Person Page - 238

     Donna Marie Coudures was born circa 1943. She married Frank Joseph Falzon, son of Frank Tabone Falzon and Katherine Bridget Fox, on 26 June 1960 at San Francisco, CA, USA.
     Her married name was Falzon. Donna Marie Coudures was a Real estate agent.

Donna Marie Coudures was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 23 October 1994: Suburbs lure police to live outside S.F.
...In Novato, with the average price of a three-bedroom, two-bath home just under $300,000, San Francisco cops can afford a large house in a safe, family-oriented neighborhood with good schools, says Donna Falzon, a Novato real estate agent and the wife of retired San Francisco homicide Inspector Frank Falzon. Donna Falzon guesses a comparable house in San Francisco would cost as much as $100,000 more. “No matter what neighborhood you are looking at in Novato, you are going to find a San Francisco policeman,” she said. “It just really works for them ... people like living next to their friends. There's a tremendous camaraderie and tremendous brotherhood.” In fact, selling homes to San Francisco police, officers is such a brisk business that Falzon regularly advertises in the San Francisco Police Officer's Association newsletter. Her client list always includes a police officer or two.

Donna Marie Coudures was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle Donna was in a multitude of real estate ads as a real estate agent. She was living in 2021.

     Kerri A. Falzon was born on 6 April 1971 in San Francisco, San Francisco Co., CA, USA.¹ She married Lance D Baetkey.
     Her married name was Baetkey. As of 2021, Kerri A. Falzon lived at Novato, Marin Co., CA, USA. She contributed their family genealogy to Maltese Immigration Project on 13 August 2021.

     Raymond J. Falzon was born on 12 July 1967 in San Francisco, San Francisco Co., CA, USA.¹

     Elizabeth D. Falzon was born on 4 June 1962 in San Francisco, San Francisco Co., CA, USA.¹

     John Anthony Falzon was born on 13 April 1965 in San Francisco, San Francisco Co., CA, USA.¹
     He lived in 2022; johnfalzon@gmail.com.

     Debora A. Falzon was born on 31 August 1962 in San Francisco, San Francisco Co., CA, USA.¹ She married Steven D. Ashburn.
     Her married name was Ashburn. Debora A. Falzon was living in 2021 in Novato, Marin Co., CA, USA.

     Arthur E. Burnett married Jean Mary Falzon, daughter of Frank Tabone Falzon and Katherine Bridget Fox, on 12 April 1958 at San Francisco, San Francisco Co., CA, USA.

     Richard John Falzon was born on 22 January 1944 in San Francisco, San Francisco Co., CA, USA.¹ He died on 16 October 2012 at TN, USA, at age 68.
     He was listed in the 1940 US Census of Frank Tabone Falzon and Katherine Bridget Fox in 1950 at San Francisco, CA, USA; age 42, contractor, carpenter.

     Daniel Joseph Falzon was born on 31 January 1961 in San Francisco, San Francisco Co., CA, USA.¹ He married Cynthia D Carolla.
     Daniel Joseph Falzon was a Federal Bureau of Investigation. He was living in 2020 in Novato, Marin Co., CA, USA.

     Blanca A. Perez was born circa 1926. She married Paul Francis Falzon, son of (?) Falzon and Ricarda Quattromani, on 27 May 1955 at San Francisco, CA, USA.
     Blanca A. Perez was also known as Blanca A. Zelaya. As of 27 May 1955,her married name was Falzon. She was living in 2024 in Rancho Cordova, CA, USA; 3636 Husch Way Rancho Cordova, CA 95670.

     John P. Falzon was born on 5 November 1956 in San Francisco, San Francisco Co., CA, USA.¹ He married Daleann Sproul on 9 February 1980 at Los Angeles Co., CA, USA.
     John P. Falzon and Daleann Sproul were living in 2024 in Las Vegas, NV, USA.

     Daleann Sproul married John P. Falzon, son of Paul Francis Falzon and Blanca A. Perez, on 9 February 1980 at Los Angeles Co., CA, USA.
     As of 9 February 1980,her married name was Falzon. Daleann Sproul and John P. Falzon were living in 2024 in Las Vegas, NV, USA.

     Frank Joseph Falzon was born on 22 February 1942 in San Francisco, San Francisco Co., CA, USA.¹ He married Donna Marie Coudures on 26 June 1960 at San Francisco, CA, USA. Biography Dan Brock, Maltese Presence in America, 2022: FRANK FALZON: A SAN FRANCISCO POLICE DEPARTMENT LEGEND by Dan Brock
July 27, 2022 saw the release of the book San Francisco Homicide Inspector 5-Henry-7 by Frank Falzon and Duffy Jennings. Frank Falzon is a retired San Francisco Homicide Inspector and this is a true crime memoir of his career during the violent 1970s and 1980s.
“5-Henry-7” was Falzon’s individual radio call sign in the department. The number 5 designated the Inspectors Bureau, Henry was phonetic for the H in Homicide, and he was inspector number 7 in the detail. Frank is a highly decorated and accomplish police inspector who investigated more than 300 murders and other cases during his 28-year career with the San Francisco Police Department.
He played a key role in breaking the notorious Night Stalker case. Richard Ramirez, the “Night Stalker” had murdered, raped, tortured and terrorized dozens of people in Southern California and San Francisco for months. Falzon was involved in investigating the Zodiac and Zebra murders—the latter the murders of random white victims by extremist Black Muslims—the Juan Corona serial murder investigation, Chol Soo Lee and the Chinatown gang murder that inspired the acclaimed Hollywood film True Believer, the execution-style killing of prison reformer Popeye Jackson by underground radicals, a savage Potrero Hill home invasion and a streetcorner shootout with an armed robber in an era one national crime historian calls “the golden age of serial murder.”
He also was the lead investigator in the shocking November 1978 assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in the City Hall offices by former city supervisor and police officer Dan White. White was a childhood friend of Frank’s. They had gone to the same schools and, as a police officer, White was at the same station as Falzon.
Frank’s father, Frank Tabone Falzon, was one of four brothers, the sons of Salvatore and Concetta (Tabone) Falzon, all born in Cospicua, Malta who came to the United States.
The first to come to North America Frank Falzon’s declaration of intention, dated July 1924, states that he was born on August 20, 1902, sailed from England on board the Celtic and arrived in New York Harbor on March 19, 1923. While there is no reason to doubt the latter, no record of Falzon can be found on either the passenger or crew lists of the Celtic in March 1923. Nor is there a passport found for him in the National Archives of Malta.
Could he have been a stowaway on board the Celtic and eluded getting caught? This seems doubtful as there is no record of anyone else on board who was Maltese and, therefore, could have assisted a fellow countryman.
Frank, the former homicide detective. raises two interesting points about his father. One is that he vaguely remembers stories his uncles, Charlie and Lawrence, “sneaking my father into the United States (Detroit) through Canada.” In any case Frank, Sr. was living at 2021 4th Street in Detroit by July 1924.
The other curious point is that the younger Frank Falzon believes the photo on his uncle Lawrence’s passport, issued in March 1920, is not that of Lawrence but of his father, Frank.
In any case, sometime between 1925 and 1934, Frank Tabone Falzon moved from Detroit to San Francisco where he met and married Catherine Fox in 1934.
Their son, Frank, the third of four children, was only eight years old when his father died of melanoma on April 4, 1951. The boy who grew up to be a San Francisco Police Department legend was featured in the popular 2021 Netflix documentary, Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer. He has been depicted in movies, plays, and video games and has been featured internationally in numerous documentaries, media interviews, magazine articles and books.
For additional information on Frank Falzon, his career and family background, including family photos, consult
https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/watch-maltese-american-inspector-caught-killers-living.977009, which article appeared in the Times of Malta, Sunday, August 28th of this year.
I wish to thank Charles J. Vella of the Bay Area for drawing my attention to the book and to Frank Falzon himself. Thanks to correspondence with the renowned former San Francisco Homicide Inspector, further light was shed on his father.
     Frank Joseph Falzon was listed in the 1940 US Census of Frank Tabone Falzon and Katherine Bridget Fox in 1950 at San Francisco, CA, USA; age 42, contractor, carpenter. Frank Joseph Falzon was educated an Associate of Science degree in criminology from City College of San Francisco. He was a San Francisco Police Dept; Homicide division in 1965. He was a San Francisco Homicide Inspector: Frank Falzon was a highly decorated and accomplished police inspector who investigated more than 300 murders and other cases during his 28-year career with the San Francisco Police Department, 22 of them in the homicide detail.

He played a key role in breaking the notorious Night Stalker case, investigated his childhood friend and former fellow cop, Dan White, for the murders of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, participated in the Zodiac, Zebra, and Juan Corona serial murder investigations, and other high-profile cases.
He was a recipient of the San Francisco Police Department’s highest honor, the Gold Medal of Valor. He also earned a Gold Medal Medallion as the city’s Bravest Police Officer and numerous commendations and was the department’s 1978 Police Officer of the Year
A retired S.F. police homicide inspector, who grew up with Dan White and later worked with him in the Police Department. Falzon took White’s confession that he assassinated Mayor Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk.. at San Francisco, CA, USA.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 18 December 1966: Awards for i n s t a n t courage, in going up against guns and capturing criminals, went to: Officers Edward J. Erda latz Jr. and Frank J. Falzon, for disarming a man with a gun who confronted them during a marijuana investigation.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 8 June 1969:...The other officers honored were: ...Frank J Falzon... 'Falzon and Otten jointly received two separate awards. One was for capturing an armed suspect in a bar. The other was for heroism when, after observing smoke and flames billowing from a building, they aroused the sleeping tenants and assisted some, who had been trapped, to safety.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 1 November 1972: S.F. Cops In Italy on Corona Case
Two San Francisco homicide detectives have been in Florence, Italy, for the past two weeks running down a hot lead in the Juan Corona mass murder case. The Chronicle learned last night. Inspectors Jack Cleary and Frank Falzoa went to Florence at the expense of Sutter county, reportedly seeking a homosexual who formerly lived in the Yuba City area. Sutter county Sheriff Roy Whiteaker said “no comment“ when asked about the matter, saying he was “prohibited by court order“ from
talking about it. But a high San Francisco police official who asked that his name not be used said that in early October Sutter county officials contacted local police and asked that a lead be checked out. Cleary and Falzon were assigned to the case. “Later,” the official said. “Sutter county asked that these two men be detailed to them at Sutter county's expense to investigate a lead in Florence, Italy, which evolved from their original investigation here.” Cleary and Falzon are expected back in San Francisco possibly today, but the official would not comment on the “substance” of their investigation. However, another reliable informant close to the Corona trial speculated that Cleary and Falzon have been trying to locate a witness, homosexual himself, who might shake defense attorney Richard Hawk’s claim that Corona is “hopelessly heterosexual.” Hawk said last Friday he believes the murders were committed by a homosexual who carved up his victims in a rage.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 1 November 1972: Jailed Man's Trial Testimony - Corona Linked to a Victim -- By Don Werors
Fairfield, Solano county
A man serving a year in tail for receiving stolen property testified yesterday he saw one of the victims allegedly killed by Juan Coioita get into Corona’s pickup truck about 25 days before the victim’s body was discovered. ’’And 1 didn’t see him no more,"Byron Shannon said. Shannon, a farm labor foreman, told the jury he was standing with John Henry Jackson on a Marysvllle street corner early one morning on either May 3 or 4, 1971. Jackson, he said, was asking him about a farm job.
But then, Shannon said, Corona drove up in a blue and-white pickup truck with another man and Jackson went over to him. "I ain't going with you.” Shannon said Jackson called back. ‘I'm going with these fellows.” Defense attorney Richard Hawk, after asking Shannon repeatedly where he lives, tried to introduce into evidence a picture of the Yuba county jail in Marysville. “This is where he lives,” Hawk said. "He’s a thief and he’s doing a year in jail." Superior Court Judge Richard Patton excused the jury, while both prosecution and defense argued — and finally agreed — that Shannon was, indeed, serving a year’s sentence for receiving stolen property.
Earlier, special prosecutors Bari Williams asked Shannon which way Corona was traveling when he pulled up to the corner, “He was traveling east ' and west. ' Shannon replied. When asked again, Shannon said he was traveling "east going west," and a third time, pointed to the east on a diagram of Marysville while saying "he was
going west." Judge Patton allowed Shannon to view photographs of the victim's clothing although Hawk complained it was the first time he (Hawk) had seen the photos. Throughout the trial, Hawk has complained bitterly that the prosecution has withheld evidence from him. Shannon identified the clothing as having been worn by Jackson that morning and said they were the same clothes he was wearing in January, too.
Earlier in the day Hawk questioned a veteran finger print expert about discrepanciess in dates on evidence being used by the prosecution. Russell Parmer, who retired yesterday after 36 years with the California Bueau of Investigation and Identification, told Hawk among other things that a fingerprint card on one of the 25 men Corona is is accused of killing cannot be found and "we have no idea where it is." State documents indicated that fingerprints were taken from victims some days before other records show the bodies were discovered. "Six or seven” reports of attempts to fingerprint victims were not dated at all. "Wouldn’t you say this is a strange circumstance?” Hawk asked him of the premature finger print record. "I would say so,” Parmer replied. "It’s not possible to have fingers before you find the man. is it?” Hawk persisted. "Hardly,” the veteran expert acknowledged.
Later, however, Parmer volunteered that “I think I can clear this up." Dates recorded in a box labeled "date fingerprinted" on a fingerprint card actually refer to the date he entered the case. That would explain, he suggested, why bodies discovered May 28. 1971 are recorded as having been fingerprinted on May 26. Hawk was incredulous. "Do you sit there under oath and try to say that?" he asked. "Isn’t it plain that the import of the English language on these records is that the card qas made up May 28?" Parmer replied. "That's what's indicated." Parmer replied. "But I know better." And not dating some unsuccessful attempts to take finger prints, he admitted was simply "a mistake." The prosecution 'was was also less than successful yesterday in getting clear testimony to build its case that Corona killed 25 men and burled their bodies 18 months ago. Leonard Brunelle, an Investigator with the Sutter County sheriff's department, brought into court a dozen photographs he took
of the "lower end" ol Marysville last June and a large diagram he had made of the area from an assessor's map. The area is where Corona’s half-brother, Natividad once ran the Guadalajara Cafe. A superior court julge in February. 1971, found Natividad liable lor $250,000 damages for savagely beating a man in the bar. Natividad vanished shortly thereafter.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 20 December 1973: Herb Caen: with a sore back? ... At the Hall of Justice, there has been a revival of 'The Bow Tie Boys/⁷ as the homicide detail was known in the legendary days of Ahern, Cahill and Neider. Inspectors Gus Coreris, Dave Toschi, Earl Sanders, Frank Falzon and George Murray have blossomed wit with big bow ties, despite denigrators who call them “The five fruiters”.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 1 November 1974: Herb Caen: INTERNATIONAL NOTES: S.F. Homicide Inspectors I« rank Faizon and Jack Cleary, in Genoa, Italy, on a case, woke up one morning in their hotel room to discover Jack’s watch missing from the night table. Down in the lobby, they waved their arms to no avail (neither speaks Italian) and even drew a picture of the purloined ticker but all they got was shrugs till Cleary produced his SFPD badge and hollered “Effa Bee Eye!” At that, the manager hastily opened a drawer in his desk and handed over Cleary’s watch ...

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 20 May 1975: Zebra Case Prosecution Wins a Major Point By Charier Raudebaugh
Superior Court Judge Joseph Karesh ruled for the prosecution yesterday on a critical legal point in the Zebra murder case..He held that the state has now laid the legal groundwork to support a charge of conspiracy to commit murder against the four black men who had been on trial since March 3.
The ruling opened the door for the prosecution to begin producing evidence on every one of the 13 street murders and seven assaults that terrorized San Franciscans during the winter of 1973-74. In legal language., the judge held that the slate had established a prim* facie case of conspiracy. Prima facie translates, literally, as “on the face of it." The four accused killers are indicted under a common count of conspiracy, and tnen separately tor three specific murders and four assaults, as well as kidnaping and robbery charges tangential to the specific crimes. Defense lawyers bitterly opposed the conspiracy charge, arguing that the evidence was weak at the best and came only from a man glibbly admitted purpose, lying when it suited him. Yesterday Judge Karesh called lawyers to court and jury ahead of time for final arguments. "The prosecution is trying to bootstrap itself into proof of a conspiracy." said John Cruikshank one of the defense lawyers. "I will agree there is no evidence (these defendants) established by-laws and sgned a written agreement." said Assistant District Attorney Robert Dontero. "But we do have by inference a stronger case than most conspiracy cases.”
Karesh emphasized in his ruling that he was not assing judgment on the credibility of the state’s witnesses. That will be for the jury, he said. But, he said, the prosecution can introduce evidence of other murders not specifically charged against the four men as “acts in furtherance of a conspiracy to commit murder.” The prosecution quickly took advantage of the ruling.
A series of witnesses—an autopsy surgeon, policemen, a criminologist, and others—began detailing the slayings .of Frances Rose. 28; Paul Danzic. 26; Neil Moymhan, 19. and Mildred Hosier. 50. all in the latter months of 1973. Miss Rose, a physical therapist, was slain in front of the University of California Extension Division Center at 55 Laguna street Jessie L. Cooks, one of the four men on trial, was arrested six blocks away, with a pistol in his waistbard. He s now serving a life sentence for the killing, having pleaded guilty. Homicide Inspector Frank J Falzon said the night of the crime. Cooks confessed. “He stated he first met the victim when she pulled up and offered him a ride in her car,’ Falzon testified. “Once in the car he became angry. She began making racial remarks and calling him ‘nigger.’ This angered him very, very much and he shot her four times.” It was the first time even these details of the crime have been made public. Lawyers for the other defendants protested that the testimony was prejudicial against their clients. Judge Karesh reaffirmed his initial ruling on conspircy, asserting that the evidence of murder would be admissible only against Cooks, and would have no weight against the other defendants except possibly in regard to testimony about the weapon used to kill Miss Rose. Proscutor Robert Podesta thereupon called Inspector Kenneth Moses to the witness stand to identify the .22 caliber pistol that killed Miss Rose. It had already been identified by earlier witnesses as “similar to” a gun carried by Cooks on other crimes when other defendants were along. The trial will resume at 10 o'clock this morning.



Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 24 September 1975: Herb Caen: ELSEWHERE: Tom Manney, key defense witness in the Zebra trial, was arrested by Police Inspector Frank Fzizon in one of those coincidences that could and probably did make a TV episode. Frank was fullback and Tom halfback on the St. Ignatius High football team that won the city championship in 1959.. They were even chums through grammar school, but, concedes Falzon, their relationship at the moment is “a little strained.”. Dramatic line of dialogue from Manney ;when the arrest was made: “I thought you’d be coming for me, Frank” . . .

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 14 April 1976: Herb Caen: BARREL'S BOTTOM: The apparent solution to the Popeye Jackson slaying is sweet vindication for those quiet operators, Homicide Inspectors Dave Toschi and Frank Falzon. often loudly accused by Jackson's followers of “just going through the motions” on this case.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 26 November 1976: Stalking the Brown Bag Killer
...In the weeks and months to come, this blond young man was to become known to police and citizens of San Francisco as the Paper Bag Killer.
Inspector Frank Falzon, homicide detail, was on call at the Hall of Justice when the report of the shooting came in.
Frank Falzon is a new-breed cop. He is 33, a college graduate who has been a police officer in San Francisco for 11 years.


Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 11 February 1977: Cop Kills Suspect Whose Shots Missed
An escaping supermarket robbery suspect answered an off-duty homicide inspectors verbal challenge with three pistol shots last night, and was slot dead on the street by the officer. The shootout rattled the quiet residential Ingleside neighborhood around Selmi's Market at Holloway and Ashton streets at 6:40 p.m.
The dead suspect, about 18, was not immediately identified. Police said homicide Inspector Frank Falzon had stopped his car outside the store to buy a sandwich when he observed the holdup in progress. He crouched behind a parked car near the dcor and was prepared to await the suspect’s exit. When a customer approached, Falzon was forced to give up his cover to prevent the customer from entering. At that time, police said, the suspect left the stcre with a .45 caliber automatic pistol in one hand and an unknown amount of cash inside a paper sack. Faizon identified himself and the suspect fired one shot which whizzed by Faizon from a distance of six feet
Holding his police badge in one hand, the officer returned one shot and the suspect ran down the street, firing two shots as be fied. police said. Faizon then fired a second shot from 20 feet which struck the suspect in the head, killing him instantly. Police said two other homicide inspectors will investigate the shooting in conjunction with the district attorney’s office.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 12 February 1977: Cop Who 'Sensed' a Holdup By Robert Popp
Homicide inspector Frank Falzon said yesterday that a "sixth sense” made him stop Thursday evening at an Ingleside supermarket where he later shot it out with a holdup man. The exchange of gunfire rattled the quiet neighborhood around Selmi’s Market at Holloway and Ashton streets and brought death to Lloyd Henry Hill, 25. of 440 Alameda del Prado, Novato. Hill was on parole from a 15 years-to-life term he received in 1970 for his part in a Redwood City supermarket holdup in which a policeman and woman were wounded. "I was driving east on Holloway to attend a class at City College,'' said Falzon, “when I saw a man inside this market motioning with his hands. I didn’t see a gun then, but a sixth sense, or something. made me stop. “I parked the car ten feet away, and then I saw him plant a .45 against someone's head. I got out and got down behind the car and trained my gun on the middle of the door. “I waited for him to come out, but he didn't, and it seemed like an eternity.” At this point, a passerby started to walk up to the store, so Falzon. fearing the robber might take the man hostage, left his cover to warn him against entering. “Then the guy came out. and I told him: 'Stop. I'm police.' He fired two shots at me and started running. I fired once and I just hit his clothing by his right shoulder. “We were both in the middle of the street by this time, and he turned and fired at me twice again. I assumed the cup-and-saucer position (cupping his left hand to steady the other fist holding the gun). "I fired once and got him in the head and he went down.” Hill's body was lying over a bag containing $279 taken from the store. He had a .45 caliber pistol in his hand. There was one bullet in the pistol's chamber three left in its clip. Police found four shell casings in the area. Falzon
who is 35, has been with the police department for 12 years, the last five with homicide.


Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 30 March 1977: Behind Aranda Murder Case By Birney Jarvis
Homicide Inspector Frank Falzon said last night that a series öf “baffling coincidences” led to the wrongful imprisonment of murder suspect Luigi Aranda.
“I don’t think a case like this could ever occur again,” said Falzon. The detective said he and his partner Inspector Jack Cleary were contacted about six months after Aranda was sent to prison by the wife of the unnamed current “prime suspect” in the 1974 execution-style slaying of Hells Angel Jesse Galvin.
The woman is now in protective custody while her husband is being sought for the slaying, Falzon said. Faizon said the woman knew at the time of the trial that Aranda was innocent. “She was living in fear of her life, from what she had heard from her husband. She was fearful of her own safety and that of her child.’ Falzon said that because of the woman’s fear, “it took a great deal of persuasion” to induce her to talk for the record on tape. He said a big reason why he and. Cleary initially thought they had an airtight case against Aranda was because two eyewitnesses to the killing “positively identified” Aranda in a police lineup.“It was a tragic mistake , on their part,” the detective said. “The similarity in appearance between Aranda and the man we now believe to be the real killer is remarkable.” Falzon said police thought Aranda had a motive for shooting Galvin because the two men had had a fight the week before in tie Tip Top Bar, a bikers’ rendezvous in the Outer Mission.
There were other “baffling coincidences,” Falzon said. For example, the homicide team learned that Aranda had threatened to “get even” with Galvin because of the bar fight, in which Aranda’s woman companion had two teeth knocked out and was hospitalized. Moreover, said Falzon, he and Cleary discovered that Aranda had a pistol similar to the one believed used in the slaying.     Months before, police learned, Aranda had fired a shot into the wall of the bar. When the bullet, was dug out of the wall, ballistics tests showed it had “characteristics similar” to thé'bullet that killed the Hells AngeL Finally, said. Falzon, “for some reason Aranda didn’t téll thé entire _ truth on the witness stand, and it was quite obvious (to the jury).” Falzon said the evidence he and Cleary amassed since the wife of the prime snspect began talking led them to the conclusion that Aranda should not have been , sent to prison. “I do not believe that any jury would have found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” Falzon said.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 26 January 1978: Tahoe Gambler Sought in S.F. By Robert Popp
A murder warrant was issued yesterday tor the arrest of a South Lake Tahoe man, suspected of killing a man who allegedly sold cocaine to society figures here.
Named in the warrant was David Alan Duke, 25, described as an unsuccessful gambler who attempted to get out of debt by trying to rob Robert Kent Whitfield, 33, at Whitfield’s large flat at 2167 Grove street January 16. According to police, witnesses said they heard the two arguing in a distant part of the flat, then heard a struggle, and finally heard one shot from what turned out to be a .38 caliber pistoL _: They said they, saw Duke Tuning down the stairs towards the street, Whitfield's Irish setter Jubal nipping at his heels, and then saw Duke wheel and fire once at the dog. Another witness living across the street said that Duke ran from the building, missed the pursuing dog with two more shots, and then drove off in a green 1976 Ford camper, Nevada license plate number OB 1685.
As homicide inspector Frank Falzon pieced the story together, Duke was heavily in debt. He had met Whitfield recently, and drove to San Francisco to rob him. Falzo said that Whitfield had met many social figures while remodeling their Victorian homes. “In addition to his remodeling,” Falzon said, “Whitfield was dealing in coke' to his society friends. He had friends in society. Indeed, it was learned that one of the unnamed witnesses in the flat at the time of the murder is a member of what
.. When police arrived, they found 16000 in cash in Whitfield’s pockets, and $20,000 worth of drugs...In an, Falzon said, police confiscated 169 grams of cocaine.
Duke, Falzon said, was a professional gambler out on bail from South Lake Tahoe for allegeclv trying to extort $8000 from a loan shark. Duke did not appear in court at South Lake Tahoe Tuesday, for a preliminary hearing on the extortion charge.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 17 April 1979: Dan White's 'Confession' Told in Court By Ruben Rupp
Former Supervisor Dan White confessed that he shot Mayor George Moscone and Supenisor Harvey Milk because they were playing a game against him and be would be “the fall guy and scapegoat.” according to a document filed in Superior Court yesterday. In a brief filed by Assistant District Attorney Thomas Norman opposing White's motion to have “special circumstances” dropped from the murder charges against him, the previously secret testimony of Inspector Frank Falzon at White's preliminary hearing last January was quoted at length. Inspector Falzon tape-recorded a statement given by White soon after the 32-year-old former fireman and policeman surrendered after the City Hall shootings on November 27. Paraphrasing White's remarks. Falzon said: "He felt at this time there was a game being played against him and he was going to be the fall guy and scapegoat. And that it was a political opportunity for the mayor to destroy him and appoint somebody else.”
White had resigned his supervisor's job from District 8 two weeks earlier, citing financial need, and had then changed his mind and tried to have Moscone reappoint him. Falzon said White described how he had tried unsuccessfully to reach the mayor by telephone and the mayor had not returned his calls. White, according to the inspector said he had no plan "That he left home on the morning of November 27 but that he called a former aide to pick him up, put on his revolver and grabbed a handful of bullets. Falzon said White could not recall how many shots he fired at the mayor but that he did remember reloading his gun before encountering Milk.
"He (White) thought if he went to Harvey Milk, maybe he would be honest this time if he confronted him with why he had schemed behind his back and why he had tried to get the constituents in District 8 to be against himself and have somebody else appointed," Falzon said. White described how he invited Milk into Milk's office and asked him why be had schemed against him, the inspector continued. “When Harvey Milk gave the appearance as if he knew nothing was going on. but he also had kind of a wry smirk on his face, as if deep down inside he knew, and it was a political game.'' Falzon said, "he ( White) said that he felt himself get all flushed and hot and at that time he shot Haney Milk." The prosecutors brief filed yesterday also included part of the preliminary hearing testimony of Dr. Roland Levy, a psychiatrist, who talked to White after the shootings. White felt, he said, that the mayor had been subjected to pressure not to reappoint White and that one of the prime movers of the pressure was Milk. The former supervisor, according to Levy, expressed disappointment over the political situation m San Francisco and said he found it "much more corrupt than he bad realized." White. according to the psychiatrist felt that his job was to "straighten out the corruption.’' “And yet he was stymied every time he tried to do anything and to represent what he considered the will of the people of San Francisco against the small pressure groups," Levy said.
In his brief opposing White’s motion to have the "special circumstances" dropped from the murder charges. Assistant District Attorney Norman argued that the twin kill
ings were carried out "in retaliation for or to prevent the performance of official duties." If White is found guilty of first- degree murder and the jury determines that "special circumstances" applied to the killings, he could be sentenced to death or to life in prison without possibility of parole. Citing the testimony of Falzon and Levy, Norman declared that the record "is replete with material which amply inferentially supports the allegations of special circumstances."
Attorney Douglas Schmidt, who is representing White, filed a motion last week asking that the “special circumstances” be dropped.
Arguments on White’s motion are scheduled for 2 p.m. Thursday before Superior Court Judge Claude Perasso.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 18 April 1979: Secret Tapes Bared In S.F. Mayor’s Killing
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Former Supervisor Dan While confessed he shot Mayor George Moscow and Supervisor Harvey Milk because “there was a game being played against him and he was going to be the fall guy and scapegoat,” ac:ording to a court brief filed Monday. The brief was filed by Assistant District Attorney Thomas Norman and quoted at length from the previously secret testimony of police Inspector Frank Falzon at White's secret preliminary hearing last January 7. Inspector Falzon taped a statement given by White shortly after he surrendered following the Moscone- Milk shootings at City Hall last Nov. 27, the papers said.
“He felt at this time there was a game being played against him and be was going to be the fall guy and scapegoat," Falzon said of White’s statement. “And that it was a politico opportunity for the mayor to destroy him and appoint somebody else." White who had resigned his supervisor’s job two weeks before thr shootings, was trying to get Moscone to reappoint him to the post. Flazon said White described how he had tried to reach the mayor by telephone and tbe mayor had not returned his calls. The inspector said White told him he had no plan when he left his house on the morning of Nov. 27. However, he put on his revolver and grabbed a handful of cartridges before leaving in the car of a former aide. Falzon said White could not remember how many shots he fired at the mayor. However, be did recall retailing his gun before encountering Mük. ‘He (White) thought if be went to Harvey Milk, maybe he would be honest this time if he (White) confronted him with why he had smerked behind his (White's) back and why he had tried to gel the ccnstituents in District 8 to be against himself (White) and have somebody else appointed,” Falzon said. After seeing Milk with a “kind of wry smirk on his face," White said “he felt himself get all flushed and hot at that time he shot Harvey Milk,” Falzon said. White, whose trial is scheduled to begin Monday, is charged with first degree murder committed under “special circumstances." His special circumstances part of the
charge means be could be sentenced to death or life in prison without parole. White's attorney, Douglas Schmidt, has asked that the special crcumstances be dropped and as was his motion which prompted prosecutor Norman's brief containing Fclzon’s testimony. Arguments on the Schmidt motion are scheduled for tomorrow.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 4 May 1979: WHITE'S DRAMATIC CONFESSION
'It was just like a roaring in my ears . .. then I just shot him. That was it. It was over!' By Duffy Jvnnina'
A tape recording of Dan White's tearful and tormented confession to killing Mayor Georye Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk was played to an emotionally charged courtroom at his murder trial yesterday. At least four jurors wept while listening to the gripping 24-minute tape. White himself also cried, with greater intensity than he had on Wednesday. HLs wife, one of his awyers and several persons in the packed audience were also moved to tears. In a halting and anguished voice, White said on the tape, that therere was a roaring" in his ears just before he gunned down Moscone in the mayors private sitting room at City Hall last November 27. “I Just shot him." said White. "That was it. It was over. Of his encounter with Milk moments later, White said: ”He just kind of smirked at me . . . and then I got all flushed and hot and I shot him.” White had been interviewed at the Hall of Jtstice by homicide inspectors Frank Falzon and Edward Erdelatz an hour after the shootings and 30 miiutes after he surrendered to police. Asked by Falzon, his longtime personal friend to explain "in a narrative form" what happened, White, began: “W'ell. it’s just that I've been under an awful lot of pressure lately - - financial pressure, because of my job situation, family pressure,not being able to have the time with my family. It’s just that 1 wanted to serve the people of San Francisco well and I did that.” White told how those pressures led to his resignation from the Board of Supervisors. He said he asked for the job back alter his family and friends urged him to reconsider. The mayor, he said, told him he was ‘‘doing an outstanding job'* and indicated he would reappoint White to the board. “And then it came out that Supervisor Milk and some others were working against me, White said, and told of overhearing a telephone conversation between Milk and City Attorney George Agnost in Agnost's office one day. White said he complained to Moscone that his opponents “had traumatized my family*' by making “false charges'* to the district attorney that he had not reported campaign contributions from large corporations. Two months later the district attorney said the charges were unfounded but no one hears about it ... but my family suffers and I suffer for it.' White complained on the tape. ‘ Moscone then told White he would have to show "some support from the people of District 8" in order to be reinstated. “I could see the game that was being played.' White told the inspectors. ‘They were going to use me as a scapegoat, whether I was a good supervisor or not was not the point. “This was a political opportunity and they were going to degrade me and my family and the job that I had tried to do and more or less hang me out to dry." White said he attempted to contact Moscone during the week prior to the shootings, but his calls were never returned. “It was only on my own initiative when I went down today to speak with him." White said. I was troubled, the pressure, my family again, my son’s out to a baby-sitter. My wife's got to work long hours. 50 and 60 hours, never see my family." Tears began to flow down White's face in the courtroom. His wife. Mary Ann. hung her head where she was sitting behind him in the spectator section. Inspector Falzon asked White what he planned when he went to see the mayor. "What did you have in mind?“ Falzon inquired. "I didn't have any devised plan or anything.“ said White. “I was leaving the house to talk, to see the mayor, and I went downstairs to make a phone call and I had my gun down there. "I don't know. I just put it on. I. I don't know why I put it on, it’s just
when he confronted Moscone in his office. White said, the mayor told him a press conference had been scheduled to announce the appointment of Don Horanzy to the District 8 seat. ‘ Didn't even have the courtesy to call me or tell me that 1 wasn't going to be reappointed." said White. “Then I got kind of fuzzy and then just my head didn’t feel right." White said he protested to the mayor that his opponents “had been dogging me since I've been in office“ and that his supporters had collected signatures on petitions on petitions in his behalf. “He knew that and he told me it's a political decision and that’s the end of it. and that's it." said White.
Moseone invited White into the mayor’s back room and offered him a drink. “I was obviously distraught and upset ... but I just kinda stumbled in the back... and he sat down and he was talking and nothing was getting through to me." said White. “It was just like a roaring in my ears and then ... it just came to me. you know, he . . ."
“You couldn't hear what he was saving. Dan?” asked Falzon. “Just small talk ... it just wasn’t registering. What I was going to do now. you know, and how this would affect my family, you know. and. and just all the lime knowing he’s going to go out, and, and lie to the press and, and tell ’em. you know, that I wasn’t a good supervisor and that people didn’t want me and then that was it. ‘Then I just shot him, that was it, it was over.”
White said he left by a back door and was going to go downstairs when he saw Milk’s aide and then it struck me about what Harvey had tried to do and 1 said. "Well. I'll go talk to him.” As he crossed the second-floor corridor to the supervisors’ office. White said, he thought “at least maybe he’ll be honest with me, you know, ’cause he didn’t know I had . . . heard his conversation. And he was all smiles and stuff and I went in and. like I say, I was still upset. White said he told Milk he wanted to talk to him “just to try to explain to him, you know. I didn't agree with him on a lot of things but I was always honest, you know, and here they were devious and then he started kind of smirking at me cause he knew that 1 wasn't going to be reappointed." “I started to say you know how hard I worked for it and what it meant to me and my family and then my reputation as a hard worker, good honest person ..White said Milk smirked at him again. "As if to say. too bad. and then, and then 1 just got ail flushed and. and hot and I shot him.* By this time in the tape, several persons were dabbing at their eyes with tissue and handkerchiefs, and sniffling could be heard from various parts of the courtroom. Associate defense lawyer Stephen J. Seherr shifted restlessly in his chair at the defense table beside attorney Douglas R. Schmidt and also wiped his eyes.After leaving City Hall that day, White said, he drove to the Doggie Diner at Van Ness and Golden Gate Avenues and telephoned his wife.
“I didn't tell her on the phone." he said. See. she was working, son's at a baby sitter’s, s—. I just told her to meet me at the cathedral." Mary Ann took a cab and met him at St. Mary’s Cathedral at Gough Street and Geary Boulevard, he said. White said be had not told her of the pressure building within him. She always has been great to me. but it was. I couldn’t tell anybody. I didn't, there was just, just the pressure hitting me and just my head's all flushed and I expected that my skull's going to crack. "Then when she came to the church. I told her and she kind of slumped and just, she couldn't say anything." White said she accompanied him to Northern Station where he turned himself in. "Is there anything else you’d like to add at this time?" asked Faizon. "Just that I've always been honest and worked hard, never cheated anybody or. you know. I'm not a crook or anything and I wanted to do a good job." said White. "I’m trying to do a good job and I saw this city as it's going kind of downhill and I was always just a lonely vote on the board and tried to be honest and. and I just. I couldn’t take it anymore anc that's it." Assistant District Attorney Thomas F. Norman had called Falzon to the witness stand to play the tape. When it was over. Superior Court Judge Walter F. Calcagno ordered a brief recess, after which defense attorney Schmidt cross-examined Falzon about his relationship to White. Falzon said he had known White almost ten years. He described White as a “man among men. a hustler." On the day of the shootings. Falzon said. White was “destroyed ... a shattered individual both mentally and physically." Falzon said White excelled in pressure situations, especially on the athletic field, but sometimes “had a tendency to run from situations.." “His ultimate goal was to purchase a boat and sail around the world and get away from everybody." Falzon said. Norman's final witness was Mitchell Luksich, a police criminalist and firearms expert. He testified that the two fatal shots into Moscone’s head were fired from a distance of between six and 18 inches. Norman, who called 19 witnesses in three days, is expected to rest his case this morning. Schmidt could begin the defense as early as this afternoon.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 4 May 1979: Jury hears tape -- White trial judge reaffirms charges
SAN FRANCISCO (, AP) - The judge in the Dan White murder trial refused today to dismiss charges against the former supervisor in connection with the shooting deaths of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. After prosecutor Thomas Norman formally rested his case, White's attorney. Douglas Schmidt, said the charges should be dropped because the prosecution had not presented "enough evidence to go to the jury." Superior Court Judge Walter F. Calcagno rejected the motion, saying there was "sufficient proof." Schmidt was to begin White's defense later today. The trial began Monday and Norman presented 19 prosecution witnesses.
In court Thursday, the jury heard a tape recorded statement given to police just after the shootings in which White tearfully described the shootings, saying of Moscone’s death: "I just shot him That was it. it was over." "He (Moscone) was talking and nothing was getting through to me. It was just like a roaring in my ears...." White's voice, recorded an hour after the Nov. 27 assassinations, told a Superior Court jury Thursday. While, on trial for the two slayings, said he was worrying about "what I was going to do now...all the time knowing he's (the mayor) going to go out and lie to the press and tell them, you know, that I wasn’t a good supervisor.”
Then Milk, San Francisco's first openly homosexual supervisor and White's poltical adversary, was killed about 90 seconds later, according to testimony tefore Superior Court Judge Walter F. Calcagno.
The confession was submitted by prosecution witness Frank Falzon. a police homiclde inspector and friend of White, a former policeman. Falcon taped the interview after White surrender to authorities following the shootings. Falzon was the last prosecution witness. Several jurors and spectators wept openly while the recording was played, and White sat at the defense table with tears streaming down his cheeks.
White has pleaded innocent to the killings. Prosecutor Thomas F. Norman has asked for the death penalty under the "special circumstances" provision" of a newly passed state law. which provdes for capital punishment in cases where a public official has been killed to prevent him from carrying out his official duties or there is more thaï one death. Leaving Moscone's office, White said he saw a Millk aide, "and then it struck me about what Harvey had tried to do, so I said "Well, I'll go talk
to him.' After enterlng Milk's office and speaking with him, "he just kind of smirked at me as if to say, too bad,' and then I got all flushed up and hot and I shot him.”.


Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 6 May 1979:...Baseball cornes up frequently when friends talk about Dan White Homicide Inspector Frank Falzon. who coached the state champion 1971 San Francisco police softball team, said White was on the tournament allitar team, and was voted most valuable player. An umpire who had officiated for 30 years, Falzon testified, said that White was the finest ball player he had ever seen. Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Examiner on 24 June 1979: Behind Dan White’s confession By Jnn Wood, Examiner Staff Writer
Seventy minutes after killing Mayor George ;Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, a shattered Dan White sat alone in'an interrogation jroom at the Hall of Justice.
The door opened, and Frank Falzon, a homicide inspector who has won 30 first-degree murder convictions and sent four men to deathrow. looked in. For an instant the two close friends stared at each, other. Then Fabon. ’stunned, blurted out a question": “Why. why?" At first White could not reply. ‘His eyes began to swell and tear, and he put his head down on his arms and shook his head back and forth as if to say. "I don t know,’ Falzon recalls. Falzon went to his desk in the homicide detail to get a tape recorder and cassette and asked Inspector Ed Erdelatz. who happened to be on duty in the homicide detail to assist in taking Whites statement.
The statement that followed was the heart of the prosecution's case against Dan White. In it White admitted arming himself, going to City Hall and killing the two officials. It gave prosecutor Tom Norman what he has described as a technically perfect first-degree murder case. But even before White was found guilty of manslaughter, instead of murder as charged, the statement also raised a number of questions — some of which Falzon calls legitimate, some playing on the tensions of a grief-racked city. Why was the statement taken by a close friend? Did the police go east on a former officer? Why wasn't White asked about climbing through a window to enter City Hall? Why did interrogators allow White to tell his own story instead of pelting him with tough questions? Here is Falzon's account of the story behind Dan White s confession: The official times of the deaths were 10:50 a.m. for Moscone arid 10:55 am for Milk on Nov. 27. Falzon was one half of the on-call homicide team that day. The homicide detail calls for six oncall teams to handle whatever comes up on a rotating basis. Falzon's partner was Inspector Herman Clark, 16 years a police officer and nine a robbery investigator and regarded as one of the outstanding such investigators in the state. Clark was new in the homicide unit, replacing Jack Geary, who moved to the district attorney's investigating staff. At about 11 am. Falzon was in the district attorney s office conferring with Deputy District Attorney James Lassan, when homicide head Lt. Jack Jordan telephoned to Falzon to “get up here right away." Jordan told Falzon and Clark that there had been a shooting at City Hall and ordered them -See Page 10, CoL 1.
Story behind Dan White’s confession — From Page 1...to go at once to the mayor's office. They arrived at 11:10 AM. In the midst of the chaos, Falzon and Clark attempted to learn what was happening, unaware that at Northern Station, White, accompanied by his wife Mary Ann, already was surrendering to a longtime family friend. Officer Paul Chignell. Significantly, given what was about to occur. White told Chignell that he would not make a statement. Shortly before leaving City Hall, of the Hall of Justice by Inspectors Carl Klotz and Howard Bailey. The homicide detail in Room 451 consists of a small space for the secretary, a glassed room for the lieutenant and a large room to house desks for the 12 homicide inspectors. At one end are two rooms for interrogating witnesses in privacy. It was in one of these bare interrogation rooms that Falzon found White. Outside the homicide detail, there was bedlam in the corridors. Repeaters were pushing to squeeze into the tiny portion in the front of the detail and Jeff Brown, the public defender, was struggling to gain admittance to the main part of Room 454. Brown s purpose was to advise White against making any statement. Although Brown was a well-connected public official, he had no status in the White case as far as the homicide officers were concerned, and despite his repeated and noisy protests, he was refused entry to the homicide detail. Falzon, picking up his tape recorder from his. desk, realized he did not have much time. After advising White of his Miranda rights to remain silent or to see a lawyer, Falzon began taking the statement. Falzon’s beginning was unusual:
“Would you, normally in a situation like this, we ask questions. I'm aware of your past history as a ponce officer and also as a san Francisco fireman, I would prefer, I'll let you do it in a narrative form as to what happened this morning if you can lead up to the events of the skooting and then backtracking as to why the skooting took place." Falzon has been criticized for this departure from customary police technique. “It was apparent the man was shattered." Falzon says. “As he spoke the man was not only crying and sobbing, but his whole body was. convulsing. Any other line would not have s elicited the facts about why these events took place. Falzon says that narratives also lead the person being interrogated to ramble, making it harder for him to protect what he’s saying, and it also suggests questions to be followed up.
Most important though was the timing. Jeff Brown was outside the homicide detail, trying to get in and stop the questioning. Because Brown did hot represent White, the inspectors thought it proper to continue their interrogation; but they knew thére wasnt much time. Indeed, minutes after the statement was concluded at 1230, attorney John Purcell, hired by the White family, arrived and said he wanted no further questioning of White. He aiso refused to allow laboratory technicians to perform neutron activation tests to determine whether While had fired a gun. If police were to obtain a statement from White Falzon say's, they had to take it just when they did, between noon and 12:30 the day of the shooting. Falzon says he was unaware of a number of key facts in the case, facts he has since been criticized for not asking about during the interrogation.
Falzon says be did not know: - That Dan White entered City Hall through a.. — See next page.
‘Police acted professionally
— From preceding page side -- ...basement window. Falzon says he assumed that White had entered without passing through the metal detector, simply walking around the electronic gate. As a police officer. Falzon knew this was a courtesy customarily extended to members of the Board of Supervisors (and to police officers) Falzon didn’t learn about White's entry until 2:10 pm, after talking with Inspector Jeff Brosch. That both Mcecore and Milk were killed by coup de grace shots after being wounded. Clark and Falzon were notified by Coroner Boyd Stephens at 2:25 pm, that both men had been shot several times and something of the nature of their wounds. Falzon says it was 3:05 before he arrived at the coroner's office, inspected the wounds in each body and leaned that both men had been given coup de grace shots after being wounded. The importance of White's remark near the end of the interview that he had reloaded the gun, Falzon says he did not know the number of times Moscone and Milk hat been shot. Although the questioners obtained White's statement that he had reloaded in his office. While was not asked to elaborate on this key fact pointing to premeditation.
The statement taken by Falzon and Erdelatz had one flaw beyond the control of the officers — White’s coolly distraught condition. Prosecutor Norman, who heard the tape several times before using it in the trial was aware that While's chest-rattling sobs and labored breathing might be jury dynamite. The tape's probative value had to be weighed against the emotional impact. It was a tough decision and Norman made it. But Norman says that “a kid out of law school“ should know that he couldn't have just played parts of the tipe, as one critic suggested. When one part of a statement or tape is placed, the defense is entitled to have the entire dociment or tape presented. "You know what the judge would have done to me if I'd tried to pull something like that.“ Norman says, shakng his head.
Under California's evidence laws, the entire tape had to be made available to the defense before the trial began and defense counsel Douglas Schmidt could and woulc have played it But Norman had not But Norman says he coüd not rely on the defense to prove his case. Norman says that people maintaining that he should have introduced a transcript of the testimony, rather than letting jurors hear the taped emotion, ignore two facts: the defense then could have played the tape, capitalizing on how the prosecution was attempting to conceal White's state of mind, or, in the alternative, that the defense could have printed out, under California law, that a record was made and not played and that the jurors could draw the inference that the tape would have been less helpful to the prosecution.
Like Falzon, Norman has taken a share of the heat generated by the manslaughter verdict. Many critics — Norman calls them them Mondaymorning quarterbacks — have suggested that the prosecution should have put on more psychiatrists to rebut the battery of defense witnesses who said White was mentally ill. Norman says that his psychiatrist, Dr. Roland Levy, was well qualified and had examined White the day of the slayings. As a result, Norman says. Levy's testimony should have been given more weight. The jury disagreed. After White's statement was taken, police continuel to build the case against their former colleague. Falzon, who in his nine years as a homicide investigator has worked or 200 cases, says the investigation was as thorough as any case he ever participated in. White's home and office were searched, friends and enemies interviewed. Falzon says not one incident of brutality has turned up, although the rumors persisted. In fact, Falzon says, the only brutality in connection with White was when be quit the Police Department after protesting brutality by oter officers.     Falzon and Clark’s investigation totaled 480 hours, not including the work dore by the entire homicide team under Jordan. “It’s my opinion that the prosecution showed beyond a reasonable doubt a first degree murder conviction,' Falzon says. The defense was able to counter with White’s background as a city servant, being a police officer, a fireman and a supervisor along with a history of heroism, undue pressure that had built up and finally, showng a mental breakdown. I believe homicide inspectors and the police act as     ^;
professionally as humanly possible on this tragic day in the history of San Francisco.“.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 3 August 1979: Caller Tells Cop He Killed Woman
Homicide Inspector Frank Falzon said yesterday that a man confessed over the telephone to the murder of Laura Stanton, 27. whose nude body was discovered Wednesday in Hunters Point. But the agitated caller hung up without identifying himself. "I am certain that the man I talked to was the killer, the detective said 'He is a man on the verge of breaking. I hope he comes in before he hurts anyone else.' For the past year Stanton had worked as a live-in baby sitter with friends living on Green Street. She was last seen when she left the home of other friends in Sebastopol to return to the city late Tuesday. Falzon said he answered the phone at about 155 p.m. yesterday at the Hall of Justice to hear a voice that He heard to be that of "a young, nervous black man.' "Man. I need your help." the caller said.
"What kind of help do you need?" Falzon answered. You know that woman who was in the paper today. Laura Stanton? The one who was killed? I did It." the caller said. "I didn't mean to kill her. I wanted to be a friend, but she wouldn't let me" As Falzon tried to persude the caller to surrender, the officer said, the man became increasingly agitated. "Man.^- he said. I don't want to go to jail." The connection was broken as Falzon tried to talk the man into contacting an attorney. The woman was raped and bludgeoned to death with a short piece of timber. Her body was discovered at noon Wednesday on a walk way behind Sir Franca Drake School. The car she had borrowed was found at the school. Flazonsaid Stanton may have been kidnaped after visiting Union Street where she had once worked as a bartender. Friends have told police she would never have picked up a hitchhiker. Friends said Stanton's parents and sisters had been to San Francisco just two weeks ago to visit her. “They went everywhere together. At least they had that." one friend said.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 18 November 1981: Homicide inspector Sues Gay Activist -- San Francisco homicide inspector Frank Falzon has filed a S1.25 million libel lawsuit against a gay activist who wrote a letter to the editor of a local gay paper, criticizing the officer's handling of a homicide investigation. Falzon claims that a letter by Randy Schell, printed in the Bay'Area Reporter, caused Falzon to suffer a "loss of his reputation, shame, mortification and hurt feelings.” Schell's letter outlined his grievances at Falzon's handling of the killing of Schell's roommate and lover. Thomas Hadley, who was shot in the head in Buena Vista Park in August 1980. Schell’s letter said Falzon would not check out bars that Hadley frequented, saying "no gay guy would give me information because I am a police, officer." Schell , also wrote that Falzon had said gay murder investigations were difficult because homosexuals are sexually promiscuous. Falzon's complaint against Schell cites the gay activist's statements that Falzon had treated the murder "with little regard” and that Falzon did not act "in a manner befitting police officers" as the reason' for his litigation. Neither Falzon nor his attorney James Collins. was available for comment yesterday. Schell, who works in the Castro Street office of Community United Against Violence; would not comment on the particules of the case beyond saying. "I will not back down on anything I said."

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 20 April 1983: Herb Caen: One Thing After Another
INSIDE OUT: Homicide Inspector Frank Falzon, who took Dan White’s confession after the murders of George Moscone and Harvey Milk, is considering legal action over the way he is portrayed in the play “The Dan White Incident,” now running at People’s Theater in Fort Mason. “Dan was a friend of mine but he got no breaks from me,” insists Falzon. “In fact, after I took his statement, all I could think was. This guy just admitted two murders — he’s going to the death box’”.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 14 July 1983: Jury Called Biased -- Prosecutor's Defense
The prosecutor and the chief detective in the Dan White case said yesterday they thought the jury was looking for a way during the trial to give White “a break.”
The detective, Frank Falzon, also said the case “really put a black cloud" over himself and Assistant District Attorney Tom Norman, despite their excellent records.
“This is the case that eats at my guts," said Falzon. a 12-year veteran and close friend of White's. "I know the case was investigated as thoroughly as possible So the reason the case eats at me is that 1 don’t know what I could have done differently. I've gone over this case a million times in my head. I don’t know what could have brought a different result. I wish someone could tell me what we could have done differently.” Looking back on it all. Norman said that because Dan White was such an All American boy, “I think the jurors were looking for a way to give him a break. Sure they were. “I have no apologies to make for this case,” Norman added. “I've tried about 200 murder cases. I’ve never had one like this where the evidence was so strong.” Norman, who some jurors said put on a weak case and too little psychiatric testimony against White, said he felt that he handled the psychiatric testimony as he should have - getting a respected psychiatrist, Roland Levy, to interview White on the day of the slayings. Had he tried to put more psychiatrists on the stand, Norman said, he thinks the defense would have attacked them and it would have worked against his case. “As to his bad background, there wasn't any bad background" to present, Norman said. Norman said he put on all the evidence he had.
That included testimony showing how White learned Mayor George Moscone was not going to reappoint him to the Board of Supervisors and that Supervisor Harvey Milk was working against his reappointment.
Falzon who along with another inspector took White's confession shortly after the killings, agreed with Norman's assessment that the jurors sought a way to give White a break- “I looked at tho pooplo on that jury.” said Falzon, who became good friends with White when the two were on the police force together. The jurors were all American type parents. Most saw him as their child who got caught up in City Hall and got overwhelmed and lost his mind. "The jury was kind of rooting for him They were looking for a way out and Doug Schmidt gave them a way out with his defense. The jury got caught up in the emotiions. I don t blame them. " In his testimony. he said he prefaced everything with “before November 27" because until then he never would have believed in the wildest stretch of imagination that White was capable of killing. Falzon also said that on the day he look White's confession, it was never discussed in the homicide unit that he was White’s friend and perhaps someone else should take ihe confession. Instead, he had been the homicide officer on call when the case broke, and later, things were moving too fast for such considerations to be raised. When he took White’s confession. Falzon said. "I felt I got a statement that would put him in the death chamber.” Later, though, be began to have doubts about what effect the confession tape would have, because it was such an emotional portrait of a man in turmoil. "I think five or six Jurors cried" when the tape was played at the trial. Falzon recalled. "I think they looked on him as one of their own." Falzon, who has investigated hundreds of homicides, added that he thought defense attorney Schmidt "did an awesome job. He played it to the hilt. He had an argument for every prosecution point'
Describing his own emotions, Falzon said he knows that he and Norman now live with a reputation as the ones “who handled the Dan White case and bungled it"
From the beginning, the case troubled him deeply, he said. “Before that day. I would have hoped my son would grow up to be like Dan White. Nothing set me back more than to hear one of my best friends was the killer."
Mayor Duane Feinstem, who was criticized by some jurors who said she testified favorably about White and that she attacked the verdict, denied vehemently that she had tried to say favorable things about White. "Its as if the jurors are looking for a scapegoat." she said. Conceming her testimony that it would not be her opinion that White was the sort to kill two people, Feinstein said: “No one thought Dan White was the kind who would kill anyone." Feinstein idded that it was “bialantly untrue and unfair to suggest that her comments on the verdict were arything other than her true sentiments as a citizen. She said her comments after the verdict had not been political posturing and that she said what she truly believed - that these were two murders. Instead of grandstanding when the press sought her out to get her reaction. Fernsten said as a matter of fact, "I tried to downplay it."

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 14 July 1983: The Controversial Issues And Their Effect on Jurors -- Here are some of the issues that werer faced by the Dan Whiete trial Jury:
THE LAW - For a first-degree murder verdict, the Jury would have needed to find that White premeditated, deliberated and harbored malice. For a second degree verdict, they would have had to conclude that he harbored malice before the killings--but without premeditation and deliberation. For their voluntary manslaughter verdict, the Jury needed to flnd the shootings were intentional killings, without malice, committed in a sudden quarrel or heat of passion..
RELOADING — Jurors said one of the biggest fights, if not the biggest, was whether White's reloading of his gun between the time he shot Moscoie four times in the mayors office and the time about 90 seconds later, when he shot Milk five times in White's old office down the hall indicated premeditation.
White’s taped confession - made to police homicide inspector Frank Falzon, a longtime friend of White's, and another homicide inspector — did not clarify exactly where or when the reloading occurred in City hall, Jurors said. The defense argued that White reloaded "on instinct. because of his police training." Although Jurors played the tape over and over, they couldn't decide exactly where the reloading occurred, and they said court instructions were clear: If there was any doubt, resolve a question in favor of tho defendant. "If White reloaded in his own office and then asked Milk to step out (and talk to him), tiat would definitely have been murder — premedkalcd and everything else," said one Juror, Lindy. But to her the reloading location remained "clear as mud."
TWINKIE DEFENSE - The Jurors all denied that the notorious Twinkie defense " — psychiatric testimony linking Junk food consumption, depression, and violent behavior — affected their decision ai all. Psychiatric testimony touching on this point was extremely brief during the trial, and several jurors said the topic got similarly brief treatment Inside the Jury room.'     '
HOMOSEXUALITY — Jurors said that Supervisor Harvey Milk’s homosexuality did not color their deliberations — although a couple of them added that they didn't mind gays as long as they kept to themsdves. "The verdict wasn't against gays," said one Juror, John. "We looked at Moscone and Milk like iidlviduals. 1 had friends that were gay and still do. I din't come up with the verdict because Milk was gay."
WHITES CONFESSION' - While's tearful confession has been widely credited with influencing the Jury strongly in his behalf. Several Jurors said that the confession tape was definitely emotional, but they added that it was not a central factor shaping the verdict. One juror, Tom, that it would be wrong to argue, however, that the tape had no effect. "You'd be lying" if you said you were unaffected. ‘We're a society of humans and of compassion for otheo." He said the tape made While seem more real, more human, more beset by encircling financial pressures."
THE WITNESSES - Many who testified at the trial were friends of White, including prosectuion witnesses like one of tho two policemen wlo took White's confession,
Falcon testified that before the killings the only flaw he saw in White was his tendency to run, on in occasions, from situations. and I just attributed it to his own righteousness.'' Otherwise, Falcon said."to me Dan White was an exemplary individual, a man that 1 was proud to know and be associated with." Today, recalling Falcon’s testimony, one juror puzzled aloud over why Falcon took White's confession — considering that White and Falcon lad been longtime friends: "I wondered how he got assgned to the case." the juror said.
THE GUN AND THE WINDOW - Almost always, the people angered by the verdict had the same sort of questions for the jurors. "White confessed. He carried a gun. He brought along extra bullets. He climbed in a window at City Hall to avoid being caught by a metal detector at the main entrance. He reloaded his gun between the killings. How can you say these were not two premeditated murders?" During the trial, there had been testimony that ex-police officers like While often carried concealed guns. It wasn't legal to do so without a permit If officers quit the department as White did before retirement. But many carried guns anyway, and that was the way it was. Also, other city officials — including Supervisor Diane Feinsteln — carried guns for self-protection. This was a time, too, the defense aserted, when city officials were especially nervous because the Jonestown deaths had occurred only a few days earlier. There was also testimony that in the past other people had used that basement window to enter City Hall, as White did that day, so it wain't that odd. Jurors said all this testimony aflectcd their thinking. “We felt there was no premeditation," John said. He added he knew that anger could grab someone. He had caught himself in the past reaching out in a flash to lay a hand on someone.
‘‘Anger can happen to a person where they lose their head for those few seconds — where you kind of blank out and then get a hold of yourself and wonder then what you're doing."

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 25 September 1983: Policeman kills cleaver-wielding man in Chinatown
A San Francisco police officer shot and killed a man last night in Chinatown's Waverly Alley. The officer said the victim had charged him, swinging a machete.
The dead man was identified by police as Vo Tuoc Traung, 33. Homicide inspector Frank Falzon said the incident began about 6:45 p.m. Police were told a man was walking up and down Washington and Clay streets and WaverlyAlley with a meat cleaver. Witnesses told police the man was swinging the weapon, pounding it against walls and shouting at passersbys. A group of Kung Fu students came to clear a pathway between Traung and the people he was threatening, Falzon said. He said they tried to establish eye contact with him, while others called police. Because a Chinatown festival was in progress, two uniformed members of the Community Relations detail were already in the area. The officers, Edward Dare and David Tambara, first tried to subdue the man, Falzon said. One of the Kung Fu students threw a garbage can at him. knocking him over and disarming him. But when the officers approached him again, Falzon said, he jumped up, seized the cleaver and raised it over his head as he charged the officers. Officer Dare fired once, but Traung kept coming, Falzon said. Dare fired twice more. Traung died two hours later at Mission Emergency Hospital of a bullet wound in the stomach and another in the chest. Falzon said numerous people were interviewed. He said the district attorney's office joined the investigation.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 3 November 1983: New Wrinkle in White Case By Maitland Zane
San Francisco District Attorney Arlo Smith complained yesterday he is getting the brushoff in his efforts to persuade the Justice Department to prosecute Dan
White on federal charges in connection with the murders Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. Amid rumors that federal prosecutors will make a decision this week. Smith has been asking them to consider an unconfirmed report that questions the credibility of one of the homicide inspectors who investigated the case and was a witness the White trial. But the district attorney said yesterday that Assistant U.S. Attorney General Lowell Jensen, chief of the Justice Department's criminal division and his classmate at Boalt Hall law school, has not responded to his phone calls this week.
"There’s been no movement in the case," Smith said yesterday. He has been urging federal officials to prosecute White under federal civil rights laws.
In frustration, the district attorney yesterday sent a telegram to Attorney General William French Smith, asking for consideration of a report from a former City Hall aide who said she saw a homicide inspector view Harvey Milk's body at the scene, although he testified to the contrary at the White trial. The inspector, veteran homicide Detective Frank Falzon, has denied the claim by former City Hall aide Gale Kaufman that she saw him at the Milk death scene shortly after the shootings on Nov. 27, 1973. "The statement I gave on the witness stand was true and factual and I stand behind it,” Falzon said yesterday. “1 never saw Milk’s body until I saw him on a slab in the coroner’s office.” It is unclear what effect the allegation, if true, might have had on the White trial, other than to raise questions about Falzon’s credibility as a witness. The district attorney has assigned one of his own investigators to look into the report. If White is not indicted on federal charges by November 27, the five-year statute of limitations will have run out and he must be freed from Soledad Prison on January 6. Kaufman was Supervisor Quentin Kopp's aide at the time of the City Hall assassinations and now works in Sacramento as a consultant to Assembly Speaker Willie Brown.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 9 November 1983: Dan White Case Witness Upheld -- District Attorney Arlo Smith said yesterday he is satisfied that a veteran homicide inspector was telling the truth when he testified during the 1979 murder trial of Dan White.
The issue arose last week, when a former City Hall aide said she saw Inspector Frank Falzon a: the death scene of Supervisor Harvey Milk shortly after Milk and Mayor George Moscone were killed on Nov. 27,1978. Falzon. who played a key role in the investigation of the shootings by White, said he had neverseen Milk's body in the supervisor’s City Hall office. Yesterday, Smith issued a statement that said Falzon's version "has been corroborated” ihrough interviews with eyewitnesses. "The declaration of Ms. Gale Kaufman, who stated that she saw Frank Falzon come into the area and view Milk's body, has been reviewed with Ms. Kaufman and eight other persons at the scene.” Smith’s statement said. "Ms. Kaufman now states she saw Falzon in the corridor before Milk’s body was removed, iut did not see Falzon view the body of Supervisor Mill. "It is our belief that Ms. Kaufman was confused about seeing Inspector Falzon in the supervisors* offices area on the morning of Nov. 27.1978.”
Falzon responded yesterday. “I am hurt by the way Mr. Smith handled this whole affair. I feel I was used as a political ploy for Mr. Smith to gain furthei support in the
gay community. “Why did he fire off a telegram to the U-S attorney general saying that he was ‘investigating new evidence* (in the Dan White case) without ever contacting me until after he announced the investigation.”.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 30 November 1983: The Return Of The Pretty-Boy Killer
The title of tonight's documentary drama. ‘The People Versus Dan White." is both sad and infuriating for San Franciscans tecause the decision in that case went to the assassin. It is a public defeat that the decent and compassionate citizens of this city have been wrestling with for nearly five years. It will remain with us forever.
There is little that hasn't alread been said about this deplorable miscarriage of Justice but some new insights will be added for msny viewers and some old suspicions substantiated on tonight's program (8 o'clock. Channel 9 with a repeat Thursday at 10 p.m.) The recent Steve Dobbins stage play, 'The 'Dan White Incident," provides the KQSD production with the dramatic part of its 90 minute presentation. I am told that some of the sensational aspects of the play were removed by KQED producers because they could not be substantiated, particularly those involving the coroner's report. What is left is serviceable and presumably accurate. The acting in the dramatized sequences is first rate and the performance of Kevin Reilly as the killer is impressive. The 33-member cast is drawn from the playwright's Illustrated Stage Company, which is planning to open in Los Angeles in January. But I doubt if the drama Itself — as enacted tonight — would serve as anything more than a backward glance at a sordid chapter in City Hall Justice if it weren't for the documentary additions provided by some remarkable interviews. Foremost among them are the refreshing comments by two colorful Chronicle byliners, Warren Hinckle and Randy Shilts, both of whom are first-rate Journalists and full-fledged local characters in the very best sense of that word. They add the punchy, real-life observations that are missing in the Dobbins drama.
“Above all, Dan White was a brat — a neurotic, vindictive, sadistic, Irish Catholic mess," said Hinckle, right on target. '"I think he just killed Moscone on his way to kill Harvey. "
"White could bave won an Oscar for his confession," observes Shilts. “It was a beautifully crafted and delicately honed performance. The whole idea that he was some babe in the woods exposed to dirty city hall politics is a joke. "
The question of the colorless and ill-prepared prosecution versus the well-prepared, volatile and entertaining defense does not go unnoticed — including a lectern that turned into a pulpit, enabling the defense attorney to invoke God 27 times during his summation to the jury. "It boils down to this: did they blow the prosecution or did they throw the prosecjtion?" observes Shilts. "I’m not sure which, but there's a lot of evidence to Indicate that for purely, crassly’, political reasons the decision was made within the District Attorney's office not to prosecute the Dan White case with all the ammunition they had .. The word 'assassination' was never used by the prosecution during the whole tria!." Only 57 minutes of tonight’s 90-minute KQED production were available for previeving as late as 3 p.m. yesterday. At that time, Ken Ellis, KQED current affairs director, filled in the missing half hour, verbally, for me. Ellis also added that Frank Falzon, the SFPD inspector who was White’s buddy and is prominently interviewed (and portrayed dramatically as well) on tonight's program, requested that some of his footage be removed. Ellis refused.
"Falzon makes a rather remarkabh statement on camera where he explains that a lot of cops hated Police Chief Charles R. Gain," Ellis told me.
"And Falzon adds that their hostility was not directed at Gain but toward the man who put him there, George Moscone." The program is certain to raise some questions in viewer’s minds regarding the character of the marvelous men in blue and their tenacious devotion to the image of San Francisco, as they see it. in areas far removed from law and order, in the more dangerous and neurotic realm represented by their pretty boy killer.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 3 January 1984: Looking back at Dan White -- By Susan Sward
One day nine bullets changed their lives. Initially, they had little in common as a group, except for having been close to Dan White or his victims, or having worked somewhere in the city’s court system. Yet, when White, an ex-supervisor from the Excelsior District, shot to death San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor
Harvey Milk five years ago, he touched them all. Now, on the eve of White’s release Friday from state prison, several of these people talked about how the case affected them and what they feel about White after those five year
Frank Falzon:
San Francisco homicide investigator Frank Falzon says the Dan White case still eats at his guts. A mliiion times, he says, he has gone over what he might have done differently. When the call came in to the Police Department about the City Hall shootings, Falzon was one of the homicide investigators "on call.” Until he reached City Hall, Falzon did not know that the killer was White — his friend since childhood, his former teammate on the San Francisco police championship softball team, and someone he considered almost like a kid brother. Looking back on his investigation, Falzon says: “Here was a case that was 1OO percent is its entirety, and yet we lose it. To find a scapegoat in this case, it has to go beyond me —the investigator — and the district attorney who prosecuted the case. "I think it was the law. Without the diminished capacity defense in the psychiatric testimony, there was no defense in this case.” "I ask myself, what did I do for Dan White except tell the truth?" Falzon said. He had helped build the case with all its pieces: murder weapon, motive, the premeditated avoidance of the metal detector at City Hall. During the trial, Falzon was asked by White’s attorney to give his opinion of White, and Falzon responded that before the killings he had thought very highly of his friend. Critics later blasted Falzon, arguing that the case was a classic example of police protection of one of their own. The criticism stung Falzon. “I can take it. I know everyone is looking for an answer, and 1 know Frank Falzon must answer their questions. I have big enough shoulders to handle it. I'll always be an honest cop. I will continue to be that kind of policeman.” Fakon said there's nothing he would have done differently in his handling of the case — even after all these years of self-examination about what he might have done. He said only one person could say what went on almost every minute of the day of the murders. and that was Inspector Frank Falzon. Now Falzon said glumly, "the final chapter hasn't been written yet" on how While will fare outside prison walls. "When are we going to let this thing rest? What does the media want? Are the reporters going to be the semi-literate leaders of the lynch mob? *'How far do you push it?"

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 9 February 1984: Where are Harvey Milk's Clothes
Coroner Boyd G. Stephens has hidden the clothes worn by Harvey Milk the day he was shot to death, and he's not telling anyone, not even the cops, where they are.
Stephens has also secreted away the clothes of assassinated San Francisco Mayor George Moscone. The coroner said he took them from the police property room because he feared unauthorized people might "damage” the evidence. "I'm not saying where it is,” Stephens said of the clothing, which the Police Department acknowledged yesterday was no longer in the property room in the basement of the Hall of Justice. The coroner indicated that the murdered man’s clothing is not in his office, either. "It’s in a private area and there’s only one key, and I’ve got it,” he said. The coroner’s actions have touched off an unlikely tug of war over Milk’s clothes. The attorney for Milk’s estate. John Wahl, called Stephens’ actions "appalling and bizarre.” Wahl said the slained supervisor’s clothes "are the property of Joseph Scott Smith and no one in this city has the right to deprive him of his property.” Smith is Milk’s former lover and heir. Yesterday, the attorney asked Mayor Dianne
Feinstem to intervene with Stephens, but she declined. A spokesman for her office said that she discussed the matter with Stephens and "supported the coroner’s view that Harvey Milk’s clothing remain in a secure place.” Wahl said if the coroner does not surrender Milk’s clothes he will go to court to recover them.
The latest controversy in the five-year-old City Hall slayings began Monday when Smith called police Inspector Frank Falzon. the chief investigator in the Moscone- Milk slayings, and asked for Milk’s clothing. “I told him that I would photograph the property for the record and release it to him,*’ Falzen said. But when he checked he found that the coroner had removed the clothes from the property room. “Dr. Stephens is of the opinion that this case still has potential judicial proceedings," Falzon said. “His feeling is that if we lose control of the clothing, we lose control of the evidence.” Smith did not receive this news without emotion.
What's going on here?” he said. "This case is over. We tried everything we could to get Dan White re-prosecut- ed and it was no go. He has served his time and he's out. Harvey’s clothes are my property and 1 want them. Now the coroner says he’s hidden them. This is looney.”
Falzon said that he now agrees with Stephens. "This whole Dan White case has been so crazy that you never know what might happen next," he said. “I’m a little paranoid about this myself. I’ve got my whole Dan White case investigation file locked up.” 1 called Stephens to ask him if, after all the city has been through over the City Hall murders, a flap over the disposition of Milk's clothes wasn't an avoidable ugliness. Stephens replied that he felt he was safeguarding both his personal reputation and the integrity of the city of San Francisco by keeping the clothing of the two slain men in a secret place."The law gives me the authority to hold and maintain evidence,” he said. "This evidence is secured in a safe place under the chain of custody of the court.” Stephens said that what prompted him to take
the clothing from the police property room —“where people are wandering in and out all the time” — was the concern that the pants the two dead men were wearing on the day of .the murders “might get damaged. “I don’t want thèse clothes to get out of my possession and all of a sudden find a bullet hole in the seat of
the pants that wasn’t there before,” Stephens.said. The coroner said he ^signed out for the clothes” to keep them safe in March of 1983 when allegations were made lira play about the City;Hall murders that White had mutiliatedthe bodiës of his two victims by firing a bullet into the seat of the dead mayor’s pants and crushing Milk’s-genitals with his foot. Stephens said such; charges wëre “absolutely unfounded” and a libel both upon himself and the city. He said the clothes of the victims show that such acts never occured. The play is “The Dan White Incident” by Steve Dobbins, which played here to mixed reviews but is now playing in Los Angeles to hurrah notices. : “The coponer threatened to shut us down, so we dropped the lines in the San Francisco production,” Dobbins said yesterday. The playwright said.that “twoSan Francisco policemen" told him about the alleged mutilitation and he remains unconvinced that such an event did not occur. Dobbins said some of the offending lines had been restored in the Los Angeles production. Stephens said he was going to keep the evidence until he was "convinced that this case is finally over." At that point, he said, he plans to "destroy" the clothes. He seemed unimpressed by the idea that Milk’s clothing should go to his heir.
"My position would be that the clothes should never be returned." he said. “I’d want assurances that the clothes wouldn't end up in a sideshow. His clothes could become like Billy the Kid’s pistol. I would not like to see a mannequin dressed in Mr. Milk’s clothing. Smith is.the director of the Harvey Milk Archives. which collects memorabilia of the slain .gay supervisor. Smith was outraged at the coroner’s remarks. "Billy the Kid? 1 would think Martin Luther King would be a more proper analogy." Smith said that he had no plans’ to make any-use of the clothing his former lover.was slain in. "Hey. that stuff belongs to me. it’s my property and I want it"
Inspector Falzon said: "I'm beginning to think that this whole Dan White thing is never goiag to die — not in this town.” Well, whenever the Dan White case is finally over. 1 think the whole town will be. in Huck Finn’s words, rotten glad of it.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 16 February 1984: State Probes Rumor Of White's Book By Susan Sward
The state attorney general’s office said yesterday it has begun an investigation ofa report that Dan White, who is under parole supervision in Los Angeles County, has received a $50.000 advance to write a book about his life. Chief Assistant Attornev General Steve White said his office was interviewing parole officials about the alleged payment to the killer of Sun Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, but "we dont know any of the facts yet “ The sole source of the allegation about White's book advance is Jeffrey Walsworth. an Orange County attorney who said he represents a group of businessmen who recently offered $10,000 in return for word of White's whereabouts in Los Angeles. The group's statedment was to alert White s neighbors that he lived nearby. Walsworth also said in interviews Monday that White was living in a mansion in the wealthy Bel-Air district, an assertion that was flatly denied by the state yesterday. The attorney said this Information was disclosed by White to one of Walsworth’s clients after White himself contacted the group and a meeting was arranged. Howard Miller, deputy state corrections director in charge of parole, said White "is not living in s mansion" and "not residing in Bel-Air." Miller also said he knew nothing about White obtaining "any $50,000 to write a book." A new state law. which look effort January 1, is aimed at sharply curtailing the book and movie profits a criminal can make from his crime. The law prompted by White's case, requires such profits be placed in a trust for five years while anyone who received at least one quarter of the victim's estate may file damage claims in the courts.
Citing that law, both Assemblyman Art Agnus. of San Francisco, the measure's author, and John Wald, attorney for Scott Smith, the former lover of Harvey Milk, said they were going to press Attorney General John Van de Kamp to find whether White had such a book advance, and if so. to make sure the proper trust fund is set up immediately. Walsworth. an attorney from the city of Orange, did not return repeated calls from The Chronicle yesterday.
In another development in the White case yesterday. Doug Schmidt. White s attorney, issued a statement through a close friend, attorney James Collins, criticising a recent KRON-TV series of stories that stated that Schmidt was trying to interest publishers in a book about the trial. According to KRON, the b ok would include the assertion that police officers searching White's home after the killing failed to discover a diary that could have cast doubt on the defense's portrayal of White's depressed state of mind. Collins. wno would not comment on whether Schmidt is actually working on a bonk about the trial, also said "Channel 4 inferred that Mr. Schmidt was going to dlsclose the current whereabouts of his client. Dan White. That is not true." Collins described Channel. 4's story as "highly distorted and inaccurate. It falsely portrayed both Mr. Schmidt and Inspector Frank Falzon of the San Francisco Police Department. Falzon, who was the chief police investigator on the case and a friend of White, said yesterday he and several other officers "did a very thorough search of White's home following the City Hall killings and found no diary. The inference is the good old friend bypassed the diary." Falzon said. referring angrily to KRONs story “That hurt, to insinuate that I'd deliberately miss a diary. I don't even know if it exists." Larry Lee. the producer of the KRON story, stood by the story. "Our quoted informatlon was accurate — both our direct quotes from Schmidt’s outline and our summarizations."

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 21 September 1984: Herb Caen: ... The Demos have THIS kind of money to throw around? Police Inspector Frank Falzon rec’d a $1943 check from the Demo Nat’l Committee for “100 hours of overtime.” He returned it because he has already been paid for the mere 12 overtime hours he DID work.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 25 October 1984: Ex-Convict's Confession To Two Grisly Murders By Robert Popp
A 42-year-old ex-convict with a long history of violent offenses has confessed to it least two gruesome local slayings, San Francisco homicide investigators said yesterday. Homicide Inspector Frank Falzaon said investigators are looking for evidence linking the suspect William Melvin White Jr., to other crimes, including the disappearance of Kevin Collins, a 10-year-old San Francisco boy who vanished while walkig for a but on February 10. and the slaying of Samantha Voneta Hill, an 18-year old whose dismenbered body was found near Lands End last December. White is being held without bail in City Prison for investigation of homicide, kidnap and sodomy. He was arrested by Oregon state troopers after he was accused of robbing a teenaged hitchhiker near Salem, Ore., on Saturday. After his arrest, White told Trooper Mike Ogle that he had killed two people in California, and Ogle arranged for his return to San Francisco. Falzon said White has confessed to killing 15-year-old Theodore Gomez, who was found dead of stab wounds in Golden Gate Park on September 22. Herman Clark, one of the homicide inspectors working on the Gomez case, said White "told us things only the killer would know." Falzaon said the confession cleared another man whom police had earlier considered a suspect in Gomez’s death. White also led investigators to two graves at Lands End containing the remains of a red-haired teenage boy wearing a jacket inscribed with the name Ozzie. Falzon said White told investigators he cut the boy's body to pieces with a knife, hatchet, machete and a saw on May 13. "If he hadn't showed us where it was. let me tell you, we never would have found It," Falzon said of the corpse. "They (the two graves) had been concealed very, very carefully" Sex crimes officers also are investigating the possibility that White may have kidnaped and sodomizîd a 22 year old men on September 17. Inspector Brad Nicholson said the victim in that assault was handcuffed in a car, threatened with a gun and sodomized twice during a lengthy captivity. Nicholson said the victim escaped after he forced his captor's car to crash on Internate 280 near Army Street. White was wanted on a $250.000 warrant for that kidnaping at the time of his arrest in Oregon, Nicholson said.
California Department of Corrections officials said White was convicted on homicide charges in the Los Angeles area in 1971 and served a five-year sentence in state
After his release, he moved to Pennsylvania, where he was convicted of assault in 1982 and was given a one-year sentence in the Lehigh County Prisor.. Officials at the prison. He said they had records of "assaultive behavior" by White dating back to the 1960s. Falzon said that after While was released from prison in September 1983, he moved back to the Bay Area and lived briefly it the National Hotel on Market Street He then found work as a janitor for the Salvation Army, Falzon said.
In March, White began camping in a group of caves known as the "Love Tunnels" at Lands End. a trysting spot for homosexuals. Homicide Lieutenant George Kowalski said White and other street people were living in the caves and "practicing survival in case of Armageddon."
Police said the grave found on Monday was near White’s encampment. a short distance from El Camino del Mar and directly under a site known as Inspiration Point.
Falzon said some parts of the teenagers dismembered body had been stuffed into a sleeping bag and buried under rocks, brush and a large tree limb. Other parts were found wrapped in a grocery bag in a similar hole 75 feet away. The victim's identity is not known, and a spokesman for the coroner's office said his identification from X-rays and dental records will probably take "a considerable amount of time."

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 30 October 1984: Herb Caen: QUICK, LAY IN a supply of Twinkies: You may have exlerienced an unnerving case of deja vu upon reading reporter Robert Popp’s story on the front page last Thursday. It was about a confessed killer named White who murdered a straight and a gay in a case that was investigated by Inspector Frank Falzon and will be prosecuted by Asst. D.A. Tom Norman. This White is not Dan but William Melvin White Jr. and Norman concedes, “It IS eerie.” Happy Halloween.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 10 January 1985: Herb Caen: IN ONE EAR: Homicide Inspector Frank Falzon is still quizzing his prime suspect in the murder of Chef Masataka (Masa) Kobayashi but is not ready to make an arrest. “Look,” he says plaintively, “this isn’t like the old days in Chicago. We can’t hold him out the window till he confesses” ..

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 9 February 1985: Police Hunt Masa's Gun as a Lead to Killer
San Francisco police appealed to the public yesterday for information about a missing pistol that may provide the key to solving the murder of master chef Masataka Kobayashi. Investigators said the engraved automatic gun was missing from the famed chef’s attache case when Kobayashi’s body was discovered in his Pine Street apartment. "The gun could lead us to the killer,” said Inspector Frank Falzon. Falzon said that Kobayashi, who was beaten to death, carried the pistol in his attache case because he was often out at night with large sums of money. "He also had been known to comment that people could hurt you just because you’re famous,” Falzon said. Kobayashi, 45, who was co-owner of Masa’s restaurant on Nob Hill, was found sprawled in the blood-splattered hallway of his apartment on November 13. The attache case was by his side, but the gun was missing and may have been stolen by the murderer and later sold, Falzon said. It is described as a Llama .300-caliber automatic, blue engraved, serial number 892272. It is worth about $1500. Anyone with information about the gun is asked to contact Falzon or Inspector Carl Klotz at 553-1145 during the day, or 553-1071 at night The mayor's office has offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer. Falzon said “we are looking at certain individuals” as possible suspects in the case.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 31 August 1985: STALKER SUSPECT NAMED By Paul Liberator and Carl Notts San
Francisco police positively identified a suspect last night they say is the “Night Stalker" — a serial killer wanted for 16 California murders.
The suspect — Kicardo Ramirez, a 25- year-old Los Angeles man with a criminal was last seen yesterday afternoon in the East Bay.
Police say he is armed and dangerous. According to police sources, Ramirez turned up in the East Bay yesterday afternoon when he tried to buy guns at a shop in San Pablo. The sources said a clerk talked to Ramirez and sold him shotgun shells. Ramirez was wearing a black cowboy hat, a black vest and a long-sleeve shirt at the gun shop. He disappeared after that, but there was an unconfirmed report that he had been seen early yesterday evening in Santa Rosa, 50 miles north and west of San Pablo. Ramirez, who uses at least five other aliases, may be driving a green 1976 Pontica Gran Prix with California license nunber 1 LFA 239. The announcement of the suspect's identity was made in both San Francisco and Los Angeles last night. San Francisco Police Chief Con Murphy appealed to the public to watch for the suspect.
Ramirez was described by San Francisco police as being a white male of Latin descent. 6-foot-l and weighing 155 pounds. He has black hair and brown eyes. The Los Angeles police said that both his upper and lower teeth were clearly decayed.
The photograph released by both San Francisco and Los Angeles authorities was remarkably similar to a composite drawing of the Night Stalker suspect released earlier this month. Ramirez also uses the aliases of Richard Ramirez, Noah Jimenez, Richard Munoz. Richard Munoz Moreno and Nicholaus Adams, according to the San Francisco police. Ramirez is originally from El Paso, Tex., has lived in Los Angeles and in the San Francisco Bay Area, authorities said. He has what police termed a "lightweight*' criminal record involving drug possession and car theft. "It is important for public safety that the public know what ho looks like and to let the police know if he is seen. "We don’t know where he is,” Murphy said. “We know who we are looking for. Murphy said that Ramirez, who is wanted in connection with 15 killings in Southern California and at least one In the Bay Area, must, have been traveling sometime In the last two weeks. “He had to stop somwhere and got gas somewhere and he must have eaten somewhere. Hopefully, someone will come forward with some information." Both San Francisco and Loss Angeles authorities warned citizens that the suspoct could ho armed. "Don't try to stop him," Murphy said. Instead, he said, the police want to find out where Ramirez is and what car he is driving. Ramirez is the principal suspect because San Francisco police connected a burglary at a Marina District home with the shooting of Peter Pan. a 66-year old accountant who was killed two weeks ago.
The Night Stalker was identified as the man who shot Pan, and police linked him with a burglary at 3637 Baker Street that occurred two days before Pan was shot.
Police did not say what the link was, but one source close to the investigation said Ramirez was connected through stolen property that was found at the Pan murder scene. Murphy said homicide investigators Carl Klutz and Frank Falzoni, who flew to Los Angeles midweek, came up with Ramirez's name last night. "We developed leads with information from Los Angelos," Fälzon sald last night. "And everything came together."
One of the keys to the case apparently were fingerprints or other evidence obtained from a stolen car apparently used by the Night Stalker in a killing in Orange County on Sunday. The car, a 1976 Toyota, was recovered in Los Angeles earlier this week. Falzon said he and Klotz had obtained some information from a case in Lompoc in Santa Barbara County, but they would not say what the information was. Folzon said the inspectors had ‘developed some information" in the East Bay which provided Ramirez's name. Although both the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County sheriff's office also announcei that Ramirez was the suspect last night, the San Francisco police apparently have a different idea about what he might do next. "They have their theories and we have ours.” Murphy said.
The Night Stalker got his name because of his method of operation — his specialty Is entering a house between 10 p.m. and dawn. He usually enters through an unlocked door or window, and ho favors one- story homes near freeways or freeway ramps. The Night Slalker attacks his victims as they sleep. The man has been both a klller and a rapist. Police think his last victims were 29-year old William Cairns, who was on Sunday in Mission Viejo in Orange County. Whoever shot Cairns also sexually assaulted his fiance. Cairns was hanging on to life yesterday but is not expected to live. The Night Stalker's turf generally has been Southern California, but two weeks ago the killer struck in San Francisco. The killer has been linked to 10 murders — two more were added to his total late this week — and at least 21 other attacks ln earlv spring. The killer’s first victim was Dayle Okazaki, 34. who was found dead in her Rosemead condominium on March 18. Officers at the time thought it was a simple murder, but five months later a task force compared notes on a which scenes of unsolved deaths and found they were dealing with a serial killer.
Since then the killer, who also is called "The Valley Intruder” because a number of his victlms lived in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, has struck again and again. The Stalker struck fear into Californians from L„A, to the Bay Area — especially after reports that the killer might be using the freeways and could turn up almost anyplace. Residents of some Southern California neighborhoods reportedly began arming themselves. and police in all parts of the state are being deluged with reports of sightings of the Stalker. San Francisco police, opened a special telephone hotline and reported they were nearly overwhelmed with calls.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 31 August 1985: Persistent Broke the Detectives Stalker Case By Paul Liberatore
Tenacious detective work led San Francisco Police to Ricardo Ramirez as the principal suspect in the Night Stalker ease that has terrified California.
"'You bet we broke this thing’ said homicide Inspector Frank Falzon smiling broadly after a conference last night. Leads developed by Falzon and his partner, Carl Klotz, last night yielded the identity of the elusive suspect in 10 killings. Just 90 minutes before the press conference. Falzon and his partner came up with the suspect’s last name after “receiving statements from individuals from the East Bay who were able to give us a last name." Falzon said. Falzon and Klotz had been holed up in their office most of the day interviewing their East Bay informants. and apparently made one trip to San Pablo in connection with the case. Falzon was doubly proud because his son. Danny, a 25-year-old patrol officer, had also helped with yesterday's major break in the case. The younger Falzon handled a burglary August 15 at a posh, two-
story home at 3637 Baker Street in the Marina District that apparently figured prominently in making the breakthrough. Items from the Baker Street burglary were laier recovered by police, but officers would, not say where they were discovered or what dues the stolen goods yielded that led them to Ramirez.
The Baker Street case, coupled with information in the San Francisco murder of accountant Peter Pan and the wounding of his wife two days later, gave the inspectors the direction they needed. “We put the two together and developed those leads with information from L.A. and eveiything came together,” Falzon said.
He addod that additional leads from sources in Lompoc in. Santa Barbara County also “ended up putting the case together for us." Falzon credited Sin Francisco criminologist Larry Dusour with an important role in the iivestigation. At the Baker Street home, an elegant Mediterranean-style house in the shadow of the Palace of Fine Arts, the residents said last night that they were happy tiat their misfortune had yielded some big clues' in the case. The family, asking that they not be identified, said the burglar entered their house through an open rear window when no^;one was at home. An apparently exhausted Falzon, returning to his office at the Hall of Justice late last night, said, "We’ve been at this since the Fan murder. I hope 1 can go home and get some sleep tonight’’ Then he shut the door of the humicide division to work on into the night.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 5 September 1985: Fingerprints Link to Stalker Suspect By Bimey Jarvis and J. L. Pimsleur
Fingerprints found at the scene of a Los Angeles murder last year match those of the man accused of being the Night Stalker, Los Angeles police said yesterday. ,
The woman was one of 14 victims — at least one of them in San Francisco — believed to have been slain by the Stalker. So far, however, Ricardo Ramirez, 25, the suspect in the killings, has been charged in only one case, the murder in May of another Southern California victim. Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates said yesterday that the prints were lifted from a window screen in the Los Angeles suburb home of a 79-year-old woman found stabbed to death 15 months ago. ‘This is one of the many cases that detectives are researching for possible connection to the... serial killings,” Gates said. In addition to looking into unsolved homicides, Gates said that his investigators, along with police in San Francisco, are reviewing burglaries, kidnapings and molestations reported since 1981. Some of these cases reportedly may be linked by drawings of five- pointed stars, or pentagrams, and scrawled messages found at crime scenes, but investigators were reluctant to talk about this aspect of the case yesterday. San Francisco police Inspector Frank Falzon did say, however, that “a five-pointed star which was suggestive of a satanic symbol” was found on a wall in the Lake Merced home of Peter Pan, whom the Night Stalker is suspected of killing. The pentagram is often used in satanic rites, according to experts on the occult, and Ramirez was said to be obsessed with satanism. Ramirez, who was captured last Saturday after a wild chase through East Los Angeles, has a pentagram tattooed on his forearm, police said. Homicide Lieutenant George Kowalski said yesterday that police also were looking at San Francisco welfare rolls for Ramirez's name, based on a report that he had applied for assistance here. Kowalski said if Ramirez did apply for welfare here, it would help pin down the dates that he was in the city.
Kowalski said Ramirez also was believed to have been treated for an injury or illness at San Francisco General Hospital, and records are being cheeked there.
Last night, San Francisco police interviewed 13 victims of recent Bay Area robberies in the continuing effort to link physical evidence with the suspect’s statewide crime spree. The victims were shown hundreds of pieces of stolen jewelry in a “line-up” of evidence conducted in the Police Department’s fifth-floor gymnasium at the Hall of Justice. Representatives of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and a Los Angeles Police Department criminologist joined San Francisco homicide Inspectors Carl Klotz and Frank Falzon in conducting the line up of evidence. Eight tables loaded with several hundred pieces of jewelry — earrings, pendants, bracelets, pins, necklaces and brooches — were displayed for a two-hour piece-by-piece inspection. Klotz and Falzon said last night that they could not comment on the physical evidence in the case, or whether positive identifications linking Ramirez with the stolen jeweliry had been made, but a smiling Falzon said the inspectors were “extremely pleased with our night's work. San Francisco police also ...revealed yesterday that they are reexamining the evidence in the unsolved murder case of Masataka Kobayashi. Kobayashi, 45, part-owner and chef of Masa’s, the fashionable Nob Hill restaurant, was shot to death in his Pine Street apartment on November 13, 1984. “We do have a suspect in mind in that case, although we are not ruling out Ramirez,” Falzon said. Ramirez was arraigned in Los Angeles Municipal Court on Tuesday on the one murder charge and several connected felonies. Other charges are expected to follow. He also was served last weekend with a San Francisco warrant charging him with the
August 17 murder of Pan and with assaulting Pan’s wife, Barbara. She remains hospitalized. Yesterday, a small-caliber pistol found in Tijuana last weekend was being examined by Los Angeles ballistics experts to determine whether it could be linked to the stalker investigation, authorities said. “We don't know at this point if (the gun) is stolen property or possibly one of the murder weapons,” said Lieutenant Dick Walls of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department Stalker task force.
Walls would not reveal where or how the gun was found, but the Stalker used a small-caliber gun. Yesterday, members of the Los Angeles sheriff’s task force and about 40 cadets from the Sheriff’s Academy scoured the Boyle Heights neighborhood where Ramirez was caught, using metal detectors to try to find a gun that officials believe he threw away during the chase. "We are looking for the .25-caliber (pistol) that we think was dropped in the pursuit,” Walls said.- The Stalker’s victims were shot with either a .22-caliber or .25-caliber pistol, according to authorities.
Koben Vopp oho contributed to this report.


Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 22 October 1985: The Paths Cross Again For White and Falzon By Murk Z. Barabak
Dan White and Frank Falzon: two men whose lives interwined as if scripted in a tragic lay, were together again for the final act. They were chums as fellow officers on San Francisco’s Police force, and Falzon happened to be the homicide inspector on duty Nov. 27, 1978, when White shot and killed Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. Until he reached City Hall, Falzon did not know the killer was White — someone he considered almost like a kid brother. At the Northern Police Station, Falzon took White’s tearful confession within hours of the slayings, and he testified at White’s trial. Critics blasted Falzon after White was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, calling it a classic example of a cop protecting one of his own. Still stung by the criticism even years later, Falzon angrily denied that he ever went easy on White. “Dan was a friend of mine, but he got no breaks from me,” Falzon once said. “In fact, after I took his statement, all I could think was, This guy just admitted two murders —he's going to the death box.’ ” Again yesterday, Falzon was the inspector on duty when another urgent call came, this time from White's younger brother, Tom, reporting Dan White's suicide. Falzon later spoke to reporters, “The tragedies of Nov. 27,1978, affected many people’s lives. Now hopefully the final chapter in San Francisco’s most notorious murders has been put to rest with Dan White taking his own life. Prior to Nov. 27, White always tried to do the right thing. But the day he crossed that line by taking human lives was something he could not live with. I feel grief now for the family of the victim as I did for the families of the victims of 1978.”.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 7 February 1986: 61 S.F. Police Officers Honored at Ceremony By J. lPimtleur
Sixty-one San Francisco police officers received awards al a special Police Commission ceremony last night, including four homicide inspectors who were credited with cracking the “Night Stalker” case. For their work in the Night Stalker investigation, Inspectors Michael Mullano, Frank Falzon, Carl Klotz and Larry Duliour won Meritorious Awards for a "brilliant and classical investigation" representing the "highest tradition of professionalism in the San Francisco Police Department."
The inspectors were honored for linking evidence from the August 17 murder of Peter Pan in his San Francisco home and a Marina district burglary to a series of slayings in Los Angeles. The evidence led to the identification and eventual apprehension of suspect Richard Ramirez in Southern California.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 5 December 1986: S. F. Police Find Suspect !n '73 Murder By Birney Jarvis and Robert Popp
A suspect in the brutal killing 13 years ago of a Nob Hill widow has been tracked down by a couple of San Francisco homicide investigators who combined high-tech computers and common sense to locate the man. Police yesterday identified the murder suspect as Richard Leon Fowler. 35. who is awaiting sentencing in New York state for the killing last year of an elderly Rochester woman. The San Francisco victim was Alice L. Bartley, a 57-year-old retired federal government secretary. Her savagely beaten body was found Oct. 19, 1973, in her modest studio apartment at 925 Jones Street. Investigators said at the lime that ßartiey had been bound and gagged. then beaten, raped and strangled by a man they described as "an animal." San Francisco Homicide Inspector Carl Klotz said a fingerprint found at the Nob Hill murder scene was recently fed into a new $17 million state Department of Justice computer, which spit out an alias that Fowler allegedly had used more than a decade ago when he was arrested in Southern California. Klutz said he and his partner. Inspector Frank Falzon. called the FBI in Washington and asked them to run the alias through their computer. which is programmed to single out and identify suspects through their assumed names. The computer connected the alias to Fowler and revealed that he lived in Rochester, N.Y.. and had just been found guilty of murder, according to Klotz. Police also suspect Fowler of slaying two other elderly women recently killed in the Rochester area. They said Fowler allegedly gets into women’s apartments by offering to help them with their packages. or befriending them in other ways, then attacks them. The .Sun Francisco district attorney's office has been asked to obtain a warrant charging Fowler with the Nob Hill slaying so that he
can be returned here for trial. Klotz said. "It s nice to put a case to rest that's been hugging me for years. I feel we have a good sotid case against Fowler." said Falzon, who was one of the original investigators in the 1973 slayings.


Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 5 March 1987: Herb Caen: Forget the rumor that Dep. Mayor Rotea Gilford will run for Sheriff but believe the one about Frank Falzon, the SFPD’s highly regarded homicide inspector. “I’m weighing the pros and cons,” he says, “and will make up my mind in a couple of weeks. A lot of Mike Hennessey’s deputies want me to run. Deputies around here are Rodney Dangerfields, know what I mean?” .

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 25 March 1987: Herb Caen: house ... Is he or isn’t he running against Sheriff Mike Hennessey? Homicide Inspector Frank Falzon, I mean. “Money’s the problem,” he says. “If I can raise some, I go. The sheriff’s office is a disgrace,” etc., etc     ...

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 4 June 1987: Slaying Aboard Boat Follows Owner's Death By Maitland Zant
Hours after his former companion died at San Francisco General Hospital, a distraught man forced his way aboard his friend’s boat late Tuesday at the new South Beach Marina where the boat’s prospective buyer shot and killed him, police said. Randy Murray, 25, of Redwood City, was shot dead aboard the pleasure boat Wanna Be Merry at the new marina at Pier 40. Thomas Jacobson, 34, of Riverside. told investigators that he was sleeping on the boat when a man began pounding on a door at about 10 p.m. Jacobson was staying overnight on the boat in anticipation of buying it from James Harding, 54, of San Francisco, said homicide Inspector Frank Falzon. Harding died Tuesday of natural causes, Falzon said."He told the person to go away," Falzon said, recounting Jacobson's explanation. "Then, a fist came through the window and started unlocking the door." Murray entered the cabin, mumbling incoherently, Jacobson told police. Jacobson retrieved a 9mm pistol that Harding kept on the boat and fired a warning shot over the intruder's head. When the man rushed toward him, Jacobson fired a fatal shot that entered Murray's shoulder and passed into his chest, police were told. Murray reportedly had been distraught and confused by the death of Harding, Falzon said. His reason for going to tho boat remains unclear "It’s hard to say what was going through his mind at that point," Falzon said.


Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 19 February 1988: Herb Caen:...ADD INFINITEMS: Insurance exec CharlcsGucrrero invited homicide inspector Frank Falzon and Marin public defender Larry Heon to play that “murder mystery” game at dinner the other night, and neither star could unravel it. Guerrero finally solved the crime. And the “murderer” turned out to be Falzon’s wife, Donna ...

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 9 September 1988: Herb Caen column: NOW THEN: Homicide inspectors Frank Falzon and Herman Clark will be glued to the tube tonight, watching Ch. 7s documentary on Robert Lee Massie, the murderer whose sentence was commuted by then-Gov. Reagan. He then killed local liquor store owner, only to have his death sentence reversed by Rose Bird for judicial error (he is still in San Quentin). Falzon, who with Clark captured Massie, growls, “This guy used to say he wanted to die. I hope he gets his wish”...

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 17 December 1988: Police Seek Killer of S.F. Muni Driver By Susan Sward Chnmlett Stuff Witter
Police mounted a search yesterday for the man who fatally stabbed a San Francsco Municipal Railway bus driver on his route through Sunset District. Donald Joseph Mills, a 51-year- old Hunters Point man who had worked as a part-time driver for Muni for eight months, died at 658 a m. yesterday at San Francisco General Hospital.
Mills was stabbed several times at about 6:10 p.m. on Thursday aboard hi Norlega Express bus at the corner of 48th Avenue and Pacheco Street — an area of small, neat homes and apartments one block from the ocean. His assailant was seen running from the scene. Homicide Inspector Frank Fahon said that police believe they have the murder weapon, a large knife found by a postal clerk in the mail box at the intersection. Fingerprint tests were being run yesterday on the blood-smeared weapon.
In another development, police interviewed and released one youth whom two witnesses saw leaving the bus. One of the wltnosses went to the aid of the wounded driver, and the other followed the youth and later pointed out his residence to police. Officers interviewed the youth and learned “he was frightened by what he saw and didn’t want to be involved." "He is now cooperating with us," Falzon said. Faiion added that the youth apparently got off the bus to walk home and turned back to see being attacked by the lone remaining passenger — a Latin or light- skinned black man about 35 years old about 5 feet with a medium build, black hair and dark clothing. "We thnk the suspect may live in or arouid the area and had a short flight to his residence," said Falzon. He added that the killing may have occurrcd during a robbery attempt. -At this time, we don't know if there was aiy loss of property." Falzon said. They did find $8.85 on his (Mills’ person), but his wife says he often carriedl much more cash than that.” The detth of Mills — described by coworkers as a genial, quiet man — was the third killing of a Muni driver in 20 years. In 1981. a driver was shot to death near City College of San Francisco. and in 1968 a third driver died in a holdup in Hunters Point....

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 31 July 1989: The Death of Jane Doe No. 22 Uncovers a Life of Tragedy
By Susan Sward Chronicle Stuff IVriter
When San Francisco homicide Inspector Frank Falzon first saw Sally Cesena, she was stretched out under a sheet on an autopsy table in the coroner’s. office.. She was listed as Jane Doe,No. 22. Within hours, a fingerprint check established thé 28-year-old murder victim’s identity and showed that she had been arrested twice before — once for prostitution and once.for'drug possession. ' At first, there seemed to be nothing very startling about her stabbing death. A mother of four children, Cesena was one of scores of women on the streets of San Francisco who sell their bodies to get money for their drug habits. Once in a while one of these women is killed. Sometimes the cases are solved, but many times no witness comes forward. Leads don'tpan out, and the murder ends up as a dusty file in the homicide office on the fourth floor of the Hall of Justice.
But the case of Cesena, a high school dropout who grew up and died in the Mission District, gnawed at Falzon. After Falzon and his partner, Carl Klotz, visited her bereaved family, Falzon said they decided “to exhaust all efforts to solve this one.” "I saw a nice family that was not only grief-stricken by the loss of Sally, but they were also hurt" when a short article ran in the newspaper identifying her as a prostitute, he said. "They said they didn't realize she had a prostitution history, and they didn't like that being in the paper because that wasn't the woman they knew." Two years later, Falzon hopes the work he and his partner put into
Two years later, Falzon hopes the wpr.k he and his partner put into lHe case may pay off. In connection with- Sally’s death, he recently interviewed Alfonso Cruz,'who'Was convicted last year of slaying a Boston prostitute. Cruz, a 31-year-old, unemployed citizen of Mexico, denies ever killing anyone. Falzon thinks otherwise.
Cruz was arrested by Boston police as he stood with a knife in his hand over the butchered body of a prostitute. Detectives found several trinkets in his pockets, including pantyhose, a small red handkerchief and several pieces of jewelry, that pollce speculaie may belong to other slain women.
"Séria, killers will many times take something from a victim, and when they want to recollect memories of this victim, they hold it, fondle it," said Boston homicide Inspector Robert Tinlln. Among the trinkets were a small circnlar pin and a barrette with a feat 1er dangling off it. When Falzon recently showed the items to one of Sally’s sisters, "tears welled up in her eyes," Falzon said. “She grabbed her face and turned away," he said, and then she identified the-items as belonging to her sister.
How Did It Happen?
Today, Sally’s family lives in the shadow of her death, wondering how she came to be on that lonely stretch of Shotwell Street where neighbors heard her moaning and called police at 9:35 p.m. on June 2. Arriving officers found her unconscious. They concluded that she had been dragged by her attacker. Her knees were rubbed raw. She had been siabbed ln the stomach. Police don’t know for certain that Sally's killer approached her for sex, but Shotwell is one cf those streets where prostitutes in ihe Mission take their “dates." "The Mission is like the end of the line for prostitutes," says San Francisco police Lieutenant Mike Kemmitt of the vice squad, it’s like $90 dates— pretty slim. "I have seen some prostitutes who have drifted from the Tenderloin to the Mission, and whtn I see them it seems they’re at the end of their rope — physically, mentally, in every way," Kemmitt said. "It’s a vicious cycle. They get into prostitution to support their habit. After they are into prostitution. a lot of them take more drugs to cope with the fact they’re prostitutes” — to help numb them to the endless run of customers in dark alleys. Sally's mother, Dolores, said she never knew what Sally did all those nights that she went out "She was just a wild girl nobody could stop," sighed Mrs. Cacsena .
She Was a Fighter
From her earliest years, Sally was a fighter. She grew up in a working class family with five brothers and sisters, living is a Mission District flat. At one point, her father, whom she idolized, taught her how to box, and her mother remembers Sally often fighting with someone in her family or with the kids in the public schools.
Before she graduated from Mission High School, Sally dropped out and got pregnant. By the tine her second baby was coming, her common-law husband, Albert Leaillo, said he couldn’t make ends meet as a shoe salesman, so he started selling drugs. Soon he and Sally became frequent users. In 1984, a judge sent Leaillo to a drug rehabilitation program for two years, and Sally ended up collectlng welfare and trying to raise a family in a Tenderloin hotel. The kids made it kind of hard, but she loved the kids," said one of her former boyfriends, Eurnett Larrlmore. "She wasn’t going to give them up for nothing, but you could see they were cramping her style."
Her heavy drug and alcohol use continued, and she sold herself on the streets of the Tenderloin to help support herself, Larrimore said. In 1986 she lost custody of her children to her common-law husband. Toward the end, she started telling friends and relatives that her life was unraveling. A few days before she died, Sally told her mother that she wanted to take her own life. "She said, 'No one wants to help me. feed me, shelter me,”’ the mother recalled. "I told her, 'Don’t talk like that.' She said, 'It's the truth. No one cares for me.’ I said, 'Sally, we all care for you.' " Dolores Cesena never saw her daughter alive again. Sally’ s liver was severely damaged when her killer stabbed her, and she died on an operating table at San Francisco General Hospital on June 3,1967. "Deep down inside. I knew her life was catching up with her, and this was the only way she could rest," said one of Sally’s friends, Lisa Hauls. "I would have figured she would die on drugs or something. But I never figured she would get killed like that."
He Stared at Her Photo
Falzon. who has spent 25 years on the San Francisco police force, says he knows he doesn’t have enough evidence yet "for the district atterney to be able to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that Cruz is Sally's killer." But he remains convinced. During an interview at a stonewalled prison outside Boston, one thing really struck Falzon about Cruz, who stands about 5 foot 10 with blast wavy hair and a jutting jaw. "When I showed her picture to him, he stared at it and wouldn’t stop staring at It," Falzon said. "Even when we went on to other questions. his eyes went back to the pbotograph. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead. That fascinated me.”
Cruz denied he ever killed anyone. He said he found Sally's jewelry in a garbage bin while he wâs living for a while in San Francisco He said he never met Sally.
Cruz's conviction in the Boston case is now on appeal. If he loses, his sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole will remain in effect. In the meantime, Falzon’s boss, homicide Lieutenant Jerry McCarthy. says a witness Is needed before a San Francisco murder charge could be filed in Sally’s case. So Falzon waits, hopiig to get that witness. "I had lost my father as a young boy. and I saw my mother try to raise four kids." Falzon said. "When I met Sally’s mother and saw how- genuine the family was, 1 felt for her. "As policemen, we have to be her friend, and I promised her we’d do all we could to find her daughter's killer."
Frank Joseph Falzon Retirement on his 50th birtday, after 28 years on police force on 22 February 1992.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 31 March 1992: A Stormy Career for Hongisto -- He has often had public feuds with police and jailers he tried to govern By David Dietz
Story mentions Frank Falzon's comments about new Police Chief Hongisto...
"Humane Cop" In an interview, Frank Falzon, a retired San Francisco homicide detective, recalled three decades ago when he and Hongisto were partners at Potrero Station. He praised Hongisto as a “humane cop before it was the in thing to do” and said he will make a good chief. But Falzon noted Hongisto’s keen political interests even then. “Right from the beginning, he knew he was going to be a politician,” Falzon said. “He told me his ambition was to be a politician.”.


Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 14 April 1992: Herb Cain column: BAY CITY BEAT: There’ll be a retirement party May 8 at the Irish Cultural Center for Frank Falzon, the legendary S.F.P.D. homicide inspector who was on the Zodiac, Zebra, SLA and Moscone/Milk cases with his partner, Ed Erdelatz. Falzon, who quit the force on his 50th birthday after 28 years, says, “In the old days, a good cop could aspire to be chief some day, like Cahill and Neider. Now you have to be a social worker or a politician, so it’s time to get out” Erdelatz will go two more years ...

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 9 May 1995: Tiny firm develops murder game on CD-ROM By Michelle Quinn
Chronicle Stoff Writer
A man's body, covered with bits of concrete, floats off Pier 92 In San Francisco Bay. The body is supposed to be dead but the actor, Skip Przyborowski, shivers so much he's hardly a convincing corpse. But once he’s warmed-up and sprinkled with water the corpse is ready for the morgue while the coroner delivers his line, “Look's like severe trauma to the back of the head." Around the pier and in rented offices this month, a film crew is shooting scenes for an upcoming game on a disc called San Francisco Homicide. Based on a real murder case in the 1970s, the game is the story of a rookie cop who has two weeks to solve the murder of a two-timing gambler. As in real life, the game doesn't end in an arrest, but the cop, or player, has to build a solid case and convince a jury.
For InterWorks, a small San Francisco company that specializes in training CD-ROMs and videos, Homicide is its first real shot at the consumer market. For Grober Electronic Publishing, which is financing the game’s development, Homicide is the company’s leap into the game market after a decade of CD-ROM encyclopedia and reference book hits. The 100-year-old publishing house owned by the French company Lagardere Group, Grolier of Danbury, Conn., is getting into the game business because it’s where the growth is, said David Argan bright, president of Grolier Electronic Publishing. The publisher came out with the first CD-ROM encyclopedia in 1986, but since then the market has become glutted with CD-ROM encyclopedias, with the main challenge from Microsoft and Compton’s NewMedia. People buy one encyclopedia, said Arganbright, but they buy at least a dozen games. For San Francisco’s forensic experts, the CD-ROM game is a chance to get their 15 minutes of fame Though the names have been changed from the original case to protect the innocent, a real investigator plays a role, as does a medical investigator and a detective. A former deputy police chief...
MURDER: Former S.F. Policemen Star in a CD-ROM Game -- From Page B1
also holds forth about murder.
In Los Angeles, police officers moonlight as television news experts or write scripts for sitcoms. In San Francisco, cops show up in video games. ^MIt’s introducing me to the modern world,” said Kevin Mullin, a retired San Francisco deputy police chief and criminal history writer. "It’s the front end of the future.” To help the player, Frank Falzon, a retired police inspector, and Mullin recently donned makeup for their cameo performances in Homicide. David Zimmerman, the city and county’s medical investigator, plays the coroner who carts away the body; Kirk Brookbush, a San Francisco detective, gathers evidence as the game’s criminologist and Michael Brown, a current San Jose police detective, consulted on the CD-ROM game. Paul Drexler and Julie Marsh, the co-founders of InterWorks, had developed two other games before Homicide but in January, Grolier agreed to finance Homicide in a contract worth "well into six figures,” Drexler said. "It’s analogous to producing a low budget feature film." For the police officials, the game is a chance to show how difficult it is to pursue an investigation and get a conviction. They occasionally had the scripts changed for authenticity. In agreeing to do the CD-ROM game, Falzon asked that the game be nonviolent and give the player a realistic sense of how hard a police officer’s job is. “People think it is easy to solve a murder," Falzon said. “I think by playing this game you will feel the frustrations and successes that a detective actually lives. It will make you more aware of how difficult some cases are to solve. “Evidence can be twisted whether for the prosecution or for the defense." InterWorks, with financial backers, is racing to make its July 15 deadline for a rough version of the game (the final version is due in September). Grolier plans to sell the game for Christmas 1995 at $49.95 a pop. Solving a homicide is usually difficult, said the crime experts-turned-actors. But the reasons behind a murder are often quite simple. “An old detective once told me when you get down to it, most homicides are about love or money,” Mullin says in the game’s opening. “Sometimes, they are about both.”.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 18 September 1998: Dan White Had Other Targets, Cop Says; Plot against Willie Brown, Carol Ruth Silver alleged By Jaxon Van Derbeken
Dan White intended to kill not just George Moscone and Harvey Milk during his shooting spree 20 years ago but two other members of the city's liberal establishment,
including future Mayor Willie Brown, according to the lead homicide inspector on the case. Former police Inspector Frank Falzon said that White made the revelation in 1984, after he had served five years in prison for the killings of Moscone and Milk. Falzon related White's confession to author Mike Weiss, who broke the story. White and Falzon were friends before Nov. 27,1978, the day White gunned down Moscone and Milk at City Hall. Falzon questioned White later that day after White turned himself in. White, who was convicted of manslaughter after asserting the infamous junk food-based ‘Twinkle defense,” invited Falzon to meet with him in Los Angeles during tho 1981 Summer Olympics, the former inspector said. Over the course of two days. White confessed that he had plotted to kill not only Mayor Moscone and Milk, the city's first openly gay supervisor, but also Brown, who was then a member of the state Assembly, and Supervisor Carol Ruth Silver, Falzon said. He blamed all four for Moscone’s refusal to reappoint him to the Board of Supervisors seat he had quit one year earlier, Falzon told Weiss. "I was on a mission. I wanted four of them,” White told Falzon, according to the article. “Carol Ruth Silver — she was the biggest snake of the bunch. And Willie Brown. He was masterminding the whole thing.”
Brown had left Moscone’s office by a back door just before the mayor saw White in. Silver was in her law office nearby and came to City Hall after the shootings.
“To react 20 years later is not productive,” Brown said yesterday. “I guess I was the last person... DAN WHITE: Page A22 Coil
DAN WHITE: Willie Brown Was on Hit List From Page A19
...to see Mayor Moscone alive, except for Dan White.” Falzon, too, was reluctant to discuss the case. “(White) owned up to what he had done — he told me basically that he had a real bad day,” Falzon said. “It could have been a lot worse — Willie and Carol Ruth were very lucky people.” happened. It was just a sad time in the history. Falzon, who retired from the force in 1992 and now works for a title insurance company, said he regrets that old wounds have been reopened by the revelations. Falzon said that after returning from Los Angeles in 1984, he told his colleagues at the homicide unit what White had said but dropped the matter.
“At the time, the city was healing,” he said yesterday. “None of this was going to be helpful to anybody. It’s not helpful today, except in clarifying people’s minds what
White canmitted suicide in 1985 at his home in Visitacion Valley. Douglas Schmidt, the attorney iho persuaded a jury to convict White of manslaughter instead of murder, said yesterday, “My thought has always been that it (White’s killing spree) was a boil-over, spur-of-the-moment thing. If he had said that (he was gunning for Brown and Silver), that is the kind of thing that would have come in handy for the prosecution at the time of trial. He certainly never told me that." Silver, now a real estate lawyer, said the revelation strengthed her feeling that the Police Department had gone easy on White, a former police officer and firefighter. “I always believed Dan White got away with murder, that he entered City Hall with the full intent to shoot George, and perhaps a lesser intent to shoot Harvey,” she said. “I never really believed he was out to get me, but now I do.” Silver said she had had coffee with a constituent that day and had broken her routine to drink a second cup, delaying her arrival at City Hall. “That saved my life," she said. “I can’t tell you today why I drank that second cup of coffee. Life is very accidental sometimes.”

F. He was a Vice president and business development administrator at Pacific Coast Title Co., in Marin County. in 1999.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 26 November 1999: Memories That Won’t Die -- For the people who were there, movie brings back the notorious murders and trial By Sylvia Rubin
Confessing to the multitudes of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, Dan White wept and whined — a man come undone. When he explained why he gunned them down in City Hall, his voice turned cool. Officer Frank Falzon, White's close friend, took the confession on Nov. 27, 1978. “It was a day that will stay with me the rest of my life," Falzon said last week. “It's very much alive." Painful memories may be exposed again on Sunday when Showtime broadcasts “Execution of Justice," a cable movie starring Tim Daly (“Wings") as White, Peter Coyote as Milk and Stephen Young as Moscone. The movie portrays White as a deeply troubled man, while making no excuses for his actions. The lives and deaths of Milk, Moscone and White and the sensational trial, with its Twinkie defense that spared White a murder conviction, have spawned books, plays, documentaries, even an opera. Why revisit it?
Daly, who also produced the Showtime film, thinks the issues are still chillingly current. “Unfortunately, we as a society continue to produce, at an alarmingly regular rate, these Wheaties-box, All-American ... killers. Dan White was the poster boy for the disenfranchised white male.” The actor has been itching to play White for years. For one thing, he happens to be a dead ringer for the former supervisor. "Who better than me to play him?” he says. “It's always interesting when benign good looks belies something more complicated."
The actor, who got his break in Barry Levinson’s “Diner,” went on to play Joe Hackett, the serious brother, on NBC’s “Wings” for eight seasons. He played David Koresh in the 'IV movie “In the Line of Duty. Ambush in Waco,” and starred in the Stephen King miniscrics “Storm of the Century.”
In the Showtime movie. White is portrayed as an insecure, immature man who was out of his league in big-city politics. “Dan White didn't belong in City Hall," says Falzon, a police officer and vice president and business development administrator at Pacific Coast Title Co.,in Marin County. “He was in over his head. The guy I knew, he was a class act, but he was like a pressure cooker that built up and up, and he crossed the line.” Interviews with others who were in San Francisco at the time reveal that 21 years later, emotions run from profound grief to indifference to irritation that White's name is remembered at all. “I can't think of Dan White without sighing,” says real estate agent Ray Brown, a friend of White’s, who pauses for a long while before speaking. ‘Twenty-one years later. I'm still sad. I cry in my heart. Nobody should have been killed. I feel a profound sadness.” The numbing shock of the City Hall murders was made more profound because they came less than a week after the unthinkable mass suicide in Jonestown. “At the time of the killings, everything was bigger than life,” says mayoral candidate Tom Ammiano, who is featured in the movie. “I never thought about what was going on in Dan White’s mind, bul the movie showed me the mundane, ordinary things in his life, the sum of which led to an extraordinarily tragic event.” Daly listened to White’s confession tape many times and still found it difficult to get into his head. “When Dan seemed most emotional was when he was talking about himself,” Daly says. “That's when he choked up and started crying. It's a really weird, bizarre state to get to as an actor — there you are talking about murdering people and you're feeling sorry for yourself. There's a level of twisted thinking that goes along with that. That was a very tricky thing to get to.” White served slightly more than five years in Soledad state prison and was released to Los Angeles on a yearlong parole. Nine months later, he killed himself by asphyxiation in his garage. He was 39. He left behind his wife, Mary Ann, and three young children. White, the baseball star, firefighter and police officer from the Excelsior, never found peace of mind. “He didn t have any idea when he went into politics wnat it was all about,” Daly says, "He.thought being on the Board of Supeivisors was like being on a softball team. ' Most of his life was spent trying on jobs for size, then tossing them away. White resigned from the board 10 months after he was elected, then changed his mind and wanted the job back. Moscone gave White the impression he would reappoint him, but named another man to the position. The night before the murders. White got a call at home from a radio reporter seeking his reaction to Mosconc's decision. KCBS reporter Barbara Taylor made that call. ‘To this day, 1 can't discuss it without getting goose bumps,” says Taylor, still with KCBS. “He had no idea that Moscone was not going to reappoint him.”
A novice reporter at the time. Taylor found herself a part of the story. “I got letters, death threats. I was thrust into a giant story that had a profound effect on me. That I had anything to do with the murders is patently absurd,” she says. “What was so distressing and upsetting to me was that I couldn't believe that Moscone’s press secretary would tell me and not tell him first. They dropped the ball in a very inhumane and insensitive way.’
White shot Moscone first, then reloaded and confronted Milk. Jim Rivaldo, a Milk campaign activist who is now campaigning for Mayor Willie Brown, was the last person to speak to Milk that day. "My emotions about the assassinations have always been mixed," he says.'I shed lots of tears, but I knew even then that this locked Harvey into histoiy as a symbol, a rallying point.” Harry Britt, who succeeded Milk on the Board of Supervisors, says he didn't get the opportunity to cry that day. "It was one of the busiest days of my life; within an hour of getting the phone call, there were 30 people at my house, organizing the march that night, where I was to be the speaker. I remember that day not as a day of grieving — that came later - but as the extraordinary coming together of Harvey's people." The psychology of Dan White is of no interest to him. says Britt, now a professor of cultural studies at New College of California. "I don’t sit around thinking about Dan White. Dan White is a rather an important footnote at this point.” Six months after the murders, when the jury' returned a verdict of voluntary manslaughter, there were riots in the streets. Doug Schmidt was the criminal defense attorney who admits that his career was damaged by the widely negative reaction to White's sentence. Today, he says he has put the case behind him. "I've talked about this till I’m blue in the face; I still believe the defense was completely valid." he says. 'To me. the emotional aspects have long passed.’’ In many ways, 1978 doesn't seem so far away, given San Francisco's upcoming mayoral race between an ultra-liberal gay man and a longtime liberal politician. "There are still a lot of Dan Whites out there who are not going to buy into the program," Falzon says. "If there is a lesson to be learned, it is that everyone has to keep the lines of communication open."

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 14 February 2004: 2 inmates charged in decades-old slayings DNA evidence ties suspects to S.E womens deaths
By I axon Van Derbeken Chronicle Staff Writer
Armed with new DNA evidence, San Francisco authorities on Friday charged two prison inmates with raping and murdering women in cases that date back more than 20 years. Both inmates were scheduled to be freed later this month for other crimes but will now remain in custody pending the setting of bail. In the second case, police long believed that another man was responsible for the rape and killing. That changed when physical evidence...
Police say the first crime dates back nearly 25 years and claimed the life of Laura Stanton, a 27-year- old bartender, who was raped and then bludgeoned to death with a piece of wood. She was attacked as she drove home to the Marina district on July 31,1979. The next day, her nude body was discovered next to Sir Francis Drake Elementary School in Hunters Point. The man who now faces charges, 48-year-old Kenneth Crain, had been questioned in 1987 by police during the investigation of the Stanton case. The Stanton slaying got a fresh look when retired San Francisco police Inspector Frank Falzon contacted the homicide unit in 2002. “It was a case that had bothered him — he was aware that there was biological evidence, and he was anxious that it be submitted for analysis,” Hennessey said. Falzon remembered how Crain was interviewed after police had gotten a tip. “We went and talked to him—at that time we didn’t have the physical evidence,” Falzon said. “We were just never able to wrap it up.” “I was pretty excited when I heard about the DNA — we were going in the right direction, we just didn’t have the perfection we have with DNA,” Falzon added. “This is good news.” Police say Stanton was kidnapped after visiting Union Street, where she had once worked as a bai tender. Her partially nude body was left in a pathway near the school. “She was an absolutely adorable young lady,” Falzon said. “She wasn’t looking for any trouble, it just found her.”... Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the East Bay Times on 24 May 2005: Fully prepared
By Bay Area News Group

FRANK Falzon has seen it all. He spent 28 years with the San Francisco Police Department, the last 21 as a homicide inspector. In retirement now, he hasn’t lost his sense of humor, no matter how macabre the subject matter. He was in South San Francisco last week for a speaking engagement. He discussed some of his more memorable cases, albeit ones with an ironic twist. For instance, there was the one-time Hell’s Angels hit man who was being questioned by Falzon in a murder case.
During interrogation, the guy refused to answer any of the inspector’s questions. He just sat there glaring at Falzon. Finally, in some frustration, he read the accused his Miranda rights. “But I got too close to him and violated his personal space,” Falzon recalled. “I was just inches from his face. He still didn’t say anything. He was sitting there handcuffed. Finally, he raised his hands and tugged at his lower lip. And then I saw it.” Yep, tattooed on the inside of his lower lip were just two words: “F*** y**.” Apparently, he had been preparing for something like this for some time. Later, during the cycle dude’s trial, the judge noticed that the defendant kept staring at Falzon while pulling at his lower lip. In chambers, the judge asked Falzon what was going on. Falzon told the judge about the crude tattoo. That took care of the situation. Falzon noted, however, that, “If you’re having a bad day, well, just tug on your lip.”
And there was another true story that got a chuckle from the audience. Falzon was called to a murder scene at a San Francisco playground. The dead body lay in what amounted to center field on a baseball diamond. A crowd was milling about. Falzon’s partner approached and asked if he should gently disperse the curious. Falzon, a one-time baseball player himself, said: “Sure. You take right field, I’ll take left, and it looks like the guy on the grass has center covered.”
David Letterman should be so quick. Through the years, Falzon was involved in some very high-profile investigations, including the Zebra and Zodiac slayings and the killings of Juan Corona and Richard Ramirez. But it’s those lighter moments that have stuck with him. Falzon lives in Marin County.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 20 March 2010: Putting an end to a widow’s tragic ordeal By Jaxon Van Derbeken and Matthai Kuruvila
Phan Nguyen was left with nothing. Her husband, Tong Van Le, 44, was trying to make a living running a market in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights, but he was executed at his Novato home, prosecutors say, by men who went after him for reporting a holdup at his store. That was in September 2008. Nguyen, a Vietnamese immigrant who speaks limited English, was helpless — she was too afraid to return to her home, and she couldn't keep up her husbands... [Frank Falzon was involved in this case.]

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 17 October 2010: WAYBACK MACHINE - Final chapter in city's tragic history - By Johnny Miller
Here’s a look at the past. Items have been culled from The Chronicle’s archives: 1983 Oct 22: Former Supervisor Dan White killed himself this week in 1983.
Dan White and Frank Falzon: two men whose lives interwined as if scripted in a tragic lay, were together again for the final act. They were chums as fellow officers on San Francisco’s Police force, and Falzon happened to be the homicide inspector on duty Nov. 27, 1978, when White shot and killed Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. Until he reached City Hall, Falzon did not know the killer was White — someone he considered almost like a kid brother. At the Northern Police Station, Falzon took White’s tearful confession within hours of the slayings, and he testified at White’s trial. Critics blasted Falzon after White was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, calling it a classic example of a cop protecting one of his own. Still stung by the criticism even years later, Falzon angrily denied that he ever went easy on White. “Dan was a friend of mine, but he got no breaks from me,” Falzon once said. “In fact, after I took his statement, all I could think was, This guy just admitted two murders —he's going to the death box.’ ” Again yesterday, Falzon was the inspector on duty when another urgent call came, this time from White's younger brother, Tom, reporting Dan White's suicide. Falzon later spoke to reporters, “The tragedies of Nov. 27,1978, affected many people’s lives. Now hopefully the final chapter in San Francisco’s most notorious murders has been put to rest with Dan White taking his own life. Prior to Nov. 27, White always tried to do the right thing. But the day he crossed that line by taking human lives was something he could not live with. I feel grief now for the family of the victim as I did for the families of the victims of 1978.”. Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the New York Post on 17 May 2016: Lead investigator reveals ‘suspect’ in unsolved murder of famed restaurateur By Jamie Schram     

The prime suspect in the 1984 unsolved murder of legendary former Manhattan chef Masa Kobayashi is a drifter who was accused of molesting the victim’s relative, The Post has learned. Masa — who shot to stardom in the early 1980s after opening the posh French bistro Le Plaisir on the Upper East Side and later, Masa’s Restaurant on the West Coast — was beaten to death with a gun he carried for protection in November 1984, according to the former chief investigator on the case, San Francisco Homicide Inspector Frank Falzon. Kobayashi had moved to San Francisco from New York City months earlier and opened Masa’s, a celebrity haunt that attracted the likes of Paul Newman, Shirley MacLaine and Steve Jobs. Just before he was killed, Masa, 45, confronted a man suspected of molesting the restaurateur’s relative, Falzon told The Post, revealing new details about the murder. “Masa wanted [his relative] to stay away from the suspect.”
“We suspected that [the man], who knew karate, put [Masa] in a chokehold and broke a bone around the neck, and we think he hit [Masa] over the head with the automatic, which was missing,” said Falzon, who retired from the SFPD in 1992. The suspect, who was in his early 20s at the time, admitted to police that he was the last person to see Masa alive — and failed a polygraph test, Falzon said. But then he clammed up and hired a lawyer.
The man has never been charged with the crime, but “based upon our investigation, he remains the primary suspect” in Masa’s murder, Falzon said.
The Post is withholding the man’s name because he hasn’t been arrested. The SFPD said this week that Masa’s slaying remains an “open homicide case” and declined to characterize the man’s alleged role. Efforts to reach the man, who hung out around Masa’s apartment building, were unsuccessful because his name doesn’t appear in public records. But his lawyer, Tony Tamburello, told The Post, “[The police] have a theory that is not supported by any forensic evidence and anything independent.” Masa had moved his family into the apartment building near Chinatown, where the eatery owner’s relative would disappear for hours with the man, said Masa’s former maitre d’, John Cunin, who discovered his boss’s body. “When Masa questioned his [relative] about it, [the kin] would say they were reading the Bible together,” said Cumin, noting that he was briefed on the investigation at the time. Masa’s family eventually got the relative out of the city.
Then on Nov. 11, 1984, Masa closed his restaurant for the night and walked back to his building, where police believe the man was waiting for him and demanded to know where the relative was, according to Falzon and Cunin. The pair are believed to have gotten into a war of words as the man followed Masa to the door of his apartment, and things turned violent, Falzon and Cunin said. Under police questioning, the man admitted that “he went to Masa’s apartment and was the last one, we knew, to have seen Masa alive,” said Falzon, who convinced the guy to take a polygraph test. “The next day, [the polygraph expert] came back and said, ‘He did it. I studied the charts. There’s no doubt in my mind,’” Falzon quoted the expert as saying. But polygraph tests are not admissible in a court of law, and Falzon didn’t have enough evidence to charge the suspect. The case stayed cold. Over the years, some media reports have linked Masa’s slaying to the infamous “Night Stalker” serial killer, Richard Ramirez, who died of lymphoma in 2013 on California’s death row. Falzon, who was on the Night Stalker Task Force and helped solve the case in 1985, dismissed the idea that Ramirez killed Masa because his MO was totally different. “The Night Stalker would break in, steal all of your valuables and destroy you. Nothing like that here,” Falzon said.Masa’s family declined to comment for this article.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 14 March 2017: Decades later, pain lingers for family of victims in SF murder
by Evan Sernoffsky
March 14, 2017
Police detectives search throughout the rubble from the house at 1301 Kansas Street in San Francisco was set on fire by Angelo Pavageau after he murdered Frank Carlson, and brutally beat and raped Carlson's wife Photo ran 04/20/1974
If Frank Carlson had died any other way, his family said they could have mourned his loss, treasured their memories of the young husband and moved on.
But when Angelo Pavageau tortured and killed the 25-year-old aspiring journalist before sadistically raping and beating Carlson’s wife in their home in the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, he plunged his victims’ families into a lifelong trauma that continues 43 years later.
Pavageau, now 68, was scheduled for a parole review in April, and as with the 12 previous times he had gone before the panel, Frank Carlson’s family was ready for a fight. They asked the community and lawmakers to submit letters to the parole board, and they created a website, urging action from the public, all the while preparing to offer statements to the board. There was an unexpected twist in the case Friday, though, when the convicted killer opted to postpone the review, thereby dodging recent laws that allow the parole board to lengthen the time before Pavageau’s next hearing. The case underscores the fact that even with the passage of state victims’ rights laws, people affected by violent crime are often forced to face their ordeals in perpetuity. “The most frustrating thing about this process is it forces our family to relive this over and over and over again,” Eric Carlson, 59, said in an emotional interview with The Chronicle. “My life has still not recovered,” he said.
The attack on April 19, 1974, stands as one of San Francisco’s most horrific crimes, shocking the city’s most hardened homicide detectives in an era marked by serial killings, notorious murders and extreme violence. The crime has stayed with Eric Carlson — who was 16 at the time of the killing — but so have his undimmed memories of his brother, an aspiring journalist who was a graduate of San Francisco State University. “He was a really good person,” Eric Carlson tearfully recounted. “He was my big brother and he always looked out for me, and I looked up to him.” After his murder conviction, Pavageau was condemned to die in the gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison — a sentence that was reduced to life with the possibility of parole in 1976 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional. His state-appointed attorneys have argued for his release from the California Medical Facility at Vacaville, saying he has admitted to the crime, is remorseful and has been rehabilitated. Eric Carlson’s mother, Elizabeth “Betty” Carlson, made it part of her life’s work to guarantee that her son’s killer never got out of prison, testifying at every one of Pavageau’s parole hearings — including a stretch of 10 between 1980 and 1991. Before she died in 2010, Eric Carlson promised her he would carry on her fight. In 2008, two years after Pavageau was last denied parole, state lawmakers passed the California Victims’ Bill of Rights Act, better known as Marsy’s Law. The law allows the state parole board to extend the time between hearings to up to 15 years to cut down on the frequency with which victims’ families had to appear before the panel and relive a horrible ordeal that befell their loved ones. By deferring the hearing, Pavageau will have three years before he’s up for parole again. Retired San Francisco homicide detective Frank Falzon, who helped solve the 1974 murder of Frank Carlson by Angelo Pavageau.
While a hearing in April would have reopened many wounds, for the first time it could have given the Carlson family a longer period to heal.“It would be a way to move on from the recurring trauma — put it in a place and not have to open it up and deal with it so often,” Eric Carlson said. The nightmare began the night of April 19, 1974, when Pavageau broke into Frank and Annette Carlson’s home on the 1300 block of Kansas Street. Annette Carlson, 24, was asleep in an upstairs bedroom while Frank Carlson worked downstairs. Armed with a knife, Pavageau, a postal clerk and mail truck driver who lived down the block, sneaked in through the upstairs window, startling Annette Carlson awake around midnight. Her screams brought her husband running upstairs, she testified during the trial. The assailant forced Annette Carlson to tie her husband up with a telephone cord in the downstairs of the two-bedroom Victorian while he turned up the stereo. As the wife watched, Pavageau smashed Frank Carlson in the head with a hammer so many times its steel claw broke. He continued his beating with a 3-inch-thick chopping block, then a bottle of pennies, and a heavy vase.
“‘Why doesn’t this bastard just die? Just die, die!’” Pavageau said toward the end of the savage attack, according to Annette Carlson’s testimony.
As the stereo blared, Frank Carlson’s head eventually wobbled limply forward in death. The coroner said the victim was so badly beaten that every inch of his skull was crushed. Eric Carlson at his home in Alamo, Calif., on Thursday, March 9, 2017. Carlson's older brother was brutally murdered in his Potrero Hill home in 1974. The killer, Angelo Pavageau, is up for parole next month and Eric will be there fighting to keep the convicted killer behind bars.
Eric Carlson at his home in Alamo, Calif., on Thursday, March 9, 2017. Carlson's older brother was brutally murdered in his Potrero Hill home in 1974. The killer, Angelo Pavageau, is up for parole next month and Eric will be there fighting to keep the convicted killer behind bars.Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle “He not only murdered her husband right in front of her, but he took her upstairs and subjected her to three hours of rape and torture,” retired San Francisco homicide Inspector Frank Falzon said in a recent interview with The Chronicle. In his 22 years as a homicide detective, Falzon said, the attack was “the most aggravated case I ever worked — and I worked some bad ones.” During his time with the Police Department, Falzon investigated the Zodiac and Zebra killings, the San Francisco City Hall slayings of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, and the “Night Stalker” killings by Richard Ramirez. Now in his mid-70s, he still recalls the particulars of the Pavageau case, including exact addresses, names and the horrific details. Falzon said that after Pavageau was through raping Annette Carlson, the killer picked up a rocking chair and began bludgeoning her with it. He tried to finish her off by cutting her wrist, leaving her to die as he poured paint thinner around the house and set it ablaze.
Annette Carlson regained consciousness as the flames grew around her and crawled naked out of the window onto the roof, where she collapsed screaming. Three neighbors climbed onto the roof to help her.
“This case brings up a lot of emotion for me,” Falzon said. “Pieces of flesh had been pulled out of her head. The way I described it when I saw her in the hospital, her head looked like an orange with parts of the skin peeled off.” Police arrested Pavageau after tracking a ring stolen during the crime back to him. Inside the killer’s home down the street from the crime scene, Falzon and his partner, Jack Cleary, found more jewelry taken that night. A jury found Pavageau guilty in August 1974, and he was sentenced to death. When Pavageau’s sentence was reduced to life with the possibility of parole — the next-most-severe punishment at the time — Betty Carlson prepared for a long fight. “My mother was an amazing person,” Eric Carlson said. “After this happened, she picked herself up and dusted herself off. She reinvented herself as a victims’ rights advocate and worked until she was 90.” Annette Carlson has since rebuilt her life and has declined interview requests over the years.
Despite the emotional pain, Eric Carlson said he won’t stop fighting to keep his brother’s killer in prison. Continuing the fight is a pledge he made to his mother.
“I promised her on her deathbed I would do this,” he said. “That’s how much it means.”
Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky.


Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 15 March 2017: A 4-decade quest to keep killer confined -- Victim’s brother relives horror to block parole By Evan Sernoffsky
If Frank Carlson had died any other way, his family said they could have mourned his loss, treasured their memories of the young husband and moved on.
But when Angelo Pavageau tortured and killed the 25-year-old aspiring joumalis tbefore sadistically raping and beating Carlson’s wife in their home in the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, he plunged his victims’ families into a lifelong trauma that continues 43 years later.
Pavageau, now 68, was scheduled for a parole review in April, and as with the 12 previous times he had gone before the panel, Frank Carlson's family was ready for a fight. They’asked the community and lawmakers to submit letters to the parole board, and they created a website, urging action from the public, all the while preparing to offer statements to the board. There was an unexpected twist in the case Friday, though, when the convicted killer opted to postpone the review, thereby dodging recent laws that allow the parole board to lengthen the time before Pavageau’s next hearing. The case underscores the fact that even with the passage of state victims’ rights laws, people affected by violent crime are often forced to face their ordeals in perpetuity. “The most frustrating thing about this process is it forces our family to relive this over and over and over again," Eric Carlson, 59. said in an emotional interview with The Chronicle. "My life has still not recovered," he said. The attack on April 19,1974. stands as one of San Francisco’s most horrific crimes, shocking the city’s most hardened homicide detectives in an era marked by serial killings, notorious murders and extreme violence. The attack on April 19,1974. stands as one of San Francisco's most horrific crimes, shocking the city’s most hardened homicide detectives in an era marked by serial killings, notorious murders and extreme violence.
The crime has stayed with Eric Carlson — who was 16 at the time of the killing — but so have his undimmed memories of hie brother, an aspiring journalist who was a graduate of San Francisco State University. "He was a really good person,” Eric Carlson tearfully recounted. "He was my big brother and he always looked out for me, and I looked up to him.” After his murder conviction, Pavageau was condemned to die in the gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison — a sentence that was reduced to life with the possibility of parole in 1976 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional. His state-appointed attorneys have argued for his release from the California Medical Facility at Vacaville, saying he has admitted to the crime, is remorseful and has been rehabilitated. Eric Carlson's mother, Elizabeth “Bett’ Carlson, made it part of her life’s work to guarantee that her son's killer never got out of prison, testifying at every one of Pavageau’s parole hearings — including a stretch of 10 between i960 and 1991. Before she died in 2010 Eric Carlson promised her he would carry on her fight. In 2008, two years after Pavageau was last denied parole, state lawmakers passed the California Victims' Bill of Rights Act, better known as Marsy's Law. The law allows the state parole board to extend the time between hearings to up to 15 years to cutdown on the frequency with which victims’ families had to appear before the panel ar.d relive a horrible ordeal that befell their loved ones. By deferring the hearing, Pavageau will have three years before he’s up for parole again. While a hearing in April would have reopened many wounds, for the first time it could have given the Carlson family a longer period to heal. “It would be a way to move on from the recurring trauma — put it in a place and not have to open it up and deal with it so often,” Eric Carlson said.
The nighrmare began the night of April 19,1974, when Pavageau broke into Frank and Annette Carison's home on the 1300 block of Kansas Street. Annette Carlson, 24, was asleep in an upstairs bedroom while Frank Carlson worked downstairs. Armed with a knife, Pavageau, a postal clerk and mail truck driver who lived down the block, sneaked in through the upstairs window, startling Annette Carlson awake around midnight. Her screams brought her husband running upstairs, she testified during the trial. The assailant forced Annette Carlson to tie her husband up with a telephone cord in the downstairs of the two-bedroom Victorian while he turned up the stereo.
As the wfe watched, Pavageau smashed Frank Carlson in the head with a hammer so many times its steel claw broke. He continued his beating with a 3-inch-thick chopping block, then a bottle of pennies, and a heavy vase. “ 'Why doesn’t this bastard just die? Just die, die! " Pavageau said toward the end of the savage attack, according to Annette Carlson’s testimony.     As the stereo blared, Frank Carlson’s head eventually wobbled limply forward in death. The coroner said the victim was
so badly beaten that every inch of his skull was crushed. ‘‘He not only murdered her husband right in front of her, but he took her upstairs and subjected her to three hours of rape and torture," retired San Francisco homicide Inspector Frank Falzon said in a recent interview with the Chronicle. In his 22 years as a homicide detective, Falzon said, the attack was “the most aggravated case I ever worked — and I worked some bad ones." During his time with the Police Department, Falzon investigated the Zodiac and Zebra killings, the San Francisco City Hall slayings of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, and the “Night Stalker" killings by Richard Ramirez. Now' in his mid-70s, he still recalls the particulars of the Pavageau case, including exact addresses, names and the horrific details. Falzon said that after Pavageau was through raping Annette Carlson, the killer picked up rocking chair and began bludgeoning her with it. He tried to finish her off by cutting her wrist, leaving her to die as he poured paint thinner around the house and set it ablaze.
Annette Carlson regained consciousness as the flames grew around her and crawled naked ou t of the window onto the roof, where she collapsed screaming. Three neighbors climbed onto the roof to help her. “This case brings up a lot of emotion for me,” Falzon said. “Pieces of flesh had been pulled out of her head. The way I described it when I saw her in the hospital, her head looked like an orange with parts of the skin peeled off." Police arrested Pavageau after tracking a ring stolen during the crime back to him. Inside the killer’s home down the street from the crime scene, Falzon and his partner Jack Clean found more jewclry taken that night.
A jury found Pavsgeau guilty in August 1974, and he was sentenced to death.
When Pavageau’ssentence was reduced to life with the possibility of parole - the next-most-severe punishment at the time — Betty Carlson prepared for a long fight.
“My mother was sn amazing person,” Eric Carlsoi said. “After this happened, she picked herself up and dusted herself off. She reinvented herself as a victims’ rights advocate and worked until she was 90." Annette Carlson has since rebuilt her life and has declined requests for interviews over the years. Despite the emotional pain. Eric Carlson said he won't stop fighting to keep his brother’s killer in prison. Continuing the fight is a pledge he made to his mother. “I promised her on her deathbed I would do this,' he said. “That's how much it means."
Evan Semoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 14 December 2018: The Zodiac case, 50 years later
Tracing the decades-long fascination with ‘our Jack the Ripper,’ responsible for a series of unsolved Bay Area slayings -- By Kevin Fagan | Dec. 14, 2018
He is our Jack the Ripper.
Fifty years ago this week, a psychopath with a .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol sneaked up on two high school students parked on a windswept lover’s lane in Benicia. Shot down as they scrambled in terror, the young couple died in a spray of gunfire. It was an unusually messy crime scene.
The killing on Dec. 20, 1968, of David Faraday, 17, and his 16-year-old date, Betty Lou Jensen, marked the beginning of what became the twisted legend of the Zodiac Killer. By the time he was done, five more victims across the Bay Area would be shot or stabbed — three of them killed, two left barely alive but scarred for life.
Zodiac murder victims Bettilou Jenson and David Faraday Although the carnage spanned less than a year, the moniker Zodiac Killer was cemented into history. He would never be caught.Considering the homicidal tumult of the 1960s and ’70s, the number of his victims was actually somewhat low. Charles Manson murdered eight people. Ted Bundy killed 36, the Zebra Killers 14. Unhinged San Francisco preacher Jim Jones ordered the deaths of more than 900 in Jonestown, Guyana.
But this sadistic murderer had a repulsively unusual characteristic.
As he killed, the Zodiac mailed a flurry of taunting letters and cryptograms to The Chronicle and others. “This is the Zodiac speaking,” they opened, and were often signed with a rifle-sight crosshairs symbol.
He claimed to love killing because “man is the most dangerous game,” and once threatened to massacre a dozen people unless The Chronicle printed his message. The paper published the letter. The Zodiac also threatened to wipe out an entire school bus by shooting out the front tire so he could “pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out.”
Fifty years later, with the case still unsolved, the Zodiac Killer’s death crusade is perhaps the most infamous murder mystery in America.
“There have been a lot of terrible crimes in the city, but nothing ever quite like the Zodiac case,” said San Francisco Police Homicide Inspector Gianrico Pierucci, who investigated the case for several years before retiring last year. “It was crazier than hell. There are thousands of potential suspects and lots of evidence, and it’s a tough one. Nobody ever even got arrested.
“He’s our Jack the Ripper. It’s been 50 years, and all we have is two sketches of a white male with glasses?” he said in exasperation. “Very frustrating.”
Written on greeting card mailed to a San Francisco newspaper (Chronicle) by a killer who calls himself Zodiac and included a letter and a cryptogram in San Francisco on Nov. 11, 1969. Police say Zodiac has killed five, but in his new communications Zodiac claims seven. The writer lists the months the killings took place at the bottom, with the total ?and I can?t do a thing with it!? refers to a drawing on the card showing a dripping wet pen with the salutation: ?Sorry I haven?t written, but I just washed my pen?? Photo: Associated Press 1969
Like the Zodiac, Britain’s Ripper had five confirmed kills within the space of one year in 1888 London, sent taunting letters to newspapers and never was caught. The havoc he wreaked had the same sort of effect on the population that the Zodiac did.
The Zodiac’s murders and taunts terrified people across Northern California from 1968 to 1970. His crimes inspired the 1971 movie “Dirty Harry” and spawned generations of amateur sleuths around the world who have named literally thousands of suspects they believe are absolutely, without doubt, the killer. Police investigators, meanwhile, have named only one suspect: convicted child molester Arthur Leigh Allen of Vallejo.
Allen owned boots identical to those worn by the Zodiac, and said in an interview once that his favorite short story was “The Most Dangerous Game,” which the killer had referenced in one of his letters. He was picked out in a photo lineup many years after the attacks by one of the Zodiac’s surviving victims. He also wore a watch with the Zodiac’s crosshairs symbol on it, reportedly partially confessed to a friend interviewed by investigators — and was fingered as the culprit in former Chronicle political cartoonist Robert Graysmith’s authoritative 2002 book, “Zodiac Unmasked.”
Allen, however, died of a heart attack in 1992 at age 58 before detectives could make enough of a case to charge him. Ever since, police from Napa, Solano and San Francisco counties, where the killings occurred, have continued to scrape through every clue they have filed in teeming storage cases and closets, not to mention the streams of tips that still pour in.
San Francisco alone has about 30 boxes of evidence, including the blood-spattered door of the taxi in which the Zodiac shot to death his last victim, cabbie Paul Stine, 29, in the Presidio Heights neighborhood on Oct. 11, 1969. Other departments also have car parts from the murder scenes and plastic rope the Zodiac used to tie up victims.
Between the first homicides in Benicia and the Stine killing, there were two more Zodiac attacks on dating couples: In July 1969 in Vallejo, he shot Michael Mageau, 19, and Darlene Ferrin, 22; and in September 1969 at Lake Berryessa, he stabbed Cecelia Shepard, 22, and Bryan Hartnell, 20. Mageau and Hartnell both survived and gave descriptions of the killer. They rarely speak about the Zodiac in public.
None of the investigators working the case today would speak on the record for this story. A few who worked it in the past, however, refuse to give up on the idea that the killer will be identified some day. If the Zodiac turns out to be someone other than Allen and is still alive, he probably would be in his mid-80s or 90s, given that he was described at the time as appearing to be 35 to 40 years old.
“I can’t help but believe he is somewhere in our files, that the answers are in there somewhere,” said long-retired San Francisco homicide Inspector Frank Falzon, one of the earliest investigators on the case. “With all these different law enforcement agencies, it’s got to be solved someday.”
Through 1974, well after his last known victim, the Zodiac sent about two dozen letters to The Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner and Vallejo Times Herald, ultimately claiming 37 slayings. But investigators only ever confirmed those five killings and the two survivors.
For many years, the most hopeful new direction in the case has been DNA testing — the science that cracked the decades-old Golden State Killer case this year. Investigators in that case turned to genealogical sites to match a profile to an ex-police officer who now faces 13 counts of murder and 13 more of rape.
The Zodiac case, however, is more complicated. The letters and the few possible shreds of DNA evidence were handled extensively by detectives and others long before anyone knew DNA analysis was even a tool. The Zodiac also was apparently very careful about minimizing helpful clues in the form of saliva, fingerprints or blood. So, many investigators believe the chance of a useful hit turning up in the profiles is slim at best.
Said one police source, who couldn’t speak publicly: “With the Golden State Killer, they had a full strand of DNA. Not Zodiac. We have crumbs, and not good ones.”
“I think the hunt for DNA is an illusion, a dog-and-pony show,” said Mike Rodelli, who wrote the 2017 book “The Hunt for Zodiac” after 20 years of research. He believes the killer is not Allen, but a deceased San Francisco businessman.
“The evidence is way too old and overhandled,” he said.
Tom Voigt, another private sleuth who has researched the case for decades, disagrees.
“The only thing that could solve it is the DNA — and that could happen tomorrow,” he said.
“He could be drinking coffee next to you, he could be sitting at the bus stop. Or he could be dead. But absolutely, it will be solved,” said Voigt, who runs the exhaustively researched Zodiackiller.com site. His top suspect: a long-dead Martinez newspaperman.
Of all the Zodiac evidence, the three things seized upon most by detectives and amateur sleuths are the handwritten letters, the ciphers and the sketches generated by the two survivors. But all are so open to interpretation that new tips are made to investigators and The Chronicle every month or so from people claiming to have solved the case.
Among the many theories: The Zodiac was the Unabomber, a gang of demented cops, the crazy uncle upstairs, the edgy neighbor, and so on. Dozens insist the killer was their father. But except for one long cipher sent in pieces to The Chronicle, Examiner and Vallejo papers in 1969, no detectives have been able to confirm a translation of the killer’s cryptograms, a crazy quilt of letters and symbols laid out in straight lines. The one that was solved — by a Salinas schoolteacher and his wife — offered little beyond the boast, “I like killing because it is so much fun.” The rest, according to FBI code experts, appear to be gibberish.
The killer’s handwriting also is easy to match to numerous people because it’s in such a simple hand, and the artist’s rendering depicts the typical early-1960s fellow with a crew cut and horn-rimmed glasses. In the minds of many, this leaves the lone named suspect — Allen, of Vallejo — as the mostly likely guy.
“I believe he did it, no doubt. There are just way too many coincidences that make way too much sense,” said John Henslin of Texas, who was a friend of victim Betty Lou Jensen — and whose sister, Sharon Stutsman of Nevada, was Jensen’s best friend. “Him murdering our friend ruined Christmas for all of us for life. Every year, every anniversary, we remember that killing all over again.”
In an email, Stutsman, who is ill and cannot speak clearly, fondly remembered Jensen as an “artist in every way ... funny, always happy.” Her father worked at the same Vallejo school district where Allen was employed as a janitor, and Henslin recalled that the family thought “he was creepy.”
That’s an impression shared by former KTVU-TV crime reporter Rita Williams, the last person known to have interviewed Allen, shortly before he died, at Allen’s home in Vallejo.
Williams said that although Allen denied being the Zodiac, he fit the killer’s profile in many ways. After the interview, Allen wrote Williams a letter containing a handwritten “Z” identical to the one on a widely publicized letter that some believe the Zodiac sent in 1967 to the father of an unconfirmed Riverside victim, before the Bay Area killings began. The letter to Williams also had bad grammar similar to the Zodiac’s.
“I remember him showing me tons of things on his shelves, and so many looked like clues,” Williams said. “It was almost like a game with him ... eerie.
“I said to the cameraman when we got into our car afterward: ‘We just talked to the Zodiac.’”
Kevin Fagan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kfagan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @KevinChron.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 23 March 2021: The DoodlerOne man’s American dream ends in his bloody death by Kevin Fagan

With detectives in the 1970s swamped by surging murder rates, the Doodler kills gay men in the shadows and walks away free. Klaus Christmann becomes his third known victim, his body left in the sands on the edge of San Francisco. Klaus Christmann wanted a new start. San Francisco in 1974 was just the place.
It was hip. It was in America — land of opportunity. It had a vibrant and growing gay population. He liked that scene. Back home in Germany, the 31-year-old Christmann had managed a bar that catered to both gay and straight customers. So that April, Christmann flew out to visit an American buddy he’d met while the friend was pulling an Army hitch in Germany. He came to San Francisco “to achieve something better for himself and his family,” Christmann’s daughter said. “Many people thought that in America, pretty much anything is possible, and you can achieve much more.”

About this project:Chronicle reporter Kevin Fagan spent nearly three years investigating the unsolved murders of gay men in 1974 and ’75 by a serial killer dubbed the Doodler by San Francisco police. The Doodler podcast, narrated by Fagan and produced in partnership with Ugly Duckling Films and Neon Hum Media, is available on y

That dream ended on July 7, 1974, on Ocean Beach. Christmann’s nearly decapitated corpse was found that morning — near where the body of another man, Gerald Cavanagh, had been discovered nearly six months before. He’d been stabbed 15 times, front and back. Another rage killing.
Christmann had last been seen at the Bojangles gay dance club in the Tenderloin the night before, a Saturday. The beach was a popular gay hookup spot.
Everything about his murder screamed Doodler. A few months ago, I stood in the sand for a second time with cold-case cop Dan Cunningham, the veteran homicide inspector whose call in 2018 had propelled me into this Doodler story. He’d said he was investigating a serial killer with a signature — making his move on victims by sketching a quick portrait of them. The Doodler had hunted gay men against a mid-1970s backdrop of LGBTQ oppression, stabbing to death at least five in San Francisco, and perhaps as many as 14. The last time Cunningham and I were at Ocean Beach, we looked at the spot where Cavanagh was found, near a pay phone that a mysterious caller had used to report the killing. This time, a couple of hundred feet away, at the foot of Lincoln Way, we gazed at the place where Christmann took his last breath. Dan Cunningham walks along Ocean Beach
San Francisco Police cold-case inspector Dan Cunningham counts his steps to find the approximate location of the crime scene at Ocean Beach. He is at the approximate spot where the body of Klaus Christmann was found on July 7, 1974. Christmann, a 31-year-old German citizen, was murdered by the Doodler Killer, and his body dumped at the foot of Lincoln Way on Ocean Beach. Was there anything we could see here, all these years later, to better understand what had happened?
Cunningham recounted what he knew from the police files. Compared to the Doodler’s other victims, he said, “There were a lot more stab wounds. There was a struggle. There was a lot of blood.” He didn’t linger on the description. He’d taken it from the main cop who rolled to the scene that day: bow-tie-wearing homicide Inspector Dave Toschi, who headed the initial investigation and who died two years ago. “He said that was probably the most horrific crime scene he had been to,” Cunningham said. “That guy had seen a lot of crimes. ... He had seen a lot.” Inspector David Toschi rifles through files. He is wearing a bow tie.
Inspector David Toschi of the SFPD in 1976 — he worked on the Zodiac case and was involved in the initial investigations into the Doodler. Turns out Tauba Weiss, the woman who found Christmann’s body, was hardened, too. She’s 95 now. I found her in a person-finder database we use at The Chronicle. Age had not fuzzed her memory. I asked her if she was shocked when she stumbled across a corpse at 6 a.m. while walking her German shepherd, Moondance.
“A body is a body,” she said. “Oh?” I replied. “You’ve seen a lot of bodies?” “Young man, I was in Auschwitz,” she snapped. “I lost six brothers and sisters. My parents. I know death. A body is a body.” Hacking at a body like that — and it was hacking, not just stabbing — would require cover, so the commotion wouldn’t be seen or heard. This was the right spot for that. The sound of the waves, sand dunes shielding the view. And nearby, a cement structure that looks like a bandstand — the Doodler could have used that for more cover, we thought. It all added up. This was a murderer who thought things through. These weren’t spontaneous eruptions of emotion. Strobes light up the approximate location of Klaus Christmann’s crime scene at Ocean Beach
Strobe lights illuminate the approximate location where Klaus Christmann’s body was found at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. Christmann was a 31-year-old German citizen looking for a new life in the city when he was murdered by the Doodler. His body was found on July 7, 1974, on Ocean Beach at the foot of Lincoln Way.
Three men dead now — Cavanagh in January 1974, Jae Stevens in June, and Christmann a week and a half later — and the cops still didn’t see a pattern. Small wonder. In the early ’70s, San Francisco was awash in murder. Homicide inspectors were swamped. There were the Zebra “Death Angels” Killers, new threats from the Zodiac Killer, Patty Hearst’s kidnapping by the murderous Symbionese Liberation Army. Each year the city endured about 130 killings, compared to 40 or 50 today.
Where the Doodler hunted and where victims were found
Prime targets: gay men. They had to be on guard all the time. But still they came to the city. As dangerous as it was — roving bands of teens routinely beat up gay people — it was better than other parts of America. San Francisco was a mecca where they could be themselves, mostly.
Still, it was 1974. Sodomy laws remained on the books. Cross-dressing was illegal — that law was finally overturned the same month Christmann was killed. Vice squads busted gay men for being gay. Homicide detectives were consumed with the more notorious cases.
Plus, the city’s cops had no computers to cross-reference cases, no DNA technology to crank an arrest out of a database by matching samples. Just gumshoes with instincts. Like homicide Inspector Frank Falzon, now retired. “When you were on a call, we were going seven days a week, 24/7,” said Falzon, who had a piece of just about every major case, from the Zodiac to the Doodler. “You could have a case, and the guy sitting right across from you could have a related case, and you wouldn’t know it.” When he investigated the Doodler, there was no DNA technology, just gumshoes with instincts. Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle
They’d work a murder as far as they could each shift, then hand off to the incoming guys. They were good, but sheer volume made it tough to keep up.
Into that morass dropped the Christmann killing.
In fact, this was a new kind of murder. Bodies in similar locations, killed in the same manner, over and over. That just wasn’t something investigators were familiar with before killers like the Doodler and Zodiac showed up, criminologist Mike Rustigan told me.
“The very concept of serial murder originates in the ’70s,” said Rustigan, a San Jose State University professor emeritus who teaches law enforcement officers how to investigate serial killers. “Keep in mind, if you go back historically with homicide, almost always a homicide was acquaintance-perpetrated. That is, the offender knew the victim.” In the late ’60s and into the ’70s, he said, “there’s like a new pitch in America. And suddenly you have killers — gunmen, stabbers, whatever — who are targeting victims for no apparent motivation. I mean, in other words, total strangers.”
The worst, like the Zodiac, left signs or mailed bragging letters to the news media. All had defining techniques. And hunted their prey intently. Like the Doodler.
Police sketches of the Doodler from 1975 and 2018
“You don’t see the taunting of the police with the Doodler,” Rustigan said. “But you do see a very efficient way of killing. I mean, very methodical. You know, with the doodling, and all of the trademarks of a very cunning serial killer.”
There were few clues to Christmann’s slaughter. But looking back on them now, they were telling.
The frenzied stabbing he suffered reflected focused fury, just like the murders of Cavanagh and Stevens. He wore orange bikini shorts, carried a tube of makeup, wore several rings. Handsome, with cool sideburns and clothes. Was known to frequent gay bars.
But that’s where the police files and short news clippings ended. Except to say Christmann had been staying in San Francisco with a friend named Booker T. Williams and that his wife and two kids were back in Germany.
Klaus Christmann grew up in Germany and sought a fresh start in San Francisco in 1974. His American dream ended on July 7, 1974, when he became the Doodler's third victim, his body dumped on Ocean Beach. Courtesy Christmann Family
Even with the help of private investigator and former Chronicle colleague Mike Taylor, it took weeks of records searches to unearth even small shreds of information on Christmann. Booker Williams died in 2001. His widow, living back east, knew nothing. Others who might have known him had passed away — a common theme in this hunt. Then, diving into social media, we discovered a relative in Germany had requested records from the SFPD just two years ago. We started scratching around, and pretty soon we’d hired a bilingual freelancer to interview Christmann’s widow and daughter in Germany.
The widow didn’t want to be involved. The daughter asked us to use an alias — we chose “Helen.”
The family learned in 1974 that Christmann was murdered through a curt telegram from Williams: “Sorry to tell you, Klaus has died.” A one-page death notice from the German consulate in San Francisco followed, a bit of communication with San Francisco police — that was it.
Helen said her mother lost hope fast. “They told her right from the beginning that there was very little chance that the perpetrator would be found at all, because there are so many murders,” Helen said. Christmann was working for the Michelin tire company when he was slain, she said. And though cops here had pegged him as gay — there’s no doubt about that in the police files on his killing — Helen wasn’t so sure. “He was an attractive, well-groomed man,” she said. And, yes, carrying makeup “might have been unusual” back then. But from 6,000 miles and 46 years away, she thinks assumptions that her father was gay are “conjectures.”
Her mother never thought Christmann was gay, Helen said. But she did tell Helen that “she was a bit flustered when she went to that bar” — the gay-friendly one Christmann had managed in Germany — “where he worked, when she was confronted with open homosexuality for the first time. ... I think she was a little surprised and overwhelmed by it.”
“It was another time, another generation,” Helen said. “I was raised to be be completely open towards homosexuality. I have no problem with that. Maybe that’s why I don’t believe there’s much truth to this presumption.”
In other words, from her modern perspective, she saw no reason to think that just because her father worked at a gay-friendly bar in the 1970s that he was gay himself. All interesting. But not getting us any nearer to understanding where Christmann had been. Who he’d hung out with. Or whether he’d picked up any warning signs of the end awaiting him. Where was this going to lead? The tidbits we had dredged up on the Doodler’s victims helped us better understand their agonies. But we weren’t any closer to the suspect himself. What we were beginning to understand, though, was that the fear of a murderer walking free nearly half a century ago carried through to this day. Not just in victims’ survivors, who were still so rattled they didn’t want to be named or participate in our hunt. But in anyone who was gay and remembers the horror. “It put the shivers to everybody on Polk. I mean, everybody heard about it and nobody had any substance, you know?” Ron Huberman, who later became the first openly gay investigator in the city District Attorney’s Office, said of Polk Gulch, then the city’s hottest gay sector. “It still puts the shivers.”
Those shivers were about to explode. Just as “everybody” feared, the Doodler wasn’t done.
Kevin Fagan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kfagan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @KevinChron.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle in April 2021: Given Frank Falzon's 25+ years as a homicide inspector, he was noted in the Chronicle on many reported crime stories.
I have listed 65 in full form.
But he is also listed in stories in the Chronicle on the following 169 dates:
Sep 20, 1965
Oct 01, 1968
Jul 08, 1970
Nov 12, 1970
Aug 08, 1971
Nov 23, 1971
+ 2 more in 1971
Jul 11, 1972
Sep 13, 1972
Dec 26, 1972
May 17, 1973
May 25, 1973
Jun 05, 1973
Jun 07, 1973
Oct 19, 1973
Oct 20, 1973
Nov 07, 1973
+5 more in 1973
Jan 25, 1974
Apr 15, 1974
May 09, 1974
May 12, 1974
Aug 14, 1974
Aug 16, 1974
Sep 13, 1974
Oct 11, 1974
+10 more 1974
Jan 14, 1975: Zebra
Feb 08, 1975
Feb 18, 1975
Feb 21, 1975
Mar 18, 1975
Jun 09, 1975
Jun 12, 1975
Dec 15, 1975
Dec 31, 1975
Jan 14, 1976
Jan 20, 1976
Jan 24, 1976
Jan 25, 1976
Jan 28, 1976
Mar 19, 1976
Mar 22, 1976
Apr 8, 1976: Popy Jackson killing
April 8, 1976
May 20, 1976: certificate of meritourius conduct
Aug 30, 1976
Sep 21, 1976: Gay vs Cop baseball
Jan 07, 1977
Feb 20, 1977
May 15, 1977
Mar 30, 1977
Mar 31, 1977
Jun 01, 1977
Aug 21, 1977
Aug 23, 1977
Dec 15, 1977: medal
Dec 17, 1977
Dec 18, 1977: Amanda case
Feb 04, 1978
Feb 05, 1978
Jul 31, 1978
Sep 28, 1978
Aug 03, 1978
Aug 30, 1978
Nov 09, 1978
Nov 30, 1978
Jan 19, 1979
Jan 28, 1979
Apr 13, 1979
May 04, 1979: Dan White Confession
May 13, 1979
May 18, 1979
May 25, 1979
May 30, 1979
Jun 03, 1979
Jun 10, 1979
Jul 11, 1979
Oct 22, 1979
Oct 23, 1979
Nov 27, 1979
Jan 11, 1980
Jan 11, 1980
Jul 21, 1980
Nov 21, 1980
Feb 01, 1981
Feb 25, 1981
Mar 22, 1981
Apr 03, 1981
Jun 29, 1981
Jul 08, 1981
Aug 26, 1981
Sep 18, 1981
Sep 20, 1981
Nov 08, 1981
Nov 09, 1981
Nov 10, 1981
Nov 12, 1981
Jan 22, 1982
Feb 24, 1983
April 28, 1983
Jul 14, 1983: White Verdict
Nov 22, 1983
Feb 07, 1984
Mar 02, 1984
Oct 25, 1984: William White case
Oct 26, 1984
Oct 27, 1984
Nov 21, 1984
Nov 30, 1984
Nov 16, 1984: Masa
Nov 30, 1984: Masa's homicide
Dec 11, 1984
Dec 12, 1984
Feb 22, 1985
Feb 23, 1985
Jun 11, 1985
Aug 20, 1985
Aug 27, 1985
Aug 29, 1985
Sep 01, 1985: Night Stalker captured
Sep 02, 1985: Night Stalker, Ramirez
Sep 03, 1985
Sep 04, 1985
Oct 22, 1985: White suicide
Oct 23, 1985
May 15, 1986
Jul 22, 1986
Sep 08, 1986
Sep 23, 1986
Sep 30, 1986
Oct 26, 1986
Sep 26, 1986
Apr 16, 1987
Apr 26, 1987
Mar 11, 1987
Oct 30, 1987
Oct 31, 1987
Nov 15, 1987
Mar 05, 1988
Apr 16, 1988
May 14, 1988
Oct 7, 1988
Dec 28, 1988
Jan 11, 1989
Jan 19, 1989
Jan 25, 1989
Mar 01, 1989
Mar 02, 1989
Sep 24, 1991
Oct 23, 1994
May 06, 1995
Oct 04, 1995: Comments on O.J. Simpson
Sep 22, 1998
Nov 26, 1999
Mar 18, 2001
Apr 05, 2005
April 6, 2021: Doddler case. He contributed his biographyogy to Maltese Immigration Project in June 2021. He was a correspondent to Maltese Immigration genealogical project frankjfalzon@yahoo.com on 12 August 2021.
Frank Joseph Falzon His website: https://frankfalzon.com/. He was living in Novato, Marin Co., CA, USA.
Frank Joseph Falzon Netflix’s ‘Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer’ is a gripping four-part documentary series that chronicles the desperate pursuit for Richard Ramirez, a Satanist who terrorized California in 1984 and 1985, killing 13 individuals and raping, burglarizing, and attempting to murder dozens more. By following the police officers tasked with bringing the killer to justice, this Tiller Russell directed series manages to pay respects to Richard’s victims, all while highlighting how his cruelty and malice remain nearly unprecedented to this day. Amongst such police officers is Frank Falzon, the man who got Richard’s name from a verifiable source.
Frank Joseph Falzon Frank Falzon is a former San Francisco Police Department Homicide Inspector who made a name for himself by letting his discipline, meticulousness, and mere determination to solve crimes shine through. After all, from simply following these practices, he not only had a huge role to play in the “Night Stalker” case in 1985, but he also managed to solve the 1974 Carlson Case, where Frank Carlson and his wife, Annette, were brutally tortured by Angelo Pavageau. He was the author of San Francisco Homicide Inspector 5-Henry-7: My Inside Story of the Night Stalker, City Hall Murders, Zebra Killings, Chinatown Gang Wars, and a City Under Siege
by Frank Falzon and Duffy Jennings | Jul 19, 2022 on 19 July 2022.

Frank Joseph Falzon was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle on 28 August 2022: The Maltese American inspector who caught killers for a living
Frank Falzon publishes recollections of violent crimes that rocked San Francisco
August 28, 2022| Sarah Carabott |
Times of Malta
Having investigated over 300 cases in San Francisco, including high-profile murders, Frank Falzon has several impressive achievements under his belt, but he is the proudest when he talks about his Maltese connection.
From hunting down the Night Stalker and the Zodiac Killer to getting a confession out of Dan White for the killing of Mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk, retired detective Falzon recalls an exciting 28-year career in the police.
“But the biggest part of my life remains my father: Frank Tabone Falzon. My dad was everything to me,” Falzon, now 80, tells Times of Malta.
Video: Karl Andrew Micallef
Frank Senior, from Cospicua, had migrated to Detroit, US, with two of his brothers – Charlie and Lawrence – after the economic crash of World War 1. He moved to San Francisco where he met Catherine Bridget Fox, of Irish heritage, at the church of St Paul’s Shipwreck in San Francisco.
“The community of the area were I, and my three siblings, were raised in, was predominantly Maltese.
"My dad’s friends were all Maltese: I remember we’d stop in front of the display window of a shop selling TVs, to watch whatever was being broadcast on this new device, and all the Maltese people would gather around my dad.
“My dad was a celebrity: he was a championship soccer player for the Maltese club and eventually the San Francisco athletic club.
“My dad and I were inseparable – we did everything together and my Maltese connection lives deep inside my heart.”
Frank Senior died of melanoma when his son was just eight years old. The bond between the two was so tight that his family broke the news after some days as they feared the little boy could not be able to handle the news.
After his father’s death, there was a point when the young boy would tell his peers he was Italian, to avoid being quizzed about his nationality.
“I don’t do that anymore – I am very proud to be a Maltese citizen and I have dual citizenship: Maltese and American, and I have since also visited my father’s hometown of Cospicua.”
Falzon’s Maltese connection features in a book he has just published, called San Francisco Homicide Inspector 5 Henry 7.
The book details Falzon’s personal inside recollections of the violent crimes that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s, including the Chinatown gang murders and the rise of a deadly underground counterculture that targeted police at the time.
‘I should have been screaming for help’
One case, known as the Zebra murders, was unfolding not far from his family home. Concerned about his family’s safety, he moved his family out of San Francisco and across the Golden Gate Bridge to Marin County.
Still, he remained involved in homicide investigations for another couple of decades.
Police photo of Frank Falzon taken in 1975 for the SFPD memory book. Photo provided by Frank Falzon
“I worked over 300 murder cases. I was fascinated by the work… to me it was paramount to make sure I did a thorough job, arrested the right person, and proved to a jury of 12 people beyond a reasonable doubt that the person I had arrested was behind the crime they were being charged with. I was catching more high-profile cases than any other team in the homicide detail.”
Did he ever fear for his life?
“Looking back now I should have been screaming for help, but I was caught up with the fact I had sworn to do my duty. I was surrounded by fine men who were pretty much like me – trying to do a good job for the city of San Francisco that meant so much to them.
“At the time, it was my responsibility to be the best homicide inspector I could be… Did I feel fear? Never. I felt almost invincible. I felt like nothing could happen to me – looking back it was silly thinking – but it was my mental capacity not to confront the fear and dangers we were going up against on a daily basis.”
Moscone and Milk murder that haunts Falzon
One case that he carries with him every day since it happened on November 27 of 1978, remains Dan White’s murder of mayor George Moscone and human rights campaigner Harvey Milk.
Frank Falzon (L) taking Dan White (R) to prison following his emotional confession. Photo provided by Frank Falzon
White and Falzon had grown up in the same neighbourhood, attended the same schools and played on the same softball field. White eventually became a police officer and was based at his same police station.
“Dan White and I had a very solid bond,” he said, recalling how after shooting and killing Moscone and Milk, White had walked over to a diner from where he called his wife Mary Ann to tell her he was going to kill himself.
“She pleaded with him, begging him to go to St Mary’s Cathedral, telling him she’d head there herself. She turned him in at the Northern Station – the same station that only years earlier he had been working at.
“I got word that White was in custody. He had already said he didn’t want to give a statement to officers who arrested him. But when I walked into the interrogation room, he took one look at me and saw the face of a man he respected and had grown up with.
Dan White and Frank Falzon while they were still both on the police force. Photo provided by Frank Falzon
“I asked: what were you thinking Dan? He was like a pressure cooker whose lid blew off. He said: Frank I want to tell you the whole truth. He started crying and convulsing. I left the interrogation room, got a tape, asked fellow Inspector EdwardErdelatz to sit in with me and we took the now famous confession of Dan White for the murder.”
The entire ordeal was shocking for him.
“I don’t know how I survived that day – later that night I had the responsibility to go to his home, approach his wife – one of the nicest people I’ve ever known – and serve her a house search warrant. I couldn’t ask for anyone to be more understanding than Mary Ann.”
All Star team - L to R middle row Dan White and Frank Falzon. Photo provided by Frank Falzon.
Frank Joseph Falzon Email from Frank Falzon: Thank you, Charles! You’ve been an unbelievable advocate. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all you’ve done regarding my family heritage. I’m forever grateful. Warmest regards, Frank Falzon A Maltese American on 10 September 2022. He was a member of the Maltese American Social Club in October 2022.
Frank Joseph Falzon From his website: Frank Falzon’s Most Notorious Cases
Night Stalker

I extracted the identity of Night Stalker suspect Richard Ramirez from his best friend in 1985 by tracking a gold bracelet Ramirez stole in a San Francisco burglary two days before he shot a local accountant to death and brutally raped his wife. It broke the case after months of unsuccessful efforts by Southern California law enforcement agencies to identify Ramirez, who killed 15 people during a months-long crime spree.

Dan White

My longtime friend escaped a premeditated murder conviction in the city hall shootings with a surprisingly lenient verdict that touched off a city riot. He served only five years, then made a shocking post-prison confession to me: He had other prominent targets that day. I also happened to be on call when White committed suicide while on parole.

Zebra Murders

The so-called Zebra killers known as Death Angels murdered eleven people over the winter of 1973-1974. One night while out working on a different case with my partner, Jack Cleary, we happened upon one of the Zebra shootings moments after it occurred. As the victim died in Jack’s arms, I directed responding officers to the area where the shooter fled. They quickly caught the suspect. I took the man’s confession, contributing to the conviction of four men.

Street Corner Shootout

I was off duty, driving to a night class at City College when I saw an armed robbery in progress. I survived an Old West-style, face-to-face shootout with the suspect, who fired five times at me from a few feet away. All of them missed. I returned fire with two shots, killing the gunman. This 1977 encounter earned me a Gold Medal of Valor, the department’s highest award, and Policeman of the Year honors.

“There were times I thought I’d seen everything. I was almost always wrong.”
– Frank Falzon

Savagery on Potrero Hill: A stolen antique wedding ring helped me solve what many still consider the city’s most horrific home invasion case in 1974. The intruder savagely bludgeoned a young husband to death, then raped and beat the man’s wife for hours, slit her wrists, doused her and the room with paint thinner, and set the house afire. Amazingly, she survived and, with my support, has successfully fought the killer’s parole bid sixteen times.

Paper Bag Killer: Using guns hidden in paper bags, the deranged 24-year-old son of a prominent San Francisco psychiatrist fatally shot two random middle-aged men on the street two months apart in 1973, thinking they both resembled his fiancée’s rapist. I describe in detail how we caught this so-called “Paper Bag Killer,” my first experience confronting someone with a multiple personality disorder.

Holocaust Survivor: In 1978, Auschwitz concentration camp survivor Miriam Slamovich startled an intruder who had climbed through a back bedroom window into her San Francisco home. When she screamed, he shot her in the face. He ran out the front door, pursued by her husband, Henry, another Holocaust survivor who had been on German industrialist Oskar Schindler’s list of Jews he saved from the death camps. The shooter escaped, Miriam died, and the case remained unsolved for six years until San Francisco’s new fingerprint computer made its first match – a single print from the outside glass on the Slamovichs’ bedroom window.
Other top cases:

Candle Shop Killing

Fire fighters arriving at a blaze in the La Santa Cruz Light Shop in San Francisco’s Mission District find Elsie Cabatic’s burning body in the back of the store. She had been hit over the head and choked before she was doused in flammable liquid and burned alive. In a time before computerized fingerprint databases, it takes thirty painstaking hours to identify three fingerprints found on the can of lighter fluid the killer used.

True Believer

Chol Soo Lee was convicted of a Chinatown gang murder in 1973 and later killed a fellow prison inmate, earning a trip to Death Row. He won a new trial based on the testimony of a questionable witness. That witness wasn’t called during the new trial. However, the defense showed that the original ballistic test was inaccurate. The jury acquitted Lee. The judge gave Lee credit for time served for the in-prison killing and set him free. Years later Lee was involved in a bizarre arson-for-hire with tragic results. Lee’s case was the basis for the acclaimed film, True Believer.

Bonnie and Clyde

Van Wesley Purcell and Cheryl Lynn Southall, a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde who robbed at least nine grocery stores and pharmacies, shoots and kills a member of the Cala Foods grocery chain family when he tries to thwart a holdup. Anthony Cala, one of nine brothers whose family ran the ten-store chain, had a plan if his store was ever robbed. His plan cost him his life.

Lucky Luigi

When a group of Hells Angels celebrating a birthday in Luigi Aranda’s neighborhood bar knocks him unconscious and dumps him in a trash can, he vows revenge. Someone later executes the birthday boy. Aranda is convicted of the murder, but ten years later my partner and I develop new evidence in the case, and we testify before the Parole Board. The board agrees and frees Luigi from prison.

“Popeye” Jackson, Sara Jane Moore, and Tribal Thumb

When two gunmen shoot ex-con and prison reformer Wilbert “Popeye” Jackson and a Vallejo schoolteacher to death execution-style in a parked car late one night, witnesses describe one of the shooters as a young, thin black man with a large Afro. Our ten-month investigation takes twists and turns through the radical underground that involve the Patty Hearst case and Sara Jane Moore, who had taken a shot at President Ford. The suspect we finally catch and who is convicted wasn’t black after all. And the Afro? It was a wig.

Pump Station Murders

When Roland Luchini fatally shoots two of his San Francisco Water Department co-workers at their desks in the Lake Merced Pump Station in 1979, his case draws wide comparisons to city hall killer Dan White. Their motives and psychological defenses align in many ways, but Luchini’s sentence is much different than the former cop and fireman who killed the mayor and a fellow supervisor. I was involved in both trials at the same time.

Death Wish

Robert Lee Massie, a condemned prisoner who pursued his own demise for years, finally gets his wish granted in 2001, more than three decades after Governor Ronald Reagan stayed his first scheduled execution. But in 1979, after just eight months on parole, Massey kills a man during a liquor store robbery. As the inspector on that case, I take his confession. Massey is convicted and sentenced to death again, but the State Supreme Court reverses it on appeal because his lawyer hadn’t approved the plea deal. After a new trial and a new conviction in 1989, the judge sentences him to death a third time. I am there at San Quentin Prison on March 27, 2001 to witness Massey’s execution by lethal injection.

Justice for Laura Stanton and Mary Frances Bennett

The murders of two young women less than five months apart in 1979 – the rape and beating of a bartender and the vicious stabbing of a jogger – both remain unsolved for more than twenty years. Then advances in DNA science tie the victims to their killers, both already serving prison terms for other crimes. The bartender case is linked to a rapist who is just two weeks away from being paroled in 2004, and the other confirms what police long believed but couldn’t prove, that the jogger was slain by the serial murderer known as the Trailside Killer.

Tragedy on Campus

High school sweethearts Catina Rose Salarno and Steven Burns’ families were friends and next-door neighbors in 1979. But when Catina graduates, she breaks it off with Steven, saying she wants to date other men in college. Outraged, he follows Catina to the University of the Pacific and shoots her in the head outside her dormitory with a gun he stole from her father’s store. Catina’s mother later launches Crime Victims United and remains active in the organization.

Road Rage

Sean Donnelly and Charles McKelvie were best friends. The two 16-year-old high school students are headed to a party in the Sunset district one Saturday night in 1981 when they begin hot-rodding with another car with two men inside. When both cars stop at an intersection, words are exchanged, bullets fly. One of the five shots fired at McKelvie’s car kills Donnelly, the son of a retired police detective. Our investigation stalls for months until a Chinese youth gang leader identifies the two assailants from his own gang to avoid prison on unrelated charges.

The 49er

Bruce Rhodes was a star football player at Woodrow Wilson High School and San Francisco State University in the 1970s before he earned a free agent spot on the roster of his hometown San Francisco 49ers as a defensive back. But in his second season he broke his leg in two places in a game against the Houston Oilers, effectively ending his career. Then one night in 1981 he is gunned down in a cocaine deal gone bad, a tragic end for a once promising athlete.

Witch Killers: A Match Made in Hell

Suzan and Michael “Bear” Carson, gripped by a folie à deux, or shared psychotic disorder, and believing it was their duty to kill people they decided were witches, terrorize Northern California in 1981. They beat their Haight-Ashbury roommate to death with an iron skillet and stab her multiple times. When finally arrested after two more killings, they insist on holding a rambling, hours-long press conference in San Francisco to attract more media attention.

Celebrity Chef

Chef Masa Kobayashi, owner of an eponymous trendy San Francisco restaurant, is murdered in his apartment in 1984 by a man who apparently knew martial arts and broke a bone in Kobayashi’s neck before striking him in the head with a gun the chef carried for protection. We identify a suspect who admits to being the last person to see Masa alive and fails a polygraph test. But polygraphs are inadmissible, and we have no conclusive evidence, so he is never charged.

Caveman

In late 1984, an ex-convict with a long history of violence lures teenage boys to his campsite inside a cave at the Lands End area at the westernmost edge of San Francisco. One of the boys is killed, cut into pieces, and his body parts and head are placed into two separate graves. When he is captured a month later, he shows us where he had buried the torso and the severed head.

Juan Corona’s Pens

When the central California community of Yuba City needed help gathering evidence in the machete murders of 25 migrant farmworkers by Juan Corona in 1971, my partner and I identified the unique Italian-made Corona pen used to log his victims’ names in a ledger.

Body in the Bay

In the summer of 1972, a young couple sitting on the edge of a pier is startled to see the body of a man floating about two feet below water level in San Francisco Bay. His hands were hogtied behind his back and a 50-pound concrete slab was bound to his waist.

Hells Angel’s Lip Service

When I questioned a Hells Angel in a shotgun murder, he wouldn’t say a word. I pressed him, demanding to know if he wished to tell his side of the story. He slowly pulled down his lower lip. There, tattooed on the inside, was a message for me and anyone else who confronted him.
Frank Falzon, Website.² Research. Frank Joseph Falzon was also known as Sonny in the family.

     Kristen Michele Falzon was born on 4 March 1990 in San Francisco, San Francisco Co., CA, USA.¹
     She was living in 2021 in NJ, USA.

     Maryvonne M. Letouzic was born circa 1951. She married Claude C. Farrugia.
     Her married name was Farrugia.

     Thomas Jean Farrugia was born on 12 June 1983 in San Francisco, San Francisco Co., CA, USA.¹

     Barbara Ellen McNeil was born circa 1943. She married George Alfred Farrugia.
     Her married name was Farrugia.

     Mary R. Farrugia was born on 7 November 1965 in San Francisco, San Francisco Co., CA, USA.¹

     Melita Farrugia was born on 14 May 1961 in San Francisco, San Francisco Co., CA, USA.¹

     George Alfred Farrugia Jr was born on 15 June 1964 in San Francisco, San Francisco Co., CA, USA.¹ He married Jawana Maryeha Botello on 15 June 1985 at Reno, NV, USA.¹ George Alfred Farrugia Jr married Barbara Ellen Brewster on 29 June 1993 at Clark Co., CA, USA.
     George Alfred Farrugia Jr was living in 2022 in Burbank, CA, USA.

     Jawana Maryeha Botello married George Alfred Farrugia Jr, son of George Alfred Farrugia and Barbara Ellen McNeil, on 15 June 1985 at Reno, NV, USA.¹
     As of 15 June 1985,her married name was Farrugia.¹

     Barbara Ellen Brewster married George Alfred Farrugia Jr, son of George Alfred Farrugia and Barbara Ellen McNeil, on 29 June 1993 at Clark Co., CA, USA.
     As of 29 June 1993,her married name was Farrugia.

     John V. Farrugia was born on 8 August 1962 in San Francisco, San Francisco Co., CA, USA.¹

     Alfred F. Farrugia was born on 10 April 1968 in San Francisco, San Francisco Co., CA, USA.¹

     Gennie Lopez married Frank Anthony Farrugia, son of Anthony Farrugia and Mary Ungaro. Gennie Lopez and Frank Anthony Farrugia were divorced in December 1967.
     Her married name was Farrugia.

     Gina Rosanna Farrugia was born on 15 May 1962 in San Francisco, San Francisco Co., CA, USA.¹

     Richard M. Farrugia was born on 5 April 1964 in San Francisco, San Francisco Co., CA, USA.¹
     He was living in 2020 in Daly City, CA, USA.