Star Witness

The state’s star witness against William Hightower was his erstwhile girlfriend, Doris Shirley aka “Mickey” Clayton aka “Mickey” Carroll. The DA helped facilitate her hurried marriage to a youthful suitor, Lee Putnam, son of a Federal building inspector, and kept the couple in tight seclusion, shuttling them between cozy resorts until Doris had delivered her testimony at trial. In her original statement to law enforcement, Mickey claimed to have no knowledge of Hightower’s activities on the evening of the kidnapping, or of his renting of the Ford widely presumed to have been used in the crime. She later revised her story to say that she had ridden in the Ford with Hightower after he picked it up around 6pm, but that he had dropped her off in San Francisco to eat dinner alone, and she definitely had not taken a trip with him to San Jose during the next few hours, which coincided with Father Heslin’s abduction. Her new hubbie vouched for that story, telling police they went on a movie date while Hightower was off the scene. And that was the nail in the coffin for Hightower.