es
that he covered up the tire tracks at the scene; they resembled too similarly the treads of his 1939 Ford, said Kirkes.
Kirkes asked Liebler to be his alibi. If anyone asks, the patrolman told him, I was in here the evening of the murder buying liquor.
But Liebler trusted in Ross and told the budding sheriff that this wasn’t true. This piqued Ross’ interest in the case and raised a suspicious red flag—one of the first—for his friend Kirkes.
Ross did some poking around and discovered Kirkes had been doing more than just asking local merchants to corroborate his story. Kirkes had also patronized a local service station that week, thoroughly and meticulously cleaning out the trunk of his car with an air hose roughly grabbed from a station attendant.
Not satisfied, Ross learned, Kirkes had requested the entire ’39 Ford repainted and cleaned.
SILENCE BROKEN
Longtime Carpinteria farmer George Bliss had been interviewed by authorities in 1942 shortly after the murder, asked if anything suspicious had come within his sights.
“They asked me if I had seen the car ... and I saw nothing at all,” Bliss, 87, recently recalled as his answer to police. Bliss’ property, near the former Beckstead land, was not in close proximity to where the body was reported found on the border of neighboring
BEHAVIOR; WHY WOULD A VANDERBILT CLASS DISPLAY SUCH SLOPPY POLICE WORK?
Since the Liebler phone call, Ross wondered why every clue kept pointing back to Kirkes and his car. Those odd imprints on Senteney’s leg, according to the county coroner, matched up with the pattern of a floor mat found only in then-current model Ford coupes.
The floor mat of Kirkes’ Ford was missing. The coroner’s theory—that the corpse was perhaps shoved into the truck of the Ford—seemed more than coincidental. It shed light on Kirkes’ uncharacteristic behavior; why would a Vanderbilt University graduate, at the top of his class, display such sloppy police work? Ross decided to approach the district attorney and pursue murder charges for Kirkes. The patrolman was brought in for questioning but denied everything; the D.A. told Ross that most of the evidence was circumstantial, too light to build a solid murder case. Ross was left stymied, and Kirkes returned back to the highway patrol, soon after leaving with the Red Cross for a World War II tour of duty in the Aleutian Islands. Along with his departure went the Senteney case, sitting unsolved for years.
SPRINGSUMMER2007 31
1939 Ford
ON TRIAL, Leonard Kirkes’ was described as a handsome, strapping man who knew everyone in Carpinteria. The father of a 6-year-old boy, he was a helper in Boy Scout activities and a member of the Lions Club.
COURTESY OF LARRY CERVANTES AND JOHN McCAFFERTY ALISO SCHOOL
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