her where she landed.
In another case, recounted by Patricia Holt in her biography of the detective, Lipset said that the army’s criminals weren’t always the smartest crooks, but they could be brutal:
A Belgian couple was found leaning against each other in a sitting position on their bed, with a trail of bullets froman automatic rifle moving up the right arm of the woman, through her shoulder and neck area into her husband’s shoulder and neck area and down his left arm. They had been killed in this manner by a GI looking for jewels. He had mistaken them for the jewelers who lived next door. He thought they were lying when he killed them and took some of the woman’s heirloom jewelry, which we later found sewn into the lining of his backpack. 13
Crimes like these left a lasting impact on Lipset, who for the rest of his life kept every file and report from his World War II days—along with every grisly crime scene photo of hacked and mutilated bodies—locked in his attic in San Francisco.
But another lasting legacy of World War II was the rigorous training the army gave him. Although Lipset grew frustrated with the bureaucracy and petty corruption of the officers he worked for in the service, he appreciated their methods and attention to detail. The record-keeping system he used in private practice and even the format of his reports resembled systems he’d followed in the army.
The army taught Lipset almost everything he needed to know to become a private eye, including how to search a crime scene without disturbing evidence, how to interview witnesses, and how to analyze documents. Thanks to exacting supervisors, he also learned how to use ethyl alcohol to test for blood, how to take fingerprints, how to detect gunpowder burns, and how to make a plaster cast of a tire print. In one training exercise, instructors sent students into town to spend thirty seconds in front of a store window, and then turn around to be quizzed by an officer on the exact details of the display. How many objects were there? How many inches away from one another were they? What color was the backdrop?
Lipset was also taught how to conduct surveillance, with teams of investigators leapfrogging the suspect or bracketing him, withone in front and one behind the target. The importance of attention to detail was relentlessly hammered into each trainee.
In the 1970s, Lipset was a wealthy man, working for San Francisco’s most prominent law and financial firms. He was at his most powerful during a project his biographer Patricia Holt called “the case of the elusive entrepreneur.”
In 1973, Lipset received a call from Creative Capital, a venture capital company based in New York, which wanted his help in unraveling a bad investment. Creative Capital—along with an entrepreneur, Paul Maris—had invested $3.5 million to buy a garment manufacturing business: the Alvin Duskin Company in San Francisco. But now, as CEO of Duskin, the stylish, dark-haired, thirty-five-year-old Maris was running behind on his debt-service payments and spending a lot of money on the company, putting several members of his family on the payroll, and giving expensive Mercedeses, Maseratis, and Ferraris to his executives. Creative Capital felt Maris had become a bad investment and wanted to force him out of the company. But when representatives of the board of directors attempted the ouster, Maris threatened to punch them in the nose.
Creative Capital hired a law firm to obtain restraining orders and Lipset’s firm to plan a more forceful corporate ouster. To prepare for the takeover, Lipset hired twenty operatives and developed a written plan for going into the garment company and forcing Maris out. Lipset also retained a six-foot-six bodyguard for the CEO of Creative Capital, in case Maris became violent during the confrontation. Lipset said: “The dress factory was a big building with half a dozen floors. We knew we would have to keep people from moving
In another case, recounted by Patricia Holt in her biography of the detective, Lipset said that the army’s criminals weren’t always the smartest crooks, but they could be brutal:
A Belgian couple was found leaning against each other in a sitting position on their bed, with a trail of bullets froman automatic rifle moving up the right arm of the woman, through her shoulder and neck area into her husband’s shoulder and neck area and down his left arm. They had been killed in this manner by a GI looking for jewels. He had mistaken them for the jewelers who lived next door. He thought they were lying when he killed them and took some of the woman’s heirloom jewelry, which we later found sewn into the lining of his backpack. 13
Crimes like these left a lasting impact on Lipset, who for the rest of his life kept every file and report from his World War II days—along with every grisly crime scene photo of hacked and mutilated bodies—locked in his attic in San Francisco.
But another lasting legacy of World War II was the rigorous training the army gave him. Although Lipset grew frustrated with the bureaucracy and petty corruption of the officers he worked for in the service, he appreciated their methods and attention to detail. The record-keeping system he used in private practice and even the format of his reports resembled systems he’d followed in the army.
The army taught Lipset almost everything he needed to know to become a private eye, including how to search a crime scene without disturbing evidence, how to interview witnesses, and how to analyze documents. Thanks to exacting supervisors, he also learned how to use ethyl alcohol to test for blood, how to take fingerprints, how to detect gunpowder burns, and how to make a plaster cast of a tire print. In one training exercise, instructors sent students into town to spend thirty seconds in front of a store window, and then turn around to be quizzed by an officer on the exact details of the display. How many objects were there? How many inches away from one another were they? What color was the backdrop?
Lipset was also taught how to conduct surveillance, with teams of investigators leapfrogging the suspect or bracketing him, withone in front and one behind the target. The importance of attention to detail was relentlessly hammered into each trainee.
In the 1970s, Lipset was a wealthy man, working for San Francisco’s most prominent law and financial firms. He was at his most powerful during a project his biographer Patricia Holt called “the case of the elusive entrepreneur.”
In 1973, Lipset received a call from Creative Capital, a venture capital company based in New York, which wanted his help in unraveling a bad investment. Creative Capital—along with an entrepreneur, Paul Maris—had invested $3.5 million to buy a garment manufacturing business: the Alvin Duskin Company in San Francisco. But now, as CEO of Duskin, the stylish, dark-haired, thirty-five-year-old Maris was running behind on his debt-service payments and spending a lot of money on the company, putting several members of his family on the payroll, and giving expensive Mercedeses, Maseratis, and Ferraris to his executives. Creative Capital felt Maris had become a bad investment and wanted to force him out of the company. But when representatives of the board of directors attempted the ouster, Maris threatened to punch them in the nose.
Creative Capital hired a law firm to obtain restraining orders and Lipset’s firm to plan a more forceful corporate ouster. To prepare for the takeover, Lipset hired twenty operatives and developed a written plan for going into the garment company and forcing Maris out. Lipset also retained a six-foot-six bodyguard for the CEO of Creative Capital, in case Maris became violent during the confrontation. Lipset said: “The dress factory was a big building with half a dozen floors. We knew we would have to keep people from moving
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