Robert Leroy Biehler

Overview

Robert Leroy Biehler was convicted of three counts of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Background

Biehler operated in the underworld of Hollywood, California, in late 1966. He consorted with hookers, madams, 8mm-porn actresses and other low-lifes. He had been married in the early 1950s, and later was arrested and convicted of robbery. He was sent to prison until 1960, when he was paroled, and then was sent back until 1966 for a parole violation.

During the time he was in prison, Biehler’s first wife divorced him. After Biehler was released in August 1966, he married Janet. He lived with Janet and her two children from a previous marriage and worked as a painter.

While in prison, Biehler met and formed a relationship with Richard “Dixie” Aldrich, a professional burglar. Through Dixie, Biehler met criminal defense attorney Howard Meyerson, whose clientele included Morton Molin, a 25-year-old gigolo and heroin addict living with a madam named Julia Cook. Julia lived in North Hollywood with her 15-year-old son, Kenneth, and operated a string of call girls from her apartment. Julia reportedly took in between $500 and $1,000 each day, sold 8mm porno loops, and fenced stolen goods.

Biehler had a sexual relationship with Julia and coveted her “trick book” listing her girls and the johns and their preferences. In a statement he gave to police much later, Biehler said:

“Her body was scarred,”
“Her breasts were far too large for my taste; she didn’t kiss as satisfactorily as I would have liked and she didn’t function very well.”

Biehler had plans to take over the pimping operations of the entire San Fernando Valley and believed he needed to get rid of Julia. He sought a gun to do so.

The offence

Murder of Julia Cook and Kenneth

Janet Biehler overheard Biehler talking to someone on the phone shortly before Julia was murdered. Janet heard Biehler ask:

“Can you get me a gun?”

Janet screamed in alarm, and Biehler cuffed her with the back of his hand, hitting her in the face. He explained into the phone that he just had to break “his old lady’s jaw.”

It was Morton Molin on the other end, and he agreed to provide Biehler with the .32 for $150. The heroin junkie/gigolo turned the gun over to Biehler the next day at a bar called the Iron Horse. He recalled later that it was loaded with five rounds.

After the sale, Molin returned to the Meyerson house. He received a phone call from Julia telling him that Bob Biehler had shown up at the North Hollywood apartment. Molin inferred that Julia was frightened and that she was “muffling the phone like somebody might have been standing right next to her and she didn’t want them to overhear what she was saying.”

Molin waited until nearly midnight before heading to Julia’s North Hollywood apartment. Inside, he found Julia and 15-year-old Ken slumped in two chairs in the living room. The house had been ransacked and the TV was on. Julia’s “trick book” was gone. Molin helped himself to jewelry and $800 in cash.

Molin returned to Meyerson’s home and said he had not been able to get into Julia’s home. The next day, Meyerson and Dixie Aldrich convinced him to go back to the apartment to see if Julia was OK. Molin did so and reported what he saw. He subsequently told Meyerson that he had seen the bodies in the same position the day before.

Police discovered that Julia and her son had been both shot twice in the head with a .32 Smith & Wesson. A towel similar to the type that Biehler’s brother-in-law, a barber, used in his shop was found at the scene. The shooter used the towel to muffle the sound.

Biehler convinced Janet to provide him with an alibi and he ditched the clothes he wore to the murder. Although the gun used to kill Julia and Ken was never found, Molin was arrested on suspicion and soon released.

On the morning after the murders, Biehler called another friend and told her that Julia and her son had been “snuffed.” He told the friend to look in the Los Angeles Times, but the paper did not run anything that day. The woman talked to police, and based on Biehler’s “big mouth,” he was picked up and charged. Still, because police couldn’t break Janet’s alibi, authorities charged Biehler with parole violations. He was sent back to prison for those parole violations, and the North Hollywood murder investigation went cold.

Murder of Michael Coveney

In August 1973, Biehler was reparoled and again lived with Janet and her children near Sunland. Biehler was trying to re-establish himself as a Southern California pimp.

He passed his days at a bar called the Shadow Hills Lounge. Janet had made friends with a young, disabled Vietnam Vet named Michael Coveney, who supplemented his meager government stipend by selling coke.

Biehler and Coveney had a fatal run-in on October 14, 1973, in the parking lot of the Shadow Hills Lounge. The bartender said he was called outside at about 10 p.m. that night to see Coveney laying on the ground with Biehler standing over him.

Biehler pulled the disabled vet, who had recently broken his left leg in a motorcycle accident, to his feet and dragged him to his car and away from the bar. He drove about a mile away to Janet’s home, where she was sleeping with her two young children. An enraged Biehler dragged the drunken Coveney out of the car, threw him on the front lawn, and called for Janet to bring his sawed-off .30-caliber Enfield rifle.

As Janet’s two children huddled under the sheets of their bed, Coveney said, “please don’t kill me.” Biehler pointed the sawed-off rifle at the helpless disabled vet and pulled the trigger. Janet recalled screaming:

“Oh my God!”

Her son remembered that after hearing the blast, he jumped out of bed and ran into his sister’s room and got into her bed.

Biehler ordered Janet to help him load the body into his Volkswagen. They threw in the rifle and a shovel and drove off toward the Los Angeles Crest Forest. Not far from a ranger station, Biehler dug a shallow grave and dumped the body in it. He buried the rifle a short distance away.

Biehler then returned home, turned on a garden hose, and had it run through the car all night long. The next morning, he woke Janet’s children and told them that because their mother was as guilty as he was, they had better help clean up the mess. He supervised their cleaning operation. He explained that Coveney had threatened to expose him to his parole officer for owning the firearm, and he warned everyone not to say anything to the police.

The burial was not deep enough: a trip to check on things revealed that “something had been digging at the grave.” Biehler and Janet were forced to return to rebury him. The corpse ruined Biehler’s Volkswagen, and he later was forced to burn out the interior of the car with gasoline and dispose of the car.

Attempted and successful killing of Flip

After this distraction, Biehler returned to Hollywood and began handling working girls through the Hollywood Call Board Answering Service under the name Carl Johnson. Biehler and Janet fell out over his insistence that she welcome Christine Corder into their bed, and Biehler moved in with Christine in early 1974.

At the Hollywood Call Board Answering Service, Biehler met Maida Sue Ellington, the office manager and bookkeeper, who was embezzling from her boss by taking cash payments and not recording them. Maida was involved with another woman, Carole Phillips, a former professional roller derby skater with a 5-year-old son. Carole went by the nickname “Flip.”

Maida and Flip had a love-hate relationship. They were both women, and Maida was white while Flip was black. Maida was dealing dope, working as a prostitute, and stealing from her employer, which Flip considered inappropriate. When Flip threatened to tell Maida’s mother that her daughter was a dope-dealing lesbian prostitute and a thief, Maida told Biehler that she wanted Flip “burned.” For $1,800, Biehler agreed to help.

October 5, 1974 attack on Flip

Biehler bought a gray wig and matching mustache at a Hollywood costume shop. He met up with Maida, who gave him a .22-caliber handgun to use. The plan was for Biehler and Christine to pose as plumbers to gain entry into the house Flip and Maida shared. Biehler bought a toolbox, cut a hole in the bottom large enough to fit his hand and a hole in the side large enough for the barrel of the pistol. He wrapped the gun in a towel and tape. He and Christine headed for Flip’s remote Kagel Canyon home. Maida had prepped Flip by explaining that a plumber was coming to fix a leak in the bathroom.

On October 5, 1974, Irma Jean Pack and Nancy Moore, two single schoolteachers living next door to Flip and Maida, were on the roof of their house fixing a TV antenna when two people drove up and parked in front of Flip’s house. One man got out wearing brand new blue coveralls and a gray wig and mustache that appeared fake even from a distance. He carried what appeared to them to be a tackle box. After taking a deep breath, he walked up to the house.

They heard voiced come from Flip’s house and then four “banging noises.” Biehler came back to the car, handed the gun and a bloody glove to Christine, and they drove away. The schoolteachers could not get the license plate but described the car as a Volkswagen. Biehler and Christine disposed of their clothes at a laundry and dumped the wigs and mustache in a garbage can somewhere along the way.

Biehler told Christine:

“She tried to run up the stairs,”
“I knocked her down and told her to keep her mouth shut. This was a robbery.”

Biehler told Christine that he shot Flip four times in the head and that he thought she was dead or dying when he left. The neighbors rushed over to Flip and found her lying in a pool of blood. Flip had been hit three times in the head, twice behind the left ear and once behind the right. She survived and would recover.

Maida met Flip and the police at the hospital. Maida told police that they had had a plumbing problem and that she hadn’t yet called anyone to address it. A doctor recalled that Maida said:

“I’m not surprised that this didn’t kill her because she has such a hard head.”

In the weeks following Flip’s attack, Maida did little to deflect suspicion. She told two coworkers that Flip was threatening to tell her mother about her lifestyle and asked another if she would still like her “if she had Flip shot.”

December 22, 1974 murder of Flip

On December 22, 1974, Biehler and Maida decided to try again to kill Flip. They celebrated an anniversary at the Hialeah Lounge while Biehler and Christine staked it out across the street. This time, they planned for it to look like a robbery.

When the two women came out of the bar and got into their car, Biehler got out of his Volkswagen and into the backseat of Maida’s car. Holding a gun to Flip’s head, he directed them to drive to a remote gravel road. Christine followed in the Volkswagen and watched as Maida got out of the car followed by Biehler. Biehler hit Maida with a blackjack, and Maida fell to the ground. When he walked back to the VW, Biehler said to Christine:

“This time she’s really dead.”

Maida lay unconscious in the road for about 15 minutes until a couple who lived on the gravel road pulled up. They discovered Flip dead in the car and Maida with a bruise on her head and a broken nose. A search of Flip and Maida’s home revealed two .22 caliber pistols, each similar to the one that apparently killed Flip. Ballistics tests were inconclusive.

Investigation

Police linked Maida to the killings. She was arrested on January 30, 1975, the same day as Biehler.

The killings would not have been linked without Christine jumping parole and going on a crime spree with escaped federal prisoner Michael Thompson. Christine and Michael Thompson were arrested months later in San Mateo County. Christine led police to Michael Coveney’s grave on December 10. That led to Janet’s arrest on the 11th and Biehler’s arrest the next day for Coveney’s killing and the murder of Julia and Ken Cook.

Arrest and trial

Maida was arrested on January 30, 1975, the same day as Biehler. California had no death penalty statutes at the time.

Biehler was convicted of four counts of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Outcome

The case resulted in Robert Biehler’s conviction of four counts of first degree murder, with a sentence of life in prison without parole.

Other details

Biehler was also described as a pimp and thief. After his repousal in August 1973, he tried to re-establish himself as a Southern California pimp and operated through the Hollywood Call Board Answering Service under the name Carl Johnson.