The search for the killer of a Hillsborough police officer was hampered by a driver’s license issued in a false name.
In the early morning hours of Aug. 6, 1959, Hillsborough police officer Gene Doran stopped a car on Bunker Hill Road near Skyline Boulevard. We’ll never know the reason Doran stopped the vehicle.
At 4:07 am, Doran spoke to the dispatcher to request information on the car he had pulled over. This call was the last communication Doran made to the dispatch center. Having not received a response to repeated tries to give Doran the requested information, at 4:43 am, dispatch personnel requested help locating Doran, who had been alone in his car on a routine patrol. Local police from several county cities immediately scoured the area. At 4:49 am, a Belmont officer reported finding Doran dead beside his car with several bullet holes in his body. DMV paperwork for a replacement driver’s license had been found pinned beneath Doran’s left ear. Doran’s gun was missing.
Although there had been no eyewitnesses, a woman nearby who happened to be awake at the time heard what she thought were knocks on her back door, which she opted not to open, considering the hour.
Doran, 36, lived in Burlingame but worked for the Hillsborough Police Department. He was married with two children and had a baby due that November. The crime stunned the residents of the area and law enforcement officers throughout the county. Many of those officers felt that Doran would have lived had another policeman been in the car with him.
Sheriff Earl B. Whitmore severely criticized “penny-pinching” municipalities that used one-man patrols on city streets, as there is nobody to assist an officer in trouble. The sheriff told The Times: “Every time an officer gets out of his car to question a party on a country road at night he takes his life into his hands.” That same newspaper stated: “Police officers today bitterly commented, ‘That’s one pretty good argument against one-man cars… He didn’t have a chance.’”
The local community rallied around what The Times said were his widow and “orphans.” Just days after the shooting, approximately $400 (just over $4,000 in 2022 money) had been collected, with some donations as large as $50. Various banks agreed to collect the money, and a local print shop created display materials for free.
The main clue was the DMV paperwork specifying a David Kehoe of San Francisco as the murderer. The DMV clerk remembered Kehoe clearly due to his sudden departure when asked to provide a photograph and fingerprints for the replacement license. The clerk described Kehoe as “23 years old, 175 pounds, five feet 10 inches tall, having black hair.”
Not surprisingly, “Kehoe” didn’t exist, but top-notch police work found he was actually Alexander Robillard, who was quickly found and indicted on Aug. 17, 1959. He was whisked into a speedy trial where he pleaded not guilty in mid-September. He didn’t have a leg to stand on, as his fingerprints were found on the roof of Doran’s car, where the officer had attempted to frisk him. Robillard was found guilty and sentenced to death.
Like today, the death sentence sparked appeals, although the process was not as long as similar cases today. The Times reported on April 13, 1961, that Governor Edmund G. Brown was to decide if Robillard would have the sentence carried out or not. Robillard’s lawyer claimed that Brown needed to consider the fact that his client had the “emotional maturity of a 14-year-old” and had experienced an alcoholic father and a series of placements in foster homes.
The attempt was fruitless – Robillard went to the gas chamber on April 26, 1961.
