I recall Thoresen's wife saying he paid Stoddard to kill Richard Thoresen, but not hearing elsewhere that Thoresen paid others to kill. Seems most of the time he did the killing himself.
There were several times that Thoresen had attempted to pay people to kill for him. He successfully paid two different people to kill his wife. One guy took the money to Mexico and spent it. The other guy gave the money back. There were others he tried to pay to kill his wife and was turned down. He also tried to pay people to kill his parents on more than one occasion. Nobody ever took the job, though. Thoresen did try to kill his parents himself once, but that didn't go so well. He also paid a hitman to kill a guy named Joe Hinojosa, but called the hitman off at the last second because he realized it could be linked back to him. Thoresen and Hinojosa were good friends, but Thoresen's wife left him and stayed with Hinojosa for a short time after William had beat Louise, and he accused the two of having an affair.
He dumped Stoddard's body in the ocean after beating him with a hammer. I have all kinds of info on Thoresen including FBI documents and some papers having to do with Richard Thoresen's insurance policy. William and Richard never got along until Richard got his inheritance and William wanted to get his hands on it. The guy was a lunatic. I know he was traveling around the country at the time of Valerie's murder, and I know he was in Chicago around the time but I can't place him in Chicago on the date of the murder. I have posted a good amount of my Thoresen findings
HERE.
Thoresen was also questioned in the 1957 murder of Judith Mae Andersen after he had bragged to a friend about chopping a girl into pieces and dumping her in the lake. Police did not have enough to go after him, though. A couple of people have told me that a wealthy young man like Thoresen would probably not be hanging out in the area of town where Andersen's body was found. I have a newspaper article from around the same time as the murder that places Thoresen in that area. Thoresen once tried to push his mother from a 2nd story balcony and on another occasion he tried to throw his wife from a 20th story hotel window, but his lawyer heard Louise scream from the next room and he busted in and stopped him. He was charged with assault on a hotel employee after breaking the guys arm because his bill was 75 cents more than it should have been. If a rich man is going to break a guys arm over 75 cents then he would have no problem killing his own brother for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I don't have a full arrest record on Thoresen finished just yet, but here are some things worth mentioning:
-1957 Thoresen is stabbed during a scuffle with a parking lot attendant in Evanston, Ill. Thoresen claims that he later hit the same man with his car.
-1958 Charged and fined $50 for shoving a man in Kenilworth, Ill.
-1959 Charged with stealing 6 colored posters from a ferry terminal in Bar Harbor, Maine. Thoresen's father agreed to bail William out as long as he checked into a mental health facility upon their return to Chicago, but William refused. His father bailed him out anyways. William was charged with a felony and placed on 2 years probation.
Here is a link that gives more information. Thoresen later tried to appeal this because he was about to start his weapons trial, and being a convicted felon it was illegal for him to own any firearms.
-1964 Accused of lighting dynamite outside of a radio station in Arizona where he and his wife were living. The charges were dropped because the witness was too scared to testify.
-1965 William and Richard Thoresen were named in burglary warrants for breaking into their parents home. Richard was murdered the day before he was to go to trial.
-1966, March 11th Thoresen and Lewis Dale Stoddard were arrested after a high speed chase in one of Thoresen's Ferraris. Police were investigating "suspicious circumstances" outside of Val's Gun Shop on Columbus Ave. in San Francisco. Not sure what the "suspicious circumstances" were. The two were originally charged with assault on a police officer, possession of a blackjack and resisting arrest. The resisting arrest charge stuck and the other charges were dropped.
-1966, December. William and Louise Thoresen, accompanied by J. Curtis Earl (for part of their trip) go around the country buying up all the weapons and ammo they can get their hands on. Louise left some packages at Kennedy airport in NYC. One of the packages accidentally opened and revealed a gun inside. The airport contacted the authorities and Louise was arrested when she came to claim to collect the packages. These packages contained an arsenal, and even more was found in the rental car in Louise's name. William approached the rental car and was confronted by either FBI agents or NYPD (I forget which), who attempted to question Thoresen about the murder of Valerie Percy, but William would not cooperate and went to get his lawyer.
-1967 ATF raids the Thoresen mansion in San Francisco and finds that the house is full of weapons and ammo. Everything from handguns to machine guns to bayonets to anti-aircraft weapons. Over the next few days, the ATF learns of warehouses where Thoresen has even more weapons and ammo, and they find a garage in his neighborhood where he has stored a cannon. In total, they confiscate over 77 tons worth of goodies.
-1967 Charged with assault and bribery in Las Vegas after breaking Joan Jelke's nose and then handing two police officers $5000 in cash each and telling them to "lay off."
-1970 after Thoresen is shot to death by his wife, police search the home they bought in Fresno (they were living there because that is where their trial was being held) and find a bunch more weapons and ammo, a bunch of heroin and LSD, and more than 50 lbs of high grade marijuana. Thoresen and an unidentified woman were to fly to Europe on the night of his death. Police believe he was running drugs. Police also re-searched his San Francisco mansion after his death and found that he was stockpiling weapons there again. They also found 7 slot machines in the home. Pretty weird. The pathologist found needle marks in Thoresen's arm. If you click
HERE, you can see a lot of this stuff.