Wilberforce Canning orders Gómez and López killed

Wilberforce Canning’s order to kill Gómez and López turned the search for Nico Peterson into an act of revenge as well as an effort to control what others knew. The two men were brought from south of the border to the Cahuilla Club, where Canning had them interrogated and killed. Their fate later became part of the evidence against him, even as his connections helped him escape the immediate police response.

Background and Purpose

Canning’s interest in the Mexican men was tied to two matters that converged at the Cahuilla Club: what they knew about Nico Peterson, and their responsibility for Lynn Peterson’s murder. After the raid, Floyd Hanson told investigators that Canning wanted to learn what Philip Marlowe knew about Nico, including whether Nico might still be alive and where he could be found. Hanson also said that Canning knew the men had killed Lynn and took revenge on them. The account therefore distinguishes Canning’s practical purpose—seeking information about Nico—from his retaliatory motive for having the men killed.

The men had not simply arrived at the club on their own. Hanson said Canning had associates south of the border who seized them and sent them north. That cross-border reach gave the order a larger context: Canning could use associates beyond the club to bring the men within his control, then use the club itself as a place to interrogate and dispose of them. Their capture and killing also connected Canning’s search for Nico to the earlier violence against Lynn.

The Order and Its Execution

When Philip Marlowe could see the poolside scene, Gómez and López were restrained in chairs beside him. López was dead; Gómez remained alive but gravely weakened. Canning presented their condition as the result of an interrogation conducted by Clarence Bartlett, the club’s butler, and ordered Bartlett to remove them, with Floyd Hanson assigned to help. Hanson’s horrified reaction showed that he was not simply carrying out the order without misgiving, but Canning ignored it and continued directing events.

Bartlett and Hanson returned after taking the two men away. Canning then counted them as eliminated and turned his attention to Marlowe, whom he accused of withholding information. The sequence makes the order part of a wider effort to force answers about Nico Peterson: after the two Mexicans had been interrogated and killed, Canning subjected Marlowe to further questioning. The men’s deaths were not an incidental consequence of the club’s violence but a deliberate step in Canning’s attempt to control the investigation.

Raid, Confession, and Escape

After Philip Marlowe alerted Bernie Ohls, officers raided the Cahuilla Club. They found Bartlett by the pool, unconscious from blood loss, while the drunken Shriners moving through the grounds complicated the search. Hanson was arrested at his Bay City apartment as he packed to leave; Ohls later remarked that taking so many belongings had cost him time. The raid ended Canning’s immediate control of the club, but not his freedom.

Under questioning, Hanson described what had happened to the two men and offered to show investigators the lime pit where he and Bartlett had dumped their bodies. It lay in a remote corner of the club grounds, and Hanson said the soil there was acidic. His account supplied investigators with an explanation for the blood at the pool and a location connected to the men’s disposal, turning Canning’s order into evidence that could be pursued beyond Marlowe’s recollection of the scene.

Hanson’s statement also clarified the purpose of the interrogation. Canning had wanted to learn what Marlowe knew about Nico Peterson and whether Nico might still be alive or could be found. Hanson said he had no useful information to give the authorities about that inquiry, and Ohls concluded that Canning had not trusted him with sensitive details. He also reported that Canning knew the Mexican men had killed Lynn Peterson and had acted against them in revenge. The account thus linked the killings to two distinct stakes: Canning’s search for Nico and his retaliation for Lynn’s death.

Canning escaped before the police reached his home. His staff said he had arrived in haste, looking as though he had been caught in a sudden downpour, and ordered a bag and a car for the airport. An airline employee thought she recognized him on a flight to Toronto, with a further leg to London, but could not recall the name on his ticket. The authorities checked passenger records and circulated his photograph at the airport; the alias remained unknown. His associates and reach had helped bring the two men to the club, but his flight left investigators with no immediate arrest.

The aftermath remained unresolved. Later, Ohls reported that there was no trace of Canning, Bartlett could no longer speak after Marlowe’s gunshot had damaged an artery in his knee, and the two Mexican men remained unidentified. The raid exposed the killings and Hanson’s account connected them to Canning, yet the people and records needed to close the case were incomplete. The order’s consequences therefore extended beyond the club: it left a criminal investigation in which the central figure had fled and important witnesses or victims could not provide a full account.

The Unsettled Question Behind the Killings

The information Canning sought concerned an identity that official records appeared to have settled. Joe Green reported that Nico Peterson had died in a hit-and-run near Pacific Palisades on April 19, and the county file placed the collision on Latimer Road between eleven at night and midnight, with the driver unknown. Yet Green had not officially identified the body; he believed Nico’s sister had done so at the morgue the following day. Against that record stood a reported sighting of Nico alive, which led Philip Marlowe to question whether the dead man had been correctly identified. Canning’s effort to extract what Marlowe knew—and his order against the two men who might also have been questioned—therefore intensified the violence around a central uncertainty without resolving it: whether Nico was dead or had arranged to disappear.