were, they were good Americans. They were just misguided, but they really weren't. They were bad people and they wanted to kill people. Wendy Yoshimura, who was one of the people identified in the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, she was part of a plot where they had parked a vehicle a block from Berkeley police station and they had 460 sticks of dynamite in the car and they were going to blow up the whole police station, which would have leveled the whole block. But somebody got cold feet and they called the police and they said, your station's going to get blown up. The car's here. So the bomb squad, the police, everybody went over there. And of course there was the car in the garage with all the sticks of dynamite in the trunk and everything. But we had a, like in, in the police station one time between the midnight shift and the morning. So midnight and say 12:30, 1 o' clock in the morning, they placed a bomb under one of the police cars and set it off as the officers are going through the parking lot. So some of the officers got hit by shrapnel. One almost died, but except for quick first aid because he had a sliced femoral artery. And so the officers who attended him, they were smart enough to realize he's going to bleed out really quickly. So they put their thumbs and, you know, did what they need to do to keep him alive. Another friend, he went to a call at a house around 1 or 2 in the morning. And he's driving back to the station and he feels the car shutter and he looks in his Rearview mirror and sees a fireball. And they had put a bomb under his gas tank. The only reason he lived was because he had just filled up with gas. So there wasn't any oxygen in the gas tank to cause a bigger explosion. So it caused an explosion, but not as big where it would have killed him. So he was driving slowly, he hit the brake, he rolled out of the car into the street and you know, he survived. So there was a lot of that going on back in the day.

[Interviewer]

Very dangerous to be a police officer in Berkeley at the time. Do you understand why there was so such anti police sentiment?

[Tom Elfmont]

Oh, it was, it was basically towards the draft and the Vietnam War. Those were the two key, I think, key movers.

[Interviewer]

But at the time, wasn't there also a lot of concern about police brutality in Berkeley? And this is why they were acting out against.

[Tom Elfmont]

It wasn't, you know, they, they always, police brutality is something that's going to be there because it just, it's, it's going to be there. But I don't think there was in Berkeley anyway. There was. Police brutality wasn't a big issue until the riots started. And when the riot started, you know, the rioters would say, oh, police brutality. They did this, they did that. But I want you to give you an example. So one night I was working and Berkeley had 15 police officers on duty after midnight for a city of 150,014 square miles. UC Berkeley became. The students became aware of, I think it was Nixon or Johnson started to bomb or mine Haiphong harbor outside of hanoi. So at 1 o', clock, 2 o' clock in the morning, we hear big crowds on the campus and they would do war hoops like in an old western movie like Indians, war hoops. And 15,000 kids come off the campus down Telegraph Avenue and they start smashing windows, throwing Molotov cocktails into buildings, setting things on fire, assaulting police officers. And so if you only have 15 or 20 cops and you're waiting for mutual aid for more cops to show up, and they're not going to show up for a while, like Oakland, San Francisco, Alameda county sheriffs, what are you going to do, right? You're going to leave and give them the city or are you going to fight back? Well, if you're the police, you're supposed to try and restore order. So yeah, I'm sure there was a lot of allegations of police brutality the following day and everything, but it was about how do you establish order with so few people and that many people coming off and they're in a frenzy about this whole thing with the war and bombing and everything.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, you're giving a specific example there. And I think I'm jumping ahead here, but I think it's important to mention this. I mean, police brutality is still very much in the news constantly. And you said police brutality is always going to exist. And why do you think that is? What do you attribute to it? It's. Tim,

[Tom Elfmont]

you know, I think the police get plenty of training, but it's more than your training. It's also that you got to have. You got to have a lot of self confidence and common sense. And those are two things that not everybody has. And like example, LAPD is probably 28 or 30 weeks of training now and they talk about use of force and police brutality all the time and don't do this, don't do that. But you know, there's always going to be situations where it happens. And I don't know exactly why, but I know in my career, I think a lot of it has to do just individual officers, lack of confidence in their training and their personal abilities. I mean, that's what I think it is.

[Interviewer]

Do you think, do you think that law enforcement in general, I guess particularly police force, attracts a certain kind of personality that might lead towards more brutal.

[Tom Elfmont]

No, I don't think so. I mean, nowadays when I talk to a lot of the young police officers, they all have a good mindset about why they want to be there. And you know, maybe in, in the 60s and 70s it did, but I don't think that exists today. I really don't. Because everybody realizes that the, the police departments talk about it all the time. Look, you're probably not going to lose your life doing the job of a police officer, but you're going to lose your job if you engage in misconduct. Right.

[Interviewer]

And you're going to tarnish the reputation of all your colleagues around you who are trying to do good.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yep. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Who are trying to protect Americans or. That should be the goal.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah, sure.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yes.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

But that's what happens is I talk about this often how because of a few bad apples, then the, the reputation of the police gets tarnished in a way that is bad for all of us. Well, I think then we don't trust the police. Yeah.

[Tom Elfmont]

I think especially in Los Angeles, I have a real problem because if you look back at, even when Otis Chandler owned the LA Times, he found that negative stories about lapd, they sold newspapers. And even though I don't think the LA Times is a good newspaper anymore, I don't think there's many out there, but LA Times is definitely not one of them. I think what they've done is since I joined lapd, there has never been a time when the LA Times doesn't have one, two or three or four writers and editorial writers that are unbelievably anti police. And I've talked to them personally back in the day, and they don't. They're not reasonable. They're just not reasonable people. I mean, they have this guy not to name people, but I'm going to name him, this guy Libor Janey. And he writes now for the LA Times only on police issues. And he will take the smallest issue, and it's not even police brutality, and he will turn it into five columns in the LA Times and make it sound like LAPD is doing something bad. And the LA Times still goes along with it, even though Otis Chandler doesn't own them anymore. And I think that feeds the whole negative police story about the police. And it's just, I. I think it's disheartening for the cops, if you notice. So you want to. You want to do a little statistical research. So LAPD used to have a nightstick that was a straight nightstick made out of wood, 26 inches long. So Rodney King happened, and Rodney King was a disaster because the sergeant was not a good supervisor. And I knew two of the police officers were very weak people.

[Interviewer]

The ones that were there.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah, yeah. And I don't know about the third. And what they, Their, their tactics were totally inappropriate and the sergeant didn't stop them from doing it. So you look now today, and they'll say, oh, it's because they carry the Taser. Or this. And that cops do not carry a traditional nightstick anymore at all.

[Interviewer]

Because of that incident.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah, because they don't want to get filmed using a nightstick because it could be taken out of context and they're swinging something at somebody and then the photographer says, oh, it's police brutality. But the most an LAPD actually changed and went to the PR24 baton, which my personal opinion is not a good police use of force weapon. And when I was in Berkeley, we carried the straight stick, and very few departments do anymore. But, like, even in Montana, you will never see a policeman get out of his car. And they'll have a small. What they call is an asp. Asp, which when you go like this, it'll open up and they'll have a Taser. Taser is great because it is effective and it's not going to harm you for life. But they don't carry a nightstick. And why is that? The cops don't want to deal with it. They don't want their picture in the paper with the nightstick, nothing. They stopped carrying them in LA years ago and they would just leave them in the car.

[Interviewer]

Can we just go back to what you said? I haven't read the column of the journalist you mentioned, but I do think that there it is the responsibility of the press. Right. To report on incidents where there is misconduct.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

By police departments and police officers, 100%. So even if it's. Yeah, even if it's written every day, I think that the moment that we take our eyes off that police brutality increases because it is because of the watchful eye of the press that stories like this get. Get told.

[Tom Elfmont]

Well, I think the watchful eye of the press is basically what you need to have for, you know, the whole world, of course, but you talk about the watchful eye of the press. So the LA City Council has 15 members. Four are in prison and one is pending a felony trial for corruption and fraud. Who's watching the City council? This is what the cops would say. And so I used to teach a class to senior police officers at the police academy. And I would say to them, okay, you guys, tonight, because there's a bar at the police academy and a restaurant and everything actually has good food. So I would say to the cops, okay, tonight we finished a class at 8 o', clock, 9 o', clock, and you guys go up and have a couple beers and then you go home. Now you have a couple beers and you driving down the street in your own car and you hit a pole and LAPD comes and your dui, that's going to affect your career a lot. Now what happens if that same person in the bar is the mayor, Chief justice of the California Supreme Court, a federal judge? Is it going to impact them at all? No, it's not. So the police say that as a really big dichotomy in the way that they're treated, you know, and then you have all these people now with this president who are criminals, been convicted, pled guilty, and they're all pardoned. But yet if you're on LAPD and you get a dui, they're a little better now because they do offer programs for alcoholics and this and that. But basically your promotion, your ability to work different places is going to be stunted for a number of years.

[Interviewer]

And you don't think it should be that way you think it's unfair that they get that it could affect their careers.

[Tom Elfmont]

I think what's unfair is the way you write, the way you write the stories to make it like there was just a story in the LA Times about some guy in the Valley who gave the Police Foundation $15,000. Well, LAPD and every police department I know has non profit foundations where people donate money and over the years they use it to buy SWAT equipment, this equipment, that equipment. It's not a big deal, but it shouldn't be a 10 column story and imply all kinds of wrongdoing. That's what I don't like.

[Interviewer]

Understood. Okay, let's get back to your story. This became a political conversation in a way that I was expecting. But let's talk about again. Okay, so you were in Berkeley. So all this craziness was happening. There was bombings, there was a lot of attacks towards the police, police officers like yourself. And then you decided, is that when you decided you wanted to leave Berkeley?

[Tom Elfmont]

Well, what happened in, in the election in, I think it was May of 1972, there were nine council seats in Berkeley and five of them were up for a reelection. And the radicals, and they were radicals, so I'm not speaking out of school, they won those five seats. And one of their platforms was to do away with the police department. Now in Berkeley at the time, we had homes in like my beat on the west side of Berkeley where they would fly Chinese flags, North Vietnamese flags, Russian flags. And these people had talked about, well, we're going to do away with the police. We're going to take no shotguns for the police in their cars and we're going to form neighborhood posses. So if you see somebody committing a crime, you start blowing a whistle. All your volunteer posse members come out and you chase the person. But then what are you going to do with them if you don't have police?

[Interviewer]

So sort of like neighborhood

[Tom Elfmont]

militias.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Tom Elfmont]

And basically amphetamine, you know, Neighborhood watch.

[Interviewer]

Wow. People who are not actually trained.

[Tom Elfmont]

So they, they wanted to do that.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Tom Elfmont]

And I said, you know, if they want to do this, and they've only been in office a month or two, I'm, I'm not sticking around because it's not going to be good for my career. So then I went to la.

[Interviewer]

And that was a good career move, I guess.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah, yeah, very good.

[Interviewer]

And so you started at LA, this was what year when you came to LA?

[Tom Elfmont]

73.

[Interviewer]

And you immediately got into the LAPD and what was it at the beginning were you immediately put in the gang and drug test force.

[Tom Elfmont]

Well, I, I, I went through the academy like everybody. And then I went to 77th Street Division, which is at 77th and Broadway, right in the heart of South Central. And I worked with a great partner and we were responsible for the three projects, Nick Nickerson Gardens, Imperial Courts and Jordan Downs. And so we were, we were called, Anyway, we were 12, a 69. And my partner was Dick Sweet. He was great police officer. And so I was working there and then LAPD came up with, they were going to start gang units. And Ed Davis was the chief of police. And so they came up with the name Trash for Gang units. T R A S H. And that stood for Total Resources Against Street Hoodlums. So the community complained a little bit and Davis said, yeah, you know, that might be a little harsh. We need to change the name. We're going to change it to Community Resources against Street Hoodlums. So I was assigned to that first unit down in South Central back in 73, 74, so called Crash. Yes. Okay, Crash.

[Interviewer]

And what was that like?

[Tom Elfmont]

You know, people don't realize because there to me, I mean, there's almost no crime nowadays, even in la, even in bad neighborhoods because there was so much shootings, murders, drive by shootings. It was constant.

[Interviewer]

Right. I actually wrote this down because I thought it was, I thought it was fascinating that the crime in the 1970s was so much more than it is today. Just like you're saying, Louisiana was running up to 1,300 murders a year. Now it's around 300. Yes, 1,300 at the time.

[Tom Elfmont]

That's.

[Interviewer]

It was.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah. No, and that went on for a lot of years. You know, that went on through the 80s and till the early 90s and it was just out of control.

[Interviewer]

What do you think changed?

[Tom Elfmont]

Well, see, here's the thing. I've always said that if you're a chief of police, whether it's Culver City or LA or New York, don't ever take credit for reducing crime that way. You don't have to accept credit when it goes up. Because I read something like, I don't know, 30 something years ago, it was called a report by the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica. And they looked at all the potential causes of crime and there were probably well over 30 or 40 bullet points on things. The one thing that I know that had an impact was when Duke Magian was the governor, he started three strikes. And that had a big impact because most of these offenders in their late teens, early 20s, they were multiple offenders and so I think three strikes, which is, you know, I think it's gone the way of the win now, made a big difference.

[Interviewer]

So the idea being that a lot of the crime happens by a small group of people who are repeat offenders. Yeah. By the three strikes is if you offend a third time, you.

[Tom Elfmont]

Prison.

[Interviewer]

You were going to prison regardless. Yeah.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

And.

[Interviewer]

And you thought, and you. And so there was a study done about this where they found out that actually this was one of the reasons why.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah, I remember reading it back in the.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I mean, that would make sense, right?

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah, I mean, so many factors. Unemployment, jobs, schools, just everything.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Inequality always leads to violence.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

And so there was a lot of neighborhoods that there were where there was actually extreme poverty at the time in a way that there isn't nowadays.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah. Now I'll give the credit to the LA Times for this. Back in the day. So we used to have murders where it was a really a second or a first degree murder and the person should have gone to prison for life or 25 to life. And the cops used to call it a misdemeanor murder because what the DA did. I had a case one time where a guy was, he went to a party, 45 year old black man, around Expo park, nicely dressed, he had a hat on, a suit. And he tried to get in the party and the guy came to the door and said, no, you can't come, it's a private party. And he said, no, I want to get into the party. So he, he took basically like a Swiss army knife that you use for your fingernails and stuff where the blade is an inch and a half. And he stuck the guy right in the center of the chest. So when I got there, the guy was sitting in a chair and he didn't even have blood coming out of his chest, but he died because that tiny blade punctured his aorta. So he bled to death, he bled internally. So we, we took the guy, he admitted doing it and we booked him for murder. So the district attorney's office some months later let him plead guilty to a misdemeanor of voluntary manslaughter with credit for time served and five years probation. So we used to begin calling because we worked in the ghetto, black on black murders, misdemeanor murders. And it was a total double standard because think about what happened in 1980, 81 in Westwood, and there's been a lot of documentaries on it. And also the Bob Big Boy murders on La Cienega where white people were killed and the city Went crazy. We need more cops. We let the cops put everybody in jail. District attorney. But all prior to that, when there were 1300 murders in this city in the 70s, if it was a black on black crime and it was more of what the DA might call, oh, well, they weren't a threat to anybody else. They let them plead guilty to nothing.

[Interviewer]

And because they saw it as gang related.

[Tom Elfmont]

No, no, I think it was just institutional racism.

[Interviewer]

Right?

[Tom Elfmont]

It was just black on black.

[Interviewer]

Absolutely. Yeah.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Huh.

[Tom Elfmont]

And so those are the kind of things you see as a cop. And it makes you start to wonder how fair is our system, you know? You know, young police officers, myself included, I'm going, wait a minute, this guy should be in jail for 25 years. He just killed this guy because he wouldn't let him in a party, right? Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And why do you think that was?

[Tom Elfmont]

You know, I don't know, because the DAs back in the day, they were hardcore DAs, you know, I mean, they would charge people for a big deal. I mean, I think because there was so much going on, they just wanted to get it done with, get the paperwork over and let it go away. Hitters. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

What was some of the most interesting times that you had the lapd? This. And this all happened before you were captain, right?

[Tom Elfmont]

Oh, yeah. I was a police officer and a detective.

[Interviewer]

For how long?

[Tom Elfmont]

12 years.

[Interviewer]

Before you became a captain?

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And what was the most interesting cases or work that you did while you were a detective or an officer, before you became a captain?

[Tom Elfmont]

One of the funniest stories, I was a watch commander in Hollywood on the midnight shift and the place was crazy all the time. We had 50, 60 people waiting to get booked into the jails and it was nuts. And one of the desk officers came up to me and I went out in the field a lot and he said to me, hey, Lieutenant, there's a guy here, he's a parole agent and he wants to book a parolee for a parole violation. And this is like two or three o' clock in the morning and we're just hammered, busy. So I go talk to the parole agent and he's got a parole agent jacket on, he's got a parole agent badge and he's got a wanted poster. And he shows me the wanted poster and then he points out the guy and it's him. I said, I need to book him on a parole hold. So I'm, I'm like 95% sure it's a good deal. But I happened to walk into, out of the parking lot. I Don't know why, but I went out in the parking lot, and I see him come out and get in his car, and he drives out of the station. And I just said, you know, I write his license number down.

[Interviewer]

This is the parlayant.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Tom Elfmont]

Well, come to find out what this guy was doing. He was a gay man, and he would. He invented that. He was a parole agent, and he would cruise Hollywood Boulevard, Melrose, Santa Monica, and also other adjoining cities, and he would look for gay men that look like a wanted poster.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Whoa.

[Tom Elfmont]

And then he would get out of the car, confront them, show them the wanted poster, and he would say, you're under arrest. And the guy would go, hey, man, that's not me. I've never been to jail. Never been to prison. You're under arrest. And then he would handcuff them, put him in the car, and then he would say to them, well, you know, if you do me some sexual favors in the car, I'll let you go. Well, this particular guy, he brought to my station. Hollywood wouldn't do those favors to him. Sexual favors. So he. He turned him over to us and we booked him. But I had the station run the license plate, and I saw it wasn't a parole vehicle and it was some guy. And I don't remember what the other clues were, but it turns out he had been doing this in Southern California for quite a while. And so our detectives took over in Hollywood, and they located him up somewhere around Bakersfield in a motel, and they arrested him.

[Interviewer]

I mean, he's a sick, sick man.

[Tom Elfmont]

Very.

[Interviewer]

That's crazy.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

And wait, was.

[Tom Elfmont]

But he was clever when you booked

[Interviewer]

the guy, that was essentially the victim. Was. He was probably telling you, I'm not the person in this photo. But you're thinking this is what they all say, right?

[Tom Elfmont]

Exactly.

[Interviewer]

They all say they're innocent.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Right. And so then eventually, you release that man as soon as possible. What a crazy story.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah. So that was an interesting good police

[Interviewer]

work on your part for checking the license plate.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah, it turned out that way.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Tom Elfmont]

You know, a lot of police work is lucky. That was luck. I happened to be in the parking lot, and something just struck me wrong about the deal. That's luck.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Yeah, luck. Or a certain instinct that you have. Right?

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Which if you spend a lot of time in the police force, you probably start seeing things in a different way and getting more in tune with your instincts.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah. Your radar gets better.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, exactly. Wow, that is a crazy story. And was it always your goal to become a captain Was.

[Tom Elfmont]

Oh, yeah, no, I wanted to promote. Yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

And how did that happen then?

[Tom Elfmont]

Oh, you know, it's LAPD at the time. I'm sure it's still hard. The process is really difficult because you take a written exam and they ask you questions like what kind of fire extinguisher is used to put out a propane fire at the back of a police station? You know, just silly stuff because it was basically to eliminate everybody.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Tom Elfmont]

So you had to study all kinds of paperwork for months.

[Interviewer]

Did you become a Captain before the 92 riots or after?

[Tom Elfmont]

Before.

[Interviewer]

Oh, before. Okay, so you were a captain during the 92 riots. Okay, so tell me about that. How was that? Do you remember the day?

[Tom Elfmont]

Oh, yeah.

[Interviewer]

And tell me, even before then, what was sort of the atmosphere in LA leading up to it?

[Tom Elfmont]

Well, most police officers felt that the officers that dealt with Rodney King didn't do a good job. Now, they weren't going to say bad things about him.

[Interviewer]

Why not?

[Tom Elfmont]

Because. Because they would just talk to themselves. If you asked them, do you think that the officers who stopped Rodney King could have done a better job? And almost to a person, it's almost like in. In Montana. So Montana's a red state. A lot of the cops are super red. But if you say to them, what did you think of the footage, the video of ICE officers in Minneapolis?

[Interviewer]

I was going to ask you about that.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah, yeah. They would tell you, oh, my God, they don't know what they're doing. Their tactics are terrible, terrible. Now, they're not going to say, oh, they should go to jail, they should do this, they should do that. But they will tell you that as law enforcement officers, they were poorly trained. The execution was very poor. They'll tell you that. And the same thing with Rodney King. They saw that, they said, oh, my God, they should have. All four of them just jumped him. He's a big guy, but there's four of you. Just get on him and pin him down. And when help gets there, you'll get him handcuffed. And don't stand there hitting him with a baton when he's lying there. And that's insecurity and, you know, poor training and excessive use of force, all kinds of things.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Yeah, yeah. So.

[Tom Elfmont]

But they would tell you that.

[Interviewer]

But not publicly. They would not tell you that.

[Tom Elfmont]

No, they're not going to go public on something like that.

[Interviewer]

But this is where I have a problem with that, because if you're trying to distance yourself, you should be trying to distance yourself from that sort of behavior. Right? And if nothing else, to save the reputation of your force and your colleagues and yourself.

[Tom Elfmont]

Well, that's what the chief of police. Police need you to do in a case like that.

[Interviewer]

I think it is important we had a retired ICE agent come on this program on this podcast and talk to me about what he saw as excessive use of force by ICE agents in the case in Minnesota. And I think more people should be as brave as he was. I mean, he's retired, but he talked about how it is talked within themselves. But nobody, very few, if any of them will come out and publicly say this. And I do think it's important for the American public to see that this is not the standard and shouldn't be the standard, and that when things like this happen, that not only the chief of police or the head of ice, which in this case actually failed dramatically as well in calling it what it was, which is excessive use of force, that they should all stand up and say, this is not what we stand for and should not be done.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah. I personally don't think that's a police officer's job. I think on all their interpersonal communications and everything, that's their job to tell their friends. And I know a lot of police officers, me included, where they seen police officers do something and they'll go grab them and tell them, hey, knock it off, or this and that, but it's not their job to tell the American people. And like, I'm sure the police union, if you look back at Rodney King, they basically said, I don't know, I don't remember what the Los Angeles Police Protective League said about Rodney King, but, you know, you can't make a great hamburger into a steak. And so. But I think it's.

[Interviewer]

What does he mean by that?

[Tom Elfmont]

I think it's the organization's responsibility. You can't say anything good about the Rodney King. It was all wrong. Yeah. And I think today all the cops would say that. But even back in the day, the cops that knew those guys, they would tell you it's wrong. So amongst themselves, their peers, which is way more important is peer pressure, they would say it was not the right thing to do. They did the wrong thing. But I don't think it's their obligation to go public and to say things and get into back and forths with the public and the press. And I just don't think that's part of the job definition. That's the part of the bosses, and that's their responsibility to do that.

[Interviewer]

I mean, in the case of Rodney King, it was a failure of the justice system at large. Right. Because the people responsible for what happened to Rodney King, for the attacks on him and the aggression, were actually not convicted. Right. They were let go. Nothing happened to them. Right.

[Tom Elfmont]

I think the initial trial, they were let off in Simi Valley.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Tom Elfmont]

But then they were tried in federal court and they were convicted at the time.

[Interviewer]

What was it like for you being a police officer and after the Rodney King case?

[Tom Elfmont]

So the day that Florence and Normandy started the riots at Florence and Normandy as a result of the Simi Valley case, I was a captain and I.

[Interviewer]

So the Simi Valley case, just so our listeners. So for people who don't know, that's

[Tom Elfmont]

the one where they were found not guilty.

[Interviewer]

Not guilty, right.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah. So I drove in where the officers

[Interviewer]

were involved in the brutality of Rodney King, where they were found not guilty.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah, correct. So I drove into my driveway after work and my daughter was sitting on the couch and she was watching the live video footage from Florence in Normandy. And they had pulled the guy, I don't remember his name, out of the truck, and they were taking a cement block and they ended up basically crippling for life and all kinds of other stuff was going on. So I saw that, and I didn't see any LAPD there. So I got on the radio and I said, this is Commander 25. You need to respond all units to Florence and Normandy for a major disturbance, and you need to declare a tactical alert for the city of la. So they go, roger. And so I wait five, ten minutes, and I hear a little radio chatter in the back where the captain at 77th at the time, Paul Jefferson said, negative, we're not responding. Now he has more power than I do because he's the commanding officer of that station. And I go, wait a minute, something's wrong with this picture. Anyway, long story, the rest is history. It got totally out of control. So I'm going to fast forward. So that night, at about 9 or 10 o' clock at night, my deputy chief, Glenn Levant, called me and he said, tom, Daryl Gates wants you to go to the command post and take over the city. And I said, glenn, you know I love you to death. He's probably the best boss I ever worked for. And I said, but I don't want to do it. I said, gates basically put me in the doghouse after 39th and Dalton.

[Interviewer]

Who's Daryl Gates? Sorry?

[Tom Elfmont]

Daryl Gates, the chief police.

[Interviewer]

Oh, he was a chief of police? Yeah. I should know this, but I haven't watched. There's amazing documentaries about The LA riots that I've watched, but it was long

[Tom Elfmont]

watch, let it fall.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

It's the one you participated.

[Tom Elfmont]

It's the one I was in, yeah. So I said, I don't want to go because Gates has not supported me, and I don't want to go down there and deal with the command officers in South Central la, because the command officers, in my opinion, back in the day, they were ineffective people. The deputy chiefs, assistant chiefs, commanders, whatever. And I said, I can't deal with them unless I'm in charge 100%, which means gates is going to have to tell everybody in the city, Tom Elfmont is now the chief of police working for me directly because, see, I had a reputation that I was an operational guy and that I could execute, and I was tactically aware of everything, where other guys coming up the ranks, they worked in the Internal affairs, they worked here, they worked there. But I had a reputation as a street guy that could operate. I knew how to operate and execute. So a couple hours goes by. It's about midnight, 11 o', clock, and I get a call back from Levant, and he says, no. Gates says, you have to go. I said, glenn, can't you talk him out of this? Let me stay and work for you in West Bureau? He says, no, he's committed. You gotta go. I said, but is he gonna tell everybody when I get there, they work for me? And he said, yes. Well, that made a difference because now I had power. I didn't have to go beg him and everything. I could just say, this is what you're going to do. And I got in my car. It was about 12:30, 1 o'. Clock, the whole city's burning. The smoke planes weren't landing at lax. And I headed down there and put my uniform on. I got down to the command post. I had one sergeant who was one of the better sergeants I ever had in the field, Jerry Johnson. He came up to me and he grabbed me by the shoulders. He had tears running down his face and. And he said, captain, nobody's in charge. We've completely lost control. It's crazy out there. And there'd been multiple shootings with the police involved, where police were killing people and people were shooting at the police. And I said, well, we got to do something. And anyway, it's a long story, but in about the first, probably the first time in my life I was chewing Tums, the anxiety was I started doing things that were big deals, like I ordered the city South Central to be completely cordoned off from the 10 freeway down to Rosecrans and from Alameda street all the way over to past Los Cienega, like Robertson. And every single street that either went in or out of South Central was closed with police checkpoints, highway patrol, whoever. And so that started to make a difference in stuff. And then I broke the South Central into six sectors. But because there was nobody in the field that could make decisions, because it was all sergeants and lieutenants, I took six commanders and I put six of them in the field and made them responsible for these zones. One for day shift and one for night shift. And so now these commanders are working for me. The deputy chief in South Bureau at the time, he passed away recently. His name was Matt Hunt. He was in the command post. He never said a word to me. And some other people there that are still living, and I'm not going to put them under the gun right now. They totally left me alone. I became like, with Gates backing, I could do anything I want. And we got it calmed down in a couple days. But I'm going to tell you a funny story that not a lot of people know. So about the second or third day, we're getting thousands of officers in mutual aid from The Border Patrol, ATF, DEA, federal prisons. The military came in. 7th Infantry Division came down from Fort Ord, and I assigned them to protect food sources, places where people could shop, like grocery stores. And so we put them. We'd put like a hundred soldiers in a parking lot of a grocery store and have them just stay there 24, 7, so that the grocery store didn't get looted. So when the thing came to an end, people had a place to go to get food. But Eric Lillo, who was a fine gentleman, he was a captain, but he was my logistics officer. So he came to me and he said, tom, we don't have cars. We have a thousand people, law enforcement at the airport, at lax, just waiting, but we don't have cars to give them. I said, eric, do you have business cards? He said, yeah. I said, take somebody with you and get all your business cards together. Go to every rental car agency at the airport. Take all their cars and leave the business card behind. Leave a business card, take all their cars, which you know is going to be thousand cars, if not more. So nobody ever says anything to me that about that. And the police commission would come down. Jess Brewer was the president of police Commission. Tom, what do you need? What can we do for you? How can we help? So everybody saw that they were coming and talking to me, and I Would tell them what I need, and then they would go back and make it happen with the rest of the police department. So they take all these cars. Now, fast forward about three or four years later, I'm sitting in my office as a captain, and I get a phone call from a city attorney. And he said, captain Tom Elfman? I said, yes. And he said, were you the field commander during the riots? I said, yes, I was. He said, I have to ask you a question. I said, sure. What is it? He said, well, we had a vehicle, it had four or two border patrol and two DEA in it, and they crashed into a citizen's car. And the citizens are suing a rental car agency because that's who it was registered to. And we're saying, no, that's not right. LAPD didn't have any rental cars. And I said, you know, I'm going to change your story, and you should just pay the people. I did. I told Eric Lillo to go get all the cars from everybody. Amos Hertz, Alamo. He said, okay, that's fine. That's what we're going to do. And he hangs up. And I never heard about it from anybody. But see, that's the kind of a decision that when you're in a crisis, you can't call the chief of police, you can't call the police commission, you can't call the city attorney's office and say, is it okay? Can we take a thousand cars from the rental car agencies?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, we're talking. It's a life or death situation, right. And you have to make decisions.

[Tom Elfmont]

And so anyway, for three years, four years, nobody even knew that it happened until the city got sued.

[Interviewer]

So, Tom, you were involved in a pretty controversial case, right? Known as the 39th and Dalton. Can you tell me a little bit about what happened there, if you don't mind?

[Tom Elfmont]

Oh, I don't mind. 39th and Dalton was three blocks from Southwest police station. Crime was crazy. You could walk 10ft in Southwest and buy rock cocaine from anybody or they would have it with them. So there was a Hispanic family living in a house between two four unit apartment buildings. And they had come to the station to see me, and they said, captain, we've been calling for help. We've been calling Narcotics Division, this, that nobody will help us. I said, okay, well, let me look into this. So anyway, within a day or two, somebody, when their daughter was coming home from school, fired a bullet through their front window. So I said, you know what? We're gonna. We gotta take care of this. And So I. I made some mistakes, but I made some choices with some detectives and a supervisor. What we were gonna do. And what we were gonna do is establish surveillance on those two apartment houses and catch them making hand to hand rock cocaine sales repeatedly. So we waited until what the cops would call Mother's Day when all the checks go out, you know, from social services. And I don't know, you know, maybe there were like 30 or 40 gang members in front of the house, and they're doing hand to hand sales in front of this Hispanic family's house. And so then they organized, which I knew they were going to do a raid, and they raided the two four unit apartment buildings. And they were the Rolling 30s gang. They're still there today. I mean, I read stories about them still being there today.

[Interviewer]

Well, they do. We actually did a gang story, an episode for Traffic about gangs where we spent some time with the Rolling 30s.

[Tom Elfmont]

Oh, really?

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Tom Elfmont]

Okay. Yeah, they're still there.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Tom Elfmont]

And so they did it. And I wasn't there when the raid went down. I was actually home, but I had a couple supervisors that were there. And the following day, I think one of my sergeants said, hey, captain, you should go out and see the damage, because there's a lot of damage to the house. And so I go out there with my sergeant, who was a really, really good guy, and we look around, we walk around and we said, wait a minute, this damage is done by police officers. This is malicious damage to the house, even though we had search warrants, et cetera.

[Interviewer]

So here's what I've read about the case. This was one of the most cited cases of LAPD overreach of that era.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Officers smashed walls, tore toilets from floors,

[Interviewer]

slashed furniture, threw debris through windows, and arrested residents. And onlookers, children, grandparents, and Red Cross assisted families were displaced.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

The city ultimately paid out roughly $4 million in damages, which was a record at the time.

[Tom Elfmont]

So I call Internal affairs and they say, well, don't worry about it. You handle it. You start an internal investigation at your station. So we started that, and I think maybe it was a week or two into it and the cops started gossiping that the only reason they did it was because I told them to do it. And so what happened was Internal affairs was now involved, and it was a big hullabaloo. They had the aclu, nobody got hurt, nobody got beat up, nobody went to the hospital, nobody got shot, but there was a lot of damage. So they bring the Red Cross out there and they set up Red Cross saying oh, we need to help people. People are homeless. People are this, people are that. And it became a huge, huge case. So what happened was somewhere, I don't know how many months later it was, but they said, oh, you know, Tom Elkmont, the captain, he encouraged the guys to do that. And so I got charged with a misdemeanor crime of conspiracy to commit vandalism, along with one of the officers and one of the sergeants. And there's no doubt the police did the damage.

[Interviewer]

So you mentioned that you made some mistakes, but you say that you absolutely did not encourage them to destroy that house.

[Tom Elfmont]

No way. I mean, all my years. I mean, I ran a gang unit for five years in the west side. I never had people destroy a house.

[Interviewer]

So two questions is, what were the mistakes that you think you made? And the second question is, why do you think. Why were you charged? And why do you think?

[Tom Elfmont]

They said, oh, first of all, I should have been there. I should have been there. I took my eye off the ball, but I should have been out there because that would have stopped it.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Tom Elfmont]

And then I had some faith in one of the supervisors out there, which was misplaced because he saw everything happening and he didn't do anything. You know, I always talk tough when I was. When I would talk to cops, and I mean, at one time, even when they were doing the big gang sweeps, the assistant chief, Vernon, he would have a thousand officers at the Coliseum, and he'd have me come talk to him because the officers trusted me and they believed me. And because I didn't talk, gobbly speak, bureaucratic keys, whatever, I just told him, like, it would have this. And so I probably put too much confidence in the officers having the smarts to do the right thing. And also, I trusted the supervisor, who, turns out, was very weak. And the funny thing is, months later, I get a phone call. I'm not going to say who it is, because he's still around working. He was a reporter for cbs, and he said to me, tom, you know, I should have told you back then, but I was out with your unit a bunch of times, and they were out of control, and the supervisor wouldn't do anything. I said, oh, Jim said, I wish you'd have told me, because I would have gotten rid of him.

[Interviewer]

His name was Jim. You just said his name. Is that okay?

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah, Jim's okay. A lot of reporters in la.

[Interviewer]

Right, right, right. But do you think that there's a part of that? So, I mean, eventually you were charged with something that you didn't Actually do. But do you think there's part of it that it is your responsibility as the captain in that case?

[Tom Elfmont]

Oh, definitely was, yeah, it was definitely my responsibility. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And why do you think they were running loose like that? Why do you think they were acting like this? And why did they destroy the house, you think?

[Tom Elfmont]

I think it was just payback, you know, they wanted to pay back the gang and it was just misplaced. Misplaced reasoning. But I mean, yeah, it's almost like the Navy if you're the captain of a station and your cops go crazy, you know, the Navy says you can't run that ship anymore.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Tom Elfmont]

And that's what they did to me.

[Interviewer]

Right. I think I said the bucket. But it's the buck stops here, right? Yeah, I always get all the expressions wrong. The buck stops.

[Tom Elfmont]

No, it's true.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

So, and so what, what do you think you did?

[Interviewer]

Because there are still so many cases like this. What do you think you did? What could you have done at the time as a captain to make sure

[Tom Elfmont]

that, oh, I should have been there.

[Interviewer]

You should have been there in that day. But it turns out that it wasn't just that day. Right. They had done other things. What was it as you, you, as in your leadership that you failed to do that allowed for this type of behavior?

[Tom Elfmont]

Well, the unit that did it, I'd only been in the station a month or two.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Tom Elfmont]

So I wasn't familiar with them. But the biggest thing is I should have been there because it wouldn't have happened.

[Interviewer]

What happened to the unit after that?

[Tom Elfmont]

We went to court and we had a trial under a wonderful, fair judge and it was an acquittal.

[Interviewer]

The unit was acquitted.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah, I was. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And you were too, huh? And do you think they should have been?

[Tom Elfmont]

Oh, yeah, 100%. I mean, the jury foreman, his last name was Cox, he was a 23 year old black man and he even. I went to lunch with him several times afterwards and he said we could see what was going on. Basically that the department needed a scapegoat. And so you were going to be the scapegoat.

[Interviewer]

You. Yes. But what about the rest of the people that actually destroyed the house?

[Tom Elfmont]

The officers? Yeah, nobody was convicted.

[Interviewer]

But don't you think they should have been? They destroyed the house.

[Tom Elfmont]

Oh, I think some people should have been. But you need to have the evidence, right? Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And there was no evidence in that case or there was weak evidence.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Huh.

[Interviewer]

Wow, that's so, so interesting. And so you were what happened? You were what happened? How did that affect your Career?

[Tom Elfmont]

Oh, it was. It was. My career was shot then. Yeah, that's how it ended, pretty much. I mean, I stayed on the department, but I never got promoted or never got a good job again. But it was actually a blessing in disguise because.

[Interviewer]

So this was after the riots. Right, Sorry. Just. So, yeah. Why was it a blessing in disguise?

[Tom Elfmont]

Because I ended up doing consulting and everything. And then I started my own business company.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Tom Elfmont]

And then I left.

[Interviewer]

How soon after that did you leave the lab?

[Tom Elfmont]

Oh, it was like five years. Yeah. But I knew. I just knew I couldn't get a good job. They weren't going to give me a good job because Dalton became an albatross around my neck. Oh. Tom Elfman, this bad racist captain, so we can't give him a good job, so.

[Interviewer]

But how did it feel to you to be called a racist?

[Tom Elfmont]

Well, I've never been a racist. I don't think anybody called me a racist. But the guy with the LA Times, Richard Serrano, I think he works for somebody in D.C. now. He wrote in one year, 123 articles about Dalton and me. 123. Because I counted them and I think his. I know his first name was Richard. I can't remember his last name, but he was, you know, me, I think he was just a slimy guy and anything he could do to generate a story, that was fine.

[Interviewer]

Did you ever meet him?

[Tom Elfmont]

I had met him before that. It wouldn't be a good thing for me to meet him after he started writing about me.

[Interviewer]

So you think he had it in for you? He was somehow.

[Tom Elfmont]

I don't know if he had it in for me, but I think it was selling papers, that's all. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

One thing that is interesting that we didn't meant that I didn't mention was that you were the youngest person to make it as a captain at the LAPD at the time. The youngest person ever. Right.

[Tom Elfmont]

Well, what they called I became a captain in 12 years.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Tom Elfmont]

And they tell me a lot of people said, you're the fastest. From when you went on the department to make captain was Tom Belkmont. And then some other people said to me, oh, no, Barry, you made it in 12 months. Tom. Barry Wade, who was an assistant chief, he made it in 11 months.

[Interviewer]

You mean years, right?

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah, years, yeah. No, I made it in 12 years. He made it in 11 years and 11 months.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Oh, so just one month before you.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So you're the second fastest of becoming a captain.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

How did your.

[Interviewer]

How did the. The. The consultancy or hanging out with Michael Mann for the movie Heat. How did that come about?

[Tom Elfmont]

So Glenn Levant was a deputy chief and he worked in Parker center downtown. And he had close relations with a lot of business and entertainment people. So he called me up one day and he said, hey, Tom, Michael Mann is looking for somebody to consult on a movie he's writing. So I said, I'm there. Tell me when and where. So did you know who Michael Mann

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

was at the time?

[Tom Elfmont]

Oh, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah, yeah. Because I watched one of his best films, which was Manhunter, which was about a serial killer that he did about 10 years before. And it. If I watch that thing today, it'll still scare me, it's so good. So Michael said, well, come on over and meet me today, tomorrow, the next day, whenever. So I go to this very middle class, suburban Mar Vista home and I go knock on the door and I walk in and there's Michael Mann. And there's nothing, no furniture in the house. There's a couple chairs and there's a big desk and all kinds of writing papers. And he's sitting behind the desk and he says to me, so this is what I'm doing. Do you want to get involved in the project? I said, of course, I'd love to. And that's where it started. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

That's so fun. It's interesting. I was reading a little bit about Heat before this interview, and I had no idea, but one of the best crime movies ever made. But I had no idea what's actually supposed to be set in Chicago, because the Robert De Niro character, who's a bank robber. Right. That he was actually a very famous Chicago bank robber.

[Tom Elfmont]

Right, right.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

And then do you know why he

[Interviewer]

decided to then move it, do it here in la?

[Tom Elfmont]

Oh, I think because LA has way more better visuals.

[Interviewer]

Of course.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah. And the cachet of Los Angeles, LAPD and the visuals and everything. Yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

So you think that's why he decided to come in here and what was it like then? So then he started sort of ghosting you, following you around. He did hours and hours with you. Right on.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah. I would take him out with me at night when I worked as the duty officer for the city. And I would take him everywhere. Homicide calls, shooting calls. One night we were up in Hollywood, we just left a homicide, and I see a car that looks like a undercover cop car. And I said, michael, I'm going to pull this guy over. And I pull him over and I knew something was up with him. And I started talking to him and he's got portable Radios in the car, he's got paperwork. And I knew he was some kind of wacky guy. And anyway, I then asked him if he opened the trunk and he agreed to it. And in the trunk he had all kinds of documents showing and badges that he was a State Department security agent and he had body armor and everything. So we arrested him. Well, I arrested him. Michael can't arrest him. And took him into Hollywood station and called the State Department and said, hey, this guy. So they charged him in federal court with impersonating a federal agent and everything. But Michael loved it. And I can tell this now, but back in the day I couldn't tell it. So I kind of feel like if you're going to ride with me in a police car, especially in LA in the 1970s and 80s, you're going to carry a gun. Because I've always worked by myself as a sergeant or a lieutenant or as a captain. And God forbid, if something happens and I get shot, they're going to try and kill you or you're next. Right. So I would say to Michael, because I knew Michael like guns and I knew he knew how to shoot. So I said when he would get in the car with me, I said, michael, I'd give him a pistol.

[Interviewer]

No way.

[Tom Elfmont]

And I'd say, this is only, only the nuclear option if I'm shot and they're trying to kill you. And he would say, I get it. And so he would carry a gun with me and he.

[Interviewer]

Did he have a license? Was that, was that legal?

[Tom Elfmont]

No, his license was Tom Elflad.

[Interviewer]

I've been in many ride alongs. No one has ever done that to me.

[Tom Elfmont]

Oh yeah, Yeah, I used to do it. I had a photographer, great guy. He rode with me for years and he always had a gun.

[Interviewer]

Wait, can you, can't you get in trouble for saying this?

[Tom Elfmont]

No, not now. It's 20 years later, 30 years later.

[Interviewer]

And Michael Mann was comfortable with this arrangement, I guess.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Was it.

[Interviewer]

Was there ever a situation where he. It got close to him actually having to use it?

[Tom Elfmont]

No, no. With the photographer? There were a couple. Because he rode with me a lot and there were a couple situations where I thought, oh man, oh, wow, gonna have to shoot somebody. And I just was hoping, you know, that he wouldn't shoot him. That would be me.

[Interviewer]

Who was the photographer?

[Tom Elfmont]

I can't say. He's still doing a lot of things. Really Department. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And he's a good photographer, I guess.

[Tom Elfmont]

He's a world renowned commercial photographer.

[Interviewer]

Oh, wow. And he was doing it as part.

[Tom Elfmont]

He was volunteer. He was a volunteer photographer for the lapd. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Interesting.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

I'm going to see if I can find him. I mean, he must have incredible photography.

[Tom Elfmont]

Oh, he took a lot of photos. He took thousands of photos riding with me.

[Interviewer]

Wow. Yeah, wow. And so we got close, but he never had to actually use it.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah. We were in South Central about 2 o' clock in the morning, and we were driving, I think, on Avalon, and two girls stopped us, waved us down. I was in a black and white and they said, hey, there's a guy, he's driving this kind of car. And he just pulled up and pulled a gun on us and told us to get in the car. So he was going to kidnap, rape him. And we said, okay, we'll see if we can find him. So I put a broadcast out saying, hey, the guy, this description that he pulled a gun on these two girls. And so we started, we went around the block and we went down San Pedro Street. I think it was from Avalon. We cut across like 82nd, and all of a sudden the guy's right in front of us. So I turn on the lights, I light him up, and he takes off. And we're going in South Central. We're flying, and he's going here and there. And the airship, because I'd already called, they happened to be right above us.

[Interviewer]

And that's the helicopter.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah, yeah. So he. He turns down an alley that was a dirt alley in a residential area. And the suspect, and he's doing maybe 60, 70, and there's dust flying and garbage cans flying. Just like the movies.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. And which actually happens a lot in la.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah. He slams on the brakes and he jumps out of the car. And as he jumps out of the car, he turns to face me and so I. I draw down on him. And I was just getting ready to shoot him, and I look at my friend and he had his gun out too, so I think he was going to shoot him. And then the guy puts his hands up and drops to the ground. But it was the guy and it had the gun and everything. Yeah.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Was he.

[Interviewer]

Was this photojournalist, Was he trained to use a gun? Did he know?

[Tom Elfmont]

Oh, yeah. No, he was good with a gun. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Wow, that's a crazy situation. Did you have a lot of situations like that where you thought you were that close to being shot at or killed?

[Tom Elfmont]

Oh, I was shot at, yeah. Quite a few times, yeah.

[Interviewer]

So what was the scariest situation you were in?

[Tom Elfmont]

You know, I have to tell you, this. And it's not bravado. If you're a really good police officer and you're confident, you get concerned, but you don't get scared. You don't get scared. I was at the SLA shootout in 1974.

[Interviewer]

What was that?

[Tom Elfmont]

That was the Symbionese Liberation army when they kidnapped Patty Hearst. And we cornered him in South Central. And There were over 7,000 rounds fired by LAPD SWAT and the Symbionese Liberation army because they had a machine gun and they had rifles. And my partner, Steve Steer, who was a great police officer, went on to a long career in SWAT. We were lying in the gutter, the curb, probably 40, 50ft from the house, because we were sent in to cordon off the house and evacuate the neighbors. And then they opened fire. But honestly, I hate to smile, but I kind of was an adrenaline junkie, so that's okay.

[Interviewer]

So these were situations that you enjoyed in a way. Did any bullet ever hit you?

[Tom Elfmont]

No. No. I got hit in Berkeley by a bunch of Black Panthers. They ran me over with a car. So I was out of commission for a while. But short of that, that was probably the worst thing that happened to me.

[Interviewer]

So it's understandable that when you left the LAPD eventually retired in a place like Montana. Yeah, just quite the opposite. Why did you decide to go to Montana? And I'd love to talk a little bit about what you're doing now in your cold cases.

[Tom Elfmont]

I'd always wanted to work on a ranch and be a cowboy. And so my mother had a good friend who lived in Oklahoma, and she was married to a guy that had a small cattle ranch. So I took a bus out there in the summer, and I worked on his ranch all summer. And I loved it. I had my own horse. I had the dog. I just loved it. And so all my life, I wanted to be in what I call the west, and I really wanted to be where there was big animals, you know, and they call the Yellowstone, you know, the American Serengeti.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Tom Elfmont]

And so my house is 60 miles north of Yellowstone, but it's in the Yellowstone ecosystem. And I love that.

[Interviewer]

That's really beautiful. Yeah, I love is one of the most beautiful states in the U.S. i've been to Montana and actually did a story about bears in Montana.

[Tom Elfmont]

Oh, really?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, we got to see a few. Yeah, it's pretty spectacular. You. But you did weren't comfortable or you weren't happy being completely retired. So tell me about your work in the cold cases. How did that all start?

[Tom Elfmont]

I was up in Montana. And you know, the police have a network of who's retired and where they live and everything. And so the local sheriff, Dan Springer, he was getting pressure from Danny Houchen's sister Stephanie, saying, what's going on with the case? How come you're not doing anything? How come you're not doing this, doing that? And so what happened was, and just,

[Interviewer]

just so our listeners understand, Danny houchen was the 15 year old. Right. Who was killed and they never found out. Yes. And they never found out who did it.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah, so.

[Interviewer]

And it had been 30 years ago, right?

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah, 1996. Okay, so what happened was the sheriff asked his former college roommate who was a California high level police executive, and he brought him up to Montana to work at the sheriff's department. Hey, do you know anybody that will help us with a cold case? So Eric, his name's Eric Paulson. He reached out to a guy named Bud Arcey. Bud is a detective who worked Hollywood and he worked Robbery Homicide and Major Crime. And Bud knew I was living in Montana. So Bud calls me up and he says, hey, Tom, you want to, want to meet up with a sheriff? And I said, well, if it's close by, but I'm not driving 100 miles all day long. But if it's close and I can help, yeah, I'll meet with them. They lay out the case and he's got with him the guy who would investigated it for a few years, a captain named Matt Boxmeyer. Eric's there and the sheriff, and so they tell me and we talk about it for a couple hours and I said, well, yeah, I'll probably be good to do this. So a couple months goes by and I get a phone call from Eric. He said, yeah, the sheriff wants to swear you in and wants to have you work the case. So I said, okay. And that's how it started.

[Interviewer]

And it was voluntary, right. You weren't being paid for this, is that right?

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah, I didn't get paid. Yeah.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

And why did you say yes to this?

[Tom Elfmont]

I didn't want to deliver Meals on Wheels.

[Interviewer]

What does that mean?

[Tom Elfmont]

I wanted something significant that would be a good contribution to the law enforcement and the family. That's right, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Had you worked on any cold click cases before?

[Tom Elfmont]

I worked on a lot of homicides.

[Interviewer]

Right back here in la. Yeah.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah. But I did work on a cold case on the first day I went to homicide as a detective in Southwest Division. Rudy Tyser, who was the supervisor and was a great police officer, great detective. He comes over and says, look, your partner's on vacation. And he said, but I'm going to give you this murder book. And it happened three, four months ago, but maybe you can work on this for a while until your partner gets back. So I open up the murder book. Never forget the day. And in the murder book, on the first page is just a little piece of white paper torn from a piece of bigger white paper with a phone number, a 213 phone number. I said, huh? Who would. Now I have a definition. There's real police and there's police. And I was always the real police. Because if you gave me something to do where I could help people or get a bad guy, I did it to the best I could, and a lot of cops aren't like that. And a lot of it probably today has to do with regulations and rules and the press and everything. And I tell people that when they call me, even in my private investigation business, they call up and they go, oh, my God, Tom. We called the police, lapd. We asked them. We had this happen that happened. This happened. The cop came out, and he was mildly interested. And then the other time, somebody calls and the cop comes out and he solves the whole thing, gets the job done, Right. So it's like any other thing. Anyway, I call the phone number, and a young black woman answered the phone, and she lived right in the apartment over where the guy was killed on 62nd street by Normandy. And she says, yeah, I called, and nobody ever called me back. Her name was Lovey Lee. Now, I could. Half these stories I could turn into a script if I could write.

[Interviewer]

So suddenly you're put on this Danny Houchen case, and were you hopeful that you were going to crack it? I mean, because it had been 30 years. Lots of different police officers had been involved, detectives, and nobody could find out who this guy was. Correct?

[Tom Elfmont]

Well, I told Danny's sister Stephanie, who has since become a very close friend of mine, and the family has. I said, first day I met them, I'm going to solve this.

[Interviewer]

Really? You were that you were confident that you were going to be able to do it?

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah, it could be a fault of mine, but it could also be very positive. I told him, I'm going to solve this case.

[Interviewer]

And it could have been terrible if you hadn't. Right. Because it was false hope that you're giving the family, who was probably for this for so long. Yeah.

[Tom Elfmont]

But they believe me.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Tom Elfmont]

So that's part of it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. So tell me about the case. What was the first thing you did. And what helped solve it?

[Tom Elfmont]

Well, one of the things you do is you talk to a lot of the, the witnesses, the close, original witnesses.

[Interviewer]

Give me the details of what happened that day when she was killed. What was this? She was found on the side of a river, right. Or a.

[Tom Elfmont]

She had a fight with her mom and dad and she went out to this fishing access site, Cameron Bridge, by herself. She took the family truck and she was 15 and she had an ACL elastic brace on her knee because she injured her knee a week before, two weeks before. What I think happened is she was out at the fishing site and nobody else was there. And the suspect, Paul Hutchinson, was a huge outdoorsman, a hunter, a fisherman, but he also trapped. Now if you're a trapper, one of the things you do is you spend a lot of time looking at the area where you're going to set your traps and blending in so going like a stalker. So I think Hutchinson was out there setting his traps early in the morning and he saw Danny alone and she was an attractive 15 year old girl. And he decides that I'm going to go talk to her and maybe I could talk her into having sex or whatever. And he goes over, he was big, he's like 642-30240. She was 135, 15. And he goes over and he starts talking to her by her car. And who knows, you know, maybe he offered her marijuana, maybe she was smoking. I don't think she was smoking marijuana. But anyway, something happened between the two of them because she had semen all over her underwear. But it didn't appear she had been raped, that she freaked out and took off down a path where there's a creek, that's a Shallow Creek with 12, 18 inches of water. So he chases her and she trips and falls forward into the creek and he comes up and lands on top of her and grabs her by the back of the head and pushes her face down into the mud. So she wasn't, she didn't drown, she was asphyxiated.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, because at the time it was reported as being a drowning. Right?

[Tom Elfmont]

Well, that's what the sheriff there said because he totally lied. The sheriff there lied.

[Interviewer]

And why did he lie?

[Tom Elfmont]

I don't know. I mean, I have my thoughts about it, but I don't know.

[Interviewer]

Why do you think it was? Because they just wanted to wrap up the case and they didn't want to have the idea that there was a possible.

[Tom Elfmont]

I think that could have been part of it. And I think also it was Montana, 1996. It's a lot of. You know, my wife, even when she comes to Montana, she said, this isn't Montana, this is Mantana. And I'm not sure. I'm not sure, but he definitely lied, and there was no reason to lie.

[Interviewer]

But you think he knew for sure that this was a murder, but he decided to say that this was a drowning?

[Tom Elfmont]

Well, I've been told by his son, who's a sheriff in Great Falls, Montana, and he's asked me to speak to his dad. I won't do it because I don't want to listen to a bunch of nonsense where I'm going to end up, we used to call it as a cop, I'm going to have to gangster slap him because I don't believe him and he's lying.

[Interviewer]

But his story is that he didn't know that this was a murder. Is that what he's saying? Is that what he said?

[Tom Elfmont]

Well, that's why they classified it as a drowning, an accidental drowning.

[Interviewer]

And what makes you believe that? That he knew all along? Was it because of the evidence? As soon as.

[Tom Elfmont]

Well, either he was a total idiot because all you'd have to do is look at her trachea and her bronchial tubes and they were stuffed with mud. She suffocated to death. She didn't have any water in her lungs or her stomach. She got asphyxiated.

[Interviewer]

This is so. It's crazy.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

So you were the.

[Interviewer]

When as soon as you started looking at the evidence, you came, you realized that 100. Nobody had realized this before.

[Tom Elfmont]

I don't know whether they did or didn't. But the. The investigator that had worked the case for four or five years, he's a captain on the sheriff's department. And I don't know how to say this because I've not named him, but he doesn't like me because I solved the case and he. He's gone and whined to the sheriff. Oh, that Tom Elfmont got accolades and everything. And I did so much on this case. He tried everything he could to stonewall me on the case. And one of the things you need to do when you have cold case especially is you need to see the physical evidence. And I could not get in to see the physical evidence. He would never allow me. So I would send him repeated emails. Hey, Matt, let me see the evidence. Matt, let me see this. Let me see that.

[Interviewer]

You just named him. Yeah.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah, I did. Intentionally. So it's not a big department. Anybody who listens, who they know who I'm talking about, even if I don't name him. So I finally went to Eric Paulson, who's the chief deputy who got me into this deal. I said, eric, I have to go to the evidence room. He's not letting me in. And he goes, come on, let's go. So we get up and we walk over to the evidence room, and there's an evidence technician in there. And he says to her, get all the. Danny. Ouch. And stuff. Bring it out. And, well, I need to let Matt know. No, you need to get it all out and put it on the table for Tom. So five minutes later, Matt comes storming in. He's about 6, 5, 270 pounds, and you got. You know. And he's whining and crying, and this is my case. You're. But you're doing this, you're doing that. And then he walks out. He says, I'm done with this. I'm not going to handle this case. Well, good. We don't. I don't want you to handle it. I don't want anything to do with you. And so when I'm going through the evidence, because a lot of the evidence they talked about in written reports was hair. Hair follicles. And I see the four hair follicles taken from her cervix and inner thighs. And I said to myself, you know, they're still here. And the question is, are they still well preserved? So in the meantime, I had reached out to a friend of mine who was actually in Bozeman. It's staying at my house. And his name is Buck Henry. And Buck is a famous LAPD homicide investigator, and he is one hell of a character. So it turns out his son was working homicide in Newport Beach. And his son had said to his dad, dad, the greatest police officer with DNA knowledge that I've ever met in my life is Court Dupuig. And Court is my supervisor here in Newport Beach. So I call up Court Dupuig and introduce myself, and I say, court, this is what I have. Will you help? He said, I'm all yours. And literally, it was almost like having a virtual reality headset where he was hooked up to my head, and he helped me learn so much about DNA, so much about the different labs, so much about the different things you need to do and look for and look at. He was amazing. He was amazing. And so I saw the hairs, and I thought, you know, this could be the breakthrough. So he gave me the name of a company in San Francisco called Astria Forensics Interestingly, it's run by two women that are PhDs from Berkeley and I think Stanford that are, they're. They're geniuses, right? And they have two guys working for them that get. They have masters and they're geniuses in their field.

[Interviewer]

All the best companies are run by women. Tom,

[Tom Elfmont]

we can get into that later. But. And I'm going to tell you there's some truth to that. And, and I'll tell you why. And then I'll probably have people coming after me. But no, I'll tell you why. So I'm gonna. A quick analogy. So when women first came on the police department, everybody said, oh, they can't be cops, they can't do this, they can't be that, because they can't shoot. But I've instructed a lot of women in my life. And the thing about women and shooting, they follow direction better than men, they have a better attention span, and their fine motor skills are better. So women who have never shot in their life can actually be very good shooters. But, okay, so fast forward. I send two of the hairs to Astria because I tried to do something with the Montana state lab, and the sheriff, to his credit, would give me money so that I could go to an outside lab. But the Montana lab, even though they're certified, they don't have enough people and they don't have enough space, so they can't do anything in a timely manner. So the first two hairs get there, and the first two hairs they say, can't do it or we're not going to get DNA from. They didn't have roots, so they have to get it from the shaft. That's what made it so difficult. So I said, okay, try hair number three. So they try hair number three, because each one's costing three, four or $5,000, right? And they say, well, we got 10% of DNA, but we need more than that to be able to do a genealogy search. So I said, okay, we're going to do hair number four. So this process went on for several months, and in hair number four, they finally did it. It had plenty of DNA in the shaft of the hair. And so once we had that, and then with Kenny's. I mean, not Kenny, but Court Dupuig's advice and being my right hand man, right. We were able to take that DNA and start looking at it forensically for genealogy. And that's how we came up with the suspect.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Wow.

[Interviewer]

And so that took months, right?

[Tom Elfmont]

Months, yeah.

[Interviewer]

And when you finally got the name of a suspect, what was his name again?

[Tom Elfmont]

Paul Hutchinson.

[Interviewer]

Paul Hutchinson. Hutchinson. You knew pretty much that it was him, but you still had to go and meet him in person, right?

[Tom Elfmont]

Well, yeah, but when we first came up with it, it came back to a cousin of his and a brother of his and him a potential three of them. But when we did the background, it showed that he had moved to Bozeman, Montana, In August of 96, a month before Danny died, and was going to Montana State University to be a fisheries biologist. So when we looked at the three profiles of the people we knew right away, it had to be him. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And so what did you do next?

[Tom Elfmont]

I drove down to Dillon, Montana, where he lived, to see what his house looked like and nose around to get familiar. And then also met up with the local sheriff down there in Beaverhead county, who's. He's the quintessential Montana sheriff. He's great. He's like a salt of the earth guy, but he's all about his community and law enforcement. Name's Dave Wynn. And I went to meet him and he basically laid out the magic carpet for me. He said, anything you need down here, you've got. Well, one of the things he had down there, he had Bureau of Land Management law enforcement people, federal law enforcement people, who he had cross deputized because the county is so big, it's the size of Connecticut. If he didn't have enough people, he could always call on them to help. So this one BLM law enforcement agent, because I didn't know how we were going to get DNA from Hutchinson, because we followed him a few times in the morning, and he would always go to McDonald's and he'd get a big, big coffee, a Mac Coffee or whatever they call him, and then he would go to the BLM office. But we couldn't follow him in there, and he didn't throw the cup away when he was driving or anything. So Matt said, you know what? I have surveillance cameras in our whole BLM building, like all the feds do. I'll get those cups. So Matt begins watching him when he comes to work, and he walks into his office and he would throw the cup in a trash can. Matt would retrieve it and bag it for evidence and send it to me. Well, in the meantime, because it was a slow process, I talked to court, Court dupuig, and court says, well, what do you think we should go interview him? Well, Montana has, because it's a super red state, they have laws, privacy laws that are so stringent, it really restricts law Enforcement like California is a lot easier to be a cop because of things you can do as far as searching, talking to people and everything. But I said, you know, I'm going to take a chance. And I had a couple good friends in Chicago that were former U.S. attorneys, and, and I said to them, you guys, can you research the law in Montana for me? So his name is Jeremy Margolis and his partner Robin. So they researched the law and they said, tom, as long as you don't talk to him in a police station or his house, if you talk to him in a public place, you don't have to give him Miranda. So I said, okay. So we go down there. We knew he was working, he had a couple interns with him. He comes back to the BLM office, and I get out of the car and walk up to him and I've got a sheriff's shirt on. I said, hey, Paul, Tom, El Monk, Allatin County Sheriffs, this court, we'd like to talk to you.

[Interviewer]

And just, just to back up a little bit, this is because the evidence wasn't enough, right? You needed more than just the, the, the DNA evidence that you'd gotten to be able to arrest him?

[Tom Elfmont]

No, we could have arrested him, but Montana, it's a difficult process, and we wanted to tie him to a story, which is what you want to do in serious cases.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Tom Elfmont]

So we thought we'll time do a story and then we'll come back and arrest him.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Tom Elfmont]

So it was like 98 degrees in Dylan that day, and we were going to sit outside and talk to him because they have a little outside area where you can have lunch. And we said, how about if we sit down over here, Paul? And he says, you know, why don't you come inside and we'll go to the conference room. It's a lot nicer and cooler. Well, once he voluntarily invites us in, we're home free. So that's when we go inside, into the conference room and sit down with him.

[Interviewer]

What did you tell him you were

[Tom Elfmont]

wanting to talk to him about missing and murdered women along the rivers in southwest Montana.

[Interviewer]

And even though you said that he invited you inside, or you said this

[Tom Elfmont]

once, you were when we got inside.

[Interviewer]

So he had no idea when he first invited you inside?

[Tom Elfmont]

Probably not.

[Interviewer]

And so when you said that, what was his reaction?

[Tom Elfmont]

He said, yeah, I don't know how I can help. And, you know, whatever. But he was, he got totally upset with us. I don't know how long we talked to him, maybe 40, 50 minutes.

[Interviewer]

So just to clarify, you went in and you didn't say you are the prime suspect of this investigation. You just said, we're looking at these

[Tom Elfmont]

cases of Mason, you work the Rivers Recreation Area.

[Interviewer]

Maybe you could help us.

[Tom Elfmont]

Maybe you could help us. Yeah. And Court and I, Court did a lot of the talking, but we sat him down and talked to him. It was. It was quite a while. And we kept asking him, you know, have you heard any girls killed? Have you seen any girls get assaulted? Do you know where Cameron Fishing Bridge is? Yes, I do. See, you want to tie them to the scene. Well, why were you out at Cameron Fishing Bridge ever? Oh, I used to trap out there. I used to trap skunks, raccoons, otters and things like that. When did you move to Bozeman? August of 96. Okay, that puts him in Bozeman. It puts him at where Danny was killed. It puts him out in the woods lurking around. And so we tied him into that story. And he was very, very upset towards the end of the interview. He was sweating profusely. Four times he got up and asked to go to the bathroom, and he did. And so it finally, when he got up to go to the bathroom the last time, we had a body camera with us that we put on the table so we could record the whole thing and also his reactions to it. And so he came back in. And I had already told Court, I said, court, you know, we're going to wind this up because I think he's going to confess now. Montana's so different than California because of personal rights. And I didn't want him to confess in Dylan because then we have to put him in the Dillon jail. We have to drive to Bozeman, we have to write paperwork, we got to go to a judge, we got to come back, we got to get him, then we got to bring him back to Bozeman. We had plenty. Yeah, you know, we had plenty. So I didn't want to be spending all night doing paperwork till the following morning, 8, 9, 10 o' clock in the morning, and then have to drive back down and get him. So we just said to him, I gave him my business card. I said, hey, look, if you think anything else, let us know. Thank you very much for your cooperation and everything. So I go home and a couple hours drive, I get home and I'm going to bed. I go to bed early. And about, I think, 4, it was actually 4, 17 in the morning, I get. I see that I got a missed phone call. So I knew whose number it was. So I call it, and they tell me Hutchinson just committed suicide. He shot himself in his truck about 10 miles outside of Dillon. I said, okay, you do. Do me a favor. I said, make sure you get a swab from his. In, you know, his cheeks so we can get that to the lab right away, have somebody drive it from Dylan to the lab. And I called Stephanie and I woke her up. She lives in Seattle. And I said, stephanie, I don't know how you're going to feel, but Paul Hutchinson. Because she knew I was going down to talk to him.

[Interviewer]

Stephanie is Danny's sister.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah, sister. Younger sister. He killed himself. And so there was a big pause, big pause, and she finally says, well, I don't know how I should feel about this, but I need to call my mom, dad, and my brother and everybody and let them know. I said, that's fine. Take your time. I said, just wanted you to know right away, call me anytime today. And so that. That was that. They drove his lab, his DNA, to the lab, and three days later, the lab said that the DNA in the semen on Danny's underwear matched Paul's DNA. Something like the ratio was three trillion to one.

[Interviewer]

Right. So 100. It was him.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Do you think he did this again to other women? Do you think there are other cases?

[Tom Elfmont]

I think he's probably raped other women because he was a sexually dysfunctional guy, according to his wife, because I interviewed his wife a few weeks later. But I think when he was hunting in rural Texas or Arizona, because he hunted everywhere, there's a possibility he was out sneaking around the woods with camouflage, and he saw a girl by herself and he raped her but didn't kill her. And I put a bulletin out nationwide. I got some calls from different people, but nothing that would indicate a hit.

[Interviewer]

A bulletin saying, by the way.

[Tom Elfmont]

Oh, an FBI bulletin.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Yeah.

[Tom Elfmont]

With his picture, his DNA information, and his mo.

[Interviewer]

So what was the family's reaction then after that?

[Tom Elfmont]

Oh, they were so relieved. They were so relieved because they wanted to know that it wasn't somebody close to the family that was a friend of Danny's that killed her. Right. So knowing that it was a total stranger made them feel better.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Yeah, I'm sure.

[Interviewer]

I mean, some closure there, right?

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Wow, that was a crazy. How long did it take you to solve this case?

[Tom Elfmont]

About a year and a half.

[Interviewer]

How did that. How did that feel for you? I mean, people had spent years trying to.

[Tom Elfmont]

This case was emotional for me.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Tom Elfmont]

I. I really like the family. I developed an emotional bond with Danny's family. And with Danny, I would wake up at two, three o' clock in the morning and I would say, danny, I got you, Danny, I got you. I'm gonna get him. And then I'd fall back to sleep. So it was a big deal for me.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I'm sure.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Wow. Yeah, it's incredible. It's great police work, but also as good as it is, I mean, it seems like it didn't take that much, that it wasn't that hard. This should have been something, that they should have cracked it themselves.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

The Montana law enforcement. What is. What happened there? Like, how. What do you think went wrong there?

[Tom Elfmont]

Like I told you in the beginning, you have the real police and then you have the police.

[Interviewer]

Do you think. Does Montana have a lot of police that is not real police? Is there. Do you think they could be better there?

[Tom Elfmont]

Oh, way better. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You coming from spending so much, from working all your life at lapd, like, what. How do you find it different there, law enforcement?

[Tom Elfmont]

Oh, it's very laissez faire. Very laissez faire. And there's no. Like, there's things that happen up there that I can't be involved in because of who I am. I'm just an unpaid guy volunteer that make me crazy that they don't jump all over it and try and, you know, put people in jail.

[Interviewer]

You better be careful with what you say or you're going to be kicked out of the state. Tom.

[Tom Elfmont]

I might get kicked out of the sheriff's department, but I don't think they're going to kick me out of the state. You know, I just don't think that's going to happen.

[Interviewer]

Are you. I mean, I'm sure you have plenty of people that love you there, including the Houchen family. Are you working on other cold cases now?

[Tom Elfmont]

I have another case that's in the district attorney's office. I asked her to give me a warrant. He's in jail for another murder committed in Hawaii, and he committed a Murder in 1989 in Belgrade, Montana of an Ogala Sioux girl who'd been adopted. And I'm waiting for the county attorney to give me a warrant so I can extradite him. But he also had a partner in this case, and his partner is a very successful, multi, multi millionaire local rancher.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Tom Elfmont]

And I'm hoping I can put a case on him.

[Interviewer]

Is this public? Is it okay for you telling me this?

[Tom Elfmont]

I can't tell you who he is or anything, but.

[Interviewer]

But do you think if they hear this they won't know it's them or.

[Tom Elfmont]

No, no. Okay. He knows that I'm after him. I went to his house a couple months ago and knocked on his door and said, I've been doing this for 50 years, and I'm going to get you.

[Interviewer]

And you are.

[Tom Elfmont]

I think I will. One way or the other.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Wow. Did you ever think that you're going to end up in Montana solving cold cases?

[Tom Elfmont]

And I knew I'd end up in Montana, but I thought it would more be. I don't know what I thought it would be, but I never thought I'd be involved in law enforcement up there.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Tom Elfmont]

And, you know, like, if this was California, there's no police department in California that would say to me, oh, Tom, you worked lapd. You worked a lot of homicide. You're this. That. Can you come work and do this cold case for us voluntarily? Yeah, they just wouldn't do it down here. And I think to the sheriff's credit. Right. He knew that his people and his agency weren't going to be able to get there, so Eric brought me in, and the sheriff turned me loose.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. That is very good police work, actually. Right.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah. Yeah. No, I think it was. He recognized the case for what it was.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Tom Elfmont]

That it needed somebody to clean it up and. And make, you know, get a conviction, so to speak.

[Interviewer]

And it made national headlines. It was the New York Times case.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Case you cracked.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

It is incredible. Well, Tom, it has been an amazing privilege to have you on the show.

[Tom Elfmont]

Well, my privilege. Thank you.

[Interviewer]

Thank you for coming on the Hidden Third. It was great to hear a little bit of your.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah, it was really nice to meet you, too.

[Interviewer]

You, too.

[Tom Elfmont]

I enjoyed it.

[Interviewer]

Me, too.

[Tom Elfmont]

Yeah. Sa.