CRIMINAL MIND > FORENSICS & INVESTIGATION

Beverly Hills Cop

A Frozen Case

Paul Edholm, recent

Beverly Hills is more likely known for Rodeo Drive and extravagant Hollywood spending, the filthy rich and excess. Working for the BHPD, Paul Edholm had always appreciated letters. Their different shapes. Sizes. The way certain people made an "M" and others curved a "G." He had learned the power of letters while working with his father as a young boy in Buffalo, New York, at a printing press—a job that was, even though Paul didn't know it then, a portend of what was to come some twenty-five years later.

After working twenty years with the BHPD, many of which as a forgery detective, Paul was comfortable living his retired life as a consultant. When various police departments or agencies needed a handwriting expert, Paul Edholm, a nationally renowned expert, was the man to call. He had a way with letters; he could tell you, with just a glimpse, if two samples of handwriting were cut from the same hand. Upon further investigation, he could say it with 99.9 percent accuracy and sit in the witness stand—as he had many times—and swear to it.

As Paul sat in his living room during the summer of 2002, his telephone rang.

It was Darren Levine, a Los Angeles assistant district attorney familiar with Paul's work. Levine had called before, asking Paul to help out on a rather odd cold case his office was reinvestigating. Today, though, Levine had a particular request.

"I have that case involving two police officers who were murdered. I need your help."

The case was finally moving forward.

At first, the request didn't seem so different from what Paul had done most of his career. But cold didn't begin to describe the crimes; the murders had occurred back in 1957. By this point in the case, the LA DA's office had obtained a photostatic copy of a document from 1959 they believed the killer had written, on top of a document from a suspect they had only recently been conducting surveillance on. Levine wanted Paul to come down to the El Segundo PD and have a look at the documents.

"We think we got our guy, Paul."

Paul had never heard of the case. He was a boy when the murders occurred. But here he was, almost five decades later, about ready to play one of the more pivotal roles in the case.

Levine said they had a partial fingerprint, too, that they were "cleaning" up.