In June 2018, the FBI and several California law enforcement agencies asked the public for help in identifying the “Golden State Killer,” a mysterious nighttime serial killer whose shared DNA has been linked to 13 homicides, more than 50 rapes, and hundreds of burglaries committed between the 1970s and 1986.

A reader contacted me and asked if it could be Louis Wiechecki?

For a moment I thought it might be him.

However, a document check revealed that Wiechecki had been cleared of all charges, and another man was later identified as the serial monster.

Before I could reply, the reader pinged me again on Instant Messenger. She had an update: Louie Wiechecki is dead.

The longtime smoker died in April 2018 of congestive heart failure after years of suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). An obituary posted on dignitymemorial.com said simply: “Lou, beloved husband and friend.”

I called one of Lou’s neighbors in Henderson to confirm the information was accurate. Mary MacGregor said there were quite a few people at his funeral.

She also said she remembered me as the reporter who was there the day Louie was arrested by SWAT, and she wondered if I had read Louie’s book.

I couldn’t hide my surprise. “What book?”

•••

“Through the Eyes of a Criminal,” a self-published novel by Lou Stanley—a name Wiechecki changed—was a revenge tale about a juvenile delinquent who became a crime lord, committing kidnappings and murders to fund his vendetta against “the cops, prosecutors, and others who tried to ruin my life.” The most important of those, it turned out, was a “Los Angeles journalist” who wrote about his connection to a cold rape and murder case that was initially ruled a suicide.

According to Wiechecki’s character, the journalist had to be “cut and chopped. Nothing too dirty, just enough to be sure he would die.”

My literary close encounter with Louie’s black heart reminded me that there were still unanswered questions. The one that haunted me most after all these years was who did Deputy Coroner Joe Stevens call that night in 1974 after Linda’s death? Who was the voice on the other end of the line that convinced him to rule it a suicide?

Driven by Louie’s revenge fantasy, I made it my priority to discover the truth.

•••

A year later, I was sitting at a table at Wood Ranch in Irvine, across from the retired Santa Ana police officer who had been the first to arrive on the scene at the Aladdin Apartments in 1974 in response to an emergency call about a suicide in Apartment 8.

Larry DeSantis agreed to talk about the case he’s never forgotten. “It still haunts me,” he said. “This guy got away with murder.”

He remembered that day as if it were 48 hours ago. Wiechecki had been his first contact at the Aladdin Apartments. He recalled the first words Louie had spoken: “She committed suicide. She’s in there.”

And Louie’s continued obsession with suicide – what DeSantis called “his whole thing. He was adamant about suicide. It was really weird.” He said Wiechecki kept telling detectives that Linda was a mental patient.

Deputy Coroner Stevens was not someone who was easily fooled, DeSantis said. In fact, Stevens’ first impression of the death scene was that it appeared staged, and he was also concerned about the rare occurrence of a woman committing suicide in the nude.

But hours later, alone in the coroner’s office, Stevens dismissed all doubt and suspicion, based on a single late-night call he made to the local telephone number of Dr. Vincent Mark, supposedly Linda’s personal physician treating her for depression.

The voice on the other end of the line convinced Stevens that Linda had recently been hospitalized for depression, was taking the powerful antipsychotic drug Thorazine, and was having “strong suicidal thoughts.”

More than 30 years later, the real Dr. Mark told Orange County investigators that he did not know Linda Cummings; he did not treat psychiatric patients and never prescribed Thorazine.

“I didn’t talk to any coroner… in ’74,” the real Dr. Mark told investigators. He paused for emphasis. “No, I didn’t.”

So who was he? Who told Stevens the big lie that convinced him, despite all the contradictory evidence at the scene, that Linda’s death was self-inflicted? How did Stevens get the name and phone number of a local doctor in the first place?

“Because Louie wrote it down on a piece of paper,” DeSantis told me, still scanning the Aladdin courtyard from the perspective of 45 years.

“Did he give it to you?” I asked.

“No—” he began, but stopped in mid-answer. “Wait a minute. He gave it to me. I passed it on. It had the doctor’s name on it. He gave it to me, and I passed it on to Sergeant Enos.”

Yes, Louie undoubtedly used his own phone number—or the number of a nearby pay phone—a phone he could easily monitor for the next few hours. When Stevens reached for the phone that night to call Linda’s doctor, it was Wiechecki waiting to answer the call. And the voice that answered, “Doctor Mark,” was the voice of Linda’s killer.

And when the deputy coroner concluded his report with a big red rubber stamp saying SUICIDE, he essentially doomed any future criminal proceedings to failure.

When Judge Fasel dismissed the murder charges against Louie—in the face of faded memories, dead witnesses, and lost evidence—it was the end of Linda’s chance for redemption through the justice system. But good journalism, operating in a public forum, can sometimes accomplish what justice and the courts cannot.

The official records still had an incorrect version of her story. This had to be corrected.

Coming Saturday, part six: Linda Cummings’ brother wants a major change.