Gerald Mason

Mason died in prison on January 22, 2017, 9 days before his 83rd birthday. He had spent 14 years in prison. His next parole hearing was still 7 years away.

Mason, 75, was turned down for parole in 2009. The three-member board decided Mason should not come before the panel again for the maximum period of 15 years until March 2024 when he would have been 90 years old. California prosecutors were determined that he would never be released.

Police located Mason, who had returned to and was still living in his hometown of Columbia, South Carolina. He was a wealthy retiree and a grandfather, quietly living with his family in a suburban neighborhood. Then in January 2003, a large group of police officers called at his door. Mason was completely shocked and had asked where they were from. The police officers had said, "We are from the El Segundo Police Department, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department." Mason then said, "You're homicide detectives? I think I need a lawyer." The police officers then told him that they were there because of the murders of two police officers in 1957. Horrified, Mason responded, "My god, you're here for that? That happened so long ago, I can't believe you're here bothering me with that."

In a 2003 interview with People Magazine, Jerri Mason Whittaker, Gerald Mason's daughter, said, "There really aren't words to describe the range of emotions we've gone through." Even so, she insisted, "I could not have had a better father."

In 2002, with advances in computerized finger-printing technology, the FBI decided to expand the system to include prints collected during arrests in all 50 states. A match based on the partial left thumb prints lifted from the steering wheel of the stolen car, came back about a man convicted of burglary in 1956 in Columbia. He had served time for that case. Besides the matching fingerprint the evidence was also based on matching handwriting, thus linking him to the murder weapon.

The murders of Officers Phillips and Curtis touched off a homicide investigation that continued for almost half a century. In 1960, the murder weapon was recovered a mile from the crime in a back yard. The serial number was traced to a purchase at Sears in Shreveport, Louisiana, under the alias George D. Wilson. The signature was matched to "Wilson's" signature on a YMCA receipt, located near the Sears store. El Segundo detectives proceeded to track down every George D. Wilson in the United States. However all were ruled out, and the investigation went cold.

Following his arrest, Mason was further identified by the bullet graze wound scar on his back, from a bullet fired by Officer Phillips in 1957.

Born in Columbia, South Carolina, he was arrested and spent time in prison for burglary in that state in 1956. After his release in 1957, then aged 23, he hitchhiked his way to California, stopping in Shreveport, Louisiana where he purchased a revolver using an alias. He later stated that it was purchased for protection while hitchhiking.

In Hawthorne, California, Mason came upon four teenagers at a local lover's lane. Drawing his revolver, Mason forced the two couples to strip down to their underwear and bound and blindfolded them. He then raped one of the girls. Leaving the teens alive as they were, Mason then drove off in their 1949 Ford sedan, ran a red light, and was pulled over by Officers Richard Phillips and Milton Curtis of the El Segundo Police Department.

Gerald Fiten Mason (January 31, 1934 – January 22, 2017) was an American convicted murderer and rapist. Mason's 2003 arrest and prosecution for the 1957 murders of two El Segundo, California police officers made national headlines.