anged his mind, however, and said
‘d saved the money.
Ih Downleville, ern Watters, wife
Deputy Sherif] Percy Watters, told
r husband that she'd overheard ‘a
man bragging about a trip. she'd
cen to Reno with a man who'd had
n awful lot of money to spend”.
The man, however, turned out to be
ck Santo, the ex-convict who'd '‘al-
idy established an alibi for the after-
on of the slaying.
(In Fresno Deputy Sheriffs Joe Pier-
i and Mark Kann arrested a man
med Otto Black on a fugitive warrant
ued by the FBI. He was tall and
tially bald and the crime he'd com-
tted, according to the FBI, was
rked by the brutality and callousness
tt marked the Guard Young massa-
But he proved he’d been far from
ester that day and he was returned
Oregon for prosecution on an assault
irge.
The days went by rapidly. Sheriff
1ooler had to leave the investigation
aporarily when his mother became
iously ill. State Highway Patrolman
t Cooley and State Agent Winberg
1 to drop out for awhile when the car
‘'y were in—the same car that had
ried Sondra to the hospital—
nged into a ravine on Highway No.
injuring them slightly.
The routine detective work con-
ued. Deputies went from house to
ise in Chester and Westwood with
’ length of pipe, a Staggering job.
vas from a hot-water heater, experts
1 said, and the deputies looked for
‘ hot-water heater with a new length
pipe installed where this one might
ve been taken out. They didn’t find
sondra was released from the hos-
ul_and Janes and Sheriff Schooler
1 Doctor Greenman questioned her
in. She could reveal nothing more
t would help. They showed her a
ection of guns and asked her to tell
m which if any looked like the one
big man had used. She pointed to
ickel-plated revolver.
Put them away,” she said. “I don't
: guns.”
{EY showed her a group of photo-
graphs including one of Otto Black.
: could recognize none of them.
heriff Schooler placed a sheet of
er over the forehead and eyes on
ck’s picture. “Now do you know
1?” he asked.
Yes. That's the bad man.”
chooler put the sheet of paper over
‘ther photograph—that of a deputy
riff which had been included be-
se the officers wanted to be sure
t any identification the child might
ke, would be true.
That's the bad man, too.”
ny picture with forehead and eyes
ered was a picture of the’ bad man
her, the officers discovered.
Mce again the officers went into a
ference—Sheriff Schooler, District
orney Janes, State Agents Horton
| Winberg. They spent a week going
t each angle of the case, re-inves-
iting each tip and each suspect.
sent, Black, Crocker, Santo.
There’s one thing,” Schooler said.
e haven’t found out where Santo
the money he supposedly was
ading in Reno.” f
yi he had a good alibi,” Winberg
Nevertheless, I'd like to know about
t money,” Schooler declared. “Let's
him in here.” m
anto lived near Auburn, California,
he was pretty much of‘a wanderer:
riff Wayne Brown of Nevada
ity reported that he was not at
bd _ nobody knew where he might
‘ound.
?ick him up when he returns, will
?” Sheriff Schooler asked. . “And Jet
snow. We don't have anything on
bib we would like to ask a few
stions.”
nd the case droned on. In February
Tict Attorney Janes was sworn in
1 Superior Court judge and Jack
ne became the new district attor-
. New leads were developed and
‘stigated and cleared up. The tele-
: in Sheriff Schooler's office contin-
ued to carry its share of tips and wanted
notices and requests.
Finally, on April 4, 1953, that tele-
type carried another notice that did not
mention the Guard Young case but
might concern it. Deputy Gillespie was
the first, to see it.
“Wanted,” it said, “for kidnaping
and murder, Jack Santo, MWA, 6'2”,
220, thin hair .. .”
It was from the Los Angeles police,
and Santo, it said, was under suspi-
cion in the brutal slaying of Mrs. Mabel
Monohan in Burbank, California,
chiefly on the testimony of a man
named Baxter Shorter. Shorter, after
giving this testimony, had been taken -
from his home by two armed men and
Santo was suspected of being one of
those two.
Gillespie took the notice to Sheriff
_ Schooler,
“This is one of the characters men-
tioned in the Guard Young case, re-
member?” he said.
The Sheriff remembered, all right.
“We'd better look into it,” he said.
BEFORE he could telephone Los An-
geles police, however, another notice
came in on the teletype.
Jack Santo also was wanted by Sher-
iff Brown of Nevada County on sus-
picion of murder in the slaying of a
gold miner named Edmund Hansen.
“Tell you what, Bob,” Sheriff School-
er said. “Let's get over to Nevada City
and see what Sheriff Brown has up his
sleeve. This may work out.”
Sheriff Brown had quite a story to
tell—and so did Chief of Detectives
Thad Brown of Los Angeles when
Schooler talked to him. The stories
went back two years and covered sev-
eral brutal crimes.
The first in the long series, which in-
cluded two slayings, was the torture
robbery of Andy Colner, a gold buyer,
i Folsom, California, on November 30,
51.
Two, masked men had entered Col-
ner’s home at eight o'clock in the eve- |
ning and bound him and his wife while:
they ransacked the house for gold they
believed he had hidden. Colner’s feet
were burned with matches even after
he revealed the hiding-place of 60 one-
ounce gold bricks and $2,000 in cash.
One of the bandits wore a rubber Hal-
lowe’en mask, Cotner said, and the
other carried an old-fashioned Western
44 Colt revolver.
; with the Colner
CII Agent Horton was sent up to help.
“We've had some other gold robberies
in the state,” Horton declared. “The
bandits have posed as gold buyers and
made deals with the miners but before
they closed the deals they moved in and
robbed them. ‘
“We've covered all the legitimate gold
sales and we believe they are connected
with some gang that’s smuggling gold
out of the country. It’s worth a lot
more outside the United States where
the value isn't set by law.”
A year ‘passed. Ther., on March 11,
1953, Mabel Monohan was murdered in
Burbank, California.
The body of Mrs. Monohdn, a widow,
was found unmercifully beaten in her
fashionable home in Burbank, a suburb
of Los Angeles. She had been a former
vaudeville roller-skating star and
- mother-in-law of L. B. Scherer, a well-
known Las Vegas casino operator:
Chief of Police Rex Andrews of Bur-
bank, Detective Chief Brown of Los
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Angeles and State CII Agent Ray Mc-
Carthy directed the work on the case,
believing at first that the murder in
some way was connected with th
operations of Scherer. ~ ‘
However, through the cooperation of
the Los Angeles Burglary Squad, they
learned that a gang of jewelry thieves
might be involved.- Included in this
gang were ex-convicts named Baxter
Shorter, Emmett Perkins and Jack
Santo, and a woman, Barbara Graham.
Los Angeles police at that time had no
knowledge that Santo had been ques-
tioned in the Guard Young case.
These four were arrested and they
immediately protested their innocence.
Santo was a respected businessman
engaged in the gold-exporting business,
he said, and Perkins was his partner.
Because the information against them
was solely from the undercover man,
the gang members had to be released.
However, police kept after them.
Eventually they picked up Baxter
Shorter again, and he confessed.
He had been an unwilling accom-
Plice to the torture murder, Shorter
said, and the actual killers were Santo,
Perkins and Mrs. Graham. Shorter
had been hired by them to blow the
safe in Mrs. Monohan’s house in the
belief that it held $200,000 in cash
and $150,000 in jewelry. (Actually,
there was no safe in*° Mrs. Monohan‘s
home, no substantial sum of money
and no such jewelry.)
Shorter declined police protection
" and asked to be released on bond. The
very next day two men appeared at
his home and took him away at gun-
point—to pay the gangland penalty
for a squealer, police were sure.
Shorter’s wife identified a photo-
graph of Perkins as one of the kid-
Napers, and Detective Chief Thad
Brown declared he was sure the other
one was Santo. But they were missing
now; they had fied.
That was when the “wanted” notice
went out on them and that was when
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ty realized that Santo well could be
involved in the slaying of Ed Hansen.
For he lived in the vicinity, in Auburn;
he was notoriously brutal. And further-
more he had stated that he was a gold
exporter. Somebody vitally interested
in gold and probably exporting it
illegally was: involved in the Hansen
slaying. Brown was sure.
THAT was the story about Santo.
which Sheriff Schooler picked up
from Sheriff Brown and from Los
Angeles’ Detective Chief Thad Brown.
“The trouble is,” Schooler said to
Sheriff Brown, “we've got to connect
him some way with the Guard Young
case, and with the Hansen shooting.
And we've got to find him. But how?”
“Right now, I don’t know,” Brown
said frankly. “The first thing is to find
out all we can about Santo when he
was living in Auburn.”
Pictures of Santo, Perkins and Short-
er were shown to Mrs. Hansen at her
home. :
. She could not identify any of them
as the man whose mask her husband
had pulled off. “But that fellow there,”
she added, pointing to Perkins. “He
looks like the other one.”
The pictures were shown to Andy
Colner. - He couldn’t identify them.
“There's only one way to handle this,”
Sheriff Brown said to Sheriff Schooler.
“We'll do a complete investigation of
Santo and his activities and his pals
here in Nevada County. You do the
same in your territory. Maybe we'll
come up with something.” .
So Sheriff Schooler went back to
Chester, smack up against the same
barrier he’d bucked before. Santo had
an alibi for the time of the slaying.
“I think,” Schooler said to District
Attorney Keane, “it’s about time we
found out just how good and how
strong that alibi is.” ~
Meanwhile, Sheriff Brown and his
men in Nevada County were learn-
ing quite a bit about Jack Santo. He
had been sent to a Federal prison under
57
he
aia
the Dyer wet, for transporting a stolen
automobile across a state line, and that
was the only major conviction against
him. However, he supposedly had been
a member of Mickey Cohen’s and
Buggsy Siegel’s gangs in Los Angeles
‘and he had been arrested up and down
the Coast many times.
In April, 1952, he had been arrested
in Newcastle, California, on a charge
of assault, for starting a fight with a
man named Francis McCann of. Rose-
ville. Santo had been fined $50 for
this assault.
That was the complete police record
available to Sheriff Brown. It did not
tell the Sheriff, of course, where Santo
might be or who his close friends were
in the vicinity.
A few discreet inquiries, however,
soon brought out the descriptions of
three persons who had spent a great
deal of time with Santo—and the
names of two of them. One was Harriet
Henson, a local waitress; another was
aman named George Boles, a part-time
farmer. The third was tall, partially
bald and with a quizzica] look on his
face. Emmett Perkins, Santo’s com-
panion in the Monohan murder, was
tall and balding. And so was the man
Sondra Young had described.
No one knew were Santo and Perkins
were, but Harriet Henson still was
working near Auburn and Boles, who
had no criminal record at all, probably
was not far away,
Back in Chester, Sheriff Schooler and
District Attorney Keane had another
talk with the man who had given
Santo his alibi on the date of the Young
massacre,
“Sure, Jack was here that day,” this
man declared. “You asked me before,
remember?”
“Was he around all day?” Schooler
isked.
“All day?” The man scratched his
ead. “That was quite awhile ago. He
vas here with his girl friend, Harriet
vhat’s-her-name — Henson, I. think.
\nd that character, Perkins. Then
ater, the next day, we went to Reno
0 see a golf tournament. Jack had
‘nother girl friend meet him there,
Jorma Hudson. And it’s a funny thing,
‘e said he’d pay all the bills and he
id; he must have laid out a hundred
nd fifty bucks paying for everything.
\lways before he was pretty tight, bor-
owing five or ten from me.”
“How's come he met another girl
tiend in Reno?” Sheriff Schooler
sked. “What was the matter with
tarriet?”
The man grinned. “Well, they had
fight, I guess. They went out in the
‘ternoon together and Jack came back
one and I just figured Harriet got
ad at him and took off,”
“What time did they go out?”
Perplexed, the man scuffed his shoe-
> on the rug. “A little after lunch.
ilf-past two, maybe. They said they
‘re going to look at some horses they
tnted to take deer hunting.”
‘And when did Santo come back
thout Harriet?”
“Oh, after an hour or so. Longer
an that. Let’s say four or half-past
iy
“Yeah,” Sheriff Schooler replied
yiys:’ oet’s,”
|E DIDN'T go any further into the
alibi question then. It was broken.
cause Chester and Westwood are
ly thirteen miles apart. Between
‘0 and 4:30 Jack Santo easily could
ve driven to Westwood and seen
ard Young there and followed him.
Norma Hudson was a Government
ploye, Schooler knew—the same girl
o had been overheard by Sheriff
‘tters’ wife, boasting about the money
‘k Santo had spent on her, Keane
1 Schooler looked her up.
Sure,” she said, “I met Jack in Reno
und that time, maybe a day or two
er the killings over in Chester. And
had a swell time; he bought me
1e clothes and we hit all the night
ts. He won a lot of money gambling.”
Did you see him win it?” Schooler
ed.
he shook her head negatively. “But
said he did. Where else would he
all that dough?”
Where else? ‘The SherifT and the
District Attorney thought they knew,
Schooler and his men. in Plumas
County were looking for Santo: so were
Sheriff Brown and_ his officials in
Nevada County, Chief Rex Andrews in
Burbank, and the Los Angeles police.
The Los Angeles police got him.
Barbara Graham, the woman impli-
cated in the Monohan murder, had a
record for passing forged checks; when
a flood of such checks turned up in
Lynwood, Policewoman Kay Sheldon
went there, spotted Mrs. Graham ina
store and followed her to a hideout
where she, Santo and Perkins were ar-
rested.
It was just about all over. Except
for one little thing. Evidence.
“We actually don’t have enough on
Santo to go into court with,” Keane
told Sheriff Schooler. “And neither
does Sheriff Brown in Nevada City.”
“They'll probably get him good for
the Monohan murder in Los Angeles,”
Schooler replied. “But I'd like to have
this thing wrapped up tight. What
can we do?”
They didn’t know. A close re-investi-
gation of several days didn’t turn up
anything more than that Santo had
been in Chester and had been spending
a lot of money shortly after the slayings.
Sheriff Schooler got on the telephone
to talk to Sheriff Brown.
“I think,” Brown said, “we're getting
somewhere. Come on over.”
HEY were. A man named Jack
Fernaux, a garage operator of Mo-
desto, California, had been in to see
Sheriff Brown that very day, sent to
him by the police in Modesto.
“It’s about this Jack Santo charac-
ter,” he had said to the Sheriff. “He’s
got a girl friend, Harriet Henson, see?”
“Yes, we know that,” Brown replied.
“And she came in to see me yester-
day,” Fernaux went on. “She wants
me to help this Santo out; he’s in some
kind of a jam in Los Angeles.”
“He certainly is. But how are you
supposed to help him?”
“This Harriet asked me to rig up an
alibi, see? She asked me to go to Los
Angeles when they have the trial and
say Santo was here when some old dame
was murdered down there.”
Sheriff Brown tried to give the
impression that he was considering this
information deliberately. Actually, it
might be just the wedge he needed, he
knew.
“Tl tell you what,” he said. “You
arrange a meeting with her and act
like you're going along with her idea.
We'll be listening. It might prove
interesting.”
It did. With Sheriff Schooler in on
the plot and with State Agents Win-
berg, Horton and McCarthy planting
a wire recorder where it wouldn't be
seen, the entire conversation between
Harriet Henson and Fernaux was taken
down.
As it was introduced later at Santo’s
trial in Los Angeles, portions of it
went like this:
Miss Henson first asked Fernaux to
testify that Santo had stopped in
Fernaux’ garage on the date of the
Monohan killing. This would Place him
too far from the scene of the crime to
be implicated.
Fernaux: But we both know Jack
did that job.
Miss Henson: All right but that’s why
I've got a girl who will say she was
with him at eight o’clock (the hour of
the murder).
Fernaux: The minute I get down
there as a witness you know what’s
going to happen.
Miss Henson: They’re going to try to
break your story.
Fernaux: And that won’t be hard to
do... This attorney (Santo’s defense
attorney) ... does he know, does he
help to set these things up?
Miss Henson: No.
Fernaux: As far as he’s concerned
does it have to be on the level?
Miss Henson: Yes.
And on it went, with Harriet Henson
Stating that false alibis already had
been arranged for Perkins and Barbara
Graham.
In Sheriff Brown’s office, the investi-
gators got together to hear a playback
of this conversation,
“What'll we do now?” Sheriff Brown
asked. “Arrest this girl?”
CII Arent McCarthy spoke up.
“Why? We've got Santo on ice now
until his trial in Los Angeles; he can't
get away. And we've got a pretty good
idea that Harriet will hang around.”
“What do you want to do then?”
Schooler asked.
“Wait until Harriet testifies at the
Santo trial and then introduce this as
evidence,” McCarthy said. “It will
break her story down completely and
be pretty telling against Santo—and
then when we arrest her she'll be so
startled she's likely to admit to the
full truth about anything.”
That was the plan they agreed upon,
although it meant waiting several
months until the trial began in Los
Angeles. Meanwhile, though, Sheriffs
Brown and Schooler were far from idle.
ps NEVADA CITY, Mrs. Hansen had
not been able to identify Santo or
Perkins, although she had seen her
husband’s killer. Some other member
of the Santo gang, then, must have
been the man whose mask had been
snatched off and whom Mrs. Hansen
had seen.
A close friend of Santo had_ been
George Boles. Boles was operating a
small farm in the county and working
as an attendant at a state hospital.
Sheriff Brown managed to get a pic-
ture of him surreptitiously and showed
it, with a number of others, to Mrs.
Hansen.
She identified it immediately, he
Stated,
In Chester, too, Sheriff Schooler and
District Attorney Keane were busy
working up their case. They found a
man, they said later, who knew Santo
and who would be able to testify defi-
nitely that he had been in Westwood
Friday afternoon, October 10. In other
words, he had gone from his friend’s
home in Chester to Westwood, the same
route Guard Young had taken, and he
must have returned the same way.
It all depended now upon Harriet
Henson, for she had been with Santo
when he left his friend’s home that
afternoon.
In September Santo, Perkins and
Barbara Graham were brought to trial
for the murder of Mrs. Monohan. The
trial went just about as Agent McCarthy
had expected it would. Harriet Henson
appeared on September 4 as a defense
witness for Santo.
Carefully, Chief Deputy District At-
torney Adolph Alexander of Los Angeles
County let her tell her story, then led
her through it again. When she was
finished he calmly read from the vren-
script of her conversation with Fernaux.
And, her story blasted, Miss Henson
was placed under arrest by Sheriff
Brown on a charge of complicity in the
slaying of Edmund Hansen as soon as
she had left the courtroom,
Taken to Nevada City, she proved to
be much less startled than the experts
had expected. She refused to say any-
thing about the Hansen case or the
Guard Young killings. Instead she
stayed stubbornly in a cell, asking
guards about the progress of Santo’s
trial, asking why he hadn't written to
her, how he apparently felt and looked.
George Boles was placed under ar-
rest, and Mrs. Hansen picked him from
a living line-up as the man who'd shot
‘her husband, Sheriff Brown said.
Boles thereupon broke down and con-
fessed complicity in the Hansen slay-
ing, Brown claimed. The Sheriff quoted
him as saying:
“Santo was going with us on the
night we went to Hansen’s Place but he
backed out because he said the cops
were hot on him. He said Perkins and
I could do the job and Harriet could
drive the car.”
His alleged confession then told in
detail how both he and Perkins had
shot Hansen when the gold-mine owner
had pulled the mask from his face.
It went on: “After the Papers said
that Mrs. Hansen had seen me, Perkins
wanted to go back and kill her, Santo
told him it wouldn’t be necessary be-
cause nobody knew he was connected
with the crime and if she ever identified
either of us, he would kill her before
she reached the witness stand.”
But Miss Henson still would not
change her story and she was the only
link with the Guard Young case. Still
she asked about Santo and waited for
letters from him—letters which did not
= although she wrote to him every
ay.
That gave Sheriff Schooler an idea.
With Sheriff Brown and the CII agents,
they talked to the young woman again.
They told her about the trip Santo had
made to Reno with Norma Hudson,
“He's not interested in you,” Brown
said. ‘As soon as you're out of his sight
he’s after another girl. Deep down you
know that, don’t you, Harriet?”
And she sighed and nodded her head,
her glance on the floor.
“Then why don’t you tell us the
truth?” Brown asked. .
She did then, he said later; she made
a complete confession in the Hansen
case, corroborating almost everything
Boles had said, and she also implicated
Santo and Perkins in the horrible
multiple slaying on the little logging
road between Westwood and Chester.
This is the statement she made, ac-
cording to officials:
She had left the Chester house with
Santo and gone to a bar where she
waited while Santo drove off alone.
“I was in this bar in Chester when
Jack and Perkins came in and told me
we were going to have to leave ina
hurry. That was about four o'clock
(30 minutes after Young and the chil-
dren had been slain), So we drove
to Reno. On the way Jack stopped and
got some beer and Perkins changed his
shirt and some other clothing.
“He told me, ‘we had a pretty grue-
some day. If I had known the children
were along I would not have completed
the caper.’
“Later, he gave me a wallet with
“some of Young’s papers in it and told
me to burn it. He also gave me a hat,
which I threw out of the car,”
Harriet allegedly said she burned the
Papers and the wallet later. “Perkins
counted out two thousand dollars,
mostly in twenty-dollar bills, and gave
it to me and said Santo had the rest
of the money, less ten per cent they
had paid for the information about
Young so they could pull the robbery.”
Harriet completed her Statement by
telling the officers, they claimed, that
she could show them where the body
of the missing Monohan case witness,
Baxter Shorter, could be found.
THs. for the officers, the case was
closed. Each piece had fallen into
place. The Guard Young case finally
was solved.
As this is written, Santo, Perkins,
Boles and Harriet Henson have been
indicted for murder in Nevada County
for the slaying of Edmund Hansen.
Santo, Perkins and Barbara Graham
were found guilty of the first-degree
murder of Mabel Monohan on Septem-
ber 22, 1953, in Los Angeles by a jury
which made no recommendation of
mercy. Under California law this
—" that a death sentence is manda-
ry.
On October 6, that death sentence
was passed upon Santo and Perkins and
on October 13 it was Passed upon Mrs,
Graham who had been dubbed “Bloody
Babs” during her trial.
As this issue of OFFICIAL DETEC-
TIVE STORIES goes to press, trials of
the four who were indicted in Nevada
City are pending. And Sheriff Schooler
and District Attorney Keane are await-
ing developments to see if trials would
be of any value in Plumas County for
the merciless massacre of Guard Young
and the four little children.
In Chester, Mrs. Guard Young is still
taking care of Sondra Gay, completely
recovered now, and her brother, Wayne.
She holds no malice toward anyone,
she says.
“I am thankful,” she told newspaper
reporters, “every time I hold Sondra in
my arms, that she was spared.”
In this story the names Norma Hud-
son, Guy Crocker, Otto Black and
Michael Nugent are fictitious.
Ral
These were the “nice men", the
police say, Santo and Perkins
lifferent stores in a hundred different Si YQ
‘ties. ce
A few fragmentary finger-prints had r ‘
deen found on Young's auto—possibly
‘nough to identify the person who had
eft them, should he be captured, but
ar from enough to allow anyone to
ull his name from a file.
And, most important of all—the
ighteen-inch length of pipe almost
ssuredly was the death weapon. The
tains on it were of human blood; hu-
lan hairs matching those of some of
le victims were found upon micro-
‘opic examination.
Deputy Sheriff Ed Spellmeyer took
le pipe and hurried to Ophir to ques-
on the man who thought he might
ave sold it the very morning of the
aying. Other deputies picked up the
up telephone call to meet her there.
But you know what?”
“What?” asked Janes, '
“Well, Nugent runs a business, you
know. I asked around and nobody
knows where he was Friday afternoon.
He just sort of disappeared.”
“Let’s get him,” Janes said.
Nugent's license number and a de-
scription of him and_ his automobile
were flashed to authorities of Washoe
County, Nevada, in which Reno is lo-
cated, and were put on an all-points -
bulletin, to carry up ang cown the West 2
Coast. He might be heading in any ,
direction; he might be going to Reno,
as he had said.
THs another day passed, a day of
hard work and frustration for the
officers. They were farther than ever
from a solution to the crime and as
the case grew in importance and the
horror of it became fresher and greater
each time they thought of it, they real-
ized that it was a slaying that had to
be solved, no matter what the cost or
the effort.
But how?
Sondra Gay, the next morning an-
swered her mother’s questions readily.
Yes, she said, she'd had a nice ride.
Yes, she'd had some ice cream. They’
gone to the ice-cream store and then
they’d gone into the woods,
fete eS Soo : Did anyone hit her? Sondra didn’
Survivors of the family of six, Mrs. Young, Baby Wayne and Sondra, clinging to her mother know. She wh
Fr ee ‘,
a
: : Right up to the vital Point of the
cord and took it first to Guard three-quarters of an inch in diameter, Every possibility was being exhausted crime she had _ spoken willingly and
8’s store, to investigate the dis- The death Pipe was only half an inch. rapidly. Far too rapidly. From across without any trace of fear or hesita-
18 report they’d heard when first Another lead was gone. the nation expressions of sympathy — tion, her mother said. But she couldn’
seen this cord bound tight And sheriff's officers in San Mateo were coming in, police officers were re- answer any questions that would help
d his stiff and lifeless wrists. County had picked up the ex-convict laying suggestions, names, theories. the officers. ; ;
se men were back first. The only who supposedly had been in Chester at The reward had swelled to .$5,000. “Can we ever hope to get anything
cord carried at’ Young’s store, the time of the slaying. He was aman _ Newspaper reporters were arriving in out of her, Doctor Greenman?” District
{ learned, was very similar to this with an explosive temper, all right, Jack Chester and Westwood by automobile, Attorney Janes asked,
to the strangers. His pipe was. story.
had an extra strand in it and Santo by name, and he had been in by train and by bus. i The Doctor took a long time framing
isly was not the same. : Chester, he admitted. But he’d spent | an answer. “I don’t know,” he said
n Deputy Spellmeyer telephoned. the entire afternoon at the home of a THEN the deputy reported on Michael finally. “I¢ she continues to improve
t Chavalia, operator of the trad- reputable Chester citizen and he hadn't Nugent. we may try again tomorrow. Perhaps
st in Ophir, still had some of the ‘Known anything about the slayings, “He told one fellow he was going to we'll even take her out there and see
‘ft from which he’d sold this one The reputable citizen backed up his Reno,” the deputy said. “Account his if it helps her memory
wife’s on a vacation and he got a hurry- (Continued on Page 56)
25,
“Schinagle wrote her several letters,”
a Cleveland detective reported. “In one
of them, he warned her hot to tell any-
one about her condition.”
“That indicates he knew about the
unborn child,” McAllister said. “We'd
better find out a lot more about him.”
McAllister again called on Sheriff
Fravel of Delaware for assistance,
Joining the investigation with Fravel
was Captain J. E. Cornely of the Mar-
ion, Ohio, Police Department.
Fravel went to the Wesleyan campus.
The Sheriff was told that Schinagle had
been an honor student in high school
and planned to enter the ministry after
finishing his undergraduate work.
serious young man, Schinagle
frankly admitted his love for Miss Pfeil
and that they had planned to marry in
spite of the objections of their parents,
He said the girl had not returned to
school for the 1953 term because of poor
srades. He had visited her in White
?lains on July 4 and August 24 she
vent to Cleveland to be near him, ob-
aining a job at a department-store.
Schinagle also stated that he did not
now who might have wanted to kill
is attractive girl friend.
The officers doubted that he could be
he killer. He was a good Student, went
9 church each Sunday, loved music
nd planned to continue his studies at
berlin College in northern Ohio, the
owing year.
“But we’ve got to make sure,” Fravel
eclared.
As a last resort, the Sheriff suggested
tat they search Schinagle’s. room.
here, the officers went through the
Massacre on the Chester Logging Road
‘But you must remember that if she
ows any hesitation or any ill effects
ting such a trip, we'll call it off im-
diately.”
nce again the Sheriff and the Dis-
+t Attorney agreed. It was a vague
x and a slim one—placing their
‘nces of solving this case upon the
mory of a three-year-old child. But
vas a step they had to take. They
! nothing else to do, no other leads
ept that involving Nugent.
i that afternoon Nugent was
ad, \
‘uppose you try to pin him down to
finite statement about his where-
ts Friday,” Janes said. “Then
look into it from this end and if
nd anything we’ll be up there just
ist as we can make it,’”” ;
t Nugent could offer only a vague
4g Up early tomorrow that’s
ty important.”
T other matter was the trip to the
ene of the crime with Sondra. But’
in’t made in the morning. Sondra
tritable and tired and complained
headache and Doctor Greenman
the trip up. “
aybe after she has a nap,” he said.
: slept that afternoon and when
woke, she was more cheerful and
aplaining. With trepidation Doc-
teenman agreed to the auto ride.
riff Schooler had set it up care-
They rode in a car that was the
year and model as her father’s
een and the Sheriff even re-
zed ash trays and sun visors to
~ Reina MG a teeta Nm meng itt onan
young man’s personal belongings but
found nothing that might involve him
in the slaying.
FRAVEL went next to the student's
desk, with a number of envelopes on
it. One of these was Sealed and, al-
though so far unstamped, addressed to
a girl at Wittenberg College in Spring-
field, Ohio.
“What do you think?” Fravel asked,
holding this envelope. “Shall we open
it?”
The officers agreed that the impor-
tance of the case warranted the action.
Fravel opened it, read the letter inside
and then whistled.
“This boy is a two-timer,” he said.
eenerentiy, he’s forgetting about Cyn-
thia.”
Fravel pocketed the Paper and
turned to the next phase of the inves-
tigation. He questioned the sopho-
more’s fraternity brothers and class-
mates. Schinagle had been seen with
fellow students early in the evening of
September 17, up until nine p. m., but
no one could account for his movements .
later,
The officers decided to question
Schinagle again. This time they no-
ticed that he was quite nervous.
“We have evidence that you were
tired of Cynthia,” Fravel declared,
holding up the letter written to the
Wittenberg co-ed. :
“That girl was just an acquaintance,”
the youth replied. “You wouldn’t ex-
Pect me to forget all my friends just
because of Cynthia. Besides, it was part
of the act to hide our Telationship,”
hake it resemble Young’s' even more.
Sondra was put in the back seat with
her mother and Doctor Greenman; the
Sheriff and District Attorney’ Janes,
men with whom she was not so familiar,
rode in the front.
They set out slowly, leisurely, and
entirely through the coincidence caused
by Sondra’s nap, at approximately the
Same time she and her father and her
sisters and her little friend had left
Westwood on that fateful Friday,
With Doctor Greenman and Mrs.
Young doing the questioning and the
Sheriff and District Attorney making
as few suggestions as Possible, they
talked to her. }
AD she met anyone the last time
they took this ride?
“Oh, yes,” Sondra said. “The men -
in the shiny car, They stopped Daddy
and one of them got in with us and he
had a gun.”
And then, while the adults held their
breaths, almost afraid to push this any
further:
“They were nice men. They were
good to me.”
What did the men look like? By sug-
gesting comparisons, the officers tried
to get some sort of a description.
One of the men was bigger than the
Doctor, the child said. Bigger than the
Sheriff. Real big. He wore a white
mask. And he didn’t have much hair
on the top of his head.
Michael Nugent, Janes knew, was six
feet two inches tall and balding.
The other man wasn’t very big. He
didn’t wear a a
“They made us lie down in the back
ring blue jeans and a
“pretty” shirt, too.
would balk at-this road.
But before they reached it she said,
“We also know that you were out late
Thursday hight,” Fravel continued,
“Where did you go?”
Schinagle stammered, then blurted
that he had been out for a ride.
“Alone?” the Sheriff inquired. “Not
very likely. Who was the girl?”
This time, no Teply.
“What time did you meet Cynthia
Thursday night?” Cornely asked.
Again the young divinity student
didn’t reply.
“Where did she spend the night?”
Fravel demanded. “In @ motel or
hotel?”
The student flushed. He had not
taken her anywhere, he insisted.
“But she hid out Somewhere so that
no one in town would know she was
here,” Cornely persisted.
Schinagle had lost his calm exterior .
head miration appeared on his fore-
ead.
“I guess you fellows know everything
I did,” he said in a low voice.
“If we don’t know, we soon will,” the
Sheriff declared. “Now tell us where
you saw Cynthia when she was here.”
Schinagle then told this story, the
officers claimed:
“There’s an old shack on the athletic
field. Cynthia spent the night of the
sixteenth there. We met secretly the
next day off campus and she told me
to meet her at the shack again that
night. I did. i
“We had a fight and 1 choked her.”
Cynthia, clad in the flannel night- -
for Schinagle in the small shack ac-
cording to the police. They quarreled
“The lady had red jeans on.” .
The lady! What lady? Could a
woman be involved in this? Could any
woman have been so inhuman?
It seemed preposterous.
Then they had reached the mouth
of the road.
“Should we turn down here, Sondra?”
Doctor Greenman asked.
She glanced out the window. Then,
suddenly, without warning, she scram-
bled into her mother’s arms.
“No!” she cried. “No, no, no, no!”
She buried her face on Mrs. Young’s
shoulder. “No!”
Sheriff Schooler was driving. He
U-turn, approaching it again.
“How about it, Doc?” the Sheriff
asked gently.
“Shall we turn, Sondra?” the Doc-
tor asked.
“No!” she said. Then, “My head
hurts.”
And that was all the questions
they could ask the girl that day. It
was too much for her, and for her brave
mother, too, who just the day before
had buried two of her children.
But it might be vital information.
Wo was the lady in the: “req
Jeans”? Some third Person mixed
up in this ghastly horror? t
“You can’t tell,” Doctor Greenman
said. “She didn’t mention any lady
when she first talked about the two
men. It’s quite possible she saw this
woman before the kidnaping, maybe in
the drug store where ‘they got the ice
The other interesting point was the
vague description Sondra had given of
& man approximately as tall as Michael
Nugent and without a great deal of
hair, just as Nugent was semi-bald.
District Attorney Janes telephoned the
Washoe County sheriff’s office.
Nugent, he learned, had been wear-
ing blue jeans and a fancy sports shirt
when he was arrested—clothes cor-
responding to those the big killer had
worn,
“We'll be there as fast as we can,”
Janes said into the phone.
They drove to Reno. From Sacra-
mento, State Agents Kenneth Horton
a.
b+
and he strangled her. He left the scene
and returned shortly afterward to find
her unconscious. He then placed the
girl on the back seat of his car and
drove north out of the city. He stopped
about a half hour later and found her
still breathing. Leaving the car, he
Picked up a sharp rock that he found
beside the road.
“She moaned a little and I struck her
again and again on the head and the
face,” officers quoted him as saying. He
got behind the wheel again and drove
toward Upper Sandusky. Off the main
highway on County Road No. 42, he
and, alone, returned to Delaware, where
he attended classes as usual,
In this alleged confession, Schinagle
d was sentenced to life imprisonment
by Judge Russell H. Kear.
To protect persons innocently in-
volved in this case, the names William
Hayes, Philip Adkins and Ben Fallon
are fictitious. The name of the Way-
farer Motel also is not the real one,
(Continued from Page 25)
and E. A. Winberg of the CII sped to
help in the investigation if they could.
From Berkeley came Inspector Al Rei-
del, an expert with the lie detector.
With District Attorney Jack Streeter
of Reno, they questioned Nugent closely
and at length and he told them a few
more details of his activities on the
previous Friday. '
In Chester officers’ talked to Mrs.
Young to_see what she might know
about the quarrel between her husband
and Nugent.
“I absolutely can not conceive of
Mister Nugent doing anything like
that,” she stated flatly. “Yes, he quar-
reled with my husband once but that
was a long time ago and lately they’ve
been getting along better, than ever.”
Besides, she declared, Sondra knew
Nugent and she would have recognized
him most likely, mask or no mask, and
would have mentioned his name to the
Officers. .
One by one the vague Points in Nu-
gent’s alibi were verified.
Completely exonerated by the lie-
detector tests and by the evidence, too,
Nugent was released and immediately
added $100 of his own to .the reward
fund. And a weary, exhausted group
of investigators went into another hud-
dle. They had little left to go on now;
exhausted and baffled, they almost .
wished they could forget the case. But
they knew they had to keep it up.
THE first flush of the investigation
was over; from now on it would be
dogged and tiring, chasing down one
tip, one angle, one Suspect after an-
other, perhaps through weeks or
months. Their best chance to wind it
up fast had vanished. Now. would
come the barrage of hard and almost
hopeless work.
It started the very next morning.
In Quincy, the county Seat, an ex-
convict named Guy Crocker was seen
flashing a thick roll of $20 bills. The
money stolen from Young had included
$7,000 in twenties: this ex-convict, a
tall, partially bald man,-was arrested
and he shook the bars of his cage in
anger and roared at the police and re-
fused to tell them where the money
came from. . ‘
After a short time behind bars he
ee
both Chester and Westwood opened their homes to deputies,
who made a house-to-house search for matching pipe or
line. None was found, Neither were there any records of
sale of such objects recently in any hardware store or
plumbing shop in the area.
The entire West was shocked by the slaughter of Gard
Young and the three children. Records failed to show any
similar case in which three children had been murdered
during a robbery merely to close their mouths forever.
Governor Earl Warren denounced it ag.‘‘the most horrible
crime in the history of California” and offered a state re-
ward of $1000. Within hours, rewards of $8000 for informa-
tion leading to the arrest and conviction of the killers were
announced.
“The surviving child,’ Schooler said, “seems our only
hope.”
Two armed guards stayed near the bedside of Sondra
Young in the Westwood hospital. The child remained in
critical condition, semi-conscious and suffering from a
basal skull fracture. Prayers for her recovery were offered
in churches on Sunday.
“We're taking no chances that the killers wipe out the
only survivor,” Schooler said, in commenting on the guard
at the hospital. “She may hold the key to the mystery.”
Fourteen suspects, men with criminal records and sadistic
degenerates, were questioned throughout California during
the first 48 hours after the bodies were found.
Schooler received a report from clerks at the bank that a
black car with an Arkansas license had followed Young out
Deputy Ed Spellmeyer examines length of pipe he
found; police believe it to be the murder. weapon
of Westwood. An alarm was put out at once for such a car
One was stopped by a state policeman near Cline’s Cor-
ner, New Mexico, 65 miles east of Albuquerque. It held
three men, in their early 30’s, who claimed they were head-
ing back to Arkansas after a vacation in Nevada. They had
$2000 between them, which they said they had won gam-
bling in Las Vegas. They admitted they had been in Reno,
less than 200 miles from Chester, several days earlier. How-
ever, after proving they had been in Las Vegas at the hour
of the murders, they were released.
Two young Westwood women, Joanne and Maxine Wil-
son, had a story to tell. They reported to Sheriff Schooler
that at four o’clock on Friday afternoon they had driven to
Chester. hey declared that they had almost collided with
a parked tan Chevrolet at the intersection of the logging
road and the highway. Near the car, they told Sheriff
Schooler, they had seen a young man, roughly dressed and
wearing a hunter’s red hat. The girls said the man was
peering intently up the logging road.
District Attorney Bertram D. Janes announced he believed
the man was a hunter, rather than a lookout.
“But he may be a perfect witness,” Janes told newsmen.
“He may have seen something happen, or may even have
seen the killers!”
Despite a public appeal, the hunter, if such he was, did
not make himself known.
Suspect after suspect was questioned. One man was jailed
for boasting in a San Francisco bar that he knew the killers.
An ex-convict who had purchased a service station near
Chester was quizzed because he recently had spent a num-
ber of $20 bills. The ex-con claimed he had been saving the
bills. Police wondered if this was a lie, or if he was just
an unfortunate man who had tried to spend twenties at the
wrong time?
Sondra Young passed the crisis, and on October 14th,
Sheriff Schooler was able to talk with the little survivor.
He asked if she had taken a ride and had eaten a popsicle.
The child nodded.
“What happened then, honey?” Schooler asked.
“Two bad men. I didn’t want to go up the road.”
Putting together Sondra’s disconnected story, the sheriff
gathered that two men in a car had forced Young to stop.
One man, Sondra said, was bald in front and wore a mask.
The other held a “shiny” gun. She did not know either.
The armed man got into the back of the Young car, Son-
dra related, and forced Young to drive up the road to the
dump. Shown several weapons, she picked a nickel-plated
pistol as similar to the one held by the killer.
That was all Sondra could tell, detectives discovered
glumly. Nature had drawn a cloudy curtain over her re-
membrance of what had followed. She was unable to
identify any of the suspects brought before her. Psycholo-
gists agreed that at her age, her value as an identifying
witness could last only a short time unless the killers had
been persons she knew.
The Saile boy was buried on the day Sondra told her
story. The next day, nearly 1000 mourners attended services
for Young and his two daughters. Four Mormon bishops
took part in the service. Bishop Glen Thurwood of West-
wood told the weeping throng, “God is on our side, and in-
evitably these people who did this thing must pay for their
crime,”
Days passed and the service station owner was cleared.
Additional suspects were hauled in. These included itiner-
ant farm hands and two holdup men from Oakland, Califor-
nia, who tied their victim’s hands. But no one has been
linked to the massacre of Gard Young and the four children.
Mrs. Saile and Mrs. Young, ‘with her two surviving chil-
dren, have left the town of bitter memories. Sondra has re-
covered from her injury but does not speak of the tragedy;
it has dropped into her subconscious mind. Sheriff
Schooler keeps in touch. with them in the distant cities
where they are trying to take up life anew.
“Sondra never was able to tell us more,” he said recently.
“Tt is too much to expect of a child, under four at the time.
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Murder and kidnap suspects
sit in police station after
swift raid.on gang hideout,
t
Murder of Mable Monohan was followed by abduction
at gunpoint, and probable gang execution, of state's star witness
TRUE POLICE CASES Magazine, November, 1953.
>
: oo BY M. K. ARNOLD -
E. and caution were the watchwords of Mrs. Mable
* Monohan, sweet-faced, slightly crippled 62-year-old widow.
Since her husband’s death 6 years ago she had lived alone
in a corner house on Parkside Avenue in a quiet residential
district of Burbank, a thriving little city 12 miles northeast
of Los Angeles. -
The Venetian blinds of the eccentric widow’s attractive
six-room stucco bungalow were kept tightly closed so that
no prying eyes could get a glimpse of the well-furnished
interior. The rustic wooden gate that led to the high-walled
rear patio remained locked at all times. Even the gardener
had to ring the front doorbell and be carefully scrutinized
through a tiny window before’ she would unlock the patio
gate to admit him. Ziggy, a black Labrador retriever, had
been trained to bark an alarm at sight of would-be tres-
passers. Yet, despite all these precautions, Mable Monohan
was destined to be the victim of one of the most brutal
murders in the history of California crime. 2
Mrs. Monohan was the former mother-in-law of Tutor
Scherer, 70-year-old Las Vegas gambling casino operator,
from whom her daughter, Iris, about 35, had been divorced
in 1951. But the gambler and the widow had remained
on friendly terms. Young Iris had received a generous
financial settlement from Scherer, which included a deed
to the house which her mother occupied.
Neighbors gossiped about Mrs. Monohan’s insistence
upon absolute privacy. Was there some sinister secret hid-
den within the walls of that house which she dared not
disclose? Or was it only natural timidity that caused her
to rebuff outsiders? She had a few women friends residing
in Los Angeles, some of whom occasionally spent the night
with her, but these infrequent contacts were her only social
activities.
Iris remarried a J. Robert Sowder, wealthy New York
oil man, and visited her mother occasionally. During these
visits, the house showed signs of normal life. The blinds
were opened, the dog, Ziggy, romped in the front yard,
and Iris chatted briefiy with neighbors.
On March 5, 1953, Mrs. Monohan waved good-bye to her
daughter, who had spent the past month with her, then
limped back into her lonely sanctuary and closed the blinds.
Detective Chief Coveney, standing,
and seated left to right, Dist. Atty.
Roll, Police Chief Andrews and Asst.
D. A. Alexander, seized mob in killing,
Five days later the gardener came to mow the lawn.
When he walked up onto the front porch to ask for the
key to the patio gate he was astonished to find the door
slightly ajar. .
“The key, Mrs. Monohan,” he called. -
There was no response. Sensing something was wrong,
he edged his way into the living room. Large, brownish-
red splotches marred the fine rug. He went from room to
room, feeling a sickening premonition of what he might
find. A moment later, heart thudding, face dead-white, he
ran from the house to a next-door neighbor and summoned
police.
Detective Carl Lane arrived within a few minutes. After
a brief examination of the premises he telephoned for as-
sistance. Lieut. Robert Coveney, chief of the detective
division of the Burbank Police Department, accompanied
by Officers E. J. Vandergrift and H. E. Loranger and a
crew of technicians, responded to the call.
The frightened gardener led them to the fully clothed
corpse of Mrs. Mable Monohan lying face down on the
floor in a pool of congealed blood. Her hands were tied
behind her back with a blood-soaked length of sheet. Her
feet were inside a linen closet; the upper part of her body
protruded into the hallway. Encircling her neck was a
loosely knotted cloth which evidently had been used as a
garrote. On her forehead were multiple bruises and a semi-
circular depression, apparently the result of a severe blow
from a hammer or possibly a gun-barrel.
While the body was being photographed, Coveney and
his men made a meticulous search of the house for clues.
Every one of the six rooms presented a scene of carnage.
- Blood spattered the walls, furniture had been overturned,
rugs pulled up and all dresser and cabinet drawers emptied
of their contents. Even a bread-box had been opened and
flung to the floor. A smudged, bloody handprint on one
wall and two faint footprint ‘impressions were photo-
graphed, but there was little hope they would help identify
the murderer.
With the house so thoroughly ransacked, robbery seemed
to be the motive, but the way the woman had been bludg-
eoned to death indicated the killer’s vicious hatred or a
Matronly West Coast
widow Mable Monohan
was felled by crushing
blows on face and skull.
Her battered body was _
found in ransacked home,
inset, said to be hideaway
of fortune made gambling.
‘c aunp uo (seTesuy soT)
ue SNIvWuadG SWVHVYD
5S6T
*srteo peyerxdydse Sseqtum *OINYS P
¢
S
desire for vengeance. The robbery motive*was further
weakened when investigators discovered a purse on a shelf
in the linen closet containing $500 in cash and jewelry
subsequently appraised as being worth more than $7,000.
a gory would ip sap these items? Still, a desperate
Ss had been ma i i
ter arp € for something that might hold the
_ Lieut. Coveney learned from nei hbors th:
light over the driveway had been bathing eo aes
that Mrs. Monohan had last been seen on the morning of
the same day. He was told that she seemed fearful and
apprehensive, and all those interviewed agreed upon one
point: It was extremely doubtful that she would voluntarily
admit a stranger to her home, And since there was no sign
of a forced entry, Coveney could only assume that she
wis acquainted with her killer, :
No strange cars had been observed in the vicinj
next-door neighbors had heard no sound i Pisces rae
or any screams for help. They said they were listenin
to television programs during the evening of March =
the day the murder was believed to have been committed—
= oe hg Jon as escaped their notice, It was
als ssible that Mrs. é i
before rel ete iy fonohan was knocked senseless
__ Ziggy, the black Labrador, weak from hunger. was whi
ing piteously in the back yard. The senieet eae hin
some food and a reassuring pat on the head and then let °
the officers in to inspect the premises. A huge avocado tree
oa a jacaranda, with their lowest branches high above
he ground, could have afforded no hiding place for the
iller in the patio even if the dog had tolerated his presence
Baxter Shorter right inset, mobster who “
3 > Ti " o “talked,”
Paar nigh at gunpoint from apartment house, below while
tantic wife, inset, saw helpless husband forced into car,
Dr. Frederick N. Newbarr, chief autopsy surgeon of Los
Angeles County, and his assistant, Dr. Victor Cefalu, de-
termined that the victim had died of strangulation and’ an
intercranial hemorrhage due to concussion of the brain,
bine swollen face was covered with abrasions and discolora-
S. :
Mrs, Iris Sowder, informed of the tragedy by tel raie
at her New York home, left by iwi tisscteacke tie
Burbank. Tearfully, the distraught woman said she could
think of no possible motive for her mother's vicious slaying.
She said she had visited her mother from February 6 to
March 5 and before leaving for New York had given her
$500 in bills of various denominations. She said Mrs. Mono-
han had placed the money in a black purse—which proved to
be the same one that the killer, or killers, had overlooked
Mrs. Sowder discounted the possibility that large sums
of money might have been concealed in the house and said
that her mother was in no way connected with her former
son-in-law’s gambling activities. :
They were on friendly terms and that is all,” she said
It was learned that recently a tall man carrying a small
Suitcase was seen entering the Monohan house. An under-
world informant stated the suitcase was believed to contain
huge sums of currency—a myth which was later disspelled
when the man was identified and located. He explained
ies — of money, the bag contained only poker chips
= ee, use by Mrs. Monohan in penny-ante games
Tutor Scherer, interviewed by officers, express “e
regret over his former mother -falaw's fate oe wie ke,
to cast any leght upon the mystery, con
During the ensuing 2 weeks Burbank police worked
day and night to unearth information that might lead to a
solution of the baffling case. Young: Chief of- Police Rex
Andrews was determined that this first major crime to
come within his jurisdiction should not go unsolved
Finally, he learned via the criminal grapevine that 2
years ago a gang of hoodlums had planned to rob Mrs
Monohan of money they believed gamblers had hidden in
use. But s uddenly th n AC
her hous . Ss e a had abando i
fang ed the
‘Shinde.
William Upshaw freely told of
gang’s scheme to rob Monohan
home. He said mob’s moll ordered
gunman to bash victim’s head in.
Reputed gang chieftain,
right, accused of pistol-
whipping and _ strangling
not-so-cautious widow.
Named as accomplices are
San Francisco deep sea
diver, combing hair, and
coy hoodlum, top right,
who was also fingered as
one of Shorter’s abductors.
Confidants of the mob included two local men named
William Upshaw and Baxter M. Shorter, 41, an ex-convict
whose criminal record dated back to 1927. Shorter had been
arrested a dozen times in six states for offenses including
larceny, forgery, carrying concealed weapons, obtaining
money under false pretenses, hustling and vagrancy. In
some instances he had been fined or placed on probation.
In others he had smilingly talked his way out_of the jams.
But in April, 1939, Lady Luck deserted him. Arrested
in Los Angeles on a charge of burglary, he was convicted
and sentenced to a term of 1 to 5 years in San Quentin.
Paroled in 1940, he received his final discharge in 1942.
Four years later he was questioned regarding a Los Angeles
robbery and subsequently released for lack of evidence,
and in July, 1951, he paid a $150 fine for being drunk in
an automobile.
On March 26, just 17 days after the murder, Shorter,
with Upshaw and three other men, was picked up by Bur-
bank police and questioned regarding the earlier plot to
burglarize the Monohan house. All five, Lieut. Coveney
said later, were acquainted with the murdered woman, her
daughter Iris and Tutor Scherer. A curtain of strict secrecy
was drawn about the inquiry, and the suspects were re-
leased after having been held 3 days. Coveney, besieged
with reporters, would only say:
“Those five men hold the key to the situation.”
Then, on April 13, the case broke wide open.
It was announced that not one man but a group of five
persons, including a 29-year-old woman, had participated
in the murder of Mable Monohan. Someone had “sung”
and that someone was Baxter Shorter. According to a
statement released by police, he said:
“I went on the job thinking it was going to be a ‘safe
cracking’ ‘job and just a ‘safe’ job. We thought Mrs.
Monohan had $150,000 hid in a vault or safe. I stayed
outside as a lookout. The others went inside, After a
long time I went in. I saw Mrs. Monohan on the floor,
bleeding. I was horrified. Then one of the fellows pulled out
a gun and pistol-whipped her about the head as the woman
Gay gun moll caught in police raid enjoys life in prison
hospital during treatment of an alleged heart ailment.
with tus stood by yelling: ‘Give her some more. Give her
some inore. She's making too much noise.’ Mrs. Monohan
couldn't or wouldn’t tell where the money was. She was
struck twice more with the butt of the gun and I guess
that’s what killed her. I could hardly wait to get out of
there. After we left, I got away from them and put in
a phone call for an ambulance, but I neglected to say that
the address was in Burbank, so the ambulance never got
there.”
Shorter named his accomplices as Jack Santo and Emmett
Perkins, both ex-convicts, John True, a deep-sea diver
from San Francisco, and Barbara Graham, mother of a
15-month-old son. Shorter said they had driven to the
Monohan house after dark on the night of March 9 ina
green two-tone 1952 Oldsmobile sedan registered by a
woman described as Santo’s girl friend.
“We'd been told that some big gamblers were trying to
beat the Government out of the income tax on about
$150,000,” Shorter said. He also said Barbara Graham,
estranged from her husband, was romantically interested
in Emmett Perkins. It was she, he added, who had forced
her way into the house by menacing Mrs. Monohan with
a gun. Three of the men—True, Santo and Perkins—fol-
lowed her in while Shorter said he remained outside in,
the car as a lookout for about 15 minutes, then was ordered
by Santo to come into the house.
Under the terms of an agreement which Burbank police
had made with Shorter, he was to remain at liberty, at
least for the time being, in exchange for the vitally im-
portant information he had given. Vehemently, he refused
Chief Andrews’ offer of a police guard.
“I’ve got a loaded rifle in my living room,” he declared.
“T can take care of myself.”
He was permitted to return, unescorted, to an apartment
house he had recently purchased on North Flower Street
in downtown Los Angeles. With sensational accounts of
his confession appearing in all the daily papers, it was a
foolhardy move on Shorter’s part.
Shortly after eight o'clock [Continued on page 60
31
once for such a car.
n near Cline’s Cor-
nuquerque. It held
ed they were head-
1 Nevada. They had
hey had won gam-
- had been in Reno,
| days earlier. How-
s Vegas at the hour
.e and Maxine Wil-
to Sheriff Schooler
1 they had driven to
almost collided with
tion of the logging
r, they told Sheriff
roughly dressed and
said the man was
inounced he believed
ykout.
Janes told newsmen.
, or may even have
if such he was, did
One man was jailed
he knew the killers.
service station near
ly had spent a num-
had been saving the
e, or if he was just
pend twenties at the
id on October 14th,
1 the little survivor.
nad eaten a popsicle.
oler asked.
ip the road.”
ted story, the sheriff
orced Young to stop.
nt and wore a mask.
not know either.
the Young car, Son-
e up the road to the
cked a nickel-plated
killer.
letectives discovered
curtain over her re-
She was unable to
efore her. Psycholo-
ue as an identifying
inless the killers had
iay Sondra told her
1ers attended services
yur Mormon bishops
Thurwood of West-
on our side, and in-
1g must pay for their
. owner was cleared.
hese included itiner-
»m Oakland, Califor-
sut no one has been
ind the four children.
two surviving chil-
ories. Sondra has re-
speak of the tragedy;
ious mind. Sheriff
in the distant cities
anew.
pre,’ he said recently.
ider four at the time.
ea
after she had sustained such severe injuries and shock.”
The sheriff will not commit himself as to whether he
believes the crime was of local origin or was engineered
by criminals from outside the area.
There are several schools of thought on this. Some believe
it was done by persons who knew of Young’s regular trips
for money, and who killed the children in fear they would
recognize the slayers. Others declare it must have been the
work of outsiders. They point out that any resident of the
area who knew of Young’s habits, and who saw him with
the children, would have waited until some later trip when
he was alone.
A third suggestion is that the crime may have been
planned by someone in the area, with outsiders coming in to
do the dirty work. In that case, the local “finger” may not
have expected murder to follow, and the pressure of con-
science may someday drive the local contact to confes-
sion.
Supporting the theory that criminals from outside the
mountains did the killings is the nature of the death
weapon—the lead pipe, a silent weapon. Presumably, at
least one in the party was armed. Local residents would
have known it was safe to use a gun the woods that day
when hunters were shooting all over the place.
The physical clues are scanty: just the pipe and the
rope. Perhaps some inference can be drawn from these,
if at least one other lead can be uncovered.
What urgency kept the murderers from delaying or aban-
doning their crime? Was there a black car involved in the
killing? Who was the red-hatted hunter? These are only a
few of the unanswered questions that will continue to be
asked until the day when, in the words of the Mormon
bishop, ‘‘these people pay for their crime.’ With the help of
MD readers that day may come sooner than expected for the
two brutal murderers. If you have any information which
may be at all helpful to Sheriff Melvin Schooler write him
in care of his Plumas County office, Quincy, California.
Huge two-family house in
Chester became too empty
following massacre which
claimed one victim from
top floor and three from
lower, and its occupants
moved off, to start anew
Victims of the tragedy, Gard Young's wife {/.)
embraces mother of Michael Saile, after funeral
ROBART. TET NEA lie BRE RTC OF
ARERR
kb
thinking!
‘She ordered sternly to “remain where you are. This 4
thing of running all over the country, unless you got @:
floater out of Chicago [perhaps she really had been told by
the police there to leave the city], must be stopped.”
After that, she settled down for a while, and-for the:
i thfulness—
rest of 1949 her letters—whatever their tru 4
were touchingly full of detail aimed at showing how normal |
her life was now. At Thanksgiving: “I am going to fix a.
turkey Thursday for myself and a few friends. It will be:
fun cause I just love to cook.” She got a job as a nurse J
aid in the Nye County’ Hospital in Tonopah, working a;
night shift from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., and “I just love ms,
job and I always have my nose in some medical boo .
_ . « The other morning I assisted in a delivery and now
I take care of the mother and baby on my shift, aside®
from my other duties. We also have a lot of indigent and.”
ental patients. It is all so interesting.” =
“ In Deceibers “I think you would agree with me that My
look a lot better since I have been here. I have let all the:
dye grow out of my hair and it is back to its natural,
brown and I cut it too. It must be this small town life,”
Gosh, I just love it here. I don’t think I could live in a
big city again. We are really having the weather now. by
snowed for two days last week and it is so cold it 1s
effort to keep warm. I had to buy earmuffs for my cates
cause the cold makes them ache something awful and
long as I can keep them and my feet warm Iam a
As for the snow I really like it.” Some of these le
were typed, and revealed Barbara as an accurate typ
Then in January came big news, after a wistful
tence. “Well, it’s been almost a year now since I've beg
released and it’s beginning to fade from my mind and
seem like it was all a bad dream.” The letter went ome
have met an awfully nice fellow and if everything goe
right I may marry him in a couple of months. ves As: ya
I haven’t made up my mind and I don’t feel like
into marriage without thinking about it first.” (
time, one might say!)
The “awfully nice fellow” was a salesman for 3.
company. They were married, not “in a couple of mont
but on February 9th, by a judge, with the chief of Pe
of Tonopah as witness to the ceremony. “I wrote am
60
i
= formed my mother of the marriage. Guess that is about all
E.
. for now except that I am very happy.”
= *-For several months things went on beautifully, Barbara’s
; only complaint being a siege with the dentist. “Sure wish
» people didn’t have to have teeth. I am really the worst pa-
; tient a dentist can have. Oh, well.” But even for that there
© were consolations: “I got the cutest little toy cocker
» spaniel. She is a little doll. I just love dogs.”
»~ Then came a rather suspicious episode. Suddenly, in
_July, Barbara wrote that she was pregnant, that she and
cher husband were going to Los Angeles, and she gave an
‘address there as that of his family. Her probation officer
| wrote to find out what all this was about, and the letter
was returned unclaimed. Then there was no more talk of
> pregnancy, and Barbara was back in Tonopah with no
Paatisfactory explanation. Still things seemed to be going
© pretty well; in August she wrote: “My husband has gone
son another selling trip byt I decided to stay here.”
> In November: “I rented a little hamburger stand. It is
doing quite well though there is no big profit in it, but it
is comfortable. I work about 12 hours a day and I don't
«have any help so I get to keep it all [the profit].” In her
© Rew capacity as businesswoman and citizen Barbara waxed
etomically indignant over local conditions. “What makes
/& hard on everyone is the fact that all the public utility’s
|e privately owned and believe me they are really high,
why even the sewerage system is on a commercial basis,
tthe small business places and homes have to pay 2.50 and
ume large places 7.50. I heard that this is the only town
iM the United States where they charge that.”
= What happened at the beginning of 1950 is anybody’s
wees. Obviously the marriage was beginning to break up.
wemhaps her husband had found out belatedly some things
mhadn’t known about his wife’s past (all Barbara’s
mbands except the last one were quite respectable men);
thaps some of the “friends” of her former life turned
unexpectedly and were too much for her always weak
Wal to resist; perhaps she had just got tired of dull domes-
Bty..Her reports were spotty until June, when the proba-
Ma officer got a letter postmarked in Seattle, but implying
M-Barbara had been recently in San Francisco. In
@he.spoke of a “visit” from her son—the one in Seattle?
Bought I would be able to bring my boy up to see you
d to get home so I didn’t have the chance, He
61
Ge ae.
eR AS ae a
be rgb as
ergs
RODE, AORN RSS A LL NASM REAGAN OEE ALAS NEP US
SNM MIR R i: bovine
b
:
:
3
a bar shes
nd clerk and the woman owner of a —
pecouiied. whom she had given as reference, were & <
friendly, said she had always paid her bills, never caused:
any trouble or “any disturbance of any kind and
haved good”—but, with or without trouble, they couldn't}
he had been there when she hadn't. _ a
ities Barbara came out of jail, she did make a serious:
effort to reorganize her life. Thanking her probation eee
“a million, for writing and advising me what to do,” -
went to Tonopah, Nevada, in April 1948. She had friends}
there, and “thought it would be a good idea to get away
from San Francisco for a while.” 4
She wrote that she liked it “very much. It is a very
small town and everyone knows everyone else. I am going =
to continue my schooling and will have a job in a —_
of days. I am sure I can get a better start here, as I will be,
away from everyone I pea and I won’t be running nto.
the street and what not.” 3
aon pin added: “The people are all just wonderful
me and they have accepted me without asking any q +
tions, . . . The teachers here at the local high school :
going to see what they can do about my finishing ny
school that I started.”
But she didn’t go back to school for very long, thor a
she registered in the Commerce Night School. Be 8
April and August she moved back and forth be een
Tonopah and Goldfield—largely, she said, because. f
“1
altitude of Tonopah was too high for her heart. '
really had a slight functional heart impairment, wid
she exaggerated a good deal.) She worked in various reste
rants, and there was an abortive project for her to ope
a restaurant of her own in Goldfield, but that fell thro ae
Then on August 15th, she suddenly announced that
was en route again to Chicago—without permission, @
the probation officer decided to let her go ahead. She a
another girl were driving back there, and she wrote thatg
was “assured of a waitress job when I arrive. aa
All through Barbara’s weekly reports to her wou
probation officer in San Francisco, there is a pallies
strain of reaching out for attention and sympathy. “4
can’t get used to the idea of corresponding with som
and not receiving answers. I guess you would hav
in your office forty-eight hours a day if you
answer all your mail.” “Well, as usual I have a
time writing this letter cause I feel so silly w
38 Z|
getting an answer. I'can never think of anything to
may. and under normal circumstances I do write a fair
‘etter.” She knew very well that an oVerworked probation
‘officer could not possibly give her the constant interest and
raffection for which she craved—but it is unfortunate that
40 easily led a girl never happened to make just that kind
of connection.
- What she was really reaching out for, unconsciously,
|¥as a mother-substitute. Her own mother had self-right-
seously dissociated herself from the bad girl who had been
sconvicted of perjury—though her own career had cer-
“tainly not been unspotted. The first Christmas after her
fpil term, Barbara did not receive even a card from her
mother, though she had sent one with her address. She
fWtote: “I haven’t seen or heard a word from my family
paince I got in that trouble, and I thought after the first
pot the year I might be able to go to San Francisco for a
eweek and see if I can make up with them. It has been
)a0 long since I’ve seen them that I really miss them.” It
Mwas the next July before she could report joyously: “Oh,
‘Agot a card from both my mother and sister, which made
We very happy.” |
> By this time she had long been back in Tonopah. Any-
ime who ever placed much faith in anything Barbara said
Must have been very gullible; but it is possible to believe
Mat she was really unburdening her heart when she wrote:
Mhings were getting awfully rough in Chicago for me
mad the temptation of easy money was getting pretty hard
B resist, so I came back here.” One reason this may
Mave been true is that she added: “The first thing I did
nl arrived here was to check in at the district attorney’s
Mice. I told him everything and when he asked if I had
¥ previous trouble prior to what happened last year I
ms very frank and told him everything. So he told me to
fabead and write you [her probation officer] and if you
M@ated any information as to what I am doing just to
: him.” oF
Seut.almost immediately Barbara began to have itching
@ again. First she wrote vaguely about “going to Port-
bd to be married” and then changed her mind. Next, she
ying she “was thinking I would like to see my son
er one]... . I know my mother-in-law would be
sed for me to go there, because in her heart she
ound him at all times.” (Considering that her
i-law was far from “very pleased” when later
39
ceeetiliieeieenineees tee
yt
RO ee Se see
is so cute. He will be ten years old the 1st of July so
will stay for his birthday.” '
Perhaps the reference was to her other son, who was |
supposed to be boarded out in Oakland; but in any event.
it was a provable fake, for hard on its heels came an.
indignant letter from her ex-mother-in-law, which charged:
that “the letter you received was one of the letters she
[Barbara] sent up here to my daughter asking her to mail:
it for her which my daughter did, which made me very.
angry.” Offended and curious, she wrote to the given:
address (not recognizing it as the probation office), to say |
that Barbara was not in Seattle at all. The office responded 3
that Barbara was violating probation and had disappeared. 4
A second communication from Seattle then went into de- 3
tail:
I received a letter from her Dec. 24, 1949 for the 3
first time since she left [my son] that she would like to 5
see her son so I told her to come and visit him, she was |
in Tonopah, Nev. at that time then she moved to Frisco, 3
she kept in touch with me until June. So June last 7
month the 18th, she came up here to see him and ™
stayed here only one day, she left here June the 19th
back to Frisco. I know she went to Frisco: because
had one letter from her since. I was very angry at her
to think she could only visit one day with her son
not seeing him for years, so then I found out f
her she had another son. .’. also that she was ma
again and now is supposed to be married a thi i
[fourth?] time, which [only] I am supposed to know,”
she wanted me to keep this a secret that she was 2
Mrs. but I doubt she is married to the man so if
refer to [him] or this address to her you will give
away and I don’t want any trouble.
She added naively: “I just cannot understand how
Barbara, can travel and dress without working, she seen
to have plenty of money while she was here.” The won
and the little boy were innocent victims of what she >
propriately called “Barbara’s mess.” “I would like to know?
what she is on parole for, and then for her boy’s sake
think we had better forget she is even around. The
is very likeable and nice and I would like to keep him
he does not care for his mother and is very happy hem
what can anyone expect not seeing her all these yea
62
~The probation officer did nevertheless write to the San
Francisco address the woman in Seattle had given, and
/ the letter was returned, On September 17, 1950, Barbara’s
§ probation was revoked and a bench warrant was issued
» for her. She had failed to report since June (and then
- untruthfully) and the violation was patent.
For two and a half years Barbara remained AWOL.
; She had received the last peremptory summons from the
| Probation office to come in and explain in person what
~ Was going on; for in 1953 she remarked airily that she
been “opening a night club” in San Francisco, which
, the knew to be a violation of the probation terms she
had signed (they. included keeping away from question-
q able characters and out of bars), so “I knew they would
+ pat me in jail, and I came down here.” “Here” was Los
Angeles. Another story was that she was mixed up in
, an abortion case. For a while in Los Angeles she was
- known as “Susan Brewster.”
* Up to this time, though Barbara had been playing
“Mound dangerously on the fringes of the underworld, the
; Worst people she had known were petty hoodlums and
iminals like Monroe and Sittler. Now for the first time
ne was up against big-time gangsters. She had gone over
edge and she was out of her depth. In the end it was
much for her and overwhelmed her.
Somewhere along the way she had shed the husband
married in Tonopah. When she entered the limelight
in—through bad check charges amounting to $26,
y in 1953—-she was Mrs. Henry Graham, and she had
© Mill a third son, born in 1951.
Hank Graham was no big-timer; he was an out-of-work
Bartender, whose only contribution to Barbara’s progress
Was to introduce her to the drug habit—‘we messed
;Mfound with marijuana and some laudanum pills I got
Ffom the doctor.” He was arrested later on charges of
|Possession of heroin. It was a stormy marriage, punctuated
|’y noisy drunken quarrels, and he left her for good in
rch 1953. Before they parted he had introduced her
Emmett Perkins. ,
Once again a mother-in-law was handed a baby to care
Barbara wrote to Graham from prison, after the
trophe, “Take care of the baby, I miss him very
” She made no reference, then or later, to her two
63
Before we can get to Barbara’s final disaster, we must 4
introduce the two villains of the piece. ;
Jack Santo for years headed a vicious: gang whose -
activities ranged from gold highjacking in the Mother Lode
country of California to brutal murder for profit. His sec- ”
ond in command was Emmett Perkins, a professional
gambler. Other part-time members of the gang were |
Santo’s common-law wife, Harriet Henson;
Boles (once a newspaper man); Willie Upshaw;
True (a deep-sea diver), who turned state’s evidence;
John L. ©
kidnapped from his home in the presence of his wife —
and was never seen again—he was undoubtedly killed.
Among them, the gang committed a series of atrocious |
crimes, ending with Shorter’s kidnapping and almost cer “
tain murder. They included the torture and $4000 robbery |
of a gold buyer, Andrew Colner,
California, in December 1941; the murder of Edmund |
Hansen, a gold miner, when he
sion of his Nevada City home, in December 1951, to steal
his gold; the savage murder of a Chester grocer, Guard
Young, his two little daughters, and a neighbor’s child, in |
October 1952, when the gang highjacked his auto as he »
was returning from a bank on a lonely road—a fourth d
child, then three years old, was also left for dead but |
finally recovered; and the beating to death of Mrs. Mabel
Monohan, an elderly, crippled widow, in a vain search a
for money and jewels supposed to be in her house in Bur-
bank. This crime, occurring in March 1953, was the one
which involved and engulfed Barbara Graham. 4
Perkins was forty-four years old and far from pre”
possessing; he had a wife and son; but there is little doubt
that he and Barbara were bound by more than “business” %
ties. This relation would of course have meant little to q
Barbara, though she perfunctorily denied it. She said 4
once that only Graham, of all the men in her life, had 3
ever awakened her sexually; like many promiscuous @
women, she was frigid. Such business ties there also were, 4
however, for she went to work as a shill in a gambling
house in El Monte that Perkins was running (betweem”
trips to the Mother Lode). Barbara explained in court?
that the house provided “stud, draw, low-ball, and some®
dice,” and she was the come-on for them all. a
One of the steady patrons of the joint was Perkin
friend and leader, Jack Santo. Before long, Barbara, ¥
od
and
Baxter Shorter, who tried to turn state’s evidence, was @e
is wife, in Folsom, # ; ; :
and, hax wit, * lame, sixty-three years old, and she lived alone with a
§ dog and cat, but she wouldn’t let any stranger into her
i ’s inva- |
resisted the gangs | house at night; her walled front yard was floodlighted and
George W.
a had been many questionable things but never a member
». of a professional gang, was too deeply implicated ever to
® be able to extricate herself again. She had started as a
wayward child, and she was ending as a gun-moll.
Early in 1953 Santo and Perkins began to hear rumors
- of a fabulous hoard of money, the property of Luther
(Tutor) Sherer, owner of a casino in Las Vegas—several
hundred thousand dollars, which he was supposed to have
cached in the Burbank home of his former mother-in-
law, Mrs. Monohan. (As a matter of fact, all he ever
stored there was an extra stock of poker chips.) Mrs.
Monohan herself was rumored to have valuable jewelry.
(She hadn’t.) The gang decided that all the gold in
California wasn’t in the Mother-Lode after all: right at
* hand was a prize worth going after.
They cased the house thoroughly and discovered that
the old lady was cagy and suspicious. She was frail and
the side gate was kept locked. So they decided to use
- Barbara to gain entry.
They were to drive up to the house—Santo, Perkins,
} Shorter, and True (who said virtuously that he had no
~ idea they were going to be violent about the robbery),
f together with Barbara. Barbara was to get out, ring the
| bell, say her car had broken down, and ask to use the
© telephone. Then the rest of the gang would pour out of
| their car and crowd in. Mrs. Monohan would be bound
- and gagged and blindfolded, they would ransack the house,
grab the treasure, and leave, They all wore gloves, and
F. they were all armed.
That was the way it was planned. What happened was
4 a little different.
John True’s story, which convicted Barbara, was that
: she immediately struck the widow to the ground, held her
« by the hair, and began beating her over the head with the
= butt of the pistol she, like the rest of them, was carrying.
| Mrs. Monohan, in bewilderment and agony, kept moan-
= ing, “Oh, no, no, no!” Somebody called out, “Give her
more,” so Barbara did. The noble Mr. True intervened
and begged her to stop. He knelt and took the victim’s
head in his lap, thereby getting his trousers spattered with
Blood—“I wish I could get my pants pressed!” he com-
sined when they left the house. Barbara meanwhile
65
made by John True that contradicted his testimony on fe
stand—the chief evidence that sent Barbara Graham toh het
death. The allegation that Barbara had confessed to Teelf
was directly contradicted by the prison matron who wai?
present at every interview she had with the warden. With
everybody concerned dead, the investigation fizzled out,;
with the conclusion that “justice had been done.” 4
Whether she ever confessed or not—and nobody couk
rely on Barbara’s telling the truth on any occasion—one
thing can be said with certainty: if there are such things
as “born murderers,” Barbara Graham was not among:
their number. Long ago her probation report found in het;
“psychopathic personality tendencies which lead to de!
linquency.” From her heredity, her background, her earth
history, one might have predicted that she could become:
a prostitute, a drug addict, a passer of bad checks
varieties of criminality that are passive and can aris}
almost accidentally in a suggestible, easily led persom
There was no strength in Barbara, but there was never any:
viciousness or brutality, either—unless it came to the)
surface from buried depths when Mrs. Monohan opened)
the door to her ring. Psychologically, that is most unlikely,
There is no doubt whatever that she was a compulsi
psychopathic liar. Caroline Anspacher,--a reporter wha:
spent many hours talking to her, noted a curious things:
whenever Barbara was lying, her eyes would change color
and darken. So frequently did this happen that finally th
reporter said: “That was a lie, wasn’t it?” And Barba
frankly acknowledged that it was. In some strange W
she seemed to lie brazenly and unremittingly about
but to be unable to lie successfully about her emoti
Her feelings, so long as she retained them, were real; t
she had no stability, and like a chameleon she changed
the color of her personality according to the hue of nose
by whom she was surrounded. =
It is barely possible that in close association with bruteg
like Santo and Perkins she even took on enough of theif
characteristics to be able to commit a savage murder, E
if that is true, it took thirty years for it to happen;
if at any time, by good luck, someone strong and patiem
enough had taken over, someone she could have truste®
for unfailing love, she might have become a very diff
being. The one unending search of her vacillating,
dependable life was for an emotional security she
never fortunate enough to find.
72
The Murderer Was A Lady:
LOUISE PEETE
= The last thing anyone could say of shrewd, bold, self-
seeking Louise Peete is that she was mentally incompetent.
“It may be doubted, however, whether for all her sharp
thinking any woman could be said to be perfectly sane
who would twice risk her life in crimes that were almost
«= complete copies of each other: at best the verdict-must be
~ that fundamentally she was abysmally stupid.
There can be no doubt that she was thoroughly guilty
of both the murders for which she was convicted, and for
= the second of which she was gassed at San Quentin in
April 1947—the second woman in the history of the State
of California to incur the supreme penalty. Indirectly,
- ‘she also caused the death of at least one other person, and
haps of three beside him.
Louise Peete (she always preferred the name conferred
her by her longest marriage) was born in Shreveport,
isiana—just when is a matter of conjecture. She was
incorrigible liar, and in nothing more than in her age.
The best that can be said is that she arrived on earth
sOmewhere between 1880 and 1892. The median date,
about 1885, makes her sixty-two or thereabouts on the
‘Spring day when she departed from this planet. Her
‘ s-maiden name is lost in the mist that surrounds her—she
| didn't keep it long—but her given name seems originally
| to have been Lofie Louise. She soon dropped the grotesque
P“Lofie” and remained simply Louise thereafter.
Her father, she said (there was no other evidence),
s a schoolteacher. “I have never considered myself
cularly well educated,” she ayerred modestly. Some-
she developed a rather good epistolary and oratorical
73
went to a nearby bedroom, took the case off a pillow, and #
wrapped Mrs. Monohan’s battered head in it.
That was True’s testimony at the trial. On another later’
occasion he said that Barbara was left-handed and the ~
wounds were made by a right-handed person; that “the a
old lady was-beaten to death with her own stick”; that it
was he who wrapped up her head; and made various other
contradictory statements. He cannot be questioned now; “3
in 1958 he was killed in a ship collision on the Mississippi
River.
Whoever beat Mrs. Monohan drew enough blood to
soak, not spatter, the clothing of anyone who touched her, 3
Deputy District Attorney J. Miller Leavy said she looked a
“as if she had been hit with a heavy truck traveling at @
high speed. The savage brutality of the attack is like 3
nothing I have seen in twenty years of experience. I can a
scarcely believe that human beings could do that to an 3
elderly woman against whom they had nothing, merely be-
Cause they wanted money.” Money they didn’t get, in-
cidentally; there was no large sum in the house, and no ™
valuable jewelry.
The jury believed True. They must have been convinced *
“beyond a reasonable doubt” that this savage attack was *
committed, not by one of the men who tortured the: %
Colners to death, shot the defenseless Hansen, and fatally
beat Guard Young and the small children with him—but .
by a girl five feet three inches tall and weighing 118°*
pounds, while these tough, ruthless men stood by and lets
her handle the job. a
There is no other account of Barbara’s ever having
been physically violent; even drunk and disorderly, she
was not given to displays of passion; she was, rather,
inclined to be carelessly kind and sentimental. There have.
been plenty of criminal women who could coldly beat an
old cripple to death and not even raise their blood pres 3
sure. But that isn’t the kind of human being Barbara 3
Graham was; it is completely out of character. 4
And she was undoubtedly the safest fall guy for True=
to blame. &
It was on the basis of his testimony that the jury of&
nine men and three women found her guilty, along wi
Santo and Perkins, of first degree murder. There is pre
tically no doubt that she was there, and that she
ticipated knowingly in the raid. But without that pi
66
~ Monohan was killed?
. ferreted out from his hiding-pla
3 called as a witness. Yes, h
he had left, just
; Of her as the actual killer, it is very doubtful
: het
». would ever have been, condemned Aes death. whether she
: For someone needing very bad] to : nee’
- the Monohan murd aes ¥ to establish an alibi,
© for Barbara. In the accustomed pattern, she a
€r came at a most inconvenient time
nd Graham
were getting ready to split up. Early in March there was
@ noisy quarrel between husband and wife which lasted all
y and up to nine o’clock at night h
out on her. ght, when Graham walked
The big question was—what was the date of that quar-
Tel? Was it, or was It not, Monday, March 9th, when Mrs,
Barbara, of course, said that it was. Henry Graham
day on that date.
lone in the cotta
ed her sympathetic neighbor to look
O.weeks, since she “had to go away.”
iene
Barbara took the arrest quietly, merely remarking th
she had a bad heart and would live only five months more,®
anyway. The police noted that she had puncture marks:
on her arms. “J
It is significant that when Barbara was frantically search|
he tried to find one also for
ing for an alibi later on, s
April 14th—the day Baxter Shorter was kidnapped. In.
jail she told the fake go-between provided by the police
that he need not worry about Shorter’s turning up—he:
was definitely and permanently out of the way. There is.
nothing, however, to connect her with his actual murdet.:
The police, who wanted the Monohan case clinched,
devised an elaborate drama to “get” Barbara. They planted.
a policewoman named Parker, under the name of “Shirley:
Olsen,” as her cellmate; and Barbara talked too much
her, but still not enough. Next they used a genuine prisoney
a girl of twenty who was serving a manslaughter term a i
ing from an auto fata
the immediate release which was her promised reward. «
If ever there was a man’s woman, it was Barbara G
ham. But now her whole nature was upset, her emotio
in turmoil. She was in prison on a murder charge; not ong
of her family or friends came near
concern for her, and when she reached out blindly for
helping hand it came only from her fellows in misfo
She blushed scarlet and hung her head at the trial wh
they read aloud in court her love letters to the girl ser®
ing the manslaughter sentence. Occasionally, in dea mg
with this girl, Barbara’s mind cleared and she voiced bat
suspicions of a double-cross—though she never seems &
have suspected that the whole web in which she was beat
caught had been spun by the poli
she was “passing kites” to the girl
Hi, Baby. Your note was so sweet, honey, but I wal
you to be very sure of your feelings or I wouldn't ¥ a
to start something we couldn’t finish. You are a” vet
lovely and desirable woman, honey, and I want
very much.
“There is so little affection up there” (in the jail
mumbled when they asked her why she had WIi
another woman in such terms.
So the girl won Barbara’s trust and love, and s
fided her awful need of an alibi. To “Shirley” 2
passed the situation off insouciantly: “Maybe Pll
68
which read like this
lity. This girl put it over and wou
her or showed any
ce. But most of the i 2
a
3 Bie cn nowt wes ge I’ve spread enough money
oth people [!] so I won’t ha
thing but the check charges.” We Se aoe Any
Eri ges.” But to the m
1 here a she confessed that she simply “couldn't eh :
_ Where she had been on March 9th. =
The girl had a ready solution. Why, she said, she knew
a es hat mad ion would swear to an alibi for
a paid for his services. Barba
.$500, and later raised the ante to $25,000, aa ee
Dees wera she expected to get that kind of
: ; fas at this time that she remarked about k
‘Ang that perjured testimony was dangerous and came high,
for she had had the same kind of experience herself in
San Francisco.
gee were made, and Barbara received a visit
the jai es the “hoodlum.” His real name was Sam
» and he was a member of the police force. He
p escribed himself at the trial as “a walking wire recorder”
‘@uring his interviews with Barba
Suring ra; he was hung abo
= F aagaant a concealed beneath his elotties, which
epapi eas word ey seer a Blandly he agreed
»VUU, to swear that they had spent the evenin
: jt of March 9th together in a motel in Encion Te
oot and described it to her.
n all this came out in court, Barbara |
hayk : ost the com-
pr oe which she had been chatting and smiling th
tira ; Seed a cried out chokingly, “have you
Bw a —e ‘© you know what it means not to
a wild animal in a ca
oy ge, she had been fighti
“a 7 rd some means of escape; or if not of i ag
pe * ke a - delay. At the very beginning the trial was
re coun fees aar hae et fell downstairs on her
Bay to ad to be taken to a hospital. Her law-
tr Pa opel that she might have fractured her
* — was merely shaken up; whether she
ip falien eliberately, like a child trying to put off
, ae pres never determined. She had already had
ck” that may or may not have been faked,
Manother “accident” in which her head had
b
pls re 22nd that Judge Charles es
oe in abil to res Jury. Barbara was more fright-
eae — een in all her thirty years. It had
7th ner to joke cynically before; by way of
dang given to the phony alibi witness, Sirianni,
69
&
:
&
&
‘a
suggested a line from the Rubaiyat—“I came BRS
an henge ike wind I go.” She had spoken flippantly of
“the short and happy life of Barbara Graham. But no
reality was staring her in the face. With tears in her eyé bh
she said to the reporters: “My stomach is all knotted up
Now it begins—the waiting waiting, always waiting. WHY:
did this have to happen to me? Life is so short, 1s mul
to be shorter?”
But she took the verdict
October 6th was set for a
instead Barbara’s lawyers,
Wolfe, sprang 4 surprise by
Judge Fricke appointed Al Matthews to se
attorney, and set a new date a week later. Then, as Xpectt
he denied the motion, and she went to the State
tution for Women at Corona to await the date of her mt
cution at the same time as Santo and Perkins. The first dam
set was December 13th. Actually, it was a year and a hs
re before they died. a
at the end of November 1953 Barbara was SeCtem
moved from Corona to San Quentin, where she was places
in a segregated section of the hospital ward, the ont
woman inmate among nearly 4800 men. Despite extra
precautions at Corona, underworld tips persisted that =
attempt would be made to kidnap or kill her. She 7
placed under twenty-four-hour guard by prison mattam
Her new lawyer, Matthews, who had formerly been pum
defender in Los Angeles, said an attempt had been i
on his own life the day after he took over the case. Wi sf
she was in San Quentin he had her given a lie test Wim
showed her to be “a pathological liar, a perjurer, nd.
forger, but basically non-violent.” It also proved that &
really was left-handed. ~ Sag
In April she was taken to Quincy, where Santo-a
Perkins were being tried for the Guard Young MUi
and testified for the defense that Ray McCarthy, an &
of the State Bureau of Criminal Identification and Inve
gation, had offered to “put me free in the Monohan 6
if F would put Santo and Perkins in the Young cum
She said she refused and blamed her trial and cor
on the refusal. The two men were nevertheless
guilty.
In June, with the extra funds for her care
available in the new fiscal year, Barbara was ret
Corona, There was no further talk of unde
70
ae
ance, except for a hush-hush story in August about a man
4 who was caught after he had climbed over a wire-fence en-
; Closure around the prison. The superintendent, however,
‘described her as “a constant problem, and a very, very
‘difficult woman to handle.” She asked for special guards,
r fear Barbara would commit -suicide. But Barbara de-
“pied any such intention. She did have “frequent hystérical
‘fainting fits,’ which probably served as a psychological
arsis.
rom the first execution date on, Matthews secured one
PMay after another. The final date set was June 3, 1955. It
AL s arranged that Barbara should be executed in the
bmorning, Perkins and Santo together in the afternoon. All
the last-minute pleas had failed.
> Barbara braced herself for the ordeal. In a last interview
“with reporter Bernice Freeman, she stoutly maintained her
M@nocence. “But in a situation like this, you don’t moan,
you don’t beg, you don’t plead—you try to be a woman.”
Pethaps she was still dramatizing herself—or perhaps, too
she was becoming mature and responsible. Certainly
Me faced the torture of two last-minute reprieves and the
i al failure of all her lawyer’s frantic attempts to save her
With more courage than that shown by many tough and
Mardened men. She trembled, and she asked for a blind-
Wid because “I don’t want to have to look at people,” but
Mee died quietly, murmuring the prayers of the church in
Mhich she had been reared. She was buried in a San
lafael cemetery, with Henry Graham and five woman
fiends who had come from Southern California as the
mly mourners. “I guess I'll have to tell Tommy that
Memmy moved some place too far away for us to visit
many more,” said Tommy’s father.
bara Graham was dead, but her story did not die.
east two books and an anthology article by Stuart
er have been written about her case, and in 1958
a motion picture, “I Want to Live,” which focused
Mention on her again but presented an evasive and falsi-
@ picture. The real Barbara was a very different person,
Mi in many ways a more interesting and pitiable One.
in 1960 came the sensational statement by Deputy
Attorney Leavy that before she died Barbara had
| her guilt to Warden Harley O. Teets of San
ho himself died in 1957. A hearing was called
embly Committee on Criminal Procedures to
both the alleged confession and the statements
=
me
70 The California Crime Book
came a habit that interrupted her progress at school
where she was a passing, if not a good student.
At thirteen Barbara discovered boys in earnest, and
her mother made loud noises of disapproval. She
might have been more understanding since she was
not exactly a goody-goody herself in those reform-
school days. But no, Hortense hustled Barbara off to a
convent school. Barbara loved the nuns and did sur-
prisingly well, until her mother brought her home
again. Soon there was more trouble with boys, and
once again she was running away.
Caught by juvenile officers, Barbara was returned.
She was following in her mother’s footsteps, because
Hortense consented to having her sent away to Ven-
tura. There she remained for nearly two years while
her behavior worsened. She tried to run away from
Ventura and was branded a “difficult girl who made a
poor adjustment.”
No one could deny, however, that when she came
out she was beautiful. Moreover, she had graduated
from grammar school and had completed close to a
year in high school. Still under the probationary rules
of the California Youth Authority in effect until 1942,
Barbara went to business college, then worked as a
file clerk and switchboard operator.
But before she reached sixteen she was picked up
in Long Beach for disorderly conduct. Then a friend
introduced her to a young man who was a decent
enough sort; for when she became pregnant he as-
sumed the responsibility, and just after her son was .
born, he married her. Long afterward, her ex-mother-
in-law denied that her son was the father of the boy.
But the marriage quickly ended in divorce, and the
mother-in-law took the child Barbara did not want
and raised him as her own.
Divorced in 1941, Barbara drifted on to San Diego
The California Crime Book 71
and promptly got into more troub]
ee times for va
Moving on to San Francisco in 1944, Barbara gave
occupation as cocktail waitress in various clubs
en she was “vagged” by the police, although in
truth she was not a waitress but a B-girl. The police
Teport accused her bluntly: “She has been very pro-
miscuous sexually, practicing prostitution for several
the dark side of the
In Chicago she began to run with a few underworld
characters here and there, and at twenty-three she
was an old traveler down the road of vice. She had
put on a few pounds too
rth Side hotel, Bar-
undercover gambling
dens, earning her way in the Windy City as a “dice
girl.” In April, 1947, she returned once more to San
Francisco. In Feb
beat Sally until she was all but dead.
Thomas Sittler and Mark Monroe were
trial for the crime. Their alibi was that they
THE LIFE AND DEATH
OF BARBARA GRAHAM
Many a murder has been committed on
the mere strength of a rumor. There are all kinds of
rumors of course, but usually the rumor that launches -
a murder has to do with money. A great sum of
money is supposed to be in the possession of the poor
victim, and for some inescapable reason the victim :
keeps his enormous cache of currency tucked away in =
his home. Here all sorts of thieves can break in and »
steal it after forcing the victim to “talk,” and under ©:
penalty of death, reveal the hiding place.
Having heard this rumor from the usually unrelia- —
ble source of a fellow crook who would grab the
dough for himself if he believed there were an ounce
of truth in his assertions, the killer, or killers, dash off
to do mayhem and murder with weapons in every
pocket. Consumed by their greed, it never occurs to
them that only the rarest of nuts keeps large sums of |
money in any place but the insured, protective custo- <=
dy of a bank or similar institution.
But in March, 1953, a rumor was to bring about the 4
death of four people. One would be murdered and. s
three would go to the gas chamber. Of the three des-
The California Crime Book 67
tined to die in the gas chamber, one was a woman,
and her name was Barbara Graham.
Barbara’s dreadful life, the climax of which was a |
brutal and senseless murder, became the subject of a
motion picture that did much to dramatize but little
to illuminate the truth of her sordid and pitiful exist-
ence en route to the gas chamber.
The victim of the rumor was also a woman—Mrs.
Mabel Monohan, an elderly, crippled widow who
lived alone in her Burbank house near Los Angeles.
Completing this cast of characters, who followed a
rumor to Mrs. Monohan’s door and thence to a final
door at San Quentin, were two vicious veterans of
crime—Emmett Perkins and Jack Santo.
Santo was a gang leader who masterminded a small
group composed of his common-law wife, Harriet
Hensen, John L. True (a deep-sea diver), George
Boles (an ex-newspaper man), Willie Upshaw, and
Baxter Shorter. The latter was kidnapped from his
home when he made an attempt to turn state’s evi-
dence and was caused to disappear—permanently.
Emmett Perkins, operator of a gambling joint, was
also Jack Santo’s right arm in the little band of cut-
~ throats who specialized in highjacking and murder for
gold. Yet they loved any scheme that promised an
easy plunder, and killed anyone who got in their way.
= The gang tortured gold buyer Andrew Colner and his
he wouldn’t reveal where he kept his gold or his cash.
That was ten years later in 1951.
- “In 1952, the gang highjacked the automobile of
Guard Young, a grocer who had just returned from
the bank and was on his way home, taking with him
a rye ee yr ee on
TiN PERKINS & SANT Ca f { f ) 6= 341955
anh,
CALIFORNIA
CRIME BOOK
ROBERT COLBY
67)
PYRAMID BOOKS ° NEW YORK
68 The California Crime Book
his two small daughters and the two children of
neighbors. Young was murdered along with all of the
children but one, who, left for dead, eventually recov-
ered.
Strangely, it was Barbara Graham’s husband, Hank
Graham, who introduced her to Emmett Perkins in
March, 1953, before Hank became disenchanted with
Barbara and they parted company. It was a rotten
marriage that seldom knew an intermission from
boozy arguments full of screaming abuse hurled at
each other. If Hank had been seeking revenge, he
could have found no better weapon with which to de-
stroy Barbara than Emmett Perkins. For until she met
Perkins, Barbara’s escapades were, comparatively,
mild as trick-or-treat.
Although Perkins had a wife and-a son, he soon
made Barbara his playmate and companion in crime.
Emmett was forty-four and no bargain in the looks
department, but Barbara was in the black swamps of
a life that had been coasting downhill for years. And
she was ripe for any man who offered her even a pre-
tense of relief from the shambles of her life.
So she became a shill for Perkins at his E] Monte
gambling den, attracting the suckers to games of dice,
stud, draw, and low-ball. Gang boss Jack Santo was a
frequent visitor to the gambling house. And since he
was Perkins’ friend and leader in crime, Barbara got
involved with the gang to the extent that she knew
too much to bow out with her skin intact. In any case,
whatever her motivation, goaded by fear or profit, she ~ . 4
decided to join in their deadly adventures.
The plot to rob Mrs. Mabel Monohan of a fortune
that she was alleged to keep hidden in her Burbank
home lured Barbara into her only experience with real
criminals engaged in a violent crime. It was to be her a
Wood, a railroad
much to weake
bara home, and
The California Crime Book
first step across the borderlin
Her first and her last. nae
Barbara Grah
Oakland, Califo
69
the petty offender.
Barbara was just two years old.
Barbara had onl
Barbara’s mothe
ment. Certainly the ab-
death of her father did
n her emotional security.
ease, Hortense rem
After her re]
74 The California Crime Book
check uncovered the fact that the letter en oo
mailed for her by the mother-in-law’ daug =
though Barbara had once an to Seattle for a day,
ctually living in San Francisco.
vagal oe Barbara’s last known ge be =
Francisco was returned, and in September, 1 .
probation was revoked and a bench warrant ay a
Barbara vanished from sight for two an be =
years. She had moved to Los Angeles, eae ae
Tonopah salesman a gree i pom: nan =
r when he w — \
ides big a “Hank” Graham she had a third son
inni Barbara cashed a |
in 1951. In the beginning of 1953,
bad check for the amount of twenty-six dollars, and
the police, aware of her past record, were a re
cate her. In March of that year she bro . we “
Hank Graham and true to form, left their baby
ie aan Barbara had no time for a baby. a sn
point she was involved with Emmett pears re Au
gambling joint, as we have noted, and se be 7
partner in crime, gang boss Jack Santo, who ——
little group on robbery expeditions sapere sro
ended in murder, such as orange’ iti ed gr
ung and three innocen' 3
een Mo. Mabel Monohan, a Se
woman who lived alone, except for a dog and ag : ,
kept in her Burbank =e on pee peg . “i 3
i e and ha
sagen prsel cain of 1953 Santo and Perkins
heard rumors that the owner of a Las Vegas Reng oes
Luther (Tutor) Sherer, had given Mrs. Mono : -
eral hundred thousand dollars to hide for him
house. She was Sherer’s former mother-in-law an =
cording to the rumor she owned valuable jewelry
she also concealed on the premises.
The California Crime Book 75
In truth, she did not have a dime belonging to
Sherer in her possession, nor did she keep valuable
jewelry at her place. Nevertheless, the rumor persist-
ed, and so did Santo and Perkins. Having recruited
Barbara Graham to join in their plan to rob Mrs,
Monohan, they cased the house and discovered that it
was not going to be such an easy target. The place
was walled and illuminated by floodlights at night.
Also, the gate was kept locked. Therefore Barbara
was elected to ring the bell, pretend that her car had
broken down, and ask to use the phone.
This was to be the opening gambit, after which
, Santo and Perkins, followed by gang members John
True and Baxter Shorter, would rush in and tie up
Mabel Monohan. When she was gagged and blind-
folded, the hiding place of money and jewels would be
uncovered and the gang would depart with the loot.
It was a good plan in theory but in practice it
worked out quite differently, if we are to believe the
account given later by John True on the Witness
stand, the testimony that convicted Barbara Graham.
The way he told it; when the widow came to the
door, Barbara wrestled her to the ground, held her by
the hair and began beating her with the butt of a pis-
tol. “Oh, no, no!” Mrs. Monohan pleaded, but some-
one in the group demanded, “Give her more!” and
Barbara continued the beating with renewed vigor.
At this point, said True (a man who apparently
couldn’t bear violence despite his murderous history
with the gang), he leaped to the rescue of Mrs. Mon-
Begging Barbara to stop, he cradled the bleed-
ing woman’s head in his lap, thus getting blood on his
trousers. “I wish I could get my pants pressed!” he
_ Was supposed to have said fussily as they fled the
house.
; But meanwhile, Barbara had gone to fetch a pillow-
ging of 1 /—falnal te s abl
DATE CRIME mel, %, (753
Z
Ss
y
.
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- CAPIYAL PUNISIMEN'T DATA SHEE’
STATE
OFFENDER
NAME:
RACE;
SEX:
OFFENSE:
DATE EXECUTED:
COUNTY: |
AGE:
VICTIM
NAME: | mes
RACE: yy
SEX:
AGE: 62
epdpeheute
TO CUEENDER
BACKGROUND
TEETERS-ZIBULKA INVENTORY DATA
pale l
BARBARA
W
Pee,
MUR deR
GC LAMAM
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L.A.
“bi har
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INVENTORY #
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INFORMATION: apt Atty pea 6e7 To leah In a ber g hf bencat Loe
COMMITTED:
DATE SENTENCED:
DAYS ‘BETWEEN CRIME AND SENTENCING:
DAYS BETWEEN CRIME AND EXECUTION:
COUNTY ‘SIZE:
DAY OF THE WEEK EXECUTED;
OFFENDER RESIDENCY:
MEDIA ACCOUNT OF CRIME:
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FRIDAY
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72 The California Crime Book
were at a house party all night when the burglary oc-
curred. Did they have a witness who attended the
party? Sure—they had Barbara. She was there with
another girl who would also back them up.
But the other girl didn’t show in their behalf, and
the two hoodlums enlisted Barbara alone. They had
met her when for a spell she ran a call house as a
favor for a girl friend who had become ill and had to
relinquish the operation until she recovered. Monroe
and Sittler were out on bail and looking for a patsy.
Barbara agreed to be their alibi.
So Barbara testified that she was present with
Monroe and Sittler at the party on the night of the
crime, after which she returned to her room at a cer-
tain San Francisco hotel. But while she had indeed
lived at the hotel off and on, she was in Chicago on
the night in question—February 4. Hotel records and
hotel employees caught her in the lie. For this piece
of perjury in the name of casual friendship for two
unworthy hoods, Barbara was sentenced to 1 year in
the county jail and five years’ probation.
Set free again, she seemed determined to dig in
somewhere and shape up her life. In April, 1948, she
left for Tonopah, Nevada, where she had friends un-
like the lowgrades who had helped wreck her life in
San Francisco. “It is a very small town and everyone
knows everyone else,” she wrote to her probation offi-
cer. “I am going to continue my schooling and will
have a job in a couple of days. I am sure I can get a
better start here, as I will be away from everyone I
know and I won't be running into people on the street
and what not.”
But she was unable to stick with her plan to go
back to school for very long. Instead, from April to
August she took jobs with restaurants in Tonopah and
Goldfield. In the middle of August she again set out
The California Crime Book 73
for Chicago. She had, perhaps in fear of a refusal,
neglected to notify her probation officer until, driving
with another girl, she was underway. However, when
she stated that she was “assured of a waitress job
when I arrive,” permission was granted.
It wasn’t long before Barbara was back in Nevada.
From Tonopah she had written: “Things were getting
awfully rough in Chicago for me and the temptation
of easy money was getting pretty hard to resist, so I
came back here.” Then Barbara went to work as a
nurses’ aid in the Nye County Hospital at Tonopah. “I
just love my job and I always have my nose in some
medical book,” she wrote.
Then in January another letter announced: “I have
met an awfully nice fellow and if everything goes
right I may marry him in a couple of months. .. .”
The nice fellow was a shirt salesman. She married
him in less than two months, on February 9. A judge
performed the ceremony, and the chief of police was
the witness. Barbara wrote her mother of the mar-
_ Hage and declared that she was very happy. In July
Barbara reported that she was pregnant and that she
and her husband were leaving for L. A., their address
was to be the home of her husband’s family.
When her probation officer wrote for an explana-
tion of the move, the letter bounced back unclaimed.
But all at once Barbara was back in Tonopah to re-
port: “My husband has gone on another selling trip
but I’ve decided to stay here.” She now said nothing
about the pregnancy,
Apparently the marriage began to fall apart early in
1950. Barbara’s letters were infrequent and vague.
Then in June there was word from her in Seattle
where she claimed to be visiting her first son who had
. : been left in the care of her ex-mother-in-law. But a
78 The California Crime Book
change through the flimsy walls—and it was March 9,
But hospital records proved that the woman was con-
fined for treatment on that date.
A policewoman was planted in Barbara’s cell. Her
name was Parker but she called herself “Shirley
Olsen.” Barbara talked to this bogus friend and cell
mate, but not enough to help the prosecution with a
conviction.
A bonafide prisoner was then enlisted. She was
serving time on a manslaughter conviction—the result
of an automobile accident in which there was a fatali-
ty. She was promised instant freedom if she could get
Barbara to spill the true picture of her involvement in
the Monohan killing. - a
The twenty-two-year-old prisoner did get close to
Barbara—perhaps too close. Normally man-hungry,
Barbara developed a strange attachment for the girl.
She got in the habit of “passing kites” to her. One of
these amorous notes read:
“Hi, Baby. Your note was so sweet, honey, but I
want you to be very sure of your feelings or I
wouldn't want to start something we couldn't finish.
You are a very lovely and desirable woman, honey,
and I want you very much.”
After the girl had won Barbara’s trust, she suggest-
ed a witness who could be paid to furnish Barbara
with an alibi. Barbara offered to put up the money for
this perjury and a meeting was arranged. An under-
cover member of the police force, “a walking wire re-
corder,” came to visit Barbara in jail. He recorded her
promise to pay him twenty-five thousand dollars to
swear that they had spent the night of March 9 to-
gether in a motel in Encino.
The testimony won the girl convicted of man-
slaughter her freedom and did much to buttress the
case against Barbara.
fender, Al Matthe
who denied the moti
exit from this worl
Kins and Santo.
Al Matthews won several stays for Barbara, but
when these ran out, the date was set for June 3, 1955.
Barbara was to be executed in the morning, Perkins
and Santo, seated side-by-side, would be executed in
the afternoon.
To the end, Barbara insist
She was forced to endur
ute reprieves, almost
chamber. Throughout s
courage. She did accept a
have to look at people,”
lethal fumes rose about
quietly expired.
To this day, few people believe that Barbara Gra-
was completely innocent of any involvement in
the killing of Mabel Monohan. But to what extent was
she guilty? Did she Personally club Mrs. Monohan to
death in a beating so Savage it seems unlikely that she
had the physical strength? Capable or not physically,
there is little indication that she had the inclination,
the mental imbalance for such a brutal killing.
Had she turned state’s evidence, she might have
~. Zone free, Regardless, had she not been fingered
the actual killer of Mrs, Monoh . le
an, it is improbable
that she would have been sentenced to die. P
Aries
fa
t)
4
‘
Authorities make grim discovery in wooded glen. Bodies of merchant and four children have been crammed in car trunk.
First clue which led police on track of massacre monster and gang was provided by Bernadine Pearney, above, right.
Miss Pearney’s boasting of her boy friend’s free-spending week end in Reno turned up blood money stolen from victim.
Above, left, Mrs. Cristal Young keeps vigil over daughter, Sondra,
table, background, L to r., gang ‘chief, killer pal and murderess, Girl was tricked into making confession, taped
on wire recorder, foreground. Below, left, deputy holds iron pipe used to kill grocer and three children. Right,
informer Baxter Shorter and his lovely wife, Olivia, who saw him kidnaped by gangster. He has never been found.
beaten by mass murderers. Right, seated at counsel
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GRAHAM, PERKINS and SAN®OS
Tl
Harriet Henson, lynx-eyed mistress of | ‘ i i
cilats Novt Gin Be maoation 4 aide i Nee gang Barbara Graham, left, shown with deputies, await8 death
in gas.chamber for. pistol-whipping murder of rich widow.
®
Hands manacled behind
them, massacre fiend, center,
and sidekick, left, squirm as
gun moll, Barbara, peeks
out to watch their discomfort.
TRUE POLICE,
Octeber, 1954
“
| Jadies anc
must be dest1
words of the
seven men an
jury box. Fac
stillness of th:
the jury, find
degree !”
Only the w
sagged sudde:
head upon her
she recovered
pressionless e
The tall, bes
lover took the
also his almo:
face and over
This latest
as the two m:
been sentence
show of emoti
they turned u
them.
Thus, at 9:
victory was cl
game which h
now over. Wi
in the horrib
Mob” was wr
had gone dow
Kindly Guard
victims of mi:
8, await’ death
of rich widow.
*
acled behind
‘e fiend, center,
left, squirm as
‘arbara, peeks
1eir discomfort,
untae amar
FR Sed EP a
tm,
ce
hadi, and gentlemen of the jury, the three defendants
must be destroyed like mad dogs!” With these. Stirring
words of the prosecutor still ringing in their ears, the
seven men and five women filed back to their places in the
jury box. Facing the judge, his voice rising above the hot
stillness of the courtroom, the foreman announced: “We,
the jury, find the defendants guilty of murder in the first
degree !”
Only the woman prisoner betrayed her emotion. She
sagged suddenly in her chair, then slumped forward, her
head upon her hands. But it was momentary. Seconds later
she recovered her composure and sat erect, with cold ex-
pressionless eyes.
The tall, bespectacled man who ‘for six years had been her
lover took the verdict without flickering an eyelid, as did
also his almost comical-looking sidekick with the pinched
face and oversized ears,
This latest pronouncement of doom was academic as far
as the two male killers were concerned. They already had
been sentenced to die for previous murders.- Their only
show of emotion was expressed in the hate-filled eyes which
they turned upon the woman accomplice who had betrayed
them.
Thus, at 9:55 on the pleasant morning of May 7, 1954, a
victory was chalked up for the State of California in a grim
game which had been played for almost two years and was
now over. With the conviction of this trio the last chapter
in the horrible story of the intuman “Mountain Murder
Mob” was written. Yet, though the operations of the killers
had gone down as the most shocking in the history of Cali-
Kindly Guard Young and daughters Judy, Sondra and Jean,
victims of massacre, Sondra, center, luckily survived.
CALIFORNIA'S MOST SHOCKING TORTURE MOB!
|
ew
$
A | eae
Battered body of Mabel Monahan, her hands lashed behind
her, in closet of her robbed home. Lt. R. Coveney, left.
GIRL KILLERS
BY WILLIAM P. WALSH
25
Neighbors in sorrow, Mrs. Christal Young, with her back to the
camera, and Mrs. Rosemary Saile, mother of the fourth victim
bruised and broken, Obviously he had ten
he state highway, he made his run to
he hospital, as fast as his car could go.
Somehow, in some miraculous man-
ier, little Sondra Gay was still living.
\ spark of life had survived in her tiny
ody. And this was the first duty of
hese officers—to nurse that spark of
fe and preserve it and fan it and to
eep the little girl alive. Should she
urvive, she might be a witness, yes——
ut Officer Cooley didn’t think of that.
fe thought only of the little girl and
f the life that was his to save—if only
e could go fast enough.
He rushed her to the weather-beaten
‘ame hospital in Westwood, the only
ne for miles around, and he helped
actors and nurses carry her in and he
aited, his fingers crossed and a prayer
1 his lips, for whatever word the
xctors might bring. .
Back ‘in the forest, the rest were not
aiting. Theirs now was the job of
nding who was responsible for this
‘human crime. :
The four others were dead beyond
1y doubt. This spot was in Plumas
yunty and Sheriff Schooler by radio
mmoned District Attorney Bertram
ines and the coroner and told his
fice to notify the CII, the California
ate Bureau of Criminal Identification
id Investigation in Sacramento.
These were routine steps. They had
‘0 definite leads already and they
ted on those, also.
Deputy Bates went scurrying into
estwood to get a more complete
scription of the mysterious black
tomobile with Arkansas plates that
d been seen following Young’s car.
‘:puty Gillespie hurried to Chester to
trn who owned the cabin the posse
d left not long before and if that
‘ner had rented it to the four youths
10 had fled from it so hastily, leav-
: behind them the bloody jeans—or
she owner or anyone else-might know
10 those youths could be.
‘Everybody else spread out,” Sheriff
hooler ordered. “See what you can
d—and don’t mess anything up!”
IEY spread out, while the two
sheriffs, without touching the bodies
iding arrival of the coroner, ex-
med them as closely as they could. .
Sach had been struck on the head. .
ssibly they had been wounded in
ne other way, possibly not; the
cers ‘couldn’t tell. Young was the
y one whose hands had been bound.
2 knees of his trousers were scraped
1 scuffed, the skin on his knuckles
put up a fight.
Gently and carefully they discovered
that the money was gone. Robbery?
Four persons slain, a fifth in critical
condition—for money?
Sheriff Schooler peeted at the cord
pulled tight into the slain man’s wrists,
almost cutting the skin.
“It’s sash cord,” he said. “Pretty
difficult to trace.”- '
This was mostly a civilian posse, re-
cruited from the neighbors and friends
and customers of Guard Young in
Chester and Westwood. The men
crowded around as Schooler and Sheriff af
Also a mother was Barbara
Graham, called "Bloody Babs"
Johnson made their examinations and
then moved off to search the under-
growth and the mesquite.
One of them lingered.
“About that sash cord,” he said, “I
dunno, but week before last I bought
some from him.” He indicated the
body. “From Guard hisself.” The man
turned his head and spat into the
weeds. “I dunno.”
“All. sash cord looks alike,” Sheriff
Johnson replied. “You can’t tell.’
They couldn’t, of course. But it was
‘a grisly thought. Had this cord come
from Young’s own store? Had he been
carrying it in his car for some reason?
Or was the killer a customer, perhaps
a friend or neighbor of his?
This was a theory Sheriff Schooler
had been studying.
“It’s likely somebody from around
here,” he said aloud. “Somebody the
kids might have recognized. That's why
they had to kill the children. And it’s
likely more than one man.” Then he
echoed Sheriff Johnson's words: “But
you can’t tell.”
The posse was spreading out in
widening circles, from the quiet,
abandoned car and from the logging
‘ road that led to the state highway. At
the mouth of that road the first find
was made,
There, in a pile of rubbish, Deputy
Sheriff Ed Spellmeyer of Plumas
County found first a red-smeared piece
of tissue paper unquestionably stained
with blood and then a strip of paper
tape from-an adding machine, also
dotted with red.
Figures on the tape totaled 4;128,
“It's likely from the bank,” Spell-
meyer said. “Leastways, that's close to
the amount of money they gave
Young.” :
“Then he was beaten, maybe killed,
right here,” Sheriff Johnson said, ‘‘and
not back where the car was aban-
doned.”
THEY clustered around the trash pile
and while they were probing it, a
siren sounded in the distance and grew
louder and then a sheriff's car swept
by them on Highway No. 36, without
slowing. Deputy Sheriff Gillespie was
at the wheel and beside him was a
young woman staring straight ahead,
her face wooden, her eyes red and
swollen, numbed and_ horrified -by
shock. Mrs. Guard Young, en route to
her daughter's side in the hospital.
Trying to tie seven killings to one gang, State Agent McCarthy,
Los Angeles’ DA S. Ernest Roll and Nevada County Sheriff Brown
23
They recognized her, most of the and 3:45 the previous afternoon and for a phone cal] from Albuquerque and Ry mid-morning, too, the first rep
men there, and they watched jn grim they had Seen 4 car parked beside the while they were wailing they did their had come in from the questioning
silence. What Could they say and what highway, best” with the information that had Guard Young’s friends,
. Could they do that would mean any-: “Tt way "way over on the wrong Side poured in from the aroused and eager “There's one fellow here in town wi
thing to her now? of the road,” Mrs. Maxine Wilson said. Public during the day. quarreled with oung awhile back.”
Doctor Robert Greenman of Chester “Why, I almost ran smack into it; it A taxi driver had told Sacramento deputy reported to District Attornc
he made a was parked in my lane with one of the Police that during the night two men Janes, “The wig th Bot kind of kx
oeken, a logger, came across the
item, not 100 yards from the car, TI fi ; Nn wearing wanted to use back roads, he said, isn't the kind of a man who'd kill thre
; ; had sur- The Proprietor of a general store in little kids.”
THs was an eighteen-inch-long Piece | rhunter, the little village of Ophir reported that “Let's get him in here and talk to
of rusty iron Pipe with an elbow on D: sheriffs he had sold an eighteen-inch length of him anyway,” Janes Said. “Who js
one end and with, Once more, suspi- Ns Suards pipe with an elbow on it to two stran- he?” |
cious brown Stains on it, Ster, where a gers Friday morning a few hours before “His name's Nugent, Michael Ny. |
“That could be the death weapon all . j been set the Slaying, ‘ gent. But I can't get him, Mister Janes,
right,” Doctor Greenman said. “They . Th rdly had An ex-convict who had a reputation He took off last night, nobody knows
were all beaten with a blunt instru- his office for brutality and who'd been arrested where,”
ment, maybe that pipe, maybe a tire th ushing up not long before for beating a man had “For Heaven's sake!” Janes roared,
iron. I don't think they were shot,” Schooler, n seen in Chester both before and “Go after him! Get his license Number
And on went the search, through the “ iff! “We got it— after the crimes, : and put it on the air! J] want to tak
Wilderness and eventually up and down Phone now!” to that man!”
FROM Westwood & woman had tele-
Phoned to state that she had seen a THE deputy scurried Out again and
two-toned Chevrolet car driving along Janes wrote down the little: infor.
Highway No, 36 approximately at the mation he‘d been given, In spite of his
time of the Slayings, Near. the logging exasperation, this too, probably. would
he knew
' depraved; desperate man could commit
-& Crime like this,
P in fae other hand, only someone who }
eared he might i i
EARL WARREN, then Governor ldren so. 1eoehized would ki
the nation,
As fast as telegraph wires and tele-
of California, now Chief Justice That fourth, Sondra Gay, still was in
the hospital but Doctor Greenman had
7 890d news of the investigation
ar
of the United States, speaking on ‘
“Her condition is improving rapidly,”
men in it. That was all anyone knew the Chester Massacre: "Words he told the Officers when they visiteq
about it, except that it apparently the hospital], “I can’t make any definite
Westwongted, Gu td Young out of cannot express the unspeakable Statement yet but she is Tesponding
€ countryside was aghast. From
Chester and Westwood More citizens
nature of this crime, Every citizen “Is she conscious tor?” Sheri
rushed to aid the m both ’ ' Schooler asked, —s ~—
Cities and from Others not far’ away +++ Should be on the alert to assist “Slightly, She recognized me this
came telephoned Stories of g “dark Morning ‘ang her mother, too, of
course,”
“When can we see her?”
The Doctor hesitated, “Possibly to.
in the apprehension of the mur-
to watch for it, derer or murderers" morrow or the next day, if she con.
In Sacramento Governor Earl War- : j tinues to r, Spond so readily However
ren, later to become Chief Justice of even then you can not expect much,
the United States, urged everyone to ‘ ‘ She is only three, u know, and the
join in the search for the Slayer and : Shock .of recalling this crime to her.
Offered a $1,000 reward for the arrest : Conscious mind may confuse her or
Of the killer or kKillers—the maximum “Picked it up on the highway not ten road, she Said, it’ had made a U-turn drive al] memory of it from. her,”
allowed under 4 state law Passed when minutes ago, heading east Hell-bent in front of her, “How can we approach her best,
Joaquin Murietta, the notorious out- for leather, Three hombres were in it Those were only A. few of the Stories Doctor?” Janes asked
law, was Plundering and Pillaging Calj- and they got more than two thousand that had come ch one had “With three or four gentle questions
fornia in the last century, in 8reenbacks Scattered al] over the to be followed UP. Sheriff Johnson leading up to the events. And it would
But in the little clearing in the car.” Personally telephoned the olice of the be better if the Derson who did ques.
Woods, Sheriff Schooler and Sheriff chief of inspectors jin San Francisco tion her should be Someone she knew
Johnson realized that the brunt of this Was this it? Sherifr Schooler stripped and asked that a Constant watch be set and trusted.”
t the receiver a little tighter, the up for the Arkansas automobile, and Who else but her mother? Sheriff
them and they organized the Search as_ palms of his hands wet with Perspira- he Put the information on the tele. Schooler and District Attorney Janes
St they could. tion, tt te)
n
the Westwood hospital Doctor ~* “Who are they?’ he asked, “What and Sacramento, The two-toned Chey- woman who had Seen her husband and
Greenman announced that the little kind of a Statement diq they give?” rolet also was mentioned on the tele- .two of her children wiped out so sud-
girl was Suffering from a basal skull “They gave Monickers that Sound type. As Soon as the length of pipe denly and horribly, w, uld she ask
(0)
fracture and shock but that She had a mighty Phony to me,” Flaska Teplied. was returned from the laboratory in Sondra a few gentle but leading ques-
chance to live. However, she Could not “And they haven't made any Statement Sacramento, Sheriff Schooler decided, tions? ;
questioned for Several days at the yet, except they Claim they won the he'd send a deputy with it to Ophir to “Certainly,” she_ replied. “Tll do
very best, if ever, and how much she - money in Las Vegas, gambling. But it See if it could be identified and if the whatever you wish,’”
would remember or be able to tell the won't take long to check Up on that,” men who’ burchased such a@ length With the help of the Doctor, they
detectives was problematical. It seemed like a fast and simple solu- of pipe could be traced. 4 deputy was framed five Questions they wanted Mrs,
tion to the case—too fast and too sim- assigned to the job of locating the ex- oung to put to Sondr; ese were
THAT left. for the Present, the Physi- ple. Sheriff Schooler trieq to keep his convict, learning his alibi, if any, for “Did you have a nice ride?”
cal clues and the Pope of new wit- enthusiasm under bounds, three or 3:30 p, mM. and verifying jt. “Did you have some ice oream?”
nesses, “You do that, will you?” he asked And then about midnight Sheriff “Where did you go?” ‘
A plumber had examined the length “And let me know. T'll be ready to get Flaska called back, : “Did someone hit you?”
Mt pipe. It Was standard, he said, down there just as Soon as you call “It’s a bum lead, Sheriff,” he told “Do you know who hit you?”
lalf an inch jn diameter, used, and it back. And thanks, Thanks a jot,” Schooler, “I'm sorry. These three And that would be all for the
robably had come from a hot-water He ‘hung up and he was suddenly Coyotes were sure enough spotted in a first day, Doctor Greenman Stated. If
leater, Technicians in Sacramento weary; he’d had only three hours’ Sleep Las Vegas joint at three o'clock Friday Sondra should answer those satisfac-
n
tains actually were human blood and sweaty and his face itched With its stub- money. It looks like they've been level- tion to them, she might be Questioned
> See if by some chance finger-prints _ ble of beard. This might be it. The case ing with me, I'm sorry,” even further the next day. .
light have been-left on it. might be over, Or it might be just “Okay, Sheriff,” Schooler replied, “We all want that killer captured,
Finger-print experts and chemists beginning, with many a long night of “Thanks anyway.” the Doctor state + “but under no con-
‘SO Were examining Guard Young’s au- work still ahead, He'd eer the men back their $2,000 ditions will 7 allow anyone to Put this
hi
Mobile, bolt by bolt. Experts were Quietly he told the others what he’g = Sent them on their way, Flaska fe ef feopen gain or well-being in
Said. ur 7
out the sash cord and to trace it if said, “We aren't 8oing to depend on And thus the first Promising lead had And with that Statement the officers
'ssible. Serologists made an exhaus- this lead alone, Tomorrow I want half dissolved. Each of the others they had, agreed wholeheartedly,
’e study of the jeans found in the a dozen men to question everybody Schooler knew, might dissolve just as
Stily abandoned cabin not far from Guard Young ever knew around here; readily, It was a horrible crime and EANWHILE, a few reports had come
e clearing, for all we can tell, a Personal motive it had to be solved—but they had a in from the laboratory, The jeans
Officers meanwhile did their best to might be behing this thing, long, long way to go, found in the isolated mountain cabin
ndle the tips that came in. “The rest of you either go back soon By mid-morning Officials in 25 of the had been stained with blood, all right,
Che first and most Promising was As it’s daylight and Search the woods 48 states had telephoned or teletyped but it was the blood of an animal,
m sisters-in-law, Mrs, Maxine and again or hang around here to rundown Sheriff Schooler with reports of a Probably a deer and not of a human,
Ss. Joanne Wilson of Westwood. They these tips.” Speeding car with an Arkansas license, The sash cord was of a common type,
orted by telephone to District At- So the men Scattered—a}]) except the or of known and wanted criminals who with nothing about it to distinguish it
ney Janes that they had been driy- two sheriffs and their deputies and Dis- might have been Capable of such a from other sash cord manufactured
home from Chester between 3:15 trict Attorney Janes, They were waiting heinous Slaying, * by the same firm and sold in a hundred
a ol y . €, a 2g ak
~ Ser To
$00 RG
ar bodies, when three of them are tiny, do not take up much room in a car trunk. This is Guard Young's auto as it was found, with Dr. Greenman, Sheriff Johnson
“hester Logging Ro
\
partment over Young’s grocery.
ad a precious cargo in his car.
e road between Chester and West-
winds. through hills and forests
1 elevation of almost 5,000 feet.
mes steep ravines plunge abruptly
from the road-bed on either side.
officially known as California
» Highway No. 36 and it has no
sections between the two towns
. than rough trails and unpaved
ng roads that lead off into no-
1a
iott drove slowly and carefully,
ng down each of these side trails.
1 they reached Westwood neither
or Mrs. Young had seen any sign
e missing grocer or his car.
‘stwood is larger than Chester,
3,618 population, and in a different
ty but Elliott and Mrs. Young had
fficulty finding the bank teller who
waited on Young.
e was okay when he went out,”
eller declared. “That was around
- o'clock. I gave him seven thou-
in twenties and about a hundred
and he left. I think I saw him go
the drug store across the street
the kids.”
‘d gone there indeed, the two
ed from the drug-store clerk.
2, he bought ice cream for the kids
‘hen he got into his car and drove
the clerk said. “I was watching
ise those strangers in the Arkansas
eft about the same time.”
‘angers with an out-of-state li-
cense. This was ominous news and
both Mrs. Young and Elliott were
trightened now. They went to the home
of Deputy Sheriff Arthur Bates, resi-
dent deputy in.Westwood, and told him.
“Maybe he went down one of those
logging trails and got stalled or lost,”
Bates drawled. “I wouldn't worry none
if I was you. We'll find him.”
But Bates, too, was speaking only
hopefully, because the large sum of
money Guard Young carried each Fri-
day was common knowledge, far too
common for his safety.
Bates telephoned Chester and spoke
to Plumas: -‘County Resident Deputy
Sheriff Robert Gillespie. No, Guard
Young had not returned yet.. Gillespie
promised to inaugurate a search from
his end.
‘ Bates next telephoned Susanville, the
county seat, 22 miles farther east, and
spoke to Sheriff Olin Johnson. Young,
for some unknown reason of his own,
might have turned east instead of back
to his home.
Young's car, Bates reported, was a
1951 Chrysler hard-top convertible,
pea-green in color, with California
license plates 2B9949. He was five feet
ten inches tall and wearing gray slacks
and a bluish green sports shirt, with
no jacket.
The girls, their mother revealed,
were all yellow-haired and blue-eyed.
Sondra, the youngest, had a green-
striped seersucker sun suit on; Judy
a white dress and Jean a blue skirt and
white blouse. Michael Saile, dark-
haired and with brown eyes, was .wear-
ing overalls and a cowboy suit.
“You'd better go on home now,”
Bates said to Mrs, Young when he'd
finished his phone calls. “And don’t
get upset; we'll find 'em for you.”
So Mrs. Young and Elliott drove
back to Chester and Mrs. Young’s re-
maining child, four-month-old Wayne.
| By Phil Johnson
Special Investigator for
OFFICIAL DETECTIVE STORIES
~ along.
It was a long and lonely and dark drive.
Meanwhile, both behind and in front
of her, the search was being organized.
Deputy Gillespie also had telephoned
his superior, and mild-mannered,
youthful Sheriff Melvin H. Schooler
drove up from Quincy, the Plumas
County seat, with Undersheriff William
Abernathy.
Gillespie woke up the town. From a
lumber company he borrowed four
radio-equipped trucks with special
treads, to prowl the pitted logging
roads. From taverns and stores and
homes he recruited help. Then, with
flashlights and lanterns, a posse set
out, to meet another posse organized
by Bates in Westwood.
[Rex didn’t meet that night although
they grew in size as word spread,
until more than 100 men were in the
woods, peering, shouting, looking every-
where. Three a. m. came before many
of the winding trails could be explored
and Sheriff Schooler called it off until
morning.
“Go home and get some sleep now,”
he told his men, “and be back at day-
break. We've got to find these people.”
At daybreak they were back, trucks,
men, even some dogs they'd brought
Sheriff Johnson showed up
from Susanville, State Highway Patrol-
man Jeff Cooley was.there, Sheriff
Schooler and Undersheriff Abernathy
and Deputies Bates and Gillespie. And
the townspeople, friends and neighbors
21
Atm Ny Ae wer pee 8 th Amt ewer ne inetes Boe ota
Se ee
+
¥ were good to me,"
ather and sisters, W
4 said of the men who clubbed her, killed
‘in the hospital is her mother, Christal
able, unthinkabl]
true. There they were in
men,
Stared and the
muttered to th
’ he cried. “Merci-
te)
cramped and t
they're Stran
e€ trousers care-
€ to the lab,” he
sure.”
and the search
d to his wife,
saw yesterday, ard him, wob-
to the broad-
He's spotted ‘el
Harriet Henson, th
was spurned, and
@ woman who
Sheriff Brown
8eS suggested,
eriff Schooler
€ an Ominous,
hey came upon
unters use, It,
e€y found a fire
‘ening discover
le cabin, such
‘mpty but in it th
its ashes still w
‘n’S jeans that
Sondra Gay, only three
t a minute!” Cooley cried.
! She’s—she's aliv,
ff Johnson and
lad dark, Suspi- 8 hurried up the
them.
he ran, hold-
‘eone apparent]
he jeans and
abin itself tha
n't like this,”
y b
lain and Stuffed
n't be! It abs
throttle down
Schooler declared
d
bouncing and
road, careen-
werving down
'S and brutal. To killa
nce, undisturbed One. four defense]
cogniz-
kK of his
the eldest
icate. The
Wwboy suit,
ry
the
y
dann
iM eee
12
BY ROBERT BENTON
ITH LONG EXPERIENCE as a detective, Lieutenant
Bob Coveney never had seen anything worse. Death
had come neither easily nor quickly to the gray-
haired widow whose body, hands trussed behind: her with
a strip of bedsheet, lay on the floor of the linen closet,
where the first two officers on the scene‘had found it.
“You know who she is,” Detective Ed Vandergrift said.
Lieutenant Coveney could not have recognized. the
bludgeoned features, but he knew. ‘“She’s Tutor Scherer’s
ex-mother-in-law, Mrs. Mabel Monohan. This used to be
Scherer’s house, before he went to Las Vegas. It went ‘to
Mrs. Monohan’s daughter:as part of the divorce settle-
ment,” he recalled. “Mrs. Monohan lived here’ alone.” |
Mabel Monohan was famous
beauty when young (circle),
had roller : skating act in
vaudeville with her husband
Like its mistress, the interior of the smart, seven-room
dwelling at 1718 Parkside Avenue in Burbank, California,
had been mauled into a bloody shambles.
Her body bore mute and hideous evidence of a merciless
pistol-whipping, with slow strangulation at last smothering
Mrs. Monohan’s agony in the oblivion of death. The walls
in the hall, living room, kitchen, den and the victim’s bed-
room were spattered with her blood. Everywhere the fur-
niture was overturned and broken. Pictures, ripped from
their hangings, lay smashed along the baseboards. Rugs,
jerked from beneath the toppled chairs and tables, were
heaped in the corners. ; ;
At one o’clock that Wednesday afternoon, March. 11th,
Lieutenant Rot
missed by gar
An elusive
a mysterio:
a taciturn b
1953, Mitchell
locked when he
for the 62-year
lyzed since an :
When he kn
it opened at hi
hearing no rep
the blood on t!
phone. A sho
home with det
the body in the
The medical
been dead abot
onehan was famous
when young (circle),
ss «6 skating act in
with her husband
smart, seven-room
Burbank, California,
bles.
dence of a merciless
n at last smothering
leath. The walls
UI
victim’s bed-
verywhere the fur-
tures, ripped from
baseboards. Rugs,
and tables, were
oon, March 11th,
ats cadl tee mee
pa Si a tal
Lieutenant Robert Coveney examines $10,000 jewelry
missed by gang. And (r.) ransacked drawers, clothes
An elusive $200,000,
a mysterious underworld kidnaping,
a taciturn blonde and murder
1953, Mitchell Truesdale had found the back fence gate
locked when he arrived to do his weekly gardening chores
for the 62-year-old widow, who had been partially para-
lyzed since an automobile accident several years before.
When he knocked at the front door to ask for the Key,
it opened at his touch. He called to Mrs. Monohan and,
hearing no reply, entered the hallway. The wreckage and
the blood on the walls sent him scurrying to a neighbor’s
phone. A short time later he returned to the Monohan
home with detectives who followed the trail of blood to
the body in the closet.
The medical examiner judged that Mrs. Monohan had
been dead about two days. From the table lamp still aglow
14
beside a leather club chair, a book face down on its left
arm, the detectives figured the murder for sometime Mon-
day night.
“Anything yet to indicate the motive?” Lieutenant Cov-
eney asked Detective Vandegrift.
“One item to make it fairly clear it wasn’t robbery.”
Vandegrift beckoned to an identification man, who came
over with a woman’s purse. The bag held $500 in cash
and half a dozen pieces of jewelry, including a brooch with
a two-carat diamond in its center.
“Between five and ten grand worth of ice there, Lieu-
tenant,’ Vandegrift said. “The purse was hanging on a
hook, right in plain view in the bedroom closet, and [ll
bet there wasn’t a print on it.”
The identification man nodded. ‘Nor anywhere else in
the place, except for part of a smudged, bloody palm-print.
All we turned up was a couple of heelmarks. Corrugated
rubber sole, with the trademark ‘Tred’.”
Coveney said, “The whole house sure looks as if some-
one was hunting mighty hard for something.”
Vandegrift agreed. “Every drawer searched. Even the
sheet music in the piano bench rifled. Pictures down and
rugs hauled aside, like somebody figured on finding a safe
in the walls or floors. Could it be just a blind to make us
think it was robbery?”
“I doubt that, Ed. A search was made for something.
Apparently Mrs. Monohan was led from room to room,
beaten and tortured when she would not, or could not, re-
veal what they were after.
“No one man could have done all this alone. It’s got all
the markings of a gang job. But what were the murderers
after, that $500 and a handful of good jewels would be
passed up? Some kind of document, perhaps. A will? An
incriminating paper of some sort? Mrs. Monohan’s former .
son-in-law might give us a lead.”
Much of the victim’s personal history was known to the
Burbank officers. In her youth, Mabel Monohan had been
a beauty, whose skill on roller skates had brought her
world’s championship honors and lucrative theatrical book-
(L. to r.) Attorney Cooney, Chief Andrews, John True
emery
ings.
had tour:
Their dz
A bea
she hac
as his a
Angeles
large h¢
wheret
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been
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The
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tidy ft
had bes
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He cou
daughté
at 2 0’
victin
be four
after
No «
day ni
ors of hideaway cache
Was Baxter Shorter murdered for talking to police?
ings. With her husband, the late George Monohan, she
had toured the Orpheum vaudeville circuit for many years.
Their daughter, Iris, had been born in an actor’s trunk.
A beauty herself, Iris, too, had followed the stage until
she had met and married Luther B. Scherer. The .Tutor,
as his associates called him, had been a kingpin in the Los
Angeles gaming setup for two decades before acquiring
large holdings in the legitimate houses of chance in Nevada,
whereupon he moved to Las Vegas.
Iris’ marriage to Schérer had ended in divorce in 1949.
She had received a settlement, reportedly $150,000, plus
the Burbank home in which she had installed her mother
amid rich, tasteful furnishings and with a green-eyed cat
and Ziggie, a black Labrador retriever, for company.
The daughter later had wed a wealthy oilman, to whom
she had returned in New York City only a week before
the murder, after a visit with her mother. Now, the tragic
news phoned to their Manhattan apartment, Iris and her
husband caught a plane to the West Coast.
Iris could imagine no reason for her mother’s death. ‘No
one held any grudge against her,’ the daughter was cer-
tain. “She had no fear of being alone.”
As for any possible connection between the crime and
the Nevada gambling pool, Iris was certain there could
be none, despite the fact that her mother had owned 1350
shares of stock in the Frontier Club in Las Vegas and that
several expensive automobiles, bearing Nevada plates, had
been seen parked near the Monohan residence in recent
weeks.
The crippled widow’s income from her stock in the gam-
bling house in Las Vegas amounted to only $800 a year. A
tidy fortune of $20,000 accredited to her in a bankbook
had been deposited by the daughter after the divorce.
Scherer was located at the famous Palm Springs resort.
He could give no helpful information about the crime. His
daughter, Lolly, had phoned Mrs. Monohan about a recipe
at 2 o’clock Monday afternoon. A neighbor had seen the
victim outside her home at around 3 o’clock. No one could
be found who had observed or talked with the widow there-
after. :
No one had noted any outcry or other disturbance Mon-
day night, but Mrs. Beatrice Horne, who lived next door,
¥ atten A ee
Detectives sought blonde gungirl as member of gang
had been awakened by Ziggie’s furious barking at 4 o’clock
Tuesday morning. Mrs. Horne peered out a window, saw
a light burning in the Monohan residence and, as the dog
quieted, went back to sleep.
The report on the savage murder recalled to the mem-
ories of detectives in Glendale, another suburb of Los An-
geles just east of Burbank, the unsolved slaying there in
1950 of 84-year-old Katie Kirk. Like Mrs. Monohan, Mrs.
Kirk had been left, bound and strangled, in her home.
Detective Captain W. E. Hagi of Glendale examined the
knots in the thin strips of bedsheet used to lash Mrs.
Monohan’s hands behind her. They were similar, he said,
to those in the Kirk murder. An alarm went out at once
for the principal suspect in the Glendale crime, a man who
had escaped prosecution in that case through an alibi of
70
I had a tooth extracted yesterday. Really,
I'm going to be the loveliest corpse! And
don’t forget—even if I have the right to
ask 12 guests to watch me sit in the cyanide
seat, I don’t want you, of all people, to be
one of them. I won’t ask anybody, except
my mother—who would really enjoy it. You
may be on the warden’'s list, but don’t, don’t
come, please, even if he asks you. If I have
to take it, I'll take it, but I wouldn’t want
a friend watching. Please.
I hear that you have been trying to use
influence with the big people at Sacramento
to get me the lie-detector test I’ve been
screaming for. Maybe that means that at
last you are coming around and beginning
to believe that maybe I’m innocent! Or
maybe you're just being objective again.
But I never killed that old lady, and she
was a Catholic and I'm a Catholic and I'd
be glad to meet her in Purgatory, any
time, and shake hands.
Barbara
P.S. I just read that District Attorney
Roll has tried to nix the idea of a lie-de-
tector test for me. Wonder why? Do you
suppose they're afraid to have it?
March 27th, 1954
Darling Stu:
Your letter came the other day. About
my own true-life story, I told you the truth
as I remember it—as much as I’ve told
anybody the truth. I have a wonderful way
of forgetting some things, only remember-
ing the good part. I just black out certain
parts. I guess everybody does that, but me
more than most.
They tell me that it’s a cloudy day and
that the wind is coming up outside, which
makes me restless. Don’t ever spend six
months in a room witkout a window, re-
member. You won’t have to, you're so damn
legit it hurts.
So you're doing a circus story, based on
your being a guest-clown? I can’t figure
you as a clown, somehow. And you're doing
a story on Death Valley Scotty, a bigger
liar even than me! But a wonderful old
guy.
Write when you can. Letters mean a lot.
Love to the kids.
Barbara
April 14th, 1954
Dear Stu:
We are having a good rain. I can’t see it
through the walls, but I can hear it. Wish
it would keep on for weeks. Sounds so good,
but sorta lonesome, too. Lonesome! That’s
it. You can be lonesome, even with two
guards and a matron watching you night
and day, 24 hours.
Hank wrote that he is maybe bringing
Tommy up here to see me Wednesday. I
hope and pray that this time he remembers
not to forget. But you know Hank!
Overlook this typing tonight. My nails
are very long and I kee hitting the wrong
keys. Am trying to figure out a way to trim
them, but I can’t have my manicure scis-
sors or a nail file. They’re forbidden too. I
guess I'll have to start biting my nails. So
she’s in a death cell and she’s worried about
fingernails! It’s true, in a place like this
everything gets out of focus and little
things become foolishly important—like fin-
gernails and who is going to witness my
execution.
Wish this was all over with, one way or
the other. The mills of the gods don’t have
to grind this slowly, do they? Well, I've run
off enough at the mouth. So I'll bring this
to an end. Hope all goes well with you.
Love,
Barbara
May 18th, 1954
Dearest Stu:
At long last. No, I haven't died on the
vine, at least I don’t think so. I received all
your letters, but I haven't been feeling well
lately, and have let my writing all go to
pot.
As you said when you were up here—I
didn’t believe you then—it’s true, from
what I hear, that there has been a reaction
and that they aren’t screaming for my blood
as they did last summer and fall. But, on
the other hand, what is the sense to living,
if that life has to be spent in prison? And
for something I didn't do, yet!
Once in a while I get the feeling that it
might be nice to have my sentence com-
muted, but the feeling never lasts long. Not
when I think of Tommy growing up with-
out me and not having his love. I don’t mind
telling you that when I think of him not
recognizing me as his mother, hence no
love from him, it tears the heart out of me.
He was up to see me last week and I try to
pretend to myself that he still remembers
me. How I love him!
Did you read the paper where it said I
might go back to Corona? Seems they only
have enough appropriation to pay for two
women guards here, and there’s no way in
"Oh, oh. Looks like you're going up the river.”
the world that I can see where two could
handle a 24-hour detail. I don’t think it is a
good idea, though.
As I told Al Matthews today, when he
was here to see me, at first I was tickled to
death about it, as it would mean I would be
closer to Tommy, but when I came to my
senses and thought the thing out, I can see
where it is wrong. There are too many
people to think of beside myself.
I am talking about the women at Corona.
You know darn well that if the authorities
are right and there is the possibility of an
attempt on my life from somebody out-
side, they’d be involved and there might
be more wounded or dead people along with
me when the hassle was over. I hate to
think that something like that might hap-
pen because of me. Any way one looks at
it, Corona is wrong.
And I've read that they think that I
might bust out, or be busted out, of a so-
called “easy” prison like Corona. Which is
a laugh. There's no place for me to go. My
face has been plastered over so many news-
paper pages that I’d be recognized in ten
minutes, anywhere. Besides, if I tried a
thing like that, it would be practically a
confession of guilt—just like taking a com-
mutation would be a sort of confession.
I told you when you were here that I
had nothing to confess, and that if I ever
had I'd tell it to you first. But I wish you'd
break down and forget your objective view-
point and say just once that you don’t be-
lieve that I killed Mrs. Monahan.
I suddenly find myself out of words, so
will bring this to an end, with the hope that
all is well with you and yours. Do write
when you have the time.
Sincerely,
Barbara
May 25th, 1954
Dear Stu:
Your letter arrived today, glad to hear
from you. I wonder if you're being humor-
ous in spots, or downright sarcastic? Guess
it doesn’t make much difference. I’m just
curious, You keep needling me about this
Baxter Shorter. Let me put you straight on
this—I don’t even know this fellow, let
alone his whereabouts or his grave. So if
you are looking for information, you had
better start looking somewhere else.
I can't tell things I don’t know, and I
don't know any more about him than I do
about the murder for which I have been
convicted. So your hopes of getting me to
break down and talk are in vain. I am sorry,
as I think you are truly trying to help me,
but unless somebody else comes up with
some information, I’m sunk and I know it.
I don’t like it, believe me, but that’s the way
it is.
I can’t say anything about Emmett and
Jack. It all sounds too horrible. The Nevada
City deal up North. I was never in on any-
thing with them up there and they never
talked to me about anything like that. I
wish that somehow I could have stood trial
alone, and not been linked with anybody
else. Maybe I'd have stood a better chance.
Anyway, I’m all alone now—more alone
than you can possibly think,
I hate the thought now of going back to
Corona, and pray it won’t happen. What a
place! I hate the thought of going back.
Don't think for one minute that this place
is more confining. It isn’t. Well, I'd better
not get started on that place, or my letter
will never reach you.
Sorry you have been bothered with those
unpleasant phone calls, warning you to lay
off my story. I always pray that nothing
happens to anyone involved in all this.
Wonder who the crackpots are? Some
people on the loose must be very misin-
formed, as far as I am concerned. Also
wonder what they think I know? Anyway,
I don’t talk and never will. There’s Tommy
to consider.
os
ery eee
Write when ¥o1
your family. Some
at your letters, bu
joy your so-
Dear Stu:
Received your’!
I always find some
ous. My lettersan
now. No typewri
write in longhand
a borrowed one, :
Needless to say, I
don't have to wor
anyway.
I have some be:
6-by-8 cell. Roses
Washingtons. Th
pretty—white, yel
had a black one :
just as it was oper
of the night. Whe
ing it was dead.
Been listening
ball game from t}
for my Dodgers!
game the other
Almost had me cl
I read in the p
people have form
half. one fron
Oakland, and th:
It brought }
race a little ul
truth only tends!
ing. Justice!
thoughts on
horrible. I
change my mind
I want you
everything y¢
me that you .
vestigator—whert
tor’s badge, bud’
lie-detector test
end is not forthe
that I don’t have
To repeat mys
does every
such a fou
truly kney
old capers or ur
shocked. I know
I've nothing to t¢
I haven't.
Well, my w
bring this to my
just isn’t any n
know what hap:
chess game. | en
Observer. All +
don't believe me
like to think tha:
me guilty at all-
stick your neck o
Dear Stu:
Your letter. As
it, though vou k
a lot in your
dying day—
that Jack a:
time Baxter 3!
never can e\ g
supposedly
drain. Wh t
didn't do that on:
I realize how
newspaperman,
thing, but I hone
I'm not trying to
I have only revs
here it is.
The news has
islature will no:
s could
tisa
.. he
ed to
ld be
») my
n see
p me,
with
ow it
e way
t and
evada
i any-
never
nat. I
{ trial
vbody
lance.
alone
?
ick to
e’hat a
» back.
place
getter
letter
“those
to lay
thing
this
Some
\-
Oo
y,
ommy
Write when you can. Give my love to
your family. Sometimes I get a little mad
at your letters, but at the same time I en-
joy your so-called caustic wit.
Sincerely,
Barbara
June 4th, 1954
Dear Stu:
Received your letter today, and as usual
I always find something in it that is humor-
ous. My letter-answering is quite a chore
now. No typewriter, and how I hate to
write in longhand. The machine I had was
a borrowed one and had to be returned.
Needless to say, I miss it. No hints. Well, I
don’t have to worry about my fingernails,
anyway.
I have some beautiful flowers here in my
6-by-8 cell. Roses, carnations, and Martha
Washingtons. The roses are especially
pretty—white, yellow, pink and red ones. I
had a black one a few weeks ago. I got it
just as it was opening, so I watched it most
of the night. When I woke the next morn-
ing it was dead.
Been listening on my little radio to the
ball game from the East. I am still pulling
for my Dodgers! They played a terrific
game the other day against the Phillies.
Almost had me climbing the walls!
I read in the paper that three groups of
people have formed committees in my be-
half, one from San Francisco, one from
Oakland, and the other from Los Angeles.
It brought back my faith in the human
race a little. But, believe me, after all, the
truth only tends to hurt one instead of help-
ing. Justice! I would hate to give you my
thoughts on that subject. They would be
horrible. I only hope something happens to
change my mind.
I want you to know that I appreciate
everything you are doing for me. Al tells
me that you have gone out as a private in-
vestigator—where'’s your Chicken Inspec-
tor’s badge, bud?—and tried to get me a
lie-detector test. If the cooperation at this
end is not forthcoming, believe me, it’s just
that I don’t have the information you seek.
To repeat myself—I want to know—why
does everybody seem to think that I am
such a fountain of information? If people
truly knew how little I know about any
old capers or unsolved crimes, they'd be
shocked. I know it sounds incredible that
I've nothing to tell that I haven’t told, but
I haven't.
Well, my wrist is becoming limp, so will
bring this to my usual abrupt ending. There
just isn’t any news from this end. Let me
know what happens with the long-distance
chess game. I enjoy your letters, Objective
Observer. All you'll ever say is that you
don't believe me “guilty as charged,” but I
like to think that you don’t really believe
me guilty at all—only you can’t afford to
stick your neck out and say so.
As always,
Barbara
June 6th, 1954
Dear Stu:
Your letter. As usual, I am glad to have
it, though you kid me a lot and press me
a lot in your quiet way. I will swear to my
dying day—which may not be too far off—
that Jack and Emmett were with me at the
time Baxter Shorter or Shorter Baxter—I
never can even get the name straight—was
supposedly kidnaped and dumped down the
drain. Whatever they may have done, they
didn't do that one.
I realize how much, as a writer and
newspaperman, you want to break that
thing, but I honestly can’t help you there.
I'm not trying to defend Jack and Emmett,
I have only myself to think of now. But
here it is.
The news has just come. The State Leg-
islature will not appropriate extra funds
New Vitalis with V-7 makes even
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V-7, the greaseless grooming discovery
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And, Vitalis gives you wonderful protec-
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i
aie
ah NS
for four matrons to guard me, so I have to
go back to Corona while we sweat out the
appeals and all that stuff. They have dif-
ferent rules there, and probably you won’t
be permitted to come and see me or even
to write to me. Anyway, I’ll send messages
to you through Al, or through the relatives
that are permitted. I probably won't be al-
lowed to write to you-at least, not for a
long time. Go and see Tommy and give him
a hug for me.
Love.
Barbara
March Ist, 1955
Dear Stu:
I guess this is maybe the last letter I will
ever be able to write to you, but I want
to say how much I appreciate all your ef-
forts in my behalf, and how much I wish
that you really would say once out loud that
you believe in my innocence.
I wasn’t there! I didn’t kill poor old Mrs.
Monahan and I don't even know who did.
But the prospects are not good, and get-
ting worse by the minute. I don’t know how
much longer Al Matthews can put up the
dough for the cost of appeals and things—
and they can only appeal on minor tech-
nicalities, anyway. Legal twists, that’s all.
Meanwhile life goes on, but sluggish. I
play my records over and over, I eat some-
times, without tasting anything, and I sleep
and doze and sleep again. But at night I
mostly don’t sleep. This is a period in which
I guess I’m supposed to reviey,my whole
life, like a drowning man is supposed to do.
But I’m just too tired and too bored.
I don’t eat enough and I don’t exercise.
I am just a clam that crawls back into its
shell and stagnates. Just waiting. But I still
want to go free, or get the business. I can-
not look forward to most of my lifetime be-
hind bars. You yourself say you get itchy
and nervous when you are in a prison for a
few hours, even though you know you can
get out any minute. How do you think I
feel? As if you didn’t know!
I’m beat, kid. I don’t care what they do
only I want it over with. You asked me
once if I could remember anybody, I mean
any law officer, or matron, or stuff like
that, who had ever in my long career taken
time out to try to make friends with me
and help me change directions. Not once
Really not one time. Nobody ever gave a
damn, except the Good Sisters, years ago,
and I should have stayed with them—and
of course Hank, and some of the boys on
the unlegit side of the fence, who were al-
ways quick with a $20 when a girl need-
ed it.
But I’m so alone. Nobody is so alone as 1
am. This goes on and on and never stops.
Jack Hardy and Al Matthews and Bill
Strong have done their best and I guess
they are still doing it, without a thin dime
of pay. But, in the appeal to the Supreme
Court, what have they got to say except the
minor stuff about the prejudice of the press
and all that? I’m not kidding myself—I'’m
not going to get a new trial.
And I don’t think I could live through it,
even if I got one.
Sharon and some others of my family
come to see me quite regularly. Hank comes
sometimes. They will tell you hello from
me. I wish I could see you, and keep on
getting your letters, even if you kid me
sometimes.
I’m sorry to hear that your cocker got
run over, but you still have your cats and
your children and your home. Go and see
Mom and Tommy sometime, and give him
a big hug for me. I wish I could see him
grow up. But I won't, so what’s the use of
wishing—of thinking. The best to you, al-
ways.
Love,
Barbara
oo4¢
71
a@
92
bin Rie game
as
This column is for the expression of
the reader’s viewpoint and we find that
our readers have many definite and
varied ideas. Our mail often contains
suggestions, requests, praise and con-
demnation. We will print as many of
these letters as we have space for each
month. Don’t hesitate to write in and
let us know what’s on your mind.
THE CASE OF BARBARA GRAHAM
“I’ve just finished reading Barbara
Graham’s Death Cell Letters in the May
issue of TRUE DETECTIVE. I feel sorry for
her and do not believe that she is guilty.
Why won’t they give her a lie detector
test? What are they afraid of?
“T realize that she had a police record.
Does that make her a murderess? I just
returned from Korea after serving my
second tour of duty. I am the father of
two small children. I know that if this
was my wife, I would try to trace down
every lead that I could to prove her in-
nocence. But Barbara doesn’t have any-
body—a helpless, infant child, an ap-
parently disinterested husband, and a
mother who hasn’t seen fit to come near
her. Sometimes the law can be as wrong
as any criminal, and as blind as a bat.
I hope someone will help this woman to
get a new start in life.”
Joseph Knickerbocker
Sergeant, U. S. Army
“Your story on Barbara Graham really
had my blood boiling. I believe that she
is innocent. If this can happen to a girl
in this country, then who is safe from a
vengeful law? If she dies, it will be the
worst disgrace in California history. She
fell into bad company and made mis-
takes, but this does not give us the right
to take her life. This is America! Not
Communist Russia!”
James Aldrich
Nashua, New Hampshire
“T have read Barbara Graham’s letters
and I honestly don’t think that she is
guilty of murder. I think it would be
only fair to give her the lie detector test
that she requests. If she knows that she
is really guilty, would she ask for it? I~
am sure that Stuart Palmer agrees with
me, as must a lot of other people.
“I don’t think that a girl like Barbara
could pistol whip an old lady. Sure,
there may be a little bad in her. But isn’t
there in all of us? I also think that rhay-
be Barbara knows more than she is
telling. Is she protecting someone?
THE READER‘'S
yy
Somebody close to her? Somebody close
enough for her to be willing to give her
own life to save? Why not give her
the lie test and find out? She is not
afraid to take it. Why is the prosecu-
tion afraid to give it to her?”
Don Westura
Boonton, New Jersey
“T just read Barbara Graham’s letters
and I keep wondering why she is so anx-
ious to take a lie test. She admits her-
self that ‘anybody can lie and I can lie
more than most, and I have.’ Does she
think she is clever enough to out-lie the
polygraph? Does she want to fool the
experts as well as a highly sensitive
Barbara Graham
machine? Of course, she has nothing
to lose by trying. She probably figures
that they can’t do more than take her
life, anyway. :
“Besides, I can’t believe that the police
have been refusing her the test all
along. Like any other suspect in a cap-
ital crime, she must’ have been asked
to take it. Did she maybe turn it
down ‘on advice of counsel’ when she
thought she still had a chance to talk
herself out of the rap? I may be wrong
but I have the feeling that her request
at this particular time is not sincere. °
VERY
LVIEWPOINT
“What is the latest decision in her
case? And thanks for a most fascinating
feature. It was really outstanding.”
Alfred H. Weston
Jefferson City, Missouri
“How can a young woman like Barbara
Graham sit there and feel sorry for
herself? Now she worries about little
Tommy! And what about her other
children? Maybe this is the first time
in her life that she has taken stock of
herself, and it’s about time, too! All of
a sudden, now that she is cornered, she
would like to be a mother and do the
right thing.
thought came to her just a little late,”
Ruth Alwitz
Houston, Texas
Ep.: The authorities say that the defend-
ants were offered lie detector tests, but
refused to take them. Barbara herself ad-
mits having refused it when originally
given the opportunity to submit to one.
The United States Supreme Court has
denied Barbara Graham, Jack Santo
and Emmett Perkins a new hearing on
an appeal. At the request of District At-
torney Adolph Alexander, Superior
Judge Charles W. Fricke has set the
new date for their execution in the San
Quentin gas chamber as June 3rd, 1955.
READER'S VERDICT |
In the July, 1955, issue of True |
Detective I liked these features best: |
I prefer outstanding current cases ....
I prefer great cases of the past ......
Ih
ave read TD for .......... months |
Lecce eens years |
|
Name ......... 0.00. c cece cece eee eeee |
|
AGGveSs 2.0... eee cece cece eececes
|
| ace eee en |
| : |
| Age Occupation ................. |
Fil leases bape hh Vie ir ys tc Su sce ‘
It seems to me that the’
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BARBARA GRAHAM'S
DEATH CELL LETTERS
(TD May, 1955)
The gas chamber at San Quentin was
the scene of the final act in a sordid and
brutal drama that began early in 1953
with an attempt to rob an elderly
widow in her Burbank, California, home.
On March 11th Mrs. Mabel Monohan,
62, was found beaten and strangled to
death. (“The Dead Actress and the
Diver,” TD October, 1953.) For the
crime Jack Santo, 54, Emmet Perkins, 47,
and Mrs. Barbara Graham, 30,. were
convicted and sentenced to die.
In her “Death Cell Letters” Barbara
Graham denied any knowledge of the
murder. But John True, another mem=+
ber of the gang, who won immunity by
giving evidence for the state, testified
that he had seen Barbara pistol whip
the elderly lady “and watched Santo
strangle the helpless widow after Per-
kins also had savagely beaten her with
a gun. This evidence was supported by
Baxter Shorter, a fourth member, who
was kidnaped from his home soon after-
ward and presumably slain.
Valiant and long-continued efforts by
her court-appointed attorney, Al Ma-
thews, to obtain clemency for Barbara
proved unavailing. Last minute appeals
to Governor Goodwin Knight and to the
State Supreme Court in Los Angeles re-
sulted in two brief stays of execution,
originally set for 10 a.m. When the
second postponement came Barbara was
about to be led from her cell next door
to the death chamber.
Barbara Graham
“Why do they torture me?” she cried.
“T was_ready to go!”
But the petitions were denied and at
11:34 a.m. Barbara was taken to the
gas chamber. Offered a black mask, she
said eagerly, “May I wear it? I don’t
want to have to look at people.”
Prison officials commented that Bar-
bara went to her death with dignity. And
the medical officer, who pronounced her
dead at 11:42, said, “She went easily.”
A short while later Santo and Per-
kins followed her to the lethal chamber.
; Rake Marlene McCarthy
pen A
_DEAD GIRL IN THE
LOCKED APARTMENT
(TD July, 1955)
Renee Marlene McCarthy, 18, was
staying alone in their Helena, Montana,
apartment while her mother was recu-
perating in the hospital after an ill-
ness. Renee, a senior in high school,
worked for the telephone company after
school. When she did not report for
work on March 8th, 1955, her’ aunt, a
phone company employee, went to the
apartment. The door was locked and
there was no answer to her knock. When
the superintendent of the building let
her in, they found the young girl dead
on her bed. She had been strangled.
John Presley Clair, 28, night clerk at
a local hotel and friend of the family,
had been given a key to the apartment
by Renee’s mother, in order to deliver
some groceries for her. Questioned, he
denied having been in the apartment.
But on viewing the slain girl’s body in a
Report of latest legal developments
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funeral parlor, he broke down and ad-
mitted having persuaded Renee to let
him in. When she resisted his advances,
he had strangled her.
On June 8rd Clair was found guilty
and sentenced to life imprisonment.
HE WAS AFRAID OF GIRLS
(TD April, 1955)
Between the hours of 7 and 11 o’clock
on Thursday night, December 16th, 1954,
four persons called at the home of Ken-
neth Force, a gabled frame house in
Clifton, New Jersey. One of them was
a murderer. When Mr. Force, a popular
Clifton restaurateur, returned home at
11 P.m., he found his wife, Almira, 59,
dead in their living room. She had been
beaten about the head and stabbed seven
times in the face, throat and body.
Three of the callers on that fateful
night obviously had no connection with
the crime. The fourth was John Heber-
ling, 19, a neighbor who had been a fre-
quent visitor at the Force home. He had
been questioned, as had other neighbors,
and had given a straightforward account
of his movements on the night of the
murder. But a careful checking re-
vealed certain discrepancies in his state-
ments.
On the day of Mrs. Force’s funeral the
youth was asked to take a lie detector
test. He agreed, but interrupted the
proceedings to confess the crime. He had
stopped in to see his old friend, young
Heberling said, and Mrs. Force had
offered him cookies and ginger ale. Sud-
denly he had kissed her. Then, afraid
that she would tell her husband, he had
slain her. He had, he revealed, always
been afraid of girls.
His trial on the charge of slaying
Mrs. Force began on Monday, April 25th,
1955. At the end of that day’s session
Passaic County Prosecutor Bernard L.
Stafford suffered a heart attack and died
the following day.
Superior Court Judge Robert H.
Davidson declared a mistrial, but said |
that a new trial for Heberling would be-
gin before the summer recess of the
court.
THE PRINCESS WAS A THIEF
(TD May, 1954)
Among European bluebloods, diplo-
mats, royalty and ex-kings, Mimi was
considered a great lady. Actually she
was a top-flight Raffles. Art objects,
jewels, and other valuables had a way of
vanishing from palatial homes where
she was a guest. Formerly Princess
Maria Nunciante di Mignano, Mimi now
is the \
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ndy of a white man with dark hair
ho was about the same reneral size
id weight as Shorter.”
Another week went by without re-
ts.
In El Monte, near Los Angeles, a man
imed Oberholtz went into the Tem-
e City sheriff’s substation and re-
ted to Sergeant L. R. Shoemaker
iat tenants he had rented a house to
id mysteriously disappeared,
The couple, who had given him the
ume of Mr. and Mrs. D. Johnson, had
nted a small house he owned in Sep-
mber, paid their rent through March
id then vanished.
“They seemed like nice people and
m afraid something might have-hap-
ned to them,” Oberholtz reported.
Shoemaker, Lieutenant Don Jones
id Detective Edward Kortan made a
arch of the house. They found an
ivelope with Barbara Graham’s name
n it.
Oberholtz was shown pictures of
arbara Graham and Emmett Perkins.
‘e immediately identified them as the
vo who had rented the house.
Los Angeles and Burbank police were
itally interested in the house. They
‘ent over it carefully, searching for
loodstains. They covered the back lot,
he space under the house and the sur-
yunding area for any evidence of a
reshly dug grave that might contain
he body of Baxter Shorter. Every inch
f the house was dusted for finger-
rints. :
HE search produced a small printing
press which police surmised might
‘ave been used to print bogus checks.
‘hey also found a rubber mask and a
hauffeur’s cap, similar to the type
vorn by the bandits who took $1,500,000
rom the Brink's company in Boston.
The Boston authorities and the Fed-
ral Bureau of Investigation were noti-
ied. But as far as the local police were
oncerned, all the house produced was
he fact that Barbara Graham and Em-
nett Perkins apparently had _ lived
here until the time of the death of
Mrs. Monohan’ and then had disap-
reared.
However, in view of the printing
oress, the police decided to watch re-
vorts of bogus checks and check
vassers.
Late in April, the local police in Lyn-
vood received a flood of complaints
rom merchants that a woman was
vassing bad checks. The description of
he check passer was sent on to Bur-
yank. She might be Barbara Graham,
Shief Andrews decided.
Los Angeles police were notified and
thief Thad Brown and Homicide Chief
tobert Lohrman sent Policewoman
Kay Sheldon to Lynwood.
On May 4, Policewoman Sheldon
spotted Barbara Graham in a store.
She followed Barbara. It was a diffi-
‘ult job, for the Graham gir] obviously
was trying to cover any trail. She went
into a dentist’s office and slipped out
f a side door, she walked through a
jrug store, took a bus and then a cab.
But Policewoman Sheldon was equal
.o the job. Barbara Graham led her to
in old building on the outskirts of town
which had been converted into an
apartment.
Sixteen police officers moved in.
Santo was found asleep in bed, Per-
But Only Two
“He was married and I think he had
some children. But he hadn't been
here in Houston very long—he came
from somewhere in Alabama, I think.”
“Do you have his address?”
“Not here, but I do at the station.
We can go down there and I'll look it
up.”
The two officers rose and Warfield
said, “We're pretty sure from the iden-
tification of the uniform that it is
Thomvson. But we need a more posi-
tive identification. What did Thomp-
son look like?”
52
kins and Barbara Graham in the
kitchen.
The three were taken to Headquar-
ters in Los Angeles where they denied
knowing anything about the kidnaping
of Shorter and once again repeated
that they, were innocent of any con-
nection with the death of Mrs. Mono-
han.
Perkins was placed in a line-up with
eleven other men of similar height and
weight. Mrs. Shorter viewed them and,
Chief Brown claimed, immediately
pointed out Perkins, crying: ‘‘That’s
the man. I said I’d know him anyplace
and he’s the man who took Baxter.’”:
She was unable to identify Santo or
Barbara Graham as the persons she
had seen in the car.
On May 9 Perkins was arraigned in
municipal court on a charge of kidnap-
ing, and Barbara Graham on seven
counts of passing worthless checks.
Santo was held the legal 48 hours for
questioning. -No charges could be
placed against him since he had not
been identified by Mrs. Shorter. He
was released and immediately re-ar-
rested by the Burbank police in the
Monohan case.
All this time, of course, police had
been looking for the Oldsmobile
Santo was known to have borrowed.
The car was finally located in Lynwood.
Its top had been repainted so that it
no longer was two-tone and it bore
Washington license plates. However, its
motor and serial numbers identified it
beyond question.
The car was turned over to the crime
laboratory to be searched for possible
bloodstains or finger-prints.
As: the legal time ran out for holding
Santo in Burbank, ‘Chief Andrews con-
ferred with District Attorney, S. Ernest
Roll of Los Angeles County.
“We have Shorter’s confession,” An-
drews said. ‘‘Can I file a charge against
Santo on the strength of that?”
“We can’t use Shorter’s confession
without Shorter.”
“You mean we'll
Santo?”
“Unless you can find Shorter or get
further evidence.”
Andrews then -called in two of his
best men. “I’m going to have to let
Santo go, but I want you two to live
in his back pocket. Somehow, with or
without Shorter, I’m going to clear up
this thing. If I get any evidence, I want
to know where Santo is. You two tail
him, and if you lose him don’t bother
coming back.”
Santo was released. As he swaggered
from the Burbank jail, he gave an ex-
clusive interview to a newsraper re-
porter, saying:
“T’ve got a police record and I admit
it. But the things they are doing to me
ain't fair.
“I can tell you why Shorter implicated
all of us in this Monohan case. I was
living in El Monte with Perkins and
Barbara ... You see, I was looking for
more money to complete a ten-million-
dollar guano deal and I needed more
dough. Shorter tried to cut himself in
with Perkins, Barbara Graham, True
and me, but he didn’t have any dough
to put up.
“Shorter may have pulled the Mono-
han deal, but none of us were in on it.
And we didn’t kidnap him either.”
Chief Andrews read the interview
have to release
carefully and commented to Coveney:
“If he keeps on talking, maybe he will
put his neck in a noose.”
“I think he has already,”
said.
“What do you mean?”
“You notice that he mentions he,
Perkins, True and the Graham girl were
working together. That leaves Shorter
and Verble on the outside.”
“Yeah, but what difference does that
make?#
“I've been thinking about the kid-
nsaping of Shorter. We picked up True
and right away they grabbed Shorter.
Coveney
’ How did they know Shorter was the one
who talked and not Verble?”
“How?”
“J don’t know,” Coveney admitted,
“but I’d like to guess. Verble was
scared after we picked him up. He was
afraid of us and he was afraid of Santo
and Perkins, too. He may have blown
right out of the country. They knew
he had gone, so that left only Shorter
who could have talked.”
“You’ve got a point there,’ Andrews
declared. ‘‘And if we can find Verble
maybe he will be afraid enough to talk.
He knows they’ve got Shorter and
they'll get him. Shorter told us that
Verble knew about the plans but was not
in on the actual robbery. Maybe we can
use him as a witness.”
“If we can find him,” Coveney said.
N THE meantime, the Los Angeles
police were trying to find Shorter.
The lab crew brought back a thorough
report on the car. No finger-prints or
bloodstains could be found, but the mat
in the trunk had been removed. It was
practically a new car, so unless it bore
stains of some kind on it, the mat would
not have been taken out.
On May 26 one of the detectives An-
drews had put on the trail of Santo
called in long distance from.San Diego.
“Santo just sent a wire to Los An-
geles,” he reported. ‘We couldn’t get
who it was to or what was in it, but
you can have it traced there.”
“We'll follow up on it,” Andrews
promised. “And don’t leave that boy
out of your sight.”
In Los Angeles, the telegram was
traced. It had been sent to Mrs, Mary
Shorter, Baxter Shorter’s mother, and
read: “Sorry to have been away. See
Olive and tell her not to make the mis-
take because I have to return one of
these days. All my love. Baxter.”
Andrews called his men in San Diego.
“Grab him,” he ordered. “We've at
least got something we can hold him on.
He didn’t even know that Shorter’s
wife’s name is Olivia and not Olive.”
Santo was returned to Los Angeles,
where he was charged with sending a
fictitious telegram, The maximum pen-
alty for a conviction on such a charge
is five years, but the important roint
was that the police now had Santo,
Perkins and Barbara Graham all in
jail on charges for which they could be
legally held.
Andrews called San Francisco Homi-
cide Inspectors Frank Ahern and
George Murphy and told them that
Barbara Graham had revealed that
John True was in Sausalito.
“Keep your eye on him for us,” he
pleaded. “We may want him grabbed
any day now. If this thing breaks, we'll
have to jump him in a hurry.”
err rei hm sila gc ca anna aaa,
But where was Verble? And would
he talk if they could find him?
“He's a former Mickey Cohen heneh
man,” Andrews told Coveney. “He's
been around a long time and he knows
what he is doing. I've got an idea that
he would get out of the country. ‘The
logical place to go from here would be
Mexico. And he'd be smart enough not
to try to get out from Los Angeles. Let’s
try San Diego or any other town
where he could” possibly fly into
Mexico City.”
‘BE guess paid off. Flight records in
San Diego showed that Verble had
gone to Mexico City. Long-distance
calls to the Mexican authorities re-
sulted in a conference with Verble him-
self. He promised to return voluntarily.
Andrews sent word to San Francisco
to have True taken into custody.
After his arrest True made a state-
ment from his cell, saying, ‘It looks to
me like I have been framed. The Bur-
bank police released me before because
I was able to prove that I wasn’t there.
Now I get the same thing all over again.
T'll tell .you one thing—I'm not guilty.”
As soon as Verble returned from Mex-
ico City, he was questioned by District
Attorney Roll.
The grand jury heard the witnesses
presented by Roll on Tuesday after-
noon, June 2. The District Attorney let
it be known that his chief witness was
Verble.
What Verble told the grand jury can-
not be revealed for the hearings are
conducted in secrecy. However, on
June 3, the jury returned indictments
in the court of Judge William B. Neeley
charging conspiracy to commit bur-
glary, robbery and murder against San-
to, Perkins, True and Mrs. Graham.
Judge Neeley ruled that no_ bail
would be allowed any of the defendants.
On June 10, after a long conference
with True in his cell, District Attorney
Roll requested that the grand jury be
convened again. He brought True be-
fore the jury. After True had testified
Roll announced to the newspapers:
“We now have definite evidence of how
and by whom Mrs. Monohan was Killed.
True was present during the time she
was killed and he has given us a com-
plete confession.”
The grand jury returned new indict-
ments through Judge Neeley’s court
adding the charge of murder to the
conspiracy indictments against True,
Santo, Perkins and Mrs. Graham.
On June 15, 1953, Court Reporter
Ray Brandt released a transcript of
True’s testimony before the grand jury.
True repeated in substance the story
Shorter had given police, according to
this transcript.
As this issue of OFFICIAL DETEC-
TIVE STORIES Magazine goes to press
all four are in jail awaiting further
legal developments. In addition to the
charges of murder and conspiracy to
murder, Perkins also has the charge of
kidnaping Shorter against him and
Mrs. Graham issuing a fictitious check.
To protect the identities of individ-
uals who cooperated with the authori-
ties in this investigation or who were
innocently drawn into it, the names of
Ned Verble, Fred Gooble and George
Dudley are not the real names of the
men involved.
Read It First In
Left the Bayou (Continued from Page 7) orFiciAL DETECTIVE STORIES
McPhail paused. ‘He was in his late
twenties, light brown hair and blue eyes.
About five feet eight inches and rather
slender.”
“That's the boy. What about scars
or anything like that?”
“He had some tattoos on his arms but
I couldn’t tell you what they were. I
just remember noticing they were
there.”
“After we get the information we
want at the station, would you mind
stopping by the morgue for a formal
identification?”
“Not a bit. I’ll be glad to help.”
While McPhail was getting dressed,
the two deputies telephoned Sheriff
Kern.
“McCormick and Morrison just
called in to say they’d gone through
their list without finding anything,” the
Sheriff said. “I'll tell them to come on
in and wait here for further develop-
ments.”
The night manager of McPhail’s serv-
ice station was able to supply a little
more information for the growing dos-
sier on Edward Thompson. From the
records, the officers learned that
Thompson was 29 years old, married
and had two children. He had moved
to Houston in January from Mobile,
Alabama, and-he and his family occu-
pied an apartment on Jensen Drive, on
the north side of the city.
“Did you know if Thompson ever had
any trouble with any of the men he
worked with?” Scarborough asked the
night manager.
He shook his head. “Not that I know
of—not any real trouble. He just
seemed to be the sort that was hard to
Up to the Minute
WOMAN sits alone in Cali-
_fornia’s San Quentin Prison
as this is being written—the
only woman in the all-male.institution.
She will not be there long, however, for
she is Barbara Graham, oft-married
ex-prostitute and gang moll, awaiting
execution for her part in the slaying
of a wealthy widow, Mabel Monahan,
near Los Angeles.
Two of her accomplices:in that crime,
Jack Santo and Emmett Perkins, also
‘are in San Quentin, also awaiting
execution. They are in fact under dou-
ble death sentences, once for the
Monahan slaying, once for the in-
famous killing of Grocer Gard Young
and three children, in the California
mountains near Chester. ,
The detective story behind the solu-
tion. of the Monahan murder appeared
in the August, 1953, issue of OFFICIAL
DETECTIVE. STORIES Magazine,
under the title, “The Mystery of Mabel
Monahan”. Investigation into the Gard
Young case was published as ‘“Mas-
sacre on the Chester Logging Road” in
the December, 1953, issue.
Justice moved slowly in some in-
stances, rapidly in others, to bring
sentences in various cases for which
this magazine published the complete
stories of the investigations. Two men
were executed in Texas’ electric chair,
former Airman Walter E. Whitaker,
Junior, for slaying his fiancee (“The
Strange Case of Joyce Fern White”, in
the April, 1953, OFFICIAL) and
) Maurice—Rabbit—Sampson for the
holdup-killing of Mrs. Ruth McCasland
(“‘Hurry, Lucy! Here's That Man
Again!’”, June, 1953, OFFICIAL).
Sampson’s accomplice, Willie Gilbert,
Junior, previously had been given 99
years in- prison.
In Pennsylvania prisons, ‘two men
finished their life terms within a week
of each other—through death. Jonah
Roberts died of a heart.attack in the -
Graterford Penitentiary near Philadel-
phia. Roberts’ wife had been found
dead, shot by hitch-hikers, he claimed,
near Wilkes-Barre. However, when
police learned that he had been spend-
-ing some time in motels with a waitress
he was found guilty of the murder and
given a life sentence (OFFICIAL
DETECTIVE STORIES’ issue of Octo-
ber, 1952; “With the Wrong Way As a
Clue”).
The other death was that of Peter
Bozzelli, who strangled his own daugh-
ter, Gloria, to death and was sentenced
to prison amid whispers of an improper
\
!
4
relationship. (“Philadelphia’s Case of
the Girl in the Duffel Bag”, July, 1953,
OFFICIAL). Actual cause of Bozzelli’s
death, doctors said, was. broncho-
pneumonia, “as a result of being weak- ©.
ened by lack of food”. He literally had”
starved himself to death, resisting all
efforts on the-part of prison doctors to
force food into his mouth or to feed
him intravenously.
N TTAN, John Francis
so far has been unable to convince-_the
state of New York that he also had
killed a fifth, is another who faces
death through his own choice. Roche, :
rape-slayer of Dorothy - Westwater,
Marion Brown and Rose Chronik and .
knife-killer of Alex Jablonka (“Red
Light to Multiple Homicide”, August,
1954, OFFICIAL), refused to cooperate _
with his counsel at his trial or to take
the stand in his own defense. He has
been found guilty of first-degree mur-
der with no recommendation for mercy,
which in New York means the electric
chair.
Roche, in addition to the four slay-
ings, claimed that he had killed Sailor
Edward Bates, a crime for which a man -
named Paul Pfeffer already was serving:
a prison sentence. Pfeffer was released
from prison, granted a new trial, then
suddenly re-indicted for the same
crime, on a charge of manslaughter.
Thirty times the state of Pennsyl-
vania set a date for the execution of
cop-killer and bank robber David
Almeida. Thirty times the courts re-
prieved him. Finally he was given a new
trial. At this one he entered a surprise
plea of guilty and a three-man court |
ended the long-drawn-out legal battle
. by sentencing him to life imprisonment.
Almeida was one of three men who
shot and killed Philadetphia Policeman
Cecil Ingling, whose wife’s story, “I
Saw My Husband Shot Dead”, appeared
more than five years ago in OFFICIAL
DETECTIVE STORIES Magazine, in
the November, 1948, issue: The slaying
climaxed an abortive holdup attempt
in a grocery store and Almeida’s two
accomplices, Edward Hough and James
F. Smith, Junior, had been sentenced
long ago, Smith to life imprisonment,
Hough to the electric chair. . o
The state, however, had the last word
regarding Almeida when Assistant
District Attorney Panati told the court,
“We are going to back ‘up this life
sentence with a thirty-five-year Federal
sentence for a bank holdup in New
MANHA'
Roche, who killed four persons and ,
Orleans.” What will happen to Hough,
who was given the same number of
reprieves, 30, because of his status as a
witness in the Almeida case, has not
been determined .yet.
James J: Cleary, an Illinois’ tavern-
owner who tried to play big-shot in.
Reno, Nevada, has been found guilty
of murder for the holdup slaying of
Mrs. Margaret Jenkins, Western Union
operator. ‘A jury recommended life im-
prisonment. The story of first chasing,
then tracing Cleary appeared under
the title, “Follow Me—I’m Chasing a
Killer” in the May, 1954, issue of this
magazine. ; : ,
For the killing of WAVE Irene,
Conole, Carl Strickland was sentenced
to eighteen years in prison in Leonard-
town, Maryland. The detective work
that brought about Strickland’s arrest
appeared under the title ‘‘No More
Liberty for Irene”, in OFFICIAL
— VE STORIES for ‘August,
Boastful, eighteen-year-old Ronald
Blumenthal, who told two girl class-
mates about his crime, was given life
imprisonment ‘in Dedham, Massachu-
setts, for strangling Seamstress Ora
Schonarth. This case, “What Only a
Killer Would Know”, appeared in the
October, 1954, issue. E
Two pair of brothers faced prison
in the South. Youthful Thomas and
Richard Benedict pleaded guilty to
slaying Frank Lord in Clearwater,
Florida (“Boomerang for This Good
Samaritan”, September, 1954, OFFI-
CIAL’ DETECTIVE STORIES), and
Ralph and James Jones, in Dallas, »
Texas, were found guilty of extortion
attempts against 20 prominent Dallas
families, Ralph drawing a five-year
sentence, James 20 years (“By Fire,
Bomb or Gunshot”, August, 1954, issue).
~ The $200,000 holdup of a Floral Park,
Long Island, bank has been termed the
biggest one-man bank robbery on Long
Island. Actually three men were in-
volved, stickup man George McKinney,
planner’ Ronald Martin and bank em-
ploye Clifford Oberkirch, who furnished
inside information. Oberkirch and Mc-
Kinney have pleaded guilty in Federal
court to bank-robbery charges; Martin
was found guilty by a jury. Oberkirch
ie Latest Verdicts and Legal
_- Moves in Cases Previously
Published in These Pages.
in the October,
DETECTIVE STORIES, entitled, “Help
Me Rob Your Bank”.
In Chicago, prosecutors moved re-
lentlessly against Vincent Cuicci, loose-
living grocer who shot his wife and
three children, then set fire to his
apartment in an attempt to cover up
the killings. Cuicci was found guilty of
murdering his wife and sentenced to 20
years’ imprisonment. He. was tried
again for killing daughter Angeline,
four, and given 45 years, consecutive
to the prior sentence.
Said his attorney, arguing for a new
trial, “The jury didn’t find him guilty
of murder but of being a bad father, a
gambler and a philanderer.” Said the
prosecution: He will be tried next for
killing daughter Virginia, eight, then
for the murder of his son, Vincent,
Junior, with a plea for the death pen-
alty each time. This story, “But After
They Did the Autopsies”, appeared in
the March, 1954, OFFICIAL.
ed THE rugged Gaspe peninsula of
Quebec Province, Canada, Judge
Gerald Lacroix donned the traditional
black gloves of British justice and in
accordance with the ‘verdict of a jury
pronounced the death penalty upon
Wilbert Coffin, husky backwoods guide
and prospector. The -jury, six English-
speaking and six French-speaking, had
found Coffin guilty of murdering
seventeen-year-old Richard Lindsey
whose body was found with those of his
father, Eugene, and his friend, Fred
Claar, deep in the Gaspe forests. Coffin
was tried for only one of the slayings.
The story of the investigation into this
case appeared in the November, 1953,
issue of OFFICIAL DETECTIVE
STORIES Magazine, entitled, “Who
Killed the Hunters on Gaspe?” .
OFFICIAL DETECTIVE STORIES
Magazine publishes stories of the most
recent detective investigations. / To
bring our readers up to date on final
sentences and court decisions resulting
from the detective work, this depart-
ment, “Up to the Minute”, is published
from time to time.—The Editor.
a! 4 j
TOV DLee a g
We'll put a man at every window so
can look right down on the alley
and have it covered. Other men will
be in the Health Department building
and the post office.” :
- “The problem is to freeze them,” an
I agent declared. “If they get rat-
tled and start shooting, no matter how
‘somebody is likely to get killed.”
Detective Lieutenant B. J. Handlon,
ho had been called in on the confer-
Pence, suggested: “We could use an
armored truck to follow Schomer into
the alley and bottle it up from that
end.”
=. “It still wouldn’t freeze them.”
. “What would?”
The agent suggested that a loud-
*speaker system. be installed in the
"Wildcat Lair building. At the moment
“the bandits stepped out, when the
police car was stopped, the loudspeaker
were or be killed.
“That would give the men in the
car a chance,” he said. “They can slide
down to the floor and use the car for
sprotection.” ‘
“We could use portable floodlights,
.” Kennedy said. “Those and the
dspeakers should hold them.”
The police plans called for detectiv
to intercept Robert. Anderson as hi
drove around the post-office buildin:
Other officers would pick up Joyce
.derson where she would be waiting,
the animal shelter.
. And a cordon of police cars would
=nlaced entirely around the area, re-
-g instructions from. the police
room. The sheriff's officers
over all of the roads out of the
he event of any slipup.
ve thought of everything ex-
4,” Newcomb said as the final
. were discussed. “It looks to me
uke he’s the sitting duck in a shooting
gallery.”
‘ered an FBI agent told Meagher:
» 4 “As soon as the lights go.on and
=the loudspeaker starts, fall flat. Dive
Sunder the car if you can. In that way,
¢if there’s any shooting, we won't stand
; the risk of hitting you.”
*. “No good,” Newcomb said flatly.
& “No? Why not?”
‘“ “Mayhe our men won't shoot him,
-but how about Ludwig or Anderson?
en they see they’ve been framed,
rone of them might swing: and let Ed
«have it. With a shotgun at that close
“range, he'd be finished.” ‘
“What do you think?” Meagher was
ed :
a don’t know.”
*- “Could you swap places with Bob
“Anderson or Schomer?”
=“Not.a chance...Anderson insisted on
- putting Bob in the safest spot because
-he’s his kid brother. Bob’s only nine-
teen. Schomer is in the car because he
feould get away with looking like a
‘woman. Besides, it’s Anderson's idea
‘because he, Ludwig and I have been
jpolice officers, we know how to handle
, & gun.”
~ = “You're going to be in a tough spot.
. ‘T.guess you know that. Our men will
be instructed to watch out for you.”
*“With all of them wearing full
masks?” Newcomb asked.
they going to tell Ed from Anderson or
Ludwig?”
, |» “He'll have to drop.”
» “Suppose they all drop and start
« shooting? And that’s only half of it.
‘He’s got Anderson and Ludwig to worry
+ bout at the same time.”
» An FBI agent told Meagher: “You
m’t have to go through with it, but I
* §doubt if you pulled out now whether
: ‘d go on. We could pick them up
F tt we’d have trouble getting a con-
viction. All they’d have to do is deny
2 story.”
“<“T'm not pulling out,” Meagher said.
‘ait a minute!” Newcomb cried.
\re you feeling, Ed?”
‘| do you mean?” ;
dose you got sick late Tuesday
on and had to be rushed to
sspital, Would they go through,
«jit! without you?” :° | ° :
¢
USUAL IN
many men you have around them,”
could order them to stand where they .
“How are.
“I don’t know.* Anderson figures’ I’m. *
2, me,
Oo 26INLU
a
yellow now. He might think I chick-
ened out.”
‘ “Well, that’s the way it’s going to
be,” Newcomb said. “Ed’s done more
than his share on this deal. I won't
let him get killed. Tuesday afternoon,
he’s going to the hospital with a rup-
tured appendix.”
\
W ITH the utmost secrecy, the
Police plans were carried out to
foil the million-dollar robbery. FBI
agents dressed as workmen went into
the Wildcat Lair building. -They care-
fully selected the site where the police
officers could cover best what wo
take place below. 7
The loudspeaker and-tights were in-
rn rg ee ne em ee mene ete ne mr ge +e
e
tend the party because of an emer-
gency operation. The message was
telephoned by a hospital employe so
that Anderson would be unable to
question Meagher Also, if Anderson
should call back he would find that
.Meagher actually was in the hospital:
Would he believe Meagher was sick?
Would he think Meagher had chick-
ened out?
Or, would he suspect a trap? ,
Only time would tell, And as the
minutes ticked by, the anxiety and
tenseness grew among the officers in on
the counter-plot. : ee
: t blew up when a
police officer who ha: 1
of what was taking place,
OFFICIAL) ;
November, 1952).
Up to the Minute
Ts once lovely Barbara Graham, mother of three, former shop-
lifter, dope peddler, prostitute and gun girl, has gone to her
death peacefully in California’s gas chamber.
Wearing a cocktail dress, Mrs. Graham entered the gas cham- .
ber calmly and eight minutes later was pronounced dead, executed
for her part in. the pistol-whipping slaying of an elderly widow,
Mrs. Mabel Monohan who, her killers falsely believed, had $100,000
hidden in her Burbank, California, home.
Following Mrs. Graham in death by 20 minutes were one of
California’s most vicious badmen, Jack Santo, and his sidekick,
Emmett Perkins. Besides helping to slay Mrs. Monohan, Santo and
Perkins had killed Grocer Guard Young and three little children
in another attempted robbery, and gold miner Edmund Hansen—a
total of six that police knew about. :
The story of the detective investigation into Mrs. Monohan’s
murder, ““The Mystery of Mabel Monohan”, appeared in the August,
1953, issue of OFFICIAL DETECTIVE STORIES Magazine, and
_ that of the Guard Young case, “Massacre on the Chester
Road”, in the December, 1953, issue.
Anthony Zilbauer, who answered an advertisement for an auto
- for sale in Los Angeles and killed the man who wanted to sell it,
Andrew Kmiec (“He Said He Was Hired to Kill”, February, 1954,
“Cowboy” Leonard Baldwin, hitch-hike slayer of Jack Arnold
near Barstow, California, in 1952 (‘Catch the Killer in Sheep’s
Clothing”, June, 1953, OFFICIAL) ;
Grover Edwards, robber-slayer of a former neighbor, Isaac
’ Teitelbaum, in Philadelphia (“Why Must You Kill Me?”, OFFICIAL,
In New York, William Farrell, accused of slaying co-ed Ann
Yarrow, was sent toa hospital for the criminally insane. The story
of his capture, “Greenwich Village’s Case of Ann Yarrow”, appeared
in the May, 1955, OFFICIAL DETECTIVE STORIES.
And in Wilson, North Carolina, Mrs. John Cockrell was
sentenced to a twelve-to-fifteen-year term for poisoning her hus-
band. A daughter of the couple, Mrs. Lucille Barnes, wrote the dra-
matic story of her suspicions when her father died and of her own .
investigation which eventually led to the arrest of her mother, under
the title, “Help Me Find My Father's Killer”, for the March, 1955,
OFFICIAL DETECTIVE STORIES.
‘This department, “Up to the Minute”, is published regularly
on these pages to give readers the last word on cases which have
been published prior to the long-drawn-out legal maneuvers that
frequently delay final disposition of those cases.
Logging
stalled. Walkie-talkie connections
were made with Headquarters so that
instructions could be relayed to the
waiting police cars.
Complete descriptions of all the
persons involved, as well as the descrip-
tions and license numbers of the cars
that would be used were prepared.
To avoid any possible leak, only the
key officers in the sheriff’s office and
on the police force were informed of
what was taking place. The men in the
cruiser cars would not know of their
assignments until the last moment.
This. would be the biggest robbery
since the Brink’s job in Boston. There
couldn’t be any mistakes. 5
Postal inspectors and FBI agents
took up key positions to help command’
and execute the capture of the bandits.
The one big question was whether
the gang would go through with the
plan without Meagher.
A rendezvous of the gang had been
set for Anderson’s Paradise Valley
home at six o’clock. It was to arrange
the alibi—that Anderson was giving a
party for his wife.
The robbery was planned for eight
O'clock, . ,,; +, 2.4) 3 .
-Word ' was sent!from the ' hospital
that' Meagher would be unable to at- ~
-police car with the mail.
/
particular afternoon to pay ‘a friendly
visit to Anderson’s home. But he left
after a few minutes without incident.
At six o'clock, Chief Kennedy made
a final inspecticn of the men and equip-.
ment that would be used.
Detective Lieutenant Handlon and
Detective Frank Jergovic were assigned
the job of stopping Bob Anderson after
he had given the signal that would set
the holdup in action. Sergeant John,
Skelton was to drive the armored car
that had been hidden in a garage where
it could move out quickly and follow
Schomer when he went in to block the
Several
officers would be inside ready to shoot
through the port holes of the armored
vehicle. :
Chief Kennedy and Lieutenant Allen
would follow the armored car in a
police cruiser. Several men had tried
to dissuade the Chief from coming in
behind the armored car for he would
be in the thick of any shooting, but the
Chief was adamant on this point. .
[X THE Wildcat Lair building, the
Health Department building and
the post office, 22 selected men from,
the police department, sheriff's ‘office,
Postal inspectors and’ FBI were’ sta-
a eee
tioned. Guns were loaded with live
shells under the firing-pins. The loud-
speaker and floodlights were ready.
More officers were hidden at the
animal shelter where they would pick
up Joyce Anderson.
Then word flashed through to Head-
quarters from a_ walkie-talkie unit
planted near the Anderson home.
“George Anderson and his wife just
got into their car.”
A few minutes later, another message
came in: | .
“Robert Schomer is leaving. He’s in
his car.”
The plan was on.
This was it.
An alert was flashed to all police
units,
Chief Kennedy was at the station as
Carlisle and Devlin prepared to leave
what, until tonight, had been a
car until the shooting is over. If they
make a fight for it, a lot of lead will be
d you fellows will be right in
the midfile of it.” y
As patrolmen walked out to their
car, Chief Kennedy called:
you almost lose faith.
hen something like this comes up
you see men like Carlisle and Dev-
. Those boys could get killed tonight,
and they know it. But you watched
them go out of here.’ Both of them were
smiling. They’re real police officers—
and most of the boys are just like them.
They more than make up for the bad
ones.” , .
Bell looked at his watch. “It’s time
to go.” ;
RIGHT on schedule, at eight o’clock,
: the post-office messenger came out
on the platform with the registered
mail sack. He climbed into the car with
Carlisle and Devlin. :
An auto parked on Mesquite flashed
its lights on and moved slowly around
the post office.
It was the signal, °
As the car rounded the corner,’
Handlon jammed the throttle of his
police cruiser to the floorboard. He
swung wide and then pulled in sharp,
cutting off the auto that had given the
signal and forcing it into the curb.
Jergovic was out in a flash. He
pressed his service revolver against the
head of the driver.
“Don’t.move a muscle or I'll drill
ou.”
’ George Anderson was at the wheel.
Beside him was his wife. Meagher had
said that Anderson’s brother, Bob,
would driving the car and Mrs.
Anderson at the animal shelter. Some-
' thing was wrong.
“Get out with your hands up,” Jergo-
vic ordered. “You, too, Mrs. Ander-
son.” :
Handlon relieved Anderson of the
police pistol he carried.
- “What's the idea?” Anderson asked.
“Me and my wife were on the way to
the show.” i
“You'll see a show when you meet
the Chief,” Jergovic told him. “And
don’t give me any trouble.”
In the meantime, the officers who
had been waiting on the west side of
the post office saw the patrol car with
the mail truck drive off to the station,
no attempt being made to stop it. How-
ever, Chief Kennedy and Allen spotted
Schomer as he drove away after observ-
ing the patrol car. : They placed him
under arrest.
_ Officers sped out to Anderson’s home .
where they located Robert Anderson
and Walter Ludwig. The police claim
they also found the sawed-off shot-
guns and. masks.and make-up to dis-
fg ayy as a woman at the Para-
Valley house., , . : ‘
Later in the evening, Chief Kennédy
announced that Schomer ‘had given the
, 45
Unquestionably California's Biggest
Case in Years Was the Wanton Slay- .
ing of a Man and Three Children by
This Gang That Went on to So Many
Other Crimes. Here Is the Full Story
Of the Startling Police Investigation
With this Pipe four
were slain. Officer
is Deputy Spellmeyer
HEN Guard Young failed to
return to his home by six p. m.
his wife, Christal, became
worried.
She telephoned a friend, Howard
Elliott,
“I'm scared, Howard,” she said. “He
should have been here a long time ago.
And he has the four children with him
and all that money.”
Elliott tried to reassure her. “Don’t
get upset,” he replied. “Guard prob-
ably had some trouble with the car.
We'll drive into Westwood and see if we
can find him.”
Thus, at six p.m. that day of October
10, 1952, the Guard Young case began,
inauspiciously and simply. It wasn’t to
remain. inauspicious or simple very
long. Within 24 hours it would burst
upon’ a shocked and horrified nation
as part of the most infamous and
notorious series of Slayings in many
years—a Case with startling and almost
unbelievable ramifications that. still
was echoing in the headlines of the
country more than a year later.
But at six p. m. that Friday, unknow-
ing, Mrs. Young and Elliott left Chester,
California, in Elliott's car and drove
slowly toward Westwood, thirteen miles
east.
Chester and Westwood are mining
and lumbermill . towns high in the
mountains northwest of Reno, Nevada.
Chester, in Plumas County, is on the
shore of Lake Almanor, where the north
fork of the Finger River empties into
The golden-haired girls, Judy, Sondra, Jean,
Cc OTT =
DTRBPIES
se CaS si
and Guard Young, their father
~Massacre on t
the lake. It had, according to the 1950
census, a population of 1,197.
There Guard Young and his wife
operated the principal grocery store and
raised their family of four children, ’
Young was a great-grandson of ohe of
the founders of the Mormon church,
Lorenzo Dow Young, brother of Brig-
ham Young, and both he and Mrs.
Young reflected great credit upon the
religion of their ancestors. They were
sincere, devout and respected members
of their community,
Friday was Payday in Chester. At
four p. m. when the logging mill closed
for the week-end, workers crowded into
Young's store to do their shopping and
to cash their pay checks. Regularly,
therefore, on Fridays, Young drove to
the closest bank, the branch of the
Bank of America in Westwood, and
brought back with him enough cash to
take care of these checks.
MAY Persons in both towns knew
this; he had followed the same
routine week in and week out. That .
was why Mrs. Young was sO worried
and why Elliott, too, had begun the
search immediately, although he tried
- to belittle Mrs. Young's fears,
On this afternoon Young had taken
with him three of his four children,
Judy, six; Jean, seven, and Sondra,
only three. He also had taken Michael
Saile, four, who had been playing with
the Young children and who was the
son of Mrs. Rosemary Saile, tenant in
s
Dead Actress
and the Diver
(Continued from page 17)
Angeles underworld with information
sifted from stoolpigeons and gathered in
close checking on the whereabouts and ac-
tivities of these men on March 9th, con-
vinced detectives that somewhere among
them lay the solution to Mabel Monohan’s
murder. All four were arrested on March
26th.
In long hours of questioning, though all
firmly denied knowledge of the murder,
Baxter Shorter was tripped up in several
minor lies. A search of his wardrobe pro-
duced a pair of shoes with Tred heels,
matching the prints in the Monohan home.
“They’re your ticket to a reserved seat
in the gas chamber,” Chief Andrews said.
“Unless, of course, some kind of deal could
be arranged.”
“What kind of deal?” Shorter asked ner-
vously.
“That would depend on two things,” An-
drews said. “How much you told, and how
deep you're in.”
“I'm in, all right,” Shorter said bitterly.
“It was only going to be a safe job, they
told me. All I'd have to do was be lookout,
unless the safe had to be cracked. Then
they'd call me in to open the box. A safe
job. Gambler's dough, stashed away from
Uncle Sam, so there’d be no big rumble
about it.”
In return for a promise of leniency, Bax-
ter Shorter told the story of the murder.
The crime had grown out of a report—
completely erroneous—that Scherer had
hidden $200,000 in cash and $150,000 in
jewels in the residence of his former
mother-in-law.
On Monday night, March 9th, Shorter,
three other men and a striking, brown-
haired girl whom he knew only as Barbara,
drove to Mrs. Monohan’s home in Bar-
bara’s car. Because the crippled widow
was known to be cautious, the men hid
in the shrubbery while Barbara pushed
the doorbell. They figured that Mrs. Mono-
han, although she would not recognize the
girl, would not be alarmed by a woman.
Barbara explained to the widow that her
car had stalled. She asked permission to
use the phone to call a garage. When Mrs.
Monohan opened the door to let the girl
in, the three men sprang from hiding and
forced their way into the home.
“They were there quite a while,” Shorter
related. “I went in, guessing maybe they
were having trouble with the box, and
needed my help. The place was a bloody
mess. The old lady was on the floor, tied
up, all battered and bloody. Barbara was
yelling, ‘Give her some more! Give her
some more!’
“A fellow called Emmett, who was lead-
ing the gang, hit Mrs. Monohan on the
head witn a gun butt. Then another guy—
Big Jack—tied a scarf around her throat
and choked the old woman. When nobody
was looking, I cut the scarf. I hoped she
was still alive.”
A thorough search convinced the mob
that there was no money or gems hidden
in the dwelling. They overlooked the purse
on the closet hook as they finally gave up
the hunt and left.
“As soon as I could,” Shorter said, “I
got to a phone and called for an ambu-
lance. I forgot to say Parkside in Burbank,
and so it went to the wrong street.”
Shorter said the gang drove 450 miles
north into the “mother lode” country in
Nevada County, where they holed up in a
mountain hideout near Grass Valley for
several days. Then they had moved on again.
Shorter could not fully identify his com-
panions, he claimed. Emmett, he said, was
a small, tough guy, with sunken cheeks and
loving-cup ears. Big Jack was a husky six-
footer, about 45 or 50, and had come from
San Francisco. The third man he had
known only as Jack, a. red-haired friend
of Big Jack, who had talked about working
as a deep sea diver and who apparently was
not a professional crook. Barbara was a
very pretty girl, in her late twenties. She
packed a gun. When the mob left Grass
Valley, Big Jack was driving a girl friend’s
two-tone green 1952 Oldsmobile sedan,
Shorter said. His red-headed driver pal re-
mained behind in Nevada County.
Writs of habeas corpus, meanwhile, were
being sued for the release of the four men
picked up for questioning. Of the quartet,
only Shorter actually had been involved in
the crime, although he said that Upshaw
had known about it, having refused a bid
to join in the venture.
By the time the cops learned of this,
Upshaw was out on the habeas corpus writ
and reportedly had crossed the border into
Mexico.
Hoping to conceal the fact that Baxter
Shorter had squealed, the Burbank police
made no effort to interfere with the habeas
corpus proceeding in his behalf and he was
set free while detectives worked to identify
the others in the murder mob.
Big Jack was soon pegged as Albert
“Jack” Santo, a hood with a long record.
According to George Brereton, chief of the
state attorney general’s investigative staff,
Santo was the No. 1 suspect in one of Cali-
fornia’s most horrible crimes, the murders
of a grocer named Gard Young and Young’s
four small children, in a $7300 holdup near
Chester, committed on October 10th, 1952.
NICE WORK
In the Miami area pickings are so
easy that sometimes burglars trip over
one another, So a 22-year-old army
deserter told North Miami police who
arrested him.
On the night of November 23rd, he
related, he broke into a North Holly-
wood, Florida, home—only to find
another burglar busily at work there.
Equally startled, both men took to
their heels, but in running around the
house they crashed into each other.
The first burglar, mistaking the second
for the owner of the house, pleaded
for a break.
“I'll give you a break," growled the
second, '"Scram!"'
And the first obligingly scrammed,
leaving the other to loot the house at
his leisure.
On his arrest, loot valued at $5,000,
which he admitted stealing in 17 house
raids, was found in his apartment.
"It's easy to be a burglar down
here,’ he told the officers. Most peo-
ple leave their doors unlocked, and
there's always a window open some-
where." ;
—William M. Phillips
ad AOR ER LAN TTR ETT INT
An APB alarm went out on Santo and, up
in Nevada County, his red-haired diver
pal was identified as John True, 38, a
handsome adventurer with no previous po-
lice record.
Acting on a tip, detectives set a trap for
Santo at Reno on Saturday, April llth, and
on the same day quietly arrested True
while he was taking a bath in the mountain
cabin of a friend near Grass Valley.
Santo and True were to have been nabbed
at the same time, but Big Jack was not on
the plane which detectives met at the
Reno airport and so only True was caught,
an arrest made so secretly that not even
the Nevada County sheriff knew of it.
When True’s friend, a respected busi-
nessman, found him gone and heard that
three men had taken him away, he re-
ported True a kidnap victim.
Now the fat was in the fire. Since True
had no previous record, and since his pal,
Big Jack Santo, had not been taken into
custody, the underworld would know there
could have been but one source of infor-
mation which had led to his arrest. Baxter
Shorter, the only one of the quintet in-
volved in the slaying to have been inter-
rogated by police, must have blown the
whistle on the whole gang!
On Tuesday, April 14th, Chief Andrews
went to the three-story apartment house
which Shorter owned, and in which he
lived with his pretty wife, Olivia, in the
heart of downtown Los Angeles.
“You’re hot, fellow,” the Burbank chief
warned. “We'll give you a guard, or hide
you out, whichever you want.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Shorter said.
“I’ve got a loaded rifle right here in my
living room. Nobody’s going to hurt me.”
That night police answered an hysteri-
cal call to the Shorter home and found
Olivia, still clutching a 30-30 rifie, scream-
ing wildly, “They’re going to kill him!
They’re going to kill him!”
At 8:10 p.m., Olivia said, Baxter had
opened the top half of their Dutch door
in response to a knock and had faced a
man with a gun who ordered him, “Come
along.”
Mrs: Baxter grabbed the rifle, but the
kidnaper put his pistol’s muzzle against
Shorter’s head and said, “Get back, or he’ll
die right here!”
Olivia had watched Baxter driven away
in an automobile which, from her descrip-
tion, was the car owned by the brunette
gun moll, Barbara.
Mrs. Shorter said her husband had im-
mediately recognized the kidnaper, calling
him “Perk.” From the rogues’ gallery files
in Los Angeles police headquarters she
positively identified a photograph of Em-
met Perkins as her husband’s abductor.
Having now identified the fourth man in
the murder gang, detectives easily identi-
fied the girl who had egged Perkins on in
the savage bludgeoning of Mabel Monohan.
She was 29-year-old Barbara Graham, who
had left her husband and 14-month-old
baby son to follow Perkins. The man at
the wheel of her car when Shorter was
spirited away in it, detectives were sure,
had been Big Jack Santo.
A desperate search was launched for
them—and for the body of Baxter Shorter.
Police were certain that their informant,
the only witness in the Monohan case, had
been slain soon after his removal from his
home.
As the manhunt got under way, John
True was freed on a habeas corpus writ.
In custody for a week, he had made no
damaging admissions regarding the slaying
of Mrs. Monohan. He admitted only that he
had gone hunting and fishing with Jack
Santo and had accompanied Santo south
early in March to look over some mining
work. True said he had specialized in work-
ing on machinery in flooded mines.
-__-_. se 1 a
Late in Ap:
don spotted a
town Los Ane:
pegged her for
a considerabli
Barbara was
detectives on
shopping crow
On Monday.
don and Audre
picked Barbar:
shopping tour
she boarded a
Over walkie-ta]
fourteen police
the bus,
Barbara go}
Atlantic Avenu
side of the cit
what appeared
With Detect
their head, a }
in the front an
Emmet Perkins
get out or the be
Big Jack Santo
in another roon
Sat down again
his face.
Barbara was
the officers brok:
smart beige suit
quarters.
While the thre:
knowledge of B;
at headquarters
sedan, with ne
Parked four
store where thy
out
It was robin’s
neath this paint
The car was
Santo’s girl frie;
and its Californ}
ing equipment
cap were found };
which Perkins ar
November under 1}
E. Johnson.
The rubber fo.
ripped out of the
its underside runni
slivers of wood
flower which the
County Museum |
There Miss Bo;
of botany, said ¢}
and the flower o:
as did the ribbo:
Diego and San Ja:
ern California, a:
2500 and 3000 fee
“It seems prety
tenant Coveney
Bax Shorter’s boc
in those mountai!
On Mrs. Shorter
Perkins was indict,
naping and assaul:
and held without
who claimed she
ease, was named in s
for cashing $266 wor:
Los Angeles shoppin
in $25,000 bail.
Without Shorter
however, none of +
in the Monohan m
charge the police
the inevitable habe
Jack Santo. He wa
traffic charge when
Perkins and Bart
sent a telegram
Shorter’s name and a
was well.
Arrested for forgi:
held in $50,000 bail
“But,” District Ar:
of Los Angeles (¢
it on Santo and, up
red-haired diver
John True, 38, a
th no previous po-
ives set a trap for
April 11th, and
arrested True
th in the mountain
iss Valley.
have been nabbed
g Jack was not on
tives met at the
True was caught,
‘tly that not even
iff knew of it.
respected busi-
e and heard that
iim away, he re-
‘tim.
ie fire. Since True
and since his pal,
been taken into
ould know there
source of infor-
his arrest. Baxter
the quintet in-
nave been inter-
have blown the
Chief Andrews
apartment house
nd in which he
te, Olivia, in the
Angeles.
the Burbank chief
: a guard, or hide
vant.”
ne,” Shorter said.
right here in my
ing to hurt me.”
vered an hysteri-
home and found
0-30 rifle, scream-
jing to kill him!
said, Baxter had
their Dutch door
and had faced a
iered him, “Come
the rifle, but the
muzzle against
Get back, or he’ll
ixter driven away
rom her descrip-
by the brunette
husband had im-
kidnaper, calling
\gues’ gallery files
headquarters she
pnotograph of Em-
band’s abductor.
the fourth man in
tives easily identi-
zged Perkins on in
tf Mabel Monohan.
ara Graham, who
nd 14-month-old
kins. The man at
vhnen Shorter was
tectives were sure,
as launched for
of Baxter Shorter.
at their informant,
Monohan case, had
is removal from his
inder way, John
iabeas corpus writ.
he had made no
‘garding the slaying
{mitted only that he
fishing with Jack
anied Santo south
over some mining
specialized in work-
ded mines.
Late in April, Policewoman Kay Shel-
don spotted a peroxide blonde in a down-
town Los Angeles department store and
pegged her for Barbara Graham, who had
a considerable record. In the next ten days
Barbara was seen again, but spotted the
detectives on her trail and lost them in
shopping crowds.
On Monday, May 4th, Policewomen Shel-
don and Audrey Fletcher and Myrl Stahr
picked Barbara up on one of her downtown
shopping tours, They stuck with her when
she boarded a bus to Lynwood. By code,
over walkie-talkie radio, they brought in
fourteen police cars, which followed behind
the bus.
Barbara got off at Imperial Highway and
Atlantic Avenue, far out on the southeast
side of the city. There she vanished into
what appeared to be a deserted store.
With Detective Chief Thad Brown at
their head, a horde of detectives smashed
in the front and rear doors so fast that
Emmet Perkins did not even have time to
get out of the bed in which he was resting.
Big Jack Santo, lying nude on a mattress
in another room, sprang to his feet, but
sat down again with a shotgun muzzle in
his face.
Barbara was changing her clothes when
the officers broke in. She slipped into a
smart beige suit and was taken to head-
quarters.
While the three were stoutly denying all
knowledge of Baxter Shorter’s kidnaping
at headquarters, police found a 1952 Olds
sedan, with new Washington license tags,
parked four blocks from the converted
store where the fugitives had been hiding
out.
It was robin’s egg blue in color, but be-
neath this paint were two tones of green.
The car was identified as that of Jack
Santo’s girl friend, up in Nevada County,
and its California plates, along with print-
ing equipment, a mask and a chauffeur’s
cap were found in a bungalow in E] Monte
which Perkins and Barbara had rented in
November under the names of Mr. and Mrs,
E. Johnson.
The rubber floor mat had been recently
ripped out of the trunk in the Olds and, in
its underside running gear, detectives found
slivers of wood and petals of a yellow
flower which they took to the Los Angeles
County Museum for identification.
There Miss Bonnie Templeton, curator
of botany, said the wood was ribbonwood
and the flower of a species which grew,
as did the ribbonwood, only in the San
Diego and San Jacinto Mountains of South-
ern California, at an altitude of between
2500 and 3000 feet.
“It seems pretty plain now,” said Lieu-
tenant Coveney, “that if we ever do find
Bax Shorter’s body, it will be somewhere
in those mountain wilds.”
On Mrs. Shorter’s identification, Emmet
Perkins was indicted on charges of kid-
naping and assault with a deadly weapon,
and held without bail. Barbara Graham,
who claimed she was ill with heart dis-
case, was named in seven counts of forgery,
for cashing $266 worth of phony checks in
Los Angeles shopping sprees, and was held
in $25,000 bail.
Without Shorter to testify against them,
however, none of the three could be held
in the Monohan murder, and there was no
charge the police could find to forestall
the inevitable habeas corpus writ for Big
Jack Santo. He was free in $1000 bail on a
traffic charge when, a week after he and
Perkins and Barbara were arrested, he
sent a telegram to Mrs. Shorter, signing
Shorter’s name and assuring Olivia that all
was well,
Arrested for forging the wire, Santo was
held in $50,000 bail.
“But,” District Attorney E. Ernest Roll
of Los Angeles County said, “we still
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haven't a thing to hang on them in the
Monohan murder.”
Then the break came. Bill Upshaw
walked into the office of Homicide Captain
Robert Lohrman in Los Angeles headquar-
ters. “I heard the police wanted to see me
again,” he said blandly. “So I came back
from Mexico as soon as I could.”
Upshaw clammed tight on the Monohan
case, until detectives laid the facts on the
line. The word would get out, now that
he'd come to headquarters, that he—like
Shorter—had talked.
“It won't mean much whether you actual-
ly did talk,” he was told. “The boys’ll be
measuring out the same dose for you they
gave Bax Shorter. You’ve got just one good
chance of staying alive, and that’s to put
Perkins and Santo where they can’t get at
you. If they’re ever sprung, and you're
walking around loaded with the informa-
tion they know you're carrying, you won’t
last a week.”
Upshaw talked. He went before the
grand jury early in June and told how he
had turned down a part in the Monohan
job, and how Shorter had told him the day
after the murder, what had happened in
the house on Parkside Avenue in Bur-
bank,
In the meantime, John True was re-ar-
rested in San Francisco and held in jail
there for questioning.
As the grand jury was in session, a Los
Angeles newspaper headlined a story that
Shorter never had been kidnaped, that
the story of his snatch had been invented
by police to enable them to hide him until
the time came for him to appear on the
witness stand against his former pals.
With Upshaw’s statement, involving him,
with True allowed to read the story of
Shorter’s supposed availability as a wit-
ness, and with the argument that, as a first
offender, he might expect some considera-
tion if he was cooperative, detectives went
to work on True.
The day after the grand jury returned
indictments naming True, Perkins, Santo
and Barbara Graham on charges of con-
spiracy to commit burglarly, to rob and to
murder—charges which could mean the gas
chamber for one or all—True_ suddenly
broke down.
He, too, went before the grand jury,
telling the same story of the murder that
Shorter originally had related, adding that
he had seen Barbara pistol whip Mrs.
Monohan and had watched Big Jack Santo
Strangle the helpless widow after Perkins
also had beaten the widow brutally with
his gun.
The grand jury speedily returned new
superseding indictments, charging all four
principals with murder. For John True,
however, because he had turned state's evi-
dence at last, and because he had not
known there was any chance of a murder
when he agreed to go with his friend Santo
after some “gambler’s money,” leniency
would be asked, District Attorney Roll
said.
As Perkins, Santo, True and Mrs. Gra-
ham were held without bail pending trial,
one question still remained: Was Baxter
Shorter dead, his body hidden somewhere
in the mountains, or was he still alive to
appear in court when his cohorts faced a
jury for the murder of Mabel Monohan? It
is a question only time and the authorities
can answer. $o¢
Epiror’s Note:
The name, Snoot Hogan, as used in the
foregoing story, is not the real name of
the person concerned. This person has
been given a fictitious name to protect |
his identity.
o~
sorts and lack of enough positive evidence against him.
At the same time, detectives in Los Angeles and all over
Southern California were on the lookout for any man
wearing a size nine shoe with a Tred sole, and especially
for such a man who bore: scratches or bruises. . Examina-
tion of Mrs. Monohan’s fingernails showed she must have
marked at least. one of her killers in her desperate battle
for her life. .
Her daughter, meanwhile, offered a $5000 reward for in-
formation leading to the apprehension of the slayers and,
when Lieutenant E. S. Lavold, head of the Los Angeles
burglary detail, began tapping his pipelines for informa-
tion, he was careful to emphasize this.
Lavold’s squad was especially interested in the case be-
cause the manner of ransacking the Monohan ‘home in-
dicated that the killers had been looking for a safe. The
bureau of records and identification ran out the cards on
every known safecracker in the city, and the burglary de-
tail men began checking these crooks out, demanding alibis,
extending their probes to the known companions of those
yeggmen whose whereabouts were not satisfactorily ex-
plained for Monday night, March 9th.
Four days after the murder in Burbank, the telephone
company in Los Angeles reported a curious incident. At
8:30 Monday night an unidentified man had called an
operator and asked for: an: ambulance at 1718 Parkside
Avenue. The operator instantly put a trace on the call,
at the same time rushing the ambulance summons through
to police.
The call had been made from a pay booth at Sunset
Boulevard and Vermont Avenue. The ambulance had ‘been
sent to Parkside Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, where
there was no such number as 1718. The anonymous caller
had not mentioned Burbank, but obviously that was where
he had intended help to be sent—to the Monohan home.
Therefore he must have been one. of the murder gang.
Why had he made the telephone call?
“It couldn’t have been,” Lieutenant Coveney said, “just
to have the body discovered promptly. Had that prompted
his call, he’d undoubtedly have tried again after he picked
up the papers the next day and saw no headline about a
killing. Now who would turn soft and try to get help for
the woman?”
“A professional burglar might,” suggested Burbank Po-
lice Chief Rex Andrews. “Some cracksman who went on
the job, figuring no violence would be involved. Not many
genuine burglars go in for bloodshed.”
A week after the murder, an all-points bulletin brought
in Snoot Hogan, a hoodlum with a battered nose who had
been the No. 1 suspect in the Kirk slaying in Glendale.
“Just like that job,” Hogan protested, “you guys got me
all wrong. I never done nothing like that. My sainted
mother’s ghost would trouble me every night of my life
if I laid hands upon a woman.” ,
Hogan, however, had no ironclad alibi for Monday night,
March 9th and, sweating uncomfortably under the grilling,
he was anxious to grease his way out of the jam.
“I can’t give it to you, names, times and places,” he
said, “but there was a rumble in town two weeks ‘back that
a big heist was makin’ up. Some scared dough, big in-
- come tax gravy, so the word was around.”
“Who had the word, Snoot?” ‘Lieutenant Coveney de-
manded.
Hogan shrugged. “I’m only passin’ on what I heard,” he
said. “Maybe some of Mickey Cohen’s boys. I don’t
know. I only heard the rumble, like I told you.”
Detectives search for evidence at mob’s mountain hideout rented by blonde and boy friend under phony name
With Cohe:
in prison, the
to rally severa
they have fig
home?
“That $20,0
“It could hav:
house.”
Detectives
mors, they lea
as $40,000 in
ever, did not
the Mickey Co
cached out of
“That could
Coveney said
got a fortun:
income tax pe
he was using |
Andrews n
said.
“Believe m«
was ripped a;
Suppose it wa
no dough hid
couldn’t produ
poor old woma
being stubbor:
Scherer, flat
of money, sca:
Los Angeles d
knew him.
One was 43
eracker and b
to 1927. Anoi
of 34 who h
charges. Alsc
served terms 1:
Johnny Wilds \
Cohen in a Bu
loose war year
Quiet probir
ee
sly that was where
1e Monohan home.
the murder gang.
‘oveney said, ‘just
Had that prompted
ain after he picked
o headline about a.
try to get help for
ested Burbank Po-
sman who went on
nvolved. Not many
its bulletin brought
tered nose who had
ing in Glendale.
1, “you guys got me
» that. My sainted
cy night of my life
i for Monday night,
y under the grilling,
»f the jam.
ies and places,” he
two weeks ‘back that
ved dough, big in-
tenant Coveney de-
on what I heard,” he
en’s boys. I don’t
like I told you.”
under phony name
.
With Cohen, Los Angeles’ No. 1 gangster and gambler,
in prison, the prospect of a “big heist” would be sufficient
to rally several of the Cohen mob together. But how could
they have figured on a rich haul from Mrs. Monohan’s
home?
“That $20,000 she had in the bank,” Andrews suggested.
“Tt could have been noised around that she kept it in the
house.”
Detectives worked on this angle. There had been ru-
mors, they learned, that Iris had given her mother as much
as $40,000 in cash from the divorce settlement. This, how-
ever, did not account for Snoot Hogan’s tip that some of
the Mickey Cohen gang had been on the trail of a big hoard,
cached out of the sight of internal revenue probers.
“That could bring Scherer into the picture,” Lieutenant
Coveney said. ‘Everybody figures a big-time gambler’s
got a fortune hidden away, a lot of it unreported to the
income tax people. If the story got started somehow that
he was using his ex-mother-in-law as his secret banker—”
Andrews nodded. “Even if it was only a rumor,” he
said. .
“Believe me,’ Coveney went on, “the way that house
was ripped apart, the gang was after something really big.
Suppose it was a reported cache by Scherer. If there was
no dough hidden in the house, Mrs. Monohan naturally
couldn’t produce it. It adds up, chief—a mob torturing a
poor old woman to death because they figured she was just
being stubborn.”
Scherer, flatly denying the existence of any secret hoard
of money, scanned a list of Cohen mobsters culled by the
Los Angeles detectives and named four who, he was sure,
knew him.
One was 43-year-old Baxter Shorter, an expert safe-
cracker and bunco artist with a police record dating back
to 1927. Another was William Upshaw, a handsome man
of 34 who had been arrested frequently on gambling
charges. Also on the list were Solly Davis, 46, who had
served terms in Atlanta, Leavenworth and Sing Sing, and
Johnny Wilds who, with Shorter, had been associated with
Cohen in a Burbank gaming enterprise during the money-
loose war years.
Quiet probing in the Los
(Continued on page 72)
Homicide Sergeant Howard Hudson
(L) and Police Chemist Ray Pinker
examine mask found in hideout
4
Monohan murder suspects. Man (I.) identified
as kidnaping. Shorter while his pal drove car
17
aere goes:
y in heavy
: to “Tales
and when
e sound a
e stopped
ir bumper
ing wheel
utes later
and nose
t put my
yu see—no
re always
I can get
just don’t
sent a let-
lots and
, and then
ng. Some-
letter that
cody Who
»!
inything to
sleep since
eavy-eyed.
—not with
‘ing me the
15 minutes.
owse.
u were up
vhile away
vel. I’ve
tience and
write quite
ngs, places
it. Fiction
z about me.
place like
little self.
e for now.
ly enjoyed
28th, 1954
w up here
TV set that
porter on a
rote a story
in a three-
0 build—all
houldn’t be
2ople did to
me painted
ied hunk of
the matron,
ible to write
cot and the
nix on TV.
the movies,
om without
> any spares.
y fiction, for
out art and
to anybody
e I have in
world char-
ssibly exist.
like to have
the money from my story in his name—I mean my share.
Remember, it has to go into the bank in Tommy’s name,
care of Mrs. Webb. I have told Hank that is the way
and there is no changing my mind, understand?
Hank doesn’t write to me much and I’m afraid I was
wrong when I told you that I was sure he’d learned his
lesson and would strictly leave the hay and the junk
alone from now on and be a real daddy to Tommy. Any-
way, maybe he’s not much, but he’s all I have, and I’m
still counting on his coming and getting a job near here as
he faithfully promised.
Have been having daily sessions with the prison dentist.
I sure hate it, but always feel better afterwards. He is
doing wonderful work. I'l] be a glamor-puss yet! Don’t
you think it’s sorta funny, their putting in gold inlays
and bridges and stuff, when they’ve already got some
cyanide eggs marked with my initials?
Will close for now, hope this letter finds you happy
and in the best of health. Sometime have one little
Scotch-on-the-rocks for me, will you? Bye for now.
Yours,
Barbara
February 16th, 1954
Dear Stu Palmer:
I haven’t forgotten you and I did receive your letter. I
would have written sooner, but I have been sitting in the
middle of my bed doing exactly nothing for two weeks
now. My brain, such as it is, feels numb. No sleeping
pills any more, either—maybe you read in the papers
about some joker who tongued them and kept them until
he had a fistful and could knock himself off in his cell?
So they’re forbidden.
I’m sorry I couldn’t have the last books you sent. I don’t
know why they sent them back. Maybe murder mys-
teries might contaminate the morals of the club? Anyway,
I have ‘the magazine with your novelette about Walt
Disney’s studio in it. Tl let you know frankly what I
think. So far so good. But your heroine is too darn pure.
I hate to disappoint you about the snapshots, but I guess
nobody’s kept any of me when I was a girl. Maybe they
got disgusted and tore them all up. There’s plenty of
later ones in the newspaper files, mostly taken with the
camera flash held upside down so I’m lighted from below
and look like a witch or something. (Continued on page 69)
I’m so alone. Hank comes sometimes, and Tommy. I wish I could sce him grow up. But I know I won’t, so there’s no use wishing
SET URE EGE
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Sometimes I feel I’d like to have my sentence commuted. But what’s the sense of living if that life has to be spent in prison?
Sutra tttnittiscnstin
‘
18
+ sells
So you went up to the Ventura School for |
Girls and checked up on me and on my |
Death Cell
Letters
so glad to hear from you.
mother’s record there! So Helen Coad is
assistant matron now—isn’t she a large, |
tired for anything.
— pleasingly-plump woman with a sweet- |
tooth? Send her some candy for me, and
(Continued from page 21) tell her hello for me. I’m sorry that I’m
not one of her graduates to be proud of.
; : When I came here to Quentin, there were
, pie any girl ever get a worse press than four of us condemned people here in this
i A : :
' : wing of the old hospital. By the time
‘ Thanks a is pale ates on one you receive this there will be one, me. An-
dren. Hug them close, as I wis cou other execution tomorrow. It's not pub-
hug my Tommy. : : licly announced, of course, but every-
Sincerely, body knows.
Barbara Gee, Stu, I have been feeling so low
February 25th lately, ever since I took that last fall. And
Dear ‘Stu: my nerves—they are more raw than a rare
There is some talk about my eventually Salen ak. ah log for bar Rive
going back to Corona, because of the ex- e Tules have tightene up. oh reer:
pense in keeping one woman here in a ™0ore and more of these silly dizzy spells;
man’s prison. As you know, I was moved ™aybe because I don’t eat. I'm not kick-
here because some people thought there ar ar ie kent bie Ms Tee ee
might be an attack on my life in the other ae” an it was a orona, susie
place, which is so much more open. That’s - . F
a lot of nonsense. There are only two peo- Richard Magee (Director of the Cali- |
ple who might like me out of the way— fornia Adult Authority, in charge of |
John True and Willie Upshaw—and I don’t Prisons) was up here yesterday. I had so |
think either of them would try anything many things to say to him, but I just froze
as long as I am in prison up. I couldn't talk to him any more than
Both of them know darn well I wasn't I can talk to Father Mac. He said he had JUST OUT! THE MOST EXCITING
along on that caper, but they might possibly } . Pout pute talk with you that lasted ,
think that I know something that could “Ok ; tae % intend ot houl ]
hurt them. If that is the case, then they d ne t pon een a ” ind, That's EVENT OF THE YEAR!
fear me and might prefer me out of the —e for thie time Stu. Thanks for Bien :
way. There is no danger from anyone else, thing. Wiil ite ; ‘ 2c f The gorgeous new TV-RADIO ANNUAL is
’ g. iil write you more later, because E : Ae :
and I don’t really worry about them. irl in this fix dust has to h ropes now available to you. This exciting 1955 year
They're satisfied—they lied my life away. 4 811 In this fix just has to have somebody | yook is better than ever! It covers all the
I'm in, and they’re out. If I die in the ‘© talk to now and then. Best to your | Television and Radio events of the year.
’ : family, and hold them close. You'll enjoy the hundreds of new illustra-
gas chamber, those two are guilty of my : : :
- = oe j : Always the same, tions and you'll be simply thrilled to read
' murder. Maybe they'll pay for it some- Barbara the behind-the-scenes stories of all your
' day, one way or another. People usually favorite stars. Below is a brief description
have to pick up the tab, I've learned. of this really important Annual:
I'm be iif for dying, but I tell you Dear Stir March 14th, 1954 seme sicete dy ebb Aad ner
again, I'd rather have a quick exit than ear stu: ; ee ct on Pea ect abit lps ees
, a commutation to a life sentence, with the , The check arrived okay. Even though | stories Sialic s Par a ce eee
ld possibility of getting out when I'm an old it wasn’t certified, it went through, and Dixon ¢ Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows e Wally Cox e
ric wore Either I’m innocent or not. ‘ now I can pay for my own cigarettes and Jack Webb e Milton Berle.
: wish sometime you'd say what you really S80aP and such like that. Was thankful, NEW SHOWS OF THE YEAR—Stars new and old. who
think. You talk about the objective view- oo ‘ ‘eae i Rg aae hic es helped make recent history. Honert Gi" Lewis's Sid
_ point, but I like to think you have some ankfu oO realize a e igges par ve ° ‘Sans ce Bide ce We Cu
doubts in your mind. went to Mrs. Webb, to help her in taking O'Bhea « James Dunn » William Bishop © Eddie Mercuan
— After all, you have dug up my record care of my Tommy. . : * Gil Stratton Jr.
Ce and you know that never one time in If only Hank won't get his hands on it, .
Aly my whole life have I hurt anybody phys- and go on a spree! He hasn't written, or Te Be et cee ek, Reet oe
. * e a 4 ” wo , P Sone sat
ically, or even been charged with a crime pied up. I ie mers arene, i ie me Moore Show ¢ Your Hit Parade # The Halls Of Ivy ¢ Our
- of violence. Isn't it odd that, accordin me away in the daytime and lying awake | Miss Brooks « Masquerade Party *¢ My Favorite Hus-
to the State’s case, I’d pistol-whip an old all night. I just don’t want to do any- Hort a Ce tote Dine metas — > 2 ee
: lady to death, with a roomful of thugs, big thing! Magee extended the time I could
. strong men, standing by to watch? It just ™ove out into the corridor and exercise, | ALL-TIME FAVORITES—Arthur Godfrey © Ozzie and
: d t k Ss ; ™ but how can you exercise in six feet of Harriet Nelson . Ralph Edwards e Bert Parks e Ten-
caoesnt make sense. F nessee Ernie Ford e Warren Hull e Bill Cullen e Roy
, Please excuse this horrible typing to- ath with : a and sor Rearing Rogers « Gene Autry * Ked Buttons e Jack Bailey «
mt ni ht, but I fainted last Saturda ni ht, watching you? as you. re} just sit. Jack Barry e Ed Sullivan e Art Linkletter e Donald
eless fon GH this Kigh bed endl tune adh head This should take the prize for being the O'Connor ¢ Jimmy Durante « Tom Moore.
a Just another of those things. This is the Shortest letter on record, but more later. GORGEOUS NEW COLOR PORTRAITS OF THE STARS
sary fourth I guess. I just black out. And ] Write, huh? I gotta talk to somebody. —Thrilling 4-color photographs of Liberace e Lucille
an- ny . : : : Sincerely Ball and Desi Arnaz « Eddie Fisher ¢ Gale Storm. These
an- was accused of faking it during the trial, a full page, true-to-life portraits are so unusual that you
“ to delay things. Delay things? Nobody Barbara Graham, or what’s left of her. will want to frame each one of them!
wanted more than little me to get it over!
to I readily. fal MOU: thoes diet g and don't March 18th, 1954 SS eae sek, Meerachin from the most beloved
’ . aytime dram oO an -
let anybody kid you. Dearest Stu:
25 Aside from rie above there isn’t much Thought I had better answer your letter ONLY 50 WHILE THEY LAST
me news. I heard from Hank finally, the other today, because I will probably feel worse ni
ah day—he said he had called you about the tomorrow. Had a note from Al Matthews | This terrific —_ ss a sell-out each i
ae i i today. He went up to Sacramento to see R. | No wonder—everybody wants a copy an
sing money. Send me a little of aS here, care heaaee and they iepropeatan the money only a limited number are printed. Only 50c
vour of the warden, I sure need cigarettes and Y | at your favorite magazine counter. Or, if more
: stuff. Will close for now, hope all is wel] Somehow to keep me here for another few convenient, mail coupon with 50c TODAY.
with you and yours. I like to hear about months. Which is all right with me, though
your dog and your cats. Oh, as you may [| still don’t think I’d be in any danger at Fee Meer SeRPeyshoeeeeges
know, I am trying to get a court order peieiral hate being so much trouble to | Sry.papio MIRROR Dept. MG-555¢@
for a lie-detector test. I pray it will be everybody. e e
granted. Bye for now. Two psychiatrists were up to see me a | @ 205 ©. 42 St., New York 17, N. Y. e
Sincerely, few days ago, but I excused myself. I don’t $ Send me postpaid, a copy of TV-RADIO$
we Barbara feel like having them probing around in | @4NNUAL 1955. I enclose 50c. e
. Mr tes : : ; ’ ‘ e e
- P.S. Finished your story in the magazine, ™y mind. If I can’t talk %w the chaplain, 4 4
went Liked it. She wash't’so pure, after all. But I certainly can’t talk to the doctors. I don’t ome: Op i90 Woe die ecererewialWieie ere Fe Os oO bs 0% ;
she was real. see where they can help me—anybody can | e e
lie and I can lie more than most, and I @ Address... .. cece cece eee eee eee °
March 4th, 1954 have. It’s easy to tell such professional ; Stet e
Dearest Stu: priers what they want to hear, only I'm | @ City--ss+sessseeeee seen ee ees ote........ °
Your letter arrived today. As usual, I am just too tired to lie at the moment. I’m too | ® -
20
torn up at once, like most amateur poetry. I hope this
letter finds you happy and in the very best of health.
Sincerely,
Barbara Graham
January 20th, 1954
Dear Stuart Palmer:
Received your letter. I’m worried about Mom (her
mother-in-law, Mrs. Webb) and Baby Tommy. If Mom
has moved, I don’t know anything about it.
that the money for the story about me in the magazine
gets used for Tommy and isn’t wasted. If Hank (Barbara’s
husband, Henry Graham) is using narcotics again, then
that may be the answer. He writes that when he gets out
of the jug he is coming up here so he can see me on visiting
days. I hope so much he means it. But he’s no letter
writer, and he’s not much of a promise keeper, either.
But if he came, it would make all the difference in the
world to me. I feel so terribly alone all the time.
I wish so much that Tommy could be sent away some-
where, where he’d be safe. I’ll work it out, maybe. I’ve
got some relatives up north who might take him for me.
Mrs. Webb has to work and the kid is alone all afternoon
there. He’s only a baby!
No further news at this end. The grapevine doesn’t
shake. I’m glad to hear that you had a long talk with
the chaplain, Father McAllister, while you were up here.
He’s a wonderful little man, but I can’t talk to him much.
I just can’t. I think of all those times I didn’t go to Con-
fession, and didn’t go to Mass.
Yours sincerely,
Barbara Graham
January 25th, 1954
Dear Stuart Palmer:
Your letter arrived yesterday, and was I glad to hear
from you! About the black eyes—two, not one—that you
moticed in that old police mug photo you found some-
where in the newspaper files, taken when I was under
suspicion of being in bad company or something or other.
It was nothing dramatic. The ,cops never laid a hand on me.
If I have the right to ask twelve guests to watch me sit in the cyanide seat I
wouldn’t want a friend watching. I’d ask only my mother who would really enjoy it
I just hope.
You won’t believe it, but here goes:
I was driving down Broadway in heavy
traffic one Saturday, listening to “Tales
of Hoffman” on the car radio, and when
I leaned over to turn up the sound a
bit, the car in front of me stopped
and banged my own steering wheel
with my face. Twenty minutes later
I had two beauts. My eyes and nose
were so sore that I couldn’t put my
glasses on for days. So, you see—no
melodrama like writers are always
looking for.
I’m almost sure now that I can get
you some pictures, but I just don’t
know how soon it will be. I sent a let-
ter out last night. I write lots and
lots of letters here at night, and then
tear them up in the morning. Some-
times I feel like writing a letter that
would begin: “Dear Anybody Who
Gives a Damn:” There I go!
I can’t think of much of anything to
say today—lI haven’t been to sleep since
yesterday and I’m a little heavy-eyed.
I can’t sleep nights at all—not with
the guards coming in and giving me the
flashlight in the face every 15 minutes.
In the daytime I read and drowse.
Like I told you when you were up
here, I sometimes think I’ll while away
the time by writing a novel. I’ve
started on it a few times, but then I lose patience and
finally tear the thing up. I would be able to write quite
an autobiography. I can think of so many things, places
I’ve been in my mixed-up life, stuff like that. Fiction
around them. But I always come back to writing about me.
Everything: gets that way when you’re in a place like
this—you get too concentrated on your own little self.
Well, my face is hitting the keys, so will close for now.
Oh, I finished the book on Goya’s life; I really enjoyed
it. Thanks a lot.
Sincerely yours,
Barbara
January 28th, 1954
Dear Stuart Palmer:
Thanks for your good letter. Nothing new up here
except that I got the bad news about the little TV set that
Al Matthews was going to send me. Some reporter on a
San Francisco newspaper heard about it and wrote a story
about how I was living here in fantastic luxury in a three-
room suite that cost the taxpapers thousands to build—all
the comforts of home and so on. I guess I shouldn’t be
surprised, after what most of the newspaper people did to
me before and during the trial. They all had me painted
“the ice-blonde witch,” and stuff like that.
You saw my “three-room suite”—a partitioned hunk of
the hospital corridor with an easy chair for the matron,
a closet on one side for my few clothes and a table to write
on, and the cell that’s just got room for my cot and the
John. Anyway, the warden now Says it’s nix on TV.
Of course I can’t get out to exercise or go to the movies,
being the only woman here. So I sit in a room without
even a window.
Don’t forget to send me the books, if you have any spares.
I’ve never been much of a mystery fan, or any fiction, for
that matter. I like biographies and stuff about art and
music. So-called crime books are a laugh to anybody
who’s knocked up against some of the people I have in
my cloudy past. Writers dream up underworld char-
acters, as they call them, who just couldn’t possibly exist.
I_hear, via the grapevine, that Hank would like to have
suddenly and I whacked their bumper '
the mc
Remen
care o:
and th:
Han}
wrong
lesson
alone f
way, n
still co:
he fait}
Have
I sure
doing »
you th
and br
cyanide
Will
and in
Scotch-
I'm soa
{Want to Live?
}
bd Wa MORE | talked to the gal, the more I became convinced she
wasn’t the gal.”
_ “Now Santos and Perkins, they were real bad guys, there was no
question they murdered the old widow in L.A. But everyone I talked to
said she was left-handed, and the person who hit the old lady had to
be right-handed. Also, everyone told me that she couldn't
stand violence, she couldn’t have done a thing like that.
“IT became convinced that Santos and Perkins were using
her as a shield from the gas chamber. They were all three of
them on death row and I went to see Perkins in San Quentin
and gave him holy hell, he was a goner but the least he
could do was save her life.
“A week later he sent a message that he wanted to
see me. When I went to see him, he was furious at
the warden because he had put that I was coming
over the p.a. system. He said Santos was all over-
him like a rug, pressuring him not to talk because if
they left the gat in front they figured the state
might not execute.
“She was a classy gal. She walked to the gas
chamber with ‘high heels on. A lieutenant said to
her, ‘When you hear the pellets drop, breathe deep
and it will be easier that way.’ She said to him,
‘How the hell do you know?’ ”
Three weeks after Barbara Graham's execution,
Montgomery uncovered the testimony of a witness
that had been kept from the jury, which proved she
was not one of the killers. Her story was later made
into the movie “I Want To Live” with Susan
Hayward playing Barbara Graham. Simon Oakland
played Montgomery.
pop 6 ap ty
PHL SBMS em il aa i |
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(Ss RAN AM, ERKIAS $ SRAVS &
~~For those men and women, it’s
an unpleasant hard day’s work, and
: Ye anybody who can’t handle it picked
e the wrong business.
: op I witnessed the executions of
four men and one woman over a
® period of years while I was report-
u 3 t ing and writing news for The Ex-
aminer.
] es I len) “And how did I feel about it? I' | B
think “detached” is the right word, Ss
because if you are not detached, R
a e a you can’t do what you have todo — | _
e watch and listen closely and write | =
about it afterward without emo-
e tional interference. (
: I i leMO] I’m going to tell how it was for
V me, and particularly about a day in h
June 1955 when a woman named
R Barbara Graham was executed in | —
- tandem with two men for the sav-
5 ep orter who Saw age murder of an elderly, crippled E
. widow in Burbank. I was 36 then,
< executions at , and had already witnessed one exe- h
an Quentin found cution at San Quentin. ow
Graham was a woman who just
detachm : missed beauty, fine-featured in a
ent elusive - fragile, almost ethereal way. Her 31 th
years had been a life of rebellion | By
Gale Cook served as a writer, and conflict with the law, begin- | oF
reporter and editor at The Exam- ning at 13 in Oakland. _
iner from 1947 until his retire- L
ment in 1986. During that time, he A tragic figure :
witnessed five executions at San In death she was to become a | ©
Quentin's gas chamber. figure of tragedy and controversy Se
By Gale Cook } from the portrayal of her life in the .
SPECIAL TO THE EXAMINER film “I Want to Live.” The picture oh
sion ? raised doubts about her guilt and | P"
Al i 1s running out for Robert won an Oscar for actress Susan
2 _ Harris, who murdered two Hayward. . “| po
h ie and ate their: All that would come later. This, | th
f gers, and the media is in a: however, was real-life judgment fal
ieee to watch the first state exe-! day. kn
o 4 n In 25 years. Last week probably saw a flurry | fo!
t6 sai or a be, going over: of Harris prep work at “Q” ae
in ook through the checking the chair straps, oiling se
“teen ee as - Hine on ringer pies testing | ch
: _}| Harris dies in! the mechanism for dropping two | H
CENTENCED (| that custom- cheesecloth packets of cyanide | Cx
: 7 ee 55-year- granules into a bow! of sulfuric acid | hg
] im octagon under the chairs. ii
; ll) (iit || steel contrap- After all, the old chamber hasn’t th
y : tion called the been used since the 1967 execution
—@—— 5 net gas of Aaron Mitchell, who had killeda | —
: _§| chamber? . peace officer during a robbery. | —
| WITNESS }| Pretty) Mitchell fell through a crack in a | O¢
: TO -«}| shocking, if long hiatus in capital punishment | M
HISTORY || YOU are a nor- in California. He is the only person | bo
ccna are heeds en at San Quentin since | ble
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shadow falls so cruelly across its most lengendarily sinful city:
George Sterling, its premiere poet, called it the cruel, gray.
city of love. San Francisco, like Paris, is a city of light, but it
has a dark strain, a mixture of the quick violence of the
frontier and a deathly hedonism born of boredom with’
earthly perfection. There has always been a mystery to
the place, a mystery which was spore to the work of
Dashiell Hammett, who invented the hard-boiled detective
novel during his years in Frisco. The Maltese Falcon is the
gem of the genre.
I once tried to explain Hammett’s complex relationship
with San Francisco: Hammett didn’t simply use the town as a
/
~
setting, San Francisco was a character in his work, at times a hood,
at times a madam, at times the tough beautiful crust of the earth that influenced people and defined the course of events in his world of low life with high class insights of a compact beauty. Hammett was used often
by The Examiner, which published his fiction in seriatim; “Tale of Two Women,” one of his original stories (which remains unknown to the anthologists) that appeared in the Examiner in 1946, is reprinted here.
This noir side — the dark back side of San Francisco’s smiling moon — is based, however unfortunately, in fact rather than fiction. Of the reporters who chronicled the underworld of the smiling city, the best -
was Ed Montgomery, the Examiner’s Pulitzer Prize winning crime reporter, pictured above. Montgomery fits the cliche about the mold being broken when they made it: He was Casey Crime Photographer
without a camera, he wore brown hats and gray suits and glasses that fit his firm face like the bridle on a horse anda hearing aid as large as the nipple on a baby bottle. (Once, froma precarious perch on the floor:
above a jury room, he lowered his hearing aid into an air duct to catch the jury’s final deliberations and scoop the opposition on a murder trial verdict.)
Montgomery’s no-nonsense reporting helped send many among the elite to prison, among them Artie Samish, the lobbyist-czar of the California Legislature, and Jimmy Tarantino, a ’50s gossip magazine
publisher who shook down the high and the mighty. But Montgomery got as many out of jail — several of them off death row — as he put it, innocents who were the victims of what he called “L.A. Justice,” his’
term of opprobrium for the abuse of process that was by no means geographically confined to Lotus Land. 4
Montgomery’s one failure was the celebrated case of Barbara Graham, a hard luck girl with a good heart who died in the San Quentin gas chamber for a murder she had nothing to do with. Montgomery
believed her innocent and fought to save her, and to his everlasting regret came up with the proof of her innocence three weeks after her death.
The retired Examiner ace is currently writing his memoirs with former UPI man Don Thackery, a book every crime buff will salivate for. Montgomery was so good at his trade that not only did criminals’
respectfully confess to him rather than to the cops, but he actually found the buried bodies when the cops couldn’t. Witness, here, two of the Bay Area’s most famous murder cases — “Grandma” Iva Kroeger’s
burying two bodies in the basement of her Mission District home, and the slaying of schoolgirl Stephanie Bryant by Burton Abbott. In both cases, Ed Montgomery of the Examiner dug up the bodies.
Literally. — Warren Hinckle. ae
; TUESDAY, MARCH 3.1987 7~
=| 26 ] 3 =
PERHAPS IT IS because the sun sets last in the west that the _
\
h/
WM.
a7 Wu
ad
‘OINYS * ONTYY
et ae ee Sayles ZB ana oa ate Ak on Paes hn aa Sg A OM ao aa
till in the courts, but they
die now for the M@@ohan
r,
ham had been arrested with
s and Santo, her lover at the
nt, after the Monohan mur-
Yr Case.
me these three, that day od
hajor news story. Graham’s
vas “official.” She cried that
is innocent, but this small cry
arcely heard until later.
were told that she spoke
y to her attorney in an execu-
biding cell that night, saying,
| people are always so sure
p doing justice.”
How of a doubt
yes, there was an uneasy,
shadow of a doubt about
am. Not the ‘“‘reasonable
cused. No, we reminded our-
, the jury had found her
d a reasonable doubt.”
ember, this was another
1xecution protests were only
per. I don’t recall demonstra-
utside the prison the next
ng, Friday, June 3.
rrived at San Quentin at
9 o'clock with 15 other re-
s. It was a sunny day after
orning high fog burned off.
ly sense of uneasiness was
sponsibility of doing my job
ings started going wrong im-
tely. Then-Gov. Goodwin
t telephoned the warden at
.m., ordering the 10 a.m. exe-
held up for an eleventh-hour
to the Supreme Court.
ham had spent the night
in her cell in red pajamas,
to sleep or eat. She became
he was not involved i in the.
xt, were simply role players.
’ that judges say must benefit ©
“to a moral certainty and
ee ee et ene. ee er is ete Beene Ri ie yt Re CP he Bee a
The stay was lifted by the egover-"
nor at 10:26 a.m. af@r the court
refused the writs, and Warden
Harley Teets reset the execution |
for 10:45 a.m. Graham was readied _
in her cell, a long stethoscope at-
_tached to her back.
At 10:41 a.m., 90 deonnds before
she was to enter the gas chamber:
another phone call, this from the"
‘Supreme Court clerk, |
Another petition, another stay.
Graham repeated her tortured
cry.
Waiting again. At 11:17, another
_ call, canceling the stay. This time it -
was go, for 11:30 a.m. I was stand-.
ing against one of the three win-
dows in the witness area. As al-
ways, I concentrated on taking
notes. I was an observer, not a
participant, I unconsciously re-
minded myself. This didn’t affect:
me.
Death with dignity
Graham died with great dignity.
She wore a black blindfold over her
eyes, by her own request. “I don’t
want to have to look at people,” she -
had told the warden.
She achieved a strange beauty
in her last moments. Her soft, dark
brown hair was perfectly in place. -
Her face was an ivory cameo ac-
cented by the mask and her rouged
crimson lips. She walked the few
steps from her lonely cell to the -
steel door at the rear of the gas
chamber with head erect.
She wore a beige wool suit with
covered buttons, pumps, gold pen-
dant earrings and a wedding band.
She was trembling in hand and
body as she sat down. Her lips
moved constantly, as if in prayer, .
as guards adjusted the straps
across each arm, her chest and legs.
One of the guards asked her’
UPI FILE PHOTO
Barbara Graham was executed on June 3, 1955: “Good people are always
so sure they’re doing justice,” she had told her attorney the night before.
whether the straps were all right,
and she nodded and seemed to
speak. He patted her shoulder as
he stepped out. of the chamber.
Another guard told her to breathe
normally, then left.
She sat quietly, wetting her lips.
once or twice, for almost a full :
minute. Then she breathed deeply,
and her head fell forward. In 8
minutes she was dead.
Three hours later, at 2:30 p.m., !
Santo and Perkins were strapped
into the chairs side by side.
-- their bravado. Both were barefoot-_
ed and dressed in denigg trousers
_ and white shirts. ©
/
Santo, freshly shaven with his
-pencil-line mustache in place,
- made a wisecrack as the guards
~ moved out of the chamber. “Don’t
_ you fellows do anything I wouldn’t
do,” he called.
He and Perkins appeared to
chat until the first breath of hydro-
-eyanic acid fumes contorted their
faces, and they fell still.
_ Back in the office preparing to
write my story, I recalled what
Emmett Perkins had told someone
_ after he and Santo had killed
Young and the three children. “It’s
been an awful gruesome day,” he
said.
And that’s the kind of day it had
been at San Quentin, exactly. :
As I began to write, I realized
that I was emotionally involved af-
ter all. Graham had been subjected
~ to deep humiliation and torment.
This had nothing to do with her
guilt or innocence. Those inhu-
mane, last-minute delays had
made her die a thousand deaths
instead of one.
‘And so I became drdétachad 3 in
the lead sentence of the story.
“Barbara Graham was tortured
-to death by the sovereign state of
California yesterday,” I wrote.
That sentence lasted only
through the first edition of the pa-
per. Then a properly detached edi-
tor changed “tortured” to “put.”
I would witness and write about
-yet another execution after that, a
couple of years later, and then no
more.
As for the death penalty, I voted
for it in Proposition 7 in 1978. But
now? Well, detachment isn’t all-
that easy anymore.
eae hah oes
Through the house, the killers
searched—for what, no one knew
"A
Ai
Expensive jewels and $500 cash
were spurned by the killer mob
Mabel Monohan: She wouldn't have let a stranger
into her home, neighbors were sure. Yet she did
“Good. It’s the kind of evidence that
could put somebody in the green room
at San Quentin.”
In the library, a reading-lamp was
lighted beside a big red leather chair
near the fireplace. A book, ‘‘The Pur-
ple Pony Murders,” lay face down over
the arm of the chair.
“She must have been reading here
when somebody came to the door,”
Coveney declared. “And whoever it
was, she must have recognized him.
The lights are still on in front and the
32
door has a peep-hole in it. She could
have seen him easily before she opened
the door.”
To back up this theory, the rest of
the doors and windows in the house
were locked from the inside.
Every room in the house had been
ransacked. Even the piano bench, the
bread-box in the kitchen and the cup-
board on the service porch had been
emptied in the search.
And every room had blood smears.
Assistant Chief McAuliffe suggested:
“The killer must have dragged her
from room to room, beating her in an
attempt to force her to tell where she
was hiding something.”
“He must have been searching for a
safe of some kind,’ Andrews said.
“That's why the rugs are all pulled up
and the heavy furniture moved.”
An officer came in then and told the
chief that Vandergrift had a witness
in the front yard. Andrews went out
and the detective introduced him to
Doctor David Hutton.
ape tons
“Doctor Hutton was passing here
about eight o’clock Monday night and
he saw a white-haired man stumbling
around and talking to himself,” Van-
dergrift said. “He noticed a yellow
— convertible parked at the curb,
10.””
Doctor Hutton declared that he did
not know the man and never had seen
him before.
“What do you know about Mrs. Mono-
han?” Andrews asked.
Doctor Hutton shrugged. “I never
met the woman, although I’ve often
seen cars parked around the house.
Quite a few of them had Nevada license
plates. Of course, I’ve heard, because
she was the mother-in-law of Tutor
Scherer, that she has big gambling in-
terests in Las Vegas. But I personally
don’t know a thing about the woman.”
NDREWS issued an order for an im-
mediate all-points bulletin on a
gray-haired man driving a_ yellow
Chrysler convertible.
As Andrews returned to the house,
McAuliffe met him at the door.
“The killer must have missed what he
was after,” McAuliffe announced, ex-
hibiting a purse. “Our lab boys found
it in a closet. It has five hundred in
cash and a mess of jewelry. If the stuff
is genuine—and I’m sure it is—I’d guess
the jewelry will go to ten or twenty
thousand dollars.”
Had Mrs. Monohan outwitted the
killer by hiding her money and jewels
in the old purse in the closet? Or had
her killer been after something else?
Andrews wasn’t sure. He doubted that
Mrs. Monohan would have taken the
horrible beating she had been given to
protect the jewelry and $500.
Furthermore, many expensive items
which would have tempted an ordinary
burglar still were in the house—silver- °
ware, binoculars, cameras and other ob-
jects which could be turned into ready
cash—all in plain sight.
ig here
sht and
umbling
*,” Van-
yellow
he curb,
» he did
iad seen
;. Mono-
‘I never
‘e often
house.
1 license
because
f Tutor
y¥ing in-
‘rsonally
yman.”
*ranim-
n ona
yellow
y
» house,
what he
ced, ex-
‘s found
idred in
the stuff
("d guess
twenty
ted the
d jewels
Or had
else?
ited that
ken the
given to
ve items
ordinary
—silver-
tT r
i
Two of the men in Barbara's life, toothless Emmett Perkins,
with coffee, and Jack Santo, the brutal one, with doughnut
A bank book was found showing that
Mrs. Monohan had $20,000 on deposit
at a local bank. Surely, with that
balance, she would not have remained
silent during her torture to protect $500
in her purse.
Next, the body was sent to the morgue
for an autopsy by the chief county
autopsy surgeon, Doctor Frederick D.
Newbarr.
The lab crew reported that, judging
by an examination of all the blood-
stains, the killer undoubtedly had worn
gloves.
One neighbor reported seeing Mrs.
Monohan at three o’clock on Monday.
Her dog had been howling intermit-
tently since early Tuesday. Apparently
the widow had been killed sometime
Monday night.
Further questioning of the neighbors
disclosed only that Mrs. Monohan lived
quietly and had no close friends in the
district. She often had visitors, but the
neighbors did not know who they were.
Mrs. Monohan was very chary about
letting anyone inside her house. She
kept the front door locked and on a
chain and opened the door only after
first talking through the peep-hole.
The fact that the front door had been
open and the chain undamaged indi-
cated strongly that the killer was some-
one she had admitted, someone she
knew and trusted. <
Andrews and his men returned to
headquarters, where a call was waiting
from Captain W. E. Hagi of the Glen-
dale police. When Andrews got in touch
with him, Hagi said he had read a tele-
type notice of the slaying and was inter-
ested because it was similar to the kill-
ing of Mrs. Katie Kirk, an 84-year-old
= who had been strangled there in
1950.
“The only lead we ever had was an old
second-story man by the name of Fred
Gooble,” Hagi told him. “We placed him
near the scene, but we couldn’t pin it
on him. If Gooble shows up in your in-
vestigation, I’d like you to keep our
case in mind.”
Andrews asked for a picture and the
file on Gooble and issued a pick-up
order for the man so he could be ques-
tioned.
Mrs. Monohan’s daughter was in New
York, and Andrews put through a long-
distance call. Mrs. Sowder was horrified
at the news of her mother’s death.
“I was with her for three weeks, up
until last Thursday,” Mrs. Sowder said.
“And I talked to her at two o'clock
Monday afternoon on the telephone.”
“What for?” f
“I wanted to get a recipe,” Mrs. Sow-
der explained. “It's for cooking fish.
Mother picked it up when she and Dad
were on tour in France, and she was
going to give it to me before I came
back, but it slipped my mind.”
Andrews told the daughter that the
house had been ransacked. “Do you
know what the person could have been
looking for?”
Mrs. Sowder had no idea. She was
positive that her mother kept only a
small amount of cash in the house and
owned only a small amount of jewelry.
The $500 and the jewelry in the purse
Three times Barbara entered the death chamber, twice she
walked out. This is how Hollywood depicted her final trip
belonged to her. She had left it there
when she flew back to New York.
She. said the jewelry had a value of
about $10,000, but she did not use it
very often, and for that reason she as
yet had made no effort to get it back.
“We hear your mother may have had
an interest in a gambling establishment
in Las Vegas,” Andrews said. “Is it
possible the killing could be connected
with that in some way?” :
Mrs. Sowder said the rumor was
ridiculous.
“Mother and my first husband always
got along fine, and they were friends
even after I divorced him,” Mrs. Sow-
der said. She added lightly: ‘“‘They were
both about the same age and had the
same interests, but I’m sure Tutor never
gave her any gambling interests he
might have had.”
Mrs. Sowder promised that she and
her husband would get the first plane
and fly to California to take care of
funeral arrangements and answer any
further questions.
[ ates in the evening the auto theft
division of the Los Angeles police
reported a possible lead on the gray-
haired man and the yellow convertible
Doctor Hutton had seen near Mrs. Mon-
ohan’s home.
A former vaudeville performer by the
name of George Dudley had rented a
yellow convertible on Monday after-
noon. He had failed to return the car
and it had been found abandoned in a
parking lot on South Main Street
Wednesday morning.
“This Dudley has gray hair,” a Los
Angeles officer told Andrews. “But ap-
parently he gave his right name and
address when he rented the car. We’ve
been to the hotel where he was staying
and he hasn’t been in since Monday.”
Dudley, a former vaudeville man, -
could have known Mrs. Monohan. An
all-points bulletin was issued for him. -
The following morning, Doctor New-
barr had his report ready on the autop-
sy findings. Mrs. Monohan had died
from asphyxiation due to strangulation
and from a cranial hemorrhage. Nu-
merous cuts and bruises on her face,
head and hands had been made by some
relatively sharp instrument.
“In other words, she was strangled
and beaten to death,” Andrews said.
“That’s right,” ctor Newbarr re-
plied. “But the killer did not use his
hands to strangle her. She has a bruise
around the throat. Very likely he used
a piece of the same cloth that bound
her wrists.” .
Andrews asked about the time of
death and Doctor Newbarr placed it as
sometime Monday evening.
He added one very important piece
of information. Bits of skin and flesh
had been found under the dead woman’s
nails, showing that she had clawed her
assailant.
“If you can catch up with him in the
next week or so, he’ll have the marks
she put on him,” the doctor said.
The autopsy findings bore out the
earlier theory that Mrs. Monohan had
not died immediately. She had suffered
(Continued on page 55)
Barbara had sold an alibi once. Why shouldn't she buy one now?
alain
Linon ATS Be of
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ie
; <= ; yore TO Seg re mn -s Se
; . ® CES
a
GRAHAM, Barbara, PERKINS, Emmet Re, and SANTO, John, whites,
Quentin (Los Angeles County) 6-3=1955,
as Los Angeles
N JUNE 3, 1955, a woman named
Barbara Graham was put to death
in San Quentin prison for a particu-
larly revolting murder.
A motion picture entitled “I Want to
Live,” purportedly the story of Bar-
bara Graham, is currently in release
throughout the United States. The mo-
tion picture indicates that Barbara
Graham was an innocent victim of cir-
cumstances and had no part in the
murder,
A story entitled “The Mystery of
Mabel Monohan,” detailing the investi-
gation that led to Barbara Graham’s
arrest, was published in the August,
1953, issue of OrFIcraL DETECTIVE STo-
RIES. This investigation indicated quite
clearly that Barbara Graham was a
willing party to the murder.
Since the release of the movie, an
overwhelming number of readers have
written to OFFICIAL DETECTIVE STORIES
about the case. Because of the immense
30
i
asphyxiated San
Glamorous rebel without a cause, as in the movie, or.
heartless gang moll who murdered with no compunction,
police say? Let's look at the record
public interest it has aroused, OFFICIAL
has decided to violate a previously un-
swerving policy and for the first time in
its history reprint a story from an ear-
lier issue, with changes being made only
to bring the story up to date.
Here is what was published in 1953 as
“The Mystery of Mabel Monohan”:
HE murder of Mabel Monohan was
discovered by her gardener, Mit-
chell Truesdale, at noon Wednes-
day, March 11, 1953, in her home in
Burbank, California.
Truesdale called the police, and Chief
Rex Andrews rushed to the scene with
all his available men. Among them were
Assistant Chief John A. McAuliffe, De-
tective Lieutenants Robert Coveney and
Stanley Paggeot and Detectives Edward
Vandergrift and Robert Loranger.
Truesdale was waiting for them on
the front porch of the swank house on
the corner.
LOX. Na hee :
s
“I went around back to go to work,”
Truesdale told them, “But the gate was
locked.”
A high stucco wall enclosed the back
yard. The officers could see several
floodlights burning. Two more lights on
the front corners of the house also were
illuminated.
“So I tried the front door. I rang the
bell, but nobody answered,” Truesdale
went on. “I knew the old lady was kind
of hard of hearing and I pushed on the
front door. It was open. I stuck my head
in to holler at her and I saw the blood.”
The front room was a mess. Rugs
were pulled up, furniture overturned
and drawers dumped. Smears of blood
were everywhere.
“I didn’t know what had happened,
so I went inside,” the gardener declared.
“Blood was all over the floor in the
hall. I followed it and I found her.”
Mrs. Monohan lay on her side in a
closet. A pillowcase, heavily stained with
\
_ BARBARA GRAHAM;
Hollywood's Barbara, splendidly
portrayed by Susan Hayward, is
shown in two stills at the left
dried blood, had been pulled over her
head, and her hands were tied behind
her back. Rice
“Everybody keep out. until we've had
the whole house photographed and gone
over for fingerprints,” Chief Andrews
told his men. “Meanwhile, move around
the neighborhood. See if anybody heard
or saw anything. From the looks of the
. Way the blood has dried, she’s probably
been dead a couple of days.”
WHILE the lab crew worked on the
house, Andrews questioned Trues-
dale in more detail.
he cared for the lawn each week on
Wednesday. Mrs. Monohan had been
alive and well on his last visit.
“Did she live here alone?” Andrews
asked.
“Most of the time,” Truesdale said.
“Only for the last couple of weeks an-
other woman was here. I guess it was
her daughter. I saw her the last time
I came and the two times before that.”
Andrews called his office and asked
a clerk to locate Mrs. Monohan’s daugh-
ter.
“Try the newspaper society editors,”
he said. “They'll know where she is. All
she has to do is sneeze and they run a
column on her.”
Burbank police were familiar with
Mrs. Monohan; her daughter, and the
house, which is in the fashionable
Mountain View District. It had been the
home of L. B. “Tutor” Scherer, a big-
time gambler.
Scherer, part owner of the Pioneer,
Club in Las Vegas and mentioned in
the Kefauver investigation, had lived
there with his wife and his mother-in-
law, who was Mrs. Monohan. Three
years previously, when his wife, Iris,
divorced Scherer after eight years of
married life, she was given the house as
Part of her settlement. Iris had married
multi-millionaire oil man J. Robert
Sowder and established a residence on
Park Avenue in New York, leaving her
mother the swank seven-room Califor-
nia home.
In her earlier days Mrs. Monohan,
now 63, had been a world champion
roller skater and had Played on the
Orpheum circuit and toured Europe in
an act with her husband, George Mono-
han. She had been a widow for six
years and had been seriously crippled
in an auto accident a few years before.
Iris had been a Promising Hollywood
starlet before her marriage to Scherer.
This much the police knew from
numerous newspaper stories, for Mrs.
Monohan, Iris, Scherer and Sowder
were always front-page copy.
When the lab crew had finished its
work around the body, the pillowcase
was removed from the widow’s head.
Andrews grimaced, sickened. The
head and face had been beaten unmer-
cifully.
“ty R SEAS aides ah ig 9 See edie! oon & on
The gardener said -
j
¥
Pe
‘ beaten an old woman that way, with
her hands tied behind her back,” Cove-
ney suggested. ‘““That’s about the worst
thing I’ve ever seen.”
His thoughts went to the ransacked
rooms.
This is the real Barbara, with
her third, not her first, child.
Note the close facial similarity
“Only a crazy person could have
Andrews turned away from the body.
“I don’t know,” he said. “We may
have something big here. It could be
gang stuff.” :
One of the lab men called to An-
drews from the front room. When the
chief arrived, he pointed to a spot on
the floor behind a big davenport which
had been pulled out from the wall.
“I don’t know what this fellow was
after, but look at that. A perfect print
if I ever saw one,” the lab man said.
In a thin layer of dust on the hard-
wood floor was a footprint. It showed
a waffie-weave sole, the type used on
tennis or leisure shoes. Even a trade
name was visible.
“Can you preserve that?” Andrews
asked. : Hi
“We'll photograph it first and then
spray it with fine oil and try to make
a moulage,” the lab man replied.
Was Barbara Graham
Guilty of Murder?
HE current motion-picture, “I Want to Live,” is the story of the
agonies of a young woman, Barbara Graham, as she awaits execu-
tion. Thus it is a strong commentary on capital punishment. :
Unfortunately, to present its points as well as possible and to
create the greatest dramatic conflict, the movie also carries the impli-
cation that Barbara Graham might be innocent of the murder for which
she was executed.
In fairness to the many outstanding police officers who investi-
gated this case and the prosecutors who took it into court, the original
Barbara Graham story is republished here. We suggest that you read
it either before or after you have seen the motion picture.—The Editor.
iiake 35,
Pees: tay
By J. K. Harris
~ Special Investigator for
ACTUAL DETECTIVE STORIES
31
ed
GRAHAM, PERKINS & SANTOS,
Jean Young, 7, brutally murdered
by stickup men to seal her lips
as Gard Young left his busy su-
permarket and drove to his two-
family home near the outskirts of
Chester, logging village situated in the
Cascade Mountains of northeastern
California. Arriving at home shortly
after one o’clock, Young bundled four
children, his three little girls and Mi-
chael Saile, a four-year-old boy who
lived upstairs, into his green, 1951
Chrysler hard-top convertible and
headed out along the macadam sur-
face of State Highway 36 due east to
Westwood, a town of around 7000
population.- He was going to pick up
money which he would need to cash
the checks of lumberjacks and mill-
workers who traded at his store, and
he had decided to give the children a
pleasure drive at the same time.
Gard Young’s trip was to be any-
thing but pleasant. It was to be sud-
denly and savagely fatal to the kids,
and to himself. And it was destined
G =< AUTUMN was in the air
Master Mystery
MASTER DETECTIVE,
GASSED CA XXX*X 1955
ORROR IN T
Judy, 6, sister of Jean, saw too
much on pleasure trip, was slain
to pose a baffling mystery that law
agencies have been unable to solve
despite rewards totaling $8000.
Young and his daughters, Jean, 7,
Judy, 6, and Sondra, 3, entered the
Bank of America branch in Westwood
at two o’clock that afternoon of Octo-
ber 10th, 1952. Michael Saile, a cap
pistol and holster belted about his tiny
waist, dashed in ahead of the girls.
Young did some figuring at a desk,
then stepped up to a cage and drew
out $7128. Most of this was to be used
in cashing that day’s payroll for the
employees of the Collins Pine Lumber
Co., the main industry of Chester.
“Sorry to have to give you this old
money,” the teller remarked to Young.
“This stuff was due to go into the
federal reserve for new bills. We’re
short of new paper at the moment.”
The grocer accepted the worn and
dirty bills; $7000 in twenties, $100 in
singles, the rest in change. It made a
sizable bundle and the grocer stuffed
the paper money into a large leather
wallet, which he shoved into his hip
pocket. He was seen leaving the bank
at 2:50 p.m., the four children at his
heels.
At about five o’clock, Mrs. Christal
Young finished cooking three trays of
September, 1953.
Baby sister, Sondra, was beaten,
lived, couldn't describe killers
gingerbread and set them down to
cool. When she glanced at the clock,
she was surprised that Gard and the
youngsters had not returned. She
phoned the market.
“Mr. Young isn’t back yet,” she was
told. “Some of the lumber men have
been in to get their paychecks cashed
but we’ve had to ask them to wait.”
“He probably had some business in
Westwood,” Mrs. Young decided.
When Mrs. Saile called to ask about
her son, Michael, the grocer’s wife
gave the same answer. But by six
o’clock she became worried and tele-
phoned a family friend, Howard El-
liott.
“Gard took the girls and the Saile
boy to Westwood this afternoon and
they aren’t back yet,” she told Elliott.
“Tt’s so late I’m afraid the car has
broken down somewhere along the
road and Gard can’t get to a phone.”
“Let’s drive that way and find out,”
replied Elliott. “I’ll be along in ten
minutes.”
Mrs. Young bundled up Baby
Wayne, her other child, and rode with
Elliott toward Westwood. They
scanned the ditches and narrow en-
trances to the logging roads where the
car, if broken down, might have been
Young 9
Saile, 4
Schooler told the
-obably has been
ary trail. Look in
n. Think of those
ewhere!”
nen were divided
ish-choked woods
andoned, honey-
lighway.
ster Lumber firm
State police cars
up the mountain-
1e frantic mother.
lied. “He tries to
» pick up a hitch-
ng to pick up any
ily wouldn’t have
| that money, and
1 the woods carry-
anterns, a Chester
s small plane. He
t over the forest,
studied the tangle
car parked on the
turn and whipped
his find.
aw parked auto in
of horrible crime
>
At the same time, Mr. and Mrs. G. M. Bridges, who had
just returned from a deer hunt, learned of the search.
‘Young’s car was green, and had a broken tail light,” posse-
men told them.
The couple remembered seeing such a car parked near
Bailey Creek at about 5:30 that afternoon. Sheriff Schooler
received this report just as the flier was reporting his dis-
covery.
Officers, including men from the state crime laboratory,
drove out to the side road leading*to the Bailey Creek area.
They posted guards at its entrance to keep out the curious.
Then, guided by the couple, the caravan bounced up the
rutted lane.
“There it is,’ Bridges said. The men saw the rear end of
the green car, partly hidden from the road by a clump of
mesquite and scrub timber. °
Schooler read the California license, nodded. “That’s it.”
They examined the-ground for clues as they walked for-
ard. None was to be seen; pine needles and leaves had
taken no footprints. No one was in the abandoned car.
Deputy Gillispie stooped and looked at the rear bumper.
“There’s blood on this!” he said. ‘‘And here are the keys, on
the ground!”
Aftermath:- woman who lost husband, two
children, keeps vigil over wounded baby
Blood on the bumper. Keys dropped, apparently after the
trunk had been unlocked. Schooler slipped a key into the
lock and swung the trunk lid-up. Some in the group gasped,
others cursed.
The bloodied face of what had been Gard Young stared
up at them. A white cloth blindfold had slipped off. The
corpse was high in the trunk, jammed in,on top of four other
bodies—tiny ones. .
“Young and the kids, all dead!”
Deputies lifted the uppermost corpse and lowered it to
the ground. Young’s skull had been crushed by fierce blows
from behind. His wallet and the money were missing. Mo-
tive for the massacre was clear. A three-foot length of new,
white sash cord was tied to the right wrist.
“His hands were tied, then he was killed,” Schooler theo-
rized. “Then one hand was freed to make it easier to jam
him into the trunk.”
The remains of Jean and Judy were lifted out by hands
that shook with horror and rage. The body of their play-
mate, little Michael Saile, was placed beside them. All had
crushed skulls, all were cold. A deputy reached far back and
slipped his arms under Sondra, the youngest of the group.
“Hey!” he gasped. “This one’s alive!”
The unconscious child, her head also terribly beaten,
whimpered, ~
“Give her first aid, and rush her to the Westwood hos-
pital,” Sheriff Schooler snapped. “They may save her life—
and she may be able to tell who did this.”
The sheriff studied the scene after Sondra had been driven
away in a squad car. “That mesquite stopped the car from
rolling down into the creek. If it had gone down, it might
have stayed hidden for weeks.”
While fingerprint men went over the car with their
brushes and powder, other officers searched the ground
around it. There was no sign of any struggle.
“That means the murders took place somewhere else,”
Schooler decided. “At least two persons were involved.
After the slaughter, they stuffed the bodies in the trunk.
Then one of them drove Young’s car here and abandoned it,
after trying to push it into the creek. His partner followed
in their getaway car. Let’s spread out. I don’t believe they
would dare to drive this load very far.”
Three-quarters of a mile away they came onto an area
used as a garbage dump. A narrow road led into this clear-
ing, which was 200 yards off the Chester-Westwood high-
way.
One deputy picked up a piece of adding machine tape,
which recorded the $7128 drawn from the bank.
“Looks like this was where the murders took place,” he
said.
There were bits of matted hair and flecks of blood on the
ground: A piece of white cloth matched the blindfold used
on Young; also found was a length of sash cord.
The dump was in Plumas county, so direction of the in-
vestigation fell on Sheriff Schooler.
The death weapon was found on the following day, Sun-
day, by Deputy Sheriff Ed Spellmeyer. It was an 18-inck
length of gas pipe, hidden under bushes at the rim of the
clearing. Spellmeyer let it lie where he saw it until finger-
print experts could examine it. Like Young’s car, it had no
fingerprints that could prove useful.
On Monday, as the investigation got into high gear, pay-
roll records of all industries in the area were checked, to
learn if any employees had unaccountably been absent from
work Friday afternoon. Every workman in every major
firm. passed this test.
The pipe and the length of sash cord were the only clues
to the killers that had been found. The aroused citizens of
pushed or driven to get it out of the way of traffic. They saw
no trace of the machine or its occupants.
“I’m frightened,” the young mother whispered when they
reached the outskirts of Westwood.
“T’ll call the bank cashier at his home,” Elliott decided.
He was put in touch with the teller who had served Young,
and was told that the missing man had withdrawn more
; than $7000 in cash.
| “We'd better get in touch with the sheriff. I don’t like the
| looks of this,” he told the distraught woman.
He telephoned Robert Gillispie, resident deputy sheriff.
Gillispie in turn long-distanced Sheriff Melvin Schooler in
Quincy, the Plumas county seat, more than 40 miles to the
| south.
| “Tll drive up right away,” Schooler told his deputy.
“Meantime, organize a search party. And phone Susanville
to alert the Lassen County sheriff’s office.”
The line between Plumas and Lassen Counties crossed
the highway between Westwood and Chester. Schooler
knew that had anything happened to Young and the chil-
dren on their trip home, it could have occurred in either
county
“Call in the state police, too,’’ Schooler directed. “If Young
had seven thousand dollars on him, he’d be a mark for any
stickup man.”
When Sheriff Schooler arrived at Westwood, he met
Sheriff Olin Johnson of Lassen County. The two took charge
of a posse of more than 100 loggers, millworkers and busi-
nessmen from Chester and Westwood assembled by Deputy
\ Gillispie. ;
“This man and four children have disappeared somewhere
and Sheriff O. Johnson
inspect rope found near probable scene of murder
Sheriff Schooler (/.)
24
along the road between your two towns,” Schooler told the
posse. “If they were waylaid, the car probably has been
driven up some logging road. Go down every trail. Look in
every clearing where a car could be hidden. Think of those
youngsters, probably cold and crying somewhere!”’
The hunt was speedily organized. The men were divided
into groups, each given a square of the brush-choked woods
to search. The logging roads, many abandoned, honey-
combed the area for miles back from the highway.
Six radio-equipped trucks from the Chester Lumber firm
patroled the roads, directing the searchers. State police cars
from Chico, Redding and Red Bluff roared up the mountain-
side, bringing troopers to join the hunt.
Sheriff Scho$ler took time to question the frantic mother.
“Does your husband have any enemies?”
“None that I know of,” Mrs. Young replied. “He tries to
be friendly with everyone.”
That gave the sheriff a lead. ‘‘Would he pick up a hitch-
hiker?” :
“Never. He always says it is a crazy thing to pick up any
stranger on the highway. And he certainly wouldn’t have
broken his rule when he was carrying all that money, and
when the car was filled with kids.”
That night, while the posse beat through the woods carry-
ing flashlights and surplus navy electric lanterns, a Chester
aviator named Don Nasson gassed up his small plane. He
took off at dawn on Friday, soaring out over the forest, |
skimming the towering treetops as he studied the tangle
below. Within minutes, he spotted a green car parked on the
lip of Bailey Creek. Nasson banked in a turn and whipped
back toward the Chester airport to report his find.
At tr
just
“Young
men tc
The
Bailey -
receive
covery
Office
the gre
mesqui
Scho
They
Ward. |
taken ;
Depu
“There
the gro
¥ Twas ie ; : : /
‘G. M. Bridges, deer hunter, saw parked auto in
woods, led police to discovery of horrible crime
scien OE Ms te fe
ie: isin, za, conve ee aes
LLS
A CHILD HOLDS THE KEY TO FOUR BRUTAL
MURDERS, BUT HER YOUNG MEMORY
FAILS. CAN YOU HELP POLICE SOLVE THE :
CRIME AND BRING THE KILLERS TO JUSTICE?
By Stuart Whitehouse
ondra, was beaten, Young girls’ playmate, Michael
+ describe killers Saile, 4, died wearing toy guns
set them down to
sjanced at the clock,
4 that Gard and the
not returned. She
et.
’t back yet,” she was
he lumber men have
eir paychecks cashed
) ask them to wait.”
had some business in
Young decided.
le called to ask about
|, the grocer’s wife
answer. But by six
me worried and tele-
friend, Howard El-
1e girls and the Saile
4 this afternoon and
yet,” she told Elliott.
yn afraid the car has
somewhere along the
an’t get toa phone.”
hat way and find out,”
‘lll be along in ten
OWE ee ek
Nae cen
eT. ne Seen :
- %, At Ve
District Attorney Janes (r.) watches fingerprint men at
work, after removal of bodies and live child from trunk
bundled up Baby
er child, and rode with
Westwood. They
tches and narrow en-
.gging roads where the
iown, might have been
Gard Young, father of girls and
one of four massacred for $7100
ft
hh a
oLVEX
INS
iy
ake TKD
4
SA
}
YTO
3
Calif. (LA) on 6-3-1955,
_ Miriam Allen deFord
Murderers
ie oa
: Oa
AN AVON BOOK
Fy
dr
eagime that one may ha
by | him too much instead of freeing him so
can e others; sorriest of all for the foolish litt
who—truly accidentall
“Why Did This Happen
To Me?”
BARBARA GRAHAM
e said to have had a
than aberration. '
If Barbara Graham can b
always wat OW
it was retardation rather
indulgent, and foolish she
by the ordinary criteria she was as sane as 1% ©
sy and worse upbringing. 4
i the bay fron Sa:
There,
. She was &
ng dark brown hair and eyes
» and that sometimes
“tawny” an
green and sometimes darkened to a reddish
her mixed het
S
were changeable eyes
English, Spanish, and Portuguese. She. Wee tons
Barbara Elaine Wood, after the railroad crossing SIRI * 7
her mother had married—though she was Weg 4
mate and her f ]
Joseph Wood died, anyway, when she was seven, a
her mother, Hortense, remarried. Somewhere 10 rhe
ground were a crippled grandfather and &
who had been a prostitute.
Wood’s death was not the first break in the norms
of Barbara’s life.
taken away—Hortense
the Ventura School for
tory, as a “wayward
inmate. In whose U
for caretaking is not
easily be guessed,
. such disruption on a baby of two, the age when a child,
just beginning to emerge from infancy, is peculiarly de«7
pendent on its mother. It is not strange that the keynote]
to Barbara’s life was emotional insecurity. a
Soon Hortense had two more children by her new mar-#
riage. Barbara must often have felt unwanted; she began #
running away from home when she was nine. There could
have been very little to attach her there—least of all the.
understanding affection she craved. Barbara wanted very.
much to be loved undemandingly without making any |
effort in return—the typical reaction of a child who missed {
exactly that kind of love in the early years when it is”
given freely to more fortunate youngsters.
She did fairly well in school—she had an I.Q. of 94,3
not superior but normal—and in spite of irregularities of §
attendance because of her runaway escapades, she was in|
the seventh grade in the Oakland public schools by the:
time she was thirteen. It was then that she began “going
with boys,” with all that the phrase implies. Grotesquely~
enough, Hortense was shocked; she had tried very hard to.
be strict with Barbara as she never was with herself. 0
she packed her off to a Roman Catholic convent school, 3
and there Barbara did well, was happy, and loved the =
nuns. But her mother couldn’t let well enough alone. She =
dragged her back “home,” and once again came the TUR
aways and the episodes with boys. Finally Barbara was |
picked up by the juvenile court authorities, and with het |
mother’s consent was consigned to Ventura. She was there,
from July 1937, just after her fourteenth birthday, atid
April 1939. She had one distinction—she was the m
beautiful inmate they had ever had—except her mo
The school called her “a difficult girl who made a f
adjustment here and who tried to run away a number of
times.” Yet she did well in her academic classes, f nished.
grammar school, and did almost a year of high school
work before she was paroled. In the training courses ia
housework she did not do so well, but this was undo! Ibe
edly not from lack of ability, for in the one domestig:
technique she enjoyed, cooking, she became rather. be:
than merely good.
Until the beginning of 1942, Barbara was still nom
under the jurisdiction of the California Youth Aw
For a while at least she made an attempt to rehab
herself; she went to business college and prepared
for an office job. She wrote a good clear business
a
by
be
it Sa
id though her spelling was a bit shaky, her letters were
ell expressed. I doubt if she did much reading, but she
did some; she used a quotation from Omar Khayyam later
as a password, and paraphrased Hemingway to a prison-
mate. She worked as a file clerk and switchboard operator
. as well as in more colorful occupations.
It is quite possible that if someone had taken a deep
rsonal interest in Barbara Wood in 1939, had taken her
into a home where there were love and comfort and reason-
able discipline, had sent her to high school and given her
. the background of other girls from more fortunate environ-
~ Ments, she might be today a matron shopping in the super-
| market, budgeting for a new dishwasher, and baby-sitting
= for her grandchildren. It has happened to other girls.
But there was no such person. Barbara went back to
» living in Oakland with her mother and stepfather. To
| Such friends as she had made among her former school-
mates she would be an object of suspicion, somebody
their parents would not want them to associate with. A
self-sufficient girl might have taken to morose isolation, or
mstead might have set her jaw and determined to prove
her worthiness. Barbara was far from self-sufficient; she
was very pretty, seeming older than her age, longing for
life, for excitement, for “nice things” and gaiety. It was
easy to find new friends to whom she was either a heroine
in and out of reform school already!—or accepted
fasually as one of a group of boys and girls all of whom
d such a past, present, or future as a matter of course.
She was still only fifteen when she was first picked up,
Long Beach, under the revealingly romantic alias of
arbara Olivia Radcliffe,” for disorderly conduct. She
s sixteen when one of her few respectable acquaintances
foduced her to a young man she liked. Soon after, she
S$ pregnant, and the man at least believed the child was
for he married her soon after her son was born. Ten
rs later her ‘indignant ex-mother-in-law wrote: “She
$a widow with a small son when my son married her,
‘is not my son’s child, they were only married about
at months when she left him and her child, they were
ved in the spring of 1941.”
t first glance this may seem like one of Barbara’s
tales, But actually, she may have been, not a young
but.a young divorcee (or bigamist), and the child
may not have been her new husband’s, There. is
ble confusion about her marriages and the par-
fe Ba ok mee
} ~~ --enough, and her sons have a right to protection.
entage of her children. ‘There is no need to-give thes
mames of any but her last husband; they have all suffered
- In any event, this man’s mother had taken care of th
boy from his earliest childhood. “I have kept and raised ©
him as my own,” she wrote. “Although I have five grand- 3
a
children he is just as dear to me as they are.” For a long;
time Barbara used this man’s name, and he has been:
haunted by the notoriety she brought upon him. He has_
never publicly uttered a word against her and has even”
without protest let statements be published saying that n
only Barbara’s first child, but her second boy also was
his—though his mother did not even know of the ex
istence of this child, born in 1941, until 1950, and ac
cepted Barbara’s statement that he was then three years
old instead of nine. Who his father was, only she knew.
Indeed, with all the newspaper stories of her devotion to
her son by Henry Graham at the time of her trial, very=
few people had any idea that this was her third, and not]
her first, child. a .
After the divorce in 1941, Barbara went to San Diego]
and there she was arrested three times in the next two=
years on charges of vagrancy and “aggravated lewd and”
disorderly conduct.” Twice she was fined fifty dollars
and sentenced to jail for a few months. “
In 1944 she was “vagged” in San Francisco, and the
police report read: “She has been very promiscuous sex-*_
ually, practicing prostitution for several years.” Osten @
sibly, during all this period, she was a “cocktail waitress”
in “clubs”—an euphemism for a B-girl. She had m
while been married and divorced again, to and from
sailor.
So we come to 1947, and Barbara’s first big trou
which indirectly led to all the rest.
In April 1946 Barbara left California for Chicago. By
this time her associates were for the most part denizent)
of the underworld. She had not yet taken to drugs,
otherwise there’ was very little vice with which she
not familiar. She was not yet twenty-three, beginning
grow a bit plump, but still “lively and full of fun,
young and pretty, with lovely skin and those’s
changeable eyes. She was still—or again—a brun
various times she became a blonde ora redhead. ~
It. is odd to find her writing in 1948, when she
Chicago for the second time, that during her.
ee: 56 ee
she “never had any undesirable contacts.” In fact,
gh she did work for a short time at the lower North .
hotel where she lived, for most of the-year she lived
Chicago she was a “dice girl” in various illegal gam-
> bling joints, earning up to seventy dollars a week. She came
;}ome—to whom?—to San Francisco that Christmas, but
nt back to Chicago on New Year's Day. She did not
to San Francisco until April 1947.
The Polly Adler of San Francisco at this period was
‘Sally Stanford. On February 4, 1947, two men broke into
he ‘house, burglarized it, and when she awoke and called
jfor help, beat her brutally and unmercifully to within an
of her life. (Perhaps that is why she retired and be-
e a suburban tavernkeeper. )
July, Marck C. Monroe and Thomas M. Sittler were
- thied for this crime. Their alibi was that they were at a
party all night on the date of the burglary, and they
saat two corroborating witnesses—Barbara and another
Ow, as we have seen, on February 4th Barbara was
Chicago. What happened was that when she returned
San Francisco in April, she got what might be termed
temporary job. A girl friend of hers ran a call house.
pee became ill and unable to attend to her duties, so she
fted Barbara to look after her business on a percentage
8, taking calls and relaying them to the prostitutes who
ed through the house.
was through this call house madam that one evening
a met Monroe and Sittler, then out on bail. They
lamenting the fact that the girl they had arranged
to testify to their “alibi” had failed to show up, and
@ey were stuck without a witness. Barbara and another
wershe was very young and she has reformed since, so
isnot necessary to name her—either volunteered or
mere persuaded to take the place of the missing witness.
mx years later, Barbara remarked bitterly; “I myself have
geae as a witness like that [to testify falsely to an alibi]
md I know you can’t get away with those things.”
SAll the police had to do was to check with the San
0 hotel where Barbara said she had been living
I , and she was revealed as a perjurer. She was
and convicted in October. At first Judge Shoemaker
probation and sentenced her to the women’s prison,
Tehachapi, but finally he relented and gave her a
the county jail and five years’ probation. The hotel
57
UN eet ann!
——————
~~
AJAMAS
even miles in
Pennsylvania,
ictim lying in a
ichline, 43, had
September 10,
n, left—entered
“lm tired of
n the evening
ned home and
1 Betty that
to argue with
I got mad and
the floor, I left.”
Betty dead. He
ds and dumped
icago. After a
believes that
red while he
"| WANT TO LIVE"
Barbara Graham went down in criminal history as “Bloody
Babs.” This wife, mother, prostitute, gun moll and killer
died in San Quentin’s gas chamber in 1955 for her part in
the pistol-whipping murder of elderly Mabel Monahan at
Los Angeles, California, during a robbery. Through the
magic of the movies, Bloody Babs will come alive again.
Gorgeous Susan Hayward, far right, plays the role of this
notorious woman in United Artists’ “I Want to Live,” a
Figaro production. In this dramatic story, Walter Wanger
directed Miss Hayward in her sensitive “portrait of a lost
woman,” which this film suggests. Born in the California
slums, Bloody Babs, left, seen with Deputy Darlene Wright,
spent most of her 32 years in penal institutions. What the
film stresses is the possibility that Babs was merely a tool
of the other members of the murder gang. cue accomplices
counted on the chance that no jury would send the young
woman to her death. Thus they, too, would escape the gas
chamber. The plot failed, and Bloody Babs became the
fourth woman to be executed by the State of California.
BULLETS FOR THE BETRAYAL
It was a bitter pill for Ernest Jan Fantel, 54, right, to swallow
when he-learned that his lovely spouse had celebrated their
16th wedding anniversary, not with him but with her lover,
wealthy fashion designer Horace Lindsay, 50, left. Seeking
solace by pouring out his heart into a diary, Fantel wrote:
“I feel the end coming. I am being refused and humiliated.
... She suffers me, condescends and does me the great favor.
I miss love and affection. ... She never caresses me. Did
she learn something new to keep the rich gentleman? How
to please him sexually? My terrible love commands me to kill
her, to destroy her, to get my revenge for 16 years of burning
myself out on a love she never knew.” In the end, it wasn’t
his wife that Fantel killed. He went to the home of her
lover, in London, England. There, Lindsay taunted Fantel
with his wife’s infidelity and ordered him to leave, “like a
sultan dismissing a complaining husband.” That’s when
Fantel shot his wife’s lover to death. On September 25, 1958,
a jury dismissed the charge of murder against Fantel, but
convicted him of manslaughter. He was sentenced to three
years in prison.
OUT OF THE RUINS...
The old adage “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” was
proved many times over in the case of Robert Mulroy, 36,
seen at left with his blonde “other wife,” Ruby Webb, 33.
On September 29, 1958, firemen answered an alarm at a
Chicago, Illinois, apartment house. There: they came across
Mulroy, dead from smoke poisoning. In a routine examination
of the rooms, the police uncovered some amazing evidence.
For the gossips, there was what seemed like evidence that
Mulroy, while married to a redheaded beauty and supporting
her in one love nest, was feathering another nest for blonde
Ruby Webb. As for the lawmen, they sank their teeth into
two books: a red one and a brown one. The red ledger
lists the names and phone numbers of 175 men; the brown
one contains the same data on 300 women, plus coded nota-
tions which the police believe reveal ‘‘specialties” in the
way of entertainment that the girls are willing to provide
male customers. FBI and local authorities began an investi-
gation into the possibility that Mulroy was operating a large-
scale vice ring. Neither Mrs. Mulroy nor Ruby Webb had any
knowledge of Robert Mulroy’s call-girl racket.
a2 82a, (GSI
Barbara Graham, as well as John Santo
and Emmett Perkins, died in California’s
gas chamber six years ago for the murder
of semi-invalid Mabel Monahan (Mabel
Couldn’t Lock Out Murder, September
INSIDE, 1953) . . . but the question of
Barbara’s possible innocence once again
fires America, with the opening of the
movie based on her tragic life, J Want
To Live!
“T’m convinced beyond any doubt that
Barbara Graham was innocent,” is the
vehement statement of Ed Montgomery,
the San Francisco reporter whose inves-
tigation into the Graham case supplied
the background for the movie. “Unfor-
tunately,” he commented, “much of the
material corroborating my belief was not
made available until after the execution.”
Barbara was a dope addict, perjurer,
prostitute and gambling shill . . . and
these were the -factors that may have
resulted in her paying for. a heinous crime
Susan Hayward (above) reenacts scene
of Barbara Graham (top) buying alibi.
that she was not guilty of. These factors
—and fear. The fear that prompted her |
to “buy” an alibi because she was afraid
she would not be able to convince a jury
that she’d really been home with her six-
month-old son when the brutal murder
occurred. The man from whom she tried
to “buy” the alibi—was a detective... .
Albert H. Lewis has been sentenced to
1-to-10 years, mandatory for manslaugh-
ter, for the strangulation of his wife Dolly
(That Was No Nightmare, That Was
Your Wife, November INswe, 1958).
When Lewis pleaded guilty to the man-
slaughter charge before Superior Judge
Gerald S. Levin, the greater charge of
In At The Finish
murder against him was dropped because
—as San Francisco’s Assistant District:
Attorney Walter Giubbini explained—the
prosecution would have been unable to
prove premeditation, which is necessary
4 v
Lewis watches as the body is dug up.
for a murder conviction. Lewis was drunk
when he choked his wife to death in their
home last August, put her body in the
trunk of his car, drove to Nevada and
buried her there.
Quincy Bullock faced Dillon, S.C.,
Judge T. B. Greneker and quietly said,
“I'd sure appreciate it’ if you’d give me
mercy.” But the jury had made no rec-
ommendation of mercy and the judge
had no choice other than to impose the
mandatory sentence of death in the elec-
tric chair on Bullock for the murder of
Mrs. Carolyn Barfield, 28-year-old wid-
owed mother of four children. The young
woman had been sitting with a companion
in his car when a rain of bullets suddenly
" b:
caught them, wounding the boy. They
tried to make a run for it. When she
became too exhausted to go any further,
her escort—hoping a culvert would pro-
vide a safe hiding place for her—left
her to find help. Officers found her rav-
aged, cruelly-beaten -body (A Full Moon
Drives Me Woman-Mad, November 1n-
SIDE, 1958). At his trial, Bullock consist-
ently maintained his innocence, testifying
that officers had beaten a confession out
of him. After sentence was pronounced,
the defense moved for a new trial, but
Judge Greneker rejected the motion.
Wayne Snow McFarland, the former
naval pilot who terrorized San Diego and
Coronado for over a year and a half with
his “shoe-bandit” assaults on women (If
The Shoe Fits, August INster, 1958),
has been declared a sexual psychopath
by doctors at Ascadero State Hospital,
where he’d been under observation for
90 days at the order of the court. He
will remain at the hospital for treatment.
The Houston, Tex., officer, who had been
described by the commander of his all-
weather squadron as a top-notch flier,
had pleaded guilty to charges of assault
and robbery. ,
Lita Jean Lord, the tiny, pistol-totin’
holdup girl who liked to write letters
to the San Francisco police telling them
ie i Mes 4
You Won't Catch Me This Time (October
INSIDE, 1958), has been sentenced to
five-to-life. She was judged sane and
guilty of armed robbery. Superior Judge
Gerald S. Levin imposed the sentence for
her $872 holdup of a cafeteria.
Robert Baker, 27, of Wormleysburg,
Pa., pleaded guilty to a charge of mur-
dering a hitchhiking Indiana Marine (Hell
On Wheels, May 1nswe, 1957) before
Judge Daniel Dailey in Marion County
Circuit Court, Salem, Ill. Baker, who
stood mute when first arraigned on the
charge, changed his plea to guilty at the
last moment. Judge Dailey decided to
hear additional evidence before handing
down sentence. He also continued the
murder trial of Baker’s 18-year-old wife.
The Bakers were originally scheduled to
go on trial together in the robbery-slaying
of 21-year-old Larry M. Kirk, Winslow,
Ind. The above developments took place
after defense attorneys withdrew requests
for a sanity hearing for Baker and a sepa-
rate trial for his wife. Kirk was shot and
robbed of $11 and his watch as he was
hitchhiking home from California for
Christmas. His body was found in a weed
patch near Flora, Ill. Baker himself had
served in the armed forces. He was a
veteran of the Korean War.
( er ae & r3 lock in~
A 7 Loree a7
A GGF
ORDINARY SOLE
“STIFF KS A BOARD
Every step is like a har
mer blow. You feel wo
out before day begins.
Air
Cushioned
dress shoes
with built-in
m Romance has a harder time
at San Quentin Prison than al-
most any other place on earth.
But when a. 23-year-old lifer,
Francis Silva (above), got a
glimpse of San Quentin’s only 5
woman prisoner, Barbara Gra-
/ham, (left) who is doing a
stretch for murder, he couldn’t
restrain his- feelings. Their
cells were separated by a
courtyard and, of course,
heavy steel bars over the win-
dows, so he had to limit his.
attentions to wolf whistles and
cat calls. And that was as far
as it went. His reward was a
30-day suspension of prison
privileges. Prison officials said
the flirtation was one-sided.
aa) le
uquet [54
Two hours later, Captain Harrison got in
touch with Golden.-“We'’ve picked up 11 red-
faced ragged men carrying clubs.”
Golden sighed. “Okay. Hold them all until
the motorman looks them over.” While he
was waiting for the identification to be made,
he was summoned to look at a mark which
apparently had been made by a tire rubbing
against the east curb of Cottage Grove Ave-
nue, just north of 107th Street. A long strip
of rubber had been left against the curb.
“Mrs. Walsh, on her normal course, would
have passed that point after making a left
turn off 107th Street,” Golden said. “It’s only
a few blocks from where the bum got. on the
streetcar. And it’s only a couple of minutes’
walk from the spot where the body was
found. Wonder if anyone nearby heard her
hit.” ; .
The nearest. building was a tavern 30 feet
away. The bartender was alone watching TV
when the police walked in.
“Do you know anything about an auto hit-
ting the curb outside last night?” Golden
asked. . .
“What time did it happen?”
“Between 11 P.M. and about 1:30 A.M.
today.” .
“J was at home in bed,” the bartender said.
“T get through at six o’clock.”
“Who was on duty then?”
“The night barkeep. He’ll be here in a half
hour—if he’s not late. Sit down and have a
drink.” Detective Sweitzer joined Golden in
the tavern. He tossed a comb and two bobby
pins on the bar.
“Recognize these?” :
“Yes. They’re like the ones in Mrs. Walsh’s
hair.”
“Well, I found them on the ground near
where the -curb was scraped.”
Golden turned to the bartender. “Where
does the night man live?”
He was given the address.
A few minutes later, Golden was at the
man’s door. The bartender who was just
shaving, getting ready for work, admitted him.
“Did a woman scrape the curb outside your
tavern last night?” Golden asked.
“A lady had some sort of accident outside,”
the man replied. “Maybe she scraped the curb.
I don’t know for sure, though.
“It happened round 11:30, a fellow poked
his head in the door and said: ‘There’s a
woman in trouble out here.’ A couple of men
who were at the bar went ‘out. I was pretty
busy and stayed on the job. A little later they
came back in and said: ‘Nothing to it.’
“As I got it, she was cut off by another auto
and hit the curb. Or maybe she just lost con-
trol, Anyhow, the accident upset her, the
boys said.
“One-of my customers saw that she was in
no shape to handle the car, and offered to
drive her home, I was told. She accepted and
they left together.”
“And that was at 11:30?” Golden asked.
“About that. Bill returned about two hours
afterwards. He took a lot of kidding from the
boys. He didn’t stay long.”
“What did the woman look like?” Golden
wanted to know.
The bartender rubbed his freshly-shaven
jaw thoughtfully. “As I said, I didn’t see her.
But I don’t think she was any chicken. I
heard somebody say she was gray-haired.”
“We must find Bill,” Captain Golden said,
“Where can we locate him?”
“J don’t know,” the bartender said. “Bill.
That’s the only name I have for him. He once
aoe
told me that he \
‘Does he know
“T think so.”
“Where does t
asked.
“I don’t know
think.”
“But there are
near the Loop.”
“Wherever it is
the bartender ass
once of the fanc
to make—vermo
cafes.”
Bill was descr
slender with gra
windbreaker jack
and shoes and a
The saloon em
other men who
night before, anc
them. One of th
dence that the w
Mrs. Walsh.
“After the fel
car with her, I
He handed De
blank checks.
Walsh’s name p
give this to Bill
The other pz
off with the gra
“T thought st
was just sick,”
over the wheel
But neither o
last name or w
BY questionir
tender and
Golden found c
driver had talke
at the bar.
The police 1
employers. He
“The guy wa
we happened t
hardly remembi
ing personal—e
a bartender at
“Which one?
“He didn’t sz
that he had vi
day before. A
held at the hot
patronize the |
By calling tl
Detective Swei
Nurses Associa
Hilton. He tel
hotel and ask«
tender named
“There are :
told.
“This one
graying hair.”
“That descr
J. Barry.”
The hotel
Harper Avenu
along to iden
went to Bar)
. empty.
A waitress
apartment ad
She told Gok
2 o’clock that
his clothing st
“T asked: ‘
continued. “H
0, 21-year-old Mrs. Shirley
Los Angeles college student,
smile after receiving a sen-
rear in federal prison. The
part in harboring a fugitive
Robert Thompson: Three
ise received prison terms
ral Judge Louis E. Good-
er,
on
on
similor
charges.
Cok aks
sour
ai AN ee lsh ON
Lady at the right is attractive Barbara
Graham, who was convicted in the murder of
Mrs. Mabel Monohan and is awaiting execu-
tion in San Quentin Prison, Cal. Now we have
complications. A male prisoner also awaiting
execution at the prison was charged with
flirting with Mrs. Graham despite iron bars.
But just how are you going to punish a man
already awaiting his date with gas camber?
At Hayes Beach, near Leonardtown, Md., a
passerby discovered partly submerged body
of a young woman, The body was brought in,
and deep gashes were found on the head.
Victim was identified as Irene Connole (ex-
treme right), a 26-year-old Wave. from
Rochester, N. Y., who was soon to have been
married to Navy man. A suspect was soon
arrested and held for further investigation.
In Phoenix, Ariz., Mrs. Margaret Blake
3l-year-old flagpole sitter, climbed uy
“on her. flagpole and promised to sta:
there until Christmas, When police
_came with a bogus check warrant, she
refused to come down voluntarily. So
firemen raised a ladder and Mrs. Blake
is shown coming down. She posted $500
bond, then returned to her 30-foot
flagpole perch. Is she up in the air!
*
*
*
pe
.
«
*
.
‘
.
.
.
*
.
*
ee
*Act and he
®raphs like
1 San Quen-
; by his fale
his pocket.”
s of a young, ©
raham. She’s
and is sepa~
nd she’s Per-
record is for
and vagrancy
> be quite @ |
odin a lite cn
dics tas oni saand a
Baxter Shorter, the safe-cracking
stool pigeon who “disappeared”
Andrews asked: “Do you have any
evidence at all to tie them to the Mono-
han case?”
Lavold shook his head. “All I know:
is what I’ve told you. My informant
wouldn’t go into court And even if he
should, his testimony wouldn’t be worth
anything because he wasn’t with them
and couldn't actually testify to a thing.”
“How about hauling this mob in?”
Lt AVOLD shrugged. “We've been sitting
on them for a long time, waiting
for the right break. But a homicide case
is a different thing. If you want them,
we have them all spotted and you can
put them on ice inside of twenty-four
hours.”
Andrews had a difficult decision to
make. Picking up the gang members
without evidence was risky. Unless one
of the mob should break and make a
confession the police would be forced
to turn them loose in 48 hours.
“T don’t see how we'll ever get any-
thing more than we have right now,”
Andrews decided. ‘Doctor Newbarr said
the killer will show signs of being
clawed by Mrs. Monohan. If we let it
slide, those scratches are going to heal
and we won’t even have them.”
Consequently, he issued orders for
the arrest of the five men and the
woman. All were in jail by the following
afternoon.
The detectives immediately began a
24-hour session of constant question-
ing. ;
Jack Santo looked like the best bet
to Andrews. He had-a number of marks
on his hands and face which could be
the remnants of scratches. ie
Santo explained them by saying: “I
got in a beef at a bar in Newcastle.
You can check it if you like. The char-
acter is suing me for a hundred grand
ause I knocked out his teeth ”
© A call to the court clerk in Placer
Ce revealed that Francis E. Mac-
Cann of Roseville had filed a suit
Nene Santo for a beating he claimed
Ho had given him. Further, Santo
ar eaid a $50 fine in the justice court
Newcastle on an assault charge.
Sa —o told Andrews: “I told you
that re smart. He could have picked
roe ght just so he’d have an alibi for
@ oe in case he was picked up.”
until ening went on_ relentlessly
tone f° legal period for holding per-
ney, 20 investigation expired. Attor-
that cpeeared and demanded either
chents or mes, DC Placed against their
“ they be released.
taict in Just about shoots it,” Andrews
the Burke pair as the six walked out of
t donank headquarters.
id “We ud > Lieutenant Coveney
at ne l may get a break.”
drow, po hae mesg you think so?” An-
“One of that mob is human. Remem-
ber, somebody called for an ambulance,
somebody who didn’t want the old lady
to die. If we could find out which one
it is and work on him we might get
somewhere. Maybe it’s the girl.”
“Jt isn’t the girl,” Andrews replied.
“She’s hard as nails. And it isn’t
Santo.”
“J don’t think it would be Perkins,”
Coveney said. “And I don’t see Don-
nelly calling the ambulance either.”
“That leaves Verble and Shorter. We
can try working on them. It looks like
our only chance.”
“How do you figure we should go
: _ about it?”
Andrews scowled. “‘We could get
Lavold’s stool pigeon to keep talking
about how the old woman was beaten
and what a rotten thing it was to do.
And maybe get in a hint now and then
about the gas chamber up at San Quen-
tin. It would have to be done smoothly.
Maybe it will work and maybe it won’t
but it’s all we have.”
The detectives decided to work on
Shorter first, mainly because he was
more readily available. He lived in an
apartment in downtown Los Angeles.
A week went by and an attorney
called Andrews.
“Tq like to talk to you about the
Monohan case,” the attorney said.
“What about it?”:
“Frankly,” the lawyer went on, “I
have a client who, I believe from the
things he tells me, may know quite a
bit about the case. Now, I have advised
him to go directly to you with his in-
formation but, of course, I’m only an
attorney and I have no way of forcing
him to take my advice. I don’t believe
he will. :
“The reason is this: If he does, he’s
afraid that he will be put in custody
immediately and his connection with
the case will known. As soon as it is, his
life will be in grave danger, even in
prison. You know that.”
“All right,” Andrews said. “Maybe it
would be.”
“What I would like to do is assure
him that if he tells you what he knows
and promises to stay in the vicinity,
he will not be placed in custody until
all the others are under arrest and no
one but you will know about him.”
“TI think,” Chief Andrews said slowly,
“you can assure him of that.”
“Purthermore,” the lawyer said, “if
my client should prove to be involved,
he was an unwilling participant, and
I certainly hope you will remember
what he did in clearing up the case
when it comes to trial. If, of course, it
should come to trial and he should be
involved.”
“We can’t promise you a thing as
far as the trial is concerned,” Andrews
replied. ‘“‘That’s up to the prosecutor
and the judge. But we can make recom-
mendations ”
“Good. Be at my office at two o’clock
tomorrow. Keep anyone from knowing
what’s going on and, above all, make
sure it doesn’t leak to the newspapers.”
iat” won't have to worry about
§ hare following day Andrews, Coveney
and McAuliffe were at the attorney’s
office. They arrived separately and
slipped in without being seen.
Baxter Shorter was there.
Shorter told them: “You know I have
a record. Well, I could tell you about
some safecracking jobs lately, but I
won't. I’m not going to say anything
about them. Is that clear?”
The officers agreed. “All we’re inter-
ested in right now is the Monohan kill-
ing,” Chief Andrews said. ;
This is the story Shorter then told
according to Chief Andrews:
“Santo is down in Las Vegas and he
hears a hot tip. A big-shot gamble1
down there by the name of Scherer is
supposed to have planted three hun-
dred grand in jewels and two hundred
grand in cash with Mrs. Monohan.
“we're all in on it—me, Santo, Per-
kins, Donnelly, the Graham girl, Ned
Verble. Only Ned backs out before we
take any action.
“The rest of us case the joint out
good and I’m to work on the safe. We
get to her place about nine o’clock on
Monday night. Santo, Perkins and
Donnelly sneak into the front yard and
hide in the shrubs alongside the house.
Barbara Graham goes up to the house
and rings the bell.
“Mrs. Monohan opens the peep-hole
in her door and asks her who she is and
what she wants and Barbara tells her
that her car has broken down and she
wants to use the telephone.
“The old lady opens the door and
when she does, Santo, Perkins and
Donnelly jump out of the shrubs with
their guns. They go inside and shut the
door. Me, I’m on the outside as lookout
until they can find the safe.
“Y’m there for maybe a half-hour or
longer when I get worried about being
at the place so long, so I slip inside.
“Santo and Perkins are going nuts.
They have torn the house apart. Santo
has the old woman tied up in the hall
and he’s hitting her with the barrel of
his gun. I tell him to quit it.
*BARBARA is there, and she yells at
Santo, ‘Hit her again; she’s still
moving!’ I’m telling you, it made me sick
to my stomach. I’ve got a record but
you can look it up for yourself. I never
hurt nobody. I never even stole from
nobody who couldn’t afford to lose a
few bucks—and that’s on the level.”
Shorter said they had been unable
to find the suitcases containing the
cash and jewelry, according to Chief
Andrews, and they stayed in the house
for nearly two hours searching it while
Santo beat Mrs. Monohan and dragged
her from room to room, insisting she
tell him where it was hidden.
“When we are ready to leave,” the.
alleged statement continued, “Santo
ties a rag around the old lady’s neck.
She looks dead to me already, but when
nobody is watching I cut it loose. I don’t
want no part of the gas chamber and
like I told you before, I don’t ever hurt
nobody. '
“When we get back to town, I slip
away from the others and call an am-
bulance. I don’t know why they don't
send one out there. I guess it don’t
make much difference, though, be-
cause the way Santo beat her she ain’t
going to live anyhow.”
The story Shorter told agreed with
what the officers already had heard
about the case. Particularly the call for
the ambulance, for they had kept this
part a secret and Shorter wouldn’t know
about it unless he actually had made it.
“Why didn't you tell us this when we
had you in last week?” Andrews asked
him. “We had the others then and we
could have cracked it right away.”
Shorter laughed. ‘Look, mister, you
forget I did a stretch at San Quentin.
The easiest place in the world to kill a
guy is in jail.”
“But will you testify to what you
have told us?”
“T'll give you the statement. Only
don’t come near me until you've got the
others in jail. Then keep me in another
jail. When they hear I talked, if they
can get at me I’m dead—you under-
stand that, I’m dead!”
- 4
Witness: She yelled, “Hit
her again, she's moving!
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Andrews asked: “Where are Santo
and the others now?”
“I don’t know; I haven’t seen them.
We figure the only way you cops got us
tagged for this Monohan case is you
must be hot on some of the other stuff,
so we decide to knock it off for awhile.
The boys all figure.on crawling into a
hole until the heat is off. You'll have to
find them.”
“And are you positive you don’t want
protection? We could place some men
at your apartment-house—”
“You keep your men away from me!”
Shorter cried. “Santo can smell a cop a
mile away. He sees them around my
place and he’s going to get suspicious.
Just leave me alone.”
As the officers were about to leave,
Shorter told them:
“Here’s something else. If you solve
_ the Monohan case maybe you can get
a really big one up north.”
“‘What do you mean?”
“Remember a grocer and some kids
who were killed up there?”
The case Shorter referred to was the
quadruple slaying of grocer Guard
Young and three small children near
Chester in Plumas County on October
10, 1952.
Young with three of his own children
and a four-year-old neighbor boy had
driven to Westwood where he withdrew
$7,128 to use in his supermarket in
Chester to cash checks for his logger
customers.
When he failed to return that eve-
ning, a search was started for him and
the children. The following day a hunt-
er discovered Young’s body near his
car. His wrists had been bound and he
had been severely beaten before being
killed with a shot through the head. In
the trunk of the car were the bodies of
Jean, seven, Judy, six, Sondra, three,
and Michael Saile. Sondra was still
alive. She was rushed to the hospital
where doctors despaired of saving her
for days. Finally, however, she re-
covered.
All the child could remember was
that two men had stopped their car.
She described one of the men as tall
and thin.
Santo was six feet one and less than
160 pounds.
When the detectives left the attor-
ney’s office, they rushed to Los
Angeles headquarters to see Lavold.
With Shorter as their witness, they
had more than enough evidence with
which to hold the rest of the gang.
“How soon’can we grab them?” An-
drews asked Lavold after giving him
the story Shorter had told.
“It isn’t going to be easy this time,”
Lavold replied. ‘“They’re wise that we’re
after them on the other jobs. I figured
we were taking that chance when I
gave you their names and you had
But she hadn't murdered, they claimed
them picked up. We tried to tail them
when they were released but they all
gave us the slip except Donnelly.”
Lavold said that he had word Don-
nelly was in a cabin with a friend in
the Mother Lode country southeast of
Sacramento.
Santo, Perkins, Verble and the Gra-
ham girl had disappeared.
What could they do?
“We're going to have to take a
chance,” Andrews decided. ‘““We’ll pick
up Donnelly and hold him incommuni-
cado. Maybe we can worm out of him
where the others are. At least we'll
have him on ice while we look for the
others.”
Andrews meanwhile had notified the
state bureau of criminal identification
and investigation about the lead on
Santo as a possible suspect in the Ches-
ter massacre. George Brereton, chief of
the bureau, declared that Santo already
had been considered as a suspect in
the case. He had been questioned and
gave an alibi for the time-of the slay-
ing. Although the alibi was unsatisfac-
tory, the police had been unable to
break it.
Coveney, Lavold and an investigator
from the state attorney general’s office
were sent to bring in Donnelly.
Andrews warned them when they
left: ‘‘Take him as quietly as you can.
We don’t want any word to leak out
that we’re holding him.”
Prostitute, perjurer, check forger,
In Sacramento the officers learned
the location of the cabin. They staked
it out and waited until the owner of
the cabin had gone out, leaving Don-
nelly alone in it. When they broke in
. late that afternoon to arrest him, they
found him in the bathtub.
Unfortunately the owner of the
cabin had left a small child and a baby-
sitter in the cabin. The officers had not
known about them.
When Donnelly demanded to know
why he was being taken, the officers
were unable to say anything for fear
the baby-sitter would report that he
was being arrested as a suspect in the
Monohan case.
Donnelly was rushed to Stockton
where he was booked on a technical
charge “en route to Sacramento” under
the name of James Murphy. He insisted
that he did not know the whereabouts
of Santo, Perkins, Verble or Barbara
Graham.
The following day Donnelly was be-
ing taken to Burbank for questioning.
He was to be faced with the confes-
sion from Shorter. But the whole story
appeared in the newspapers. Donnelly’s
friend had returned to the cabin and
the baby-sitter had told him about
three men coming in and taking Don-
nelly away. The friend called Sheriff
Wayne Brown of Grass Valley and re-
ported that Donnelly had been kid-
naped :
Sheriff Brown did not know why the
officers had taken Donnelly and gave
the story to the local newspaper.
When the news hit Los Angeles,
newspaper editors recognized Donnelly
as one of the men who had been held
in the Monohan case.
The headlines hit the streets and An-
_drews hit the ceiling when he saw them.
He immediately called Shorter.
“You'd better let us take you in pro-
tective custody,” he suggested.
“Santo won’t know I was the one
who squealed as long as you've only
picked up Donnelly,” Shorter said. “V’ll
take care of myself.”
“Let me send some men out.”
“You keep your men away from me
Shorter cried. “You promised you
wouldn’t come near me! I told you
Santo can smell a cop. If he comes
around here and sees cops he’ll know
what’s up.”
Donnelly refused to talk. He insisted
that he knew Santo only casually and
had no connection with the gang. The
police were not ready to confront him
with Shorter’s confession for fear of
another leak.
Shortly after eight o’clock that eve-
ning, Mrs. Olivia Shorter called the Los
Angeles police.
“They got Baxter!” she cried. “They
came and got Baxter!”
Chief of Detectives Thad Brown and
homicide officers Jack McCreadie, Wil- =
liam Cummings and J. W. Buckley
rushed to the Shorter apartment. a
Mrs. Shorter tearfully told them that.
at ten minutes after eight o’clock a-
knock had sounded at the door. Her ]
husband had opened it and a man with |
a gun was standing in the hall. Se
“Come on, Baxter, let’s go,” the man &
had said.
Mrs. Shorter raced into the bedroom
and got the rifle. She caught up with -~
the men as they reached the front door 4
of the apartment house. i
The man placed a pistol to Shorter’s ~
head and told Mrs. Shorter, “Go on ~%
back inside your apartment or Baxter
is going to die right here.”
yes—
She said the man had marched ~
Shorter outside to an old, blue-gray
sedan waiting at the curb. She saw a —
man at the wheel and a girl in the
back seat. a |
Mrs. Shorter could not describe the
persons she had seen in the car, but
she was able to give a very good de-
scription of the man who had kidnaped
her husband. [ j
Shown a picture of Emmett Perkins,
she cried, ‘““‘That’s the man! I'd know
him anywhere! He’s the man!”
The police announced that they be-
lieved the persons in the car were Santo
and the Graham girl. q
Shorter, their only witness, had been
taken for a one-way ride.
Immediately a general alarm was -
sounded through the Southwest fer
Shorter, Santo, Perkins and Barbara
Graham. Their pictures were given
to the newspapers and special radio
broadcasts were made pleading with F
anyone who saw them to notify the @
police at once. w
But several days went by without a J
word. : |
Andrews announced, ‘We're sure he %
is dead. Our only hope now is to find 4
his body and get the others on the %|
charge of kidnaping and killing him.” ~
In the meantime, an attorney for 7
Donnelly filed a writ of habeas corpus @
in the Nevada County Superior Court @
of Judge James Snell, charging that
officers under the direction of Andrews #
had kidnaped Donnelly and were hold-
ing him illegally. oe a
Donnelly continued to deny that he —
knew anything about the death of Mrs.
Monohan and because he had been in
custody couldn’t possibly have had
any connection with the kidnaping of
Shorter. q
Judge Snell set a date for the officers
to return Donnelly to Nevada County
and explain why they were holding
him. #
Every police agency in California
was cooperating with the Burbank offi-
cials to locate some clue to the missing:
Shorter. P
”
$
*
While all this was going on time ran
out for holding Donnelly. Burbank offi~§
cers either had to place charges agai
him or release him. = :
Without Shorter as a witness, they3)
had no case. Donnelly was released.
Another week went by. :
In El Monte, near Los Angeles, a mam
named Oberholtz went into the Tem5
ple City sheriff’s substation and res)
ported to Sergeant L. R. Shoemaker
that tenants he had rented a house
had mysteriously disappeared. |
The couple, who had given him
name of Mr. and Mrs. D. Johnson,
rented a small house he owned in Seps
tember, paid their rent through Ma
and then vanished.
interna-
counter
no Fran-
on, the
rs from
-looking,
leplaned
t. ‘They
greeting
ide their
d to the
ses spied
d like a
bird. His
ed awk-
~ to the
‘here the
é.
he right
ed out a
moment
icket to
sing vest
alked up
lugs into
ve feet.
k, at the
what he
dore An-
the dis-
pistol at
way.
ielp! My
vand!”
od dum-
in their
ied man
o attempt
», on duty
gt the airport, hurried over and took
. e.
one doctor was led off to police head-
quarters as an ambulance sped Andress
to a hospital. He died an hour and fif-
teen minutes later, five slugs having
netrated his body, one near the heart
and another in the brain.
When District Attorney William: E.
Clayton arrived at headquarters, he
hardly recognized Eidinoff under the
beard and in the weird clothes.
The doctor’s jacket was unzipped, re-
yealing an orange-colored bullet-proof
vest. ves
The doctor had come to the “open gun
battle” well protected.
He had gone to a lot of trouble for >
nothing. Andress wasn’t armed. He was
returning from the National School
Board Association meeting in San
Francisco when he was shot down.
After the slaying the doctor sulked
in his jail cell. He was a far different
man from the congenial, polite physi-
cian I had known in Angleton. His once-
handsome face was contorted into the
features of a man obsessed with his
own suffering.
I didn’t need to interview the doctor
to know what led up to the slaying. I
had had all the facts—from his point of
view—seven weeks in advance.
What I didn’t know—until too late—
was that on January 7, 1958, .Doctor
Harold D. Eidinoff had been declared
insane in a hearing in Houston. He
was committed to the Austin State Hos-
pital only to have been discharged on
April 2, 1958, as “no longer requiring
hospitalization.”
Eidinoff has been charged with mur-
der with malice and when this story
was written he was being held without
bond pending further legal action.
From room to room they followed the blood until, as this blood-
stain indicates, they found Mrs. Blanton (See story on page 9)
The Original Barbara Graham Story (continued from page 33)
a prolonged and vicious beating. Depth
of the wounds indicated that the weap-
on might have been a pistol barrel.
“Don’t overlook the possibility the
killer could be someone with a deep
hatred for her,” Doctor Newbarr
warned.
Mr. and Mrs. Sowder arrived by
Plane in the afternoon and Andrews
and McAuliffe met them at the airport.
Andrews first asked the daughter if
she recognized the name of George
Dudley, the vaudeville man. She did
not. He described the white-haired man
Doctor Hutton had seen, but again she
could not help.
SHE said her mother was very fond
of playing poker for small stakes
and she and a number of friends
took turns entertaining in their homes
almost weekly. Andrews got a list of
their names from her and sent out de-
tectives to question them.
Mrs. Sowder immediately offered a
$5,000 reward for any information lead-
ing to the arrest and conviction of the
Slayer of her mother. With the officers,
she opened her mother’s safe-deposit
box. They found in it 1,350 shares in
the Frontier Club, a Las Vegas gam-
bling casino. The shares, however,
would yield a return of only about $800
& year.
wont evening Mr. and Mrs. Sowder
peat to the house with the officers.
ering from the way the place had
> soenPbarider apart, the investigators were
Sm Hrhaipen: the slayer had been search-
® for something, possibly a safe. ;
eke oni Sowder, however, insisted that
wher nn of no safe. Nor did she know
the Ser ifemec have been in the house that
matter wee ae: f
; y divorce from Tutor, I gav
eater forty thousand dollars.” Mrs
ne aid. “Mother put it in the
Anyone who knew her would
a 5 ihe! the money was in the bank.
teant think practically no jewelry, so
after = nk what they could have been
Dave kn
=
Chief Andrews sent word to Las
Vegas that he wanted to talk with
Scherer to find out if he knew of any-
thing hidden in the house, or if he had
installed a safe while he was living
there.
That same evening George Dudley
was picked up in a downtown Los
Angeles bar. The elderly showman
admitted knowing Mrs. Monohan dur-
ing the days when she and her husband
had been on the vaudeville circuit.
He admitted going to her house on
Monday evening.
Brought to the Burbank headquar-
ters, Dudley told Andrews: “I read in
the papers where Mabel’s daughter had
been married to Scherer and was now
hooked up to that millionaire oil man.
I figured Mabel must be in the blue
chips.”
Dudley said he was flat broke, with-
out even money to pay his room rent.
“But I had some good clothes left.
I rented a flashy car and drove out to
see her.
“I told her I was broke and I tried to
get her to lend me some money. She
told me if she loaned dough to all the
broken-down bums she had known in
vaudeville, it wouldn’t be long before
she would be broke, too. She wouldn’t
give me a dime.”
Dudley said he had left the house
about eight o’clock and Mrs. Monohan
was alive at that time.
He said he had driven back to Los
Angeles and he did not have enough
money to pay for the rented car.
Dudley was given a close examina-
tion. He had no scratches on him.
Doctor Newbarr had said the killer
would be marked from the clawing by
Mrs. Monohan.
He was held on a charge of defraud-
ing the auto-rental agency while the
detectives investigated further.
Tutor Scherer then was located in
Palm Springs where he was vacationing
at a resort. Lieutenant Coveney and
Detective Vandergrift drove down to
interview the 73-year-old gambler.
“I’m sorry Mabel was clipped,”
Scherer told them. “She and I got
along swell. Strictly because of her, I
didn’t put up any fight about the house
when Iris and I were divorced. I knew
Mabel liked the place.”
Asked about a safe or any hiding-
places in the house, Scherer told them:
“I never had a safe in the house and
I never kept anything there. A man is
a sucker to keep anything valuable
where he lives.”
He insisted he had no idea what any-
one could have been looking for in the
‘house, or why the killers had tortured
Mrs. Monohan. The last time he had
seen her, he said, was nearly a_ year
previously.
“I was in town buying some chips
and cards for one of my places in Las
Vegas,” he declared. “I had two suit-
cases full. Then I was going out to
dinner with some friends and I didn’t
want to leave the stuff in my car be-
cause good chips and cards run into
dough, so I stopped by Mabel’s place
and left the cases with her. I picked
them up later in the evening and I
haven’t seen or heard from her since.”
In Glendale, Captain Hagi located
Fred Gooble, the suspect in the slaying
of Mrs. Kirk. Gooble was questioned
closely but was able to give an air-tight
alibi for all of Monday evening.
When a week of intense investigation
had ended, the officers had not un-
covered a single lead to the slayer of
the widow.
HEY were convinced that the killer
was known to Mrs. Monohan, that
she had let him into the house thinking
he had come on a friendly call, that he
was after something he believed was
hidden in the house and that he had
tortured and finally killed her in an at-
tempt to force her to reveal where it was
kept.
But what he was after was still a
mystery. “
A strange twist was given the case
when a switchboard operator at the
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City : Zone
State.
Psychologist: The tests show
she isn't capable of violence
Los Angeles Emergency Hospital re-
ported that a telephone call had been
received on the Monday night Mrs.
Monohan had been slain, requesting
that an ambulance be sent to 1718 West
Parkside Avenue.
However, no such address was listed
in Los Angeles and the ambulance was
not sent out. ; -
This was the correct address for Mrs.
Monohan’s home, which was in subur-
ban Burbank instead of Los Angeles
proper. The call had been placed at
eleven o'clock from a pay station at
Sunset and Vermont Avenues in Los
Angeles. Because more than a week had
elapsed, the service-station operator
where the pay telephone was located
could not recall who had used the phone
at that time.
But the fact that the call was made
altered the investigators’ thinking on
the case. :
If the ambulance had been sent out,
it might have arrived in time to save
Mrs. Monohan’s life. Doctor Newbarr
said Mrs. Monohan could have lived for
several hours after receiving the beat-
ing.
Why would a killer who tortured his
victim so brutally suddenly have a
change of heart and request an ambu-
lance? Why, too, if the killer was known
to her, would he want to save her life?
Alive, she could identify him.
George Dudley, the vaudeville man,
was questioned again. He was able to
name a bar he had visited after leav-
“ ing Mrs. Monohan’s house. The bar-
tender there recalled that Dudley had
been in the place from shortly after
nine until it closed. Dudley could not
have made the call.
“Can't figure it,” Andrews told his
investigators as they discussed the new
angle. “Everything we have learned
points to the fact that Mrs. Monohan
wouldn’t let a stranger into her house.
But if she knew the killer, I can’t see
him calling an ambulance to save her
life so she could finger him.”
The others agreed.
Then, after nearly two weeks of in-
vestigation, Chief William A. Parker of
Los Angeles called Andrews.
“It’s just possible we may be able to
give you some help on the Monohan
case,” Parker said. “I’m sending out
Lieutenant E. S. Lavold of our burglary
squad. We'll put him on loan to you for
awhile.” :
“What does he have?” Andrews asked.
“T’ll let Lavold tell you when he gets
there. He’s just gone over it with me
and there’s one condition. Lavold must
not be put into a spot where he might
have to reveal the source of his infor-
mation.”
* “It’s a deal!” Andrews cried. “Right
now, we’d do just about anything for.a
lead on the case.”
WHEN Lavold arrived in Burbank, he
explained to Chief Andrews and
his detectives:
“We've been working on a gang of
state-wide safecrackers and burglars.
Our office has been cooperating with
San Francisco and the state bureau in
Sacramento. We know we have pegged
the right boys but so far we don’t have
enough evidence to haul them in and be
sure of a conviction.”
“What’s the connection with the
Monohan case?” Andrews asked.
“I’m getting to that. We’ve had a man
planted in the gang for nearly a year.
It’s a tough mob of ex-cons who know
their business and go after only big-
time stuff.
“Well, I picked up a rumble from our
plant yesterday that a couple members
of this gang just messed up a big job.
“A big-time gambler in Las Vegas—
I didn’t get any mame but I think
maybe you can figwre out who it would
be—came into possession of three hun-
dred thousand dolkars’ worth of jewelry
and two hundred timewsand in cash. He
wanted to ditch the stuff to escape in-
come tax. So he packed it in two suit-
cases and left it with Mrs. Monohan.”
“Scherer!” Covemey cried. “He told
us he left two suitcases with Mrs.
Monohan, filled with poker chips.”
{ #¥OLD reached initio his coat pocket
and brought out a handful of mug
photographs.
“Here are the boys who supposedly
are part of the safe mob and also
handled your Momoinan case. My in-
formant tells me they tortured Mrs.
Monohan to make ler reveal where the
stuff was hiddem, but either they
couldn’t find it or their information was
wrong, because the whisper is they left
the place without getting a dime.
The first police imentification photo
was of Ned Verble.
“He was a partmer of Mickey Cohen
in the Dincara Farms,” Lavold said.
The second photegraph was of Bax-
ter Shorter. :
“About as good a man at cracking
a safe as there is,” Lavoid said. ‘“He’s
a San Quentin gradmate. He went up
with another man and a twenty-three-
year-old showgirl after they confessed
burglarizing about every hotel safe
between Berkeley and Los Angeles
back in nineteen thirty-eight.” :
The record showed that more re-
cently, after Shorter was out on parole,
he had been invelived with another
man in a bunco deal where they posed
as police officers to bilk a Los Angeles
contractor out of $10,000.
In 1952, Shorter had been arrested
on a charge of receiving stolen property
—non-negotiable bends. However, the
bonds had been returned and the case
against Shorter dismissed. :
Lavold then laid down a picture of
a tall, thin-faced man with a small
mustache. The name under it was John
Albert Santo. ‘
“Jack Santo is the real mean boy of
the bunch,” he explained, “and the
smartest. He’s beem picked up and in-
vestigated for about everything in the
books, including attempted robbery and
murder in San Francisco. But the only
solid rap against him was away back
in nineteen twenty-four when they
clipped him on the Dyer Act and he
did time at McNeil Island.” ;
Dealing off the photographs like
cards, Lavold next laid down a picture
of Emmett Perkins. The record showed
arrests starting in 1924 with a sentence
to reform school and two sentences of
from one year to life each in San Quen-
tin for armed robbery.
“You'll recognize Perkins by his false
teeth,” Lavold said lightly. “Most of
the time he wears them in his pocket.”
The next photograph was of a young,
woman. “She is Barbara Graham. She’s
been married four times and is sepa-
rated from her latest husband. They
have a two-year-old kid and she’s Per-
kins’ girl-friend. Her only record is for
perjury, disorderly person and vagrancy
but she’s building up to be quite a
tough character.
“Santo has a friend named John
Donnelly,” Lavold went on, “who was
seen with him around the time of the
Monohan case. He’s a deep-sea diver
from Oakland.”
When Lavold finished, the detettives 5
sat around the table studying the pic- #
tures.
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} e =
1s. Not ex-convict, whom he did not name had tober 9th at the Fari i i
fe , ; ’ aris home. On Frida to mind the
= had stayed at the Faris home the night be- = Jack and Harriet did some drinking, aa near the Lace aidery Shee dine a
Harriet fore the murders, and that this man and __ into a quarrel, and the brunette left in a strong hunch Sheriff School . i
aitress the Farises had gone on a big spree in huff. Faris understood she had caught a colleagues took a lo “ paged agi
g with Reno immediately after the robbery ride back to Auburn with some people Soe ioe h i mal eee ee =e
e Faris massacre. Investigation in Sacramento she met at a bar. Santo then invited John nace ‘Sante : are ti \
from revealed that the informant was none Faris and his wife to go to Reno with and Jack Maho veh ago < ge
n, Jack other than the jealous ex-husband of him to take in a golf tournament, and boned ara c ry ; 8 wi a
Beverly Winter. he called up Beverly Winter, who joined 6 feet 1 2 - i "i ~ Who stood
ip her Big Jack Santo was already known to them there. well kn ua Page rg Price ae
of the the Plumas County sheriff. In fact, he The contractor assured the officers Coast gon heel rei ee
d that had previously been questioned routine- he had not known Santo was an ex-con. Portland O 9 avs a sagt re
yi < ly, only a few days after the mass mur- He claimed the Nevada week end wasn’t ed of Bap gl lie babes side
e rs. a “spree” b i i sh
On an earlier tip that suith ahi. bad — Oe es loadart ~~ pag line, and drew two and a half years
ilkative ex-convict of violent temperament, had money. He thought someone must be ha pety Island. In 1932 he knifed
h were visited a Chester tavern on the 10th, a exaggerating. ‘id. ral ties igs poker qeny ane
d heen pickup order had been put out for him, Faris ridiculed the idea that Santo = cou vray geo in, the Ban Tee
nds up along with other potential suspects. Big could have killed Guard Young and the weas a 4 ts tk pitting
m, but Jack, who did considerable traveling, children. “Why, it just wouldn’t be pos- hide in apse . ee brie ate tr
ernoon was soon located and questioned by sible, Sheriff. Jack was in and out of my la : ; r ther off i ree
hester, deputies down in San Mateo County,on house that day, but he was just around fi ee ly haat oa ace eae Wert
10 that the San Francisco peninsula. Santo in- = town here, and I don’t think he was to ern t of his li
of fun. dignantly protested that he had spent all gone for more than half an hour at any around the Mother baie saad " er
ind was Friday afternoon at the home of Gene one time.” Faris said it was about 4:30 for som t had ti ee
ul time .Faris, a reputable Chester citizen, who p.m. when Jack called Beverly, and tele- old hive aide ot to Sohigtae big
» much could vouch for him. He was released phone company records substantiated Si fo oii abe Anteues, Op ip
sort of when a check with Faris confirmed his this eal hothily: shove, Soret ts ‘ee?
\lars—in story. The contractor’s wife confirmed his yaya forget Phevip sepeseenne
several _ On the strength of the new informa- story, though she said she hadn’t paid te Kaba ieghient way gt slab
. didn t tion about the Reno week end, the spot- much attention to Santo’s comings and Oiies a sot ii behind shell wane’
y, She light swung back to Santo and his alibi. goings. Faris enjoyed a good reputation alae ene ae fe ke ory ba
, Sheriff Schooler and CII Agent Kenneth and had never been in trouble. Still the graying hair carefully d ed H yg adge
i rom Horton questioned Gene Faris more at- lawmen were not satisfied. They noted notorious ladies’ and oid ie waren
veived a tentively. The mountain contractor, a that Jack Santo was a tall man with found him attractive Reates 1 eal be pie
a nervous little man, said Santo had called dark curly hair, just as little Sondra had married several times and vee
i ies of him and invited himself and Harriet, his described one of the killers. They also to have three children. E a i te
per pil common-law wife up for deer-hunting. established that Harriet Henson had his latest wife, he had ee iang ott
s The couple had spent the night of Oc- been wearing red jeans, which brought and on for four years with dark-haired
65
enough
e hang-
us Cor-
vuburn.
' Placer
g inter-
ociates.
Shester
’s name
iminous
| Santo
mn. Cer-
giant
Harriet
ie back
no and
lls per-
a little
it deal,
blonde
er girl
Hansen
susly in
up his
crepan-
*t name
‘r from
it route
he pair
tigators
g away
eling of
ects to
mained
r’s and
tiously,
ot and
id hop-
kept in
seemed
he had
showed
Young,
1 were
turned
Sheriff
ty and
| work-
Hansen
a man
id sani-
rtender
with a
ywn as
f quot-
he Hig-
(ps, he
hat he
r Lode
a pal
‘ds re-
times
Jansen
les un-
m off.
rch of
as still
on his
reee’s
to Los
““busi-
nurder
uthern
other
—E————— : - — :
Lode mountains—and Bloody Barbara
Graham came into the picture for the
first time.
The story of the Mabel Monahan
murder has been told many times and
fills a ‘voluminous court record, but cer-
tain investigative details have come to
light and gaps have been filled in, only
long after the case was closed.
On March 11th a gardener found the
body of Mrs. Monahan, a well-to-do
crippled widow and former vaudeville
headliner, crumpled in a hall closet of
her big white stucco home on West
Parkside Avenue in the elite Mountain
View section of suburban Burbank, out
in the San Fernando Valley north of
Los Angeles. The fragile, sweet-faced,
gray-haired 62-year-old woman had
been savagely tortured, beaten and
choked to death, her hands trussed
behind her. She had been dead for two
days. The interior of the house was
literally torn apart, as though the killer
or killers had been frantically searching
for something. Yet valuable jewelry in a
handbag was untouched.
Mabel Monahan, who lived alone and
feared burglars, had formerly been the
mother-in-law of Luther B. ‘‘Tutor”
Scherer, the white-haired multimillion-
aire Las Vegas gambling boss, a colorful
figure known as the ‘‘Poet Laureate” of
Nevada. Burbank Police Chief Rex
Andrews and his detective chief, Lieu-
tenant Robert H. Coveney, sensed a
connection between the brutal murder
and the gambling rackets. “It would be
too much of a coincidence if there
weren’t some link,” Andrews decided.
Another gambler, a bitter rival of
Tutor Scherer, operated a swank casino
only a few blocks from the Monahan
home. The police checked on this man’s
former associates, a number of whom
had gone into legitimate businesses after
the gambling operations were broken
up.
The break came late in March, with a
tip passed by a reformed and frightened
burglar and gambler to Sergeant Ed
Lovold of the Los Angeles burglary divi-
sion. The Bp confirmed the . police
hunch: the reformed gambler said it had
been rumored among the fast-buck
fraternity that Tutor Scherer kept a
cache of $100,000 or more in unde-
clared gambling profits, in a secret safe
at the home of his former mother-in-
law, to dodge income taxes.
Two former aides of Santo’s rival,
according to this informer, had had
their avaricious eyes on the rumored
hoard. One of these was Baxter Shorter,
a husky, scar-faced 43-year-old ex-
convict safecracker. The other was Bill
Upshaw, a dapper, pudgy silvery-haired
34-year-old gambler and promoter.
“For the past year or so,” the ex-
gambler confided, “Shorter and Upshaw
were trying to get me to go along with
them to help crack this safe and grab
the loot. We cased the place a couple of
times, but Upshaw got leery and kept
putting off the job. Then I had a beef
with Bax and I pulled out. When I read
that Mrs. Monahan was bumped off, I
decided I’d better get clean.”
Baxter McCoy Shorter, who now
called himself an “income property
iy
manager,” and William Alvin Upshaw,
who sold aircraft parts, were swiftly
picked up, together with two other
mobsters the informant had named. To
make it look good, he was locked up
along with them in the Burbank jail.
Under persistent grilling, weak-
chinned Bill Upshaw was the first to
crack. Nervously assuring the officers he
hadn’t been in on the actual murder and
given a promise of immunity and secre-
cy, he told what ‘he knew. He named
Jack Santo as leader of the murder mob.
Upshaw said he had met the big fellow
from the mountains when Santo came
to Los Angeles to try to promote an
illicit deal for high-grading Mexican
gold. He had introduced him to Bax
Shorter, and Santo immediately got in-
terested in the hoodlum pair’s long-
discussed project of cracking Tutor
Scherer’s reported cache in Mrs. Mona-
han’s home.
The steeleyed mountain man took
charge of the operation. His chief lieu-
tenant was a -jug-eared little buddy of
his, a gambler whom Upshaw knew only
as “Perk.” There was another man,
named John, a Northern California
hunting pal of Santo’s. And there was a
shapely young reddish-golden blonde
called Barbara, who worked with Perk
as a gambling shill. She was brought into
the job to get the timid widow to open
her door.
The job was set for the night of
March 9th. Upshaw was originally
scheduled to go along, but the pudgy
gambler was allergic to violence, and he
didn’t like the look in Big Jack’s eyes.
He backed out at the last minute. The
next day, Bax Shorter told him what
had happened. Shorter had been posted
outside as lookout. When he went into
the house, he found Santo, Perkins and
Barbara beating and torturing Mabel
Monahan to make her point out the
hidden safe. They didn’t find the safe.
The frustrated mob finally fled, leaving
the trussed-up widow at the point of
death.
With Upshaw’s information in hand,
the jittery Shorter was soon persuaded
to talk, on a similar promise of immuni-
ty. “I was there, all right,” the scar-
faced cracksman acknowledged glumly,
“but I don’t go for murder. I'll tell you
all about it.”
Like Upshaw, he knew Santo’s aides
only as Perk, John and Barbara. Shorter
said he had worried about having a
woman on the job, but Big Jack assured
him Babs was okay, that “she knows
what happens to squealers.” He could
say that again.
As Shorter told it, the blonde went
to the door and got the cautious Mrs.
Monahan to open it by asking to use her
telephone. The others piled in, while
Shorter stood watch outside.
When they called him inside to help
look for the safe, Shorter said, he was -
horrified’ to see Barbara beating the
moaning widow over the head with her
gun. Perk was slugging her also. Shorter,
who hadn’t bargained for violence, got
out fast. On his way home, he put in a
call for an ambulance, but he gave the
wrong address.
That was the shocking story of the
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A
$2,000 between them, said they had
won the money gambling in Las Vegas,
Nevada. They admitted having been in
Reno, ‘a little more than 100 miles
southeast of Westwood, but denied hav-
ing crossed into California. The protest-
ing trio were held as extremely hot sus-
pects, till they were able to prove their
alibi to the sheriff’s satisfaction. The
search continued for the dusty black car
seen in Westwood.
Also sought was a tan Chevrolet, seen
parked at the mouth of the logging road
Friday aftemoon. A young man, wear-
ing a hunter’s red cap, was standing by
it, peering up the forest road. There
were also several reports of a mystery
woman seen in the vicinity—a brunette
wearing red jeans. A Chester business-
man, who had been on bad: terms with
Guard Young, was grilled at length
when some pipe resembling the lethal
bludgeon was found on his premises.
But all these promising leads bogged
down.
On October 14th, the fourth day af-
ter the massacre, the doctors finally al-
Jowed Sheriff Schooler and District At-
torney Bertram E. Janes to interview
3-year-old Sondra Young, while her an-
guished mother cradled the wide-eyed
little girl in her arms. Sondra said she
went for a ride with Daddy and ate an
ice cream stick.
“What happened then, honey?” the
sheriff asked gently.
“Two bad men,” the child answered,
lowering her eyes. “I didn’t want to go
up the road.”
Piecing together little Sondra’s halt-
ing story, the sheriff gathered that two
’ men in a “big blue car” had forced
Young to stop on the lonely highway.
One man “with no hair in front” wore a
white mask over the lower part of his
face. The other, unmasked, was a tall
man with curly black hair, who bran-
dished a “short, shiny gun.” Sondra
didn’t know either of the men, both of
whom wore “‘pretty shirts.”
She related how the pair had forced
the children to lie down in the back
seat. Then the tall man took the wheel
and drove up the logging road, while his
masked companion followed in the blue
car.
It was obvious Guard Young had sub-
mitted without resistance for the sake
of the children—never dreaming that
they would be bludgeoned anyway. Per-
haps the calculating robbers had count-
ed on that very thing.
Sondra described one further scene,
her father lying on the middle of the
dirt road, face down, while the masked
man tied his hands behind him.
At that point the child’s memory
faltered. Nature had drawn a merciful
curtain. Later, when driven out to the
scene, Sondra clung in terror to her
mother as they approached the logging
road. “No, no!” she sobbed, “I don’t
want to go up there!”
The tiny golden-haired survivor of
the horror was not particularly interest-
ed when shown mug shots of suspects—
until the lower halves of the faces were
masked. Then she would point gleefully
and cry, “That’s the bad man,” as
though it were a game. The lawmen
64
were doubtful as to whether Sondra
would actually be able to identify the
killers if she saw them. Still her slender
information was vital.
A thousand people attended the
funeral of Guard Young and his two
daughters, the day after little Michael
Saile was buried. “God is on our side,” a
Mormon bishop told the weeping
throng, “and inevitably these people
who did this thing must pay for their
crime.”
With all immediate leads petering
out, the two mountain sheriffs and the
state agents settled down to a grim, de-
termined manhunt, centering at Sheriff
Schooler’s headquarters in Quincy, his
county seat. Hundreds of possibilities
were patiently checked out, scores of
suspects investigated. Tips and sugges-
tions came from all over the country.
But Sheriff Schooler was doggedly con-
vinced the key to the Chester atrocity
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She was found stark naked, tied to
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4
lay somewhere close at hand.
Late in October came a tip, just one
among many others, but rating special
attention because of its source. It was
relayed to Sheriff Schooler by his old
friend Dewey Johnson, veteran sheriff
of neighboring Sierra County.
The information came from the
pretty wife of one of Johnson’s
deputies, Percy Watters. Mrs. Watters
worked as waitress in a restaurant at
Grass Valley, in the Mother Lode coun-
try some 150 miles south of Chester. An
intelligent and observant woman, she
had thought to tell her husband about a
conversation she had that day with a
woman acquaintance, over the restau-
rant counter. Deputy Watters agreed it
was interesting enough to report to
Sheriff Johnson there, for relay to
Plumas County.
The woman involved was a shapely
32-year-old blonde divorcee named
Beverly Winter. She worked as a stenog-
rapher at Beale Air Force Base down by
Marysville, and was known as something
of a playgirl.
Beverly had confided to Mrs. Watters
that she recently had been on a wonder-
ful week-end spree in Reno with her
latest boy friend, a tall, handsome man
named Jack Santo, who lived in nearby
Auburn. Santo was something of a
mystery figure, a man who never
worked and was rumored to have his
fingers in various rackets. This enhanced
his charm for the fun-loving blonde.
That week end, said Beverly, Jack
was loaded with money. He bought her
a complete new outfit in Reno, and
they really lived it up around the
Nevada fun city’s bars and casinos. Not
only that, Beverly bragged, but Jack had
ditched his regular girl friend, Harriet
Henson, a brunette cocktail waitress
who lived with him, to go partying with
the blonde. Another couple, Gene Faris
and his wife, friends of Jack’s from
Chester, had been along with them, Jack
footing the bill for all.
The deputy’s wife pricked up her
ears when she heard mention of the
northern lumber town, and learned that
the big Reno party had started on Fri-
day night, October 10th, the date of the
Guard Young massacre.
Discreetly she pressed the talkative
blonde for further details, which were
not hard to elicit. Big Jack had been
deer-hunting, staying with his friends up
in Chester. Harriet was with him, but
they quarreled, and on Friday afternoon
Jack telephoned Beverly from Chester,
inviting her to drive up to Reno that
night, to join him in a week end of fun.
The blonde hastened to do so, and was
still agog over what a wonderful time
Santo had shown her and how much
money he had spent. What sort of
money? Why, hundreds of dollars—in
$20 bills. He must have had several
thousands on him. No, Beverly didn’t
know where Jack got the money. She
hadn’t asked.
Shortly after this tip came in from
Grass Valley, Sheriff Schooler received a
letter from a Sacramento man, suggest-
ing that he look into the activities of
Gene Faris, a Chester painting contrac-
tor and sportsman. The writer said an
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massacre. In
revealed tha
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Beverly Win!
Big Jack °
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Sheriff Sc
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common-
The coup
Harriet Henson, a tough, lynx-eyed
woman of 30. Big Jack often strayed,
but he always seemed to come back to
Harriet. Currently he was facing a
$100,000 lawsuit for savagely beating a
man who had made a slurring remark
about the brunette.
More pertinently, in recent years
Jack Santo had come increasingly under
scrutiny of the law. CII Chief George
Brereton supplied Sheriff Schooler with
his bulky file on the curly-haired giant.
Big Jack’s source of income had long
been a puzzle. He had once owned an
impoverished ranch and had a share in
an unproductive gold mine. Vaguely un-
derstood to be a “mining man,” he was
always hinting about mysterious big
deals. He passed himself off on occasion
as a mining engineer, a contractor, a
gold buyer, a real estate operator. No
one saw him do any work other than
hunting or fishing, yet he always seemed
to have plenty of money, which he
spent freely in night clubs and gambling
resorts from Reno and San Francisco to
Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Tijuana.
Investigators for years had suspected
Santo of “high-grading’’—dealing in il-
licit gold from the mines, selling it on
the international black market above
the legal rate, but nothing could be
proved on him. In 1949 he had come to
the attention of the sheriffs of Placer
and Nevada Counties, in connection
with a grandiose but ill-starred scheme
to organize vice and gambling on a big-
time scale in the Mother Lode.
On July 2, 1950, two masked men
hijacked $12,000 in freshly mined gold
from a truck on a lonely road near Ham-
monton. On November 29, 1951, An-
drew Colner, a gold buyer, and his wife
were cruelly tortured with matches, pis-
tol-whipped and robbed of $4,500 in
gold dust by two men who invaded their
home near Folsom, wearing rubber
masks.:
Then on the snowy night of Decem-
ber 29, 1951, two vicious marauders,
one of them masked, forced their way
into the home of Edmund G. Hansen,
operator of the famous Last Chance
Mine at Nevada City. They demanded
$20,000 in gold. When Hansen resisted
them, protesting that he had no gold in
the house, they shot him to death, rid-
dling him with seven slugs before the
horrified eyes of his wife.
Jack Santo was among several men
strongly suspected of these crimes. He
was questioned and investigated, but
still nothing could be. proved against
him. He remained ur Jer suspicion.
In February of 1952, Santo was
linked with an attempt to swindle a
Sacramento man into investing in a
mythical $8,000,000 cache of bootleg
gold. U. S. Secret Service agents, deter-
mined to stamp out the illegal gold traf-
fic, joined with the CII and the moun-
tain sheriffs in a searching probe of Jack
Santo and his activities.
They were sure of his guilt, but once
again the taciturn Auburn mystery man,
who quite evidently fancied himself as a
mastermind, a genius of crime, managed
to cover his tracks. About this same
a
tat ee
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A
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time, Santo was able to produce enough
cash to buy one of his favorite hang-
outs, a roadside tavern at Higgins Cor-
ner, between Grass Valley and Auburn.
For months the Nevada and Placer
County sheriffs had been checking inter-
mittently on Santo and his associates.
Then, in October, came the Chester
mass murders, in which Big Jack’s name
cropped up yet again.
After studying the suspect’s ominous
history, Sheriff Schooler ordered Santo
picked up for further interrogation. Cer-
tainly, .the cold-eyed, arrogant giant
snapped, he had had a beef with Harriet
at Gene’s house, and she had gone back
to Auburn while he went to Reno and
met blonde Beverly. That was his per-
sonal business. Sure, he had had a little
money from a mining equipment deal,
but he was far from loaded. The blonde
must be trying to impress her girl
friends, he leered.
Sullen-faced, waspish Harriet Hansen
was likewise picked up. Obviously in
love with Santo, she backed up his
story. But there were some discrepan-
cies in her account. She couldn’t name
the people who had driven her from
Chester to Auburn, nor tell what route
they had taken.
After lengthy questioning the pair
was released, and the _ investigators
adopted the strategy of keeping away
from Santo, to lull him into a feeling of
security. There were other suspects to
be checked, but the big fellow remained
at the top of Sheriff Schooler’s and
Agent Brereton’s list.
The lawmen played it cautiously,
keeping tab on Santo, Harriet and
Beverly without alerting them, and hop-
ing for a break. Actively they kept in
contact with Gene Faris, who seemed
increasingly nervous, as though he had
something on his mind. They showed
Santo’s picture to little Sondra Young,
but she couldn’t recognize him.
Other angles of investigation were
pressed meantime, and the weeks turned
into months. Early in 1953, Sheriff
Wayne Brown of Nevada County and
State Agent Ray McCarthy, still work-
ing doggedly on the Edmund Hansen
murder, became interested in a man
named George Boles, a 28-year-old sani-
tarium attendant, a former bartender
and part-time newspaperman, with a
minor police record. Boles, known as
“The Professor” from his habit of quot-
ing poetry, was an habitue of the Hig-
gins Comer bar. When in his cups, he
sometimes dropped dark hints that he
could tell plenty about the Mother Lode
crimes if he wanted to. Boles was a pal
of Santo’s, and telephone records re-
vealed he had called Big Jack 22 times
from his hotel, just before the Hansen
murder, The investigators kept Boles un-
der surveillance without tipping him off.
That was the situation in March of
1953, when Jack Santo, who was still
keeping both Harriet and Beverly on his
string, borrowed the blonde divorcee’s
1952 Oldsmobile sedan for a trip to Los
Angeles on one of his mysterious “‘busi-
ness”’ errands.
It was at this point that the murder
focus swung dramatically to Southern
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All denied any connection with thes
Monahan crime.
They did not dream then that John
Lawson True would suddenly turn State’s
evidence against them and render the dis-
appearance of Baxter Shorter a wasted
motion.
They did not know that the beauteous
Barbara Graham, desperate to clear her-
self, would plot her way into the gas
chamber with the aid of a cell mate,
Donna Prow.
It was to Donna Prow, 20, serving a
seven-year sentence for manslaughter,
that Barbara Graham confided her urgent
need for a man who would swear on the
witness stand that he had spent the night
of the Monahan murder in a motel with
her. Donna Prow promised to provide
such a man for a sizable sum of money.
At the crucial moment, however, Barbara
found that her ‘alibi man” was a Los
Angeles police officer!
In his Nevada City jail cell, Boles tried
to emulate his idol, the close- mouthed,
calculating, mercilessly shrewd Santo.
But Boles had a fatal weakness. He was
a show-off. When he finally decided to
talk, he talked loud and long, but not to
law-enforcement officers. Boles wanted it
in headlines. So he summoned a woman
who had once published a weekly news-
paper in Marin County on which Boles
had been employed as a part-time re-
porter. This woman, Bernice Freeman,’
now a reporter for the San Francisco
Chronicle, got a full confession from the
youthful hospital orderly. He named
Emmett Perkins as the second man in
the Colner and Hansen jobs, saying that
Santo had master minded both crimes.
Harriet Henson had driven the getaway
car on the Hansen murder. The score was
adding up fast against the fiendish
“Mountain Massacre Mob.”
Santo, Perkins and Barbara Graham
were found guilty of the Monahan mur-
der and sentenced to die in the gas
chamber at San Quentin.
Harriet Henson had been taken into
custody on September 4, 1953. She at first
_denied, then admitted she had driven the
car on the Hansen murder, but insisted
she did not know the miner was to be
slain. As for Santo, he was innocent, she
insisted. He knew nothing of the crimes.
Even when the lurid picture of Santo,
sporting in a hideout with the beautiful
and shapely Barbara Graham, was re-°
created for her, her faith in the man who
ruled her remained unshaken. Time and
again she wrote to him, “I love you, I
will always love you.” Santo did not
answer. He grunted morosely at her pro-
testations of love.
Larry Shea was the next to come forth
with assistance to the police, and once.
again it was a newspaperman who shared
the spotlight with him.
John D. Keyes, ace leg man for The
Call-Bulletin in San Francisco, assigned
to the Chester murders, in an interview
with Shea learned that the little painter,
now thoroughly horrified by the realiza-
tion that he had harbored a brutal mur-
derer in his home, believed himself to
have been the unwitting finger man in the
massacre of Guard Young and the chil- .
dren. Shea explained that casually, over
a long period of time, Santo had drawn
from him’ information on the grocer’s
habits. Santo had asked him, he said, how
often Young went to the bank in West-
wood. Chester had no bank. The gang
leader had also wanted to know how
much money Young customarily with-
drew on the fortnightly bank visits. At
no time had it crossed Shea’s mind that
Santo had a sinister. motive in asking
those questions.
62 A
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‘On the afternoon of the mass-murders, |
Shea related, Santo and’ Harriet had en-
gaged ina violent argument at his home.
Both had been drinking rather heavily.
Harriet was insistent that she and Santo
return to Auburn at once. She was due
back at her waitress job at a place near
there. Suddenly, at the. height of the
argument, Shea said, Santo turned on her
and snapped:
“I’m going uptown. I have some busi-
ness to attend to. If all goes well, you
won’t need your waitress Job any more.’
Shortly after that, around 2:30 p.m.,
Santo and his common-law wife, who
called herself Mrs. Santo; went ont. Santo
did not return until about 4:30, Shea said.
Harriet never did come back.
Perhaps it was the certainty that her
lover was doomed to the gas chamber for
the Monahan murder that finally caused
her to break down and talk. Maybe it was
the story told by Larry Shea. Again, it
may have been her intense jealousy of
Bernadine Pearney; the knowledge that
Santo had chosen the Pearney woman in
preference to her for the Reno “celebra-
tion” in which the blood money had been
spent lavishly.
Whichever of these reflections, or a
combination of all three, unnerved the
hard woman, Harriet Henson lost her icy
composure. She started talking.
It was a sordid and pitiful story she
told, beginning with her meeting with the
gang master mind in Los Angeles, going
over the six years with him at Auburn,
the quarrels over other women, par-
ticularly Bernadine Pearney!
“For a while he was living with both
of us,” she sobbed. “But when I tried to
get him to give her up, he rammed his
fist into my mouth. After that I never
said anything about her any more.”
Another time, in the presence of the
Pearney woman, Santo had ground out a
lighted cigaret on Harriet’s bare leg.
She did everything to try to please him.
Once, after he had complained she did
not make enough money, she tried to get
a liquor license for a place between
Auburn and Grass Valley. She was turned
down for, of all things, her too close
association with Santo.
Her story of the Chester visit differed
in several-vital respects from Shea’s. She
denied having gone out with Santo in the
afternoon, insisting she had remained be-
hind and later had accepted a ride to
Auburn with an Oakland couple she met
in a tavern,
Later she changed part of this story,
admitting there had been no couple from
Oakland. Instead, she said, she had gone
out of the house around 4 p.m. and had
found Emmett Perkins sitting in her car
in the driveway outside.
Perkins beckoned to her and she got
into the car. They started toward Auburn.
About 20 miles along the way, Perkins
stopped the car and changed his shirt and
other articles of clothing. He handed her
a man’s hat, telling her to throw it out. .
At that time he commented:
“We had a pretty gruesome day today.”
At Auburn, Perkins counted $2,000 in
bills, none larger than $20,. off a larger
roll. He gave her to understand it was
part of Jack Santo’s share.
He also handed her a wallet widen con-
tained the personal papers of grocer
Guard Young.
“Burn it up,” he said. The obedient
Harriet did so that night in an incinerator
‘at the Santo farm.
She and Perkins dined on hamburgers
at a tavern. He then drove on to Los
Angeles. At that moment, Santo, unbe-
known to his slavishly devoted moll, was
- heading for Reno and the rendezvous
x
with the other woman. He would return
to her Sunday night, sated with drink and
other pleasures and Harriet, according to
bed own version of the story, would ask
im:
“Did you hit those little kids over the
head?”
And receive the reply:
“What do you think?”
On October 8; 1953, Santo and Perkins,
under heavy guard, were taken from Los
Angeles to San Quentin’s Death Row.
They remained there only a few days,
embarking once more under the watchful
eyes of armed guards for Nevada City,
where with Boles, on November 9, 1953,
they went on trial for the Hansen mur-
der. The jury was out four hours. The
verdict was guilty for all defendants.
They. were sentenced to life imprison-
ment on January 7, 1954.
On March 29, Sacramento County
District Attorney J. ‘Francis O’Shea
dropped the Colner case. With Boles
already facing life, any new sentence
would merely have been incorporated into
the life sentence under California law. It
would have been useless to convict Per-
kins, already under death sentence and
facing a probable second one.
During the Hansen murder trial,
Harriet Henson made one futile attempt
to free her lover. She slipped a piece of
a hacksaw blade through a hole in the
floor to Santo, imprisoned with Perkins,
directly below her. George Boles was
credited with informing the guard and
breaking up the escape plot.
There was a final reunion” between
Harriet and Santo just before their de-'
parture from Nevada City for the
massacre trial at Quincy. In their con-
versation, wire recorded by District At-
torney John F. Keane, successor to
Bertram Janes in Plumas County, Santo
carefully avoided any reference to the
Chester slayings until they were nearing
their final parting. Then suddenly he
lashed out at her: |
“Why the hell did you tell them you
drove down to Auburn with Perk? Why
didn’t you say you took a bus or some-
thing? They sold you a bill of goods.
They didn’t have anything oti us until
you talked!”
On Monday, March 29, 1954, as grim
guards patrolled the corridors of the
Plumas County court house at Quincy,
Jack Santo, Emmett Perkins and Harriet
Henson went on trial for the fiendish kill-
ing of Guard, Jean and Judy Young and
Michael. Saile. Of the jury of seven men
and five women, all but one were parents.
Milton Schwartz, a highly capable and
respected Sacramento attorney who had
heen specially appointed to prosecute the
deadly trio, demanded that the defendants
be “destroyed like mad dogs.”
The jury accepted this recommendation
for Jack Santo and Emmett Perkins—
but asked that the _hard-eyed ‘Harriet
Henson be spared. Perhaps it was the
words of her attorney: “She is an un-
fortunate girl, who loved unwisely. ...
She worked to support Santo, and she
lived with him. ... When she could not
give him all the money he wanted, he
went to live with Bernadine Pearney, and
she still gave him all her money” that led
the jury members to recommend leniency
for the lynx-eyed mistress of murder.
This meant that while Santo and Perkins
would die in the gas chamber at San
Quentin, Harriet would receive a life
sentence,
And soon May 7, 1954, the final chapter
was written in one of the blackest pages
in California’s criminal history.
The monstrous ‘Mountain Massacre
Mob is no more.
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r himself.” No doubt
it will just go away.
na and Patricia, both
high dudgeon accuse
ions. Since one of the
may be extra inter-
at the time, but later I was sure he had a
kind of pleading look in his eyes.”
Baccala said he was sure he would know
the woman if he saw her again. He wasn’t
so sure about the men. Schooler produced
a photograph of Harriet Henson.
“Ts this the woman?” he asked. Baccala
stared hard at it. /
“That’s her,” he said. “That's her all
right.”
Positive now that a big break in the
brutal mass murder case was at hand,
Schooler prepared to pick up the trio.
It was at this point that it appeared as
though fate were looking over his
shoulder. For, from Los Angeles came an
all-points bulletin: Santo and Perkins
were. wanted there for questioning in the
slaying of an elderly widow, Mrs. Mabel
Monahan!
On the night of March 11, 1953, four
men and a woman had entered the Bur-
bank home of the 62-year-old woman.
There had been rumors abroad in the
underworld that Mrs. Monahan, former
mother-in-law of Las Vegas gambling
figure L. B. “Tutor” Scherer, had a large
sum of money hidden in her home. Some
said it might be as: much as $100,000. : It
was this money the five visitors de-
manded.
When the old lady, partially crippled,
protested she had no such sum, her hands
were: bound behind her back. The in-
truders then beat her and strangled her
until she died.
Police got a fast break in the Monahan
case. An informer put them on the trail
of an ex-convict’ named Baxter Shorter,
alias Shorty Baxter. Shorter was picked
up and proceeded to sing.
He identified his companions in the
Monahan crime as Jack Santo, Emmett
Perkins, a deep-sea diver named John
Lawson True and a blonde vixen, Bar-
abara Graham.
Thé Graham woman was no stranger to
police. A strikingly pretty woman, she
had a record of law violations dating back
some years. She had been a prostitute in
San Francisco and once had faced a court
on narcotics charges. Now, 35, she was
married and the mother of a small boy;
but she had frequently appeared with-
Santo at a gambling concession the self-
styled Lothario operated in El Monte
near Los Angeles. Like Harriet Henson,
the blonde had at one time lived with
Santo.
There was no trace of Santo, Perkins
and Barbara Graham in the Los Angeles
area, but John Lawson True turned up at
Grass Valley and was promptly nabbed.
He denied any knowledge of the Mona-
han murder.
His questioners shifted their attack
away from the murder and onto Santo
himself. True admitted he had known
Santo for some time, having done some
diving in submerged gold mines for the
fugitive.
He referred to the “Santo Gang,” iden-
tifying still another of its members as
George Boles, a dapper. soft-spoken
orderly in a sanitarium at Weimar. not
far from Auburn.
Law-enforcement officers in the moun-
tain country perked up their/ears at the
phrase “Santo Gang.”
Santo, they were aware, had not been
a “lone wolf,” and yet the possibility that
he was the head of an organized mob was
new to them. It opened up several fresh
lines of speculation.
Sacramento County had the unsolved
torture-robbery of Mr. and Mrs. Andrew
Colner on its files. And the Santo modus
operandi seemed to tie him into this crime,
too.
On November 30, 1951, two men had
appeared at the Folsom home of Colner,
a gold buyer, at about 8 p.m. Forcing
their way in, they had demanded the
wealth he was rumored to have hidden in
the place. Colner. denied having such a
hoard. The two thugs bound him and his
wife with wire and applied lighted
matches to his body. The gold buyer,
unable to bear the pain, revealed to the
fiends the hiding place of a gold brick
valued at $1,700; $300 worth of gold dust,
and $2,000 in cash.
Nevada County Sheriff Wayne Brown
was at the same time pursuing his in-
vestigation of the murder of Edmund
Hansen of Grass Valley, operator of The
Last Chance Mine.
In that brutal slaying, two men had
-appeared at the Hansen home on the
night of December 29, 1951. As in the
Colner case, they had demanded gold,
which they appeared to be certain was
hidden there. Hansen, panic-stricken, fled
into his home, crying for help. One of the
thugs sprinted through a bedroom, .cut-
ting off his escape route. Then the pair
virtually emptied their pistols into the
miner’s body. He died two weeks later.
The startling similarity—the ruthless
pattern—of the Colner, Hansen, Mona-
han and Guard Young crimes seemed in-
creasingly apparent.
Boles, the hospital orderly, was picked
up for questioning. The Colners picked
Boles out of a line-up as one as the men
who had robbed them.
Mrs. Mary Hansen, foe See 35-year-
old widow ofthe murdered Grass Valley
mine operator and a witness to his cold-
blooded slaying, also identified Boles as
a participant in that crime.
Now, on April 14, 1953, came another
development in Los Angeles. Baxter
Shorter, the State’s principal witness
against the Santo Gang, had disappeared:
His wife, Olivia, said that he had been
taken_away by.a man she identified as
Emmett Perkins and that the driver of
the kidnap car matched the description
of Jack Santo. Once again, the pattern
was the same. Dispose of all incriminat-
ing evidence, be it human or otherwise.
Shorter has never been seen since.
The hue and cry against the Santo
Murder Mob had mounted to a full-
throated roar by the night of May 4, 1953,
when 20 Los Angeles police officers,
acting on a tip, armed with shotguns,
surrounded a vacant store and broke in.
Sprawled nude on a mattress on the
floor lay Jack Santo. Beside him, half
clad, lolled Barbara Graham. Emmett
Perkins was circumspectly minding his
own business in another part of the room.
All three were booked on suspicion of
murder.
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FRONT PAGE DETECTIVE,
DECEMBER, 1955.
by EDWARD S. SULLIVAN
@ During the months of August, Septem-
ber and October of 1949, four people dis-
appeared from the Hollywood area of Los
Angeles.
There have been no bodies found. There
have been few leads. No more than a scat-
tering of clues has turned up in any one of
the four cases. And yet it may be that the
four “missing persons” were somehow con-
nected . . . and it is certainly true that the
aura of violent death surrounds each one
of these case histories.
All that has ever turned up of Jean
Spangler, 26-year-old Hollywood showgirl,
was her black handbag, the strap torn and
: an ominous note inside of it. Of buxom
Mimi Boomhower, merry widow of high
society, her handbag, likewise was the only
trace—a white handbag in this case with a
note inked on its outside. Then a year and
continued on page 46
ANYBODY SEE
e
Jean Spangler Frank Niccoli
Mimi Boomhower David Ogul
A merry widow, two mobsters and a showgirl—one by one, they disappea<ed. They
left behind their handbags and their Cadillacs, and the hint of violent death...
\F on - —
Mimi’s trophies were worth $300,000, but she needed cash. Elephant tusks were first to go.
o
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2 SNIMY
WVHVUD 2
°y “FT
JstTle
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eBTtuso
&
THE LIVING—DO THEY KNOW?
PE RETR ree oy
a
& Ave
“Count Rudini”: He specialized in wid-
ows, flattered, beat and robbed them.
» JSS 5 PECAN
Harriet Henson: Husband showed her
murder was doing what comes naturally.
a half later, Mimi’s bedraggled fur coat showed up. Of
Frank Niccoli and Davey Ogul, gangster Mickey Cohen’s
trusted hoods, the only vestiges were their respective
abandoned Cadillacs.
To veteran Los Angeles lawmen, who saw plenty of
murder and mayhem in the homicide carnival of the late
1940s—the Black Dahlia and other girl sex murders, and
the gang rub-outs centering around the above-mentioned
Mickey Cohen—the multiple riddle of the vanished four-
some still carries a strangely chilling impact, and remains
a lively challenge.
Deputy Chief Thad F. Brown, commander of the L. A.
Detective Bureau, says that in the absence of any trace at
all, the presumption is that each member of the oddly
assorted missing quartet has been murdered. Most in-
vestigators share his opinion. However, they’re reluctant to
be quoted.
But let’s take a look at the facts. In the first place, in
this day and age of widespread fingerprinting and rapid
worldwide communication, it isn’t an easy matter to vanish
i OS i na BR cabee oi
Mickey Cohen:
He became a regular at funerals. “They’re strikin; at me
through my boys,” he said. “If this goes on, I'll be broke.” Abii soon, he was.
%
voluntarily and without a trace, let aloric io ¥emain in
hiding for six long years. Add to this the lack cf any known
motive in any one of the cases for dropping -sut: of sight,
plus the obscure but menacing factors which surrounded
all four of them . . . what you get is likely to bé murder.
Out of the two million people of Los Angeles, four per-
sons, two women and two men, three of whom knew each
other, and two of whom were linked at least indirectly
with the fourth through mutual contacts—these four peo-
ple disappeared, one by one, within the short space of less
than two months in the same west side area, of just a few
square miles! Never before or since has si: asseries of
disappearances been listed in California police records, nor
withstood such prolonged investigation. Coincidence? It
would seem to defy the laws of probability. ”
Today, although the newspapers have forgotten the
blaring headlines of six years ago, the cases of the missing
quartet are still very much alive.
Less than a year,ago Jean Spangler’s ex-husband (in-
volved in a custody battle with Jean’s mother over his and
5 ee
Sam Rummel: Mickey’s attorney
knew “everything,” but had to die.
Baxter Shorter: Fingered Mabel
Monohan, may have fingered Mimi.
Jean’s little girl) also disappeared with his second wife and
with the child. He, too, is now being searched for.
And, in the now-it-can-be-told department, the execu-
tions at San Quentin last June of Big Jack Santo and
Emmett “The Weasel” Perkins may have put up another
dead end sign in the investigations. These two multiple
killers, ranked as the: most vicious and cold-blooded in
Western history, died in the California gas chamber along
with their gunmoll, Barbara Graham. It may be that the
tight-lipped Santo carried to his grave the secret of at least
Mimi Boomhower’s fate, and possibly that of the others.
Santo, killer of at least seven persons ‘(and probably more),
an expert in arranging disappearances, was a walking mau-
soleum of bloody riddlés, most of which he took to the
gas chamber with him. Not the least of these was the
exact fate of Baxter Shorter, the ex-convict squealer who
in April of 1953 vanished as completely, though not quite
as cluelessly, as the classic quartet.
Bax Shorter, undoubtedly killed by Santo and believed
to lie in a desert grave, provides the link between the Santo
Barbara Graham: Took her grisly secrets
to the gas chamber, would admit nothing.
Jack Santo: Condemned to die, he
wouldn’t give cops the right time.
Emmett Perkins: Had no qualms
over killing lonely, elderly widows.
mob, the Cohen mob, and Mimi Boomhower; and he
definitely isn’t talking.
Neither has Mickey Cohen talked, though it is doubtful
whether he could really shed very much light on the quad-
ruple mystery. He may be as mystified as anyone else, but
the pudgy little mobster is due out of federal prison just
about now, and anything can happen—police are fully pre-
pared for a new outbreak of the gang warfare that ended
abruptly soon after Mickey went to prison in 1951.
( HRONOLOGICALLY, the bulky report file, known
officially as Division of Records Number 637-144,
started far from the scene of mob guns and even of Holly-
wood show business, at the secluded $40,000 brick and tile
Mediterranean-type mansion of Mimi Boomhower at 701
Nimes Road in exclusive Bel-Air, perched on the edge of
‘ wooded Beverly Glen.
Brunette, brown-eyed, fat and vivacious Mimi, who was
born in Brooklyn, but educated at a French convent,
affected a French accent, was the widow of Novice E.
continued on next page
47
a
renter mie
Jean Spangler was climbing up. Nothing could stop her—except maybe Dr. Scott.
Boomhower, wealthy sportsman and in-
ventor who had reaped a fortune from
his linoleum patents. .
Mimi was the clinging type, and she
and her vigorous husband had had a fine,
happy marriage. Boomhower’s passion
had been big-game hunting. Mimi had
accompanied him on countless safaris in
Africa and in India. Their home was
filled with an amazing collection of ’
trophies from veldt and jungle.
When Novice Boomhower died in
‘1943, Mimi was at a loss what to do
with herself. She still kept up the big,
ten-room house, where she now lived
alone, maintaining her beloved trophy
room and other mementos intact.
A typical lonely widow with money,
she plunged into a whirl of social and
philanthropic activity to fill up the emp-
tiness in her life. On the surface, she was
4
jolly, bubbling with talk, perhaps a bit >
scatterbrained. But inevitably, at every
gathering of friends or strangers, Mimi’s
conversation came around to what a ~
wonderful man her Novice had been,
and how lonely her life was without him.
Her close friends understood and made
kindly allowance; to- others, Mimi
Boomhower was a somewhat pitiful,
though far from unique figure.
August 17, 1949, was the sixth anni-
versary of Novice Boomhower’s death,
and Mimi had planned to get together
in the evening with one of her friends
and neighbors, another Bel-Air socialite
widow, “to drink a toast to our loved
ones.” But that morning, Mimi sent a
box of flowers to her friend, with a note
saying some urgent business had come
up and that she couldn’t keep the date. .
About five o’clock the next afternoon,
Mimi's lawyer telephoned to confirm a
tentative dinner date for that night, but |
he got no answer. However, Mimi was |
home at 8:15 that same evening when
another ladyfriend phoned her to talk
about a ‘charity garden party arranged
for that Sunday. They chatted for sev-
eral minutes-and Mimi gave no indica- :
tion of anything wrong at that time.
At 8:30—it was Thursday night—she
was to have called a consulting engineer,
who was an old friend and business ad-
viser of the Boomhowers. It was a busi-
ness matter. When she didn’t call by
8:45, the engineer rang her but there
was no answer.
_ The next morning, the Bel-Air widow
called Mimi, as she did daily, and she,
too, received no answer. Nor did Mimi
answer several other phone calls through-
out the day. By Saturday, Mimi’s-
friends were seriously concerned about
her—all the more when her lawyer drove
up to her home and found the lights
blazing away in broad daylight and her
car in the garage, but got no response
to his ring.
On Sunday morning, August 21, he
called the West Los Angeles detective
bureau, and Detective Sergeant Jack
Ferges met him at the mansion on
Nimes Road and effected entrance.
at eat eee
HERE was no trace of Mimi Boom- —-
hower, living or dead. Everything
was in order throughout the house with
its huge collection of trophies and art
objects. The stuffed and mounted lions,
giraffes, gazelles and the big elephant
head looked down cryptically and aloof-
ly upon the intruders.
Mimi’s bed had not been slept in.
There was no sign of a struggle or any-
thing out of the ordinary. Neither was a
sudden journey indicated; her clothes
and suitcases were all neatly in their
closets, and the refrigerator was stocked -
with food. ae
Sergeant Ferges wasn’t very excited;
it was hardly unusual for an independent
widow to go away for a long weekend if
she chose to. But her lawyer insisted
that the voluble Mimi would never go
away for even a day, let alone three
days, without broadcasting her plans to ~
everyone. “I talked to her every day,” >
one of her friends said later. “If any Vee
emergency had come up, she would have
called me. And all those lights left burn-
ing—” Mimi’s lawyer was of the same
“opinion, but he urged that the investi-
gation be kept confidential and unofficial |
if possible, to spare embarrassment to
Mimi in case she should turn up with -
some simple explanation. :
' Accustomed to such discreet inquiries
in rarefied Bel-Air, Sergeant Ferges 3
quietly made (Continued on page 63)
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HIS LAWYER GAVE HIM THE CHAIR (J
DID THIS HAVE TO HAPPEN?
MY RIDE WITH TERROR
A GRAVEL GRAVE FOR MRS. FORGIVE
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REMBRANDT OF THE MACHINE GUN
DON'T WINK BACK AT FROG-EYE
IF IT'S RUTHIE, IT'S MURDER
| BATTLED A BERSERK ATTACKER
BOY INTO ZOMBIE
LEAVE IT TO THE GIRLS
ANYBODY SEEN THE MISSING FOUR?
BLOOD SWAP
THE DAY YOU GET ARRESTED
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when the federal grand jury indicted him for
evading $156,123 in income taxes over a three-
year period.
On New Year’s Day of 1951, an indignant
woman turned in to the San Fernando
Valley police station a bedraggled Persian lamb
cape which she said had been switched for her
new one in the checkroom of a North Holly-
wood night club. The police satisfied themselves
that the checkroom girl had made an honest
mistake in the confusion of the New Year’s
Eve celebration. But the woman who had got
away with the mew coat never brought it
back and couldn’t be traced. A routine check
of the records identified the forlorn article as
Mimi Boomhower’s missing coat, the one she
had worn when she vanished!
The night club was one frequented by the
phony French interior decorator questioned
earlier in the case. Detectives grilled him again
but were still unable to tie him up with the
missing Mimi.
On the same tack, Sergeant Burns questioned
“Count Rudini” again in Folsom, but learned
nothing new.
Mickey Cohen was convicted of tax evasion,
and on July 10, 1951, was sentenced to five
years in federal prison and a fine of $10,000.
The bail bondsmen finally took over his home,
furniture, Cadillacs and other property to make
good in part the $50,000 bond forfeited for the
long-missing Niccoli. With the kingpin gone,
Mickey’s mob fell apart.
A couple of weeks after the crestfallen little
hoodlum went off to McNeil Island, Tony
Trombino and Tony Brancato, Mafia gunmen
who had been top suspects in the Neddie Her-
bert killing, were found shot to death in a car
parked on a quiet West Hollywood street—and
with that the movie town’s gang warfare came
to an abrupt end.
While Cohen’s surviving pals were scattered
to the winds—some of them managing to do
pretty well for themselves in legitimate busi-
nesses with the stakes they had accumulated in
the rackets—the hunt for Niccoli and Ogul
came to a dead end, as did the search for Jean
and for Mimi.
Rumors had the two gamblers living it up in
Mexico City with Jean. Mimi Boomhower was
also reported variously as living south of the
border or on the French Riviera. But these
reports were thoroughly investigated and
proved to be baseless.
Chief Brown and his aides couldn’t buy the
idea that Jean would have sacrificed her bud-
ding film career and her baby to run away
with two minor hoodlums, nor that Niccoli
and Ogul would have left Mickey in the lurch.
No more would Mimi have deserted her be-
loved Bel-Air social whirl. And suicide was out
of the question in all four cases. All four, the
police believed, were murdered and their bodies
disposed of somewhere around Los Angeles.
Then on March 11, 1953, Mrs. Mabel
Monohan, 62-year-old crippled widow and
former vaudeville skating star, was found
savagely beaten and strangled in her home on
West Parkside Avenue in Burbank, another
suburb of Los Angeles. The house had been
ransacked. ‘
Mrs. Monohan was the former mother-in-
law of a multi-millionaire Las Vegas gambling
boss and once an arch-rival of Mickey Cohen
in the Los Angeles territory.
Noting that the slain widow’s home was only
a short distance from the former site of the
Din-Cara Stock Farm, Mickey’s plush postwar
gambling operation in the Los Angeles River
bottoms, Lieutenant Robert H. Coveney nosed
around among gamblers and other si:2cy char-
acters who used to frequent the neig!:i< rhood.
He learned there had been a long-standing
rumor that the old woman’s son-in-law kept
$100,000-in a secret safe in ihe: Monohan
home. And he was told that in 1951, hard up
with the collapse of the Cohen operations,
several of the former Din Cara boys kad cased
the home, but decided against burglar‘zing it at
that time.
Coveney rounded up half a dozen of the
ex-mobsters, and one of them, scar-faced
Baxter McCoy Shorter, ex-convict and former
Din Cara doorkeeper who was now an dpart-
ment house manager, soon cracked. He named
the Monohan killers as Big Jack Saito,.a
vicious, cold-eyed, curly-haired mystery: man
from the Mother Lode country of Northern
California, Emmett “The Weasel” Perkins, ex-
con hooligan with a long burglary and robbery
record, and 29-year-old, red-blonde Barbara
Graham, estranged wife of a bartender, part-
time prostitute and shill for Perkins in an El
Monte gambling joint.
"THESE three had beaten and choked the old
woman to death in a futile effort to make
her divulge the hiding place of the non-
existent cache. Shorter and another man, a
deep-sea diver from San Francisco, both of
whom had gone along for the robbery, but
wouldn’t go for murder, had vainly tried to
dissuade them.
Before the murderous trio were picked up,
they kidnaped Bax Shorter froéiif his home at
gunpoint, and he was never seen again. How-
ever, the testimony of two men who had been
in on the heist plot but backed out, convicted
them and in October, 1953, all three were
sentenced to death. a
Meanwhile, on another front, the Jean
Spangler case had made occasional headlines
when the glamor girl’s disappearance was re-
hashed during the long court battle between
Jean’s' mother and Jean’s ex-husband over
custody of the little girl. Tne father maintained
that Jean had run away and hence was an
unfit mother; the mother declared her daugh-
ter had been murdered, and would have wanted
her to keep the child.
The: little girl was eventually awarded to
her father, with the grandmother given visit-
ing rights. But the woman complained that
her former son-in-law wouldn’t let her visit
the child, and he was cited for contempt of
court. On December 8, 1953, the day before he
was due to start a 15-day jail term for
contempt, Jean’s ex-husband, his wife and the
little girl joined the missing list. They decamped
from their beach home without a trace. A bench
warrant was issued for the man and Jean’s
mother’s attorney employed private detectives
to hunt for him and the child. They were re-
ported to have gone to New York, but no
trace of them could be found there.
In the meantime, the probe of Big Jack
Santo’s activities, now that his “bloody cur-
tain” had been breached, futther linked him
with the murder_on December 29, 1951, of
Edmund G. Hansen, a Nevada City gold mine
operator. Santo, Perkins and George Boles, a
young bartender, in January, 1954, were found
guilty of the murder of Hansen and sentenced
to life—superfluous in the cases of Santo and
Perkins.
As if that were not enough,. “anto, Perkins,
and Santo’s common-law wife, hard-faced
Harriet Henson, in May, 1954, were further
convicted of one of the most atrocious crimes
in California history—the murder on a north-
2
we
Pert sect
ern logging road near Chester, on October 10,
1952, of Gard Young, a backwoods market
operator, and three little children. They killed
Young for the $7100 payroll he was carrying,
and the children to silence them. Santo and
Perkins received another death sentence, and
Harriet got life.
Throughout all of this, Santo, Perkins and
Barbara Graham literally wouldn’t give the
police the time of day. They refused to discuss
any other crimes in which they might have
been involved. Harriet Henson, jealous of
Barbara, talked ‘a little, but not much.
The fate of Bax Shorter remained a question
mark. His wife had been a witness to his kid-
naping by Santo and Perkins. And the deep- -
sea diver quoted Santo as having told him—
as a warning that he would suffer the same fate
if he squealed—that they and Barbara had
killed Shorter and buried him in a shallow
grave in the desert somewhere beyond San
Bernardino. Santo strangled Shorter with a
wire coat-hanger as they struggled in the back
of a car, according to this account, and Bar-
bara split the slain informer’s face with a
shovel and cursed him as they buried him.
Sergeant Burns, still working assiduously on
the Boomhower case, was vitally interested in
Bax Shorter. He had established a link, through
mutual contacts, between Mimi’s gambler
friends and the Shorter echelon of the former
Cohen staff. Mimi might even have visited Din-
Cara in its palmy days, and it was extremely
likely that Shorter was the “scar-faced man”
who had approached her to rent her canyon
mansion as a gambling casino.
Further, the Monohan and Boomhower cases
resembled each other in many ways: a reputed-
ly wealthy widow, living alone, linked socially
with the vicious, ex-con gambling element that
turned to robbery and murder when hard up...
If Shorter had cased the Monohan job in
1951, he might well have had something to do
with Mimi’s fate in 1949. And so might Santo
and Perkins, who had been friends of the
Cohen gamblers for some time. But Bax Short-
er was in no position to talk, and Upshaw said
he could shed no light on this angle. Neither
could it be established whether Santo had
ever had anything to do with Niccoli and
Ogul.
LAST June 3, Jack Santo, Emmett Perkins
and Barbara Graham died in the gas
chamber at San Quentin and their. lips were
silenced forever. Undoubtedly they carried a
number of grisly secrets with them.
“Count Rudini,” the con man with the
violent technique, was released from Folsom
on parole, but still wouldn’t talk. The West
Los Angeles detectives are keeping patient tab
on him as well as on a Beverly Hills playboy
who is also a suspect in the Boomhower case.
Jean’s ex-husband with his family, is still on
the missing list and is still sought throughout
the nation, although, of course, his disappear-
ance is rated as voluntary flight and not classed
with the other four—or five, if Bax Shorter is
counted.
Mickey Cohen, his term served, is due to be
released from McNeil Island at about the time
this article appears in print. He will find the
West Side lonesome, for the fate of Niccoli and
Ogul and the others has given the little mobster
the reputation of being a good man not to be
pals with. ;
And there the riddle of the missing quartet
stands today.
Chief Brown ahd several other detective
commanders rate very highly the theory that
the Santo mob, possibly working with a con
man, did away with Mimi Boomhower; they
beJieve Jean Spangler very likely died at the
hands of an abortionist, and that Frank Nic-
coli and Davey Ogul were liquidated by
Mickey Cohen’s Mafia enemies.
But still—the coincidence, the linkage, and
many unexplained factors remain, and the only
solid fact that emerges after six years is that
all of the assorted four are gone—real gone.
Leave It to the Girls
continued .from page 43
cautiously, they had flushed the poacher just
as he was about to stuff a dead bird into his
pouch. Though frightened, the man gave his
name as Joseph Lentini and quietly submitted
to arrest. At worst he faced a fine of perhaps
$10. Cramer in the lead, the trio started out
of the woods.
Suddenly, a giant of a man with wild, black
eyes sprang out from behind a bush and
blocked their path. In his hands was a double-
barreled shotgun. Lentini shouted something
to him in Italian and, snarling a reply, the big
man leveled the shotgun and fired both barrels
full into Cramer’s face. At a range of ten feet,
the blast tore off the top of the warden’s head.
Reacting instinctively, Allen snapped his pis-
tol out and, firing from the hip, shot the giant
through the arm. Roaring with hurt and an-
ger, the killer charged, threw Allen to the
ground and began choking the life from him.
His teeth sank into Allen’s nose. When Allen
wrenched his head around, the giant bit deep
into his ear. With the strength of sheer des-
peration, Allen kicked straight up—and dis-
lodged his assailant. Bleeding and groggy, he
staggered to his feet, just in time to see the
two men disappear into the woods to the
south.
His pistol gone and hovering on the brink of
unconsciousness from pain and loss of -blood,
Allen decided to go for help. Besides, he knew
there was no escape in the direction the killer
had headed. On the other side of an impas-
sable, quicksand-studded marsh lay Jamaica
Bay. The men would eventually have to turn
back and, if Allen could summon help quickly
enough, they would be trapped when they
reached the main road, which was Rockaway
Boulevard.
Taking a last look to make certain his
partner was beyond help, Allen staggered to
the nearest telephone and called the police.
But though we responded inside of ten min-
utes and quickly had the road covered for two
miles in either direction, neither the poacher
nor the killer turned up. Either they were still
hidden in the high marsh grass along one of
the bay’s countless inlets or, more likely, they
had doubled right back and made good their
escape before Rockaway Boulevard could be
blocked off.
The manhunt continued into late afternoon.
Working through from the west, a dragnet of
Npolice officers swept through every inch of the
woods while, offshore, police boats poked into
the bay’s inlets and a police plane roared back
and forth over the entire scene. But all we got
was an epidemic of poison ivy. The quarry
had vanished.
Wut kind of & killing was this? Did the
wild-eyed giant have a grudge against
Cramer? Was it a professional job with roots
in some mysterious aspect of the warden’s life?
I doubted it. Professionals don’t run off and
leave eyewitnesses to their handiwork.
Allen had said he had never scen the killer
before. Nor did it seem to him that Cramer
had recognized him in that split second before
the shotgun roared. But he couldn’t be certain
of that. Motive, it seemed, would have to wait
on our flushing the murderer.
We went through the customary routine,
checking hospitals for a man with a wounded
right arm, searching out Lentini’s address,
rounding up all the poachers who had recently
been arrested by the dead warden. Because we
expected nothing, we were not disappointed by
the blank we drew all along the line. The
killer hadn’t checked into a hospital; Lentini
lived alone in Brooklyn and hadn't been seen
around his flat all day; Cramer’s poachers
either had airtight alibis or could contribute
nothing constructive.
~*~
Close to the murder scene, we got -our first
break. It was late afternoon when we got to
a little street bordering the woods. Set back
a few yards from the corner was a ramshackle
summer cottage. In front of it was an old
green coupe. Cautiously, we pushed open the
unlocked door of the house. There was no. one
inside its single room. But dirty dishes were
piled high in the sink and eggshells and fresh
melon rinds were in a brown paper bag on the
floor. Under the table was a blood-soaked
shirt-sleeve.
“T’d say it’s a pretty good bet our man’s
been here,” I said, “and a better bet that the
car outside is his. Let’s check it.”
We ran the license plate number through the
Motor Vehicle Bureau and came up with the
name of Frank Aldino of Brooklyn. On file,
too, was a photograph of Aldino, as required
for the chauffeur’s license for which he had
applied. We took the picture to Game Warden
Allen.
“Is this the man who shot Cramer?” I
asked.
“That’s him! That's the one, all right!”
Allen shouted. “I'll remember that face for
100 years!”
Now we knew who we were looking for.
All we had to do was find him. At the
Brooklyn address we found Aldino’s wife, but
she was no help at all. “I haven’t seen him
for weeks,’ she muttered darkly. “He’s a
bum.”
We went back to the coupe and stripped the
inside. Down under the front seat, we found
a grimy sales slip from an auto supply store in
Newark, N. J.
“Say,"’ I muttered, “didn’t that license ap-
plication show that Aldino had bought his last
year’s plates in Jersey?”
We checked back and it did. Aldino seemed
to be well-acquainted across the river. I tele-
67
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Anybody Seen the
Missing Four?
continued from page 48
the usual routine checks, contacted a score of
Mimi’s friends, and wired her relatives in
New York. He succeeded in establishing only
that no one had seen the gregarious widow
since mid-afternoon of Thursday, nor spoken
to her since 8:15 Thursday night, and that she
had told no one of any plans to go away.
Everyone was certain something had happened.
The engineer had been the last to see her—
that was at-3 p.m. Thursday. He explained
that he was helping Mimi in a project to
resume manufacturing a patented bridge table
invented by her late husband. He had sug-
gested that she sell part or all of her trophy
collection, which she valued at $300,000, to
raise capital for the venture. “Mimi didn’t
want to part’ with those animals, but she
promised to think it over, and said she’d call
me at 8:30,” he explained.
Her lawyer, too, had been scheduled to dis-
cuss business with Mimi. She had asked him
to help arrange a loan for her at the bank.
The last person to talk to Mimi, at 8:15
that Thursday, said Mimi had been full of
enthusiasm for the garden party—at which she
failed to shuw up Suaday afternoon, though
she had bought several tickets for it. ;
Mimi’s part-time gardener and butler said
everything had been as usual at her home
Thursday, and that she had said nothing about
going away.
“What it boils down to,” Ferges reported
to Captain Emmett Jones, “is that Mimi
Boomhower was at home, in good health, and
full of her social plans at 8:15 Thursday night.
At 8:30 or 8:45 she was gone—with her car
standing in the garage, the house lights burn-
ing, and not a word to anyone!”
While Ferges and his partner, Detective
Sergeant Eugene V. Burns, were pursuing their
inquiries Tuesday, a Beverly Hills real estate
man and long-time friend of the Boomhowers
came to Captain Jones with a telegram from
Mimi’s sister, who lived in New York. It
authorized the police to take whatever steps
deemed advisable. Mimi’s sister was flying
west at once. Description of the five-foot-four,
175-pound widow went out over the police
radio and teletype as the hunt started.
But the results were strictly negative, indi-
cating only that Mimi had not gone away ©
voluntarily. In her mailbox was found a letter
from her bank, dated Thursday, approving her
application for a $5000 second mortgage on her
home. Another letter was an invitation from
a weight-reducing camp that had just moved
to Tecate, Mexico. Jones contacted the camp
but Mimi wasn’t there.
Her women friends examined Mimi’s clothes
to determine what might be missing, and de-
cided she must have been wearing her new
black satin dress, black Persian lamb cape and
new white hat with white handbag, plus her
$6500 diamond engagement ring, her wrist-
watch and other jewelry.
Wednesday night came a sinister find. A
clerk in a supermarket on Wilshire Boulevard
in Beverly Hills turned in Mimi’s big white
handbag, which he had discovered in the
telephone booth. It bore a message inked in
block letters on the white leather: “Police
Dept.—We found this at beach Thursday
night.” The bag contained Mimi’s wallet with
identification papers, her keys and other per-
sonal articles. Laboratory examination of it
yielded no clue, nor did the original finder
come forward despite a broadcast appeal.
When Mimi’s sister arrived to help the
search, she revealed that Mimi had recently
written her of plans to slip away and visit a
health resort in the desert at which to reduce
her plump figure. Jones instituted a check of
all such resorts. In the meantime, a posse
searched the wooded ravine below Mimi’s
home, and police technicians examined the
house itself inch by inch.
Ferges and Burns were following another
tack, and soon they turned up concrete re-
sults. It seemed that Mimi had been somewhat
pressed for money lately, despite her comfort-
able income from Novice’s trust fund. Boom-
hower’s furniture manufacturing business had
folded during the war years, and other invest-
‘ments had failed. Currently Mimi had been
planning to get the business going again. Her
lawyer knew she had been short of ready cash
and that she was debating ways to raise money
for the project. But what he didn’t know was
that the supposedly wealthy widow had been .
in really desperate straits.
She had less than $200 in the bank, had
recently borrowed $200 from a friend, and,
making a routine check on her missing jewelry,
Ferges and Burns found that Mimi herself had
pawned her $1000 diamond-studded _ wrist-
watch on July 8 ior $100. She had pawned
other items as well, and discussed getting a
joan on her $6500 engagement ring.
Where had her money gone? The answer
was soon forthcoming. Naive Mimi had taken
up gambling, a weakness known only to a few
of her closest friends. Dabbling with Lady
Luck, at first in an ill-advised effort to recoup _
her investment losses, she had of late been
losing heavily on the ponies and, it was
rumored, at swank gambling casinos.
This put a new and ominous complexion on
the case, tying the trusting and friendly widow,
an easy mark for a swindler, in with shady
and disreputable characters of the underworld.
The sleuths partially traced her associations
among bookmakers and other gamblers, in-
cluding Mickey Cohen’s outfit, but learned
little from the clannish racket boys. Among
others, they quizzed a notorious Las Vegas ex-
convict gambler and dope peddler with whom
Mimi was reported to have been seen at a
hotel bar Friday morning, but. he denied
knowing her.
Mimi had even been considering selling her
house to raise capital. And now Ferges and
Burns learned she had recently confided to a
friend that a “‘scar-faced man” of the gambling
fraternity had approached her to rent the
secluded clifftop mansion for $800 a month, to
turn it into a discreet casino. He was rather in-
sistent, the way she told it.
Then, too, she had told friends that she
had recently met “a very nice man” (whose
name she didn’t mention), who was advising
her in business affairs and was going to make a
lot of money for her. She had spoken of a big
dea] ‘nearing consummation, which: unfor-
tunately required further cash outlay.
Her lawyer had known nothing of this.
“Sounds like a con man trying to move in,”
he commented wryly. “Mimi would be fair
game for a fellow like that! She came to me
for business advice, but there were a lot of
things she didn’t tell me. This fellow probably
told her not to tell anyone about him!”
Possibly she had been kidnaped and killed
by such a man when she got leery of him and
threatened to go to the police.
“Anyway, it’s more logical than’ an ordi-
nary robbery-murder theory,” Captain Jones
pointed out to his aides. “A casual robber
wouldn’t bother to dispose of the body. Who-
ever did this was counting on delaying and
confusing our investigation till he could cover
his tracks—to make it look like she’d gone
away under her own power !”
Then a North Hollywood woman tipped the
police to the activities of a man who posed as
a French interior decorator and moved in ex-
clusive society circles. He had bragged of ob-
taining $50,000 from a wealthy widow, she
said, and recently had confided that he was
trying to inveigle the widow of a big-game
hunter into a phony deal for importation of
Mexican. huarache sandals.
FrERGES and Burns caught up with this
man, brought him in and questioned him
thoroughly, but he denied knowing Mimi or
planning any huarache deal, and the police
had to let him go.
And there the case of the missing Mimi
bogged down.
The hard-working detectives carefully ran
down every rumor, and checked marriage
license bureaus throughout the Western states
and Mexico. They went back patiently over
ground already covered, interviewing all of the
vanished wico'x’s friends again and again,
checking on everyone with whom she had had
business dealings.
In the midst- of this, the crime spotlight _
swung abruptly to .the Cohen mob itself, as
Number Two of the missing quartet went on
the records.
Mickey Cohen for some time had been on ©
the defensive, with a feeling of things closing
in on him. The stocky little Los Angeles
hoodlum had tried to take over the racket
empire of the late Bugsy Siegel. But he wasn’t
quite big enough to do it. Now Mickey evi-
dently stood in somebody else’s way.
In one of the latest of a series of attempts on
Mickey’s life, gunmen had ambushed him and .
his party as they emerged from a cafe on the
swank Sunset Strip at 3:50 a.M. on July 20.
Blasts from automatic shotguns cut down
Neddie Herbert, Cohen’s Number One lieu-
tenant, who died soon after, and wounded
Cohen himself and another man and a girl.
Mickey, from his hospital bed, insisted he
had no idea who might have it in for him. But
those in the know said the Mafia mobs of New
York, Chicago and Cleveland were all gunning
for the pudgy West Coast gambling kingpin.
Meanwhile, Mickey’s troubles with the law
were mounting, too. In addition to the increas-
ing heat on his racket activities by city,
county, state and federal authorities, Mickey
and seven of his henchmen had been indicted
in March on multiple felony counts in what
they considered a bum beef. 3
Mickey, like many hoodlums a soft touch
for a sob story, had taken up the cause of a
penniless widow whose home had been taken
away from her by a radio repairman for an
$8.90 bill. Mickey had his muscle boys picket
the radio shop. There. was a complicated
fracas, and: when the smoke cleared, Mickey
and his seven aides and three sympathetic
policemen were under indictment for conspir-
acy to assault and rob the shopkeeper.
In line with the general policy of throwing
the book at mobsters, the judge set Cohen’s
bond on these relatively minor charges at a
whopping $100,000, and those of his lieutenants
at $25,000 to $50,000 each. Mickey had to
pledge his $47,000 Brentwood home, his furni-
ture, two Cadillacs and other property to raise
the $350,000 bond necessary to spring them all
from the county jail pending trial. He felt
it his duty to reciprocate his men’s loyalty by
standing by them at this point.
"THEN on August 2, Mickey had another
narrow squeak when a bomb exploded in
the driveway of a home across the street
from his radar-guarded Brentwood fortress,
It was on August 18 that Mimi Boomhower
disappeared. Mickey Cohen, busy with his own
troubles, probably no more than glanced at the
headlines.
There is no reason to believe that he knew
the missing widow personally, though they had
in common the fact that both were born in
Brooklyn and now. lived in the same plush
Westside area of Los Angeles. True, both were
engaged in gambling, but Mickéy’s interest was
strictly the sure-thing business end, while
~ Mimi's was that of the plunging sucker.
~The next missing person headlines, however,
hit Mickey Cohen where it hurt—right in the
pocketbook. For when dapper, gray-haired
Frank Niccoli, a trusted pal of Mickey’s from
his old Cleveland days, dropped out of sight
on September 2, he left Mickey stuck for his
$50,000 bail.
At 4:55 that afternoon Niccoli, in his usual
good spirits, had left the apartment of a girl-
friend in West Hollywood, ostensibly to go to
his own fashionable bachelor quarters on
North Laurel Avenue to change for dinner. He
was never seen again. When his pals looked
for him, they found the apartment door un-
locked and the place deserted, but no sign of a
struggle. On the gangster’s dressing table, as
though he had been in the act of changing,
were $180 in cash, his $500 diamond wrist-
watch and a $2000 diamond ring. It was cer-
tainly no robber who got him.
An exotic and cryptic touch in his wardrobe,
which included 20 suits from Mickey’s Sunset
Strip haberdashery, was one lone tan shoe and
one green sock, both without mates. It seemed
that dapper Frank must have been called away
on urgent business.
_Mickey and his boys conducted a quietly
frantic search of their own, then Mickey
assumed the unaccustomed role of a pious
taxpayer and reported the disappearance to
police. “Frankie is dead,” Mickey said, flatly.
“He must be, because a pal doesn’t run out on
a pal, leaving him holding the sack for 50 Gs!
My enemies got him!”
But Mickey refused to say who his enemies
might be or even to venture a guess.
Two days later Niccoli’s black Cadillac was
found parked at the Los Angeles International
Airport. The keys were gone. Records showed
the car had been left there at 5:53 p.a. on that
same Thursday, just 58.minutes after Frank
had left his girl’s place, saying nothing about
‘going to the airport, any airport. An exhaus-
tive check of airline records and interviews
with personnel turned up no trace.
The police and sheriff’s detectives hunting
Frank Niccoli worked fully as hard as those
on the trail of Mimi Boomhower—but instead
of talkative and jittery socialites, they were
faced with the traditional won’t-talk attitude
of the underworld. Nevertheless they built up
a pretty good picture of the handsome gam-
bler's life, and could find no reason for his
taking it on the lam.
Surely he wouldn’t have fled to escape trial
)
on the conspiracy indictment; he had beaten
worse raps before, and public sympathy for
the destitute widow augured an acquittal in
the upcoming case. Neither did easy-going
Frankie appear to have had any special per-
sonal enemies; it seemed that Mickey must be
right, that Ais enemies had struck at him
through his aide—worth $50,000 on the hoof.
Niccoli had not been among the gamblers
interviewed in connection with the missing
Bel-Air widow, and there was no reason to
link him with her except as a coincidental dis-
appearance case, though a number of the same
people of the Hollywood and Westside gam-
bling world were questioned in both cases.
Private detectives employed by the bail
bondsmen worked on their own leads—un-
doubtedly with more cooperation from Mickey
and the mob—but they, too, failed to locate
the vanished hood.
Three weeks later, on September 24, a city
maintenance man found the keys to Niccoli’s
car, bearing his address tab, in a storm drain
at Ninth and Santa Barbara Avenues. This
was in the general direction of the airport, and,
it was noted, only a few blocks from the home
of Jack Dragna, reputed West Coast Mafia
chief, who is currently fighting deportation
action. Dragna naturally knew nothing about
Niccoli.
A tip that Frank Costello and_ several
muscle men had been secretly in town on that
same Thursday also ran into a blank -wall.
The Niccoli investigation bogged down as
had the Boomhower. On September 29, when
Mimi’s attorney explained that immediate ac-
tion was necessary to conserve the widow’s
$50,000 estate, Superior Judge Newcomb Con-
dee waived the seven-year requirement and
declared Mimi legally dead.
The Boomhower and Niccoli files were still
growing with daily, but unrewarding additions,
when on October 8, a new file, DR 647-660,
destined to be the biggest of them all, was
born in deceptively modest fashion.
On that warm Saturday evening, a radio
car from the Wilshire Station was called to
the Spangler apartment on Colgate Avenue, in
the Parklabrea. development on the southern
edge of Hollywood, to. take a report from
worried Sophie Spangler on the disappearance
of her sister-in-law, Jean.
It seemed that the beautiful, brown-haired,
blue-eyed, lissome young screen and TV ac-
tress had gone out at 5:30 Friday evening, the
seventh, and hadn’t come back. The police
didn’t think this much cause for worry, but her
sister-in-law and current boyfriend, a young
playwright, insisted that Jean would never
stay away overnight without calling.
They explained that Jean, a divorcée, al-
though a glamor girl and butterfly in her
professional and social life, was basically a de-
voted mother to her five-year-old daughter and
was constantly worried about her.
Jean Spangler, who had_come up the hard
way from the chorus ranks through the
little theaters and was now on the verge
of a bright future in show business, had lived
in the modern apartment with her mother.
The woman, at the moment, however was in
Lexington, Ky., visiting her’ minister son,
whose wife had just had a baby. A sister-in-
law, widow of Jean’s younger brother who had
been killed in a bomber crash in Japan, had
come out from St. Louis to help take care of
little Christine Louise while Jean was at work.
That Friday afternoon, Jean had told her
sister-in-law that she was going to mect her
ex-husband, Dexter Benner, young plastics
manufacturer, to ask him for some extra
money for Christine’s winter clothes. She re-
marked that her ex-husband, whom she had
married in 1942 and divorced in 1946, had
fallen behind in his $50 monthly child support
payments.
As she went out the front door at 5:30,
dressed in casual Hollywood fashion—green
slacks, blouse and short white jacket, with a
Say orange and green scarf over her head, Jean
turned to her sister-in-law, who was sitting
with the baby, held up her crossed fingers and
winked as she said: “Well, wish me luck!”
Then at seven pP.m., she had telephoned to
say she was at work, would do a full shift and
wouldn’t be home till’ very late. SHe didn’t
say where she was working, but the sister-in-
law assumed it was at some TV studio.
The playwright filled in further details:
“I called her at ten Friday morning to ask
her to come and read a script of mine that
night, but she said she had to meet her former
husband to talk about money. She’d try to
meet me later at a café on Sunset Boulevard.
She didn’t say anything about working.”
Saturday morning, he and Jean’s sister-in-
law compared notes when Jean failed to come
home or call.
When Jean’s ex-husband and _ his present
wife had come by the Spangler apartment in
the afternoon to pick up ;. .n’s daughter for
the child’s scheduled weekend visit with them,
her ex-husband said he hadn’t seen Jean for
some weeks, and that he had had no date with
her for the night before. It was then that the
sister-in-law called the police. i
But the initial report on Jean created even
less excitment than had that on Mimi. A
Hollywood showgirl failing .to call home for
24 hours isn’t exactly news in the free-living
movie capital. Wilshire Station made a routine
check with negative results.
But Sunday morning there came an ominous
development, strangely paralleling the Boom-
hower case, that moved DR 647-660 into top
priority. Henry Anger, a guard at Griffith
Park, the 4200-acre wild-life preserve in the
Hollywood Hills, was opening the park gates
at 7 aM. when he spotted 2-woman’s black
handbag lying in the shrubbery beside the Fern
Dell road. The bag, cranimed with personal
articles, looked new and expensive, but. its
strap was severed. Anger called police and
turned it over to them. 2
It was Jean Spangler’s bag, containing her
membership cards in the Séresm Actors Guild
and Screen Extras Guild, -her address book,
her keys, cosmetics and other feminine items.
There was no money. But what interested
Detective Sergeants William H; Brennan and
Miles E. Tullock of Wilshire Station
was a brief penciled note ‘on a folded
square of paper: “Kirk: Can’t wait any
longer. Going to see Dr. Scott,” it read. “It
will work best this way while mother is
away.” There was no signature. To the Holly>
wood-wise detectives, the cryptic message sug-
gested one thing: Abortion,
Bt when they interviewed her sister-in-
law and Jean’s playwright boyfriend, both
vehemently denied that Jean had been preg-
nant; neither had they ever heard of a “Kirk”
or a “Dr. Scott.” However,.the note was in-
dubitably in Jean’s handwriiing, on a sheet
torn from the pad by her telephane.
Next on the detectives’ cal:ing list was
Jean's ex-husband. “I had no date te meet Jean
last night!” the young manufacturer insisted.
“She hasn’t called me for weeks. She’s never
ili cana aay al al
ee
there when we go to pick up our little girl.
Furthermore, I’m right up to date in my pay-’
ments to her—I sent her $50 just the other day.
She probably went out to meet somebody she
didn’t want her folks to know about.”
He had been working late Friday at his shop
on San Fernando Road, he said; his wife had
picked him up at seven o’clock and they’d: re-
tired early. Saturday he’d worked until time to
pick up the baby from the Spangler’s apart-
ment. His wife confirmed his story. The detec-
tives were curious about some fresh scratches
on the man’s face and hands. He explained that
a stack of empty bottles had fallen on him and
broken while he .was replacing the battery of
his station wagon, in the dark garage of the
shop Friday night.
Brennan and Tullock next turned to tracing
Jean’s exact movements after she left the
apartment. They found that she had walked
over to a market at Third and Fairfax, where
she spoke to several employes who knew her.
The last they or anyone else saw of-her, she
was standing near a telephone booth in the
parking area at six o’clock, looking around in
the dusk as though waiting for someone.
The screen and TV studios where Jean had
worked were called, agents and other business
associates were contacted, but no one knew of
any job Jean had had that Friday night. :
Her family doctor was questioned, but Jean
had not visited him for some time, and he was
sure she would have consulted him had she
been pregnant.
Turning to the missing beauty’s address
book for a clue, detectives started calling all
the men and women listed in it. There was no
Kirk or Dr. Scott in the book, but there were
close to a hundred names and telephone num-
bers of showgirls, actors, producers, agents,
musicians, writers, playboys, bartenders and
assorted Hollywood characters. Jean, the de-
tectives soon gathered, had led an extremely
active social life, and had overlooked no con-
tact that might help in her climb to the top.
But none of her close friends had seen or
heard from her.
Two showgirl pals did say, however, that
Jean had recently told them she was three
months pregnant and that she planned to have
an abortion, but she hadn’t: named the. man..
An actress with whom Jean had worked sup-
plied the names of several recent boyfriends—
it seemed the playwright was only the latest ~
in a long line since her divorce. A model told
the police that Jean had recently taken a
weekend trip to Lake Tahoe with two tough-
looking, middle-aged men whose names the
model hadn’t been told.
Jean’s mother flew back from Kentucky and
was joined at the Parklabrea apartment by
the missing showgirl’s sister. Both women
echoed the indignant denial that Jean had
been pregnant; she surely would have con-
fided in them.
They contributed the information that Jean
had hinted she expected to come into a large
sum of money soon, several thousands, from
some mysterious source. “She said she was
going to get some advice about investing it—
but she never told us where the money or the
advice were coming from.”
The hunt took a new and sinister turn when
police learned that Jean had danced in the
chorus line at a now defunct night club on
Wilshire Boulevard. At that time, she had been
friendly with Mickey Cohen and several of his
henchmen who hung out at the place. Detec-
tives Brennan and Tullock were told that Jean
had gone out a number of times with mobsters
Mike Howard and David Ogul, and that
Mickey himself had promised to star her in a
new revue at Maxie’s. Immediately, the detec-
tives thought of Frank Niccoli. They learned
that Jean had certainly known him, if only
casually.
Then, while they were comparing notes with
the Intelligence Division and scanning Niccoli’s
missing person file, the startling news camé in
that little Davey Ogul himself was among the
missing !
It was on Thursday, October 13, six days
after Jean Spangler’s disappearance, that the
belated news broke that “little Davey,” like
Niccoli, a co-defendant in.the conspiracy case,
had likewise done a vanishing act, leaving
Mickey Cohen holding the bag for another
$25,000 bond. ;
On that day, Ogul’s black 1946 Cadillac was
found on Levering Avenue, near the Sawtelle
Veterans Hospital in West Los Angeles. A resi-
dent said he had seen a swarthy, heavy set,
middle-aged man—who didn’t fit Davey’s
description at all—park the car there about
four days before. Right after the Cadillac was
parked, the witness said, a man and a woman
stopped in a flashy convertible and picked up
the man who had got out of it.
Investigation established that Davey Ogul
had last been seen driving on the Sunset Strip
Sunday night—just two nights after Jean
Spangler’s disappearance. “My enemies are
trying to outsmart me!” wailed Mickey Cohen.
“They’re striking at me through my boys! If
this goes on, I'll be broke!” But Mickey’s
other little Indians, who were out on bail, had
no intention of playing the game of “and then
there were none.” Scared stiff, surviving mob-
sters Jimmy Rist, Eli Lubin, Louis Schwartz
and Harold “Happy” Meltzer went before
Superior Judge Thomas L. Ambrose and, “for
reasons of personal safety,” had him exonerate
their $150,000 bail and commit them to the
sanctuary of the County Jail pending trial.
Mickey himself retired to his bullet-proof and
radar-fenced Brentwood home with his wife.
THERE was no more clue to Ogul’s fate
than to that of Niccoli; but Lieutenant
Didion went through the motions of question-
ing Mickey and his men about Jean Spangler.
An obvious speculation was that the glamorous
but dollar-wise showgirl had run away with
Niccoli or Ogul or both. Perhaps they were the
“tough” escorts who had been seen with her on
her way to Lake Tahoe. But Mickey and the
others would admit to no more than casual
acquaintance with Jean. They had troubles
enough of their own.
Lieutenant Didion and Chief Brown fully
explored the gang link; on a rumor that
Niccoli and Ogul had been seen around Mexico
City night clubs with a tall brunette, Detective
Sergeant Abe Maltzman spent two weeks
south of the border and established that the
report was-baseless. A similar rumor about
Mimi Boomhower had already been checked
out.
For want of other grist, the hunt swung
back closer to home. Every doctor named.
Scott was interviewed; none had ever heard of
Jean Spangler. Neither had a number of
Hollywood night life figures whose first or last
name was Kirk.
Brennan and Tullock picked up a tip that a
young medical student, black sheep son of a
wealthy family, who called himself “Doc
Scott,” had been performing abortions around
the Strip. But they were unable to catch up
with him.
The hunt for Jean Spangler bogged down in
the same manner as had that for Mimi Boom-
hower; DR 637-144 and DR 647-660 ran neck-
and-neck in bulk as informants and friends
were interviewed again and again. No one, of
course, really expected to find Frank Niccoli
or Davey Ogul. Rumors and tips continued to
pour in, but came to nothing.
On December 12, 1949, with the emergency
estate matters settled, Judge Condee reversed
his “dead” ruling, on petition of her sis-
ter and declared Mimi Boomhower a miss-
ing person.
At the same time, Jean’s mother offered
$1000 reward for information on her daugh-
ter’s whereabouts, alive or dead.
A few days later, the Boomhower case
flared up when Hollywood Detective Sergeants
Colin Forbes and Arnold Hubka picked up a
long-sought con man with a mountainous
record, who specialized in victimizing wealthy
widows. Masquerading either as “Count
Rudini” or as an FBI agent, he had been
hunted since 1946 for beating a 76-year-old
woman in her Hollywood home, robbing her
of $5000 and leaving her for dead. He had
previously been convicted of slipping knockout
drops in the coffee of a wealthy Hollywood
woman and stealing $650 from her brassiere.
Sergeant Burns of West L. A., who had
“Count Rudini” high on his suspect list,
questioned him exhaustively, but the phony
nobleman wouldn’t admit to knowing the miss-
ing Bel-Air widow, even though Burns estab-
lished that they had a number of mutual
friends. Eventually, “Rudini” was sentenced to
Folsom for ten years for the robbery of the
old woman.
In March of 1950, one aspect of the mystery
was cleared up when Mickey Cohen and the
other defendants were acquitted in the con-
spiracy case. Obviously, if fear of conviction
had spurred Niccoli and Ogul to run away,
they could now turn up safely and count on
similar acquittal or dismissal. But they didn’t
even send a postcard.
But now the skids under Mickey Cohen
were really greased. The bondsmen were
harassing him to make good the $75,000 for
his two long-gone henchmen.
Then Mickey had still another narrow
escape when a dynamite explosion ripped off
the front of his home. Finally, on December
11, 1950, Mickey’s attorney, the noted under-
world mouthpiece Sam Rummel, who knew of
“everything” according to legend, was cut
down by a gunman who ambushed him at his
canyon home, not far from the scene of the
Bugsy Siegel murder.
Tt was about this time that Mimi Boom-
hower’s attorney put her fabulous big-game
trophy collection up for sale. The only person
interested was a Hollywood taxidermist, who
bid and got the collection, reputedly worth
$300,000, for $4500. Soon the buyer reported
that the seven-foot tusks of Mimi's prized
elephant head, supposed to be pure ivory, were
plaster replicas. Apparently Mimi had sold the
ivory. The taxidermist got a $300 rebate.
Now the State Crime Commission put the
heat on Mickey Cohen. The spotlight of the
Kefauver Committee was turned on him.
Facing financial ruin, with debts of $500,000,
his credit gone, Mickey frantically sold his
haberdashery and other interests. Bitterly he
attributed his downfall to the anonymous
“enemies” who had struck at his pocketbook
through Niccoli and Ogul. He had already paid
up Ogul’s forfeited $25,000 bond and was
being: pressed for Niccoli’s. The climax came
65
victim, Mabel Monohan, the 62-year-old, sweet
pled widow she and the others were convicted of pistol-
whipping and strangling to death away back in 1953, was
-faced, ,crip-
savagely tortured for no reason whatever, and
sarily ready to go at all. ;
As one ‘of the police officers who had worked on Bar-.
bara’s case summed it up after he had witnessed her ex-
ecution: “She had it a lot easier than Mabel Monohan did!”
| 8 Setcager GRAHAM in death achieved two distinc-
tions: she died with real dignity and poise, and she
kept her mouth shut. Not the least of the grisly secrets
she and her two male consorts—the latter multiple killers
numbered among the most vicious in the nation’s criminal
annals—took into the gas chamber with them was the precise
fate of Baxter “The Canary” Shorter, the scar-faced ex-
convict who vanished abruptly soon after he squealed on
the ‘bloody-handed trio just before they were arrested.
According to the second-hand story of one of their as-
sociates, cold-eyed Jack Santo killed Shorter after the mur-
derous three had kidnaped him. As they -were burying him
12
wasn’t neces-
Mabel Monahan
(above) was tortured
to death because -
the gang thought
$100,000 was secreted
in her house. They
killed the old woman
but didn’t find any
money. Lieut. Bob
clever work helped
trap the killers looks
at the widow’s body.
in a shallow desert grave, Barbara spat in his dead face
and clove it with a shovel. :
Barbara might have escaped the death penalty in the
first place if she’d turned state’s evidence, as did several
others involved with the mob. And even. after the three
principals were convicted and sentenced, authorities strong-
ly hinted to Barbara that she might expect leniency if she’
tell the Shorter story. Also if she’d help convict her pals
of the massacre of a grocer, and three little children, one.
of California’s blackest crimes, by telling what she knew.
But Babs, false to everything else, clung blindly to her
perverted underworld code and refused to sing.
The sentimental sobsters, both male and female, made
much of the fact that Babs never Officially admitted any-
thing and she won considerable national publicity and some
sympathy with~her claim of innocence. She said she didn’t
even know Mabel Monohan or Baxter Shorter, and was
several miles away at the time. She assailed the character
and motives of prosecution witnesses and. called police
tactics unfair.
But the cold, realistic fact is that Bloody Babs was found
POLICE DRAGNET CASES
Coveney (left) whose . |
Detective R. C. lL
above studying
in the slaying of
did her bit in tor
day before she
guilty by a jur
evidence, inclu
but two associ
Shorter. ;
Her emotion
three men wh:
have bothered
nor why the pc
tion. _
When origir
on the Fifth .
self. At her |
evidence in he
in an attempt
She made d
testimony left
men and thre
half ‘hours, th
as charged, a
with them.
F Barbara's
fusion, it \
life. The roo!
end obviously
hood, and B
it. Jt may be
have successf
Babs was a |
Bloody Ba
was born Ba)
June 26th, 1‘
ancestry. He!
of a butterfly
was 17 at the
wedlock. Ho
that she hate
When Bar
POLICE DR/
Ber enn re cee
Se eg
e
Ce NITICN C
and SAI
whe Nod Bd
- executed Cz
Ven
|
JO L,
ifornia
She was as deadly as the killers
who vied for her lush loveliness
but in the end it was the prison
executioner who won her for good
a ‘a eirakt
LICE DRAGN
Smiling «
Perkins,
a losing
POLICE
a
ary
\ ; 4
‘
.
Smiling at two of her mobster pals, Jack Santo and Emmett
Perkins, Barbara prepares to fight for her life in court,
POLICE DRAGNET CASES
WOMEN WHO
- WALKED THE LAST MILE |
BLOODY BARBARA
"BEAUTY QUEEN
OF THE DEATH HOUSE
a losing battle which ended in San Quentin's death house.
UR
3
Handcuffed and chained together, Emmett Perkins
(left) and Jack Santo are shown after they were
convicted for their roles in the Monahan murder.
HY DO they torture me?” brown-haired Barbara
Graham cried in anguish when her execution
at San Quentin was delayed twice by last-minute
court petitions to spare her life, making her an
hour and a half late for her date with the cyanide
fumes in the little green room.
The liquidation of Bloody Barbara last June 3rd, along
with her companions in murder, Big Jack Santa and Emmett
“The Weasel” Perkins, touched off a storm of emotional
protest.
Buxom 31-year.old Babs, whose varied career had in-
cluded both prostitution and motherhood as well as mur-
der, was the third woman to be. legally executed in Cali-
fornia history, and by far the youngest, prettiest and best-
dressed for her final rendezvous.
Her big wistful brown eyes and general feminine soft-
ness understandably aroused gallant male sympathy and
even some female support for her pleas of innocence; she
sa up to the last days that it couldn’t really happen
to her. :
And it’s quite true that the triple execution was really a
botched-up affair, with Barbara at one point actually
standing at the door of the gas chamber saying goodbye
to. her confessor when the governor ordered another post-
ponement, and she was led back to her death cell with the
grim little stethoscope diaphragm still taped to her breast.
“Why do they torture me?” she wailed repeatedly. “I
was ready to go at 10 o'clock!”
Certainly no one really meant to torture her, but only
to save her. What was‘ generally overlooked in the senti-
mental hubbub over Barbara’s dramatic finis'‘ was that her
11
Mabel Monahan
(above) was tortured
to death because -
the gang thought
$100,000 was secreted
in her house. They
killed the old woman
but didn’t find any
money. Lieut. Bob
Coveney (left) whose . |
clever work helped
trap the killers looks
at the widow's body.
bara spat in his dead face
_the death penalty in the
S evidence, as did several
And even. after the three
ntenced, authorities strong-
ght expect leniency if she’d
he’d help convict her pals
d three little children, one.
by telling what she knew.
Ise, clung blindly to her
Tefused to sing,
1 male and female, made
er Officially admitted any-
ational publicity and some
cence. She said she didn’t
Baxter Shorter, and was
she assailed the character
nesses and called police
it Bloody Babs was found
ILICE DRAGNET CASES
Detective R. C. Loranger’and Captain W. E. Hegi are seen
above studying the ropes and pillow case used by killers
in the slaying of Mabel Monahan. Barbara Graham, who
did her bit in torturing the widow, is seen at right the
day before she kept her tryst with death in the gas chamber.
guilty by a jury on prefectly clear, weighty and damning
evidence, including the independent testimony of. not one
but two associates who confirmed the story of the absent
Shorter. =
Her emotional protests of innocence failed to explain why
, three men whom she claimed she had never met -should
have bothered to get together and elect her for a frame—
nor why the police should have singled her out for persecu-
tion. ‘ ae
When originally called before the grand jury, she stood
on the Fifth Amendment and refused: to incriminate her-
_ Self. At her trial, she presented not one shred of valid
evidence in her defense, and instead let herself be trapped
in an attempt to frame a phony alibi for the murder night.
She made damaging partial disclosures to cellmates. The
testimony left no.doubt in the minds of the jury of nine
men and three women, who deliberated only five-and-a-
half ‘hours, that.Barbara was guilty of first-degree murder
as charged, along with the two men, and deserved to die
with them. othr des
F Barbara’s final day’ on earth was one of hectic con-
fusion, it was no less so.than her 31 years of mixed-up
life. The toots of her final bloody ‘eruption and shameful
end obviously lay far back in her tragically insecure child-
hood, afid Babs never let sympathetic interviewers forget
it. It may be noted parenthetically that many other people
have successfully overcome such early handicaps. After all,
Babs was a big girl when she killed Mabel. Monohan.
Bloody Babs Graham, undisputed. Miss Murder of 1955,
was born Barbara Elaine Wood in Oakland, California, on
June 26th, 1923, of mixed English, Spanish and Portuguese
ancestry. Her mother, Hortense, by all accounts something
of a butterfly herself, a typical flapper of the Roaring 20’s,
was 17 at the time and later told Babs. she was born out of
wedlock. Hortense also, according to Barbara, made clear,
that she hated her child and had never wanted her.
When Barbara was two years old, the law grabbed her
POLICE DRAGNET CASES
‘
19-year-old mother. and put her in the Ventura State School
* for .wayward girls till she was 21. Babs was sent to stay
with relatives. When Hortense came back, as Barbara told
it, “she couldn’t stand the sight of me,” and put her out to
board for ‘some time with a battle-ax of a woman who
mistreated her—again according to Barbara’s own story.
Joseph Wood, a futile sort of character who eventually
married her mother and passed as her father, died when
she was seven. Hortense married another man named
Cortes, whom she later divorced after having two more
children by him, and Babs was also known by that name.
They lived in a dilapidated shack.
Barbara’s reaction to the upset and impoverished home
life was to run away, a habit she contracted at’ nine. Once
her mother put her in an orphanage and again in a school
for incorrigible girls. Perversely, the loose-living Hortense
-was extremely strict with her d4&ughter, and-as brown-
haired, brown-eyed Babs began to blossom into her teens,
Mother rigidly forbade her to go out with boys, or even
to walk home from school with them. So she ‘met them
secretly, not only boys but older men who could give her
money.
Babs, maturing rapidly for her tender years, on the
physical side anyway, developed a romantic and self-pitying
turn of mind. In school she started reading poetry, and
became especially addicted to the fatalistic philosophy of
The Rubaiyat, as,she tells it. A quatrain of Omar’s she
was fond of quoting in her latter days was:
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
At 14 she ran away once more, determined to live her
own life, and in a San Francisco bar met a sentimental
ex-con who took her home to his mother. When the juvenile
authorities picked her up this time, at her mother’s re-
quest they sent her to the Ventura School—where’ Hortense
herself was still remembered as “not a very satisfactory
inmate.”
Despite her twisted emotidnal life young Babs had an
IQ: of 94, and did well in her studies at the reformatory,
though she-tried to Tun away several times. On her parole
in 1939, after completing the equivalent of the first year
(Continued on page 54)
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BLOODY BARBARA —
BEAUTY QUEEN OF THE
DEATH HOUSE
(Continued from page 13)
of high school, it appears that she real-
ly. made a stab at working legitimately
for a while—as a domestic servant,
dime store clerk and Western Union
messenger.
But hard work, long hours and small
pay was not for Babs, who craved ac-
tion. To her the height of glamorous
adventure was picking up men in bars.
She left home and drifted around Cal-
ifornia.
She lived for a time with a 27-year-
old man, and when arrested by Long
» Beach police in 1940 (at 17) for dis-
orderly conduct, she was using the dec-
orative alias of Barbara Olivia Rad- .
cliffe.
ITH the coming of the wartime
boom and its social upsets, Bar-
bara really began to mature. The exact
record is rather obscure, but it seems
that late in 1940, in a San Diego bar,
she met a young mechanic, Harry Kiel-
hammer, who for a switch wanted to.
marry her. They were married and ac-
cording to Barbara had a child, a son,
before they split up in 1941 and Harry
54
got a divorce.
The baby went to his mother in Seat-
_ tle, who undertook to. raise it, even
though she later stated that her son
was not the father. Soon after the di-
vorce Babs had another son. She tried
to pin this on on Kielhammer, but the
baby shortly disappeared into the cus-
tody ofa kindly relative, and Babs
was as free and unencumbered as Me-
hitabel the Cat. ;
Though she actually attended busi-
ness college for a while and got a
diploma, her inclinations drew her in
other directions. Working ostensibly as
a B-Girl or cocktail waitress and fre-
quenting taverns where sailors hung
out on shore leave, she became one of
the wartime host of “seagulls”— prosti-
tutes who followed the Fleet. .
Under the name Barbara Elaine Kiel-
hammer, she was jailed three times in
San Diego between 1941 and 1943, for
vagrancy and “aggravated lewd and
disorderly conduct.” Twice she was
fined $50 and once drew 60 days in
jail.
She drifted north, where she worked
as a laborer in the big Bremerton Navy
Yard, all the while multiplying her so-
cial contacts among lonely servicemen.
Somewhere along the line she married
a young sailor, Aloyse Pueschel, just be-
fore he shipped overseas. Soon she di-
vorced him. Later she said she had mar-
ried him only to. get his allotment
checks, and wouldn’t know him if she
saw him on the street.
Reno, Los Angeles and Stockton
were graced with her brief presence. In
June of 1944, when vice officers arrest-
ed her in a San Francisco bar for solicit-
ing a sailor for $20 and she was found
to have a venereal disease, social and
psychiatric workers made a study of
her case. .
_ - “She has been very promiscuous. sex-
ually,” their report notes, “practicing
prostitution for several years, and very
little can be said in her favor...
* “Personality tests indicate consider-
able psychopathic deviation , . .. She
has normal mental ability but psycho- .
pathic tendencies which lead almost in-
variably to delinquency.”
Thus Babs at 21 was tabbed as what
used to be called “morally insane”—“a
born criminal.” She was perfectly sane,
intelligent. and knew right from wrong
well enough, but she was driven by an
obscure, deep-seated compulsion to re-
venge herself on the world and society
for stored-up wrongs, real or fancied.
Many prostitutes come into this cate-
gory, showing their contempt for men
-|by charging money for their favors. °
Psychiatry thus far hasn’t had much
luck in curing criminal or sexual psy-
chopathy.
Wanting no part of the well-meaning
medicos and figuring she was becoming
too well known to the law on the West
Coast, restless Babs, who by this time
had transformed her mouse-brown hair
into a spectacular reddish-gold mop
that became her trademark, headed for
other parts. After an interim of which
nothing is recorded, 1946 found -her in
Chicago, working as a dice girl in
North .Side gambling joints, which re-
presented a step up for. her.
When she returned to California in
’°47, she was armed with introductions
and addresses from her Chicago gamb-
ling pals, and now she shunned the.
waterfront taverns and moved into
the big time.
When two ex-cons with big ideas,
Mark C. Monroe, dope smuggler, and
Thomas Sittler, went to trial in. San
Francisco for the vicious strong-arm
robbery of Sally Stanford, who at that
time was the Polly Adler of the Golden
Gate, Barbara and another girl popped
up .to testify that they were at an all-
night party with the accused pair on the
night of the crime. Their testimony re-
sulted in a hung jury.
But skeptical police investigated fur-
ther and found that Babs, who still
used the name Kielhammer, had been
in Chicago at the time, and the other
girl, whom she had induced to lie had
likewise been elsewhere. Charged with
perjury, Babs pleaded guilty and, in
view of her history, was sentenced to
five years in prison and five years pro-
bation.
* Monroe and Sittler had fied from the’
state but were picked up and brought
back. Monroe pleaded guilty and was
sentenced to prison, and Sittler drew a.
prison term in another assault case.
The word from certain authorities is
that Babs made a deal to give them
5 POLICE DRAGNET CASES .
dar 8
é
some informa'
tivities in retu)
sentence; Bab
this and said
the other girl
with a light s
term was mc
‘County Jail
and she was
In 1949 she
man named
Tonopah, Ne
to one of h
that “a chief
This union e
moved into a
with a hands
thy San Fran
When the
were arrested
as she told it
skip before |t
out she’d bee
short order
Graham, a
old Los Ang
ned to open
against the r
provided anc
her monthly
Somewher
up the dope
police arres
narcotics bu
evidence bet
wanted in t
probation. |
. change wit!
duplex on |
third son, T
UT BAI
for the
this time s!
* goose-necke
Weasel” Pe
ratty charac
43 years i
for assortec
Babs ha:
Weasel’s m
kids out i
claimed th
business. P:
ing house }
to work fo
men in bez
place.
Through
Santo, a!
who came
country of
and alway
mett on hi
‘Identify
Jack Sant«
figure, al\
money an¢
deals. Thc
Casanova,
He nev
Babs lear
months in
fore, for
may or n
sheriffs o
plus the s
Big Jack
time as
POLICE |
sara’s cellmate, and
had prophetically
certain things come
cinch for the first ,
fing that cyanide
-d Babs finally took
ae claimed she had
1 her husband and
of the 9th. She re-
se they’d quarreled
moved to his moth-
in her support, but
itive about the date
two other alibi wit-
weak.
story was that he
th his wife .and in-
testified that Santo -
1, Auburn, 500 miles
norning of the 10th;
ded her, story with
cording in which she
ony support for it
), Perkins and Babs
left the stand, Sher-
if Nevada City step-
ed her for her part
er, the robbery-kill-
insen, gold mine op-.
er 29th, 1951.
roke and confessed
en the getaway car
Santo, Perkins and
oung bartender and ~
nt, who also confes-
y had shot Hansen
they failed to find,a
, thought he had. All
for the Hansen mur-
22nd, 1953, the Los
d Santo, Perkins and
first-degree murder,
1e Charles W. Fricke
oly three to death.
ited outcome of their
tate Supreme Court,
; were taken to Nev-
, jury in short order
Boles guilty of the
id all three were sen-
orisonment—an ironic
of Santo and Perkins.
vurder charge against
1ad been dropped in
timony. But now fur-
had tied the Santo
Young atrocity, and
ty grand jury indicted
d Harriet for the mur:
and the three children.
|, the three were found
aen were sentenced to
time, and Harriet to
is pals were alsg linked
robberies in the gold
kins was charged with
Bax Shorter, but there
pressing these charges.
4d Santo had told him,
inst his own squealing,
ingled Shorter with a
- in the back seat of
and he, Perkins and
ICE DRAGNET CASES
—— xen ctiemammieaanpincntaiaatisininiinaniase noite
Barbara buried. the luckless informer
in the,desert out past San Bernardino.
“That’s what you get, you —— stoolie!”
Babs was said to have snarled as she
struck the corpse in the face with. a
shovel. ‘
ARBARA, while waiting on her ap-
peals, was moved from the wo-
men’s prison at Corona to San Quentin
for greater security when it was.rumor-
ed that Santo’s outside pals might en-
gineer an attempt on her life to insure
her silence. But when the State Legisla-
ture balked at the expense of keeping
her with her own matron guards in
special quarters in the prison hospital,
the. only woman inmate among 4,700 .
men, she was taken back to Corona to
sit it out. ;
- On Friday, June 3rd, 1955, the sands
finally ran, out for Bloody Babs, Big
Jack and Emmett the Weasel.
Barbara, haggard now and the red-
gold hair a short-cropped brown, had
been brought up from Corona the night
before. In her last interview she again
declared her total innocence, said she
was resigned to her fate.
She received Holy Communion and
the last consolation of her Church from
the Rev. Dan McAlister, a privilege
that it may be noted was not accorded
to Mabel Monohan or Baxter Shorter.
Early in the morning she was ready
for the execution at 10 a.m., dressed
in a beige wool suit and wearing gold
pendant earrings and an engagement
ring and. wedding band.
At 9:05 a.m. Governor Goodwin J.
Knight telephoned Warden Harley O.
Teets, ordering the execution stayed
while Federal Judge William Denman
of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
considered a_ last-minute petition by
Matthews and the State Supreme Court
-Jethal fumes rose. At the very last she
weighed an appeal by another attorney.
-The courts turned down the pleas
and the governor cancelled the stay; the
execution was set for 10:45. Babs was
led to the death chamber. She was at
the Very door when the governor called
again at 10:41. At 11:17 the final ap-
péal was denied and at 11:30 she was
strapped in one of the twin chairs.
She made no reply to: the waden’s
last words, “Goodbye and God bless
you, Barbara.” At her own request a
black mask was put over her eyes.
Her lips, a crimson gash in her white
face, moved rapidly in prayer’.as the
threw her head back and seemed to be
gasping for breath. At 11:42 the doctor,
listening through the stethoscope, pro-
nounced Bloody Babs dead.
The gas chamber was aired out and
at 2:30 that afternoon Santo and Per-
kins, hardboiled to the end, followed
her in a double-header, strapped side
by side.
“Don’t, do anything we wouldn't do!”
was Big Jack’s last quip to the warden
and guards. Perkins was first to go, and
Santo died fighting for breath.
No one claimed the bodies of Big
Jack and The Weasel, and they were
sent to Napa State Hospital for crema-
tion.
Barbara, whose body was claimed by
a Long Beach woman friend, was buried
in hallowed grounds in Mount Olivet
Cemetery at San Rafael, after private
Requiem Mass and simple rites attend-
ed by her husband and a few friends.
Father McAlister, who conducted the
service, said Bloody Babs had repented
in her final days and died “a deeply
religious woman.” As to what she may
have confided to him before the end
the priest, bound by the seal of the
confessional, could say only: “She con-
fessed all her sins.” |
THE JOLLY WITCH
(Continued from page 41)
woman, isn’t it?” countered Anna.
“That. didn’t stop you.” ,
Klauber was convinced. by this sim-
ple logic. After all, the arsenic was for
rats—and the promise of Anna’s lips
made him forget everything else.
He got the croton oil. He got the
arsenic. He got his promised reward
from Anna. But strangely, as the days
went by, the rats in the cellar djd not
sicken and die. They flourished and mul-
tiplied. It was Philip, Anna’s husband,
who sickened. He came down with a
strange malady that baffled the doctor
completely.
Day by day he weakened; day by .
day he wasted away. ‘He probably
would have died if his mother, over-
ruling all. of Anna’s strenuous objec-.
tions, had not packed him off to the
hospital.
But one way or another Anna was
rid of him. With her husband safely
out of the way she swiftly accepted
‘ Ernest Koch’s offer and moved in with
him to share, at first, his board. And
POLICE DRAGNET CASES
then in a surprisingly short time, the
bed that went along with it.
Anna in her own right was a lusty
wench. She probably would have done
in old man Koch ‘by natural means.
But she was impatient and the arsenic
was even more potent than the aban-
doned embrace of her white limbs. °
Ernest Koch expired promptly, if not
peacefully, on May 6th, 1932 and when
his will was probated Anna found her-’
self the mistress of the old man’s man-
sion.
L; had been a neat bit of business.
No suspicions had been aroused.
And thus Anna was emboldened to try
again.
Her second victim was a retired rail-
road man, Albert Palmer, a widower
with no relatives. Like Ernest Koch, he
was old and ailing, with a comfortable
bank account and a need of tender
nursing. Anna nursed him after her
own peculiar fashion but the old man.
must have: had a cast-iron stomach. He
was a long time a-dying. Worse, he
stubbornly resisted all' her efforts. to
have him change his will in her favor.
‘after graduation,
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in’t know him if she
reet.
geles and Stockton
ier brief presence. In
n vice officers arrest-
incisco bar for solicit-
0 and she was found
il disease, social and
rs made a study of
ery promiscuous sex-
rt notes, “practicing
veral years, and very
1 her favor...
ts indicate consider-
deviation , . . She
l ability but psycho- .
which lead almost in-
jency.”
| was tabbed as what
“morally insane”—“a
ie was perfectly sane,
2w right from wrong
she was driven by an
ed compulsion to re-
he world and society
ngs, real or fancied.
come into this cate-
‘ir contempt for men
ey for their favors. -
ar hasn’t had much
iminal or sexual psy-
t of the well-meaning
ing she was becoming
» the law on the West
bs, who by this time
aer mouse-brown hair
ar reddish-gold mop
rademark, headed for
‘an interim of which
2d, 1946 found -~her in
z as a dice girl in
ling joints, which re-
ip for her.
immed to California in
ied with introductions
m her Chicago gamb-
iow she shunned the.
ns and moved into
-cons with big ideas,
2, dope smuggler, and
went to trial in. San
1e vicious strong-arm
Stanford, who at that
y Adler of the Golden
id another girl popped
t they were at an all-
the accused pair on the
ie. Their testimony re-
jury.
dolice investigated fur-
that Babs, who still
Kielhammer, had been
ie time, and the other
iad induced to lie had
sewhere. Charged with
leaded guilty and, in
‘ory, was sentenced to
son and five years pro-
ittler had fled from the’
vicked up and brought -
leaded guilty and was*
son, and Sittler drew a.
nother assault case.
m certain authorities is
: a deal to give them
ICE DRAGNET CASES .
ciate ts ania na
some information on dope-running ac-
tivities in return for modification of her
sentence; Babs later vigorously denied
this and said she got leniency because
the other girl had talked and gotten off
with a light sentence. At any rate her
term was modified to a year in the
‘County Jail and five years probation
and she was out in eight months.
In 1949 she married a traveling sales-
man named Charles: A. ‘Newman in
Tonopah, Nevada, bragging in a letter
to one of her former mothers-in-law
that “a chief of police was best man.”
This union ended in divorce, and she
moved into a San Francisco apartment
with a handsome chauffeur of a weal-
thy San Francisco physician.
When the doctor and the chauffeur
were arrested on abortion charges, Babs,
as she told it later, decided she’d better
skip before her probation officer found
out she’d been associating with them. In ©
short order she married Henry Leon
Graham, a lugubrious-faced 45-year-
old Los Angeles bartender. They plan-
ned to open a night club, which was -
against the rules for a probationer and
provided another reason to forget about
her monthly reports.
Somewhere she had inevitably picked
up the dope habit; in 1951 Los Angeles
police arrested her for possession of
narcotics but released her for lack of
evidence before they found out she was
wanted in the north for skipping her
probation. In 1952, living quietly for a
_ change with her husband in a little
duplex on Innes Avenue, she bore her
third son, Tommy.
UT BABS was simply never cut out
for the quiet life and it was about
this time she took up with jug-eared,
~ goose-necked, shifty-eyed Emmett “The
Weasel” Perkins, alias Jack Bradley, a
ratty character who had spent 24 of his
43 years in San Quentin and Folsom
for assorted robberies.and burglaries.
Babs has denied she was ever The
Weasel’s mistress. He had a wife and
kids out in San Gabriel Valley; she
claimed their association was purely
business. Perkins ran a crooked gambl-
ing house in El Monte and Babs went
to work for him as a shill, picking up
men in bars and luring them to the
place.
Through Perkins she met Big Jack
Santo, a rawboned, wiry man of 48,
who came from the Mother Lode gold
country of the.Sierra Nevada, up north,
and always dropped in on his pal Em-
mett on his trips to Los Angele»
Identifying himself as a mining man,
Jack Santo was somewhat of a mystery
figure, always loaded with plenty of
money and dropping cryptic hints of big
deals. Though he fancied himself as a
Casanova, he had few close friends.
He never talked about his past, but
Babs learned that he had done 18
months ,in: McNeil Island, 15 years be-
fore, for transporting a stolen car. She
may or may not have known that the
sheriffs of several mountain counties
plus the state crime authorities had had
Big Jack under surveillance for some
time as a. suspected hijacker’ of gold
POLICE DRAGNET CASES
‘child, Sondra, 3%, had. been left for
_ and strangled to death, trussed up in a
from mines. Or that he ‘and his lynx-
eyed common-law wife, brunette Har-
riet Henson, 29, of Auburn, were ques-
tioned as suspects in California’s most
atrocious mass murder,
On October 10th, 1952, Gard Young,
operator of a supermarket at Chester
up by Mount Lassen, and three little
children were found battered to death
and stuffed in the trunk of Young’s
car on a lonely logging road. The mur-
dered children were Young’s daughters,
Jean, 7, and Judy, 6, and their play-
mate, Michael Saile, 4. Young’s other
dead but recovered.
Young had been robbed of $7,100 he
had just drawn from the bank’ to cash
payroll checks, and the children had
obviously been slaughtered because they
were witnesses. .
Santo and Harriet were questioned
when it was learned they had been in
Chester ona hunting trip at the time,
and that the same night Jack had gone
on a big spending spree in Reno with a,
blonde divorcee. Santo scoffed at any
connection with the atrocity, but the
sheriff was still dubious about him.
N MARCH 11th, 1953, Mabel
Monohan, 62-year-old crippled
widow and former vaudeville roller-
skating star, was found savagely beaten
closet of the big home where she lived
alone at 1718 West Parkside Avenue
in Burbank, out in the San Fernando
Valley north of Los Angeles. The house
was ransacked, literally torn apart.
Mrs. Monohan had formerly been the
mother-in-law of Luther B. “Tutor”.
Scherer, white-haired multi-millionaire
Las Vegas gambling ‘king, and noting
that the. murder spot was only a few
blocks from where Mickey Cohen had
once operated a swank casino, Bur-
bank Police Chief Rex Andrews and
Lieutenant Robert H. Coveney suspect-
ed a gambling or racket link.
Sure enough, they dug up a tip that
not long before, some of Cohen’s form-
er associates, at loose ends when the
little mobster went to prison for income
tax evasion, had picked up a rumor
that Tutor Scherer kept $100,000 cach-
ed in Mrs. Monohan’s home. They had
planned to heist it.
Coveney rounded up half a dozen of
the former gambling aides, including
those his informant had named. Though
nervous, they stood up under question-
ing; but later ex-convict Baxter McCoy
Shorter, through his attorney, volun-
teered the story in return for immunity.
“Sure, I went along to rob the old
lady,” Shorter admitted, “but I didn’t
count on murder! I don’t want any part
of it!” He named his companions in
the $100,000 foray on March 9th as.
Jack Santo, Emmett Perkins, John L.
True and—Barbara*Graham.
They had taken Barbara along to
get Mrs. Monohan to open the door,
then the others piled in, leaving Shorter:
as lookout. They called him in to help
hunt for the secret safe, and he saw
Barbara beating the old woman in the
face with a gun to make her tell where
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56
the money was. Perkins also beat her,
then Santo garroted her. They never
, did find the $100,000—which it turned
out didn’t: exist.
Shorter refused a police guard, and
his story was kept secret while the four
were hunted: But it leaked out when
‘True, a professional diver with no po-
lice record, was arrested in Grass Val-
ley, and that same night Perkins rang
Shorter’s: doorbell and kidnapped him
at gunpoint, before the eyes of his
screaming wife. The hapless “Canary”
was never seen again.
When Barbara, Santo and Perkins”
‘were finally arrested, they wouldn’t
give the time of day and there was no
evidence against them. Then one of the
ex-gamblers originally questioned, Wil-
lie Upshaw, came back from Mexico
, where he had fled for sanctuary. Now .
that the vicious trio were safely behind
bars, Upshaw disclosed that he had
originally been in‘ on the robbery plan
but backed out. He had introduced
Shorter to Santo. He confirmed the set-
up as Shorter had detailed it, and said
Santo had told him the next day what
had happened.
John True, a pal of Santo’s from the
north, was next to sing. “Way it was
told to me, a bunch of gamblers kept
money hid there, and there was a safe,
and we was to steal the money and
no one was to be hurt . . . Perk gave
me a gun... First thing I saw when
I went in was Barbara hitting this lady
in the face with her gun.. .”
True tried to intervene, as did Short-
er, he said, but the blonde kept slug-
ging Mrs. Monohan and egging the
others on. It was she who pulled a pil-
low case over the moaning and bleeding
victim’s head.
All four were indicted for murder,
but the indictment against True was
dropped in return for his prosecution
testimony. ~j
HEN the trial started, before Babs .
was even called to tell her ver-
sion of the night of March 9th, Prose-
cutor J.-Miller Leavy got the jump on
her by producing a tough-looking young
undercover cop, Sam Sirriani, who tes-
tified that she had offered him $25,000
to say he had spent that night with her ©
in a San Fernando Valley motel,
Barbara had contacted him through
a young woman jail mate, to whom she
desperately confided that she needed
an alibi. Her new friend told the police,
and Sirriani was sent in, masquerading
as the helpful witness, with a miniature
wire recorder under his shirt.
In the recording, Barbara admitted
she was with the three men that night,
and said: “I can assure you Bax Shorter
won’t turn up!”
As a sidelight, Leavy introduced a
series of notes Babs had smuggled to
her jail mate friend, a prétty brunette,
addressing her as “Baby Doll” and
“Sweet Candy Pants.” One note said
in part, “You are a very lovely and
desirable woman, and I want you very ©
much. tS
An attractive young policewoman,
Shirley Parker,‘ testified that she had
7
been planted as Barbara’s cellmate, and
the red-gold blonde had prophetically
confided to her: “If certain things come
to light, I'll be a cinch for the first
degree—l’ll be sniffing that cyanide
yet!” ‘
When the harassed Babs finally took
the stand herself, she claimed she had
been at home with her husband and
baby on the night of the 9th. She re-
membered it because they’d quarreled
and Hank had later moved to his moth-
er’s place.
Graham testified in her support, but
he wasn’t quite positive about the date
of their fight, and two other alibi wit-
nesses were equally weak.
Emmett Perkins’ story was that he
had been home with his wife and in-
valid son.
Harriet Henson testified that Santo
had been at home in Auburn, 500 miles
away, early on the morning of the 10th;
but the state exploded her, story with
still another wire recording in which she
tried to obtain phony, support for it
and admitted Santo, Perkins and Babs
were the killers.
As jittery Harriet left the stand, Sher-
iff Wayne Brown of Nevada City step-
ped up and arrested her for her part
in a seventh murder, the robbery-kill-
ing of Edmund Hansen, gold mine op-.
erator, on December 29th, 1951.
Harriet soon broke and confessed
that she had driven the getaway car
in that job for Santo, Perkins and
George Boles, a young bartender and ~
sanitarium attendant, who also confes-
sed his part. They had shot Hansen
seven times when they failed to find. a
$20,000 cache they thought he had. All
‘four were indicted for the Hansen mur-
der.
On September 22nd, 1953, the Los
Angeles jury found Santo, Perkins and
Barbara guilty of first-degree murder,
and Superior Judge Charles W. Fricke
sentenced the unholy three to death.
While they awaited outcome of their
appeals to the State Supreme Court,
Santo and Perkins were taken to Nev-
ada City, where a jury in short order
found\them and Boles guilty of the
Hansen murder and all three were sen-
tenced to life imprisonment—an ironic
touch in the case of Santo and Perkins.
The Hansen murder charge against
Harriet Hensen had been dropped in
return for her testimony. But now fur-
ther investigation had tied the Santo
mob to the Gard Young atrocity, and
the Plumas County grand jury indicted
Santo, Perkins and Harriet for the mur:
der of the grocer and the three children.
On May 7th, 1954, the three were found
guilty. The two men were sentenced to
death a second time, and Harriet to
life.
Big Jack and his pals were also linked
to other sadistic robberies in the gold
country, and Perkins was charged with
the kidnaping of Bax Shorter, but there
was no point in pressing these charges.
‘John True said Santo had told him,
as a warning against his own squealing,
that he had strangled Shorter with a
wire coat-hanger in the back seat of
the kidnap car, and he, Perkins and
' POLICE DRAGNET CASES
Barbara buried
in the desert ot
“That’s what yo
Babs was said
struck the corp
shovel.
ARBARA, \
peals, was
men’s prison at
for greater secu
ed that Santo’s
gineer an attem
her silence. But
ture balked at
her with her
special quarters
the, only wom:
men, she was t
sit it out.
’ On Friday, J
finally ran, out
Jack and Emm
Barbara, hag
gold hair a sh
been brought u
before. In her
declared her t
was resigned t
She receivec
the last consol:
the Rev. Dan
that it may be
to Mabel Mor
Early in the
for the execu
in a beige wo:
pendant earril
ring and. wed
At 9:05 a.t
Knight teleph:
Teets, orderir
while Federal
of the Ninth
considered a
Matthews and
ee een
THE JOLLY '
(Continued fr
woman, isn’!
“That didn’t
Klauber w:
ple logic. Aft
rats—and the
made him for
He got th
arsenic. He
from Anna. |
went by, the
sicken and di:
tiplied. It wa
who sickenec
strange mala
completely.
Day by d
day he wa:
would have
ruling all of
tions, had n
hospital.
But one \
rid of him.
out of the
Ernest Koch
him to shar
POLICE DR.
know that I rep-
in the manner in
_If I have to die,
urage, poise, and
3ab’s appearance
iterview room at
il she was a well
iapely, sexy look-
ery male head as
corridors in the
ped to 100 pounds
still a mighty at-
ie jail dress hung
vas weary looking
she commented:
» love of beautiful
nd fancy ‘cars. I
to get them but
't feel that I have
mn, ;
titute. But ‘what’s
a commodity like
grocery store to
its place like gro-
eath neared, Bar-
was innocent of
slaying. She de-
I have to go, is
life of little sins.
now that I’m not
crime of murder.”
y at Corona she
suit in which she
troyed a few me-
d wrote three let-
lest letters I ever
in a state car with
ad a matron. Only
-hour ride to San
her fast. She had
é when the officers
ed woman reached
on San Francisco
f a toothache and
“hen she was taken
m-cell only, fifteen
omb in which she
e had to walk past
Warden Teets had
with drapes. Babs
ne except the war-
| Father McAlister
he was chaplain at
ow a parish priest
- Lieut. Jack Mce-
igeles homicide de-
oping to get some
yn from her on the
-er Shorter.
ndemned row, Bar-
air of red lounging
1e night talking to
aying with Father
last requests have
whisky to a shot of
ily for a hot fudge
en dinner was sent
irned it down with
vaste good food on
‘n solid food since
‘ets talked to the
rvolice officers who
son to witness the
.s greatly disturbed.
cat,” he said. “I have
nderstand that this
of us at the prison.
I told her I wanted to make things as
easy for her as I could. Then Barbara po-
litely told me, “I’m awfully sorry, you
have to go through this.”
While Barbara prayed, Perkins and
Santo whiled. away their last hours gab-
bing with the guards about the relative
merits of the new cars, Perkins had been
visited by his sisters several days before,
but no one ever came to the grim prison
to see Santo—the dyed-in-the-wool killer
who once bragged, “I've never worked a
day in my life.” :
Before Barbara's attorney left her for
the last time he told her that he planned
to make a final appeal to Chief Justice
William Denman ot the Ninth Court of
Appeals forty-five minutes before execu-
tion time. But he warned her, “They’ve
got two strikes on you, Barbara, and this
is the last of the ninth.”
Telephone lines to the executive man-
sion in Sacramento were kept open all
night. And at 2 a.m. Gov. Goodwin Knight
received a call from Mrs. Shorter Baxter,
the wife of the missing stool pigeon,
pleading with him to wring some infor--
mation out of the trio about her husband.
Then a second call came from the Los
Angeles office of Attorney William
Strong. Governor Knight, who has ex-
pressed a strong dislike for capital pun-
ishment, said the call from Strong’s office
was “with merit” and went into action.
The governor announced later, “I felt
justified in asking the State Supreme
Court then sitting in Los Angeles to hear
Mr. Strong.”
Knight called Chief Justice Phil Gib-
son and notified Warden Teets of his
action. Gibson promised an immediate
ruling and hearing. And at 9:05 a.m. two
petitions for writs in behalf of Barbara
were filed with the Supreme Court. Fif-
teen minutes later the governor ordered
a delay in the execution to give the court
time to consider the petitions.
By then Barbara was fully dressed in
the neat suit she had worn during her
trial. Her makeup had been carefully ap-
plied and her dark hair neatly combed.
Her only jewelry was her wedding band
arid a pair of glittering rhinestone ear-
rings.
Five minutes before the scheduled 10
a.m. execution, Supreme Court Clerk
William Sullivan called Warden Teets
and:-then Governor Knight to report that
the court had denied applications for
writs to block the execution.
Barbara who had been told of the post-
ponement at 9:25 a.m. was waiting tensely
in her cell with the chaplain, Father
Edward Dingberg, and Father. McAlister.
Her spirits rose as the execution time
came and went and she hoped against
hope that no news was good news.
At 10:19 a.m. there remained only one
avenue of escape, the appeal that had been
filed with Chief Justice Denman. At this
moment he called Governor Knight.
After an eight-minute conversation
with the judge, the governor called
Warden Teets and declared there was no
further barrier to the execution. The
warden then set the time for Barbara's.
entrance into the gas chamber at 10:45
a.m. Perkins and Santo were to follow in
three hours. ‘
At 10:44 a.m. Barbara stepped out of
her cell with the two priests and started
the fifteen-foot walk to her date with
death. The black stethoscope dangled
from her chest. It was then that she was
told that another delay had been ordered.
A new petition in her behalf had been
filed with the Supreme Court in Los
Angeles and Clerk Sullivan again phoned
the warden to delay the execution.
Barbara turned to Father McAlister
and cried hysterically, “Maybe they’ve
found out that I’m innocent,” but when
the warden was notified at 11:10 a.m.
that the latest petition had been denied,
Babs broke down and sobbed, “Why do
they torture me so? I was ready to die
at 10 o’clock.”
She was then informed that she would
die at 11:30 a.m. and when that time
came she had screwed up her courage and
was ready. She managed to smile weakly
in reply to Warden Teet’s farewell,
“Good-bye and God bless you.” And then
she walked into the chamber with the
priests. ; .
She spoke her last words to-the chaplain
as the guards blindfolded her, and as’ the
stethoscope on her chest was connected
to the gauge outside the chamber and the
straps placed around her thin body she
repeated the “Ave.”
When a guard asked if her straps were
comfortable she nodded faintly. The last
_ guard patted her on the shoulder, whis-
pered a few wotds of instruction—‘“Count
to ten and then take a deep breath”—and
then left her alone.
Mercifully she couldn’t see the horror in
the eyes of the newspapermen who stood
five feet from the windows of her tomb.
They saw her wet her lips several times,
saw her lips move in prayer, watched her
cling to life for sixty extra seconds, and
then saw her die.
Eight minutes later, the bewildered kid
whose school room was a reformatory,
the wild young girl who tried to find “re-
spectability” in vice, and joined a band
of ruthless men to kill a cripple they mis-
takenly thought had $100,000 hidden in
her home, was officially dead.
In contrast to Barbara who was
dressed as though she were going to a
party, Santo and Perkins wore prison
blue jeans when they entered the gas
chamber.
Because of the delay in Barbara’s ex-
ecution, the hearse that was to take her
body to a funeral home in San Rafael
arrived at the prison before she died.
Her body was claimed by her husband
and it was buried near San Rafael. The
unclaimed bodies of Santo and Perkins
were cremated on the: Imola State Hos-
pital at Napa. F
In the aftermath of one of the bloodiest
chapters in the annals of California crime
there remained two lonely, despondent
figures—the wife and the mother of
Baxter Shorter. :
When told that the executions had
been completed, the wife of the missing
man broke down and sobbed, “I had
hoped against hope fhat they would say
something about Baxter before they en-
tered the gas chamber. Maybe ang Bar-
bara didn’t know after all. She went
without saying a thing.
“But Perkins knew what happened to
Shorter. He was the ane who came to our
apartment and took my husband away at
gunpoint. I saw him standing at the front
cod when he forced Baxter to go with
him.
“I’ve done my best to find my husband.
I've tried to learn what has happened to
him. I guess that’s about all I can do.
I’ve lived with this horrible burden for
more than two years and I’ve reached the
point where I just dgn’t care any more.”
Police have been ford that the husky
stool pigeon had beeh shot to death and
his body dumped in San Diego Bay. An-
other story is that he was shot and buried
in a lonely area somewhere between Los
Angeles and San Bernardino.
But no one really knows but the two
ruthless killers whose voices were for-
ever stilled by a dollar's worth of cyanide.
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1 was full
at her trial
en when she
as chamber.
Tough as they come—harlot, per|
achieved in death what she had wanted all her life
BY CHRIS
Biss Graham, wife and mother, <r and per-
jurer, gun moll and killer, has paid with her life in the most
ich tion in the history of San Quentin Prison. .
agonizing execu
The attractive 32-year-old brunette was snatched from
the door of the apple-green gas chamber on June 3, 1955,
by two last minute delays. Twice she steeled herself to die
but it wasn’t until an hour and forty-two minutes after
her scheduled execution time that Bloody Babs was finally
pronounced dead. ;
-the-wisp for the passionate mur-
Death was a will-o’
deress who had teamed up with male members of the in-
famous Mountain Murder Mob to beat and torture Mrs.
Mabel Monahan to death in Burbank, Cal., March 9, 1953.
Babs who had pistol whipped the ag crippled
widow and clubbed her with the heel of her shoe, silently
told her beads and clung to her confessor, the Rev. Dan
ete while her attorney waged a last ditch fight for
her life.
Only once in her anguish did she cry out, “Why do
they torture me so? I was ready. to go at 10 o’clock,” she
sobbed brokenly.
me time for her to die, it was Babs her-
But when it ca
self who clung to life for a precious extra minute in the
fume filled gas chamber.
She was the third woma
and the first person to request a
n to be executed in California
blindfold since 1941. “T
Defiant Jack Santo, left, and weasel featured Emmett
Perkins followed Babs into little twin-chaired room.
he Died Like a Lady
urer ont muderer—hard-boiled Barbara Graham
EDWARDS
don’t want to look into people’s eyes,” she told the priest,
referring to the fifty-odd reporters and -police officers
who stood only five feet away from the waist high
way she had dresse
at 11:34 a.m. and the cyanide pellet dropped into the pan
of sulphuric acid just behind her shapely ankles.
At 11:35 her dark head dropped to her chest and every-
one of us in that crowded room could have sworn she was
dead. And then suddenly she lifted her face toward the
low ceiling and it became obvious
that she was holding her breath in a desperate but futile
attempt to stave off death.
Then with a sigh of hopelessness her pent-up breath
exploded from her lungs and she gulped in the lethal fumes.
Her body twitched momentarily and then slumped limply
in the stout straps that bound her to the chair.
A prison physician who had been listening intently to
the extension of the stethoscope that had been taped to
, her chest walked from his post [C ontinued on page
~
To very end, Olivia Shorter hoped one of condemned
trio would tell what happened to her husband.
She Died Like a Lady
[Continued from page 15]
behind the gas chamber and announced
quietly, “She went easily.” ‘
Lieut. Bob Coveney of the Burbank
Police Department whose brilliant detec-
tive work helped crack the Monahan
- murder case commented tersely, “She died
a better death than Mabel Monahan.”
Jack Santo, 54, the thin lipped brains
of the mob and his sallow faced sidekick,
Emmett Perkins, 47, had to wait three
hours for the deadly fumes to clear out
of the chamber before they could be ex-
ecuted, —.
These two hard-bitten partners in at
least six murders including the Chester,
Cal., massacre of Gard Young and three
small children, died side by side. Chatting
and smiling as they entered the chamber,
Santo cracked to a guard, “Don’t do any-
thing I wouldn’t do.”
The state’s first triple execution in ten
years left every newspaperman in the wit-
ness benches emotionally ‘wrung out.
Even hardened -police officers, prison
guards, and Warden H. O. Teets himself
were visibly shaken by the experience.
Three killers were dead but what hap-
pened to Baxter Shorter, the stool pigeon
who put the police on their trail and then
disappeared, still remains a mystery.
Two days before Babs was executed,
Shorter’s mother, Mrs. Cora Shorter, of-
fered her a large sum of money for the
benefit of her three children if only she
would tell where the squealer’s body had
been hidden. ‘
When told of Mrs. Shorter’s offer,
Barbara denied she knew anything about
Shorter’s fate and said, “The man in the
pom would know more about him than
do.
The day before the execution, FBI
agents and .police officers questioned
Santo and Perkins for hours hoping to
learn what had happened to Shorter. They
said Santo told them emphatically, “I
wouldn’t tell you cops a damn thing.”
During the twenty-seven months Bar-
bara spent in prison while her appeals
filtered through the courts, she turned
more and more toward religion. The 50-
cent pellet of cyanide has made a sniveling
coward out of many a calloused killer but
Babs died as she had wanted vainly to
live—“like a lady.”
Said Father McAlister, “I don’t think
any man could have stood it any better
than Barbara did. And I’ve accompanied
a lot of men to the gas chamber.”
The dark haired beauty had once said,
“All my life I wanted money to give me
the appearance of being respectable.” In
a sehse she achieved her goal in death
and it wasn’t money but courage and
faith that won it for her. :
And that was the end for a kid who
started off with two strikes against her.
Babs was a wayward girl at 13, a water-
front tart at 18, a convicted -perjurer at
24 and a killer at 30.
Her own mother had her committed to
a reform school as: an “unmanageable
child.” When she left the institution four
years later she was well schooled in crime.
She immediately got married and had the
first of her three sons. The boy is 14 now.
At 18 Babs became a hard working
doxie in waterfront bars from Seattle to
San Diego. She later worked as a shill
in a Chicago gambling joint, tried a hand
at being a high class call girl in San
Francisco and “chippied around” with
60 333
narcotics.
She married Henry Graham, her fourth
husband, in 1950 and gave birth to her
third son, Tommy. But when the balding,
flat-nosed Perkins came into her life, she
walked out on her. husband and baby and
headed for the big money trail that the
weasel-faced killer pictured for her.
After the triple execution, Los Angeles
Chief of Detectives Thad Brown revealed
‘that Perkins once told John True, a deep
sea diver who turned state’s evidence in
the Monahan case:
“She’s the toughest little gal I’ve ever
met.” And coming from Perkins, this was
indeed a damning recommendation.
Brown also disclosed, that True once
quoted Santo and Perkins as saying that
Barbara helped the two of them bury
Shorter’s body in a shallow grave between
Los Angeles and San Bernardino.
Santo was quoted as saying, “When
Shorter was rolled into. the grave he
landed on his back on the bottom. Bar-
bara snarled, ‘Give me that shovel!’
“Wher I handed it to her she took an
overhand swing and split Shorter’s face
with it and said, ‘You'll never squeal on
anyone else!’”
There was still another side to the
strange woman who died in San Quentin’s
gas chamber. During her stay in the Los
Angeles County jail she caused several
hair pulling fights and a near riot by
sending torrid mash notes to the other
women prisoners. It was one of these
notes that led to her friendship with a
cute little brunette serving a year for
involuntary manslaughter.
She played along with Babs on the ad-
vice of Lieutenant Coveney and when
Babs confided to her that she needed an
alibi for the night of the Monahan mur-
der, the brunette offered to introduce her
to an underworld character.
The desperate murderess didn’t tumble
to the trap and when handsome Sam Siri-
anni visited her in the jail, she offered to
pay him $25,000 to say he was with her
in a San Fernando motel on the night of
the murder. . ;
It wasn’t until she walked into the
courtroom during her trial that she met
Sirianni again and was stunned to learn
he wag a policeman who had made a wire
recording of their alibi chat.
The day before she died, Barbara told
her attorney, Al Matthews, “I don’t
blame anyone because I was found guilty,
but it was that fake alibi that convicted
me.
“T did it because I had been told that
- if L said I was home with niy baby no one
would believe me. That’s when I got pan-
icky and started arranging for the alibi.”
After her conviction Barbara spent
most of her time in the women’s prison
at Corona. She did a couple of months in
San Quentin but caused so much unrest
among the sex-starved convicts there
that she had to be returned to Corona.
Three prisoners were sent to solitary
for screaming obscene remarks at her and
it was said that Barbara caused no end of
trouble by scribbling lewd messages on
paper airplanes and then sailing them
down to the prisoners iti the exercise
yard.
But as the time for her execution grew
closer, she turned more and more to re-
ligion. When I visited her in Corona two
days before her death she told me:
“1 don’t know why I’m so upset. I’m
not afraid to die. I’ve | praying con-
tinuously and I’m still hoping for a com-
mutation. You always hope, I guess. But
if it is the will of God that I die then I'll
die at peace with God and myself.”
Then she added, “It nlay seem like
an odd thing to say but I know that I rep-
resent all womanhood in the manner in
which I conduct myself. If I have to die,
I want to do it with courage, poise, and
dignity—like a lady.”
I was shocked by Bab’s appearance
when she entered the interview room at
Corona. During her trial she was a well
stacked 140 pounds, a shapely, sexy look-
ing doll Who turned every male head as
she strutted down the corridors in the
Hall of Justice.
But now she had dropped to 100 pounds
and although she was still a mighty at-
tractive woman, her blue jail dress hung
on her like a sack. She was weary looking
and near hysteria when she commented :
“My downfall was the love of beautiful
clothes, jewels, furs and fancy ‘cars. I
have done many things to get them but
not murder. And I don’t feel that I have
been a really bad person.
“Sure I’ve been a prostitute. But what's
wrong with that. Sex is a commodity like
food. People go to the grocery store to
buy food. And sex has its place like gro-
ceries on the shelf.”
As the hour of her death neared, Bar-
bara still insisted she was innocent of
the Mabel Monahan slaying. She de-
clared: .
“My last thought, if I have to go, Is
that 1 am paying for a life of little sins.
Thank God I myself know that I’m not
really paying for the crime of murder.”
During her last stay at Corona she
pressed the neat beige suit in which she
had chosen to die, destroyed a few me-
mentos of the past, and wrote three let-
ters to her children.
“They were the hardest letters I ever
had to write,” she said. .
Babs left Corona in a state car with
two state patrolmen and a matron. Only
once during the nine-hour ride to San
Quentin did she break her fast. She had
a malt at a roadside café when the officers
stopped for lunch.
When the condemned woman reached
the grim gray prison on San Francisco
Bay she complained of a toothache and
was given a sedative. Then she was taken
to a makeshift bedroom-cell only fifteen
feet from the grisly tomb in which she
was to die.
To reach the cell she had to walk past
the gas chamber but Warden Teets had
mercifully shielded it’ with drapes. Babs
refused to talk to anyone except the war-
den, her attorney, and Father McAlister
whom she met when he was chaplain at
San Quentin. He is now a parish priest
in nearby San Rafael.
She refused to see Lieut. Jack Mc-
Creadie of the Los Angeles homicide de-
tail, who had been hoping to get some
last minute information from her on the
disappearance of Baxter Shorter.
In San Quentin’s condemned row, Bar-
bara changed into a pair of red lounging
pajamas and spent the night talking to
her attorney and praying with Father
McAlister.
In the place where last requests have
ranged from a pint of whisky to a shot of
heroin, Babs asked only for a hot fudge
sundae. A fried chicken dinner was sent
to her cell but she turned it down with
the comment, “Why waste good food on
me.” She hadn’t eaten solid food since
she left Corona.
When Warden Teets talked to the
newspapermen and police officers who
had come to the prison to witness the
triple execution he was greatly disturbed.
“That poor girl is beat,” he said. “I have
asked her to please understand that this
is very difficult for all of us at the prison.
I told her I wanted
easy for her as I coul:
litely told me, “I’m
have to go through -
While Barbara p1
Santo whiled away t
bing with the guard
merits of the new ca:
visited by his sisters
but no one ever cam
to see Santo—the dy
who once bragged, “
day in my life.”
Before Barbara's «
the last time he told
to make a final app
William Denman of
Appeals forty-five m
tion time. But he w
got two strikes on y
is the last of the nin
Telephone lines tc
sion in Sacramento
night. And at 2 a.m. (
received a call from
the wife of the n
pleading with him t
mation out of the tr:
Then a second ca:
Angeles office of
Strong. Governor }
pressed a strong di
ishment, said the cal
was “with merit” a
The governor ant
justified in asking
Court then sitting 11
Mr. Strong.”
Knight called Ch:
son and notified V
action. Gibson pro:
ruling and hearing.
petitions for writs
were filed with the
teen minutes later '
a delay in the execu
time to consider th
By then Barbara
the neat suit she }
trial. Her makeup |
plied and her dark
Her only jewelry v
atid a pair of glitt
rings.
Five minutes bei
a.m. execution, S:
William Sullivan «
and: then Governor
the court had de:
writs to block the «
Barbara who had
ponement at 9:25 a.:
in her cell with
Edward Dingberg,
Her spirits rose a
came and went a
hope that no news
At 10:19 a.m. th:
avenue of escape, tI
filed with Chief Ju
moment he called (
After an eight
with the judge,
Warden Teets and
further barrier tc
warden then set t
entrance into the
a.m. Perkins and §
three hours.
At 10:44 am. B
her cell with the t
the fifteen-foot w
death. The black
from her chest. It
told that another ¢
A new petition
filed with the Si
Angeles and Clerk
the warden to del:
Barbara _ turned
Barbara Graham was full
cheeked and vibrant at her trial
but haggard and worn when she
took her seat in the gas chamber.
Pos
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ARA SHAM, ‘Barbara, white, asphyx. San Quentin (LA) on June 3, 1955,
he
- meee wee a ee — wee.
CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS ; .
SAN QUENTIN PRISON . °
2 * | ! FYHAL GAS CHAMBER — EXECUTION RECORD a
she GAM US72 — pene — GHAHAH, Barbara. . 31
end a ae esa Oct er U, 2 1953 Jur 2 » 1955
Date Exccuted
° or we ce eee ee ee. eee
MOOCRATION . - c.f TIME . RATE REMARKS
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t sas Strikes Prisoner’s Face . 11:34A4! + 60 to the end. No cricaces,
Yrisoner Apparently Uncenscicus 11:35A:} ° $ 3 dies very quietly.
7 ~3¢ Cestainly Unconscious ms . 411:36A1, 4 12 . - y
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Prisoner Proncunced Dead L1l:4 Aft "4 .
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Disposition of Remains: Eoly Cross Cemctery,San Francisco, Ca a ie
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THE MINNEAPOLIS STAR
Price 5 Cents
U.S, Weather Bureau Forecast:
Showers.
i. LXXVII—No. 163
MINNEAPOLIS, MINN., FRIDAY, JUNE 8, 1955
Two Delays.
Fail: Woman
xecuted |
ham
SAN QUENTIN, ~ Oe aig att :
ied in San Quentin’s gas cham naa
ri chin Oeeuie in the most confused exe
ifornia history. : a
es th of the deceptively demure re Seay ae Ba i
the aetiiees murder-for-money a southe rer wan
: ee i -minute
ie a eon. aufing the mornitig by a series of last
twice pos p
legal maneuvers.
She was composed and
linquent girl who grew up
de-
le. Mrs. Graham, a
Ha gh moll, moved her met’ ba
dropped into the acid beneath
llets were
rayer as the pel
death chair at 11:34 a.m.
to the gas
Following her in ;
chamber this afternoon
triple execution for the —_
murder were to come sees
Santo, 54, and emcee Tee eet
who have also
vib of five other eaves
including the gruesome ee
massacre of a grocer and ead
small children in a nor
California woodland.
he was
rs. Graham, when s
eiapped in the chair, was boo
to count to 10 and — "
deeply when the deadly pelle
were dropped.
At 11:36, two minutes —
the pellets were sreneet, rd
head rolled forward as =
was being overcome. - —
obvious she was holding
breath.
She raised her head and face
and looked straight, at the ceil-
ing of the tiny chamber for
more than three. minutes.
But at 11:37% ; ‘she. was
forced to swallow and gulp. A
few minutes later she was dead.
new appéal’ wag pre-
Sented to the supreme. court,
and just a couple of minutes
before she was to be led to the
death chamber, the execution
| Was called off again, Leen
The last ‘appeal was consid-
ered for 10 minutes ,by the su-
preme court, Chief Justice
Phil S, Gibson: then told re.
porters: “It is denied, gentle.
men.”
- Then a new a
And that was the énd of the
road for Barbara Graham,
Immediately after Mrs, Gra-
ham died her body was claimed
by her husband, Henry Graham
of Los Angeles, The last time
he saw her alive Was .at the
women’s state prison at Co-
,/rona, Calif., three days ago,
Mrs. Graham uttered no last
‘;}words before entering the
‘|death chamber. One of her
-|final comments on her plight -
*;was made Thursday night to
her attorney, Al Mattews, in a
-|midnight meeting. in a death
“1row cell,
“The food people are always
,{80 sure they are doing justice,”
Matthews said she told him,
i}. This morning, after she had
{]been granted two delays; Mrs.
3; Graham blurted to Warden
Harley O, Teets, “Why do they
;jtorture me? [I was ready at
.|10 o'clock.”
Teets’ said. Mrs. ‘Graham re-
-}Quested that’ she be blindfolded
‘|before being taken into the
*|}death chamber “because I don’t}
: _ to have to look at peo-
Pp e.” j
The blindfold, a hangover
from the days of hanging
executions, has not been used
since 1941, Teets said,
Fry wd 3, Lae MINNEAPOLIS MORNING TRIBUNE ek 5
- AROUND: NATION
LAST HOPE — Jack Santo,
Emmett Perkins and Mrs. Bar-
bara Graham are pinning their
: hopes on a peti.
ion for review
y the. United
sStates supreme
‘court as the last
jchance of escap-
jing execution
_chamber today.
“The trio was
“murder of a
Mrs. “Graham crippled | widow
in March 1953. Mrs. Graham
is*scheduled to die at 10 a.m.,
and Santo and Perkins at 1
p;m.
fin San Quentin.
“"prison’s gas
‘convicted of the
Th
¥
NEWS of the WORLD
© WITNESS from B-1
Real life judgment
day: amemoir
‘ preme Court in 1972 and 1976,
freeing 175 prisoners from con-
demned status. Capital punish--
ment was reinstated by the voters
in 1978. Since then, executions
have been delayed by state and
federal courts. Of the 329 persons
in condemned status today, Harris
has come the closest to running out
oftime. .
I first saw Graham. at about 4
o’clock on a Thursday afternoon,
June 2, 1955, at the west gate en-
trance to San Quentin.:
She was in the back seat of a - .
state car, sitting beside ‘a prison
matron. Two guards were in the’
front seat, and a CHP black and
white was tailgating the car at the
end of a 500-mile trip from the
Corona women’s prison.
Smiled for the cameras
Guards tried to force a path
through a milling knot of news
photographers and reporters, but
Graham wanted pictures. She
rolled down her door window,
- fussed at her brown hair and
smiled weakly for the cameras. She
was pale with fatigue.
As the car moved again, an offi-
cer shouted to the driver: “The
warden wants her to go directly to
condemned row.” ;
' She had a 10 o'clock date in the
gas chamber the next morning. **
Scheduled to die immediately
after her were the swaggering dan-
dy Jack Santo, 54, and his wizened,
jug-eared partner in several mur-
Jers, Emmett Perkins, 47. All three
ad drawn death sentences in the
53 Burbank robbery and murder
Mabel Monohan, who was mis-
ly thought to keep money in
"18e.
\ and Perkins were under
* death sentences for the
. beating murder of a grocer, Guard .
Young, and three small children
during a payroll robbery at Ches-
ter, Plumas County, in October
1952. Their appeals in this case’
were still in the courts, but they
would die now for the Monohan
murder.
Graham had been arrested with
Perkins and Santo, her lover at the
moment, after the Monohan mur-
der. She was not involved i in the.
Chester case.
To me these three, that day and
the next, were simply role players
in a major news story. Graham’s
‘guilt was “official.” She cried that
she was innocent, but this small cry
was scarcely heard until later.
- We were told that she spoke
bitterly to her attorney in an execu-
- tion holding cell that night, saying,
“Good people are always so sure
they're doing justice.”
A shadow of a doubt
So yes, there was an uneasy,
fretful shadow of a doubt about
Graham. Not the “reasonable
doubt” that judges say must benefit
the accused. No, we reminded our-
selves, the jury had found her
guilty “to a moral certainty and
beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Remember, this was another
_ time. Execution protests were only
a whisper. I don’t recall demonstra-
tors outside the prison the next
morning, Friday, June 3.
I arrived at San Quentin at
about 9 o’clock with 15 other re-
porters; It was a sunny day after
the morning high fog burned off.
My only sense of uneasiness was
the responsibility of doing my job
well.
Things started going wrong im-
‘mediately. Then-Gov. Goodwin
Knight telephoned the warden at
9:05 a.m., ordering the 10 a.m. exe-
cution held up for an eleventh-hour
appeal to the Supreme Court.
Graham had spent the night
pacing in her cell in red pajamas,
unable to sleep or eat. She became
so upset at word of the stay that ,
‘the prison physician was sum-
". moned.
“Why do they torture me?” she!
cried. “I was ready to go at 10.”
The stay was lifted by the gover-’’ .
nor at 10:26 a.m. after the court
refused the writs, and Warden
Harley Teets reset the execution
for 10:45 a.m. Graham was readied -
in her cell, a long stethoscope at-
_tached to her back.
At 10:41 a.m., 90 seconds before
she was to enter the gas chamber:
another phone call, this from the
Supreme Court clerk.
Another petition, another stay.
Graham repeated her tortured
cry.
Waiting again. At 11:17, another
_ call, canceling the stay. This time it
‘was go, for 11:30 a.m. I was stand-
ing against one of the three win-
_dows in the witness area. As al-
‘ways, I concentrated on taking ~
notes. I was an observer, not a -
participant, I unconsciously re- .
minded myself. This didn’t affect
me.
Death with dignity .
Graham died with great dignity.
She wore a black blindfold over her
eyes, by her own request. “I don’t
want to have to look at people,” she -
had told the warden.
She achieved a strange beauty
in her last moments. Her soft, dark
brown hair was perfectly in place. -
Her face was an ivory cameo ac-
_cented by the mask and her rouged
‘crimson lips. She walked the few
steps from her lonely cell to the
steel door at the rear of the gas
chamber with head erect.
She wore a beige wool suit with
covered buttons, pumps, gold pen-
dant earrings and a wedding band.
She was trembling in hand and
body as she sat down. Her lips
. moved constantly, as if in prayer, .
as guards adjusted the straps
across each arm, her chest and legs.
One of the guards asked her’
UPI FILE PHOTO"
Barbara Graham was executed on June 3, 1 955: “Good ph are always
so sure they’re doing justice,” she had told her attorney the night before.
whether the straps were all right,
and she nodded and seemed to
speak. He patted her shoulder as
he stepped out. of the chamber.
Another guard told her to breathe
normally, then left. -
She sat quietly, wetting her lips.
once or twice, for almost a full
minute. Then she breathed deeply,
and her head fell forward. In 8
minutes she was dead.
Three hours later, at 2:30 p.m.,
Santo and Perkins were strapped
into the chairs side by side.
They died as they had lived —
‘defiantly. They stared boldly at the
witnesses as they entered the
; = cnambe grinned and postured,
:- talked with one another, flaunted
_ their bravado. Both were barefoot-
*-ed and dressed in denim trousers
and white shirts.
‘ Santo, freshly shaven with his
2 pencil-line mustache in place,
- made a wisecrack as the guards
“moved out of the chamber. “Don’t
you fellows do anything I wouldn’t
| do,” he called.
He and Perkins appeared to
chat until the first breath of hydro-
-cyanic acid fumes contorted their
. faces, and they fell still.
--. Back in the office preparing to
~ write my story, I recalled what
Emmett Perkins had told someone
i! after he and Santo had killed
- Young and the three children. “It’s
. been: an awful ‘gruesome day,” he.
“said. ~
‘And that’s the kind of day it had
been at San Quentin, exactly. :
_As I began to write, I realized
that I was emotionally involved af-
. ter all. Graham had been subjected
_to deep humiliation and torment.
This had nothing to do with her
guilt or innocence. Those inhu-
mane, last-minute delays , had
- made her die a thousand deaths
instead of one.
‘And so I became undetached in
~ the lead sentence of the story.
“Barbara Graham was tortured
to death by the sovereign state of
alifornia. yesterday,” I wrote?’
_ That sentence lasted only
through the first edition of the pa-
per. Then a properly detached edi-
tor changed “tortured” to “put.”
I would witness and write about
‘yet another execution after that, a
couple of years later, and then no
more.
As for the death penalty, I voted
for it in Proposition 7 in 1978. But
now? Well, detachment isn't all-
that easy anymore.
adie, Wil- 3
. Buckley 4
nent. -
them that...
o'clock a 4
door. Her ©
man with 4
e bedroom
it up with
front door <
» Shorter’s
r, “Go on
or Baxter
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She saw a
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y good de-
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tt Perkins,
I'd know
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at they be-
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id Barbara ©
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‘ading with @
notify the .%
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e’re sure he
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iers on the &!
illing him.”
ttorney for
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arging that
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*% were hold-
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have had &
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vere holding
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3urbank offi-
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Bloody Babs ©
Innocent Barbara?
Graham was found guilty of the murder of
California:
ERE is the evidence on which Barbara H
ERE are the facts which a number of respon-
sible persons believe indicate that Barbara
Mabel Monohan and put to death by the state of was innocent of the crime:
An accomplice in the crime testified that
- had seen her pistol-whipping Mrs. Mono-
an;
Barbara admitted participating in the
murder to an undercover detective;
She insisted she was with her husband on
the night of the murder. Her husband denied
he had been at home that evening;
Barbara gave three different versions of
where she had been the night of the killing.
One version was in an attempt to buy a false
alibi. Another was denied by the person she
said she was with. No one has been able to
produce any witness to the third version;
Barbara had been convicted of perjury
when she falsely testified she had spent the
night in a motel with a man accused of armed
robbery; the alibi she attempted to buy for
the murder involved the same situation, a
man to testify he was in a motel with her.
She was an admitted prostitute, check
’ forger and perjurer but she never before had
been accused of a crime of violence;
A psychologist has stated that his tests
indicated a crime of violence was incom-
patible with her personality;
A next-door neighbor testified at the trial
that she had heard Barbara and her husband
arguing on the night of the murder;
She was left-handed; the accomplice who
placed her on the scene said she had been
hitting Mrs. Monohan with a pistol she held
in her right hand;
She made her admission to the under-
cover detective only at his insistence and in
an attempt to get him to go along with the
phony alibi;
The tremendous newspaper publicity,
which was mostly adverse, undoubtedly had
its affect on the jury; so did her way of life.
Shoemaker, Lieutenant Don Jones
and Detective Edward Kortan made a .
search of the house. They found an
envelope with Barbara Graham’s name
on it.
Oberholtz was shown pictures of
Barbara Graham and Emmett Perkins.
He immediately identified them as the
two who had rented the house.
Los Angeles and Burbank police were
vitally interested in the house. They
went over it carefully, searching for
bloodstains. They covered the back lot,
the space under the house and the sur-
rounding area for any evidence of a
freshly dug grave that might contain
the body of Baxter Shorter. The house
was dusted for fingerprints.
The search produced a small printing
press which police surmised might have
been used to print bogus checks.
In view of the printing press, the
Police decided to watch reports of bogus
checks and check passers.
Late in April, the local police in Lyn-
wood received a flood of complaints
from merchants that a woman was
passing bad checks. The description of
the check passer was sent on to Bur-
bank. She might be Barbara Graham,
Chief Andrews decided.
Los Angeles police were notified and
Chief Thad Brown and Homicide Chief
Robert Lohrman sent Policewoman
Kay Sheldon to Lynwood.
. On May 4, Policewoman Sheldon
Pag Barbara Graham in a store.
pred followed Barbara. It was a diffi-
set = for the Graham girl obviously
‘ tying to cover any trail. She went
nto a dentist's office and slipped out
of a side door, she walked through
drug store, took a bus and then ~ b.
But Policewoman Sheldon web a 1
ie a =. Barbara Graham led her to
which had than “ite Dae
apartment. erted into an
Sixteen police officers moved in.
Santo was found asleep in bed, Per-
kins and Barbara Graham in the
kitchen.
The three were taken to headquar-
ters in Los Angeles where they denied
knowing anything about the kidnaping
of Shorter and once again repeated
that they were innocent of any con-
atc with the death of Mrs. Mono-
an.
Perkins was placed in a line-up with
eleven other men of similar height and
weight. Mrs. Shorter viewed them and
immediately pointed out Perkins, cry-
ing: “That’s the man! I said I'd know
him anyplace and he’s the man who
took Baxter!
She was unable to identify Santo or
Barbara Graham as the persons she
had seen in the car.
On May 9 Perkins was arraigned in
municipal court on a charge of kidnap-
ing, and Barbara Graham on seven
counts of passing worthless checks.
Santo was held the legal 48 hours for
questioning. No charges could be
placed against him since he had not
been identified by Mrs. Shorter. He
was released and immediately re-ar-
rested by the Burbank police in the
Monohan case.
As the legal time ran out for holding
_Santo in Burbank, Chief Andrews con-
ferred with District Attorney S. Ernest
Roll of Los Angeles County.
“We have Shorter’s confession,” An-
drews said. ‘“‘Can I file a charge against
Santo on the strength of that?”
“We can’t use Shorter’s confession
without Shorter.”
“You mean we'll have to release
Santo?”
“Unless you can find Shorter or get
further evidence.”
Andrews then called in two of his
best men. “I’m going to have to let
Santo go, but I want you two to live
in his back pocket. Somehow, with or
without Shorter, I’m going to clear up
this thing. If I get any evidence, I want
to know where Santo is. You two tail
him, and if you lose him don’t bother
coming back.”
ANTO was released. As he swaggered
from the Burbank jail, he gave an
exclusive interview to a newspaper re-
porter, saying:
“T’ve got a police record and I admit
it. But the things they are doing to me
ain’t fair.
“I can tell you why Shorter impli-
cated all of us in this Monohan case.
I was living in El Monte with Perkins
and Barbara. . . You see, I was look-
ing for more money to complete a ten-
million-dollar guano deal and I needed
more dough. Shorter tried to cut him-
self in with Perkins, Barbara Graham,
Donnelly and me, but he didn’t have
any dough to put up. :
“Shorter may have pulled the Mono-
han deal, but none of us were in on it.
And we didn’t kidnap him either.”
Chief Andrews read the interview
carefully and commented to Coveney:
“If he keeps on talking, maybe he will
put his neck in a noose.”
“I think he has already.”
“What do you mean?”
“You notice that he mentions he,
Perkins, Donnelly and the Graham girl
were working together. That leaves
Shorter and Verble on the outside.”
“Yeah, but what difference does that
make?”
“T’ve been thinking about the kid-
naping of Shorter. We picked up Don-
nelly and right away they grabbed
Shorter. How did they know Shorter
was the one who talked and not
Verble?”
“How?”
“TI don’t know,” Coveney admitted,
“but I'd like to guess. Verble was scared
WHAT SECRET
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Benjamin Franklin
(A Rosicracian)
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PERKINS, GRAHAM & SANTOS
HORROR
| UNLIMITED
oy HUGH COBURN
ee [
|
| CHESTER, CAL., OCTOBER 3, 1953
| @ It was 2:15 p.m. when Guard Young
glanced up at the wall clock in his big
| new supermarket in Chester. The date
was October 10, 1952, and the stage was
set for one of the most atrocious crimes
in California history. Young hurriedly
shucked off his work apron and put on °
| a suit coat. He had something impor-
tant to do by 3 P.M.
| Outside, men in ‘rough clothing and
| J red hats dotted the main street of this
little mountain town in Plumas County.
Their jeeps and pickup trucks were
stacked with camping equipment and
rifles. It was deer. season in one of the
best hunting areas of the Sierra Nevada.
| Young, a graying, open-faced, well-
| built man of 43, walked over to the
| store safe in the cashier’s office. From
‘| it he took a thick bundle of checks—all
| the checks the market had taken in
| during the past week. He put them in
| a paper sack.
Then, sack in hand, he strode out the
| main door, waving to the cashier and
| ; smiling a greeting to a couple of arriving
‘| customers.
|
:
h
li
p
a
Young didn’t say where he was going.
It wasn’t necessary. This was Friday
1 and the loggers would be in town soon
| with paychecks to cash at Young’s
\ continued on page 26
Harriet Hensen: You can lie for the >
guy for a while, but ‘not forever.
FRONT PAGE DETECTIVE,
January, 195/+.
Mrs. Young waits for Sondra to regain consciousness.
-HORROR UNLIMITED continued
He didn’t even
ules. He always
noons.
When he lef:
walked around
building, where
play. Young an
lived in an apart:
ket with their for
greatest pleasure
Early in their n
had been told t!
children of their o
two small girls,
were Jean, now s
Judy, six. Except
alike as two pea:
blue-eyed blondes
But the doctor:
and Mrs. Young
their own—Sondr
haired child of thr
five-month-old boy
HE three girl
Young. Mrs.
baby, watched wit
doorway of the ap:
“Daddy, can we 5
Sondra Gay tugged
leg and Jean and
circle. If they we
a treat in Westw
candy bars, probab!
Young grinned in
on the door of his
ea ~ Dee _
Young, with Judy, Sondra, Jean,. didn’t hide banking hours,
Michael Saile got out of car once,
26
Supermarket. It was time for Young
to go to the bank for money.
That didn’t mean going across the
street. Not in Chester. In spite of the
lumber boom which had raised Ches-
ter’s population to nearly 2000, the
town Kad no bank of its own. Mer-
chants in Chester had to drive 12 miles
through the mountains to Westwood,
another lumber town in adjacent Las-
sen County.. They had no armored
car service, no police escorts. It was
every man for himself—a dangerous
situation which the businessmen had
been complaining about for years.
It didn’t bother Guard Young par-
ticularly. Young had been in busi-
ness in Chester for seven years. His
market was the biggest building in
town. He was used to this problem.
. Besides that, Young was a deeply
religious man, a Mormon directly
descended from Brigham Young. His
faith was protection enough for him.
He demonstrated this in his market
by giving credit to people who were
rated as dead beats everywhere else.
Strangely enough, they always paid
Guard Young.
Young refused to carry a gun when
he went to the. Westwood bank, as
many other storekeepers did. He did
not drive 80 or 85 miles an hour on
these trips, like some of the others.
but a man made Mike get back in.
They looked human, dpeea
human: They were
Lobes alkes) vultures
poised for a jackpot. Women
and children came last
when they spotted a kill '
Boles, right, signed a confession to a job at Last
Chance Mine, named Perkins as masked accomplice.
Police had the problem
of getting inculpating evidence quickly,
before gangland code exacted
its swift and terrible vengeance
Strip bel
recently chi
York p
custom bu
Some of the
Gangdon
Going west
just across
open Las
the Pacific
Lots of
Lt. Robert Coveney, above, checks
the scene of the brutal torture mur-
der of Mrs. Mabel Monahan, right.
DecatH CoaPER
and the —
After the pr
coroner’s su: |
‘ was remove
technicians +
BY JONAS BAYER ‘
ausechdubkanndidoac cae,
tobe wed a
|
:
‘|
4
2
j
i
served as a troubleshooter for President
Truman, prosecuted the case. The trio
got terms of seven to ten years on charges
of conspiracy to murder.
Clyde was paroled just before Christ-
mas in 1942, Checkers and Stephens got
their freedom a couple of weeks later.
Apparently something had come between
the Smaldones and Stephens during their
terms in prison because once out of stir
they went their separate ways.
Those were the war years and there was
plenty of easy money floating around.
The Smaldones went back into business—
which, according to informed quarters,
ran the gamut of slot machines, barbuit,
crap games, and a little black marketing
on the side.
Stephens dug into his capital and
opened a plush gambling emporium for
Denver society at the old Wolhurst Sad-
dle Club, Before long he was raking in
greenbacks faster than ever.
Then on March 10, 1946, thirteen
masked men burst into the Wolhurst club
at the height of the evening’s activities.
All were heavily armed. Coolly, the ban-
dits relieved the crowd of money and
jewelry, scooped up cash from the tables
and escaped with an estimated $100,000.
No trace was ever found of the ban-
dits. The underworld whispered that it
was the work of the Maffia. They hinted
old scores were settled with the stickup—
’
for instance the failure of Stephens to
take care of the Smaldones for the time
they spent ,in prison. But police were
never able to solve the crime.
Some months later,
moved their mother, Mamie, from her
modest tavern to an elaborate North
Denver restaurant and bar called Gae-
tano's,
Checkers and Clyde grew powerful and
wealthy. They operated a vast bookmak-
ing setup with outlets all over town. Their
slot machines were said to be in scores
of restaurants, bars, poolhalls and service
stations. Hoodlums in their employ ped-
dled football jackpot cards, Their dealers
ran card games, crap tables and barbuit
unhindered in Denver's suburbs.
One year the Smaldone gang descended
on Central City, the famed summer tour-
ist town in the mountains west of Denver,
and the gambling operations virtually dis-
rupted an opera festival.
But the ring of the law was closing
in on them. Governor Dan Thornton,
prodded by the press, named a “Little
Kefauver” crime commission headed by
tough Max Melville, assistant district at-
torney in Denver, to investigate crime in
the state. The Denver grand jury began
hearings. Shortly, the heat was on, The
fabulously profitable slot machines were
the first to go.
Soon after the Denver grand jury made
the Smaldones
/
its report on the gambling ring, a federal
grand jury went into action, The Smal- «
dones, Blanda, Enrichi, Mazza, Incerto
and others were indicted. Then came
George Priest’s dramatic raid last Jan-
uary on the barbuit game.
After the report of a wired table was
received, Denver officers recalled the un-
solved 1949 gangland killing of Harold
(Murph) Cohen, a petty gambler, Cohen
had told his wife, the last time she saw.
him, that he was going to either fix or
sell some dice tables, She was vague about
the details.
Four months later his body, with heavy
pieces of iron wired \to the legs, was
found by schoolboys in a lake. Could there
be a connection? The police still hope for
an answer. ,
. Over the years the Maffia’s illicit activ-
ities gradually were curtailed by strenger
federal laws, better law enforcement and
an aroused and militant public cpinion.
The mobs saw sources of revenue—boot-
legging, extortion, white slave traffic. nar-
cotics—dwindle away little by little. “heir
last stronghold was syndicate ga::bling
and federal laws have dealt that a body
blow.
Now the income tax rap, the gunmick
that ended Al Capone’s reign of crime,
has the Colorado Maffia reeling. There’s
nothing to indicate it will ever recover in
the foreseeable future.
Bludgeon Slaying in
House of Fear
[Continued from page 31]
on the following right, April 14, his 29-
year-old wife, Olivia, made a frantic call
to the police department.
“Baxter's been kidnaped!’ she
screamed over the telephone. “A man
with a gun took him away in a car,”
A group of officers headed by Chief of
Detectives Thad Brown rushed to the
Flower Street address, where they found
Olivia ,almost incoherent with grief.
“He's dead! He’s dead! My husband’s
dead!” she sobbed. Shorter’s distraught
mother was with her,
When the two women were calmed
somewhat, Olivia was shown pictures of
Santo, Perkins and True. Instantly, she
selected that of Emmett Perkins as the
man who had abducted her husband,
“Had you ever seen him before?” she
was asked.
“Never. But I couldn’t forget his face
if I lived to be a hundred. He’s the man
who grabbed Baxter,”
Later she gave a graphic account of
the incident.
“We were watching TV when someone
knocked on the dodr at 10 minutes after
eight. Baxter opened it and we saw a
man standing there with a gun in his
hand, He pointed it at us and said, ‘Come
on, Baxter, let’s go.’ My husband pushed
me aside and said, ‘OK, I'll go with you.’
As they started down the hall I seized
our rifle and ran after them. But this
man Perkins aimed his pistol at me and
when I kept on coming he put the gun
against Baxter’s head and told me if I
didn’t get back in the apartment he’d kill
Baxter right there.”
She said she saw Perkins force her
husband into a pearl-gray 1951 Plymouth
with another man sitting at the wheel.
Seconds later the automobile sped south
on Flower Street.
60
Asked to explain how the gunman got
the drop on them, she said:
“Our apartment isn’t far from the first
‘loor main entrance. When someone
knocks we open the upper half of a
Dutch door. When Baxter did that last
night the man was there with the gun
leveled at us.” \
She stated that she and Shorter had
been married for nine years. Her grief
appeared real, and authorities rejected
the possibility that the kidnaping was a
carefully planned hoax so that Shorter
could flee from a police investigation.
“We're convinced he’s been murdered,”
one top-ranking officer said. “We expect
is find him dead, That is, if we ever find
ind,
~ Mrs. Shorter signed a complaint charg-
ing Emmett Perkins and a “Joe Doe”
(presumably Jack Santo) with the kid-
naping of her husband, x
“But what good will it do?” she said
bitterly to District Attorney Roll. “I
know he’s dead.”
A storm of criticism arose over Short-
er’s not having been provided police pro-
tection, with or without his consent,
Chief Andrews appeared on a television
news broadcast and explained that he had
warned Shorter of the danger he was in
and had repeatedly urged that he accept
a round-the-clock guard or be removed
to a secret hideout, but Shorter had
laughed at the suggestion and refused
point-blank to consider the offer.
Police broadcast an all-points kidnap
alarm and issued pickup orders on
Perkins, Santo and Barbara Graham, who
were believed to be traveling in either
the two-tone green '52 Oldsmobile or the
‘51 pearl-gray Plymouth in which Shorter
was thought to have been taken for a
gangland ride. The teletype broadcast
warned officers; “Use extreme caution
as the suspects are armed and very
dangerous.”
Perkins was described as being 44 years
of age, 5 feet 9 inches tall, and weighing
140 pounds. He had a high forehead, flop
ears, dark hair, a dimpled chin and wore
false teeth which he sometimes carried
in his pocket. Perkins, Santo and True,
according to Shorter’s statement, were,
all accomplished safe-crackers.
Santo, said to be the ringleader of the
mob, was 6 feet 2 inches.ta’ weighed 200
pounds and was 52 years old. Occasion-
ally he affected a Van Dyke Os full beard
and dyed his graying haix...Fe was de-
scribed as a particularly vicious and ruth-
less criminal.
Barbara Graham, who had also used
the aliases Kielhammer, Wood and Rad-
cliffe, tipped the scales at i116 pounds and ,
was 5 feet 3 inches tall, + blonde hair
and brown eyes. She had scrved 6 years
in the Ventura School for Wayward Girls,
and in March, 1941, as Barbara Kiel-
hammer, was sentenced to 60 days in jail
by San Diego police on a vagrancy
charge, Los Angeles police had picked
her up as a suspected narcotics addict in
1951 and subsequently released her for
lack of evidence. If the stories told by ©
Shorter regarding her participation in the
macabre slaying of Mrs. Monohan could
be believed, she was living proof of the
familiar saying that the female of the
species is more deadly than the male.
While the search for the wanted trio
was being relentlessly pressed through-
out the Pacific Southwest, a new devel-
opment entered the case. Sheriff Melvin
Schooler of Plumas County in northern
California reported that Jack Santo was
definitely a suspect in an atrocious quad-
ruple murder in Chester, Cal., which oc-
curred on October 10, 1952. Gard Young,
43-year-old grocer, had just withdrawn
$7,128 from the bank to cash payroll
checks. He and his two small daughters
—Judy, 6, and Jean, 7—and a neighbor's
boy, Michael Salle, 4, had all been sav-
agely beaten to death and the payroll
money stolen. Sheriff Schooler said it
had been established that Santo and a
woman companion were deer hunting in
that vicinity on the day the crime was
committed.
On April 15 John True, the deep-sea
diver, was arrested in an isolated cabin
of a friend near Grass Valley, Cal. Chief of
one ee er
Police Andrews, Lieut. Coveney and an
investigator from the State Attorney
General’s office had surprised True while
taking a bath, made him dress and drove
the suspect to Burbank.
The tall, red-haired, rather good-look-
ing man said he could prove that at the
time of the Monohan murder he was in
Grass Valley. Shown photographs of
Santo, Perkins, Barbara Graham, Shorter
and Tutor Scherer, he declared the only
ones he recognized were Santo, whom he
described as a hunting and fishing coin-
panion, and Scherer, with whom he had
a speaking acquaintance.
At this point Attorney Patrick J.
Cooney, a veteran lawyer, announced that
he had been retained by friends of True
to represent him. On April 16 True was
freed from custody on a writ of habeas
corpus. He told newsmen: “I’m going
back to Grass Valley, get my gear and
resume diving in Idaho rivers for sunken
logs. I’ve been surveying lakes and
streams around there
have located more than 50 million board
feet in sunken logs that are just as good
as the day they sank.”
Chicf Andrews, grim-faced and plainly
worried over having to release his prize
suspect, watched True walk out of jail
to freedom. Andrews said that further
investigation of the case would be con-
ducted along lines of “new strategy” and
that his department would operate under
absolute secrecy.
Mrs. Olivia Shorter remained under a
constant police guard for her own pro-
tection while the search for her husband,
or his body, continued. Abandoned min-
ing shafts and wells from Los Angeles to
Nevada County were carefully probed.
Deserted mountain cabins located in an
area covering hundreds of square miles
_ were searched. There was the usual spec-
ulation as to whether Shorter had been
slain and his body encased in cement
and dropped into the ocean. But. as day
after day passed and nothing was heard
of the missing man, it began to look as
though the crime which had offered such
brilliant promise of solution might re-
main a mystery.
But on May 4 the Monohan story
leaped back into the limelight. Jack
Santo, Emmett, Perkins and Barbara
Graham were tracked down and arrested
by a cordon of sixteen uniformed and
plainclothes officers led by Chief of De-
tectives Thad Brown of the Los Angeles
police.
The detectives said they had learned
that the trio had holed up in the Lynwood
district. Ten days earlier, a policewoman
had picked up the trail of Barbara Gra-
ham, who did the marketing for her male
companions. Relays of officers and po-
licewomen had tailed her, frequently
losing track of her as she roamed about
the small city. Finally she was seen enter-
ing a shabby store building at 5124 Im-
perial Highway.
The raiding party converged on the
place at four o’clock in the afternoon.
Officers observed that the window blinds
were tightly drawn. This served their
purpose well. While Chief Brown and
three aides crashed through the back
door, Captain ‘Robert Lohrman, Det.
Lieut. J. W. Buckley and Sergeant Jack
McCreadie, all of the Homicide Division,
kicked down the front door, taking the
startled-occupants completely by
surprise.
Perkins was found fully clothed in a
rear bedroom of the four-room structure
that had been converted into living
quarters. Santo was lying undressed on
a mattress in the front room, Barbara
or 2 years and-
Graham, partly disrobed, was in the
kitchen. Detectives said it appeared that
she had just administered herself an in-
travenous injection from a hypodermic
kit found in her purse. However, she pro-
duced a legitimate prescription for a
morphine derivative and said. she was
suffering from a heart ailment which
necessitated use of the drug.
There was no sign of any guns—or of
Baxter Shorter.
Santo remained tight-lipped, refusing
to make any statement.
Perkins said: “I have a perfect defense.
I’m not guilty of any crime. I'll talk after
I’ve seen my attorney.”
' Barbara Graham, sullen and defiant,
would say only that she had been sep-
arated from her husband for some time
and that her child had been placed in the
care of her mother-in-law. All queries
of her alleged role in the brutal murder
met with dead silence.
After the suspects had been jailed, At-
torney Cooney again made. a dramatic
entrance. He went from the office of
Chief of Police William H. Parker, to the
Homicide Division, to the Intelligence
Squad, demanding an audience with the
three prisoners.
The man who had rented the apartment
to Santo, Perkins and the Graham woman
was detained for questioning. He said
the trio had first contacted him on the
afternoon of April 13 after an attorney
had told the landlord that the fugitives
had been accused of a crime they had
not committed and that they wished to
remain in hiding until they were cleared.
The two men and the woman had moved
in with a few pieces of luggage shortly
after eleven o'clock the next night—3
hours after Baxter Shorter was kidnaped.
“I didn’t know about the kidnaping
until the next morning when I read about
it in the papers,” the landlord said. He
“said he hadn’t discussed the case with his
tenants.
He said that before renting the apart-
ent he had insisted that they have no
firearms in their possession, that they
remain where their attorney could con-
tact them at all times, that they commit
no offenses while residing there, that
they would not resist arrest and that
they be prepared to surrender whenever
their lawyer instructed them to do so.
The high-powered Oldstnobile sedan
which had been the object of an intense
search was found parked in a garage not
far from the hide-out house in Lynwood.
It now bore Washington license plates.
The chartreuse colored top had been re-
cently repainted so that its new shade
matched the solid, deeper green of the
body.
“Why did you have it changed from a
two-tone job?” Santo was asked.
“Because I wanted it all one color,” he
replied.
The floor mat in the trunk compart-
ment was missing, leading detectives to
believe that this was the automobile in
which Baxter Shorter’s body was trans-
ported to its final hiding place. The
woman itn whose name it was registered
was questioned. She said she had loaned
it to Santo 3 weeks ago and had not
seen Santo or the car since. Efforts to
draw further information from her
proved futile.
The Oldsmobile was given an inch-by-
inch inspection. A careful examination
of the underpart turned up some small
pieces of wood and a titty, faded yellow
flower. They were taken to Miss Bonnie
Templeton, curator of botany at the Los
Angeles County Museum, for identifica-
tion, She said the wood was a variety
known as ribbon wood, found only in
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61
Southern California, usually in the San
Jacinto Mountains at elevation between
2,500 and 3,000 feet. She said the flower
flourished in the San Gabriel and San
Bernardino Mountains.
Perkins, besides being booked on
suspicion of murder, was also held under
a formal complaint charging him with
kidnaping and assault with a deadly
weapon after Mrs. Olivia Shorter had
positively identified him in a police show-
up as the man who had snatched her
husband at gunpoint.
Barbara Graham was held on seven
counts of forgery when it was discovered
that she had gone on a shopping spree
during which she cashed worthless
checks totaling $266.34. Her bail was set
at $25,000 after Assistant Chief Deputy
District Attorney Alexander informed
the court that she was still under in-
vestigation in, connection with the Mon-
ohan murder. That night she collapsed
in her county jail cell and was removed to
General Hospital where tests were made
to determine if a blood clot had formed
in her brain. Hospital attendants said
port she either “could not or would not
talk.”
Nine days later, on May 14, William
Upshaw, who had been questioned along
with Baxter Shorter during the initial
stages of the investigation, made an un-
expected appearance at Los Angeles
police headquarters. He explained that he
had been in Mexico City and had received
a telephone call from a friend telling him
he was wanted for questioning.
“I came as soon as I could get a plane
out,” he said.
During the intensive questioning that
followed, he freely answered Captain
Lohrman and Lieuts. Buckley and Lee.
The officers firmly refused, however, to
reveal what information he had given.
That same day Jack Santo, charged
with illegally switching license plates on
the Oldsmobile sedan, won temporary
freedom by posting $1,000-bail, He was
back in jail on May 29 as a result of a
telegram sent to Baxter Shorter’s moth-
er from San Diego. It read: “Sorry to
have been away. See Olivia and tell her
not to make the mistake because I have
to return one of these days. All my love.
Baxter.”
Santo denied that he had sent the wire
which authorities charged was intended
to influence the testimony of ‘Olivia
Shorter at Perkins’ preliminary hearing
on the Monohan murder charge. His bail
was set at $50,000 to insure his presence
in court at a later date.
On June 2 District Attorney Roll and
his assistant, Adolph Alexander, pre-
sented their case to the Grand Jury. John
True had been re-arrested the day before
by San Francisco police and was being
held in the northern city. The time was
ripe for action.
Upshaw, introduced as a key witness,
told the jurors that on the morning of
March 9—the day of the murder—he and
Baxter Shorter had met at a drive-in on
Ventura Boulevard with Jack Santo, Em-
mett Perkins, John True and Barbara
Graham. Shorter drove a 1949 Buick,
while the other four arrived in the Olds-
mobile with the two-tone paint. Upshaw
said the others discussed details of the
plot to rob Mrs. Monohan, after which
the two cars ‘proceeded to Burbank and
drove slowly past the house she occupied. _
“There were two large blue urns in
the front yard,” Upshaw recalled.
Later both cars parked near the Mono-
han house where another conference was
held. When Shorter objected to Barbara
Graham being in on the “caper,” Santo,
ostentatiously displaying a gun, said:
“Don’t worry. She knows what happens
to squealers.”
“I decided I didn’t want any part of
that kind of deal,” Upshaw declared, “and
Baxter drove me home after agreeing to
meet the rest of the gang later that
evening.”
From this point on, his testimony was
strictly hearsay. He told of contacting
Shorter the next day, Tuesday.
“Baxter was awfully worried. He was
afraid they'd killed a woman out there.
He said he’d called an ambulance but that
apparently it never arrived at the Mono-
han residence. According to him, Barbara
rang the doorbell and when Mrs. Mono-
han answered it Santo, Perkins and True
rushed her. When Baxter went inside
about 10 or 15 minutes later he said
Barbara Graham was shouting: ‘Go ahead
and knock her brains out! She’s making
too much noise.’”
The remainder of Upshaw’s testimony
merely corroborated the story related by
62
LOCKSMITH
IS
LOCKED
UP
Proud prisoner, left, is accused of
robbing the Elk River, Minn., bank
of $6,600 with one arm in a sling and
following written plans. A 69-year-old
key maker, Clifford Baughman was
seized shortly after police traced the
license number of escape car. In the
car police said they found a notebook
telling how to rob a bank. The loot
was recovered.
\
Baxter Shorter before his disappearance.
The Graham woman, told by Mr. Alex-
ander that she was suspected in the
murder of Mrs. Monohan, and informed
of her constitutional rights, remarked
jauntily; “I don’t have anything to say.
I don’t feel I’ve had enough time to con-
sult with my attorney, so I refuse to
answer any questions.”
Dozens of questions were put to her.
Nonetheless, to each one she gave the
same monotonous reply: “I refuse to
answer on the ground that it might in-
criminate me.”
Jack Santo, after being similarly noti-
fied of his rights, was asked pointblank
whether or not he, along with Perkins,
True, Shorter and Barbara Graham had,
on the night of March 9, pistol-whipped
and strangled Mable Monohan to death.
- He replied curtly: “I did not.”
He admitted knowing True, Perkins,
Shorter, Graham and Upshaw but denied
all implications that he might have been
involved in the crime. He claimed he had
picked the Washington license plates
that replaced the original ones on the
green Oldsmobile up on the street. Re-
minded that the Olds-once had a mat in
the trunk, he asserted that it was a used
car and that he did not recall ever having
looked in the trunk. Santo said that on
the night of the murder, True had left
for San Francisco by bus while he had
driven there in the Oldsmobile,
Emmett Perkins, after denying com-
plicity in the murder, gave the same stock
answer to all questions: “I stand on my
contitutional right.”
After several other witnesses had been
heard the grand jury promptly indicted
all four suspects on a charge of conspir-
acy to commit burglary, robbery and
murder.
The next day Mr. Alexander flew to
San Francisco to have a talk with John
True. Just what transpired during their
interview has not been made public, but
on June 9 True again made the front
pages when he confessed to his partici-
pation in the bludgeon slaying of the
selderly widow.
Brought back to Los Angeles, he gave
the grand jury eye-witness details of
Mrs. Monohan’s shocking death and
named as his accomplices Jack Santo
Barbara Graham, Emmett Perkins and
Baxter Shorter.
He said that Santo issued ali instruc-
tions as to how the crime was to be
executed. True, armed with a gun that
he said Perkins Had given him, followed
Barbara Graham, Perkins and Santo into
the house.
“TI saw Barbara hitting Mrs. Monohan
in the face with a gun.”
“What did you do?” Alexander, asked,
“IT grabbed the lady by the face—well,
I ran my hand between the gun and the
lady’s face and asked Barbara not to hit
her.any more. About then Mrs. Mono-
han collapsed.”
“Then what happened?” .
“First, Barbara pulled a_pillow-case
over the lady’s head, and Perkins grabbed
her hands and tied them behind her and
said, ‘Let’s get her away from the door,’
I held her head off the floor and we drug
her around the corner and put her in a
closet. I said, ‘Don’t put her in there.’
I took my knife and cut the pillow-case
so she could breathe. Santo tiéd the
cloth around her neck and told me to get
looking for a safe. The others were going
through the house, opening doors and
rummaging around. I couldn’t find any-
thing but a furnace and a garbage dis-
posal unit. We didn’t find any money.”
He added that he had “sneaked around”
|
5
df
'
, -
it
and cut the strip of cloth from around
the victim's throat. |
Having no previous police record, True
was asked why he joined the gang. “The
way it was told to me,” he said, “a bunch
of gamblers kept their money hidden
there in a safe and we were to steal the
money and no one was to be hurt.”
True said that immediately after the
murder, he and Santo. had left for San
Francisco. True told the grand jurors
that he had discussed his rights with
Deputy Public Defender Ellery Cuff and
was testifying voluntarily.
New indictments, superseding the old
ones, were voted by the grand jury, and
at this writing Santo, Perkins, True and
Barbara Graham stand charged with the
crime of murder.
District Attorney Roll was asked by
reporters; “What about immunity for
True?” His reply: “That'll be for the
judge to decide.” 3
Atraigned June 12 before Superior
Judge William B. Neeley, the quartet was
scheduled to enter pleas on June 22. But
they failed to do so on that date and the
case was continued.
Hero Cops
[Continued from page 13}
1 o'clock in the morning, they got an
alarm that a safe had been hauled away
from a food market in the 1800 block in
the city’s West Alabama section.
A short time later, a uniformed patrol-
man jumped a gang in the act of blowing
out a safe in Memorial Park, a huge rec-
reational area near the northwestern city
limits. The hoods fled, abandoning the
safe, a pickup truck and a getaway sedan.
Near the park, Sillivan and Stephenson
collared Johnny Farr, a known safe-
cracker, and a few minutes later picked
up his wife who came hurrying up in a
taxi to rescue her mate, After a convinc-
ing chat with the Farrs, the two detec-
tives took their captives to the mob's’
hideout in a house on Washington Ave-
nue to set a trap for the three members
of the gang who had escaped.
About 5 o'clock in the morning the trio
drove up in a stolen car. Floyd Hill re-
mained at the wheel while 38-year-old
Sam Stewart went in for the Farrs and
a couple of molls. Martin Rosser, 41, a
three-time loser at Huntsville, hid in the
bushes to cover the flight.
Stewart did not come out.. The waiting
cops put a fast squeeze on him and, with
Detective Sillivah guarding the prison-
ers, Stephenson went out alone to handle
the wheelman. He didn’t know about
Rosser in the shrubbery.
The click of the hammer on a .30-30
Winchester rifle gave Woody his only
warning. Stephenson slammed a slug into
Rosser’s shoulder before the gunman
could squeeze the rifle’s trigger, then
spun to halt Hill.
He was too late. The stolen car shot
away from the curb. Woody emptied his
gun at the fleeing auto. Later he learned
that twelve slugs went through the rear
window. Somehow Hill escaped unhurt,
only to be picked up by the. FBI shortly
afterward in North Carolina,
Stephenson watched the car disappear
around a corner and turned to see how
badly Rosser was wounded. The crook’s
rifle lay safely beyond his reach, But out
‘of his waistband the wounded gangster
was drawing a .38 revolver—and the de-
tective’s pistol had fired its last cartridge!
Woody clawed desperately for his sec-
ond gun. The big .45 automatic cleared
its holster just as the muzzle of Rosser’s
.38 centered on the young cop.
The .45 spoke first. The heavy slug hit
Rosser in the chest, slamming him Fer
to the ground. His revolver fell from dead
fingers as he dropped.
It was a clean coup for Detectives
Stephenson and Sillivan. Rosser was dead.
Johnny Farr is still serving his term in
\
Huntsville for the burglary. Sam Stewart
served a two-year stretch and Floyd Hill,
after doing a four-year bit in the federal
pen for interstate transportation of a
Stolen auto, now faces trial in Texas in
connection with the 1947 safe job.
It was Woody Stephenson's first gun-
fight. But it was not his last.
He has no intention of making a widow
of his pretty wife, Freda, or fatherless
children of his two bright-eyed daughters.
In Woody’s book there are two sound
rules for staying alive while wearing a
detective’s badge.
The first is: “The guns you wear aren't
there for show. Know how to use them.”
And the second rule is: “Know when.”
Woody is an expert marksman. Hunt-
ing and fishing are his hobbies, hunting
articularly. When the season is open,
Woedy and Freda spend most of his days
off duty hunting game birds.
On three other occasions after Rosser’s
death, Detective Stephenson had to ‘use
his pistol in line of duty. Another gun-
man died with Stephenson's bullets in
him, two others were wounded. He came
through these battles unscathed and was
cited again and again for bravery and for
exceptional performance of duty.
Early in 1953, an epidemic of safe jobs
began to spread over Houston. From the
modus operandi of the yeggs, the burglary
and theft squad men knew that many of
these crimes were the work of one cracks-
man or of one mob of yeggmen.
With his colleagues, Woody Stephen-
son worked long and hard, “Tee to stem
the robberies, but the score kept mount-
ing against the cops.
Then, on the night of April 12, an alarm
sent detectives to the Santa Rosa Phar-
macy at 5600 Telephone Road.
It was here that Stephenson sent a slu
close to one ear of a burglar, Hubbar
“Bawlbaby” Brown, who at 24, had al-
ready served ofe prison term for bur-
glary and was then under indictments for
other similar crimes. ‘
“You're mighty quick to use a gtn,”
Bawlbaby complained.
“Could be,” Woody said. “But get this.
Next time, you crumb, I won't miss.”
The safe job had been interrupted be-
fore its completion, so Bawlbaby faced
only a misdemeanor theft charge when
he appeared in court on May 12. He drew
a six-months’ jail term, which he
promptly appealed.
In the same week he was indicted on
two other counts of burglary. With his
appeal pending, however, he was at liberty
in bonds totaling $10,000.
The Thursday night of May 14, Woody
Stephenson and Detective Tony Colca
spotted Bawlbaby Brown standing in the
doorway of the Oleson pharmacy at 4710
Lillian Street.
“When I see that punk near a drug-
store,” Woody said, remembering that it
was in another pharmacy he'd grabbed
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HOB-162, Chicage 20, Il.
63
} evidence quickly,
> exacted
\
vengeance
YER
Officers descend on the ransacked rooms in the murdered woman’s fashionable home shortly after her body was found.
Ne all the Cadillacs tooling along Hollywood’s Sunset
Strip belong to picture people. Many of them have only °
recently changed their Chicago, Kansas City, and New
York plates for California tags. A goodly number are
custom built jobs, with luxurious bars and two-way radio.
Some of them have been thoughtfully bullet-proofed.
Gangdom has discovered southern California’s climate.
Going west is a good way to beat’ the “heat.”” Mexico is
just across the border and it’s only a short run to wide
open Las Vegas. In brief, the mobsters have found that
the Pacific is terrific.
Lots of people go to California to retire. They find it
After the preliminary examination by the county
coroner’s surgeon, the victim of incredible torment
was removed from her house while several police
technicians probed the place for clues to her killers.
ee ete ee sim -
everything that the Chamber of Conimerce puts in the
travel folders—palm trees on the front lawn and oranges
in the back yard. It’s a swell place for a guy with a steady
income to sit back in and take things easy. But for the
gangsters, there’s a fly in the ointment. It turns out that
gangsters don’t retire. They can’t—they have too many
mouths to feed. The lice they've collected on their way to
the big dough refuse to be brushed off. They come west,
too, with guilty secrets and itchy palms. And they have to
be taken care of because they know where the bodies are.
The big boys can shell out only so much. There’s a limit
to what they have stashed.away in the safe deposit boxes.
In a reconstruction of the crime, Detective Vandergrift, a
technical expert, above, came to the conclusion that the
victim, above left, shown in her younger days when she
was a skating champion, had been set upon by several peo-
ple while she was seated in the armchair reading a novel.
2r diver, arrived in
a former minion of
of the brutal murder.
suburb. Her address
‘ruesdale found the
‘ont door to ask for
*x Andrews. “When
oked in and saw the
vlotches of blood on
«| into the hall to a
of Mrs. Monahan,
ed behind her back
red head was hooded
ot dress was pulled
d the police.
ive chief, Lieutenant
vewbarr, the county
bulls stood guard,
nt over the grounds.
room to goom. The
nambles, with blood
_ and the ripped up
rugs. Every drawer in the house had been pulled out, every
picture torn from the walls. Even the sheet music inside
the piano bench:had been scattered. In the closets, clothes
had been ripped from the hangers, and suitcases smashed
open, Opening a pocketbook lying im plain sight in the
dead woman’s bedroom, Coveney was. amazed to find it
held five hundred dollars in. cash and an assortment .of ‘
valuable jewelry.
__ “At the very least this: stuff i is worth a couple of grand,” -
Coveney said to Andrews. “Could they have just over-
looked. this, or were they looking for something else?”
Andrews frowned. “I don’t get it,” he admitted. “I can’t
figure what they were after.”
It was too early for anything more than a guess as. to
the object of the killer’s search. Perhaps it had been a
floor or wall safe, maybe even a document of‘some kind.
It was when the officers looked over the den that they wer
first able to put together a provisional sequence of the
events which had led to the woman’s: death. A reading
lamp was still burning on a mahogany inlaid step-table.
There was a leather upholstered club chair next to the
- table, and lying face down on the arm of the chair was an
open book.
“The Purple Pony Murders by Sid Porcelain,” Andrews
read. ’The victim was reading a whodunit! This is really
one for the files.”
“It was night time,’ Coveney said. ‘Mrs. Monahan was
sitting here reading. That’s when the killer comes into the
The innocent-looking cottage, above, where important in-
criminating evidence was uncovered by investigators. At
left, Emmett. Perkins, a hardened law-breaker, taken into
‘custody, and at right, Barbara Graham, his partner in crime.
‘
6
picture. She never got back to the book.” A safety chain
was on the front door, and the back door—as well as the
windows-—were locked. It seemed a good bet that Mrs.
Monahan had herself admitted her murderer. Did this
mean the killer was someone she knew? It was something
to think about., '
. Death had not come easy to the widow Monahan. It
had climaxed a protracted ordeal of torture. “I’d say she
was ‘pistol whipped,” Dr. Newbarr said. He had rémoved
the pillow case from the woman's head, and Andrews and
‘Coveney looked with horror at the pulpy mass of lacerated
flesh which was:all that was left of Mabel Monahan’s face.
'. These are the kind of slashes that would be left by the
front sight of a pistol, and a pistol is just what a killer
would be likely to have.”
“Did the beating kill her?” Andrews wanted to know.
Newbarr shook his head, pointing to a livid welt which
circled the dead woman’s throat. “Garrotted,” he said.
“Probably, with a strip of bed sheet. Looks like a soft cord
strangling to me.’
The battered and trussed-up corpse, together with the
presence of blood throughout the house, suggested that the
killer had led the elderly widow from room to room, striking
her repeatedly, presumably in an effort to force her to
divulge the *hiding place of whatever he was looking for.
“She’s been dead about forty-eight hours,” the coroner
concluded.
Although Detective Vandergrift found nothing sus-
picious on the grounds, possible clues were found inside
the house. In the den were two shoe prints stamped in
blood on the floor. There was also a bloody but smudged
palm print on the wall of the main hall. The footprints
were distinctive, having been made by patent rubber soles
bearing the trademark ‘“‘TREDS.”
While.a squad of technicians took over, Andrews and
his aides tried to learn the answers to two important ques-
tions. Who was Mabel Monahan? Why had she been
singled out for so savage and bloody a murder ?
Neighbors filled in some of the details. Mabel Monahan -
was something of a celebrity in her own right. In her
youth she had skated, to fame and fortune with her late
husband in an act which had been featured on the Keith
Orpheum vaudeville circuit. A world’s roller skating cham-
pion, she had made successful European tours. Settling
in California, her daughter, Iris, a movie starlet, married
a big shot gambler Luther B. “Tutor’’ Scherer, a mil-
lionaire Las Vegas operator. The stucco bungalow on Park-
side. Avenue had originally been Scherer’s home before he
TOT RT Tee MT NE Le ALIN PS SG
21
PS ae a OREN RR NR FE
ae:
When a horse runs fast at Santa Anita and they make a
big haul, they throw the boys a few bones. But. it isn’t
enough, and sooner or later they slide back into the rackets
—gainbling, girls, dope. But the exodus to California has
been so great that the competition is cutthroat. There dren’t
enough payoffs, and thereby hangs a tale. There’s nobody
more industrious than a hungry hoodlum. '
In the past few years California has been harried by a
sweeping plague of unbridled criminal violence for which
the cops have a ready explanation. A gunsel has only one
talent; when he can't sell it to the mob, he has to free
lance.
The Monahan caper was set against just such a back-
ground of hoodlum ridden Southern California. Officially
it began with a phone call in Los Angeles at 9:30 on the
night of Monday, March 9, 1953. A man’s voice, obviously
muffled, said to the operator: “Send an ambulance to 1718
Parkside Avenue.”” Then there was a click and the line
went dead. The operator notified the police and immediately
traced the call to a pay booth on the corner of Vermont
Avenue and Sunset Boulevard. An ambulance from City
Hospital sirened to Parkside Avenue, while a prowl car
raced to the phone booth. Whoever the caller was, he had
disappeared. The ambulance had no better luck; there was
no number 1718 Parkside Avenue in Los Angeles.
At headquarters the police were puzzled, but put the
episode down as a prank. Lots of screwballs like to see
ambulances and fire engines rolling to a job. It was only
two days later that the call made any sénse. It not only
made sense, it made headlines.
Shortly after noon.on Wednesday, Mitchell Truesdale,
a gardener, made his weekly visit to the home of Mrs.
Mabel Monahan, a well-to-do widow who lived by herself
Baxter Shorter is shown in a nightclub with his pretty
wife, Olivia, shortly before he was questioned by the
police in the slaying. After his: release, Olivia vainly tried
to rescue her husband when he was abducted from ‘his
hotel, at right, probably for a rubout in gangland style. -
John L. True, at left, a deep-water diver, arrived in
Los Angeles with Jack Santo, right, a former minion of
the Mickey Cohen gang, on the day of the brutal murder.
’
in fashionable Burbank, a Los Angeles suburb, Her address
was 1718 West Parkside Avenue, Truesdale found the
garden gate locked. “I went to the front door to ask for
the key,” he later told Police Chief Rex Andrews. “When
I knocked, the door swung open. I looked in and saw the
living room torn upside down, and splotches of blood on
the wall.”
Truesdale followed the trail of blood into the hall to a
linen closet. Inside was the body of Mrs. Monahan,
sprawled face down, her hands lashed behind her back
with torn strips of bed sheet. Her battered head was hooded
with a pillow slip. Her blue polka dot dress was pulled
up over her waist. The gardener called the police.
Andrews brought with him his detective chief, Lieutenant
Bob Coveney and Dr. Frederick D. Newbarr, the county
autopsy surgeon. A squad of harness bulls stood guard,
while Detective E. V. Vandergrift went over the grounds.
Andrews and Coveney went from room to room. The
seven-room stucco hungalow was a shambles, with blood
everywhere, on the walls, the furniture, and the ripped up
)
SL ea Nema a ene
rugs. Evers
picture tor:
the piano }x
had been 11
open. Oper
dead wom
held five h
valuable }«
“At the \
Coveney sa
looked this,
Andrews
figure what
It was t
the object
floor or wa
It was wher
first able t
events wh
lamp was
There was
table, and
open book
“The Pio
read. “The
one for the
“Tt was 1
sitting here
above, found the grotesque Club, a Las ‘
rubber mask. oar weg Dis- More than
trict Attorney S. Ernest Scher
Roll fought a desperate cages
legal battle to continue Burbank cot
the suspects under arrest. urba “
or possibly
house—son«
se@king.
‘ Tutor Sc!
left LA to make his headquarters in Nevada. The Scherers
were divorced, now, and Iris had marriéd again. Her new
husband was J. Robert Sowder, prominent New York
oilman.
Mrs. Monahan ‘stayed on in Burbank, living alone in
the luxuriously furnished bungalow. Although crippled in
an automobile accident, she managed quite well by herself,
keeping no full-time servants. She was a person of cautious
and solitary habits, the neighbors said, wary of strangers,
Among the victim’s possessions over-
looked by the killers were valuable
jewels closely studied by Lt. Coveney.
In the cottage abandoned
by the gang, Officers
Woodward and Houser,
gested right from the beginning. Neighbors had noticed in
the. past few weeks a number of expensive automobiles
with Nevada ‘plates parked outside the Monahan house.
It was inevitable that the probe should be directed toward
uncovering a link between the slaying and Las Vegas gam-
bling activities. When the police could not immediately
locate “Tutor” Scherer, the word went out that he was
wantéd for questioning.
The post-mortem on Mrs. Monahan’s body showed traces
that the wid
there when
him on Satu
tioning. Tt
in-law in fi;
with her si!
nothing of t
The poli
linked in so:
also seriou
well.
and admitting no one who did not first identify himself of flesh and foreign matter under her broken fingernails. They \
through the locked and chained door. -. Chief Andrews issued an all points teletype bulletin calling Monahan ¢:
As far as the police could find out, shé had last been for the apprehension of anyone wearing shoes with TRED Katie Kirk
seen alive on Monday afternoon, A neighbor had stopped soles, and bearing scratches or lacerations. The police also Kirk, too,
for a brief chat with her on the lawn. Another neighbor,
Dr. David Hutton—former husband of the late evangelist,
sent out their usual feelers to underworld informants. They
then settled down to the routine business of questioning
also, had b«
Captain W
Aimee Semple McPherson—told thé police that he dis- friends and relatives, studying the physical evidence, and in a posit
tinctly recalled hearing the sounds of angry male voices surveying recent California crimes for points of compari- exactly like
coming from the direction of the Monahan home at about son. Mrs. Kirk
9 on Monday night. Then he heard the sound of a car Mrs. Sowder and her husband flew from New York to large fort
roaring away. Other neighbors had also heard such an Los Angeles and took up headquarters in the Bel-Air Hotel. police uncle
automobile. ;
This evidence jibed with other facts pointing to Monday
night as the time of the murder—the lit lamp in the den,
the medical findings, and the mysterious phone call for an
She could shed no light on the tragedy. “I don’t know
who could have killed Mother,” she told Chief Andrews.
“No one held any grudge against her.” The victim’s daugh-
ter spot-checked the house and could find nothing of value
had attach
felt that tl
committed
rorizing s
ambulance at half past nine. This latter incident. which missing. She identified the five hundred dollars in her spectacula
was promptly brought to Andrews’ attention by the LA «mother’s purse as money she herself had given the older Accordi
police, seemed to actually pinpoint the time of the crime. © woman onthe occasion of a recent Visit. had stashe
_But who had made this call—an unwilling witness, a With Mrs. Sowder’s help, the police probed into the It yan |
disgruntled accomplice, or the killer himself, suddenly dead woman’s financial affairs. A bankbook revealed that $200,000 |
become remorseful? This was the first in the long chain there was $20,000 on deposit in Mrs. Monahan’s checking The pa
of difficult posers in the fantastic case. account. In a safe deposit box which she had maintained truth in’
The possibility of sinister underworld tieups was sug- in a Toluca Lake bank was a stock cerificate showing True |
/
‘
22
cottage abandoned
gang, Officers
ard and Houser,
ound the grotesque
nask. At left, Dis-
‘torney §. Ernest
ught a_ desperate
attle to continue
yects under arrest.
ae
ors had noticed in
‘nsive automobiles
> Monahan house.
be directed toward
id Las Vegas gam-
| not immediately
t out that he was
ody showed traces
broken fingernails.
ype bulletin calling
shoes with TRED
ns. The police also
| informants. They
ess of questioning
sical evidence, and
points of compari-
rom New York to
the Bel-Air Hotel.
ly. “I don’t know
d Chief Andrews.
‘he victim’s daugh-
d nothing of value
ed dollars in her
id given the older
» probed into the
00k revealed that
onahan’s checking
ie had maintained
‘erificate showing
a rR
that the widow had owned 1350. shares in the, Frontier
Club, a Las Vegas gambling syndicate. :
More than“ever the police were interested in talking to
Tutor Scherer who had been a big wheel in a. powerful
Los Angeles gambling combine before moving from the
Burbank cattage to Nevada. Perhaps something of value,
or possibly of criminal significance, was secreted in the
house—something for which the widow’s killer had been
seeking.
Tutor Scherer himself denied having hidden anything
there when the officers finally spoke with him. They met
him on Saturday in Palm Springs where he had been vaca-
tioning. The gambler, although he held. his ex-mother-
in-law in high regard, said that he had only casual contact
with her ‘since his divorce from Iris. He claimed to know
nothing of the widow’s financial-affairs.
The police were still convinced that the murder was
linked in some way with the gambling world, although they
also seriously considered other possible explanatioris as
well. :
They were struck by marked similarities between the
Monahan case and the killing on February 11, 1950, of Mrs.
Katie Kirk, a wealthy arid elderly Glendale recluse. Mrs.
Kirk, too, had been the victim of a soft-cord strangler. She,
also, had been trussed up and tortured: Glendale Detective
Captain W. E. Hagi and Detective R. C. Loranger were
in a position to state that the knots on her bonds were
exactly like those in the Monahan killing. The motive for
Mrs. Kirk’s murder was clearly the rumor that she had a
large fortune in valuables secreted in her home. When
police underworld informants revealed that a similar rumor
had attached itself to Mrs.,Monahan, ‘the Burbank officers
felt that there was a good chance that both jobs had been
committed by the same gang, a gang which had been ter-:
rorizing southern California with a series of daring and
spectacular thefts—and homicides.
According to the underworld grapevine, Tutor Scherer
had stashed away a fortune in the’ Parkside Avenue home.
It was rumored that Mrs. Monahan had been holding
$200,000 in éash for him and $150,000 in jewelry.
The police again talked to Scherer who flatly denied any
truth in the rumor. °
True or no, the story had evidently gained currency
The officers under Police Chiefs Rex Andrews
‘of Burbank, left, and William Packer of Los
Angeles, worked closely together in the: probe.
The bloodstained rags and soft rope used
in-the crime are inspected by Detective
R. C. Loranger and Captain W. E. Hagi.
and it seemed clear now what had motivated the attack
on the elderly widow. A murder mob had come looking
for the fabled cache and had tortured Mrs. Monahan to
make her reveal its hiding place.
Certain now that they were looking for a heist gang
rather than for an individual killer with some personal
motive, the police began to measure the Monahan caper
with a new yardstick. Systematically, the Burbank investi-
gators began to examine the files on big time robberies in
southern California. Although the series of robberies had
not brought any convictions, the police were not completely
without feads. All pointed in one direction. From all indi-
cations, the mob at work comprised former members of the
Mickey Cohen gang, at loose ends now since their chief- -
tain’s imprisonment for income tax evasion.
‘Cohen henchmen had been on the griddle in the Kirk
killing. One of ‘them, Richard K. Franklin, had been
' picked up and questioned. When the police came back to
pick him up a second time, he blew out his brains with a
revolver in his Hollywood hotel room.
_ In 1949, the Hollywood apartment of Eugenia Clair
Smith had been robbed of $365,000 in gems. Baxter Shorter,
an ex-con, was pulled in for grilling. Shorter, who had a
long record, was released for lack of evidence. The police
knew him ‘best as a former partner of Mickey Cohen in a
Burbank gambling casino. Shorter was kept under inter-
mittent police surveillance from that time on.
In October of 1952, Gard Young and his three children
were brutally murdered in the course of a $7100 robbery in
Chester, Calif. This was another case in which a Cohen
‘mobster figured prominently among the suspects. Jack
Santo, alias Jack Mahoney, a notorious ex-con, was ob-
_ served in the vicinity of the murder scene. Again there was
insufficient evidence and Santo was. freed, although the
police continued to keep tabs on him. In this way, the
authorities figured Emmett Perkins as a charter member
of the nebulous robbery gang. A former Cohen minion, and
an expert safecracker, he was Santo’s constant companion.
They were literally as thick as thieves. Perkins had a
long record dating back to 1924, and had done a ten-year
stretch in San Quentin for robbing a bank in Belvedere
Gardens in 1931. In 1951, he was arrested for the theft of
seventy-five grand in savings bonds from the View Park
home of Mr. and Mrs. Millard [Continued on page 44
nade to
uple of
g party
utenant
*s Bur-
an iso-
Grass
horities
i, a fact
ions. In
relaxed
officers
dy. He
n vaca-
red toa
he was
ne that
f Grass
Wayne
itensive
on that
armed
on Jail
re. The
y ques-
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le from
uspects
himself
fishing
ly met.
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from
ire. He
shafts,
-etrieve
ed that
1 in his
earance
Nevada
re were
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“n they
, order-
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There
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He was
ng that
ad been
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od, had
im con-
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usisting
out was
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> it had
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lat per-
Nobody
veak for
ight of
lis wife
of their
1 at 121
\ngeles.
At ex-
-e was a
er went
man of
ose and
e door-
way, ice in his blue eyes, and his thin lips
curved cruelly. A revolver glinted in his:
right hand.
“Come on, Baxter,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Shorter said nothing. His wife came
up beside him, her eyes wide and fright-
ened. The Canary pushed her behind him.
“Okay,” he said huskily. “I’ll go with
you.” .
His wife started to scream, but Shorter
silenced her with a look that froze the
sound against the roof of her mouth. He
walked out into the hall with his armed
escort.
Olivia Shorter ran to the closet where
her husband kept a 30-30 deer rifle. Her
unaccustomed fingers gripped its stock
as she darted into the hall to follow the
swift moving pair. The gunman wheeled
and brandished his revolver.
“Put that thing away,” he snarled, “or
I'll get you, too.”
Baxter nodded quietly. Olivia, sob-
bing, retreated into the hotel suite. She
ran to the window in time to see the
stranger force her husband into a gray
coupe. A second man was at the wheel.
As it roared away into the darkness of
Flower Street, Olivia could only, tenta-
tively identify it as a 1950 or 1951 Plym-
outh or Dodge. She then raced to the
telephone and called the police.
There was little doubt in the mind of
Los Angeles Police Chief* William H.
Parker about the identity of Shorter’s ab-
ductors. Olivia was taken down to head-
quarters where she was shown a num-
ber of mug shots which included those
of Emmett Perkins and Jack Santo. She
picked out Perkins’ picture with no delay.
“That’s the one,” she said. “He was the
man with the gun.”
Although Mrs. Shorter had not
glimpsed the driver of the coupe, it-was
practically certain that he was Emmett
Perkins’ sidekick, Jack Santo. The gang
had come to cage The Canary.
The car, too, hresented no problem. A
quick search of the motor vehicle records
revealed that Barbara Graham was the
registered owner of a gray 1951 Dodge
coupe. The alarm went out for this auto-
mobile, as well as for another known to
be used by the gang. This latter car, a
two-tone green Oldsmobile’ “98” sedan,
belonged to Mrs. Bernadine Pearney, a
friend of Jack Santo’s.
While a twenty-four hour police guard
was staked out around the home of
Olivia Shorter, California was, turned in-
side out for The Canary—or his body. The
police themselves held little hope that
Shorter was still alive. “I’m afraid they'll
kill him, if he isn’t already dead,” Chief
Andrews declared. “We told him at noon
aay to get out of town or they'll kill
im.”
Southern California has vast stretches
of mountain and desert. It’s beautiful
country, and an eyeful for tourists. It’s
also a wonderful place to hide a body. The
search widened, and that was a bad sign.
A search is most effective when it
narrows.
John True was released from jail be-
cause of the writ of Habeas Corpus. There
was no evidence on which to hold him.
The Burbank officers kept him under sur-
veillance, in the event it became neces-
sary to grab him.
A trio of gangsters was on the lam.
They were red hat. This was, perhaps,
a plus for the police. Perkins, Santo and
Barbara Graham were too hot to travel
far, too hot for gangdom to offer a help-
ing hand. They would have to hole up by
themselves, and it would be just a mat-
ter of time before they tipped their
hands. ;
Diamona swindlers who prey on the
general public with phony stones have |
~a good paying racket. One big reason
for their success is that their dishonest -
merchandise usually has been so
cleverly treated as to have all the ap-
pearance of genuineness. Another is
of course that human nature has little
resistance to an apparently outstand-
ing bargain.
These swindlers almost always work
as individuals, making their profitable
’ sales wherever and whenever they find
a willing dupe. ;
Occasionally, though, they operate
legitimate-appearing jewelry stores—
raking in all the cash they can for as
long as’ they feel it’s safe enough. Then
they close up shop and vanish with
their loot.
Common items in their deceptive
stock in trade are heat-treated zircons,
painted stones, toppers, and just plain
glass. :
The zircon (an artificial diamond),
when heated to a specific degree, be-
comes very hard and’ fiery. It then
looks so much like a fine expensive
diamond that even the eye of an expert
cannot tell it is imitation.
The painted stone is a cheap dia-
mond whose bottom point has been
painted with a chemical. This gives
it, temporarily, the glitter and beauty
of a costly blue-white diamond. And,
again, the eye alone cannot see the lie.
_ The topper diamond is one of the
‘ most deceptive dupe-baits. It consists
of a thin diamond of little value, fitted
snugly atop white sapphire. A trans-
parent glue is used to join the two
_ stones, and this glue leaves a white line
‘around the topper. But, since the
topper is set in a mounting that hides
the line, the deception can be seen only
if the ring is taken apart.
It goes without saying that phony
diamonds such as these are sold at
many times their actual value. But the
price always seems cheap to the dupe,
who is sure he’s getting a high class
article. i?
Of course, there are ways of testing
these swindle stones to reveal them
for what.they are, and some of these
tests can be made by anyone.
For example, the heat-treated zircon,
which can deceive the expert eye, can-
not stand the file-test. If you draw
a steel file over its surface, it will
shatter to bits. No other imitation dia-
mond can stand the file test either.
The file will ruin it by cutting into it—
which it can never do to a real dia-
mond. .
Two other tests can be made with
just plain water: (1) A real diamond
in a glass of water will shine so
brightly as to be easily distinguishable
even from a considerable distance. An
artificial diamond will be camouflaged
by thé water, and cannot be easily dis-
tinguished from it. (2) A small drop of
water placed on the surface of a real
diamond, can be rolled around intact
(with say a toothpick), as though it
were a pellet of mercury. Ona phony
stone, the droplet would immediately
spread and flow off.
Then there is the lye-test for the
painted stone. Placed in a lye solution
(one teaspoonful to a cup of water)
the painted stone loses the chemical
that gave it its beautiful blue-white
appearance. °
Another test involves the use of
hydro-fluoric acid. A bogus diamond
left in this acid for a few hours dis-
solves. A real diamond remains un-
_ harmed.
But anyone contemplating the pur-
chase of a diamond from an individual
would be most wise to take the stone
to an expert, even if he (the prospec-
tive buyer) knows of such tests as
those described above; and even if the
individual offering to sell the stone, is
a good and trusted friend. Because no
such test, made by the prospective
buyer himself, could show him the
value of the stone in dollars and cents,
anymore than friendship could. And
there are countless things expert
jewelers caf discover about diamonds
they examine and test that the layman
could never find out on his own.
However, the simplest way to avoid
being cheated in the purchase of dia-
monds is to deal only with long estab-
‘lished jewelers of high reputation.
—Joe DiGiovanni
Death Caper
(Continued from page 23]
Haymore. Here again the charge didn’t
stick, and Perkins was freed for lack
of evidence.
Police on the prowl find out a lot of
things. The Los Angeles police, after
watching these men for several months,
discovered that they shared more than
a common taint. They also had inter-
locking social orbits, consorting together
and partying with each other in night
clubs and gambling joints. The officials
were convinced that the nucleus of the
heist and murder mob consisted of
Shorter, Santo and Perkins. A woman
also figured in the picture ; a luscious, hot-
tempered strawberry blonde named Bar-
bara Graham. Although a married woman
and the mother of a small child, Barbara
was Emmett Perkins’ moll, and tough
enough to throw her well-stacked weight
around, even in the world of hood-
lums.
Burbank’s Chief Andrews was certain
that this was the gang which had pulled
the Monahan caper. The job now was to
prove it.
Information is a commodity, like any-
thing else. It can be bought and paid for.
Every big city police department has its
anonymous informants. Working in con-
junction with the Los Angeles police, the
Burbank officers learned a seemingly
significant fact. For some weeks, Jack
Santo had been out in the Mother Lode
country of Nevada County, presumably
hunting and fishing. On the very day of
the murder, he blew into town in the
company of a friend, one John L. True.
True was unknown to the police, and, so
far as anyone knew, had no. criminal
record. Santo had introduced him around
as a deep-water diver from San Fran-
cisco.
To the police the mere fact that Santo
had returned to Los Angeles on the day
in question was highly suspicious. But
suspicion was not evidence. '
“We've got one wedge,” Andrews told’
Lt. Coveney. “Somebody in that mob
went soft and phoned for an ambulance
after the job. That could mean he didn’t
ed what happened over at Mrs. Mona-
an’s.
Coveney agreed with him. “Let’s haul
in the whole shebang and rake them
over,” he said. “If we find the clinker,
maybe he’ll talk.”
A pickup order went out. There was
no difficulty in rounding up the gang
since none of the suspects were in hiding.
On March 23, they and a lesser lumi-
nary, one William A. Upshaw, also a
former Mickey Cohen henchman, were
rushed to headquarters to be ques-
tioned.
Perkins, Santo and Barbara Graham
clammed up completely after denying
any and all knowledge of either Mrs.
Monahan or her murder. Upshaw of-
fered what appeared to be an iron-clad
alibi. He claimed to have been in Mexico
on March 9.
Baxter Shorter was the only one left.
The police knew, from the dossier they
had on Shorter, that he was sometimes
referred to by his friends as “The Ca-
nary.” This augured well. ‘Let’s throw
him a little bird seed and see if he sings,”
Coveney said. “My money says he’s the
guy who made the telephone call.” *
~ Shorter was a big man, ruggedly hand-
some with powerful shoulders and a crop
of dark curly hair. He looked more like
a Hollywood bit player than a hoodlum,
and was cast in a different mould than his
confederates. No mere muscle man would
have been taken in as a partner in a
gambling joint by Mickey Cohen. He had
charm, and quiet good manners. Where
Santo and the others had strong-armed
their way into crime, Shorter had suc-
cumbed to crime out of weakness.
The police concentrated on the Canary.
They have not divulged the details of
the interrogation, but it is reliably re-
ported that the Canary sang in exchange
for an offer of immunity. Weeks later
the newspapers carried this alleged state-
ment by Chief Andrews: “We offered
Shorter a deal after showing him evi-
dence linking him definitely with the
Monahan murder. When he saw the
evidence was overwhelming he asked
‘What kind of a deal?’ He was offered
immunity for turning state’s evi-
dence.” ' f
According to Shorter’s reported story,
the gang had taken seriously the rumor
that, Mrs. Monahan had secreted a large,
fortune in her, home for Tutor Scherer.
“T went on the job thinking it was going
to be a ‘safe job,’ and just a ‘safe job,”
Shorter is quoted as having said in his
statement. “I stayed outside as lookout.
The others went inside. After a long
time, I went in. I saw.Mrs, Monahan
bleeding on the floor. The Graham woman
said, ‘Give: her some more! Give her
some more!’ Perkins hit her several times
with his gun butt. I told them I didn’t
want any part of a killing. They paid
no attention but went through the house
swearing and turning things upside down,
looking for the safe. I cut the piece of
sheet with which the old woman had been
strangled, hoping she might still be alive.
After we left, I went to a phone booth
at Vermont and Sunset and told the
operator to send an ambulance to 1718
Parkside Avenue, and hung up.”
The police now had a clear picture of
the Monahan murder, a picture which
portrayed Jack Santo, Barbara Graham,
Emmett Perkins, Baxter Shorter and
John True—Santo’s newfound friend—as
the culprits. But the picture by itself
was insufficient. Was there enough evi-
dence to indict? Andrews and Coveney
took this question to District Attorney
S. Ernest Roll.
In the opinion of the prosecutor's staff
there was not enough evidence to lay be-
fore the grand jury. It is the law that
no person may be convjcted of a crime
solely on the uncorroborated -confession
of an accomplice. Baxter Shorter’s alleged
statement, therefore was not enough! Ac-
cordingly, on March 26, all the suspects
were released. :
The Burbank police, with a sdlution so
near at hand, refused to be cheated out
of convictions in the Monahan case. They
resolved to get the additional evidence
they needed to make the rap stick.
Care had been taken to keep Baxter
Shorter’s defection from the rest of the
gang. Shorter had even refused a police
guard, a setup which he felt would reveal
him as a squealer to his partners in
crime. It was now a race to gather the
inculpating evidence before the gangland
code exacted’ its swift and terrible
vengeance.
The police knew there were only a
couple of ways to break the case. Cer-
tainly Barbara Graham, Jack Santo and
Emmett Perkins would never-crack. John
True, the fifth member of the quintet, had
thus far not been located. He was a man
without a known criminal past. He might
respond to pressures which his case-_
hardened confederates would shrug off.
Perhaps he was the weak link in the
chain. Every possible effort was made to
locate John True. It took a couple of
weeks to find him.
On Saturday, April 11, a raiding party
which included Coveney and Lieutenant
E. S. Lavold. of the Los Angeles Bur-
glary Detail, swooped down on an iso-
lated cabin in Nevada County’s Grass
Valley. The Nevada County authorities
had not been consulted in the raid, a fact
which was to have later repercussions. In
any event, John True, naked and relaxed
in a bath tub, was surprised by the officers
and was quietly taken into custody. He
told the officers that he had been vaca-
tioning at the cabin which belonged to a
friend, and that he’d had no idea he was
‘being sought by the police.
So smoothly had the arrest gone that
long after he was whisked out of Grass
Valley, Nevada County Sheriff Wayne
Brown was still conducting an intensive
search for him under the impression that
he had been kidnaped by three armed
men.
True was rushed to Stockton Jail
and booked under a phony name. The
officers wanted no leaks while they ques-
tioned him. .
True flatly disclaimed any knowledge
of the crime. He asserted that aside from
Santo, he knew none of the other suspects
named, and claimed that Santo himself
was only a casual hunting and fishing
companion whom he had recently met.
He described himself’as a respectable
citizen who made his living as a diver,
specializing in timber recovery from
rivers throughout the Inland Empire. He
sometimes worked in flooded mine shafts,
he said, where his job was to retrieve
submerged equipment. He protested that
he had never before been arrested in his
life.
The nature of True’s disappearance
could not long be withheld from Nevada
County, and the authorities there were
peeved at the liberties taken by outside
officers within the county. When they
obtained a writ of Habeus Corpus, order-
ing True’s return, the news got into the
papers, and the secret was out. There
was a hue and cry to interview the in-
carcerated man, and he could no longer
be kept incommunicado. He was brought
to Burbank where he talked to reporters
on the evening of April 14. He was_
-indignant about his arrest, claiming that
it amounted to kidnaping. He had been
mugged and fingerprinted, he said, even
though he had never been arrested in his
life. Five detectives, he claimed, had
_worked in relays, questioning him con-
tinuously.
“These detectives showed me a lot of
pictures,” he told the reporters, “and
asked me if I knew a lot of people they
mentioned. I kept telling them I didn’t
‘know the people, and they kept insisting
I did. Among those they asked about was
Baxter Shorter.”
The Canary’s name was the only one
mentioned. It was the first time it had
been publicized in the case. It provided
an initial inkling to the gang that per-
haps Baxter Shorter had sung. Nobody
knows for sure, but the facts speak for
themselves.
Later, on that same Tuesday night of
April 14, Baxter Shorter and his wife
were sitting in the living room of their
suite in the hotel Shorter owned at 121
North Flower Street in Los Angeles.
They were watching television. At ex-
actly ten minutes after eight there was a
_ brisk knock on the door, Shorter went
_ to the door and opened it. A’ man of
medium height with a flattened nose and
thinning brown hair stood.in the door-
way, ice in his blue
curved cruelly. A
right hand.
“Come on, Baxt
Shorter said ni
up beside him, her
ened, The Canary
“Okay,” he said
you.”
His wife started
silenced her with
sound against the
walked out into t
escort.
Olivia Shorter :
her husband kept
unaccustomed fii
as she darted int:
swift moving pai!
and brandished h
“Put that thing
I'll get you, too.
Baxter nodde
bing, retreated 1
ran to the winc
stranger force h
coupe. A second
As it roared aw
Flower Street, |
tively identify it
outh or Dodge.
telephone and c:
There was lit!
Los Angeles !
Parker about th:
ductors. Olivia
quarters where
ber of mug sh«
of Emmett Per!)
picked out Perk
“That’s the on¢
man with the 2
Although
glimpsed the d:
practreally cert
Perkins’ sidekic
had come to ca
The car, too,
quick search of
revealed that !
registered own
coupe. The ala
mobile, as we!l
be used by the
two-tone gree
belonged to M
friend of Jack
While a twe!
was staked <
Olivia Shorter
side out for Th
police themse!
Shorter was st
kill him, if he
Andrews decla
today to get
him.”
Southern C:
of mountain
country, and
alsoa wonder
search widene
A search is
narrows.
John True
cause of the w
was no evide
The Burbank
veillance, in
sary to grab
A trio of
They were r
a plus for the
Barbara Gra
far, too hot '
ing hand. Th
themselves,
ter of time
hands.
Nearly two weeks slid by, and it was
the end of April before the next break.
occurred in the case. Although Shorter’s
fate was still unknown, and the gang’s
whereabouts still undiscovered, the police
suddenly found themselves possessed of
a piece of vital information.
An El Monte landlord, one Bud Ober-
holtz, reported the disappearance of his
tenants—a Mr. and Mrs. D. Johnson—
from the small stucco bungalow which
they had rented in November. The couple
had not been seen since April 15,
Detective Sergeants Harry Houser and
K. L. Woodward paid a routine visit to
the bungalow, but it soon stopped being
‘routine. They got their first shock in
the garage. They found a tin can hidden
behind one of the joists. In this can were
a rubber false face and a black chauffeur’s
cap, similar to the paraphernalia used in
the now legendary Brink million dollar
robbery in Boston, Mass. In the house
was a small hand printing press, together
with engraving plates, printer’s ink and a
supply of photographic paper. The plates
had been used to forge payroll checks
with which the Los Angeles suburbs had
recently been flooded. The most impor-
tant find was a scrap of paper on which
was written the name Barbara Graham.
It lent sighificance to the set of Cali-
fornia license plates which the detectives
found in thecellar.
The plates, checked with the vehicular
records, had been issued to Bernadine
Pearney for her 1953 Oldsmobile sedan!
This was the two-tone green car which
police believed had served as Baxter
Shorter’s hearse on the night he was
snatched. They believed he had been
transferred to this car from the gray
one in which he had actually been ab-
. ducted.
It now became clear why the landlord
had not seen his tenants since April 15,
the day following The Canary’s abduc-
tion! Shown mug shots, Mr. Oberholtz
promptly identified Barbara Graham and
Emmett Perkins as his tenants. He also
identified Jack Santo as a frequent visitor
at the bungalow.
In abandoning their printing equip-
ment, the trio had committed a serious
blunder. The police now knew that they
were tied up with the phony pay-check
racket. They reasoned that desperadoes
on the lam were always short of dough.
Perhaps the trio had provided them-
selves with some of the spurious checks
to finance their fight. Eagerly, the police
scanned the complaint sheets covering
the: interval since April 15. They were
in luck. A forged check had been passed
in a Lynwood department store on April
18. The search immediately centered
on the Lynwood section of sprawling Los
Angeles.
The officials in that locality had three
persons and two cars to search for. They
found one of the automobilés on May
2. It was the green Oldsmobile, no
longer two-tone—thanks to a new paint
job on the roof—and now bearing State
of Washington plates. But the engine
serial number jibed with the registration
records, showing it to be Bernadine
Pearney’s Oldsmobile.
Few cars have ever been subjected to
a more thorough scientific examination
than was the Olds “98.” Ominously, the
rubber floor mat was missing from the
trunk compartment, perhaps because it
had become smeared with the life blood
of Baxter Shorter. Lieutenant J. W’
Buckley and Police Chemist Ray Pinker,
in checking the car for clues, found small
scrapings of wood and a small yellow
flower caught in the undercarriage. These
46
'
were turned over to Miss Bonnie Temple-
ton, Curator of Botany at the Los An-
geles County Musuem. Miss Templeton, '
in her preliminary report, identified the
wood as 4 variety of Ribbonwood, a
small shrub found only in southern Cali-
fornia in the San Jacinto Mountains, and
in San Diego -County at elevations of
2500 to 3000 feet. The flower she recog-
nized as a species of' Metzelia Affinis, a
plant which exists in two varieties. The
smaller is found in the San Gabriel and
San Bernadino Mountains.at elevations
of 2500 to 3500 feet. The larger variety
is indigenous to the desert regions. Some-
where in these vast stretches the police ,
believed they would find the body of
Baxter Shorter.
The green Olds had been found aban-
doned at Sanborn Avenue and Atlantic
Boulevard in Lynwood. Residents had
seen it there for several days. The forged
check had been passed in Lynwood. The
police intensified their efforts in this
general area.
They had to play it cagey. It was not
enough to apprehend one of the criminals.
The investigators wanted to nab all three.
That they managed to do this must be
attributed to the credit of three resource-
ful and courageous policewomen, Kay
Sheldon, Audrey Fletcher, and Myr! ,
Stahr. ' .
On May 4, these three officers
spotted Barbara Graham shopping in a
Lynwood supermarket. She was no
longer a strawberry blonde, Her hair was
now flaxen-hued, and her usually flam-
boyant. curves were subdued under a
simple cotton dress. She had been un-
able, however, to paint out the distinctive
boldness of her tough and arrogant fea-
tures. She might have fooled a male cop,
but the three policewomen promptly rec-
ognized her.
‘Trailing Barbara Graham was no easy
chore. She was ‘wary and repeatedly
demonstrated her adeptiiess at shaking
a tail. The officers had to stay on their
toes to keep her in sight. She finally
boarded a bus which they also managed
to catch. They observed her get off and
enter the premises at 5124 East. Imperial
Boulevard, a former store which had been
converted into an apartment. They then
called headquarters for a task force raid-
ing party.
Nine police cars equipped with two-way
radio, and a walkie-talkie detail, con-
verged on the scene. Fourteen officers,
armed with revolvers and shotguns, and
led by Deputy Chief Thad Brown and
Homicide Captain Robert Lohrman,
crashed into the hideout. Emmett Per-
kins and Jack Santo were asleep in bed.
Barbara Graham had her arms high in the
air, in the act of slipping her dress off over
her head. None of the trio was in a ppsi-
tion to offer any resistance. »
Rushed to Lincoln Heights jail, the
three were separately questioned. As ex-
pected, they weren’t talking. Their an-
swers were uniformly pat, as if rehearsed
against the possibility of arrest. “We got
alibis,” they each said. “We weren’t on
the lam. We were hiding out only to make
sure that our alibis checked and stood up.”
They said absolutely nothing else.
Chief Parker told the reporters, “We
presume Baxter Shorter is dead. We are
pat ie all three on suspicion of mur-
er
On the next night the three suspects
were placed in the show-up box at City
Jail, along with a group of other prisoners.
One by one, each was called to the front
of the box for the customary questioning.
In the darkness, behind the perimeter of
the klieg lights, Mrs. Olivia Shorter sat
with eyes intent on the illuminated
figures. When Perkins was called for-
ward, Mrs. Shorter jumped to her feet
and cried out, “That’s the man! Without
a doubt, that’s the man!”
The police had Perkins cold on the
‘kidnaping rap. He was at once charged
with kidnaping and assault in the Shorter
case, and remanded to the City Jail with-
out bail. It was more difficult to hold
Barbara Graham and Jack Santo.
The phony: checks served to keep
Barbara Graham on ice. She was held on
six forgery charges, and returned to the
women’s block in City Prison.
Jack Santo presented a poser until the
police got around the problem by charg-
ing him with illegally switching the
license plates on a car in his possession
—a misdemeanor in California. He pleaded
not guilty and, posting a thousand dollars
as bail, was freed. He was immediately re-
arrested and charged with forging a
fictitious telegram. His bail, this time, was
set at $50,000, the judge, of course, tak-
ing into consideration the circumstances
surrounding the case. The police realized
that it was imperative to keep him in
jail and they stood ready.to hold him on
any charge they could find to accomplish
this purpose.
White this desperate legal chess game
was going on, the grand jury met to
take testimony and return indictments—
should the evidence be sufficient. The
police were nearly frantic in their efforts
to uncover new evidence. They began
looking for William Upshaw, and sent out
a pick-up order for John True. It was
during this period that the Governor’s
Commission on Organized Crime issued
.a report which shocked the rest of the
country, as well as California.
The report painted southetn California
as a mecca for mobsters and racketeers
who masquerade as respectable citizens.
It stated that vice and crime of every
type and description flourished there as
nowhere else in the United States. The
commission chastised honest citizens for
their apathetic attitude in granting social
acceptance to murderers, blackmailers,
pimps, dope dealers and gamblers. It
specifically named a dozen nationally
known gangland figures who openly
maintained part-time headquarters in
Palm Springs, and carried photographs of
their luxuriant. estates where they lived
in feudal splendor amid swimming pools,
” private golf courses, and other sumptuous
extravagances, The report cited cities and
towns where prostitution was both open
_ and competitive, and named white slave
traffickers whose flagrant operations had
long gone unchecked.
The commission revealed that book-
making and other gambling rackets in
Los Angeles are now controlled almost
wholly by Jack Dragna under the infa-
mous banner of the Mafia, or Sicilian
Black Hand Society. Dragna had in-
herited—by strongarm methods—the two
large books which had been formerly
+ idea by Tutor Scherer and Guy Mc-
Afee.
Mexico, the report continued, poured
a flood of heroin over the border, dope
which was made available to teen-agers
and servicemen, Marines from Camp
Pendleton could obtain narcotics by
merely seating themselves in the booth
of a certain off-post cafe.
The report was replete with names like
Abe Fox, Allen Smiley, Joseph Fusco,
Abe “Longy” Zwillman, Willie Bischoff,
Gerald Catena and Mickey Cohen. These
invaders of California had brought with
them scores of lesser lights who did a
lot of glowing on their own. The report
said: “Although there is an absence of
le tee
hig syndication and ¢
no lack of hoodlums
the seed beds in wh
rackets.”
The Governor’s ©
and analyzed the e
tions which made cr
han murder possil
southern California.
others, the brutal sla
and his three small c
named Jack Santo
suspect—the Jack Ss
Angeles police were
job keeping in jail.
Three days after
report, William A.
been questioned in
the probe—voluntar
for further questio:
been in Mexico, he
just heard that
looking for him. T!
turning point in the
shaw was question:
and upon the conclu
an indictment wa
Santo, Perkins, Jo!
Graham with cons}
glary, robbery and
the Monahan home
This charge, alth:
a possible death pe
murder indictment.
reported that Ups!
the story origina
Shorter. In this a!
shaw claimed that
ants had planned t
to participate; he
the day following
been given details :
Shorter. Upshaw
conspiragy, but ni
It remained for th
True to bring the
sion.
John True w
the very day he w
on the conspiracy
sessions with the
the former diver b
of heart. A few
nounced that he,
evidence which |
jury resulted in
superseding indic
this new indictm
specifically charge
tion to the origin
What made all t!
John True had ;
murder itself.
Substantially, t!
Shorter had reve
lieving in the ru
at the widow Mc
there on the nig!
Graham knocked
told the elderly |
call a garage bec:
Mrs. Monahan h:<
to be confronted |
leaped from thei
in the shrubbery
followed the tru
whipping as the
terrified widow
didn’t: exist. The
up the house é
richer for the ps
On June 12, T
Barbara Graha
the new murder
perior Judge \
ordered them h+
when an impar
weigh the evid:
guilt or innocen
lled for-
her feet
Without
on the
charged
Shorter
ail with-
to hold
to keep
s held on
‘d to the
until the
y charg-
ing the
ssession
> pleaded
d dollars
iately re-
rging a
ime, was
rse, tak-
mstances
realized
) him in
i him on
complish
ess game
met to
tments—
ent. The
ir efforts
vy began
sent out
[t was
\vernor’s
1e issued
st of the
california
icketeers
citizens.
of every
there as
ites. The
tizens for
ng social
kmailers,
iblers. It
ationally
» openly
irters in
graphs of
rey lived
ng pools,
imptuous
cities and
oth open
ite slave
tions had
iat book-
ackets in
-d almost
the infa-
r Sicilian
had in-
—the two
formerly
Guy Mc-
1, poured
ler, dope
-en-agers
m Camp
otics by
the booth
ames like
h Fusco,
Bischoff,
en. These
ight with
vho did a
he report
bsence of
big syndication and organization, there is
no lack of hoodlum§ in our state, nor of
the seed beds in which to nurture new
rackets.”
The Governor’s Commission reported
and analyzed the extraordinary condi-
tions which made crimes like the Mona-
han murder possible — even rife — in
southern California. It detailed, among
others, the brutal slaying of Gard Young
and his three small children, and actually
named Jack Santo as the number one
suspect—the Jack Santo whom the Los
Angeles police were having such a hard
job keeping in jail.
Three days after, the issuance of the
report, William A. Upshaw—who_ had
been questioned in the early stages of
the probe—voluntarily turned himself in
for further questioning. He had again
been in Mexico, he said, and had only
just heard that the Burbank police were |
looking for him. This proved to be the
turning point in the Monahan probe. Up-
shaw was questioned by the grand jury
and upon the conclusion of his testimony,
an indictment was returned charging
Santo, Perkins, John True and Barbara °
Graham with conspiracy to commit bur-
glary, robbery and murder. in the heist of
the Monahan home.
This charge, although it carried with it
a possible death penalty, was still not a
murder indictment. It was authoritatively
reported that Upshaw had corroborated
the story originally told
Shorter. In this alleged statement, Up-
shaw claimed that the indicted defend-
ants had planned the job and asked him
to participate; he had refused, and on
the day following the murder he had
been given details of the crime by Baxter
Shorter. Upshaw was a witness to the
conspiracy, but not to the murder itself.
It remained for the apprehension of John
True to bring the case to its just conclu-
s10n,.
John True was arrested on June 3,
the very day he was indicted in absentia
on the conspiracy charge. After several
sessions with the investigating officers,
the former diver began to suffer a change
of heart. A few days later it was an-
nounced that he, too, had talked. The
evidence which he gave to the grand
jury resulted in the filing of a new,
superseding indictment on June 9. In
this new indictment, the quartet was
specifically charged with murder in addi-
tion to the original count of conspiracy.
What made all the difference was that
John True had actually witnessed the
murder itself.
Substantially, the facts were as Baxter
Shorter had revealed. The quintet, be-
lieving in the rumor of hidden treasure
at the widow Monahan’s, had proceeded
there on the night of March 9. Barbara
Graham knocked on the front door and
told the elderly lady that she wanted to
call a garage because her car was stalled.
Mrs. Monahan had opened the door, only
to be confronted by three armed men who
leaped from their places of concealment
in the shrubbery of the lawn. Then had
followed the trussing up and the pistol
whipping as the gang tried to make the:
terrified widow reveal a secret which
didn’t. exist. They systematically ripped
up the house and departed none the
richer for the brutal murder.
On June 12, True, Santo, Perkins and
Barbara Graham were arraigned on
the new murder indictment before Su-
perior Judge William B. Neeley. He
ordered them held without bail for trial
when an impartial jury will hear- and
weigh the evidence to determine their
guilt or innocence.
by Baxter |
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: 47
Susan Hayward (right) portrayed Bloody Babs in a major Hollywood movie in the late ’50s, titled ‘I Want
to Live.’ This photo mockup shows the amazing resemblance. Below left, the Titian-Haired Tigress with
denied. The final shot — wiping away a tear before she was
her attorney, as her motion for a new trial is.
led to the gas chamber. But once inside, she turned hellcat again.
40
her eyes.
4
‘Bashfu! Babs’ after
resi, covering
During a pris
ow,
loo
Death R
e-like
ing a tranc
heads for
it
ate
4
ag our
BE
k= g
se:
SEE
a
* RS aS eee ¥
2.8
3S
ae 3
= -
“3 ee
was deg
Barbara an
during a brea
38
cent but an
court Over-
v “against all
ately ordered
| nun walked
is time in a
as tried again
1 time by an
listened with
sighs to her
threw up his
her go free!”
a gave him a
zestive Mona
Canea after
whether she
night to let
iriage from
reports of
the world
nterviewed
vho was of-
alow by the
ioliday each
rere he had
during the
x, he swore,
t sonia as a
every day...
all the of-
ly disillu-
ecies.
» from time
\tains in her
comfort to
fugitives up
»me lonely
spering the
erman first
those shep-
few scat-
lack cloth
ynia’s mur-
*
Aes ‘aes
BARBARA
(BLOODY BABS)
GRAHAM
S THE TITIAN-HAIRED TIGRESS
Hollywood
starlet.
On June 3,
1955,
Barbara
erhaps the
most |
infamous.
American >
history, died
in the age
Babs (center)
as an aspiring |
ner eyes.
Babs’ after
"; n
During a prison visit, Barbs
P Whitss _ goodbye to her
STR Ll BRB GI om abe ep
from her shi
as executio on ‘date. draws near. ss
Se Me ohms Le.
Se ae eee
2 look, Barbara
ath Row.
Pe ee |
AE eA
ts
Ge LA TULA My
i
sll
Babs Graham and two cohor
ts, Emmett Perkins and Jack Santo (c.), proved camera-shy as murder probe reached crucial stage
DO YOU REMEMBER THIS HEADLINE MURDER ? |
BARBARA “BLOODY BABS” GRAHAM |
SET UP THE WEALTHY
WIDOW FOR MURDER
HEN THE GHOSTS of Bar-
bara Graham, Big Jack San-
to and Emmett Perkins were
resurrected some years ago before a
special committee appointed by the
California State Legislature, the spot-
light once again centered on the much-
belabored question of whether or not
“Bloody Babs” was really guilty of the
murder of crippled Mabel Monahan, for
28
by EDWARD RYAN
which she was later executed in the San
Quentin gas chamber.
Debate was spurred by the controver-
sial motion picture “I Want To Live,”
which won Susan Hayward an Oscar
award for her emotional and dramatic
but not entirely factual portrayal of the
doomed brunette.
More or less overlooked in the senti-
mental hubbub over what came to be
MasTAR DETECTIV:,
Sours oobuelt
“TRUE. Des, | NAO) 99
June, 1973.
known as the “Graham Case,” is the
fact that the single murder of which
shapely Barbara was convicted, revolting
though it was, marked only the climax
of the most atrocious multiple-murder
series in California’s modern crime
annals—an appalling record of at least
seven violent deaths. In the light of later
revelations, only now can the full story
be told in retrospect.
j
i
Sixty-tw
a fataln
strange
The g
his infar
wind up
palm tre
Los Ang
before,
Lode go
Nevada.
woods c
violence
robbery
and his \
slaying «
mine o}
went w
autumn
11, 195
slaughter
lines, T!
burst o1
”
2,” is the
of which
, revolting
he climax
nle-murder
‘m erime
f at least
ht of later
full story
Actress Susan Hayward won an Oscar for her portrayal of the
coldblooded redhead who was the real-life star of one of this
century's most sensational murder cases. The romanticized movie
version made Barbara Grahar. look like a poor, misunderstood
country girl victimized by circumstances. This story about
her career—which ranged from prostitution to petty crime to
heartless killing—tells it like it really was...
phe
Wey ee. " f hs i
Sixty-two-year-old Mabel Monahan made
a fatal mistake—she opened her door toa
stranger . . . ended up beaten to death
The gory saga of Big Jack Santo and
his infamous murder mob, which was to
wind up in spectacular fashion amid the
palm trees, freeways and bright lights of
Los Angeles, actually began some years
before, far up in the historic Mother
Lode gold-mining country of the Sierra
Nevada. Starting with obscure back-
woods crimes, it flared into big-time
violence late in 1951 with the torture
robbery of gold buyer Andrew Colner
and his wife and the Christmas robbery-
slaying of Edmund G. Hansen, a gold
mine operator. Both of these crimes
went unsolved. Then, on the quiet
autumn Saturday morning of October
11, 1952, the ghastly chronicle of
slaughter exploded in the nation’s head-
lines. That was the day pure horror
burst on the sparsely settled logging
Nation was horrified at the bloody slaughter of Guard Young, 43, his daughters (/.
ee .
to r.) Jean, 7, and Judy, 6, and a young playmate, 4-year-old Michael Saile
country of Plumas County, high up in
the rugged Cascade Mountains of north-
eastern California.
The bloody nightmare had begun to
unfold at six o’clock the previous after-
noon, Friday, when Mrs. Christal
Young, wife of Guard Young, a super-
market operator in the tiny lumber
town of Chester on the shore of Lake
Almanor, telephoned a family friend.
“[’m worried about Guard,” she said.
“He should have been back from West-
wood a long time ago. He drove over to
the bank, you know, like he always does
on Friday. He has the three girls and the
little Saile boy with him, and all that
money for the payroll checks.”
“Don’t get upset,” the friend re-
assured her. “Maybe he was delayed on
some business in Westwood. Or maybe
his car broke down, and he can’t get to
a phone. We’ll take a run out the high-
way and find him. I’ll pick you up in a
few minutes.”
The family friend’s voice conveyed
‘ more assurance than he felt. He too was
gravely concemed to learn the grocer
was long overdue on his routine trip to
the bank in the neighboring town. He
lost no time in getting over to the
Youngs’ home.
The small community of Chester,
numbering only about 2,000 people,
had no banking facilities of its own.
Businessmen had to drive 12 miles east
to the slightly larger town of Westwood,
just over the Lassen County line, where
the Bank of America maintains a
branch. It was common knowledge that
Guard Young, proprietor of the prin-
cipal market in Chester, drove over to
the Westwood bank regularly every
Friday afternoon and brought back sev-
eral thousand dollars in cash to accom-
modate the lumber mill workers and
loggers who came in with their pay-
checks on that day.
Friends and fellow storekeepers had
often cautioned Young to beware of
robbers on the lonely mountain high-
way. But the husky, good-looking
43-year-old supermarket operator, a
deeply religious man descended from
hardy Mormon pioneers, smiled at their
warnings. He refused to carry a gun or
take a bodyguard on his trips to the
bank, or to drive at breakneck speed, as
did some of the other merchants. Young
didn’t believe in violence; his faith, he
often said, was protection enough for
him.
That Friday afternoon, a_ crisp
autumn day, Guard Young had left his
market at 2:15. p.m. Stopping by his
29
jad not
d be al-
he pro-
is pro-
at the
ie verge
tus, ac-
hen he
inessee,
rom in-
was in
’ appre-
ut inei-
» Union
hearing
slaying
utomo-
manded
no trial
irges, Or
fecklen-
o theft,
til such
nvicted
irse, en-
1ocence.
penolo-
‘n must
ors are
ves only
that has
ed true
ogy and
leceived
ys and
hat the
sincere,
‘n more
ly very
oxically
and ap-
hy they
isinuate
rust of
ive pro-
vious to
n would
uld not
y.
siveness
himself
nents in
yn pro-
of that
him to
im with-
an im-
st of an-
of seve-
assuring
gets an-
mn life at
( that of
ooo
Baker
persons
ry, Fic-
because
interest
ns,
s earaemorsrract
satin DE ato
“Bloody Babs’’ Set
Up Widow for Murder
(Continued from page 30)
them for police investigators.
“Well, they didn’t complete the job,”
Sheriff Johnson said through tight lips.
“Let’s pray the little girl lives and can
describe the killers.”
While patrolmen
blocked off the log-
ging road pending ar-
rival of state crime
technicians from
Sacramento, the two
sheriffs and their
aides studied the
scene. It was evident
that an attempt had
been made to push
the car over the
bank into the creek.
Only the heavy mes-
quite growth had
stopped it from roll-
ing over. If it had
gone down, it might
have remained hid-
den for weeks.
There was no sign
of any struggle
among the pine
needles at the spot
where the car stood.
‘“‘That means the
murders took place
somewhere else,”
Sheriff Schooler de-
cided. “At least two
people were in-
volved. They stuffed
the bodies in the
trunk, then one of
them drove Young’s
car here and aban-
doned it, after trying
to push it into the
creek. His partner
followed in their get-
away car. Let’s look
around. They would-
n’t have dared to
drive this load very
far.”
The only item
found near the car
was Guard Young’s
ring of keys, lying
on the ground. The
investigators noted
that the grocer’s hat
was missing. Silent
teams of taut-faced deputies searched
the creek bank, and backtracked down
the rutted logging road. They noted
faint tracks of a car with one bald tire,
in addition to those of Young’s
Chrysler. Soon, at a
forest clearing near W
debouched onto Route 36, they came
upon sinister and eloquent evidence.
A deputy picked up a couple of
strips of adding machine tape, recording
the slain grocer’s bank transaction. Also
Young’s pocket comb, a
loth that matched
found were
torn piece of white c
the blindfold, a length of sash cord, and
line,
taken place in
jurisdiction.
paper. There were
some bloody tissue
d flecks of blood
bits of matted hair an
on the scuffed groun
spot, within shouting
state highway but hidden from it, was
the murder scene, beyond a doubt. It
lay on the Plumas County side of the
which meant the massacre had
Sheriff Mel Schooler’s
Sheriff Olin Johnson
pledged him full cooperation.
d. This secluded
distance of the were stopped on
ex-convicts with
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~<————-- eo ee -
here the dirt road
witness,
Search of the area continued, while
an all-out alarm alerted authorities
throughout California,
awmen.
little Sondra Gay
be suffering from a
joined the mountain l
At the hospital
Young was found to
basal skull fracture and extreme shock.
She was still unconscious, but the doc-
tors believed she would pull through.
Taking no chances on the callous killers
trying to finish off the sole surviving
Sheriff Johnson
the first such re
Oregon and wards eventually
Nevada. Agents of the California State $6,000.
Division of Criminal Identification and The
trash dump in a Investigation, the redoubtable CII,
urgent alarm was
ing two or three
A speeding car
was stopped in N
placed two young men in it
armed guards at the little girl’s bedside
in the Westwood Hospital.
A score of suspicious automobiles
mountain highways
and back roads and their occupants
questioned. Fourteen potential suspects,
records of sadistic
violence, were picked up for investiga-
tion in various parts of Northern Cali-
fornia. But Saturday’s widespread police
activity came to nothing. Sunday morm-
ing a deputy found
the murder weapon,
a blood-spattered
18-inch length of gas
pipe, under the
bushes at the trash
dump. It yielded on-
ly fragmentary finger
smudges, as had the
death car. The state
crime lab men con-
centrated on efforts
to trace the pipe and
the sash cord, a slim
hope at best.
“A piece of lead
pipe isn’t a mountain
man’s usual weap-
on,” Sheriff Schooler
commented. “My
guess is that these
killers are outsiders.
But they must have
had some local con-
tact—somebody who
knew about Young’s
Friday trip to the
bank, and fingered
the job for them.”
News of the Ches-
ter massacre appalled
California and the na-
tion. Newspapers
branded it Califor-
nia’s most atrocious
crime. It was one
thing to kill a grown
man in a $7,000
holdup. But what
sort of heartless
fiends would slay a
carload of innocent,
helpless children, on
the remote chance
that the terrified tots
would be able to
identify them?
Governor Earl
Warren, later Chief
Justice of the United
States, announced a
$1,000 reward for in-
formation leading to
arrest of the killers,
ward posted by the
Golden State since pioneer days. Re-
totaled more than
hunt spread across the West.
Tips poured in from all directions. An
broadcast for a black
Buick sedan with Arkansas plates, carry-
rough-looking strang-
ers, reportedly seen driving out of West-
wood just about the time Guard Young
started for home with the children.
fitting the description
ew Mexico. The three
, who had more ies
home on the outskirts of town, he had
smilingly yielded to the entreaties of his
three little daughters, Jean, 7, Judy, 6,
and Sondra Gay, 3, who clamored to go
with him. Young bundled them into his
car, along with their playmate, little
Michael Saile, 4, whose mother rented
an apartment from the Youngs. ‘“‘We’ll
be back before four o’clock, dear,’’ the
affable grocer told his pretty wife, who
stayed at home with their baby, Wayne,
aged five months.
Now it was after 6 p.m., almost dark,
and no sign of Young and the children,
nor any word from him. The loggers and
mill hands were waiting impatiently to
cash their paychecks.
The family friend picked up worried
Mrs. Young, who had to bring the baby
along with her for lack of a sitter. They
drove out State Route 36, along the
north shore of Lake Almanor, toward
Westwood. Cruising slowly, they
scanned the ditches and the narrow en-
trances to the logging roads where a
disabled car might have been parked.
They saw no sign of Guard Young’s
green 1951 Chrysler hardtop converti-
ble, nor of its five occupants.
The miles ticked by. “I’m scared!”
Christal Young shivered when they
reached Westwood as dusk was settling
over the forest. Her escort now fully
shared her alarm. He called the bank
teller at home, and learned that Young
had left the bank at 2:50 p.m., after
depositing his week’s bundle of checks
and withdrawing $7,128 in cash, mostly
in $20 bills. He carried the money, as
usual, in a canvas Federal Reserve Bank
sack.
Further inquiries established that the
grocer had bought ice cream sticks for
the four children, across the street from
the bank. Several people had seen them
start back toward Chester, at just about
three o’clock.
Young’s friend called the resident
deputy sheriff. As soon as they heard
the ominous facts, the authorities took
a most serious view of the disappearance
of the grocer and the children. Sheriff
Melvin H. Schooler of Plumas County
and Sheriff Olin Johnson of Lassen
joined forces, and that night a hastily
assembled volunteer posse of more than
100 millworkers, loggers and business-
men from the two towns beat through
the woods along the 12-mile stretch of
mountain highway.
State highway patrolmen from the
Sacramento Valley joined deputies of
the two counties, and one of the lumber
companies sent out six radio-equipped
trucks to coordinate the search. But the
near-freezing night passed without any
development. It was as though Guard
Young and the four children had been
swallowed up by the black forest.
Soon after daybreak Saturday morn-
ing, two local pilots took off in small
planes from the Chester landing strip, to
skim low over the towering pines and
firs. A little after 7 a.m., one of the
pilots came circling back to report to
Sheriff Schooler: He had spotted a
green automobile parked in the brush
off an abandoned logging road near
30
ae”
In San Quentin prison hospital bed, Babs showed elation over growing clamor by
some members of the public to spare her from execution in the dread gas chamber
Bailey Creek, some four miles east of
Chester.
At that same moment a Chester mill-
worker, who had just heard of the
search, was telling Highway Patrolman
Jeff Cooley about a green Chrysler he
and his deer-hunting companions had
seen parked at Bailey Creek at about
5:30 Friday afternoon. There was no
one around the car, and they had as-
sumed it belonged to some other
hunters.
Cooley, with the millworker and a
couple of loggers, sped out the highway
and turned up the ru.ced track into the
dense forest. The Chester man directed
them to the spot, about half a mile from
Route 36, where a shiny green hardtop
stood half-hidden in the tangled under-
growth at the very lip of the creek. It
was Guard Young’s car, all right.
“Looks like it’s abandoned,” Patrol-
man Cooley said as the four men ap-
proached the car. Then he noticed the
blood on the rear bumper. The trunk
was open a crack. Cooley jerked the lid
up. He reeled back with a choked ex-
clamation.
His companions, craning to look,
gasped in horror, “Young and the four
kids—all dead! God!”
The battered, bloody face of Guard
Young stared sightlessly up at them. A
white cloth blindfold had slipped down
from his eyes. One arm was twisted be-
hind him, a length of white sash cord
dangling from it. The grocer’s corpse,
clad in slacks and green sports shirt, was
high in the car trunk, jammed in on top
of the four pitifully tiny forms. Crum-
pled far back in the trunk were the
bludgeoned, lifeless bodies of little Jean
and Judy Young and Mike Saile. Three-
year-old Sondra Gay, tiniest of all, lay
pinned and crushed under the others,
almost hidden at the bottom of that
ghastly tangle of dead flesh, caked with
dried blood.
Patrolman Cooley and the other men
stood white-faced and shaken. Then, as
the highway patrolman fumbled auto-
matically for a cigarette, he suddenly
tensed and made a dive for the trunk.
“Hey! This one’s alive! I saw her
move!”
It was true. Little Sondra Gay was
stirring feebly, the sole moving thing in
that charnel heap. Tenderly the men
lifted her out. They smoothed back the
blood-matted golden curls. As the sun-
light struck her, the little girl’s eyes
flickered open for a moment, then
closed again. There was an ugly gash on
the back of her head and blood was still
oozing from her right ear. She was bare-
ly breathing.
Swift examination of the other four
bodies confirmed that they were cold in
death. Leaving their companions to
await the arrival of other officers, Pa-
trolman Cooley and one of the loggers
rushed the unconscious child to a doc-
tor’s office in Chester, and thence to the
hospital in Westwood.
Sheriffs Schooler and Johnson, who
had already taken off on the flash from
the pilot, were at the scene a few min-
utes after the bodies were found. Other
officers and newsmen were close on
their heels. Schooler and a hastily sum-
moned physician supervised removal of
the four victims, which were laid in a
pathetic row on the sunlit forest
ground. Skulls of all four had been
crushed by savage blows from behind.
Guard Young’s hands had evidently
been tied when he was killed, then one
hand was freed to make it easier to jam
him into the trunk on top of the slaugh-
tered children.
Young’s money sack and his wallet
were missing. Motive for the massacre
was obvious. Cold-blooded, inhuman
highway robbers, for the sake of Guard
Young’s $7,000, had bludgeoned the in-
nocent tots along with the grocer, to
insure that no one would live to identify
(Continued on page 63)
|
IM
SI
IM |
: but ;
the :
dialogue fr:
before he fc
the Oaklanc
i “Dayligh
{ Lovers Lane
The wor:
that bluster
working his
untrammele
nue. It was
after breakt
on a story i
trudging, he
couples. Af
night panao
romantic sp:
In the di
ing, howeve
up the terr:
about as ron
The aspir
as somethin;
beside the r
seated at counsel
confession, taped
2 children. Right,
never been found.
immed in car trunk.
arney, above, right.
stolen from victim.
Es et SR SISOS na
Fact that Barbara Graham faces execution for her vicious
murder of crippled woman doesn’t seem to bother her, as
she greets cameramen. She had fallen down court steps..
The slayers had hoped to use home of Larry and Lucille
Shea, above, for alibi, but Sheas helped police smash mob.
Below, Harriet took lover’s abuse; not his two timing.
ES
fornia, only 50 spectators were present in that courtroom in
Quincy, a town of 2,000 people situated near the California-
Nevada border.
* * * *
The morning of October 10, 1952 had been pleasant, too,
in the little community of Chester, nestled in the mountains
of Plumas County about 250 miles northeast of San Fran-
‘cisco,
Standing in the entrance to a comfortable old frame
house, grocer Guard Young, 43, kissed his attractive wife,
Cristal, good-by as they watched their three children,
golden heads glinting-in the sunlight, run toward the almost
new green Chrysler sedan parked by the road. As always,
the little ones were eager for the trip—if the 11-mile drive
to the adjoining community of Westwood could be called a
trip. a
“Daddy, can Michael come with us?”
Young recognized the voice of his oldest daughter, Jean,
and called back:
“Certainly, if his mother says it’s all right.”
Michael was Michael Saile, a four-year-old playmate of
his daughters, who lived in a small apartment behind the
Young home with his, mother, Rosemary.
Starting toward the car, Young paused momentarily,
glancing back at his wife, who was to remain’at home with
the latest addition to the family, five-month-old Wayne.
Her expression betrayed concern.
“Guard, you will be careful, won’t you? The children—”
“Don’t worry, honey,” he cut her off, laying a strong
hand gently upon her shoulder, “I’ve made this trip so many
times, and you always worry. Nothing’s going to happen.”
Cristal Young frequently chided herself ‘for her anxiety
over the trips her husband made to the bank in Westwood
every two weeks, He would go to the bank on the 10th and
25th of each month to pick up a large sum of money to cash
pay checks for the loggers who worked on the surrounding
mountains. She was well aware that it meant more business
for the Youngs’ grocery store; yet she was never able to
rid herself of the idea that carrying such large sums—in-
variably in excess of $5,000—was dangerous.
The children fidgeted eagerly as Young took his place
behind the wheel of the green Chrysler. Judy and Jean, six
and seven, were adopted children. Sisters, they bore a strik-
ing resemblance to each other, Both were golden haired and
beautiful as only children of that age can be. Sondra, three
and-one half, was the Youngs’ own child, but with her fair
skin and blonde hair she easily passed for the natural sister
of the other girls. She still retained vestiges of her pudgy
baby features. Michael, a handsome youngster, was their
constant companion in imaginary adventures on the brushy
hillside near the Young home. _,
But today was better yet. A ride to Westwood and—
maybe—if they were good—ice cream ‘and candy. On this
happy note, Guard Young headed his car down the curving,
timber-bordered highway toward Westwood, just over the
Lassen County line.
The children babbled happily of familiar landmarks and
. unusual sights as the miles disappeared behind them. Guard
Young, as he often did, indulged in a bit of reverie.
He recalled how he and his wife had come to Chester
some years earlier from the bustle of the metropolis, San
Francisco. :
Chester. had been good to them, giving them peace and
happiness. Their supermarket had prospered. Young, a
Mormon bishop, had become a highly respected member
of the little community.
His neighbors knew him as a quiet, good-humored man,
always ready to lend a helping hand—a man who delighted
in the companionship of his children and who loved the
beauty of the towering mountains around him. Unaccount-
ably now, his wife’s gentle warning came back to him. Be
careful. He wondered, Careful of what? For it was Guard
Young’s nature to wonder why [Continued on page 58]
oo
Sr cic Catia Hoa takin aig age
27
Westwood, observing
the children and fol-
ir own car when he
hester. There would
portunity to force the
ide of the road some-
mile route linking the
5S.
»posed, of course, that
along that they would
ie youngsters.
‘ning these thoughts
ren a call came from
pital. Sondra Young,
ured from a possible
a fighting chance to
s he was to hear this
ertained grave doubts
lf-year-old child, hav-
o so cruel an ordeal,
le witness. Neverthe-
ie killers were known
. there was hope.
ing maintaining her
» the bedside of her
e again set about the
checking every lead.
them, some patently
was not lacking. The
of Criminal Investi-
o, headed by George
«k to supply trained
the facilities of its up
ology lab at the dis-
ain law-enforcement
‘estwood lies in Las-
‘iff there, Olin John-
n hunt at once, con-
-h for witnesses who
ing and the children
arance.
first moves was to
» check all long-dis-
iginating in Chester
ers. It was a routine
as determined to ex-
avenue in search of
ster and Westwood
ier to make every ef-
vurce of the 18-inch
near Young’s car.
gators were assigned
anel and payroll rec-
vanies in the area, to
iploye had left sud-
o report for work.
tile establishments in
‘ted to watch for the
: $5,000 for apprehen-
vere posted at once:
sociation, of which
mber, put up $3,000;
used-car dealer of-
| Warren, then gov-
or the state.
tiality of the crime
e surrounding coun-
fear and fury. Aware
-s might strike again
untain people were
s for action.
e was but hours old,
‘ached that nemesis
1e “dead end.”
phere, grief-stricken
{1 a Mormon funeral
Catholic service for
a Young had re-
_ and two days after
in the glen, doctors
nough to talk. Care-
accompanied by her
placed in a car with
District Attorney
» from Westwood to
sne of the massacre.
Conscious of the delicacy of this task,
the two officials couched all their ques-
tions in the simplest language possible
and spaced the queries far apart to avoid
tiring the plucky child. Still pale and
somewhat dazed, little Sondra answered
haltingly. /
“Who were the people you saw on the
way home?”
“Two men and a woman in a big blue
car,” she said.
Further questioning elicited the in-
formation that the woman wore red
slacks. The car was a sedan. One of the
men had a gun.
The three strangers had stopped her
daddy’s car and had made him drive up
the logging road, the child said. They
forced her daddy to get out of the car and
tied his wrists behind him, One man was
masked. When her daddy tried to push
the mask down, the man struck him,
knocking him to. the ground. Then the
man beat him some more as he lay on the
ground.
Schooler and Janes listened in silence
as the little girl, uncomprehending, re-
lated what she had witnessed.
One was a “big man,” the child con-
tinued, “with a little bit of black hair
around his bald head.” He had worn the
white mask. His jeans were blue, his
shoes black. The second man was shorter.
He had curly hair. He did not wear a
mask.
'The blue sedan had followed her
father’s car up the logging road. Here her
tale ended. She did not seem to remember
that she or the other children had been
beaten. She said she didn’t believe that
she had ever before seen the péople who -
had beaten her daddy.
That was all that Sheriff Schooler’s in-
&
terview with the child produced in the
war of evidence.
nd then, suddenly, Chester was once
again thrown into a state bordering on
hysteria. Word ran through the com-
munity: ‘
“The killers have struck again.”
Schooler, showing signs of the strain
he was under, heard the details. A man, a *
little boy and a girl, had disappeared with-
out a'trace. Search parties were organized
at once. The sheriff, asked what he
thought of the case, snapped:
“It looks like a repetition of what we
had here before.” ;
_ But it proved to be otherwise. Smiling
sheepishly, the missing trio walked out
of the woods unharmed. They had got
lost.
The excitement engendered by this in-
cident had just subsided when Mrs. Lila
Ames, an attractive brunette who drove a
- laundry truck in the Chester-Westwood
area, approached Schooler with important
information. She said she had been driv-
ing along the highway from Chester to
Westwood between 3 and 4 p.m. the day
of the killings and. had seen Guard
Young’s car going up the logging road,
followed by another car. She was slightly
vague about the color of the second ve-
hicle, but thought it might have been tan.
At about the same time, Sheriff Charles
F. Ward of Sierra County reported to
Schooler that a backwoods trading-post
dealer near Auburn had sold a length of
pipe and a piece of clothesline rope to two
men shortly before the crime. The pipe
and rope matched the items used by the
killers. The trading-post dealer said that
one of the purchasers was heavy set and
muscular/ with hairy forearms. The other
was slender and of medium height: with
blond hair. They drove a brown car. A
deputy was sent to Sierra County to check
the story.
It seemed to Sheriff Schooler that time
was working against him. Days had
passed. The killers could now be thou-
‘sands of miles away. Still tips continued
to pour in—some of them promising—
and they all had to be investigated.
Then, from Sierra County came a tip
that sounded somewhat substantial.
Mrs. Fern Watters, the wife of a deputy
sheriff in Grass Valley, reported that a
woman there was boasting of a wild, free-
spending week-end in Reno in which her
escort had purchased new clothes for her,
given her $500 in cash and financed the
drinking and gambling of a foursome
which had included Mr. and Mrs. Larry
Shea of Chester.
Schoofer was immediately interested
for several reasons.
One of the long-distance phone calls
made from Chester the day of the mur-
ders had originated from the Shea home.
The recipient of the call had been
Bernadine Pearney of Grass Valley—the
woman who was now bragging about the
Reno week end. .
At the time the deputies had made a
check-up on all out of the city phone mes-
sages, Shea, a painting contractor, had
denied placing the call. He said it had
been made by a friend, Jack Santo, who
had been a guest at the Shea home while
on a deer hunting trip in the Chester area.
Santo had been accompanied by his com-
mon-law wife, Harriet Henson.
The call had been placed at 4:43 p.m.
Friday, October 10, little more than an
hour after the kindly grocer, Guard
Young, and the four little children had
been brutally bludgeoned.
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I city Zone. State.
Santo was a familiar character in the
mountain country. Over six feet tall and
weighing in the neighborhood of 200
pounds, he had often been heard to re-
mark:
“T never worked a day in my life.”
Nor had anyone ever accused him of
Performing an honest day’s labor. Years
earlier he had done time in McNeil Island
federal penitentiary on a charge of trans-
porting a stolen car across a state line.
Now he lived on a small farm near
Auburn with the silent, lynx-eyed Hen-
son woman. They were a well-matched
pair, close mouthed on their personal af-
fairs but outspokenly contemptuous of
the law. Judged by their features alone,
they might have been called handsome.
But something in the eyes, a bitter set
to their mouths, would send an involun-
tary shiver down the spine of a. keen ob-
server of human nature. The layman
would settle for the description “hard
looking.”
In the mountain country it was whis-
pered that Jack Santo, who looked’
younger than his 51 years, was a shady
gold dealer. It was a vague term that in-
cluded the “high grader,” a dealer in gold
dust stolen from the still active mines of
the area—mines that had once been the
lure for prospectors in Forty Nine. There
was a good profit to be made in illicit gold,
smuggled from the mines in the cuff of a
pair of trousers, the inside of a shoe or
even thder a loose upper plate. Some
foreign nations were a ready market for
the yellow stuff, and rumors had arisen
of a thriving gold-narcotics trade.
Ostensibly, though, the strapping Santo
lived off his woman. Harriet Henson, who
came out of Montana’s dry wheat belt,
had been a waitress in Los Angeles when
Santo picked her up. She continued to
sling hash after she came to live on the
Auburn farm, and turned the money she
earned over to her ill-tempered and de-
manding paramour. Just how much Jack
Santo appreciated these contributions to
his life of ease may be judged from his
oft-repeated remark to Harriet in public
that “you don’t earn enough to support
me.
It was a statement in character with
the domineering ‘gentleman. farmer,”
who was vain about his pencil-line
mustache and his prowess with the
women.
Once, after he had been ‘stopped by as
California Highway patrolman for speed-
ing, Santo told some friends in a tavern:
“If I could have reached for my gun,
there would have been one less cop.”
This, then, was Jack Santo, the man
who-had arranged a wild spending party
in Reno several hours after Guard Young
and the children were murdered and
$7,100 taken.
Was it conceivable, Schooler wondered,
that beyond being the contemptible crea-
ture he was, Santo could also be a skulk-
ing monster?
While everything pointed to the fact
that Santo was a surly, cop-hating bully
with a penchant for shady. dealings, that
alone was not enough to tie him in with
the Chester massacre.
Larry Shea, the painting contractor,
who, with his wife, Lucille, enjoyed a fine
reputation in Chester, revealed that Santo
and Harriet Henson had not, as was
previously believed, remained at his home
all day on October 10. Santo and Harriet
Henson had gone out about 2:30 in the
afternoon. This was important informa-
tion, but it wasn’t enough. There was still
no witness who could place Santo or the
Henson woman near the death scene at
the proper time. The couple had driven*to
Chester in a red pickup truck. No one had
60 ray
So AS a an
reported seeing such a vehicle in the
vicinity of the logging road. But: Harriet
was known to own a tan Oldsmobile
sedan. Mrs. Lila Ames, the laundry truck
driver, had seen a car—possibly a tan one
—following Guard Young’s car up the
road. Still, tan autos were no rarity. And
how about the second man mentioned by
little Sondra? Schooler was still convinced
it would have taken two men to subdue
Guard Young. \ .
He renewed his questioning of the
townspeople and struck pay dirt fast. A
close friend agd frequent companion of
Jack Santo had been seen in Chester the
day of the murders.
This man was Emmett Perkins, a safe
cracker who had spent 24 of his 44 years
behind bars for a variety of offenses.
Perkins could easily have driven Har-
riet’s car to Chester and stayed out of
sight, awaiting a signal from Santo to
stalk the unsuspecting grocer, rob him,
and then seal his lips forever. And that
would have been essential, for Guard
Young knew Jack Santo.
This theory was reinforced by a state-
ment from a local rancher named Calvin
Baccala. Baccala, 54, a big man in
rumpled clothing, related that while
driving over the Chester-Westwood high-
way shortly before 3:30 on the afternoon
of October 10, he had seen Guard Young’s
car parked on the shoulder of the road.
“I saw Guard Young standing beside
the car talking to another man,” he said.
“A second man was behind the wheel of
the car and a woman was in the back seat
with the little girls. I remember that the
little girls’ heads were bobbing up and
down. A little boy was running around
behind the car. I was going 10 or 15 miles
an hour and, as I passed, Guard Young
looked at me. I didn’t think much about it
national complications.
TRUE POLICE CASES
JOHN'S OTHER WIFE
You can see how John behaved when he was told to “speak for himself.” No doubt
Mr. Trejo hopes that if he doesn’t look at his horrible problem it will just go away.
And what a problem! His two attractive young wives, Valentina and Patricia, both
of San Francisco, accidentally discovered each other—and in high dudgeon accuse
their mutual husband of playing fast,and loose with their affections. Since one of the
wives is a ‘Mexican national, and the other an Italian, there may be extra inter-
at the time, but
kind of pleadin;
Baccala said |
the woman if he
so sure about th
a photograph o:
“Ts this the w
stared hard at i
“That’s her,”
right.”
Positive now
brutal mass m:
Schooler prepar
It was at this
though fate \
shoulder. For, fi
all-points bulle
were wanted th
slaying of an el
Monahan!
On the night
men and a won
bank home of
There had bee:
underworld tha
mother-in-law
figure L. B. “Ti
sum of money h
said it might b«
was this mone
manded.
When the olc
protested she ha
were bound be
truders then be:
until she died.
Police got a f:
case. An inform
of an ex-convict
alias Shorty Ba
up and proceede
He identified
Monahan crime
Perkins, a deep
Lawson True a:
abara Graham.
Thé Graham
police. A. strikir
had a record of 1:
some years. She
San Francisco an
on narcotics cha
married and the
but she had fre
Santo at a gamb!
styled Lothario
near Los Angele:
the blonde had
Santo.
There was no
and Barbara Gra
area, but John Lz
Grass Valley and
He denied any
han murder.
His questione:
away from the 1
himself. True a
Santo for some 1
diving in submer
fugitive.
He referred to
tifying still anot
George Boles,
orderly in a sani
far from Auburn.
Law-enforceme
tain country perk
phrase “Santo G:
Santo, they we:
a “lone wolf,” and
he was the head o
new to them. It
lines of speculatio
Sacramento Co
torture-robbery of
Colner on its files
operandi seemed ti
too.
On November
Massacre Monster and His
Girl Killers
[Continued from page 27]
any man would ever want to harm
another.
Cristal meanwhile had set about her
tasks at home.
The newest Young child, Wayne, re-
quired much care, and things must be set
in order. Her feeling of unrest had
quickly vanished on her husband’s de-
parture, giving place to a more urgent
problem: what would four hungry trav-
elers want to eat after the journey?
Preoccupied with these matters, she
hardly noticed the afternoon wear on un-
til darkening shadows began to lengthen
over the little community. Then, unable
to combat a growing sense of alarm, she
notified the sheriff’s office.
The assurance given by a deputy that
someone would retrace the route taken by
the grocer and the children assuaged her
concern somewhat. No doubt, she tried
to tell herself, they would turn up safe
and sound. But several hours passed. The
initial search had produced no sign of the
missing man and his charges, and now
search parties were being hastily or-
ganized. Fifty men were quick to respond
in Chester. A party of similar size was
mustered in Quincy, 50 miles away. Mo-
bile radio equipment, brought into serv-
ice at once, operated in conjunction with
six big radio-equipped lumber trucks
from a nearby milf In the gathering
darkness, little groups of men pushed off
into the wild underbrush and _ thickly
wooded canyons.
From the start it was a grim expedi-
tion. Most of the searchers knew Guard
Young, which meant that all of these were
certain he would not disappear volun-
tarily. It was unthinkable that he would
vanish of his own volition with four chil-
dren in his car. They knew also that he
had withdrawn $7,100 from the Bank of *
America in Westwood around 3 p.m. that
afternoon.
The search was difficult. The country
surrounding Chester is heavily wooded
and mountainous. A short distance away,
the cold. blue waters of lovely Lake
Almanor wash quietly along a rugged
shoreline. Down a boulder-strewn can-
yon, the Feather River rushes to the lake.
A man would encounter almost virgin
wilderness in any direction he ‘might
choose to travel.
But the search parties tackled this
knotty problem with enthusiasm, utilizing
their man power as efficiently as possible.
At 3 a.m., exhausted, they stopped for
coffee and a brief rest. They had found
not a sign of the missing grocer or the
children. Weary and frustrated, they
watched dawn lighten the eastern sky,
unaware that at that very moment a
hunter was delivering startling news to
Plumas County Sheriff Melvin H.
Schooler, the man directing the massive
search. A green Chrysler sedan, he told
the sheriff, was parked a short distance up
a logging road from the Chester-West-
wood highway. It matched the descrip-
tion of the missing car. Schooler and some
of his men raced to the scene, which lies
in a heavily logged area of scrub and sec-
ond growth. A glance told them it was in-
deed Young’s car which was parked facing
into a brushy thicket. There was no sign
of the grocer or the children.
Had they been taken away in another.
car?
58 raN
~
The question was not long unanswered.
California State Highway Patrolman
Jefferson Cooley, one of the first officers
to arrive, making a routine inspection of
the auto, pulled open the trunk. The sight
that met his horrified gaze made him turn
away, sickened. Jammed into the trunk
like slaughtered animals were the bodies
of Guard Young and the four children.
They lay in a grotesque tangle, like
broken rag dolls, their heads oozing blood
from gaping wounds, their clothing
saturated with the red ooze. Young’s
wrists were bound behind him with
clothesline rope. A tiny hand, that of lit-
tle Michael Saile, clutched the grocer’s
hair as if in the child’s dying moment he
had reached out blindly for aid. The
grocer, Judy, Jean and Michael had been
dead for some time. Little Sondra mirac-
ulously had survived the savage pummel-
ing, but. was so near death that the
horror-stricken officers doubted she
would live long enough to be taken to
the hospital. As they stood there, im-
mobilized with rage and grief, she moved
feebly, stretching a tiny hand toward
them. Minutes later she was gently re-
moved from the welter of dead bodies and
placed in the ambulance that would speed
her to the hospital in Westwood.
Schooler, Deputy R. R. Gillespie and
Cooley were all veteran law officers. Yet
they cringed before the grisly horror in
this silent glen. It was inconceivable that
any human being could have done this
thing. Still, something that moved about
in the shape of a man obviously had. For
Guard Young’s $7,100 was gone. He had
carried it with him. when he had driven
out of Westwood shortly after 3 p.m. the
preceding day. Silently and with mount-
ing fury, Schooler and the others began
a methodical search of the immediate
area. A short distance ‘away, one of the
officers picked up a length of iron pipe.
It bore stains which appeared to be blood.
A ghastly picture of a beast in human
form took shape, a creature who ‘could
gaze into the innocent eyes of a child and
rain merciless blows upon a tiny head
with an iron pipe.
It was apparent that whoever had way-
laid Young had known his habits—his
fortnightly trip to Westwood for money,
his refusal to carry a gun, his. kindly,
trusting nature. The grocer would have
been an easy person to beguile and trick.
The missing $7,100 made it clear that
someone had methodically plotted the
ambush of Guard Young, with robbery as
a motive.
The physical evidence of the crime sug-
gested strongly that the killer or killers
were known to Young and the children.
What would explain the brutal and ap-
parently senseless slaughter of the young-
sters, unless it was to prevent them from
pointing the accusing finger? .
Sheriff Schooler leaned strongly to the
theory that more than one person had
participated in the murder orgy, reason-
ing first that Young, a powerfully built
man, would have offered fierce resistance
on behalf of the children, and second, that
the little ones themselves, confronted by
a single assailant, would have scattered
and fled into the brush.
Bank officials revealed that most of the
money in Guard Young’s possession
when he had disappeared had been in $20
bills. After obtaining it, Young had taken
the four children across the street to a
confectionery store and had purchased ice
cream for them. There the trail ended.
Evidently the grocer and the children had
started back toward Chester. Assuming
they had, what had happened next?
A possibility that occurred to Sheriff
Schooler was that the killers had lain in
‘
wait for Young in Westwood, observing
his movements with the children and fol-
lowing him in their own car when he
started back to Chester. There would
have been ample opportunity. to force the
grocer’s car to the side of the road some-
where along the 11-mile route linking the
two mountain towns.
This theory presupposed, of course, that
the slayers knew all along that they would
have to dispose of the youngsters. —
Schooler was turning these thoughts
over in his mind when a‘call came from
the Westwood Hospital. Sondra Young,
though critically injured from a possible
skull fracture, had a fighting chance to
survive. Thankful as he was to hear this
news, the sheriff entertained grave doubts
that the three and half-year-old child, hav-
ing been subjected to so cruel an ordeal,
would prove a reliable witness. Neverthe-
less, assuming that the killers were known
to the Young family, there was hope.
With Cristal Young maintaining her
heartbroken vigil at the bedside of her
child, the sheriff once again set about the
task of methodically checking every lead.
He had a number of them, some patently
false. But assistance was not lacking. The
California Bureau of Criminal Investi-
gation’ at Sacramento, headed by George
Brereton, was quick to supply trained
agents and to place the facilities of its up
to the minute criminology lab at the dis-
posal of the mountain law-enforcement
men. And because Westwood lies in Las-
sen County, the sheriff there, Olin John-
son, entered the man hunt at once, con-
centrating on a search for witnesses who
might have seen Young and the children
before their disappearance.
One of Schooler’s first moves was to
order his deputies to check all long-dis-
tance phone calls originating in Chester
the day of the murders. It was a routine
precaution, but he was determined to ex-
plore every possible avenue in search of
the brutal slayers.
Deputies in Chester and Westwood
were instructed further to make every ef-
fort to trace the source of the 18-inch
length of pipe found near Young’s car.
Still other investigators were assigned
to go over the personnel and payroll rec-
ords of lumber companies in the area, to
determine if any employe had left sud-
denly or had failed to report for work.
Banks and mercantile establishments in
the vicinity were alerted to watch for the
missing bills.
Rewards totaling $5,000 for apprehen-
sion of the slayers were posted at once:
a grocery trade association, of which
Young had been a member, put up $3,000;
a Chico, California, used-car dealer of-
fered $1,000; and Earl Warren, then gov-
ernor, posted $1,000 for the state.
The shocking bestiality of the crime
filled Chester and the surrounding coun-
try with a mixture of fear and fury. Aware
that the fiendish killers might strike again
at any time, the mountain people were
loud in their demands for action.
But though the case was but hours old,
it seemed to have reached that nemesis
of all investigators, the “dead end.”
In this tense atmosphere, grief-stricken
townspeople prepared a Mormon funeral
for the Youngs and a Catholic service for
little Michael Saile.
Meanwhile, Sondra Young had re-
gained consciousness, and two days after
the bloody discovery in the glen, doctors
pronounced her well enough to talk. Care-
fully bundled up and accompanied by her
mother, the child was placed in a car with
Sheriff Schooler and District Attorney
Bertram Janes to ride from Westwood to
the logging road—scene of the massacre.
h
Conscious of t
the two officials
tions in the sim
and spaced the q
tiring the pluck
somewhat dazed,
haltingly.
“Who were thi
way home?”
“Two men and
car,” she said.
Further quest
formation that
slacks. The car \
men had a gun.
The three str:
daddy’s car and
the logging roa:
forced her daddy
tied his wrists be
masked. When |
the mask down
knocking him tc
man beat him so
ground.
Schooler and .
as the little girl
lated what she |
One was a “hb
tinued, “with a
around his bald
white mask. Hi
shoes black. The
He had curly h
mask.
'The blue se
father’s car up th
tale ended. She d
that she or the
beaten. She said
she had ever bef:
had beaten her «
That was all t)
ME.
SUL
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Dept. R-25
ormant tells me -they tortured Mrs.
fonohan to make her reveal where the
tuff was hidden, but. either their in-
Olmation was wrong or they couldn't
ind it, because the whisper is they
‘ft the place without getting a dime."
The first police identification photo
as of Ned Verble.
“He was a partner of Mickey Cohen
1 the Dincara Farms,"’ Lavold_ said.
‘HE second photograph was of
Baxter Shorter.
“About as good a man at cracking
safe as there is,” Lavold said, ‘He's
San Quentin graduate. He went up
ith another man and a twenty-three-
‘ar-old showgirl after they confessed
irglarizing about every hotel safe
‘tween Berkeley and Los Angeles
‘ck in nineteen thirty-eight.”
The record showed that more re-
ntly, after Shorter was out on parole,
’ had been involved with another
an in a bunco deal where they posed
police officers to bilk a Los Angeles
ntractor out of $10,000.
In 1952, Shorter had been arrested
a charge of receiving stolen property
non-negotiable bonds, However, the
nds had been returned and the case
1uinst Shorter dismissed.
Lavold then laid down a picture of
tall, thin-faced man with a small
istache. The name under it was
in Albert Santo.
‘Jack Santo is the real mean boy
the bunch,” he explained, “and the
artest. He’s been picked up and
‘estigated for about everything in
books, including attempted robbery
{ murder in San Francisco, But
» only solid rap against him was
iy back in nineteen twenty-four
en they clipped him on the Dyer
and he did time at McNeil Island.”
dealing off the photographs like
ds, Lavold next laid down a picture
smmett Perkins. The record showed
ests starting in 1924 with a sentence
‘eform school and two sentences of
n one year to life each in San
‘ntin for armed robbery.
You'll recognize Perkins by _ his
e teeth,” Lavold said lightly. “Most
the time he wears them in his
ket.””
he next photograph was of a young
nan. “She is Barbara Graham.
's separated from her husband and
a two-year-old kid and she’s
kins’ girl friend. Her only record
or perjury, disorderly person and
tancy but she’s building up to be
e a tough character under the -
lance of Perkins,
janto has a friend named John
e,” Lavold went on, “who was seen
1 him around the time of_ the
iohan case. He’s a deep-sea diver
1 Oakland and as far as we know,
clean. But my information. says
ihould be questioned, too.”
hen Lavold finished, the detectives
around the table studying the
ares,
idrews asked: “Do you have any
2nce at all to tie them to the
ohan case?”
‘vold shook his head. “All I know
hat I’ve told you. My informant
dn’t go into court. And even if
hould, his testimony wouldn’t be
h anything because he wasn’t with
1 and couldn’t actually testify to
ing.”
‘ow about hauling this mob in?”
vold shrugged. “We've been sit-
on them for a long time, waiting
the right break. But a homicide
is a different thing. If you want
we have them all spotted and
can put them on ice inside of
ty-four hours.”
drews had a difficult decision to
» Picking up the gang members
dut evidence was risky. Unless one
e mob should break and make a
‘ssion the police would be forced
tn them loose in 48 hours.
don’t see how we'll ever get any-
‘more than we have right now,”
ews decided. “Doctor Newbarr
the killer will show signs of being
‘d by Mrs. Monohan. If we let :
de, those scratches are going to
and we won’t even have them.”
Consequently, he issued orders for
the arrest of the five men and_ the
woman, All were in jail by the follow
ing afternoon.
The detectives immediately began a
24-hour session of constant questioning.
Jack Santo looked like the best bet
to Andrews. He had a number of
marks on his hands and face which
could be the remnants of scratches,
Santo explained them by saying: “TI
rot in a beef at a bar in Newcastle.
You can check it if you like. The
character is suing me for a hundred
grand because I knocked out his teeth.”
A call to the court clerk in Placer
County revealed that Francis E,
MacCann of Roseville had filed a suit
against Santo for a beating he claimed
Santo had given him. Further, Santo
had paid a $50 fine in the justice court
at Newcastle on an assault charge.
Lavold told Andrews: “I told you
Santo was smart. He could have
picked that fight just so he’d have an
alibi for the scratches in case he was
picked up.”
Questioning went on relentlessly
until the legal period for holding per-
sons for investigation expired. Attor-
neys appeared and demanded either
that charges be placed against their
clients or they be released. And
Andrews still had nothing but the
vague story from the stool Pigeon of
two suitcases filled with cash and
jewelry. Not one shred of evidence had
been found which would place any of
the six persons at the Monohan house.
And none of the six persons was ready
to talk,
All six were released.
“That just about shoots it,” Andrews
said in despair as the six walked out
of the Burbank Headquarters.
“I was sure we were on the right
track. The story about the Suitcase
with the cash and the jewelry ties in
with what Scherer told us, The motive
is about right for the way the woman
was tortured and the house torn apart.
But now we've tipped our hand and
I don’t see a ghost of a chance of
breaking it.”
“I don’t know,” Lieutenant Coveney
said. “We still may get a break.”
“What makes you think so?” An-
drews asked. me
“One of that mob is human. Re-
member, somebody called for an
ambulance, somebody who didn’t want
the old lady to die. If we could find
out which one it is and work on him
we might get somewhere. Maybe it’s
the gir].”
“It isn’t the girl,” Andrews replied,
“She’s hard as nails. And it isn’t
Santo.” ;
“I don’t think it would be Perkins,”
Coveney said, “And I don’t see True
calling the ambulance either,”
“That leaves Verble and Shorter. We
can try working on them. It looks like
our only chance.” |
“How do you figure we should go
about it?” x
' Andrews scowled. “We could get
Lavold’s stool pigeon to keep talking
about how the old woman was beaten
and what a rotten thing it was to do.
And maybe get in a hint now and then
about the. gas chamber up at San
Quentin. It would have to be done
smoothly. Maybe it will work and
maybe it won’t but it’s all we have.”
TRE detectives decided to work on
Shorter first, mainly because he was
more readily available. He lived in an
apartment in downtown Los Angeles.
A week went by and an attorney
called Andrews. ’
“I'd like to talk to you about the
Monohan case,” the attorney said,
“What about it?” ;
“Frankly,” the lawyer went on, “I
have a client who, I believe from the
things he tells me, may know quite a
bit about the case. Now, I have ad-
vised him to go directly to you with
his information but, of course, I’m only
an attorney and I have no way of
forcing him to take my advice. I don’t
believe he will.
“The reason is this: If he does, he’s
afraid that he will be put in custody
immediately and his connection with
the case will be known. As soon as it
is, his life will be in grave danger,
even in prison. You know that.”
“AI right," Andrews said: “Maybe
it would be.”
“What Tiwould like to do is assure
him that if he tells you what he knows
and promises to stay in the vicinity,
he will not be placed in custody until
all the others are under arrest and
no one but you will know about him.”
“T think,” Chief Andrews said slowly,
“you can assure him of that.”
“Furthermore,” the lawyer said, “if
my client should prove to be involved,
he was an unwilling participant and
I certainly hope you will remember
what he did in clearing up the case
when it comes to trial. If, of course,
it should come to trial and he should
be involved.”
“We can’t promise you a thing as
far as the trial is concerned,” Andrews
replied, “That’s up to the prosecutor
and the judge. But we can make
recommendations.”
“Good. Be at my office at two o'clock
tomorrow. Keep anyone from knowing
what’s going on and, above all, make
sure it doesn't leak to the newspapers.”
“You won’t have to worry about
that.”
The following day Andrews, Coveney
and McAuliffe were at the attorney's
office. They arrived separately and
slipped in without being seen.
Baxter Shorter was there.
Shorter told them: “You know I have
a record. Well, I could tell you about
Some safecracking jobs lately but I
won’t. I’m not going to say anything
about them. Is that clear?”
The officers agreed. “All we're
interested in right now is the Monohan
killing,” Chief Andrews said.
“But remember: You don’t pick me
up. You don’t come around my place.
You leave me strictly alone until after
you have all the others.”
THis is the story Shorter then told,
according to Chief Andrews:
“Santo is down in Las Vegas and he
hears a hot tip. A big-shot gambler
down there by the name of Scherer is
supposed to have planted three hun-
dred grand in jewels and two hundred
grand in cash with Mrs. Monohan,
“We're all in on it—me, Santo, Per-
kins, True, the Graham girl, Ned Ver-
ble. Only Ned backs out before we take
any action.
“The rest of us case the joint out
good and I’m to work on the safe. We
get to her place about nine o’clock on
Monday night. Santo, Perkins and
True sneak into the front yard and
hide in the shrubs alongside the house.
Barbara Graham goes up to the house
and rings the bell.
“Mrs. Monohan opens the peep-hole
in her door and asks her who she is and
what she wants and Barbara tells her
that her car has broken down and she
wants to use the telephone to call a
garage.
“The old lady opens the door and
when she does, Santo, Perkins and
True jump.out of the shrubs with their
guns. They go inside and shut the door.
Me, I’m on the outside as lookout until
they can find the safe.
“I’m there for maybe a half-hour or
longer when I get worried about being
at the place so long, so I slip inside,
“Santo and Perkins are going nuts.
They have torn the house @part. Santo
has the old woman tied up in the hall
and he’s hitting her with the barrel of
his gun. I tell him to quit it. ;
“Barbara is there and she yells at
Santo, ‘Hit her again; she’s still mov-
ing!’ I’m telling you, it made me sick
to my stomach. I’ve got a record but
you can look it up for yourself. I never
hurt nobody. I never even stole from
nobody who couldn't afford to lose a
few bucks—and that’s on the level.”
Shorter said they had been unable
to find the suitcases containing the
cash and jewelry, according to Chief
Andrews, and they stayed in the house
for nearly two hours searching it while
Santo beat Mrs. Monohan and dragged
her from room to room, insisting she .
tell him where it was hidden.
“When we are ready to leave,” the
alleged statement continued, “Santo
ties a rag around the old lady’s neck.
in sh atta,
She looks dead to me already, but. when
nobody is watehing Pout it loose Talon't
want no part of the gas chamber and
like I told you, I don’t ever hurt nobody.
— “When we pet back to town, I slip
away from the others and call an am-
bulance. I don’t know why they don't
send one out there. I guess it don't
make much difference, though, be-
cause the way Santo beat her, she ain't
going to live anyhow.”
THE story Shorter told agreed with
what the officers already had heard
about the case. Particularly the call for
the ambulance, for they had kept the
call a secret and Shorter wouldn't know
about it unless he actually had made it.
“Why didn’t you tell us this when we
had you in last week?” Andrews asked
him. ‘We had the others then and we
could have cracked it right away.”
Shorter laughed. “Look, Mister, you
forget I did a stretch at San Quentin.
The easiest place in the world to killa
guy is in jail. I give you the story last
week while you’ve got them in the same
jail with me and I’m dead. You find me
in the morning with a shiv in my ribs.”
“But will you testify to what you
have told us? Will you sign a state-
ment?”
“Tll give you the statement. Only
don’t come near me until you've got the
others in jail. Then keep me in another
jail. When they hear I talked, if they
can get at me I’m dead—you under-
Stand that, I’m dead.”
Andrews asked: “Where are Santo
and the others now?”
“I don't know; I haven't seen them.
We figure the only way you cops got us
tagged for this Monohan case is you
must be hot on some of the other stuff,
So we decide to knock it off for awhile.
The boys all figure on crawling into a
hole until the heat is off. You'll have to
find them.”
“And are you positive you don’t want
protection?. We could place some men
at your apartment-house—”
“You keep your men away from me!”
Shorter cried. “Santo can smell a copa
mile away. He sees them around my
Place and he’s going to get suspicious,
Just leave me alone. I have-a Tifle and
I'll take care of myself.”
As the officers were about to leave,
Shorter told them:
“Here’s something else. If you solve
the Monohan case maybe you can get
a really big one up north.”
“What do you mean?” 4
“Remember a grocer and some kids -
who were killed up there?”
“You mean the Guard Young case?”
“I guess that’s the name.”
“One of this mob did that?”
Shorter shrugged. “I don’t know
about it. But you can ask. If a man’s
going to smell cyanide for the old lady,
he won’t be no deader for the others.
You ask about it. I wasn’t around, but
I just heard.” >.
The case Shorter referred to was the
‘quadruple slaying of grocer Guard
Young and three small children near
Chester in Plumas County on October
10, 1952.
Young with three of his own children
and a four-year-old neighbor boy had
driven to Westwood where he withdrew
$7,128 to use in his supermarket. in
Chester to cash checks for his logger
customers.
When he: failed to return that. eve-
ning, a search was started for him and
the children. The following day a hunt-
er discovered Young’s body near his
car. His wrists had been bound and he
had been severely beaten before being
killed with a shot through the head. In
the trunk of the car were the bodies of
Jean, seven, Judy, six, Sondra, three,
and Michael Saile. Sondra was still
alive. She was rushed to the hospital
where doctors despaired of saving her
for days. Finally, however, she re-
covered,
All the child could remember was
that two men had stopped their car.
She described one of the men as tall
and thin.
Santo was six feet one and less than
160 pounds.
When the detectives left the attor-
ney’s . office, they rushed to Los
Angeles Headquarters to see Lavold.
John True, deep-sea diver: He went after other things, police
say, instead of 50,000,000 board feet of
very often and for that reason she as
yet had made no effort to get it back.
“We hear your mother may have
had an interest in a gambling estab-
lishment in Las Vegas,” Andrews said.
“Is it possible the killing could be con-
nected with that in some way?”
Mrs. Sowder said the rumor was
ridiculous.
“Mother and my first husband always
got along fine and they were friends
even after I divorced him,” Mrs. Sow-
der said. She added lightly: “They were
both about the same age and had the
same interests but I’m sure Tutor nev-
er gave her any gambling interests he
might have had.”
Mrs. Sowder promised that she and
her husband would get the first plane
and fly to California to take care of:
funeral arrangements and answer any
further questions. , :
Later in the evening, the Auto Theft
division of the Los Angeles police re-
ported a possible lead on the gray-
haired man and the yellow convertible
Emmett Perkins, left: He kept
his false teeth in. his pocket
octor Hutton had seen near Mrs.
onohan’s home.
A former vaudeville performer by the
ume of George Dudley had rented a
low convertible on Monday after-
on, He had failed to return the car
id it had been found abandoned in a
wking-lot on South Main Street
ednesday morning.
“This Dudley has gray hair,” a Los
igeles officer told Andrews. “But ap-
rently he gave his right name and
dress when he rented the car. We've
en to the hotel where he was staying
d he hasn’t been in since Monday.”
Dudley, a former vaudeville man,
uld have known Mrs. Monohan. An
-points bulletin was issued for him.
The following morning, Doctor New-
rr had his report ready-on the autop-
findings. Mrs. Monghan had died
m asphyxiation due to strangulation
lumber he'd located
and from a cranial hemorrhage. Nu-
merous cuts and bruises on her face,
head and hands had been made by
some relatively sharp instrument.
“In other words, she was strangled
and beaten to death,” Andrews said.
“That's right,” Doctor Newbarr re-
plied. “But the killer did not use his
hands to strangle her. She has a bruise
around the throat. Very likely, he used
a piece of the same cloth that bound
her wrists.”
ANDREWS asked about the time of
death and Doctor Newbarr placed
it as sometime Monday evening.
He added one very important bit of
information. Bits of skin and flesh had
been found under the dead woman’s
nails, showing that she had clawed her
assailant, ;
“If you can catch up with him in
the next week or so, he’ll have the
marks she put on him,” the Doctor said. -
The autopsy findings bore out the
earlier theory that Mrs. Monohan had
’
not died immediately, She suffered a
prolonged and vicious beating. Depth
of the wounds indicated that the weap-
on might have been a pistol barrel,
“Don't overlook the possibility the
killer could be’ someone with a deep
hatred or a grudge against her,” Doctor
Newbarr warned. “Only someone with
a vicious nature or an unbalanced mind
would inflict a beating like this old
lady took.” -
Mr. and Mrs. Sowder arrived by plane
in the afternoon and Andrews and Mc-
Auliffe met them at the airport. °
Andrews first asked the daughter if
she recognized the name of George
Dudley, the vaudeville man. She did
not. He described the white-haired man .
Doctor Hutton had seen but again she
could not help. . :
Mrs. Sowder said her mother was
very fond of playing poker for small
stakes and she and a number of friends
took turns entertaining in their homes
almost weekly. Andrews got a list of
their names from her and sent out de-
tectives to question them.
Mrs. Sowder immediately offered a
$5,000 reward for any information lead-
ing to the arrest and conviction of the
slayer of her mother. With the Officers,
she opened her mother’s safe-deposit
box. They found in it 1,350 shares in
the Frontier Club, a Las Vegas gambling
casino. The shares, however, would
yield a return of only about $800 a year
and apparently could have had no con-
nection with the slaying,
That evening Mr. and Mrs. Sowder
went to the house with the officers,
Judging from the way the place had.
been torn apart, the investigators were
convinced the slayer had been search-
ing for something, Possibly some kind
- of a safe. ‘
Mrs. Sowder, however, insisted that
she knew of no safe. Nor did she know
what could have been in the house
that the killer wanted.
“After my divorce from Tutor, I gave
mother forty thousand dollars.” Mrs.
Sowder said. “Mother put it in the
bank. Anyone who knew her would
have known the money was in the bank.
Mother had practically no jewelry, so
I ope think what they could have been
after.” j sie
Chief Andrews sent word to Las
Vegas that he wanted to talk with
Scherer to find out if he knew of any-
thing hidden in the house, or if he had
installed a safe while he was living
there. :
That same evening George Dudley
was picked up in a downtown Los’
Angeles bar. The elderly showman
admitted knowing Mrs. Monohan dur-
ing the days when she and her husband
had been on the vaudeville circuit.
He admitted going to her house on
Monday evening.
Brought into the Burbank Headquar-
ters, Dudley told Andrews: “I read in
the papers where Mabel’s daughter had
been married to Scherer and was now
hooked up to that millionaire oi] man.
I figured Mabel must be in the blue
chips.” .
Dudley said he was flat broke, with-
out even money to pay his room rent.
“But I had some good clothes left.
I rented a flashy car and drove out to
see her,
‘ing at a resort.
“I told her I was broke and I tried to
get her to lend me some money. She
told me if she loaned dough to all the
broken-down bums she had known in
vaudeville, it wouldn’t be long before
she would be broke, too. She wouldn't
give me a dime.”
Andrews said he had left the house
about eight o’clock and Mrs. Monohan
was alive at that time. _
‘He said he had driven back to Los
Angeles and he did not have enough
money to pay for the rented car.
“I didn’t want to be accused of steal-
ing it, that’s why I put it ina parking-
lot,” he declared. “I knew I was up
against it. Then, when I read about
Mabel being killed in the paper, I was
really scared. But I swear I never laid
a finger on her.” i :
Dudley was given a close examina-
tion. He had no scratches on him.
Doctor Newbarr had said the killer
would be marked from the clawing by
Mrs. Monohan. ‘
Further, Dudley insisted. he was -
wearing the same clothes he’d had on
when he was at the house.. He had not
gone back to his hotel for fear of being
arrested for not-paying for the rented
automobile. No bloodstains could. be
found on his clothes, if
He was held on a charge of defraud-
ing the auto-rental agency while the
detectives investigated further. -
Tutor Scherer then was located in
Palm Springs where he was vacation-
Lieutenant Coveney
and Detective Vandergrift drove down
to interview the 73-year-old gambler,
“I’m sorry Mabel was clipped,”
Scherer told them. “She and I got
along swell. Strictly because of her I
didn’t put up any fight about the house
when Iris and I were divorced. I knew
Mabel liked the place.” -
Asked about a safe or any hiding-
places in the house, Scherer told them:
“I never had a safe in the house and
I never kept anything there. A man is
a@ sucker to keep anything valuable
where he lives. Banks have safe-
deposit boxes.”
He insisted he had no idea what any-
one could have been looking for in the
house, or why the killers had tortured
Mrs. Monohan. The last time he had
seen her, he said, was nearly a year
previously. ;
“I was in town buying some chips
‘(Continued on Page 49)
11
-
SST SASS OCT
The Mystery of Mabel Monohan
and cards for one of my places in Las
Vegas,” he declared. “I had two suit-
cases full, Then I was going out to
dinner with some friends and I didn't
want to leave the stuff in my car because
good chips and cards run into dough,
so I stopped by Mabel’s place and left
the cases with her. I picked them up
later in the evening and I haven't seen
or heard from her since.”
In Glendale, Captain Hagi located
Fred Gooble, the suspect in the slaying
of Mrs, Kirk. Gooble was questioned
closely but was able to give an air-tight ©
alibi for all of Monday evening.
HEN a week of intense investiga-
tion had ended, the officers had
not uncovered a single lead to the slay-
ing-of the widow.
They were convinced that the killer
_ was known to Mrs. Monohan, that she .
had let him into the house thinking he
had come on a friendly call, that he
was after something he believed was‘ -
hidden in the, house and that: he had
tortured and finally killed her in an
attempt to force her to reveal where
it was kept.
But what he was after, was still a
mystery.
A strange twist was given the case
when a switchboard operator at the Los
Angeles Emergency Hospital reported
that a telephone call had been received
on the Monday night Mrs. Monohan
had been slain, requesting that an
ambulance be sent to No. 1718 West
Parkside Avenue,
However no such number was listed
in Los Angeles and the ambulance was
not sent out. :
This was the correct address for Mrs.
Monohan’s home in Burbank. The call
had been placed at eleven o’clock from
a pay station at Sunset and Vermont |
Avenues in Los Angeles. Bécause more
than a week had elapsed, the service-
station operator where the pay tele-
phone was 4ocated could not recall who
had used the telephone at that time. ‘
But the fact that the call was made
altered the investigators’ thinking on
the case. '
If the ambulance had been sent out,
it might have arrived in time to save.
Mrs. Monohan’s life. Doctor Newbarr
said Mrs. Monohan could have lived for
several hours after receiving the-beat-
ng.
Why would a killer wHo tortured his
victim so brutally and viciously sud-
denly have a change of heart and
request an ambulance? Why, too, if
the killer was known to her, would he
want to save her life? Alive, she could
identify him. :
George Dudley, the vaudeville man, _
was questioned again, He was able to
name a bar he had visited after leaving"
Mrs. Monohan’s house. The bartender
there recalled that Dudley had been in
the place from shortly after nine until
it closed. Dudley could not have made .
the call.
“I can’t figure it,” Andrews told his
investigators as they discussed the new
angle. “Everything we have learned
points to the fact that Mrs. Monohan
would not let a stranger into her house,
But if her killer was known to her, I
can’t see him calling an ambulance to
save her life so she could finger him.”
The others agreed.
McAuliffe added: “If we could only
get some idea what the killer was after.
He tore the house to pieces and tortured
her to death and nobody can even give
us a hint.”
Then, after nearly two weeks of
investigation, Chief William A. Parker
of Los Angeles called Andrews.
Across the nation, narcotics
men struck recently to. halt
drug sales to juveniles, In
charge of Philadelphia raids was
Joseph Bransky. See Page 20
“How's the Monohan case coming?”
Parker asked.,
“I wish she had lived in Los Angeles
instead of out here in Burbank and
then it would be your baby,”’ Andrews
said bitterly. “Frankly, we're stumped.”
“It's just possible we may be able to
give you some help,” Parker said. ‘I’m
sending out Lieutenant E. S. Lavold of
our Burglary Squad. We'll put him on
Joan to you for awhile.”
“What does he have?” Andrews
asked eagerly.
“T’ll let Lavold tell you when he gets
there. He's just gone over it with me
and there’s one condition. Lavold
must not be put into a spot where he
might have to reveal the source of his
information.”
“It’s a deal!” A#ndrews cried. “Right
now, we'd do just about anything for
a lead on the case.”
“t
“- : eames
(Continued from Page 11)
When Lavold arrived in Burbank, he
explained to Chief Andrews and_ his
detectives:
“We've been working on a gang of
state-wide safecrackers and burglars.
Our office has been cooperating with
San Francisco and the State bureau in
Sacramento. We know we have pegged
the right boys but so far we don't have
enough evidence to haul them in and
be sure of a conviction.”
“6 HAT'S the connection with the
Monohan case?" Andrews asked.
“I'm getting to that. We've had a
man planted in the gang for nearly a
year. It's a tough mob of ex-cons who
know their business and go after only
big-time stuff.
“Well, I picked up a rumble from our
plant yesterday that a couple members
of this gang just messed up a big job.
(
Ccmacane bommmnd Eg
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aie ak
HB sown 4
Read It First In
OFFICIAL DETECTIVE STORIES
The way my informant gave it to me
was like this:
“A big-time gambler in Las Vegas—
I didn't get any name but I think
maybe you can figure out who it would
be—came into possession of three
hundred thousand dollars’ worth of
jewelry and two hundred thousand in
cash. He wanted to ditch the stuff to
escape income tax. So he packed it in
two suitcases and left it with Mrs.
Monohan.”
“Scherer!” Coveney cried. “He told
us he left two suitcases with Mrs.
Monohan, but he claimed they were
filled with poker chips and cards.”
Lavold reached into his coat pocket
and brought out a handful of mug
photographs.
“Here are the boys who supposedly
are part of the safe mob and also
‘handled your Monohan case. My in-
me
oe!
,
Boe age
¢, Wig 72
“Af wv, a *, th
th Shorter as their witness, they had
re then enough evidence with jwhich
1old the rest of the gang.
How soon can ,we grab them?”
drews asked Lavold after giving him
story Shorter had told.
It isn’t going to be easy this time,”
‘old replied. “They are wise that
re after them on the other jobs. I
ured we were taking that chance .
en I gave you their names and you
1 them picked up. We tried to tail
m when they were released but they
gave us the slip except True.”
\VOLD said that he had word True
was in a cabin with a friend in the
ther Lode country southeast of
sramento.
janto, Perkins, Verble and the
aham girl had disappeared.
“he problem was, how to proceed?
“hey couldn’t afford to issue a pick-
bulletin for the gang for fear word
ild leak out and Shorter would be in
iger. The job of locating each one
1 keeping him under surveillance
il the others could be picked up was
10st impossible. The gang was
ooky” after being questioned and
ild move as soon as they had a hint
y were being watched.
We're going to have to. take a
nce,” Andrews decided. “We'll pick
True and hold him incommunicado.
ybe we can worm out of him where
others are. At least we'll have him
ice while we look for the others.”
\ndrews meanwhile had notified the
te Bureau of Criminal Identifica-
1 and Investigation about the lead
Santo as a possible suspect in the
»ster massacre. George Brereton,
ef of the Bureau, declared that
ito already had been considered as
@ suspect in the case. He had been
questioned and gave an_alibi for the
time. of the slaying. Although the alibi
was unsatisfactory, the police had been
unable to break it.
Coveney, Lavold and an investigator
from the State Attorney General’s
office were sent to bring in True.
Andrews warned them when they
left: “Take him as quietly as you can.
We don’t want any word to leak out
that we're holding him until we get
our hands on the others.”
In Sacramento the officers learned
the location of the cabin. They staked
it out and waited until the owner of the
cabin had gone out, leaving True alone
in it. When they broke in late that
afternoon to arrest True, they found
him in the bathtub.
Unfortunately, the owner of the
cabin had left a small child and a baby-
sitter in the cabin. The officers had not
. known about them.
When True demanded to know why
he was being taken, the officers were
unable to say anything for fear the
baby-sitter would report that he was
being arrested as a suspect in the
Monohan case.
True was rushed to Stockton where:
he was booked on a technical charge
“en route to Sacramento” under the
name of James Murphy. He insisted
that he did not know the whereabouts
‘of Santo, Perkins, Verble or the
Graham girl. by
T= following day True was being
taken to Burbank for questioning to
be faced with the confession from
Shorter when the whole story appeared
in the newspapers. True’s friend had
returned to the cabin and the baby-
sitter had told him about three men
coming in and taking True away. The
friend called Sheriff Wayne Brown of
Grass Valley and reported that True
had been kidnaped. - .
Sheriff Brown did not know why the
officers had taken True and gave the
story to the local newspaper. True’s
name and description were carried on
the wire-service.
When the news hit Los Angeles,
Newspaper editors there immediately
recognized True as one of the men who
had been held in the Monohan case:
The headlines hit the streets and
Andrews hit the ceiling when he saw
them. He immediately called Shorter.
“You'd better let us take you in pro-
tective custody,” he suggested. “Santo
‘and the others are bound to see in the
papers that we’ve picked up True.”
“Santo won't know I was the one who
squealed as long as you’ve only picked
up True,” Shorter said. “I’ll take care
of myself.”
“Let me send some men out to keep
you covered.”
“You keep your men away from me,”
Shorter cried. “You promised you
wouldn’t come near’ me. I told you
Santo can smell a cop. If he comes
around here and sees cops, he’ll know
what’s up.”
True refused to talk. He insisted that
he knew Santo only casually and had
no connection with the gang. The
Police were not ready to confront him
with Shorter’s confession for fear of
another leak.
Shortly after eight o'clock that eve-
ning, Mrs. Olivia Shorter called the
Los Angeles police.
“They got Baxter!” she cried. “They
came and got Baxter!” -
Chief of Detectives Thad Brown and
Homicide officers Jack McCreadie,
William Cummings and J. W. Buckley
rushed to the Shorter apartment.
Mrs. Baxter tearfully told them that
at ten minutes after eight o'clock, a
knock had sounded at their door.
Shorter opened the door and a man was
standing in the hall with a gun.
“Come on, Baxter, let’s go.”
Shorter had walked out into the:hall
with him. :
Mrs. Shorter raced into the bedroom
and got the rifle. She caught up with
her husband and the man as they
reached the front door of the.apart-
ment-house.
The man placed a pistol to Shorter’s
head and told Mrs. Shorter: “Go on
back inside your apartment or Baxter
is going to die right here.”
She said the man had marched
Shorter outside to an old, blue-gray
sedan waiting at the curb. She saw a
bmg at the wheel and a girl in the back
seat. :
Mrs. Shorter could not describe the
Persons she had seen in the car, but
she was able to give a very good
description of the man who had kid-
naped her husband. :
Shown a picture of Emmett Perkins,
police claimed she cried: “That’s the
pe I'd know him anywhere! He’s the
man!”
“The police announced that they be-
lieved the persons in the car were
.Santo and the Graham girl.
In this pleasant lowa City
home young Charles Nelson,
inset, couldn't live with
his horrible secret. Turn
to Page 14 for this story
Shorter, their only witness, had been
taken for a one-way ride.
Immediately a general alarm was
sounded throughout the Southwest for
Shorter, Santo, Perkins and Barbara
Graham. Their pictures were given to
the newspapers and_ special radio
broadcasts were made pleading with
anyone who saw them to notify the
police at once.
But several days went by without a
word.
Andrews announced: “We are sure
he is dead. Our only hope now is to find
his body and get the others on the
charge of kidnaping and killing him.”
In the meantime, an attorney for
True filed a writ of habeas corpus in
the Nevada County Superior Court of
Judge James Snell, charging that offi-
cers under the direction of Andrews
had kidnaped True and were holding
him in custody illegally.
True continued to deny that he knew
anything about the death of Mrs.
Monohan and because he had been in
custody couldn’t possibly have had any
connection with the kidnaping of
Shorter.
“I’m just a diver,” he announced. “I
work in the logging camps around
Idaho recovering sunken logs from the
rivers. I’ve been thinking of going in
business for myself if Northern Cali-
fornia getting sunken logs out of the
lakes there. I have found fifty million
board feet of sunken logs in the lakes
that can be recovered and will be just
as good as the day they sank.
“I have no criminal record and I
know Santo only casually, The: police
jong lg a a mistake by mixing me up
this.”
Judge Snell set a date for the officers -
to return True to Nevada County and
explain why they were holding him.
Every police agency in California
was cooperating with the Burbank of-
ficials to locate some clue to the miss-
ing Shorter.
[x DESPERATION the officers ques-
tioned every neighbor Santo and
Perkins ever had had. From one of
them they learned that Santo had been
friendly with a woman who worked in
central California. Located, this
woman readily admitted that she knew
Santo “rather well” and that three
weeks previously he had borrowed her
1952 two-tone green Oldsmobile sedan.
She hadn't seen him, or the car, since.
An all-points bulletin was issued for
the car. ;
Motor vehicle records revealed that
Barbara Graham owned an old blue-
gray Plymouth. Mrs. Shorter had said
her husband was kidnaped in such a
car. Possibly, the police theorized, the
kidnapers had transferred Shorter to
a faster car.
Further questioning of the woman in
central California stirred new action
for the State Crime Bureau on the
Chester massacre. She recalled that
she had gone for a visit to Reno with
Santo on October 11. The day before—
the day Guard Young and the three
children had been slain—Santo had
been. in Chester on a hunting trip.
While all this was going on time ran
out for holding True. Burbank officers
either had to place charges against him
or release him.
Without Shorter as a witness, they
had no case. True was released.
Then a fisherman, William Elmer
Reed, hooked onto a bundle in the
Sacramento River between Junction
Point and Grand Island. Inside a brown
blanket, wrapped in newspapers, was
a headless, handless, footless torso.
Coroner’s Deputy Farlin Ball an-
nounced “the body seems to have been
in the water about the same length of
time that Baxter Shorter has been
missing. But without a head, hands or
feet, we have no way of telling who it
might be. All we can say is that it’s the
|
|
h.
no 7
TINS
eT Ire
Faithless—Texas ex-convict 19-year-
old Alton Franks, pardoned from Hunts-
ville Prison, gained attention when a
‘fellow convict, J. C. Henderson, gave him
See Mi
Alton and Betty couldn’
$19,000 with no strings attyched if he
would “go straight” (A Walkkt Full Of
Faith, September INSIDE, 1953). With his
15-year-old wife and Willie ColemawCos-
by, 18, Franks is now accused of a ga<o-
line station holdup in Arizona. All three
were taken into custody. Franks became
ill, went into convulsions, and was taken to
a prison hospital in Phoenix, Ariz. There,
he was shackled to his bed until he should
improve. Somehow he escaped. He fled
to Louisiana, then decided to turn around
and give himself up in Houston, Tex., his
home town.
year term for murder, said he has become
“soured on the world.” ;
Coming To Look—A motion to quash
the indictment charging Russell C. Stack-
house with the murder of his fourth wife,
Janie (Jf I Don’t Answer, Come Look
For Me, November rinse, 1953) was
filed in Sebring, Fla., defense attorney
charging that the indictment did not state
the means or the instrument.
chiatrists, however, reported at a sanity:
hearing that Stackhouse-would nofNin any:
event, be able to stand trial. Stackhtwag
has been ryled insane and has been com-
mitted t
fOn at Chattahoochee. ;
Locked Out—Mrs. Barbara Graham,
Jack Santo and Emmett Perkins were con-
victed in a Los Angeles, Cal., court of
the first degree murder of Mrs. Mabel
Monohan (Mabel Couldn't Lock Out
Murder, September INSIDE, .1953). The
verdict carried with it no recommendation
for leniency, making the death penalty
mandatory under California law.
Stop Staring —James Roy Johnson of
Columbus, O., won freedom from the
harge of having murdered his 25-year-
oN wife (Stop Staring At Me, Novembe
INSID
Columb’
Henderson, serving a 50
Two psy-
he Florida State Mental Insti-
wig by New Orleans, La., detec-
ohnson recalled having attended a
which. Bessie Nina Jessup Johnson was
found dead in New Orleans. Johnson had
he had suffered from a six-month “men-
i953). He had told a waitress/in S
om- tal blackout.” :
that he believed he hag
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4
elec
50
How’s your memory? The
photos below have all appeared
in INSIDE. If you fail to
recognize at least one of these
faces, your camera-eye needs
sharpening. Place half of them
and you have a talent for
spotting elusive faces. Four or
more suggests you’re a careful
reader of ID and would make
a pretty good detective. Check
your answers on page 72.
itiede
1. A BASKET CASE, he has made
an important place for himself
in the underworld west ‘of the
International Dateline. Master-
mind, dealer in dreams, he's un-
dermined many a patriotic G.I.
stable? He took part in a wild
chase in the Cumberland Moun-
tain area of Georgia and Ten-.
nessee. A lot of ammunition was
used but. no one got hurt.
ostu
2. GUNMAN or country con-—
a
3. DOLLAR-WEALTHY and
moral-poor, this . drape-shaped
fellow took a three year jolt for
“salesmanship.” Interest in his”
trial centered on his merchandise
and the names of his customers.
4. MURDER is what he confessed,
the murder of his common law
wife, but he was let off Scot-free.
He is shown here with his head
bowed upon his lawyer's chest.
5. HANDCUFFED and swerthy,
with jewelry and a wad of bills.
at his fingertips, this Spanish-
speaking man played a part in
a fnurder plot and frame up.
Can you put the finger on him?
6. LIVE FOREVER, he promised,
by following his theories. in
physics and. electronics. The
American Physical Society
laughed off this shrewd-eyed
ent. .They shouldn't have.
was no such address as that in Los Angeles.
The call was traced to a public phone in a
service station at Vermont and Sunset in Los
Angeles, but no one there could recall who’d
made it.
To Coveney, However, the information was
a needed shot in the arm. It was illogical to
suppose the killer himself would trouble to
order an ambulance for the victim. Thus a
second person either was a party to the crime
and felt remorseful afterwards or an innocent
individual knew somehow about the crime
and wanted to aid the police and the victim
herself.
At any rate, a crime known to more than one
person at least offered a better chance of
solution.
The lieutenant was playing around with
still another thought which he had discussed
frequently with Chief Andrews. It concerned
the Dincaro Stock Farm, a onetime Burbank
gambling joint operated by Mickey Cohen, the
dapper Los Angeles mobster now doing a
stretch in a federal pen for income tax
evasion.
The Dincaro establishment had been lo-
cated only a short distance from the Monohan
house and it was Coveney’s hunch that Cohen’s
associates were well aware that Tutor Scherer
had lived there prior to his divorce from Iris.
Perhaps Mickey’s ‘boys,’ figuring the elderly
Scherer was still staching some of his fortune
there, had pulled off the luckless caper result-
ing in Mrs. Monohan’s death.
W ORKING along these lines, Coveney and
YY his men picked up five men for question-
ing. They were Solly Davis and Joe Allen, for-
mer stick men at the Dincaro dice tables;
William Upshaw, an admitted gambler and
card dealer, and Baxter M. Shorter, like Davis
an_ex-con. The fifth suspect, after a lie detector
test, was released. . ‘
Grilled for five days—from March 25 to
29—Davis and Allen .were able to provide
alibis for the night of March 9. Shorter and
Upshaw, however, insisted they could not
recall where they’d been on the murder night.
- After lie detector tests, Allen and Davis
were released on writs—but not before Davis,
a one-time Cohen lieutenant, admitted that he
and Shorter had cased the Monohan residence
in November, 1951, for purposes of burglary
but had never gone through with the job.
. Shorter denied this and refused to have any-
thing to do with a lie detector test. Upshaw
also nixed such a test.
Unable to hold the two remaining suspects
any longer without substantial evidence, Cove-
ney ordered Upshaw’s release and prepared
to do the same with Shorter. :
The lieutenant made a personal ‘visit to
Shorter’s cell.
“Look here, Bax,” the officer said. “You're
not the murdering type. Why not come clean
with me and spill what you know ‘of the
Monohan job.”
Shorter hesitated, drew a long breath, then
nodded and asked to speak to Chief Andrews.
When the chief arrived, Shorter stated
flatly, “I don’t go for murder.” He promised,
if released, to, return with the whole story.
Shorter held to his promise. Three days later
he came in and talked.
He said he had accompanied three men and a
woman to the Monohan home in what he’d
been told was a safe burglary heist. The
take, he’d been told, would be some $150,000
in currency and a similar amount in jewelry.
Shorter was to act as lookout. The money,
he was a:
Tutor Sch:
Shorter
names. H
and the n
cons, and
After dr
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When t |
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Mrs. M
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lie detector
irch 25 to
to provide
shorter and
could not
irder night.
and Davis
fore Davis,
ted that he
in residence
of burglary
the job.
) have any-
st. Upshaw
ng suspects
ence, Cove-
d prepared
al visit to
ud. “You’re
come clean
iow ‘of the
oreath, then
ef Andrews.
rter stated
ie promised,
e story.
re days later
e men anda
i what he’d
heist. The
me $150,000
in jewelry.
The money,
he was assured, had been cached there by
Tutor Scherer. :
Shorter knew the gang only by their first
names. He identified. the woman as Barbara
and the men as Emmett and Jack, both. ex-
cons, and John, a deep sea diver.
After driving to the Monohan house, Short-
er went on, the men concealed themselves
around the lawn and Barbara knocked on the
front door...
When the peephole opened, Barbara told a
" story of her car having broken down and want-
ing to use the telephone to call a garage.
Mrs. Monohan opened the door and Barbara
‘ pushed her way in. She almed a gun at the
crippled woman’s head and the others followed
her in. Shorter said he was summoned into
the house a few moments later and saw
Emmett slug the old lady. ;
When he protested, he was told to “get the
hell out”—which he did. “4
It was he, Shorter continued, who put in
the call for an ambulance. In his excitement,
he said, he’d failed to stress that the Parkside
address was in Burbank, not Los Angeles.
W HERE the gang hid out, he did not know.
But he would testify against the four of
them, once they were in custody, he promised.
Shorter was released, in order not to tip off
the killers that he had “sung.” Chief Andrews
offered him police protection, but the man
refused it, insisting he owned a 30-30 rifle
and could take care of himself. .
Coveney’s next problem was no small one—
to obtain full identification on Barbara and
her male cohorts, Emmett, Jack and John.
With the help of the intelligence detail of the
Los Angeles police department, the identifica-
tions were completed a week later.
Emmett reputedly was Emmett Raymond
Perkins, a skinny, jug-eared man of 44 who
frequently carried his false teeth in his pocket.
‘ Jack was John Albert Santo, 48, a towering
balding individual who, like Perkins, had a
police record dating back. more than 25 years.
John, the deep sea diver, was John L. True,
38, a handsome, husky. man who hailed from
San Francisco and had no police record.
The woman was Barbara Graham, 29,
blonde, attractive, the mother of a 14-month-
old son, She was separated from her husband’
and was the girlfriend of Perkins. Her record,
going back several years, included arrests. on
narcotics charges, vagrancy and disorderly
conduct and she was currently wanted for
reportedly forging seven worthless checks.
Santo, the police files disclosed, was a top
suspect in the ruthless massacre October 10,
1952, of Gard Young, a Chester, Cal., grocer
and three children in the robbery of Young.
Santo, known to have been in the Northern
California town the day of the quadruple
murders, had ‘been questioned but was released
for lack of evidence.
Coveney and his men worked quietly, trac-
ing True to Grass Valley, in the California
Mother Lode country. Jack Santo, they
learned, was due in Reno, Nev., on the night of
April 11. Perkins and Barbara Graham were
believed to be holed up in Los Angeles.
Burbank Detectives Loranger and Vander-
grift, and Detective Sergeant Ed Lovold, a
safe expert borrowed from Los Angeles police,
walked in on the afternoon of April 11 as True
was taking a bath in a Grass Valley. cabin,
ordered him to dress and spirited him away.
Simultaneously, Coveney and a California
state’s. attorney investigator waited in_ Reno
to nab Santo. . '
But word of True’s arrest reached. Nevada
County, Cal., sheriff’s officials who misinter-
preted the secret seizure as a kidnaping and
‘newspapers promptly Jet out with the story.
It was enough to wreck Coveney’s carefully
hatched plans. Santo never reached Reno and
Perkins and the Graham woman dropped from
sight in Los_Afgeles. i
True was hustled to Burbank but the red-
haired prisoner, while admitting knowing
Santo and Tutor Scherer, claimed. not to
know anything of the Monohan slaying. He
refused a lie detector test and presented a
vague alibi; he was. in Los Angeles Sunday, -
March 8, the day before. the killing, but in-
sisted he had taken a bus back to Grass Valley
that same, afternoon. ‘
True was booked-on suspicion of murder. In
a police lineup, Baxter Shorter, without True’s
knowledge, fingered the prisoner as the “John”
who'd been at the Monohan house’ with him
and the others. .
Late the afternoon of April 14, word leaked
out in downtown Los Angeles—and was pub-
lished in a Los Angeles newspaper—that the
killers of Mrs. Monohan were known and that
the information had been given to Burbank
authorities by an inférmant who was not now
in custody—an obvious reference to Baxter ~
Shorter. . :
Three hours later Los Angeles police re-
ceived a frantic call from Olivia Shorter. Her
husband, she said between sobs, had just been
abducted by a man at gunpoint. and rushed
away in a car driven by a second man.
The kidnaping had. taken: place at her
apartment on North Flower Street. When the
kidnaper appeared at the door, the woman
said, she took up a rifle but’ was forced to
drop it when the man threatened to kill her
husband on the spot.
_. Shown police photos of Perkins and Santo,
Mrs. Shorter unhesitatingly named Perkins as
the man.
_ Los Angeles police immediately issued an
all-points bulletin for the apprehension of
Perkins and Santo, who were believed to be
driving either a 1950 or 1951 Dodge or Plym-
outh, or possibly a 1952 two-tone green Olds-
mobile. E
As the hours passed, police officials began to
despair that Baxter Shorter would ever be .
seen alive again.
Meanwhile, attorneys for True demanded
his release and for a time it appeared that
_ Chief’ Andrews himself would be accused of
kidnaping the driver as a result: of the Grass
Valley arrest. ‘
Witt Shorter’s disappearance there was no-
hope of holding True further; evidence
was too meager. Glumly, the chief accepted
service of a writ and gave the prisoner his free-
dom after five days in custody.
~ I$ was inconceivable to Andrews and Cove-
ney that a case which one high law enforce-
ment official referred to as “one of the hottest
criminal cases in the state today,” pointing ©
strongly as it did to the pperation of a wide-
spread murder-robbery ring, should .go to
pieces so ignominously. ‘es
But there was yet another hope: it was
William Upshaw; who with Baxter: Shorter .
had refused to undergo a lie test. Upshaw
and Shorter were long-time pals and he likely
knew more than he professed to know. Per-
haps that had been the. reason for refusing
the test. ~ ;
But Upshaw couldn’t be located.
Nor was. there word on Baxter Shorter.
On May 4 came a break. A policewoman
picked up . Barbara Graham’s trail in Los
Angeles and followed her to suburban Lyn-
wood and to a store which had been converted
into an apartment. There, a score of officers
crashed in the front and rear doors and found
Barbara, With her were Perkins and Big
Jack Santo. :
The trio surrendered meekly, but they said
they knew nothing. Perkins denied the gun-
- point kidnaping of Shorter, even when Olivia
Shorter accused him to his face. P
Near the Lynwood hideout officers located
the two-tone green Oldsmobile, but there was
one noticeable difference: it had been newly
painted a solid green.
Significantly, the rubber mat in the trunk
compartment was missing—perhaps an indi-
cation that Shorter’s bullet-riddled and bloody
body had been transported in the vehicle.
PRINT men and lab technicians swarmed
over the car as the three suspects were
-booked on suspicion of murder. Perkins was
additionally charged with kidnaping and as-
sault with a deadly weapon and the Graham
woman with seven counts of check forgery.
The following day a second hideout—this
one a bungalow in nearby El Monte—was
turned up. In the bungalow investigators
found check writing equipment and a rubber
mask of the type used in the Brink’s stickup
in Boston. ;
Santo, meanwhile, had been released on a
writ by Los Angeles police and promptly re-
arrested by Burbank officials. ;
+The Oldsmobile had failed to disclose
Shorter’s fingerprints’ or any other concrete
clue that might point to his fate. Checking
the underpart of the vehicle, however, crime
Jab men found a tiny yellow wildflower
which a botany curator at Los Angeles county
museum identified as.a type growing only in
high Southern California mountain elevations
and in desert regions.
Santo insisted he had not driven the Olds
off the highway except near Las Vegas.
But the botanist pointed out that no such
wildflower grows there and the prisoner
clammed up. —
On May 13 William Upshaw walked into the
Los Angeles police headquarters, declaring he
‘had flown back from Mexico City as soon as
a friend notified him he was wanted for
questioning:
. Upshaw repeated that he knew nothing of
‘the Monohan case and that he was a legiti-
mate business man, engaged in the airplane
parts industry. :
But again he refused to submit to a lie
detector test.
Released by Los Angeles police, Burbank
detectives rearrested him. Finally, Upshaw
agreed to tell what he knew, promising to be-
come a prosecution witness.
He stated”that for a time he made up the
sixth member of the gang, along with Perkins,
Santo, True, Shorter and the Graham woman.
Upshaw said he and the others drove by
the Monohan home on the night of the mur-
der but that he decided against taking part
in the planned heisting and: was let out of the
car. The following day, he said, Shorter told
him what had happened.
Upshaw was released and reporters were
told that he was free of any suspicion in
connection with the Monohan case.
Then, on June 2, Upshaw returned—as a
surprise witness testifying before the county
grand jury. :
51
The same day, at Coveney’s request, John
True was arrested in a northern California
city and transferred to-San Francisco custody.
On June 3, the grand jury returned a
triple-pronged indictment based on Upshaw’s
testimony. It accused Perkins, Santo, True
and the Graham woman of conspiracy ‘to
commit burglary, robbery and murder in the
slaying of Mabel Monohan.
Coveney now flew north to work on True.
He knew that True had no police record and
that, if he were promised that a request for
‘eniency would be made in his behalf, he
would probably agree to turn state’s witness
against the rest of the gang.
With the same thought in mind, Chief As-
sistant Deputy District Attorney Adolph Alex-:
ander also headed for San Francisco.
But it was five days before the diver would
consent to the plan. Then he was returned
to Burbank.
On June 9, True appeared before another
session of the county grand jury and re-
peated the story he’d told Coveney and Alex-
ander. $
Here, at last, was an eye-witness, close-
a] FOAL ATI DD NIETO IE NET
up account of Mabel Monohan’s slaying.
True told how Barbara Graham charged
into the Parkside Avenue home, after hood-
winking the crippled woman into opening the
door.
True said he followed the blonde into the
house, and was folléwed in turn by Santo,
Perkins and, lastly, Shorter.
He related how he had watched, too shocked
to open his mouth, as the Graham woman
wielded the butt of her revolver hammer-like
against Mrs. Monohan’s head, time after time,
until the old lady dropped to the floor.
When the victim pleaded she had no cache
of money and jewelry in the house, Perkins
joined in striking her. At this point Barbara
Graham jumped up and down and shouted,
“Hit her again! Hit her again!”
Finally, when the woman lay quivering and
bleeding, praying for mercy and moaning,
Santo twisted a strip of cloth about her throat
and strangled her. Then he picked up her
body and tossed it into the linen closet.
After that the gang virtually ripped the
house apart, searching for the fortune.
True, an underwater mine salvage expert
told, too, about his meeting with Santo in
northern California and of Santo’s proposal
to join him in a mining venture in the southern
part of the state. Subsequently Santo casually
mentioned “pulling a caper soon”—a phrase
True said he didn’t understand.
Later, after he’d met the other gang mem-
bers, he was told what the caper was.
Having heard the star witness, the grand
jury returned a superseding indictment.
4. The bill accused Perkins, Santo, Barbara
Graham and True of murder, in addition to
the earlier charges of robbery, burglary and
murder conspiracy. \
All were ordered held without bail.
The district attorney announced he would
request the death penalty for all but True, and
that the question of leniency for the latter
would be a matter for court decision.
There was little doubt, however, that, as
promised him, leniency would be asked in his
behalf,
Even as the new indictment was returned,
probers in the state ‘attorney general’s office
.began requestioning Jack Santo regarding the
Chester killings. The Monohan case and its
evidences of bestiality convinced them Santo
was the moving spirit behind the quadruple
slaughter in the northern mountain town.
True, meanwhile, had been moved to a jail
far removed from Santo and Perkins, as a
precautionary measure.
No charges were planned against Upshaw.
AS for the missing Shorter, officers were
convinced he’d been taken for a one-way
ride. A few insisted the man had staged the
elaborate “kidnaping” as a means of side-
stepping the “heat” and would turn up one day
very much alive. To this the others countered
that Shorter was not under surveillance and
could have vanished without kicking up any
fuss at all.
On June 12, 1953, Santo, Perkins, Barbara
Graham and True were arraigned on the in-
dictment before Superior Judge William B.
Neeley.
The four will reappear in the courtroom June
22, at which time they are scheduled to enter
formal pleas to the charges.
Chief Andrews and Lieutenant Coveney ad-
mitted they were pleased. One of the state’s
most fanatastic cases appeared to be heading
toward a remarkably successful conclusion.
on Telegrap!
and he enter!
were such g¢
jans were sc:
Then Larr
who was 26,
lonesome. Sh
with other v
playing arou
On the n)
trude Hawk
in his living
It was nc
shot throug
Larry Tu
committed s
amining the
killing her.
He was ¢
New York,
and decided
dancer in t
that up to.
Touched
frightened
her down a
Three tir
for his mis
the jury fa
the sensatic
was a “love
Gertrude H
wall, The c
fall of Lar
day !
Unable t
San Franc
loch releas
sumed the)
that was L
soon chasi
Anya he
in night cl
was again
San Franc
was in ab
been stabt
tions to th
Anya ar
to find La
the stab
D EVAS’
troup
bly Lond
was a dey
returned :
country, !
circuit. In
try her h
peared in
and seve:
drama gr
she. visua
lasting su
That w
her deat!
remarriag
mind. St
course, s!
now cam:
All the
about tr:
Monahan murder. To cap the tragedy,
the crippled widow had died for noth-
ing. The rumored cache didn’t exist.
The cold-blooded killers had left with-
out a penny of loot.
Shorter promised to testify against
the others, and he and the other infor-
mant were released. Jack Santo’s record,
of course, was known, and the wires
hummed between Burbank and the
Mother Lode country. Shorter’s story
was kept secret while he helped detec-
ik to identify and trace the other
three.
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68
Big Jack’s aides were soon identified.
His jug-eared crony was Emmett ‘The
Weasel”? Perkins alias Jack Bradley, a
wizened, doleful little Los Angeles man
who had spent more than half his 44
years in the Big House, on multiple con-
victions including bank robbery, bur-
glary and auto theft. Recently he had
been running a gambling house in El
Monte.
The blonde was Perk’s girl friend,
Barbara Elaine Graham, a 29-year-old
sometime prostitute and dope user with
a sordid police record up and down the
Coast, dating back to 1937. The other
man was John Lawson True, 38, a rug-
ged deep-sea diver from Sausalito, who
had met and become chummy with
Santo while working in the Mother
Lode country, diving into flooded mines
to salvage equipment.
All three had dropped from sight,
along with Jack Santo. Baxter Shorter
disdained police protection, declaring he
wasn’t afraid of punks who would kill
an old woman. But when the police
moved to close a statewide trap on the
four fugitive killers, the plan misfired
and there was a leak to the press. John
True was arrested at Grass Valley but
the others got away. A few nights later,
on April 14th. Baxter Shorter was kid-
naped from his Bunker Hill apartment
house at gun point, by a snarling little
man whom Shorter’s wife identified
positively as Emmett Perkins. He was
whisked away in a car with another man ~
at the wheel.
“The Canary,” as the newspapers
dubbed the luckless informer Baxter,
was never seen again. His pal Bill Up-
shaw had fled to Mexico before the
story broke. John True blandly denied
any part in the Monahan murder. With
no one to testify against him, he won
release on a writ of habeas corpus.
Intensive investigation, in. which the
northem county sheriffs and CII agents
cooperated with Burbank and Los An-
geles detectives, convinced Chief
Andrews and Lieutenant Ccveney that
Shorter and Upshaw, whatever their
own moral guilt, had told the truth: Big
Jack Santo and his oddly assorted mob
were the slayers of Mabel Monahan.
And the callous, vicious modus operandi
of the Burbank murder made the north-
ern lawmen feel more strongly that San-
to was also the killer of Guard Young
and the three children, and of Edmund
Hansen.
The missing trio was finally traced
through some rubber checks issued by
Barbara Graham, and on May 4th, a
small army of Los Angeles police, led
personally by Deputy Chief Thad F.
Brown, closed in on their hideout in a
boarded-up store building in suburban
Lynwood. The raiders found Big Jack
Santo lying nearly nude, half-asleep on a
bed. Jug-eared Perk lay fully clothed in
another room. Blonde Babs was wander-
ing around the place in semi-undress. All
three startled fugitives gave up without
resistance.
Booked on suspicion of murder, the
hardened, con-wise trio wouldn’t give
the police the time of day. They denied
even knowing Baxter Shorter or Bill Up-
shaw, much less Mabel Monahan.
ig
i
Blonde Babs scornfully rejected offers
of leniency if she would confess and
implicate her male companions.
The green Oldsmobile sedan that
Santo had borrowed from his Grass Val-
ley girl friend, blonde Beverly Winter,
was found parked in a garage near the
southside hideout. It bore false Washing-
ton license plates, had been partly re-
painted, and the rear floormat was miss-
ing. Investigators believed the car, which
Shorter had mentioned as being used in
the Monahan job, had also figured in the
kidnaping and presumed murder of Bax-
ter Shorter. There were no bloodstains,
but weeds caught under the fenders in-
dicated the car had been driven recently
into the mountains between Los An-
geles and the desert country.
Detectives located the El Monte bun-
galow which Perkins and Barbara had
rented under a phony name for their
gambling operation, occupying it off
and on for the previous six months, and
decamping in haste immediately after
the Shorter snatch. There was a small
printing press in the house, and other
indications of a check forgery setup,
also a single grotesque plastic gargoyle
mask,
But there was as yet no legal evi-
dence to link any of the three with the
slaying of Mabel Monahan, and the trio
knew it. In the absence of the two infor-
mers, District Attorney S. Emest Roll
was powerless to proceed with a murder
charge. Finally, with a lawyer battling
for the trio’s release, Emmett Perkins
was formally charged with the kidnap-
ing of Shorter, on a complaint signed by
Mrs. Olivia Shorter, and Barbara Gra-
ham was charged with seven counts of
forgery. Santo, with no formal charge
against him, was released by the Los
Angeles police and immediately rearrest-
ed by Burbank officers on suspicion of
murder.
At this point the harassed district
attorney, Ernest Roll, got a break. Bill
Upshaw, now that the accused killers
were safely behind bars, came back
from Mexico and offered to sing to get
his own record clean. Roll took Upshaw
before a secret session of the county
grand jury on June 2nd. Naturally, the .
nervous star witness could testify only
to the plot in which he had taken part,
and not to the actual murder, which he
had not witnessed. The jury in short
order returned indictments charging
Santo, Perkins, True and Barbara Gra-
ham with conspiracy to commit murder,
robbery and burglary in the slaying of
Mabel Monahan.
John True was rearrested in Sausali-
to. He looked thoughtful when his inter-
rogators pointed out that conspiracy to
commit murder can carry the death
penalty, the same as murder itself. On
promise of leniency, since this was his
first brush with the law, the disconso-
late driver agreed to turn state’s evi-
dence. He told the full story of the
murder, adding shocking details not cov-
ered in Shorter’s account. True said he
had gone along only because he was
curious to see a safe cracked by an ex-
pert.
ey it was told to me,” True relat-
ed, ‘‘a bunch of gamblers kept money
hid there, anc
we was to sté
was to get hi
saw, when I w
this old lady i
True said he
Shorter, but
pistol-whippi:
ing the others
Then, acc:
Barbara pull
moaning and
gray head, an
hands behind
turned to sea
ing diver said
case so that
Later, when
viciously aro
to silence h
slipped into
to loosen it.
True reve:
after the cas
Santo confid
and Barbara
and buried hi
the wilds of
tains, on the
ing to True’:
. self had stra
coat-hanger,
the slain Car
he lay in his
and screame:
anyone else!’
Apparent!
weak sister, }
the time, ‘‘J:
die: You get
squeal and di
True told
of the granc
jurors swiftl
formally cha
der. All four
charge again
return for hi
the others.
‘While: the
further patie
up in the nc
ging country
fornia. The
ever, focuse
figure of ‘
with the res
the gory Sz
relegated t:
predictable,
shapely, ati
trial for her
The acct
was a dark
bara Elain«
nia, in 19
typical flap
her she wa:
Babs was |
mother, th:
from her
placed in \
ward girls.
way from
Babs was s
On her rel
mate wor!
ferred the
career of pi
Young |
hid there, and there was this safe, and
we was to steal the money and no.one
was to get hurt. But the first thing I
saw, when I went in, Barbara was hitting
this old lady in the face with her gun.”
True said he tried to intervene, as did
Shorter, but the tigerish blonde kept
pistol-whipping Mrs. Monahan and egg-
ing the others on.
Then, according to True’s account,
Barbara pulled a pillow case over the
moaning and bleeding victim’s battered
gray head, and Perkins tied the widow’s
hands behind her. While the others then
turned to searching the house, the sing-
ing diver said he cut a hole in the pillow-
case so that the victim could breathe.
Later, when Santo twisted the garrote
viciously around Mrs. Monahan’s neck
to silence her moans, True said he
slipped into the hallway and contrived
to loosen it.
True revealed that at a later meeting,
after the case had broken wide open,
Santo confided to him that he, Perkins
and Barbara had killed Baxter Shorter
and buried him in lonely Fish Canyon in
the wilds of the San Bernardino Moun-
tains, on the edge of the desert. Accord-
ing to True’s story, Santo said he him-
self had strangled Shorter with a wire
coat-hanger, the blonde Barbara split
the slain Canary’s face with a shovel as
he lay in his shallow grave, spat on him
and screamed, “‘You’ll never squeal on
anyone else!”
Apparently tabbing True for another
weak sister, Big Jack admonished him at
the time, “John, there are two ways to
die: You get caught and die—or you can
squeal and die.”
True told his story to another session
of the grand jury on June 9th, and the
jurors swiftly returned new indictments
formally charging the quartet with mur-
der. All four pleaded not guilty, and the
charge against True was later quashed in
retum for his promise to testify against
the others.
While the Los Angeles trial pended,
further patient investigation was pressed
up in the northern gold mining and log-
ging country as well as in Southern Cali-
fornia. The metropolitan press, how-
ever, focused on the pseudo-glamorous
figure of “Bloody Barbara” Graham,
with the result that the other phases of
the gory Santo saga were more or less
relegated to the background. This was
predictable, for it is not every day. that a
shapely, attractive young blonde faces
trial for her life for a vicious murder.
The accused murderess, who actually
was a dark-eyed brunette, was born Bar-
bara Elaine Wood in Oakland, Califor-
nia, in 1923. Her teenage mother, a
typical flapper of the Roaring 20s, told
her she was born out of wedlock. When
Babs was two years old, her butterfly
mother, then aged 19, was taken away
from her by juvenile authorities and
placed in Ventura State School for way-
ward girls. Later, as a 14-year-old runa-
way from an unhappy foster home.
Babs was sent to the same institution.
On her release she made a stab at legiti-
mate work, but soon found she pre-
ferred the more adventurous and easier
career of picking up men in bars.
Young Babs, known then as Barbara
¥
Cortes, drifted around California, going
from one man to another. In 1940 she
was married briefly to a young mechan-
ic, and had two babies who wound up in
the care of relatives. During the war
years she wandered up and down the
Coast, from San Diego to Bremerton.
Working sketchily as a B-girl or cock-
tail waitress, she hung out in taverns
frequented by sailors on shore leave.
She was ont of the wartime host of
“seagulls,” prostitutes who follow the
fleet. She married a young sailor just:
before he shipped overseas, to get his
allotment. She accumulated a string of
arrests for vice and vagrancy.
When San Francisco vice officers
jailed the 21-year-old Babs in 1944 for |
soliciting a sailor in a tavern, and she
was found to have a venereal disease, |.
her case was referred to social and
psychiatric study. The wayward blonde
was found to have a high IQ, but a
fatally twisted personality. “Tests indi-
cate considerable psychopathic devia-
tion . . . She has normal mental ability,
but psychopathic tendencies which lead
almost invariably to delinquency.”
Deciding she was becoming too well
known to the law on her native Pacific
Coast, Barbara headed for Chicago,
where she worked as a dice girl in gam-
bling joints. She learned the ropes rapid-
ly; she was a big girl now, and by the
time she returned to California, she was
moving in circles a notch above her for-
mer waterfront bar milieu.
In 1947, two dope-running ex-cons
were arrested for the strong-arm rob-
bery of a notorious San Francisco
madam. Babs and another girl came for-
ward as alibi witnesses, testifying they
were at an all-night party with the two
men on the night of the crime.
The jury was impressed enough to
disagree, but skeptical detectives soon
established that Barbara had been in
Chicago at the time, and the other girl
had been elsewhere too. The unhappy
blonde pleaded guilty to perjury. When
the judge took a look at her record, he
sentenced her to five years in prison and
five years’ probation. This was later
modified to a year in the county jail
plus probation. Though she hotly de-
nied it, authorities later said Babs won
this leniency by giving information on
narcotic activities.
In 1949, the shop: orn blende mar-
ried her third husband, a traveling sales-
man. He kept on traveling, and Babs
drifted into a common-law union with
the handsome chauffeur of a wealthy
San Francisco doctor. When the doctor
was jailed for abortion, Barbara, who
was still on probation, prudently lit out
for Los Angeles. Shortly she was mar-
ried again, to Henry Leon Graham, a
sad-faced 45-year-old bartender.
In 1950, Babs was listed as a proba-
tion violator for failing to report. In
1951, Los Angeles police picked her up
for possession of narcotics, but released
her before they found out through fin-
gerprints that Barbara was wanted up
north for jumping probation.
In 1952, Barbara bore her third son,
Tommy. This time she kept the baby,
and for a spell lived more or less quietly
with her bartender husband. But she
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craved. excitement and easy money.
Soon she took up with an old acquaint-
ance, ex-con Emmett rerkins. The. jug-
eared, wizened Weasel, a grotesque little
man who looked more like 63 than 43,
exercised some unaccountable fascina-
tion for the 29-year-old party girl.
Perk had a wife and children out in
the San Gabriel Valley, and Babs later
insisted her association: with Perk had
been a purely business one; however,
they spent considerable time together,
and they posed as man and wife when
they rented the El Monte house in
November, 1952, for their crooked gam-
bling operation. Barbara acted as the
wily Perk’s lure and shill. Her job was to
pick up men at bars and lure them out
to the suburban bungalow to be clipped.
It was at the El Monte place, early in
1953, that the money-hungry and
thrill-hungry blonde met Big Jack
Santo, apparently for the first time.
Santo and Perkins were long-time part-
ners in crime. Their operations ranged
from the Los Angeles area to the Moth-
er Lode country. There was never any
definite indication that Barbara knew
Jack Santo before 1953, or took part in
any of his prior crimes; but it seems
evident that the felonious trio, in close
association, plotting the Monahan raid
and thereafter, must have discussed
their mutual histories, and that Babs
knew something of the mountain giant’s
sinister career.
On Santo’s part, he must have known
Barbara pretty well, to have trusted her
on the Monahan job and later in the
Shorter snatch. It is not clear whether
there was any romantic attachment be-
tween them, whether the curly-haired
Don Juan from the mountains, who was
always partial to blondes, took her over
from Perkins as his mistress. Big Jack
and The Weasel apparently shared Bar-
bara’s affections on a utilitarian basis
during the weeks they were hiding out .
from the law together. As police later
traced their flight, they stayed at vari-
ous motels together before holing up in
the Lynwood hideout, and sometimes
they slept three in a bed. Babs had al-
ways wanted adventure and excitement;
when she met Big Jack Santo, she got it
with a vengeance.
That was the murky background of
the Mabel Monahan murder. As the Los
Angeles trial drew near, that summer of
1953, the mountain sheriffs began to
get a few breaks on their end of the
multiple murder investigation.
By this time Beverly Winter, the
blonde Grass Valley divorcee, was sadly
disillusioned about her handsome boy
friend Santo, who had used her car in
the commission of two murders. Sheriff
Schooler and state agents now ap-
proached Beverly and persuaded her to
cooperate as an undercover operative
for the law. They convinced her Santo
wasn’t going anywhere, and could do
her no harm.
At their instigation, the blonde con-
tacted Gene Faris, the Chester painting
‘contractor, and invited him to a secret
rendezvous in a cabin at, Truckee in the
High Sierra. She use’ the pretext that
Jack Santo wanted her to have a talk
with him. She plied Faris with liquor,
and he talked freely for the first time.
His revelations were duly preserved by a
hidden tape recorder.
The jittery little contractor, who said
he had hardly slept for months, dis-
closed that Emmett Perkins had been in
Chester and Westwood with Santo and
Harriet Henson on the day of the Guard
Young massacre. Faris was certain Santo
and Perkins were the killers, though
they had not admitted it to him direct-
ly. He was afraid to talk, in mortal ter-
ror lest he share the fate of Bax Shorter,
and also because the authorities might
think he himself had a part in the
atrocity.
Faris explained that he had unwit-
tingly mentioned to Santo how Guard
Young and other Chester tradesmen
drove regularly over to Westwood to
transact their banking business, and
came back with large sums of cash. Big
Jack had questioned him closely on the
subject, Faris confided. Santo had been
particularly interested in the habits of
another Chester grocer, whom they hap-
pened to see going into the Westwood
bank that ‘moming. Faris then went on
about his business.
Early in the afternoon Santo and Per-
kins came back to Chester, and Big Jack
remarked, “If that fellow had not driven
like a maniac, we’d be in the chips
now.”
Santo, Perkins and Harriet left the
Faris home about 2:30 p.m., saying
they were going to a local bar. Big Jack
came back alone at 4:30 and phoned
Beverly Winter. Faris believed the ex-
con pair had slain Young and the chil-
dren in the interim, after being frustrat-
ed in their plan to rob the other grocer.
Then Harriet had driven back to Auburn
with Perkins. The little contractor now
agreed that Big Jack had indeed had a
lot of money on him that night in Reno.
Faris told Beverly she could assure
Santo of his continued silence. He was
due for a rough shock. Sheriff Schooler
and State Agent Horton picked him up
and confronted him with the tape re-
cording of his tete-a-tete with the
blonde. Assured of immunity and pro-
tection, the scared painting contractor
now agreed to cooperate. He repeated
his story in fuller detail, and promised
to testify. The little man’s bombshell
evidence was kept secret, while the in-
vestigators sought corroboration of his
story.
Now that Big Jack Santo’s “Bloody
Curtain” had been breached at long last,
the law’s pace quickened. Sheriff Brown
of Nevada County and State Agent
McCarthy, after months of undercover
work, took a gamble and _ arrested
George Boles, the young sanitarium at-
tendant. Edmund Hansen’s widow ten-
tatively identified him as one of the
killers—the one who had not worn a
mask—and he was booked on suspicion
of murder. Boles refused to talk, and
the sheriff let him sit it out in jail.
The Monahan murder trial got under-
way in Los Angeles in August. Extraor-
dinary precautions were taken to guard
John True and Bill Upshaw, on reports
that Big Jack’s underworld pals had set
a price on their heads. Spectators were
searched for weapons, and a cordon of
nine watch!
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But not
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nine watchful deputies escorted True to
the stand. :
But nothing happened. The state’s
key witnesses told their damning stories.
John True reenacted the crime, painting
a frightful picture of wanton, vicious,
pointless murder. The “honest diver”’
had a rough time under cross-examina-
tion, as did pudgy little Upshaw.
One defense lawyer remarked acidly,
“This case reminds me of the Pied Piper
of Hamelin—there are so many rats in
it!”? Nevertheless the stories of the two
informers stood up.
Bloody Barbara, Big Jack and The
Weasel continued to deny everything.
They crossed themselves up with futile
alibi attempts that boomeranged. At the
very outset, a young undercover cop,
whom Babs had naively contacted
through one of her women jailmates,
testified she had offered him $25,000 to
say she was with him in a San Fernando
Valley motel on the murder night. A
young policewoman, who had been
planted as Barbara’s cellmate, testified
the desperate blonde had confided to
her, “If certain things come to light, I'll
be a cinch for the first degree—I’ll be
sniffing that cyanide yet!”
Taking the stand in her own defense,
Barbara claimed she had been at home
with her baby on the night of March
9th, but her story could not be substan-
tiated and the state knocked holes in it.
Harriet Henson, the hard-faced bru-
nette from the mountains, was still true
to Big Jack. She took the stand in his
defense, to testify that Santo had been
at home in Auburn, 500 miles away,
early on the morning of March 10th.
But the prosecution exploded her story
with a wire recording of an attempt she
had made to secure support for the
phony alibi. In the recorded conversa-
tion with a Modesto garageman, Harriet
admitted Santo, Perkins and Babs were
the Monahan killers.
The sensational trial was further en-
_ livened at that point by a dramatic sur-
prise development from another quar-
ter. Up in Nevada City, young George
Boles, thinking things over in his cell
and reading of the way the’Los Angeles
trial was going, finally capitulated. He
confessed that Jack Santo was the mas-
termind of the Edmund Hansen murder,
the Andrew Colner torture robbery, the
gold truck robbery, and other Mother
Lode crimes dating back several years.
Perkins and Boles had been the two
triggermen. The ex-bartender confessed
that he and Perk had shot Edmund Han-
sen, while Harriet Henson drove the get-
away car, in which Big Jack waited.
Santo, who had cased and planned this
and the other jobs, had not wanted to
take an active part personally, because
his tall, rawboned figure was too well
known around the gold country.
When Harriet Henson, pallid and
trembling, stepped down from her or-
deal on the witness stand, Sheriff Brown °
stepped up and arrested her for her part
in the Hansen murder,
On September 22, 1953, the jury
found Santo, Perkins and Barbara guilty
of murder in the first degree, and Supe-
rior Judge Charles W. Fricke sentenced
the unholy trio to the gas chamber.
In Nevada City, Harriet Henson was.
grilled daily by Sheriff Brown and
Agent McCarthy. At length she admit-
ted driving the getaway car, but she
refused to implicate Big Jack, with
whom she still wag apparently in love.
The lawmen continued to question
Harriet, artfully dropping frequent men-
tions of Santo’s blonde girl friend Bever-
ly, and his association with Babs Gra-
ham. They stressed that Big Jack had
cast her off and had use for her only as
an alibi dupe. He wouldn’t even reply to
the daily love letters Harriet was still
writing him. Finally, after three weeks,
the harassed brunette broke down and
told the full story of the Hansen mur-
der—and also of the Chester Massacre.
On that bloody aftemmoon of October
10th, Harriet said, Santo and Perk had
left her in a Chester tavern and picked
her up again after an hour. They were
excited and shaky. Though Harriet in-.
sisted the murderous pair never told her
in so many words what they had done,
she quoted Perk as shinny “This has
been a pretty gruesome day for us,” and
later, “‘If I’d known the kids were along,
I wouldn’t have gone through with the
caper.”
Big Jack aiid The Weasel were in a
hurry to lezve the vicinity. Jack told
Harriet to drive Perkins back to Auburn,
while he himself went on to Reno. On
the way, Perk changed his clothes, and
gave Harriet a wallet-—Guard Young’s—
and some papers to destroy. At her
home, Harriet told the lawmen, Perk
counted out $2,000 from a fat envelope
and handed it to her as her share of the
day’s profits.
The Nevada County grand jury in-
dicted Santo, Perkins, Boles and Harriet
for the murder of Edmund Hansen,
while investigators in Plumas County
wrapped up loose ends of the Guard
Young case.
Meantime, on persistent rumors that
friends of Santo were plotting to deliver
Barbara Graham from the women’s pris-
on at Corona, the doomed blonde was
secretly transferred under heavy guard
to San Quentin. She was the first wom-
an prisoner held there in many years.
Santo and Perkins were brought from
San Quentin to Nevada City, where they
pleaded not guilty, along with Boles and
Harriet. An attempt by Big Jack and
The Weasel to escape from the moun-
tain county jail was foiled by guards,
after they had cut halfway through two
bars with smuggled tools.
At the opening of the Hansen murder
trial in December, Harriet Henson reluc-
tantly agreed to testify against the oth-
ers, in return for dropping of the charge
against her. The signed confession of
orge Boles was introduced. An impor-
tant witness was the Modesto garageman
who had blown up Santo’s alibi attempt
in the Monahan case. An old hunting
companion of Santo’s, he related how
Big Jack had tried to enlist him for the
Hansen job and other crimes. Asked if
he weren’t afraid to testify, he said con-
temptuously, ‘“‘No. He seems to be bet-
ter with children and old women.”
Santo, Perkins and Boles were found
guilty of the murder of the gold mine
operator, and on January 15, -1954,
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may or may not have known that the
sheriffs of several mountain counties
plus the state crime authorities had had
Big Jack under surveillance for some
time as a suspected hijacker of gold
from mines. Or that he and his lynx-
eyed common-law wife, brunette Har-
riet Henson, 29, of Auburn, were ques-
tioned as suspects in California’s most
atrocious mass murder.
On October 10th, 1952, Gard Young,
operator of a supermarket at Chester
up by Mount Lassen, and three little
children were found battered to death
and stuffed in the trunk of Young’s
car on a lonely logging road. The mur-
dered children were Young’s daughters,
Jean, 7, and Judy, 6, and their play-
mate, Michael Saile, 4. Young’s other
child, Sondra, 3%, had been left for
dead but recovered.
Young had been robbed of $7,100 he
had just drawn from the bank to cash
payroll checks, and the children had
obviously been slaughtered because they
were witnessés.
Santo and Harriet were questioned
when it was learned they had been in
Chester on a hunting trip at the time,
and that the same night Jack had gone
on a big spending spree in Reno with a
blonde divorcee. Santo scoffed at. any
connection with the atrocity, but the
sheriff was still dubious about him.
N MARCH IIth, 1953, Mabel
Monahan, 62-year-old crippled
widow and former vaudeville roller-
skating star, was found savagely beaten
and strangled to death, trussed up in a
closet of the big home where she lived
alone at 1718 West Parkside Avenue
in Burbank, out in the San Fernando
Valley north ot Los Angeles. The house
was ransacked, literally torn apart.
Mrs. Monahan had formerly been the
mother-in-law of Luther B. “Tutor”
Scherer, white-haired multi-millionaire
Las Vegas gambling king, and noting
that the murder spot was only a few
blocks from where Mickey Cohen had
once operated a swank casino, Bur-
bank Police Chief Rex Andrews and
Lieutenant Robert H. Coveney suspect-
ed a gambling or racket link.
Sure enough, they dug up a tip that
not long before, some of Cohen’s form-
er associates, at loose ends when the
little mobster went to prison for income
tax evasion, had picked up a rumor
that Tutor Scherer kept $100,000 cach-
ed in Mrs. Monahan’s home. They had
planned to heist it.
Coveney rounded up half a dozen of
the former gambling aides, including
those his informant had named. Though
nervous, they stood up under question-
ing; but later ex-convict Baxter McCoy
Shorter, through his attorney, volun-
teered the story in return for immunity.
“Sure, I went along to rob the old
lady,” Shorter admitted, “but I didn’t
count on murder! I don’t want any part
of it!” He named his companions in
the $100,000 foray on March 9th as
Jack Santo, Emmett Perkins, John L.
True and—Barbara Graham.
They had taken Barbara along to
get Mrs. Monahan to open the door,
44
then the others piled in, leaving Shorter
as lookout. They called him in to help
hunt for the secret safe, and he saw
Barbara beating the old woman in the
face with a gun to make her tell where
the money was. Perkins also beat her,
then Santo garroted her. They never
did find the $100,000—which it turned
out didn’t exist.
Shorter refused a police guard, and
his story was kept secret while the four
were hunted. But it leaked out when
True, a professional diver with no po-
lice record, was arrested in Grass Val-
ley, and that same night Perkins rang
Shorter’s doorbell and kidnapped him
at gunpoint, before the eyes of his
screaming wife. The hapless “Canary”
was never seen again.
When Barbara, Santo and Perkins
were finally arrested, they wouldn't
give the time of day and there was no
evidence against them. Then one of the
ex-gamblers originally questioned, Wil-
lie Upshaw, came back from Mexico
where he had fled for sanctuary. Now
that the vicious trio were safely behind
bars, Upshaw disclosed that he had
originally been in on the robbery plan
but backed out. He had introduced
Shorter to Santo. He confirmed the set-
up as Shorter had detailed it, and said
Santo had told him the next day what
had happened.
John True, a pal of Santo’s from the
north, was next to sing. “Way it was
told to me, a bunch of gamblers kept
money hid there, and there was a safe,
and we was to steal the money and
no one was to be hurt . . . Perk gave
me a gun. . . First thing I saw when
I went in was ‘Barbara hitting this lady
in.the face with her gun...
True tried to intervene, as did Short-
er, he said, but the blonde kept slug-
ging Mrs. Monahan and egging the
others on. It was she who pulled a pil-
low case over the moaning and bleeding
victim’s head.
All four were indicted for murder,
but the indictment against True was
dropped in return for his prosecution
testimony.
HEN the trial started, before Babs
was even called to tell her ver-
sion of the night of March 9th, Prose-
cutor-J. Miller Leavy got the jump on
her by producing a tough-looking young
undercover cop, Sam Sirriani, who tes-
tified that she had offered him $25,000
to say he had spent that night with her
in a San Fernando Valley motel.
Barbara had contacted him through
a young woman jail mate, to whom she
desperately confided that she needed
an alibi. Her new friend told the police,
and Sirriani was sent in, masquerading
as the helpful witness, with a miniature
wire recorder under his shirt.
In the recording, Barbara admitted
she was with the three men that night,
and said: “I can assure you Bax Shorter
won’t turn up!” :
As a sidelight, Leavy introduced a
series of notes Babs had smuggled to
her jail mate friend, a pretty brunette,
addressing her as “Baby Doll” and
“Sweet Candy Pants.” One note said
in part, “You are very lovely and
desirable woman, and I want you very
much.
An attractive young policewoman
Shirley Parker, testified that she had
been planted as Barbara’s cellmate, and
the red-gold blonde had pyophetically
confided to her: “If certain things come
to light, V'll be a cinch for the first
degree—I’ll be sniffing that cyanide yet!”
When the harassed Babs finally took
the stand herself, she claimed she had
been at home with her husband and
baby on the night of the 9th. She re-
membered it because they’d quarreled
and Hank had later moved to his moth-
er’s place.
Graham testified in her support, but
he wasn’t quite positive about the date
of the fight, and two other alibi wit-
nesses were equally weak.
Emmett Perkins’ story was that he
had been home with his wife and invalid
son.
Harriet Henson testified that Santo
had been at home in Auburn, 500 miles
away, early on the morning of the 10th;
but the state exploded her story with
still another wire recording in which she
tried to obtain phony support for it
and admitted Santo, Perkins and Babs
were the killers.
As jittery Harriet left the stand, Sher-
iff Wayne Brown of Nevada City step-
ped up and arrested her for her part
in a seventh. murder, the robbery-kill-
ing of Edmund Hansen, gold mine op-
erator, on December 29th, 1951.
Harriet soon broke and confessed
that she had driven ‘the getaway car
in that job for Santo, Perkins and
George Boles, a young bartender and
sanitarium attendant, who also confes-
sed his part. They had shot Hansen
seven times when they failed to find a
$20,000 cache they thought he had. All
four were indicted for the Hansen mur-
der.
On September 22nd, 1953, the Los
Angeles jury found Santo, Perkins and
‘Barbara guilty of first-degree murder,
and Superior Judge Charles W. Fricke
sentenced the unholy three to death.
While they awaited outcome of their
appeals to the State Supreme Court,
Santo and Perkins were taken to Nev-
ada City, where a jury in short order
found them and Boles guilty of the
Hansen murder and all three were sen-
tenced to life imprisonment—an ironic
touch in the case of Santo and Perkins.
The Hansen murder charge against
Harriet Hensen had been dropped in
return for her testimony. But now fur-
ther investigation had tied the Santo
mob to the Gard Young atrocity, and
the Plumas County grand jury indicted
Santo, Perkins and Harriet for the mur- *
der of the grocer and the three children.
On May 7th, 1954, the three were found
guilty. The two men were sentenced to
death a second time, and Harriet to
life.
Big Jack and his pals were also linked
to other sadistic robberies in the gold
country, and Perkins was charged with
the kidnaping of Bax Shorter, but there
was no point in pressing these charges.
John True said Santo had told him,
POLICE FILES
as a warning against his own squealing,
that he had strangled Shorter with a
wire coat-hanger in the back seat of
the kidnap car, and he, Perkins and
Barbara buried the luckless informer
in the desert out past San Bernardino.
“That’s what you get, you— —stoolie!”
Babs was said to have snarled as she
struck the corpse with a shovel.
ARBARA, while waiting on her ap-
peals, was moved from the wo-
men’s prison at Corona to San Quentin
for greater security when it was rumor-
ed that Santo’s outside pals might en-
gineer an attempt on her life to insure
her silence. But when the State Legisla-
ture balked at the expense of keeping
her with her own matron guards in
special quarters in the prison hospital,
the only woman inmate among 4,700
men, she was taken back to Corona.
On Friday, June 3rd, 1955, the sands
finally ran out for Bloody Babs, Big
Jack and Emmett the Weasel.
Barbara, haggard now and the red-
gold hair a short-cropped brown, had
been brought up from Corona the night
before. In her last interview she again
declared her total innocence, said she
was resigned to her fate.
She received Holy Communion and
the last consolation of her Church from
the. Rev. Dan McAlister, a privilege
that it may be noted was not accorded
to Mabel Monahan or Baxter Shorter.
Early in the morning she was ready
for the execution at 10 a.m., dressed
in a beige wool suit and wearing gold
pendant earrings and an engagement
ring and wedding band.
At 9:05 a.m. Governer Goodwin J.
Knight telephoned Warden Harley O.
Teets, ordering the execution stayed
while Fedral Judge William Denman
of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
considered a last-minute petition by
Matthews and the State Supreme Court
weighed an appeal by another attorney.
The courts turned down the pleas
and the governor cancelled the stay; the
execution was set for 10:45. Babs was
led to the death chamber. She was at
the very door when the governor called
again at 10:41. At 11:17 the final ap-
peal was denied and at 1:30 she was
strapped in one of the twin chairs.
She made no reply to the warden’s
last words, “Goodbye and God bless
you, Barbara.” At her own request a
black mask was put over her eyes.
Her lips, a crimson gash in her white
face, moved rapidly in prayer as the
lethal fumes rose. At the very last she
threw her head back and seemed to be
gasping for breath. At 1:42 the doctor,
listening through the stethoscope, pro-
nounced Bloody Babs dead.
The gas chamber was aired out and
at 2:30 that afternoon Santo and Per-
kins, hardboiled to the end, followed
her in a double-header, strapped side
by side.
“Don’t do anything we wouldn't do!”
was Big Jack’s last quip to the warden
and guards. Perkins was first to go, and
Santo died fighting for breath.
No one claimed the bodies of Big
Jack and The Weasel, and they were
sent to Napa State Hospital for crema-
tion.
Barbara, whose body was claimed by
a Long Beach woman friend, was buried
in hallowed grounds in Mount Olivet
Cemetery at San Rafael, after private
Requiem Mass.
NEVER MAKE LOVE TO A MURDERESS
(Continued from page 35)
x
countered Anna.
you.”
Klauber was convinced by this sim-
ple logic. After all, the arsenic was for
rats—and the promise of Anna’s: lips
made him forget everything else.
He got the croton oil. He got the
arsenic. He got his promised reward
from Anna. But strangely, as the days
went by, the rats in the cellar did not
sicken and die. They flourished and mul-
tiplied. It was Philip, Anna’s husband,
who sickened. He came down with a
strange malady that baffled the doctor
completely.
Day by day he weakened; day by
day he wasted away. He _ probably
would have died if his mother, over-
ruling all of Anna’s strenuous objec-
tions, had not packed him off to the
hospital.
But one way or another Anna was
“That didn’t stop
. tid of him. With her husband safely
out of the way she swiftly accepted
Ernest Koch’s offer and moved in with
POLICE FILES
him to share, at first, his board. And
then in a surprisingly short time, the
bed that went along with it.
Anna in her own right was a lusty
wench. She probably would have done
in old man Koch by natural means.
But she was impatient and the arsenic
was even more potent than the aban-
doned embrace of her white limbs.
Ernest Koch expired promptly, if not
peacefully, on May 6th, 1932 and when
his will was probated Anna found her-
self the mistress of the old man’s man-
sion.
T had been a neat bit of business.
No suspicions had been aroused.
And thus Anna was emboldened to try
again.
Her second victim was a retired rail-
road man, Albert Palmer, a widower
with no relatives. Like Ernest Koch he
was old and ailing, with a comfortable
bank account and a need of tender
nursing. Anna nursed him after -her
own peculiar tashion but the old man
must have had a cast-iron stomach. He
was a long time a-dying. Worse, he
stubbornly resisted all her efforts to
have him change his will in her favor.
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L city sae:_...diniie
sate Sedicaioion
AB AS, Petraes lea ook tian ca
just before Santo, Perkins and Barbara Graham were arrested.
According to the second-hand story of one of their as-
sociates, cold-eyed Jack Santo killed Shorter after the mur-
derous three had kidnapped him. As they were burying him
in a shallow desert grave, Barbara spat in his dead face
and clove it with a shovel. :
Barbara might have escaped the death penalty in the
first place if she’d turned state’s evidence, as did several
others involved with the mob. And even after the three
principals were convicted and sentenced, authorities ‘strong-
ly hinted to Barbara that she might expect leniency if she'd
tell the Shorter story. Also if she’d help convict her pals
of the massacre of a grocer and three little children, one
of California’s blackest crimes, by telling what she knew.
But Babs, false to everything else, clung blindly to her
perverted underworld code and refused to sing.
The sentimental sobsters, both male and female, made
much of the fact that Babs never officially admitted any-
thing and she won considerable national publicity and some
sympathy with her claim of innocence. She said she didn’t
even know Mabel Monohan or Baxter Shorter, and was
several miles away at the time. She assailed the character
and motives of prosecution witnesses and called police
tactics unfair. .
But the cold, realistic fact is that Bloody Babs was found
guilty by a jury on perfectly clear, weighty and damning
evidence, including the independent testimony of not one
Jack Santo, Emmett Perkins and Barbara Graham looked like any three people in Anytown, U.S.A. before trial.
\
but two associates who confirmed the story of the absent
Shorter.
Her emotional protests of innocence failed to explain why
three men whom she claimed she had never met should
have bothered to get together and elect her for a frame—
nor why the police should have singled her out for persecu-
tion.
When originally called before the grand jury, she stood
on the Fifth Amendment and refused to incriminate her-
self. At her trial, she presented not one shred of valid
evidence in her defense, and instead let herself be trapped.
in an attempt to frame a phony alibi for the murder night.
She made damaging partial disclosures to cellmates. The
testimony left no doubt in the minds of the jury of nine
men and three women, who deliberated only five-and-a-
half hours, that Barbara was guilty of first-degree murder
as charged, along with the two men, and deserved to die
with them. :
F Barbara’s final day on earth was one of hectic con-
fusion, it was no less so than her 31 years of mixed-up
life. The roots of her final bloody eruption and shameful
end obviously lay far back in her tragically insecure child-
hood, and Babs never let sympathetic interviewers forget
it. It may be noted parenthetically that many other people
have successfully overcome such early handicaps. After all,
Babs was a big girl when she killed Mabel Monahan.
panier rire
Bloody Babs Graham, undisputed Miss Murder of 1955,
was born Barbara Elaine Wood in Oakland, California, on
June 26th, 1923, of mixed English, Spanish and Portuguese
ancestry. Her mother, Hortense, by all accounts something
of a butterfly herself, a typical flapper of the Roaring 20's,
was 17 at the time and later told Babs she was born out of
wedlock. Hortense also, according to Barbara, made clear
that she hated her child and had never wanted her.
When Barbara was two years old, the law grabbed her
19-year-old mother and put her in the Ventura State School
for wayward girls till she was 21. Babs was sent to stay
with relatives. When Hortense came back, as Barbara told
it, “she couldn't stand the sight of me,” and put her out to
board for some time with a battle-ax of a woman who
mistreated her—again according to Barbara’s own story.
Joseph Wood, a futile sort of character who eventually
married her mother and passed as her father, died when
she was seven. Hortense married another man named
Cortes, whom she later divorced after having two more
children by him, and Babs was also known by that name.
They lived in a dilapidated shack.
Barbara’s reaction to the upset and impoverished home
life was to run away, a habit she contracted at nine. Once
her mother put her in an orphanage and again in a school .
for incorrigible girls. Perversely, the loose-living Hortense
was extremely strict with her daughter, and as brown-
haired, brown-eyed Babs began to blossom into her teens,
Paice rere
The unholy trio knew they'd have to change their attitudes—and plans—after being sentenced to the gas chamber.
Mother rigidly forbade her to go out with boys, or even
to walk home from school with them. So she met them
secretly, not only boys but older men who could give her
money.
Babs, maturing rapidly for her tender years; on the
physical side anyway, developed a romantic and ‘self-pitying
turn of mind. In school she started reading poetry, and
became especially addicted to the fatalistic philosophy of
The Rubaiyat, as she tells it. A quatrain of Omar's she
was fond of quoting in her latter day was:
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel halt a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
At 14 she ran away once more, determined to live her
own life, and in a San Francisco bar met a sentimental ex-
con who took her home to his mother. When the juvenile
authorities picked her up this time, at her mother's re-
quest they sent her to the Ventura School—where Hortense
herself was still remembered as “not a very satisfactory
inmate.”
Despite her twisted emotional life young Babs had an
IQ of 94, and did well in her studies at the reformatory,
though she tried to run away several times. On her parole
in 1939, after completing the equivalent of the first year
(Continued on page 42)
ee
by Nelson Stein
EXECUTION
OF A
BAD GIR
* “WHY DO THEY TORTURE ME?” Barbara Gra-
ham wanted to know. Condemned to die in California’s
gas chamber at San Quentin, the comely prisoner’s :
execution was twice delayed by last minute petitions.
It is quite true that the triple execution of Barbara and
her companions in murder—big Jack Santa and Emmet “the
Weasel” Perkins—was really a botched up affair, with Bar-
bara at one point actually standing at the door of the gas
chamber saying good-bye to her confessor when the governor
ordered another postponement, and she was led back to her
death cell with the grim little stethoscope diaphragm still
taped to her breast.
“Why do they torture me?” she wailed repeatedly. “I was °
ready to go at ten o’clock!”
Certainly no one really meant to torture Barbara, but only
to save her. Her big wistful brown eyes and general feminine
softness understandably aroused gallant male sympathy and
even some female support for her pleas of innocence; she
felt right up to the last days that it couldn’t really happen
to her.
Buxom 31-year-old Barbara, whose varied career had
included both prostitution and motherhood as well as mur-
der, on June 3rd, 1955, became the third woman to be
legally executed in California history, and by far the young-
est, prettiest, and bestdressed for her final reridezvous. Pos-
sibly no other execution in this country’s history has touched
off so violent a storm of emotional protest. >
What is generally overlooked in the sentimental hubbub
over Barbara’s dramatic finis was that her victim, Mabel
Monohan, the 62-year-old, sweet-faced, crippled widow she
and the others were convicted of pistol-whipping and stran-
gling to death in 1953, was savagely tortured for no reason
whatever, and wasn’t necessarily ready to go at all.
As one of the police detectives who had worked on Bar-
bara’s case summed it up after he had witnessed her execu-
tion: “She had it a lot easier than Mabel Monohan did!”
Barbara Graham in death achieved two distinctions: she
died with real dignity and poise, and she kept her mouth
shut. Not the least of the grisly secrets she and her two male
consorts—the latter multiple killers numbered among the
most vicious in the nation’s criminal annals—took into the
gas chamber with them was the precise fate of Baxter “The
Canary” Shorter, the scar-faced ex-convict who vanished
abruptly soon after he squealed on the bloody-handed trio
$100,000 was there and “Bloody Babs”,
“Big Jack”, and “The Weasel” wanted it!
T>
POLICE FILES Mi
THE TRUE BARBARA GRAHAM STORY:
to
“A i: ;
Loge
iS i
Barbara's tears brought sympathy from some.
Sweet-faced Mabel Monahan was pistol-whipped.
\GAZINE, February, 1965.
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the Magistrate, “you are charged with
assault with some unknown object
thereby causing the death of Dorothy
Mae Grammer in Baltimore city on
August 20th, 1952.”
The dazed man looked up at the
judge, then cast his eyes down as though
lost in a black whirlpool.
Judge Laukaitis now pressed the
routine third but most dramatic ques-
tion, “Does the defendant wish to enter
a plea at this time?
Grammer did not remove his blank
stare from the floor. Defense counsel
answered, “Yes, your Honor.”
“And the plea is... ?”
“Not guilty.”
Sodaro was now ready to seek an
indictment charging George Edward
S. Grammer for the murder of his love-
ly wife. He and Captain Murphy con-
ferred for an hour, then sent investi-
gators over to the scene of the crime to
search for more clues. He wanted to
make sure he had all the facts available
to him.
In the backyard they discovered a
pile of large logs about six feet long
and a foot in diameter. The logs were
charred. In the center was a heap of
ashes as though something bulky had
been burned. Further back, about thirty
feet from the charred logs was a spot
where trash was usually burned by
neighbors. Sifting the ashes meticulous-
ly, the detectives found several impor-
*
tant objects. Had the suspect burned
incriminating evidence?
And then a virtual atomic bomb fell
among reporters and photographers
covering the sensational case. The wom-
an police had described as an “im-
portant and material witness” for the
State against George Edward S. Gram-
mer was coming to Baltimore.
The girl, 28, slender and beautiful,
appeared before the grand jury for
nearly an hour as a voluntary witness
tor the prosecution. Sodaro had sneak-
ed her in undetected and had ably
managed to keep her identity a secret.
Hettchen had accompanied her through
in an aura of complete mystery. Some
of the fortunate onlookers who had
happened to see her, pointed to the un-
identified, attractive witness as the
“Lady In The Red Hat.”
After testifying before the grand jury,
she was released from police custody
when a professionat bondsman posted
$5000 bail in her behalf.
ND now word leaped from mouth
to mouth: “Who Is The Lady In
The Red Hat?”
“T have no desire,” Sodaro said, “to
prejudice the case for the defense or
the prosecution, nor for the witness her-
self. We have known of her since the
accused gave his statement last Sun-
day.”
Few courthouse observers .had the
opportunity to get a close look at the
attractive girl. Lt. Hettchen, who went
to New York City, hurried her out of
the grand jury room to a mezzanine
door from the attorney’s office to an
elevator, then out of the building from
a basement exit, while the hungry
throng, photographers and_ reporters
waited at nearly every entrance to the
courthouse.
Two days later nine witnesses of the
31 summoned were heard. It took ex-
actly two hours and forty minutes to
hear them.
It took the grand jury only six min-
utes for deliberation before they in-
dicted George Edward S. Grammer
for the murder of his 33-year-old wife.
“Feloniously, willfully and with aelib-
erately premeditated malice and afore-
thought did the accused kill and mur-
der Dorothy Mae Grammer in said city
of Baltimore, and State of Maryland,
on or about the 20th day of August,
1952,” the charge read.
Judge Herman Moser heard the evi-
dence presented by the prosecutor, and
found George Grammer guilty, sen-
tencing him to death on the gallows.
Grammer appealed his case, but to no
avail. On Friday, June 11th, 1954, the
poker-faced man who had killed his
wife for another woman’s love walked
up to the gallows platform—and plunged
down, dead. The perfect murder went
into the category of “not quite.” *
EXECUTION OF A BAD GIRL
(Continued from page 29)
of high school, it appears that she real-
ly made a stab at working legitimately
for a while—as a domestic servant,
dime store clerk and Western Union
messenger.
But hard work, long hours and small
pay was not for Babs, who craved ac-
tion. To her the height of glamorous
adventure was picking up men in bars.
She left home and drifted around Cal-
ifornia. 3
She lived for a time with a 27-year-
old man, and when arrested by Long
Beach police in 1940 (at 17) for dis-
orderly conduct, she was using the dec-
orative alias of Barbara Olivia Rad-
cliffe.
ITH the coming of the wartime
boom and its social upsets, Bar-
bara really began to mature. The exact
record is rather abscure, but it seems
that late in 1940, in a San Diego bar,
she met a young mechanic, Harry Kiel-
hammer, who for a switch wanted to
marry her. They were married and ac-
cording to Barbara had a child, a son,
before they split up in 1941 and Harry
got a divorce. .
The baby went to his mother in Seat-
tle, who undertook to raise it, even
though she later stated that her son
42
was not the father. Soon after the di-
vorce Babs had another son. She tried
to pin this on Kielhammer, but the
baby shortly disappeared into the cus-
tody of a kindly relative, and Babs
was as free and unencumbered as Me-
hitabel the Cat.
Though she actually attended busi-
ness college for a while and got a
diploma, her inclinations drew her in
other directions. Working ostensibly as
a B-Girl or cocktail waitress and fre-
quenting taverns where sailors hung
out on shore leave, she became one of
the wartime host of “seagulls”—prosti-
tutes who followed the Fleet.
Under the name Barbara Elaine Kiel-
hammer, ‘she was jailed three times in
San Diego between 1941 and 1943, for
vagrancy and “aggravated lewd and
disorderly conduct.” Twice she was
fined $50 and once drew 60 days in
jail.
} She drifted north, where she worked
as a laborer in the Big Bremerton Navy
Yard, all the while multiplying her so-
cial contacts among lonely servicemen.
Somewhere along the line she married
a young sailor, Aloyse Pueschel, just be-
fore he shipped overseas. Soon she di-
vorced him. Later she said she had mar-
ried him only to get his allotment
checks, and wouldn't know him if she
saw him on the street.
Reno, Los Angeles and Stockton
were graced with her brief presence. In
June of 1944, when vice officers arrest-
ed her in a San Francisco bar for solicit-
ing a sailor for $20 and she was found
to have a venereal disease, social and
psychiatric workers made a study of
her case.
“She has been very promiscuous sex-
ually,” their report notes, “practicing
prostitution for several years, and very
little can be said in her favor... .
“Personality tests indicate consider-
able psychopathic deviation . . . She
has normal mental ability but psycho-
pathic tendencies which lead almost in-
variably to delinquency.”
Thus Babs at 21 was tabbed as what
used to be called “morally insane”’—‘a
born criminal.” She was perfectly sane,
intelligent and knew ‘right from wrong
well enough, but she was driven by an
obscure, deep-seated compulsion to re-
venge herself on the world and society
for stored-up wrongs, real or fancied.
Many prostitutes come into this cate-
gory, showing their contempt for men
by charging money for their favors.
Psychiatry thus far hasn’t had much
luck in curing criminal or sexual psy-
chopathy.
Wanting no part of the well-meaning
medicos and figuring she was becoming
too well known to the law on the West
Coast, restless Babs, who by this time
had transformed. her mouse-brown hair
into a spectacular reddish-gold mop
that became her trademark, headed for
other parts. After an interim of which
nothing is recorded, 1946 found her
POLICE FILES
meta
in Chicago, working as a dice girl in
North Side gambling joints, which re-
presented a step up for her.
When she returned to California in
°47, she was armed with introductions
and addresses from her Chicago gamb-
ling pals, and now she shunned the
waterfront taverns and moved into the
big time.
When two ex-cons with big ideas,
Mark C. Monroe, dope smuggler, and
Thomas Sittler, went to trial in San
Francisco for the vicious strong-arm
robbery of Sally Stanford, who at that
time was the Polly Adler of the Golden
Gate, Barbara and another girl popped
up to testify that they were at an all-
night party with the accused pair on the
night of the crime. Their testimony re-
sulted in a hung jury.
But skeptical police investigated fur-
ther and found that Babs, who still
used the name Kielhammer, had been
in Chicago at the time, and the other
girl, whom she had induced to lie had
likewise been elsewhere. Charged with
perjury. Babs pleaded guilty and. in
view of her history, was: sentenced to
five years in prison and five years pro-
bation.
Monroe and Sittler had fled from the
state but were picked up and brought
back. Monroe pleaded guilty and was
sentenced to prison, and Sittler drew a
prison term in another assault case.
The word from certain authorities. is
that Babs made a deal to give them
some information on dope-running ac-
tivities in return for modification of her
sentence; Babs later vigorously denied
this and said she got leniency because
the other girl had talked and gotten off
with a light sentence. At any rate her
term was modified to a year in the
County Jail and five years probation
and she was out in eight months.
In 1949 she married a traveling sales-
man named Charles A. Newman in
Tonopah, Nevada, bragging in a letter
to one of her former mothers-in-law
that “a chief of police was best man.”
This union ended in divorce, and she
-moved into a San Francisco apartment
with a handsome chauffeur of a weal-
thy San Francisco physician.
When the doctor and the chauffeur
were arrested on abortion charges, Babs
as she told it later, decided she’d better
skip before her probation officer found
out she’d been associating with them. In
short order she married Henry Leon
Graham, a lugubrious-faced 45-year-
old Los Angeles bartender. They plan-
ned to open a night club, which was
against the rules for a probationer and
provided another reason to forget about
her monthly reports.
Somewhere she had inevitably picked
up the dope habit; in 1951 Los Angeles
police arrested her for possession of
narcotics but released her for lack of
evidence before they found out she was
wanted in the north for skipping her
probation. In 1952, living quietly for a
change with her husband in a little
duplex on Innes Avenue, she bore her
third son, Tommy.
iw BABS was simply never cut out
for the quiet life and it was about
this time she took up with jug-eared,
goose-necked, shifty-eyed Emmett “The
Weasel” Perkins, alias Jack Bradley, a
ratty character who had spent 24 of his
43 years in San Quentin and Folsom
for assorted robberies and burglaries.
Babs has denied she was ever The
Weasel’s mistress. He had a wife and
kids out in San Gabriel Valley; she
claimed their association was purely
business. Perkins ran a crooked gambl-
ing house in El Monte and Babs went
to work for him as a shill, picking up
men in bars and luring them to the
place.
Through Perkins she met Big Jack
Santo, a rawboned, wiry man of 48,
who came from the Mother Lode gold
country of the Sierra Nevada, up north,
and always dropped in on his pal Em-
mett on his trips to Los Angeles.
Identifying himself as a mining man,
Jack Santo was somewhat of a mystery
figure, always loaded with plenty of
money and dropping cryptic hints of big
deals. Though he fancied himself as a
Casanova, he had few close friends.
He never talked about his past, but
Babs learned that he had done 18
months in McNeil Island, 15 years be-
fore, for transporting a stolen car. She
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CRIME CALENDAR
A NATION-
@ Brutally Slain by Robbers
Search continues for the slayers of
Gard Young, 43, above, Chester, Calif.,
grocer who was murdered on October
13, 1952, with three children, Judy
and Jean Young, his daughters shown
at right and left of center child, and
Michael Faile, a lad who accompanied
them. The center child, Sondra, aged
three, miraculously survived and has
described the killing to the authorities
with amazing clarity for one so young.
The slain grocer was carryine $7100 on
his person and was slain for this money.
The criminal most wanted and
sought by the FBI was Leonard J. Za-
lutsky, 37, escaped life termer, who
sits mutely here in evident dejection at
his arraignment on September 9, 1952,
before a U.S. Commissioner. Zalutsky,
whose picture, record and fingerprint
classification appeared in the Septem-
@ End of the Trail
ber issue of AUTHENTIC DETEC-
TIVE, in its Wanted Men page, was
arrested in Beaver -Falls, Pa, by a
detective. He was held for court under
a $25,000 bond. Zalutsky was convict-
ed for burglary, murder and auto theft,
and is considered a very dangerous cri-
minal.
Willard .D. Elmquist; 23, is shown
seated here in the West 68th Street Po-
lice Station in New York City, where
he was booked on September 12, 1952,
on charges of assault and robbery in
connection with the holdup last August
16 at the Hotel Dorset in New York.
Ironically, Elmquist was* married the
day previous to his arrest to Carmen
Carrion, and was taken into custody at
the wedding reception. He is wearing
the trousers of his bridegroom attire.
Police say he admitted a whole series
of holdups, which should put him out
‘ w
@ Most “wanted man” captured
of circulation for’a long time. His bride,
a magazine subscription saleswoman,
was questioned and then released.
Betty Moore, 16, was tragically slain
by her father, John Moore, 54, on Oc-
tober 1, 1952, when the pretty young
girl returned home from a late date in
Miami, Florida, Moore then killed him-
self with the same gun, after leaving a°
note, which read: “My darling baby: I
love you too much for you to have to
go through the hardships of life on
this earth. Your old Dad, the Dog.”
William Pflugfelder, 29, a securities
analyst, is led by the police into the
courtroom at Garden City, N.Y., where
he was arraigned on October 10, 1952,
cn charges of assault and the illegal
possession of a firearm. Pflugfelder was
specifically charged with the shooting
WIDE SURVEY OF CURRENT CRIME NEWS
@ Slain for a late date
of Jane H. Spaulding while she sat eat-
ing dinner with her family in her Gar-
den City home on October 9. Police
said .Pflugfelder is a rejected suitor of
Miss Spaulding, who was injured seri-
ously but not fatally by the blast of
gunfire.
Booked on a kidnaping charge is
Carmen Rodriguez, 32, of New York
City, who, on October 15, 1952, kid-
naped the infant daughter of Mr. and
Mrs. Rafael Hernandez from a ward at
Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan on Oc-
tober 12. The baby was found in her
apartment on East 4Ist Street three
days later, following a diligent police
search and some smart detective work.
The object of the kidnaping, it is said,
was to provide Mrs. Rodriguez with
further means for obtaining home relief
from the welfare authorities.
@ Rejected suitor fires shot
SE a aL ae
Stanners at-p, >
him before in the neighborhood. His
description, other than the gray hair,
“was vague. -
“What do you know about Mrs.
Monohan?” Andrews asked.
Doctor Hutton shrugged. “I never .
met the woman, although I’ve often
seen cars parked around the house.
Quite a few of them had Nevada license
plates. Of course, I’ve heard, because
she was the mother-in-law of Tutor.
Scherer, that she has big gambling in-
terests in Las Vegas. But I personally
don’t know a thing about the woman.”
Andrews issued an order for an im-
mediate all-points bulletin on a gray-
haired man driving a yellow Chrysler
convertible.
As Andrews returned to the house,
McAuliffe met him at the door.
“The killer must have missed. what
he was after,” McAuliffe announced,
exhibiting a purse. “Our lab boys
found it in a closet. It has five hundred
in cash and a mess of jewelry. If the
stuff is genuine—and I’m sure it is—
I'd guess the jewelry will go to ten or
twenty thousand dollars.” ‘
Had Mrs. Monohan outwitted the kill-
er by hiding her money and jewels in ‘
the old purse in the closet? Or had her
ened been searching for something
e :
Andrews wasn’t sure. He doubted
that Mrs. Monohan would have taken
the horrible beating she had been given
to protect the jewelry and $500.
Furthermore, many expensive items
which would have tempted an ordinary
burglar still were in the house—silver-
ware, binoculars, cameras and other
objects which could be turned into
ready cash, all in plain sight.
A bank book was found showing that
Mrs. Monohan had $20,000 on deposit
at a local bank. Surely, with that bal-
aces
‘ ance, she would not have remained
silent during her ‘torture to protect $500
her purse. :
Next, the body was sent to the morgue
for an autopsy by Chief County Autop-
sy Surgeon Doctor Frederick D.
Newbarr. ‘
The lab crew reported that, judging
by an examination of all the blood-
ering the killer undoubtedly had worn
gloves, -
NEIGHBORS told of hearing the pet
Labrador in the back yard howling
since Tuesday morning. One neighbor
reported seeing Mrs. Monohan at three
o'clock on Monday. Apparently the
‘widow had been killed sometime Mon-
day night.
Further questioning of the neighbors
disclosed only that Mrs. Monohan lived
quietly and had no close friends in the
district. She often had visitors but the
neighbors did not know who they were.
Mrs. Monohan was very chary about
letting anyone inside her house. She
kept the front door locked and on a
.chain and opened the door only after
first talking through the peep-hole.
The fact that the front door had been
open and the chain undamaged indi-
cated strongly that the killer was some-
one she had admitted, someone she
knew and trusted.
Andrews and his men returned to
Headquarters, where a: call was waiting
from Captain W. E. Hagi of the Glen-
dale police. When Andrews got in touch
with him, Hagi said he had read a tele-
type notice of the slaying and was in-
terested because it was similar to the
killing of Mrs. Katie Kirk, an 84-year-
old recluse who had been strangled
there in 1950.
“The only lead we ever had was an
old second-story man by the name of
RUSS SOLE ae bia ae teat
Mrs. Olivia Shorter: "That's the man. | said
I'd know him anyplace and that’s the man!”
John ‘Santo, smartest, and Barbara
Graham, toughest, detectives say
Fred Gooble,” Hagi told him. ‘“We
placed him near the scene, but we.
couldn't pin it on him. Tf Gooble shows
up in your investigation, I’d like you
to keep our case in mind.”
Andrews asked for a picture and the
file on Gooble and issued a pick-up or-|
der for the man so he could be ques-'
tioned. |
Mrs. Monohan’s daughter was in:
New York and Andrews put through a
long-distance call. Mrs. Sowder was!
horrified at the news of her mother’s
death. i
“I was with her for three weeks and
left only last Thursday,” Mrs. Sowder)
said. “And I talked to her at two:
o'clock last Monday afternoon on the:
telephone.” {
“Why did you call her?”
“I wanted to get a recipe,” Mrs. Sow-'
der explained. “It’s for cooking fish.
Mother picked it up when she and Dad’
were on tour in France and she was.
going to give it to me before I came.
back but it slipped my mind. I called:
her because we were having guests in.”!
Andrews told the daughter that the.
house had been ransacked. “Do you!
know what the person could have been
looking for?” he asked.
Mrs. Sowder had no idea. She was
positive that her mother kept only a
small amount of cash in the house and
owned only a small amount of jewelry,
The $500 and the jewelry in the purse
belonged to Mrs. Sowder, she had left
it there when she flew back to New
York.
She said the jewelry had a value of;
about $10,000 but she did not use it
VO AT PY DWTMA na ENOL
Ds, DLA P PE MALLING ANd SAIN LO »
Mrs, Mabel Monohan: She had a peep-hole in her door,
stout chains to keep it shut, floodlights in the yard
Mrs. Mabel Monohan and gave
Southern California, noted for its
fantastic killings, one of its most
bizarre. .
The gardener, Mitchell Truesdale,
called police in Burbank at noon
Wednesday, March 11, 1953. She'd
been killed in her home at No. 1718
West Parkside Avenue, he said.
Burbank police were familiar with
the house, which is in the fashionable
T gardener found the body of
Mountain View District, for it had been |
the home of L. B, “Tutor” Scherer, a
big-time gambler.
Scherer, part owner of the Pioneer
Club in Las Vegas and mentioned in
the Kefauver investigation, had lived
8
OF FICIAL
there with his wife and mother-in-law,
Mrs. Monohan. Three years previously,
however, when Iris Monohan divorced
Scherer after eight years of married
life, she was given the house as part
of her settlement. Iris had married
multi-millionaire oil man J. Robert
Sowder and established a residence on
Park Avenue in New York, leaving her
*- mother the swank seven-room Califor-
nia home.
In her earlier days Mrs. Monohan,
now 63, had been a world champion
roller skater and had played on the
Orpheum circuit and toured Europe in
an act with her husband, George Mono-
han., She had been a widow for six
years and had been seriously crippled
LDerecri Ve
G4 5%, (Joa
eenemntensamememmme
California’s Latest Torture
By J. K. Harris
Special Investigator for
ACTUAL: DETECTI VE STORIES
in an auto accident a few years before.
Iris had been a promising Hollywood
starlet before her marriage to Scherer.
This much the police knew from
numerous Newspaper stories, for Mrs.
Monohan, Iris, Scherer and Sowder
were always front-page copy.
. The call from the gardener sent Po-
lice Chief Rex Andrews and all of his
available men rushing to the scene.
Among them were Assistant Chief John
A. McAuliffe, Detective Lieutenants
Robert Coveney and Stanley Paggeot
‘and Detectives Edward Vandergrift
and Robert Loranger,
Truesdale was waiting for them on
the front porch of the swank house on
the corner.
.
“I went around back to go to work,”
Truesdale told them. “But the gate
was locked.”
A high stucco wall enclosed the back
yard. The officers could see several
- floodlights burning. Two more lights
on the front corriers. of the house also
were on. The lights had been installed
by Scherer when he lived there and
apparently were still used by Mrs. |
Monohan.
“So I tried the front door. I rang*:
the bell but nobody answered,” Trues-
dale went on. “I knew the old lady
was kind of hard of hearing and I
pushed on the front door. It was open.
I stuck my head in to holler at her and
I saw the blood.”
FURIES
The killers couldn't find a
hidden safe in Mabel's home
e front room was a mess. Rugs
pulled up, furniture overturned
lrawers dumped. Smears of bloéd
everywhere,
didn’t: Know what had happened
went inside,” the gardener de-
i. “Blood was all over the floor
> hall. I followed it and I found
3. Monohan lay on her side in a
. A pillow case, heavily stained
ried blood, had been pulled over
ead and her hands were tied be-.
her back, '
erybody keep out until we’ve had
vhole house photographed and.
ver for finger-prints,” Chief An-
told his men. “Meanwhile, move
d the neighborhood. See if any-
leard or saw anything. From the
of the way the blood has dried,
probably been dead a couple of
le the lab ‘crew worked on the
Andrews questioned Truesdale
te detail. The gardener said he
for the lawn each week on
‘sday. Mrs. Monohan had been
nd well on his last visit.
) she live here alone?” Andrews
isked,
st of the time,” Truesdale said.
for the last couple of weeks an-
voman was here. I guess it was
ughter. I saw her the last time
and the two times before that.”
‘ews Called his office and asked
k to locate Mrs, Monohan’s
er.
the newspaper society editors,”
|. “They'll know where she is.
: has to do is sneeze and they
‘olumn on her.”
a the lab crew had finished its
round the body, the pillow case
noved from the widow’s head.
ews grimaced, sickened. .The
id face had been beaten unmer-
¥ @ crazy person. could have
an old woman that way, with
ids tied behind her back,” Cove-
gested. “That’s about the worst
ve ever seen.” .
2ws turned away from the body.
uughts went to the ransacked
“I don’t know,” he replied. “We
To Her Neighbors Mabel Monohan Was Just a
Lonely Old Lady, But When She Was Slain in
Quiet. Burbank, California, the Los ‘Angeles
‘Underworld Erupted As It Seldom Has Before
A gunman took Baxter Shorter
from his apartment, at right
may have something big here. It could
be gang stuff.”
One of the lab men called to An-
drews from the front room. When the
Chief arrived, he pointed to a spot on.
the floor behind a big davenport which
had been pulled out from the wall.
“I don’t know what this fellow was
after, but look at that. A perfect print
if I ever saw one,” the lab man said.
In a thin layer of dust on the hard-
wood floor was a foot-print. It showed
a waffie-weave sole, the type used on
tennis or leisure shoes, Even a trade
name was visible. . :
“Can you preserve that?” Andrews °
asked, .
“We'll photograph it first.and then
Spray it with fine oil and try to make
a moulage,” the lab man replied. .
“Good. It’s the kind of evidence that
could put somebody in the green room
at San Quentin.”
|X THE library, a reading-lamp was
lighted beside a big red leather chair
near the fireplace. A book, “The Pur-
ple Pony Murders”, lay face down over
the arm of the chair. ‘
“She must have been reading here
when somebody came to the door,”
Coveney declared. “And whoever it
¥
id
‘
_was, she must have recognized him.
The lights are still on in front and the
door has a peep-hole in it. She could
have seen him easily before she opened
up. ”
To back up this theory, the rest of
the doors and windows in the house
. were locked from the inside.
Every room in the house had been
ransacked, Even the piano bench, the
bread-box in the kitchen and the cup-
board on the service porch had been
emptied in the search, : .
‘ And every room had blood smears in
Assistant Chief McAuliffe suggested:
“The killer must have dragged her
from room to room, beating her in an
attempt to force her to tell where she
was hiding something.”
“He must have been searching for a
safe of some kind,” Andrews said.
“That's why the rugs are all pulled up
and the heavy furniture moved.”
An officer came in then and told the
Chief that Vandergrift had a witness.
in the front yard. Andrews went out
and the detective introduced him to
.Doctor David Hutton, former husband
of the evangelist, Aimee Semple Mc-
Pherson,
“Doctor Hutton was passing. here
about eight o’clock Monday night and
he saw a white-haired man stumbling
around and talking to himself,” Van-
dergrift said. “He noticed a yellow
Chrysler convertible parked at the
curb, too.” ;
Doctor Hutton declared that he did .
not know the man and never ‘had seen
3 PY tind
r 4 at +
Saile got out of car once,
in made Mike get back in.
n’t hide banking hours, '
He didn’t even vary his trip sched-
ules. He always went on Friday after-
noons. -
When he. left the store, Young
walked around to the side of the
building, where his children were at
play. Young and his wife, Crystal,
lived in an apartment above the mar-
ket with their four children. Young’s
greatest pleasure was his family.
Early in their marriage, the Youngs
had been told they could not have
children of their own. So they adopted
two small girls, sisters. These two
were Jean, now seven years old, and
Judy, six. Except for size, they were
alike as two peas in a pod—pretty,
blue-eyed blondes.
But the doctors were wrong. Mr.
and Mrs. Young had two others of
their own—Sondra Gay, a golden-
haired child of three-and-a-half, and a
five-month-old boy.
HE three girls crowded around
Young: Mrs. Young, holding the
baby, watched with a smile from the
doorway of the apartment. ;
“Daddy, can we go? Please, Daddy?”
Sondra Gay tugged at Young’s trouser
leg and Jean and Judy danced in a
circle. If they went, they-would get
a treat in Westwood. Ice cream or
candy bars, probably.
Young grinned indulgently, one hand
on the door of his green 1951 Chrys-
ik a
we
Deputy Sheriff Spellmeyer holds length of pipe car- .
ried by people who waylaid Young and passengers.
id a i a aban eli a
ler sedan. “Sure, pile in.” Young
liked to have the kids around.
“Michael, too?” one of- the girls
begged. She pointed to four-year-old
Michael Saile, a neighbor playmate.
Michael was a dark-eyed little boy
whose widowed mother rented an
apartment from Young.
“Yeah, Mike, too,” Young said.
. Two of the youngsters got in the
back seat, two in front. Young told
his wife he would be back by 4 P.M.
Mrs. Young watched them leave.
Highway 36 from Chester to West-
wood is a well-maintained two-lane
_ Macadam road with few bad curves.
If there aren’t too many logging trucks
on the highway, the trip can be made
in 15 minutes without’ speeding.
Young arrived at the Lassen County
branch of the Bank of America in
Westwood at 2:50 p.m. He left the
children in the car while he was in the |
_bank. He deposited his bundle of
checks and withdrew $7128. The cash
consisted of $7000 in old $20 bills, one
$100 bill-and $28 in change. He put
all of it in a canvas Federal Reserve
Bank sack.
Returning. to his car, Young was
greeted by a chorus of. demands for
ice cream. Shaking his head in mock
disgust, he led the four children across
the street to Ray Benight’s Variety
Store. There he bought each child an.
ice cream stick.
Officers peer into car held only by un-
derbrush from slipping into 4 ravine.
Later, Benight estimated that it was
2:55 or 3 P.M: when Young and. the
children returned to the car. Benight.
saw Young back away from the curb
and drive toward Chester.
MRS. YOUNG began to worry at
about five o’clock; her husband
had not returned. At six, when the
market closed, she and the wife of the
cashier drove to .Westwood and back,
looking for Young’s car along the high-
way. Mrs. Young thought there might
have been an accident.
No trace of the car was found, so
Mrs. Young notified the sheriff’s offices
in Plumas and Lassen County. By
nightfall, Sheriff Melvin H. Schooler
of Plumas County and Sheriff Olin
Johnson of Lassen County had or-
ganized a search party of 200 volun-
teers. ,
At daylight next morning, Schooler
sent two planes aloft from the Chester
landing strip. At about 7 A.M. one of
the pilots reported sighting a car like
Young’s in the underbrush on an
abandoned logging road. The road led
off the Chester-Westwood highway,
about four miles east of Chester in
the Bailey Creek area.
At the same moment, a Chester mill
worker named Jerry Bridges was tell-
ing Highway Patrolman Jess Cooley
- about a car he had seen near Bailey
Creek at 5:15 (Continued on page 84)
~
NX
84
from whom love must come. Her parents
were involved with their own tragedies and
those tragedies left fearful wounds on their
children’s souls.
“They called my father ‘Kelly The Crack,’ ”
Jane told one of her doctors. “My real name
is Kelly, you know—Nora Kelly. That was
until I was adopted by the Toppans. I don’t
know when I first found out that my father
was still alive. I was never permitted to see
him because he was what we called ‘violent.’
I don’t think I really wanted to see him.
And then later; he died. Actually, I believe
I must have been afraid of him.”
Instead of love then, Jane had been emo- °
tionally scarred—so deeply that even she
knew nothing of it: she. could be sweet,
motherly and helpful. But put someone utter-
ly in her power—one of her patients—just
as she had once been in the power of her
parents, then she would use that person as
she had been used. Instead of caring for such
a person, she would try to destroy him. For
Jane, herself, had been destroyed.
HAT she felt impelled to poison those
people who had been most kind to her
was indicative of the fact that she was afraid
of kindness, afraid of love—her parents’ love
had turned into hatred and madness. Jane
would stamp out of her life the possibility
that that transformation might occur again.
At the same time, she would show the world
that she could not be overlooked, could not
be taken for granted, would not be the
neglected child.
“Toppan the Terrible,” the newspapers
called her during her brief and sensational
trial. “The Angel of Mercy has turned out
to be an Angel of Death,” said the New
York World on June 25, 1902.
Her counsel pleaded insanity, but she
laughed merrily at her own lawyer. “How
”
could I be insane,” she said, “if I knew what
I was doing? Insane people do not know
right from wrong. I knew that what I was
doing was wrong, so how could I be insane?”
That is an exact quote. And the entire nation
was appalled by what Jane Toppan had to
say during those hot June days when she
was supposedly pleading for mercy, but
actually boasting of her crimes and relishing
every headline she was responsible for. Here
is trial testimony:
“Do you feel no remorse, Miss Toppan,
for what you have done?”
“No, I feel just fine.”
“When you witnessed a patient’s death
struggle, did not your conscience tell you that
what you were doing was a monstrous thing?”
“I knew before I started that it was a
monstrous thing I was doing. And some-
times I did decide to save the patient.
Generally, it was foo late. When I was able to
save them, it only meant that I would have
to do it all over again—sometimes I waited
for several weeks, however, before trying
again.” f
As the trial went on, Jane’s mad logic be-
gan to fall apart. “The jury is probably
right,” she said at one point. “Something
very likely is wrong with my head. I can’t
say just what the trouble is. I only know
that I have never felt so well as when’ I
would come to and find that one of my
patients was dead.”
“Exactly what do you mean, Miss Toppan,
when you say ‘come to?’” her lawyer wanted
to know.
Jane faltered. “I don’t know,” -she said.
“In the last moments . .,. when someone
. . when they died, I think I loved them
‘most then.” :
Killing, for Jane, was a way of making
love. She was lost in a. destructive ecstasy
instead of the creative one ‘she would have
known as a normal human being. She would
caress the body of her dying patient through-
out its torments. At the moment of death,
she achieved her greatest joy, a release from
consciousness, from the tensions -of her life
—an experience comparable to that of a
sexual climax. She would black out. The
victim was dead ... Jane returned to earth,
but not to the scene of the crime. She felt
no guilt.
ANE was aware of the legal syntax of right
and wrong. That is, she knew that her
acts were punishable by law—but, deep inside
of herself, she didn’t know why they were.
And because she didn’t know why, Jane could
legally be called insane.
And that was the jury’s verdict.
She was committed for life to the State
Hospital at Taunton. She took with her from
the Barnstable Jail six volumes of Rudyard
Kipling, the complete works of Edgar Allan
Poe, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and
a scrap-book of her newspaper clippings which
she had made for herself with zealous care.
She had smiled as a child “when being
punished. She smiled when imprisoned. She
had smiled during her trial. She smiled now
as she sat in the asylum, reading, chatting
with other patients, turning over the pages
of her scrapbook.
In a quiet room at Taunton, strangely
scented with sickness and sanitation, Jane
Toppan fell in love. She fell in love with a
book of yellowed clippings. She was deeply
in love with them when she died at the age
of 81 in 1938.
Jane Toppan had become a legend. She
had taken her place in history—a master
artist in the game of murder. She had de-
voted her life to it, gambled everything, and
in the perverse underworld of her mind had
won that game.
Horror Unlimited
continued from page 27
p.M. the day before. Bridges hadn’t paid any
attention at the time, thinking it belonged to
a deer hunter like himself.
Patrolman Cooley, Bridges and a friend,
Paul Eschman, immediately drove up the
dusty logging road. They followed it for half
a mile until they came to a small clearing in
the fir, pine and manzanita. ‘
Young’s car was there, its front end jammed
into the brush. Only the heavy thicket had pre-
vented it from rolling 75 feet down into Bailey
Creek Ravine, where it might not have been
found for months.
There was no one in the front or back seat.
The three men were puzzled until Cooley no-
ticed ugly red stains on the rear bumper. The
trunk door was not closed tight, either.
Cooley jerked the lid open, then recoiled,
pale with nausea.
Guard Young’s crumpled body lay there, one
bound hand stretched behind him. Beneath
him and farther back in the trunk were the
bludgeoned, lifeless forms of his older daugh-
ters, Jean and Judy, and the body ,of Michael
Saile. Little Sondra lay pinioned under the
other four, her yellow hair matted with blood.
Cooley stepped back to light a cigaret with,
shaking fingers. He dropped it at a shout from
Bridges: “That one’s alive.” —“
ee
Feebly and in jerks, Sondra Gay was stir-
ring under the bodies of the four dead; moving
as if she were trying to raise herself. -
Tender hands freed her from the grisly
tomb. As the sunlight fell across her face, her
eyes blinked open, then slowly closed again.
She had an ugly welt across the back of her
head and blood was flowing from her right ear.
But she was breathing.
Eschman and Cooley drove her to the hospi-
_ tal in Westwood with the throttle on the floor-
board. Surgeons huddled over her and at last
came up with a report: Basal skull fracture,
concussion, and shock; condition not serious.
GHERIFF Schooler, an FBI-trained peace of-
ficer and expert woodsman, took charge at
the scene, assisted by agents and criminologists
‘of the California Department of ‘Justice. From
the mute evidence, Schooler easily reconstruct-
ed the hideous events which had overtaken
Guard Young and the children.
Obviously, Young was waylaid on the high-
way near the junction of the logging road. The
killers, in another automobile, either lay in
wait or overtook him, knowing he was carry-
ing cash. ;
Young was, forced to drive up the logging
road, probably at gun point, with the other
car following behind. Somewhere along that
road the robbery and murders occurred.
All four victims were beaten to death. Their
skulls were crushed and broken.
Jean and Judy Young and Michael Saile
were struck from behind, as if their slayers
had made them lie face down before delivering
the blows.
Sondra Young received a glancing blow. In
their haste the killers undoubtedly left her for
dead.
The murder weapon was an 18-inch length
of half-inch plumbing pipe with an elbow
joint on one end. This pipe was found in the
bushes near the car; it had human hair and
blood on it.
Young’s hands had been crudely bound with
new white sash cord, although he had worked
one hand free before his death. His face was
pulpy-and discolored from blows. His hands
were scratched and bruised, as if he had strug-
gled desperately.
A coil of the sash rope lay in the dust nearby.
Keys to the car were found about ten feet to
the rear of the machine. The killers apparently
tried to shut and lock the trunk before leaving
the scene. The lid would not quite close over
Young’s body. There was a bloody, smudged
palm print on the left side of the trunk door.
CEN EH
__ hmmm
The money an
Young usually car:
ment, were missing
his wallet, which h
Farther down th
Young’s comb, son
other piece of sas!
adding machine tay
the total of checks
other listed the $71
That was about
palm print was vi:
taken from the car
and the children,
classification. No p
the pipe. The logg
meager clue—mark
tire, probably made
The crime shock
thing to kill a ma:
had died for less
carrying. But wha
bludgeon a carload
why?
Sheriff Schooler
were killed to prey
the murderers late:
knew them. I thin}
they. decided they h
protect themselves.”
The conservative
page editorial on tI
brutality, wantonn¢
humanity, this fienc
nation of a norma!
“No law enforceme:
be spared in captur
for this heartless cr
for the State of Cal
spur the search for
this atrocity.”
Governor Earl \
day, posting a $10
by the State since
offers—notably one
Grocers, Ltd. —bhbrou
heads to $6325
4 ARLY in the i
others believed
men. They reasone:
Chester would kno\
enough to pick the
Schooler and Dis
waited impatiently |
She was an eye-wi'
her three-and-a-ha!
Perhaps she could t
Sondra was able
October 12. When s!}
reached for her mot!
said, “I won’t play
Mrs. Young explain
had been scolded fo
a garden hose. Ap;
beating was punishn
Sondra told her st
a child’s account,
under the gentle o
attorney. There wer:
“She said Young w
by two men in a
“with no hair in fr
She clutched at the
cate the color. This
back.”
The other man, a
gun,” had “curly ha
face. He got in You
She would
t through-
of death,
lease from
f her life
hat of a
out. The,
1 to earth,
e. She felt
ax of right
v that her
deep inside
they were.
Jane could
» the State
th her from
of Rudyard
Edgar Allan
Women and
ypings which
cealous care.
when_ being
risoned. She
smiled now
chatting
‘e pages
n, strangely
tation, Jane
love with a
was deeply
d at the age
legend. She
‘y—a master
She had de-
erything, and
yer mind had
—_——————
-re along that
yccurred.
-o death. Their
Michael Saile
{ their slayers
efore delivering
ncing blow. In
dly left her for
18-inch length
vith an elbow
as found in the
uman hair and ©
{ely bound with
he had worked
h. His face was
ows. His hands
: had strug-
just nearby.
bout ten feet to
-illers apparently
ik before leaving
quite close over
ploody, smudged
the trunk door.
The money and the bank: sack, ‘ which
Young usually carried in the glove compart-
ment, were missing. So- were Young’s hat and
his wallet, which had contained another $200.
Farther down the road, investigators found
Young’s comb, some bloody tissue paper, an-
other piece of sash.cord and two pieces of
adding machine tape from the bank. One gave
the total of checks Young had deposited; the
other listed the $7128 he had withdrawn.
That was about it in the beginning. The
palm print was virtually useless.: Fingerprints
taken: from the car either belonged to Young
and the children, or were too smeared for
classification. No prints were developed from
the pipe. The logging road itself, yielded one
‘meager clue—marks from a car with one bald
tire, probably made by a deer-hunter.
The crime shocked the nation. It was one
thing to kill a man in a holdup; many men
had died for less than the sum Young was
carrying. But what manner of men would
bludgeon a carload of innocent children? ‘And
why?
Sheriff Schooler voiced his opinion: “They
were killed to prevent them from identifying
the murderers later on. Maybe the children
knew ‘them. I think after they killed Young,
they. decided they had.to kill the little ones to
protect themselves.”
The conservative Sacramento Bee ran a front
page editorial on the Chester case. “For sheer
brutality, wantonness and lack of all sense of
humanity, this fiendish crime defies the imagi-
nation of a normal mind,” said the newspaper.
“No law enforcement facility, no effort should
be spared in capturing the persons responsible
for this heartless crime. It would be in order
for the State of California to offer a reward to
spur the search for the fiends who committed
this atrocity.”
Governor Earl Warren responded the next
a]
’ day, posting a $1000 reward, the first offered
by the State since early days. Other reward
offers—notably one for $3000 by the United
Grocers, Ltd.—brought the price on the killers’
heads to $6325.
FARLY in. the investigation, Schooler and
others believed the murderers were local
men. They reasoned that only someone from
Chester would know Young’s movements -well
enough to pick the exact time to rob hing
Schooler and District Attorney Bert Janes
waited impatiently for little Sondra’s recovery.
She was an eye-witness, but how much had
her three-and-a-half-year-old mind retained?
Perhaps she could. tell them something.
Sondra was able to talk to her mother on
October 12. When she opened her eyes, Sondra
reached for her-mother’s hand. “Mommy,” shes
said, “I won’t play in the water any more.”
. Mrs. Young explained tearfully that the child
had been scolded for getting herself wet with
a garden hose. Apparently she thought her -
beating was punishment for this offense.
Sondra told her story on October 14. It was
a child’s account, given in halting phrases
under the gentle questioning of the district
attorney. There were many gaps.
“She said Young was stopped on the. highway
by two men in a “big, blue car.” One man
“with no hair in front” wore a white mask. ~
She clutched at the hospital bed sheet to indi-
cate the color. This man’s hair was “black in
back.” . 4
The other man, a “tall man with-a short
gun,” had “curly hair” and did not mask his
face. He got in Young’s car and “told Daddy
‘she added. She did not recall seeing the other
‘children struck. She did not remember the
t
to drive up the dirt road. Daddy did what he
said.” The masked man followed behind in. the
blue car. ‘ i
Sondra said she stayed in the front seat
with her father, while the curly-haired man
made the other three children lie down in back.
“Michael got out once,” she said. “One of the
men made him get back in.” j bao
Sondra’s memory faltered after that. She
described a rubbish pile along the logging road,
where both cars halted. She remembered only
one thing more—her father lying flat on the
roadway, face down with his hands being tied. i:
by the masked man.
“He hit Daddy while he was on the ground,”
blow she herself received:
She could not add to the account when Mrs.
Young and officers took her to the scene itself.
When they neared the logging road, Sondra
clung to her mother. “Shall we go up -that
road?” Mrs. Young asked. Sondra cried; “No,
no, no, I don’t want to.”
‘Though the accuracy of her story could not
be assessed, she had given some help; two men
were involved; they drove a blue car, probably.
a sedan; one man was tall. with dark. curly
hair; the. other was smaller with dark hair
balding at the forehead; presumably his mask
concealed easily recognizable features. Still,
it wasn’t the kind of dope a sheriff could put
in an all-points bulletin. . . :
Endless attempts were made to trace the
sash cord and the pipe used in the murders.
[HE pipe led to the first arrest in the case.
A Chester businessman, on bad terms with
Young, had been doing. some plumbing ‘in his
own: establishment. Some of the pipe. was
similar to the death weapon. This man was
tall with a receding hair line. Unfortunately
for him, he could not readily account for his’
whereabouts on the afternoon of the murder.
He was released only after days of harrow-
ing sessions with police officers, ending with a
lie detector test. :
It would take volumes to describe the many:
false leads checked out in the long investigation.
Hundreds -of persons were questioned and
many were actually: arrested, only to be re-.
leased in a day or two. One suspect was hunted
for months until it .was established he had
died 11 months before the murders.
‘Almost everyone in Chester wanted to help
solve the case; Schooler’s office was deluged
with tips. There were dozens of reports of
mysterious strangers seen in the vicinity of
the murder scene. Most of these proved to be
deer hunters or will o’ the wisps.
One frequent report—worth noting in the
light. of later developments—was that. a woman
had been seen on the highway near the logging
road that day. This didn’t jibe with Sondra’s
story. It was one of those tantalizing hints that
couldn’t be nailed down. ;
But it seemed to tie in nicely with a couple
of reports which filtered into Schdoler’s office
toward the end of October, 1952. :
The first one came from Schooler’s old
friend, Dewey Johnson, sheriff of neighboring
Sierra County. Johnson had a deputy named
Percy Watters whose wife, Fern, had been
working. in Grass Valley, Cal. Grass Valley is
a foothill town about.150 miles south of Ches-
ter. Mrs. Watters told Sheriff Johnson about
an interesting conversation with a friend in
Grass Valley—a woman named Marge Soren-
son. : ‘
_ Marge Sorenson was. a shapely, empty-head-
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86
<9: gta 2 “AERA MRE
The
Inevitable
Triangle
@ Scarcely out of three cor-
nered pants themselves, 4-year-
old Luigi and 5-year-old John :
watch with practiced eye as
New York patrolman Vincent
Highes prepares their. three-
month-old sister for a dry run.
The three youngsters were
abandoned on the steps of a
foundling home where police
found them after anonymous
phone call from a woman. A
note, left with the children and
addressed to the Mother Su-
perior, said in part: “Mother,
I no longer have the money to
feed them. God be with them.”
ed blonde divorcee, 32 years old, a stenographer
at an air base. She liked a gay party and she
didn’t mind if a man spent money on her.
The deputy’s wife said Marge told her about
a “real big party” in Reno, beginning the
night of October 10 and lasting for two days.
Her date was a Grass Valley man named Jack
Santo, a big, handsome fellow, vaguely sus-
pected of being in the illegal gold-buying
rackets. Santo was Marge Sorenson’s big love
at the moment. ‘ 6,
Santo apparently was loaded with money
that weekend. Marge told how he bought her
several hundred dollars’ worth of clothes in
Reno. He had such luck at the gambling tables
that they came home from the weekend with
“$500 over expenses.”
How had this party begun? Well, Jack
Santo was deer-hunting in Chester on October
10. That afternoon, he phoned Marge from
Chester, asking her to meet him in Reno that
night. This she had done. Another couple—
friends of Jack’s from Chester—joined them in
the party.
Marge Sorenson couldn’t stop talking about
this wonderful party, for a special womanly
reason. It was a feather in her cap because she
had beaten the time of Jack Santo’s regular
girlfriend.
"THAT was 30-year-old Harriet Henson, a
lynx-eyed brunette who lived with Santo in
Grass Valley and worked as a waitress in Au-
burn. Harriet was with Jack in Chester, Marge
crowed, but Jack had sent her packing that
Friday afternoon. Yes indeedy, little Marge
really put one over on Harriet Henson.
While Schooler and the state agents were di-
gesting this fascinating story, they got a letter
from a man in Sacramento. This-‘man thought
it would be a good idea if police checked on a
Chester contractor named. Ralph Nichols.
Everybody in town knew Nichols, a shrewd,
dark-featured little man; a hunter, fisherman
and golfer; owner of several houses; the only
man in Chester who had a television set.
The letter-writer said Nichols had an ex-
convict staying at his house the night before
the murders. Furthermore, Nichols and _ his
wife and the ex-convict went to Reno for a
big -whingding the evening after the crime.
The ex-con’s name was Jack Santo.
This informant turned out to be Marge
Sorenson’s jealous ex-husband.
Ralph Nichols was questioned immediately
by Schooler’ and State Agent Kenneth Horton.
Why, sure, he said, Jack Santo and his girl
friend, Harriet Henson, spent the night of
October 9 at his house. Jack was a good friend
whom he had known for years as a fellow
hunter and fisherman. Jack: had called him
from Auburn the previous afternoon, asking
if he could come up for deer hunting.
. Nichols said Santo and Harriet were there
most of the following day, too. In the after-
noon, Nichols said, Santo and Harriet had a
beef and the woman left in a huff. She caught
a ride to Auburn with people she met in a
Chester bar.
Santo then asked Nichols and his wife to go
to Reno for the weekend to see a golf match.
Marge Sorenson joined the three of them in
Reno. Nichols couldn’t recall any heavy spend-
ing by Santo that week-end.” ;
As for Santo’s activities in Chester on the.
day of the. murder, Nichols said, “I don’t
think he was gone from my place more than
half an hour at any time.” It was news to him
that Santo was a jailbird, he said. “I -have no
information ‘that would hurt Jack Santo.”
Just who was Jack Santo? State Bureau of
Identification files listed him as John Albert
Santo, 48, not exactly a stranger to police. He
was a tall, strapping character, vain about his
dark curly hair and pencil-line mustache. He
attracted women easily and flitted from one to
another, although he invariably came back to
Harriet Henson.
His rap sheet showed.a two-and-a-half year
term in McNeil Island Federal Prison starting
in 1924, for, transporting a stolen car across a
state line. In 1932, he did six months in the
county jail at San Francisco for assault with
a deadly weapon. Since then, his record was
one of many arrests but no convictions.
State agents had crossed his trail many times
in’ investigations of burglaries, safe jobs and
warmed. robberies. They felt sure he was the
brains of a loosely-knit criminal gang respon-
sible for numerous unsolved crimes, including
murders.
But they couldn’t pin anything on him.
About all they could prove was that Jack San-
to spent a lot of money but had no legitimate
source of income..He had been living in Grass
Valley for several years, making his headquar-
ters in a roadside bar called Higgins Corner.
GANTO was questioned about the Chester
case, of course. He laughed at the officers.
Hell, yes, he was at Ralph Nichols’ house that
day; certainly he went to. Reno that night.
Heavy spending? That wasa lot of bull. Marge
Sorenson was snowing her women friends.
What had he done in Chester? Well, he’d done
a little spot-light hunting with Nichols the
night of October 9. On October 10, he did
some serious drinking and had a row with
Harriet Henson, who went home alone. He
was at Nichols’ house all the time. Was any
of that a crime?
Harriet Henson, next up, was a defiant,
sulky vixen, genuinely in love with Santo. Her
story dovetailed with Nichols’ and Santo’s.
But one part didn’t ring true: Harriet couldn’t
remember the people with whom she rode
from Chester to Auburn after her tiff with
Santo on October 10; she couldn’t recall the
make of car or the route they took.
Pictures of Santo and Nichols were shown
to little Sondra Young, with negative results.
This had become a game for Sondra. Show
her a picture of a man with the lower half of
his face covered and she’d cry excitedly:
“That’s the bad man.”
‘Investigators made little progress for several
months. They kept a close’ watch on Santo,
hoping for a break. They finally got it with
the murder of Mrs. Mabel Monahan, a well-
to-do widow in Burbank, Cal. (INSIDE DETEC-
TIVE, Sept., 1953).
Mrs. Monahan was found gagged, . bound
and beaten to death in her ransacked home on
March 11, 1952. Two weeks later, cops ar-
rested Baxter Shorter, an ex-convict and
burglar. With a little coaxing, Shorter “sang”
loud and clear.
Shorter claimed he was an innocent pawn in
the case and named four others as the killers.
The chief of these, he said, was Jack Santo.
Number Two man in the job was Santo’s
good friend and henchman, Emmett Perkins.
Perkins was a wizened, 44-year-old ex-convict
with donkey ears and a balding, high-domed
forehead. He was Santo’s “heavy man”—a
cannon and a killer.
Others identified by Shorter in the Monahan
case were Barbara Graham, Santo’s current
mistress, and -John L. ‘True, a _ deep-
sea: diver with no prior criminal record.
)
In a talkative mc
Santo and Perkins
the Mother Lode
stickup killing in
1951.
Did Shorter kn«
to’s gang? Well, bh
Grass Valley. A
Boles. The officers
It was to prove in
Unluckily for B
lice released him \
Company. His bre:
soon leaked out.
On April 14, t
from his home. Af
ride, gangster stvle
Shorter’s wife late:
napers as Emmett
HE KIDNAPI
until cops caug
When he saw Sh¢
State’s evidence to
Santo, Perkins ;
in hiding. A shot;
policemen capture
makeshift apartme
ing. Santo and Bar
put it, were “unc
they arrived.
Santo had a shir
outside. To everyor
but borrowed—wit
owner was Jack
Valley,. his gay con
end, Marge Soren:
Wayne Brown, t
of Nevada County
before; he had
something out of
Sorenson several ti
she was only a lo\
Santo.
Then he made h
with him to get t
murder? Would st
bold scheme to ma
“Marge was hes
was sure that Nich:
in Chester, knew a
on the day of the
added slyly, Nich
thing or two abou
Marge Sorenson
laid carefully by
Ernest Wenberg, \
Marge rented a «
phoned Nichols in
to Truckee secret],
affairs. She hinted
tions.
Nichols bit like
the Truckee cabin
Marge was waitin
ice—and a hidden
Mellowed by
Marge’s charm, |}
talked and talked
together on tape:
He was scared
well Santo Had pu
was afraid to tell
from Santo, afraid
in on the deal
He might have
to Santo, Nichols
cussed the bank ;
dangerous it was {
those t#ips.
fool out of her; Harriet was being his dupe.
Sure, she loved Santo; sure she was loyal.
But was Santo loyal to her? What about
Marge Sorenson and Barbara Graham and all
the others? How many letters had Harriet
written Santo since she’d been in jail? Two a
day, huh? And how many replies from Santo?
None? Not even one? .
Harriet cracked a little at a time. On .
September 18, she dropped 'a major lead.
She told McCarthy: “I don’t want this to come
out anywhere—in the newspapers or any-—
where else—but I returned from Chester to
Auburn with Perkins: the day of the murders.”
The Monahan case verdict came on Sep- .
tember 22. Santo, Perkins and Barbara Graham
were convicted of first-degree murder without
recommendation for leniency. That meant
death in the gas chamber. i
Tas seemed to break Harriet’s spirit. Jack
couldn’t be saved now; she might as well
talk. During the next four days she gave a
complete statement on the Chester case. She
signed it on September 26,
Listlessly, almost in monotones, Harriet told
of. being at Ralph Nichols’ house: with Santo
on October 9 and 10, 1952. The day of the.
murder, she said, Santo left the house alone
between 2:30 and 3 p.m. and did not return
until “very close to 4 P.M.” Nichols was
sleeping. She stayed at the, house. ;
When Santo returned, he told her: “You
have to get the hell out of here. There’s a car —
»
in the ‘driveway waiting for you.
Harriet said she grabbed her purse, left all
her clothing and ran outside. Perkins, who
was sitting behind the wheel of the car, said:
“We have to get out of town.” They left with
Perkins driving. After 20 miles, Perkins stopped
the car; went to the trunk and changed his
shirt. Further down the road, he handed her
a man’s hat to throw out of the car.
At Marysville, they stopped for a couple
of cans of beer and Perkins remarked: between
sips: “This has béen-a pretty gruesome day -
for us.” Harriet drove from there to Santo’s
house in Auburn, with Perkins riding as a
passenger, .
At the house, Perkins opened an envelope
-and ‘counted out $2000 to her, mostly in
twenties with a few ones. Perkins ‘said Santo
had kept between $1000 and $1500 in Chester
and from that was to pay Nichols “ten per
cent off the top” for information. Perkins and
Santo were to split the rest. .
At the same time, Perkins gave Harriet a
wallet and some papers belonging to Guard
Young, asking her to destroy them. She burned
them in an incinerator.
When Santo arrived from Reno two days
later, he cautioned her not to read, the news-
papers about the Young case. He commented:
“If I had known the children were along, I
wouldn’t have completed the caper.”
- Basically, Harriet’s statement broke the
Chester case. But it left some perplexing
contradictions. For example, her story was at
great variance with Ralph Nichols’,
Nichols angrily denied her claim that he got
part of the murder loot. He said she was
taking . “revenge” for his earlier statements
.tying her. into the case,
Nichols reiterated his assertions that “Har-
riet left the house with Santo at 2:30 p.m. on
October 10 and did not return at all. He added
something new: When Santo returned that
afternoon, he buried his head in his hands and
‘said; “Goddam, this has been a hell of a
rough 0 ee
There was disagreement among the authori-
ties, but most officials were inclined to go
along with Nichols.
Then a new witness, a prominent rancher,
came forward with information that he had
*kept secret for -almost a year.
The. rancher disclosed that he . saw
Guard Young standing beside his car along
the highway near the logging road shortly be-
‘ fore the murders. Young was talking to one
man, while another man and a woman were
standing nearby.. The children were standing
between Young’s car and another auto behind
‘it, talking with the woman.
Sheriff Schooler believes the three with
. @foung were Santo, Perkins and Miss Henson.
Santo and Perkins were sentenced to death
“for the Monahan slaying on October 6; they”
were immediately taken to San Quentin Prison
to await éxecution.
EANWHILE, Santo, ‘Perkins, Boles and
Harriet Henson were indicted in Nevada
County for the Edmund Hansen slaying.
At this writing, Nevada County authorities
plan to seek a court order to bring Santo and
Perkins to Nevada City for trial.
No charges have been filed in the Young
case in Plumas County. Authorities have
indicated they will carry the case through to.
a trial, after .cleaning up loose ends, even
though Santo and Perkins already stand
condemned. '
‘Eprror’s Nore: The names Ralph Nichols
and Marge Sorenson are not the actual names
of the persons who were in fact participants —
in the events described in this article. The
names are used to prevent embarrassment to
thesd innocend persons.
——_ — They Shared
continued from page, a
oF
.
it was a dismal and exacting job. Hardened ’
criminals were one thing, but these people
fresh from the back country, inarticulate with
their shyness, were too pathetically humbled
by these processes of law. He had seen other
big hands tremble, other wide shoulders sag
under the soul-wracking procedures of a mur-
der trial. Mrs. Ann Smith, her slender shoul-
ders shaking, rose suddenly . and groped her
way back through the double doors at the.
rear.
“The women suffer most,” he thought, “and
a backwoods farmer’s wife is vulnerable. to
this sort of thing.” Gently pathetic,, stoic under
poverty, work and pain, they were stunned by
the censure of the men they loved, the implac-
able hate of the innocent for the accused. Shab-
by against the bright clothes of the-spectators,
lonely as the wife of the suspected killer, there .
was no way to escape the censure of the curi-
ous or the pain of her gnawing fear.
[THE sixth juror was seated as she slipped:
through the doors. Luther, who had not seen
her go, listened intently as the process of.se-
lection went on. Here were the men who would
hold his life in their hands, the women with
husbands and children at home who would
decree if he should live or die. The prosecutor
was deadly and assured; it was his job to seek
society’s greatest revenge and suddenly the.
process of the trial seemed callous and cold.
“He wants to see me killed,” Luther thought.
“That’s, what he gets paid’ for. If I die, I'll be a
feather in his cap.” He felt the first twinges of
fear, over-riding his sense of righteousness:and
anger, and his glance moved to the judge. The
black-garbed. official’s face reflected the solem-
nity of the occasion and he found no consola-
tion there. Behind -him were the movements,
the whispers of the crowd; to them he was a
movie, a new kind of show. Strangely, at this
moment, his mind: drifted back to the open
- fields and keenly. he. missed the warmth of the
sun on_his.back and, the clean smell of the air.
What ‘was he doing here? Strong’ arms that
could hold a plow firm against the wrench of
upturning earth and legs used to the soft give-
ness of fresh furrows and the gentle nap of the ,
sweet-smelling marsh,grass. All of his life he
had loved the free things, God’s things, that
had answered ‘so bountifully to the fullness of
. his strength, and now he huddled like a scared
rabbit before men’s hard and curious eyes. .
And Ann.’ He cringed at the thought of her,
knowing in his misery that it was. for her that
he suffered most. This would be hardest on her.
He recalled her gentle shyness, the worshipping
trust that she gave him, like a helpless pet, and
he ‘wondered how she had lived through the .
long months he. had spent in: jail. Her small”
body used to tremble in-his arms at the clap of’
_ thunder and the rush of rain; she had clung to
him in. ber moments of happiness ont sorrow, 3
- drawing: strength from his strength to meet
worry and perplexity and fear. He’d thought
of her during the nights that he’d lain on his-
hard bunk, listening to the sigh of sleeping
men, his own eyes wide under the perpetual
twilight of a prison cell. Once he’d cried out
for her, but the others had mimicked him for
a long time after and her name had rung hol-
low on their jeering lips. :
HAT had she done? Ii he was convicted,
how could she: get .along? A bailiff
tapped ‘him .on ,the shoulder and, startled, he
blinked up into the man’s face.
“Your wife told me to give you this,” the
court officer whispered, and he handed Luther
a note,
-“My Darling,”. her small, “neat handwriting
said. “I cannot go through with it. I have
gone to the end. Don’t go looking for me for
I am heading for the water. I will die loving .
you. . Forgive me, dearest, and I know that God |
will be with you ... Ann.”
The chair crashed behind him aiid he was
-on his feet, listening to his own great shout.
. The judge’s gavel rapped. preecayore rose in
their: seats. -
“Stop her,” Luther ‘cried, ies: voice thick
_with pain. “You’ve got to stop oe She’s
gone to kill herself |” ‘
Attorney Frink ‘took the note from’ his
-hand.: He glanced at -it,.then took it. to the
judge. Justice Nim
lips compressed.
“Court recessed,’
the sheriff. “Put e
the waterfront,”
Smith!”
It was nearly 1
quickly down the
holding back tear:
picion, hurrying int
breeze that came f:
help him more if }
can’t do anything f
Jet her tell anyone
that night when tl
Simmons’ house,
shudders and her :
promise before Goc
one why they had
he didn’t want he
courtroom, shamed
herself, under the
shared, she had kn
she were dead he |
there was nothing t
could tell. She hez
and between the bu
ing sheen of blue t
as her grave. She |
to go around the }
her but he reached
shoulders and she :
she gave way to hc
“You've got to ;
deputy said gently.
he guided her to th
Back in his cell
jail, Luther grippec
whiter than prison
of the steel door a:
steps down the na
deputy stopped in
to read the man’s }
“Ts she all right
“We found her.”
“Ts she all right
“She’s suffering {
her up before she gx
hospital now. But :
“Can’t.I see her
’ “Not for a while.
“She doesn’t nee
“She needs me.” T
He watched as the |
to the window, the
The following mo
drew one of the six
trial: It would be i:
the consternation c
appearance, to pro
trial. It would be
of court. In the So:
lay pale and bleak
husband had faile
Would he realize t
own life was only :
his own? Or woul
be thinking, that ;
way out?
“When can I go:
OON,” the doc
get your stren
Rest, she had th:
. band is charged w
-carry a burden tha’
a secret that might
the courage to tel)
‘and take her share
‘Among the peop):
State Bureau of
as John Albert
ger. to police. He
r, vain about his
ne mustache. He
itted from one to
oly came back to -
o-and-a-half year
al Prison’ starting
olen car across @
ix months in the
for assault with
a, his record was
convictions.
s trail many times
es, safe jobs and
sure he was the
nal gang respon-
crimes, including
unything on him.
vas that Jack San-
had no legitimate
sen living in Grass
sing his headquar-
d Higgins Corner.
ibout the Chester
hed at the officers.
Nichols’ house that”
Reno that night. -
1 lot of bull. Marge
r women friends.
tr? Well, he’d done
with Nichols the
ictober 10, he did
had a row with
t home alone. He
the time. Was any
ip,. was a defiant,
ve with Santo. Her-
-hols’ and Santo’s.
ie: Harriet couldn’t *
h whom ‘she rode
after her tiff with
couldn’t recall the
aey took.
Nichols were shown
ith negative results.
for Sondra.. Show
th the lower half of
ie’d cry. excitedly:
progress for several
se’ watch on Santo,
finally got it with
1 Monahan, a well-
Cal. (INSIDE DETEC-
und gagged, . bound
: ransacked home on
eeks later, cops. ar-
an ex-convict. and
xing, Shorter “sang”
an innocent pawn in
others as the killers.
i, was Jack Santo.
the job was Santo’s
an, Emmett Perkins.
4-year-old ex-convict
balding, high-domed
ys “heavy man”—a
orter in the Monahan
1am, Santo’s current
L. ‘True, a deep-
ior criminal record.
sae sent?
Boles: The officers made a note of this name.
Ls
In a talkative mood, Shorter mentioned that
Santo and Perkins had worked other jobs:in
the Mother Lode country; for instance, a
stickup killing. in Nevada City sometime in |
1951. an ; be ae ors
Did Shorter know any other hoods in San--
to’s gang? -Well, he knew one in Auburn or
Grass Valley. A young guy named George
It was to prove important. . ber or eae
Unluckily for Baxter Shorter, Burbank po--
lice released: him ‘while they hunted Santo &
Company. His breach’ of ‘underworld ‘etiquette
soon leaked out.
On April 14, two men kidnaped Shorter
from his. home. Apparently he got a one-way
ride, gangster style; he hasn’t been seen since.
Shorter’s wife later identified one of the kid-
napers as Emmett Perkins. é
Ts KIDNAPING ‘all but blew the-case,
~ until cops caught up with True, the diver.
When he saw Shorter’s statement, he turned
State’s evidence to save his own skin.
Santo, Perkins and, Barbara Graham were
in hiding.. A:shotgun squad of Los Angeles -
policemen captured them on May 4in: a
makeshift apartment in a vacant store build-
ing. Santé and Barbara, as the police modestly
put it, were “unclad” at the moment when .
_they arrived)
- Santo had a’‘shiny Oldsmobile sedan parked -
outside. To everyone’s surprise, it wasn’t stolen
but. borrowed—with the owner’s consent. ‘The
owner was Jack Sarito’s blonde from Grass
Valley,. his gay companion on the Reno week-
end, Marge Sorenson.
Wayne Brown, the wily, easy-talking sheriff
‘of Nevada County, had talked to the woman
before; -he had a_ hunch he could: make
something out of this. He questioned’ Marge”
Sorenson several times, satisfying himself that
she was only a lovesick blonde fast-talked. by ©
_ Santo.
Then he made his pitch: Would Marge work
with him to get the truth about the Chester
murder? Would she risk her pretty neck in a .
bold scheme to make Ralph Nichols talk?
‘Marge was hesitant. Brown told her’ he
was sure that Nichols, Santo’s. contractor friend”
in Chester, knew a lot about Santo’s activities
on the day of the murders. What’s more, he
added. slyly, Nichols probably could tell a
thing or two about Harriet Henson.
Marge Sorenson liked that. The plans were
laid carefully by State Agents Horton and
Ernest Wenberg, working with Sheriff Brown.
Marge rented a cabin in Truckee. Then she
phoned Nichols in Chester, telling him'to come. -.
to Truckee secretly to discuss Santo’s business
affairs. She hinted these were Santo’s instruc-
tions. : : :
Nichols bit like a hungry trout. He.came tas
the Truckee cabin one night in midsummer.
Marge was waiting for him with whisky and:
ice—and-a hidden tape_recording machine.
Mellowed by. liquor and encouraged by
Marge’s charm, Ralph Nichols talked and
talked and talked. This was-his story, pieced
together on tape: , i
He was scared, to death. He knew damn
well Santo liad pulled the: Young job, but he
was afraid to tell the cops—afraid ‘of reprisal
from Santo, afraid the cops would think he was
in on the deal. :
He .might have unwittingly fingered Young
to Santo, Nichols thought. He’d often dis-.«
cussed the bank problem, -telling Santo how ~
dangerous it was for the businessmen to make
_those teips. .
. Horton.
se 4 i sleek} .
EVEN SET SREP eo ieee
< -
What madé Nichols think Santo did the job? |
Well, on the morning of October. 10; Nichols
left Santo at his house and drove to Westwood.
to, make a bank deposit. When he. left: the
bank about ‘11. a.m., he ran into Santo.
-* Santo’s car was parked’ there, and another
‘man was~ sitting init. ‘The~ other’man was |'*
Emmett’ Perkins. “Santo: and I talked awhile.
Then Santo nudged me and pointed. to.a fel-
. low going by.) He: askeds,"Isn't that,,the Red 2S many Others "Cleaning Up” With
Yes; |
& White grocer from Chester?’ I
that’s Frank: Locatell,. and thought-no more”
about it:” ae
Nichols. went about: his, business, returning |”
to Chester about 1. p.m. Santo and Perkins |~ ,
were sitting there in Santo’s car, When Santo
came in, he remarked that ‘‘Locatell drives
like a maniac. If he wasn’t such a fast driver, |
‘I might have been in the chips,”
Nichols believed now that Santo and Perkins | ;
meant first.‘to knock over Locatell.. Failing,
they had made a second choice that afternoon
—Guard- Young. i i .
- “Nichols never saw. Perkins again. Santo and
Harriet left his house at 2:30 P.M., saying they
were going to a local bar. Santo returned at |.
4:30 P.m., making the phone call to. Marge |.
and proposing the Reno. trip. Harriet. did. not
‘come back at.all. © 3, 0: Pe ica
Thus both Santo and his woman were absent
-at the time, of the murder: euiies ptees?
Nichols’ guess was that Harriet drove’ to
Auburn with Perkins, taking the bulk of the
‘murder loot. Nichols agreed now thdt Santo
had spent a lot of mohey in Reno... | ©
-Having Nichols ‘on record made things easier.
‘Later, he voluntarily repeated it all in a
formal. statement to Schooler and State Agent
The pace quickened now. On August. 11,
Sheriff ° Brown of Nevada County © ar-
rested George W. Boles, the man named by
Baxter Shorter as Santo’s pal’in Grass Valley.
Boles was a glib, 32-year-dld hospital . tech-
_nician ‘with a minor police record. *
The sheriff charged Boles with the murder
of Edmund Hansen, operator of the famous.
Last Chance: Mine’ at Nevada City. Hansen
was shot and fatally. wounded on December
29, 1951, by two men who chased him through
his home. on -Piety Hill, demanding money.
One man: was masked; the other, who~ wasn’t,
- was identified by Hansen’s widow .as Boles.
George Boles sat it: out in jail for a few
weeks, keeping his mouth- shut. Then the
Monahan trial began in Los Angeles.- :
[EJARRIET "HENSON testified for Santo,
‘perjuring herself in a futile effort. to give
- him an alibi for the day of the Monahan slay-
ing. As she left the courtroom, she was ar-
rested as a participant. in-the Edmund Hansen
holdup-murder. :
George Boles confessed on September 11. He
said Emmett Perkins was his masked accom-
plice. The two of them gunned Hansen down
in an abortive stickup masterminded by Jack
Santo. Harriet Henson drove the. getaway car.
. Harriet was next. She admitted driving the
car for Boles and Perkins in the Hansen job:
But she refused to implicate Santo. :
Slowly, carefully and with infinite patience, |
Sheriff Brown worked on Harriet in the coun-
ty jail at Nevada City. He and big genial Ray
McCarthy, one of the state’s crack agents, |
questioned her every day for 21 days, always
gently, always courteously. ; ‘
Over and over, they stressed, that they
were not her enemies. They only wanted to
see the truth come out. Santo was making a
fa Seas
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87
The cleanup
spot
OFF A DEAD MAN’S CHEST—Grady
Mallory, 24-year-old boat painter, was sen-
tenced in Mobile, Ala., to ten years in prison
for the slaying of Sidney Lyons Metcalfe
SRE RS
MOTHER OF SORROW _. .
@ “HE KICKED ME. He began hitting me with a kitchen pot, hard—and over the head.
I begged him—lI begged him to stop. I screamed at him and I was crying.” Then Mrs.
Anita Arredondo (right) picked up a paring knife and plunged it into her husband’s
chest. He died almost immediately. The Cambridge, Mass., woman, mother of six
children, is shown with police matron Louise Nelson Darling during questioning. “I caer
just couldn’t take it any more,” Mrs. Arredondo said. “He was as brutal with the Mallory: the charge was manslaughter.
children as he was with me. It just wasn’t any way to bring them up—beating them °
all-the time. They learned to hate him.” She is being -held pending charges. during a wine-drinking bout at a lonely .
~t ‘ Mobile River shack (42 Holes In A Dead
. . Man’s Chest, November FRONT PAGE, 1953).
Mallory had been indicted for first degree
murder, but the 12 jurors reduced the
charge to manslaughter.
SCARED—William A. Braddock, 33-
year-old father of five small children,
pleaded guilty in Winston-Salem, N. C., to
the killing of Mrs. Frances Mitchell (Scared
Silly, February FRONT PAGE, 1954). The
plea, accepted by the state, ruled out the
chance that Braddock would go to the gas
chamber for the crime. He was given a
mandatory life sentence. |
Tommie Dene Doughty, 17-year-old former
carnival strip teaser, was sentenced in
Muskogee, Okla., to 21 years in federal
prison. She had pleaded guilty to kidnaping
five-month-old Richard Lee Stammer at
Evansville, Ind., and carrying him to Bok-
chito, Okla. (... And Baby Makes Three,
February FRONT PAGE, 1954). She will be
eligible for parole after serving one-third of
the sentence, seven years, providing she
makes a good record behind bars.
TERROR’S END — Alfred Charles
Whiteway, 22-year-old father of two chil-
STRIPPER AND THE BABY—Mrs.
YES, THAT’S HIM dren, was hanged in London, England, for
Fie r ; . . _ raping and murdering two teenage girls
* ™ “YES, THAT ONE— he put me here,” she sobbed. Mrs. Catherine Zimmerman points whose bodies he threw into the River
the#&~ashe accuses of having assaulted her. He is Henry Anderson (third from Thames (Terror On The Towpath, January
) who was once her landlord. Already facing trial ‘on charges of assault with FRONT PAGE, 1954) Whiteway’s victims were
intent to rape and assault with intent to murder, growing ‘out of an attack ‘on Mrs. 16-year-old "havheek Songhurst and 18-year-
Zimmerman a few months before, the Chicago man allegedly ambushed Mrs. Zim- old Christine Reed.
merman this time as she entered her place of employment. He pulled out a gun and
fired several bullets into her leg and hip. Beside the victim is Police Captain Louis - UNLIMITED — Jack Santo, notorious
12 Posschl; right with bow tie is States’ Attorney Lewis Manilow and an officer. - ringleader of a murderous robber gang, and
a TROUT feée DereetWe, AYR /L, (GSA
two co-defendants, Emmett Perkins and
George W. Boles, Jr., were convicted in
Nevada City, Cal., of the murder of gold
miner Edmund Hansen (Horror Unlimited,
January FRONT PAGE, 1954). The jury rec-
ommended mercy and all three were given
Santo and Perkins: two down, one to go.
mandatory life sentences. Santo and Perkins
already face the death penalty for beating
to death a crippled Burbank, Cal., widow,
Mrs. Mabel Monohan (Mabel Couldn’t
Lock Out Murder, September INSIDE DETEC-
TIVE, 1953). Also convicted in that slaying
was Mrs. Barbara Graham. Perkins, who
- Young and three small children. Harriet,
has spent 24 of: his 45 years behind bars,
said he was disappointed in his latest sen-
tence. “I wanted the death penalty,” he said.
“Tf I beat the other rap (the Monohan slay-
ing) I’ll go back to prison for life.” Perkins
and Santo also are prime suspects in the
mass murder of Chester, Cal., grocer Guard
Hensen, Santo’s mistress, is also to stan
trial for these same slayings.
IF HE HOLLERS—Maurice O’Dell, 28,
and Walter Griffen, 27, died in. the Sing
Sing electric chair in Ossining, N. Y., for
the holdup-killing of Buffalo jeweler Don-
ald Hurd (Jf He Hollers, April FRONT
PAGE, 1953). Before the execution, Griffen
gave his eyes to the Buffalo Eye Bank and
Research Society so that sight may be
given to two blind persons. J. A. Albrecht,
president of the society, said that the cor-
-neas would be sent to New York where
there are blind persons waiting, since there
is no immediate need in Buffalo. Transplants
are never made to both eyes at the same
time—consequently two persons will benefit
from the gift.
MONEY, MONEY, MONEY — The
United States Court of Appeals has upheld
the convictions of William Skally, William
J. Russo, Samuel Sferas and his brother,
James Sferas, who had been charged. with
counterfeiting (Money, Money, Money...,
April FRONT PAGE, 1953) and found guilty
by the United States District Court in
Chicago, Ill. The four men were at that
time given three-year terms, but had ap-
pealed. These sentences will now have to
be served.
HER SUGAR DADDY — Millionaire:
sugar heir Adolph B. Spreckels II was sen-,
tenced to 30 days in jail by a Santa Ana,
Cal., judge on charges that he beat his ex-
wife, actress Kay Williams (Sugar Daddy,"
December FRONT PAGE Case Doo, 1%
Superior Court Judge Robert .Cgrdner-
nied a probation request, saying a. une
‘would not be adequate” in Spreckels’ case. ,
He told the millionaire that he\ will be
Kay Williams: beaten with her own shoe.
treated just as any other prisoner “despite
your wealth.” Miss Williams, who brought
charges against Spreckels after she was
beaten with her own shoe, was not in cor*
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They Crossed the Line Into
Nowhere
| [Continued from page 8]
minute search of the trail by rangers pro-
duced nothing to show what had hap-
pened to Gordon. Bloodhounds were
brought in and a helicopter flew low over
the trail with no results.
Gordon’s was a true missing persons
case, He had simply vanished. Searchers
feel he may have slipped and fallen into
a remote gulley missed by searchers and
bloodhounds, but unjess and until a corpse
is found, the Gordon case is just another
one of those perplexing mysteries.
Many missing persons cases are loaded
with dynamite, police never cease
working on t . A scrap of information
picked at random may be just the
i a jigsaw puzzle to break such a
ase. That is why police set up priorities
on. certain cases, the solution of which
a unscramble other crimes.
n April 14, 1953, there was a dis-
appearance that rocked the Los Angeles
underworld when a 44-year-old, black
jowled ex-bartender named Baxter
Shorter crossed the line into the land of
the missjng.
Shorter and his wife, Olivia, were
sitting in the living room of an apartment
they owned at 121 South Flower Street,
in Los Angeles’ ancient Bunker Hill
district. They were quietly sipping drinks,
and watching a.television program.
According to the story Mrs. Shorter
later told Police Detective Harry Hansen
of the Los Angeles Homicide Squad, they
heard the doorbell ring. For a moment
they hesitated answering, because Shorter
had been fingered as a “stoolie” for turn-
ing state’s evidence in the brutal Mable
Monahan murder case. He had spilled to
police what he knew about other members
of a killer mob who were still at large.
Then, checking to make sure a rifle
they kept by the door was loaded and
cocked, they opened the door. A man
Mrs, Shorter said was Emmet Perkins,
one of the killer mob, marched her hus-_
band from the apartment at gunpoint, she
sobbed. She said he was forced into a car
in which were two other men and a
woman, and then the car sped off into the
night, pe ti
Although the police report stated that
Mrs. Shorter had been drinking at the
time she told her story of the kidnaping,
it was a pat story that couldn’t be shaken.
Nevertheless police had the uneasy feel-
ing that Shorter might have taken a
powder with elaborate stage setting, per-
» haps to save his life from vengeance of
the mob or for another reason.
Mrs. Monahan had been brutally pistol-
whipped to death in her modest Burbank
cottage where, it was rumored through-
out the underworld, she had cached a
$140,000 bankroll given to her by her
daughter’s ex-husband, big shot Las
Vegas gambler L. B, (Tutor) Scherer.
Burbank Detective Lieut. Robert
Coverley, immediately after the crime,
contacted Scherer in Palm Springs.
Scherer confirmed that he had given
$100,000 as a divorce settlement to his ex-
wife Mrs. Irs Scherer, im 1951. He said
he believed his ex-wife had given $40,000
to Mrs.’ Monahan.
Had the underworld tip been correct?
Was there a secret cache of thousands of
dollars in the little Burbank bungalow?
And if there was, what happened to it?
Disgusted police. investigators found
everybody decidedly unwilling to talk
about it.
But it was known that Shorter had been
in Mrs. Monahan’s home the night she
was murdered. In fact, he admitted being
a witness to the bloody job, a statement
that perhaps sealed his doom, one way
or another, to the land of limbo—with or
without the big bankroll,
For, after questioning Shorter, the
police released him on a writ, presuma-
bly in a deal for singing against the other
mobsters. Oddly, no police protection
was given Shorter, though officers say
they “offered” him a guard. And so their
key witness was a sitting duck the night
of April 14 when Baxter Shorter’s door-
bell rang.
Was Baxter Shorter kidnaped, or did
he voluntarily vanish?
Police mulled these facts:
Shorter knew Perkins, but readily
opened his apartment door to the man
Mrs. Shorter swears was Perkins. Mrs.
Shorter made no effort to prevent the
“kidnaping,” though a loaded rifle stood
beside the door. There were many people
up and about at the time Shorter vanished,
yet no one besides Mrs. Shorter re-
membered seeing anything unusual,
The underworld grapevine had learned
that Shorter had made a deal with police
for immunity in the Monahan murder in
return for his eye-witness story. The
usual way out for squealers is quick mur-
der, not abduction. '
And Shorter reportedly had been kid-
naped by Perkins, who made no effort to
conceal his identity from the victim’s
wife, who naturally would go to the
police, if it actually was a kidnap.
Perkins and two others of the killer
mob, Jack Santo and Barbara Graham,
were later located by an alert police-
woman who tailed Mrs. Graham to a
southside hideout in an abandoned store,
where they had holed up since the day
after Shorter vanished: All three were
convicted at their trial.
And while police records still list the
Shorter case.as a kidnaping, one final, dis-
turbing note turned up shortly before the
trial, when a réokie cop posing as an
underworld contact worked his way into
Barbara Graham’s confidence in county
jail, where it was learned she wanted to
buy an alibi.
The officer, Samuel Sirianni, pretended
to be worried lest Shorter come forth later
as a prosecution witness and upset such
an abi. But Barbara said vehemently,
and loud enough to be heard on a con-
- cealed tape recording machine:
“Tam giving you my word that Shorter
will not be there at the trial. He has been
taken care of. He has been done away
with. He won’t be there,”
And he wasn’t!
There is a curious connection, police
noted with interest, between the Baxter
Shorter case and that of the disappearance
of two other habitues of the Los Angeles
back streets, Dave Ogul and Frank
Niccoli. All three at one time had worked
for the notorious Mickey Cohen, the
bookmaker of Bel Air, filmland’s favorite
real-life mobster.
Cohen had ridden to fame and fortune
in postwar years in a Cadillac caravan
that-roamed the Sunset Strip at all hours
of the night, with strange, hard-faced
little men peering out from behind bullet-
proof glass at the world of make believe
that was Hollywood.
Before he tangled facts with the T-men
and went up to McNeil-on a tax rap, The
Mick earned a sort?of Robin Hood rep.
utation by openly denouncing Gerald f.
K. Smith, police brutality and high taxes.
eterna
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Police figured.
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The Cleanup Spot
_ SIGNING OFF—Mrs. Jean Chase,
charged with the murder of her husband,
radio announcer Roger Chase, was found
guilty by a Phoenix, Ariz., court. (Sign-
ing Of, January FRONT PAGE, 1954). The
jury, after a six-hour deliberation, re-
turned the verdict with a recommendation
for life imprisonment. Her husband’s
body was found lying along a desert high-
way. Death had been: caused by four
bullet wounds. At the trial, Mrs. Chase
denied any knowledge of the shooting.
HORROR UNLIMITED—Jack Santo
‘and Emmett Perkins, known as_ the
\
“Mountain Mob” in the Sierra Mountain
country of California, were given the
death “penalty for the. brutal slaying
of grocer Guard Young and three
small children (Horror Unlimited, Janu-
ary FRONT PAGE, 1954). During the trial,
‘the crime was called one of the most
depraved in California’s history. When
the death sentence was announced, the
pair stood mute—each was already under
four different death sentences for other
robbery killings.» Harriet Henson, also
charged with first degree murder in the
Guard Young case, was given a life sen- .
tence. Guard Young’s body’ was found
stuffed in the trunk of his automobile
after he had been missing for 14 hours,
Under him were the bodies of three small
children who had been in the car with him
when he was last seen. A fourth child
managed to live and give the police im-
portant clues which led to the arrest of
Perkins and Santo. According to the
child’s description, all four were beaten to
death with a lead pipe, first Young and
then the children,, and then stuffed into.
the car trunk. Missing was more than
$7,000 which Young had been carrying.
FLIRTING ON THE OUTSIDE—
Ferman Espinosa, 33, the man who
chopped his 14-year-old wife into small
pieces, put them into a trunk and threw
the lot into the Platte River (Those Flirty
‘Eyes, October FRONT PAGE, 1953), man-
aged a daring escape from the Colorado
State Prison at Cannon City, Colo. Es-
pinosa was at work at the prison’s rock
ile. When lunch time came, he hid be-
~ hind a pile of rocks while his companions
were marched away. Then he scrambled
over a ten-foot wire fence and enjoyed a
short period of freedom. For several
hours he managed to elude bloodhounds °
and as many as 70 guards who searched
the area for him. Prison authorities said
that the chances for an escape such as his
were around 10,000 to one.
LIFE FOR THE GHOULS—Harold
Burkhardt and Richard Nolan, 22,. ac-
cused in the highway ‘slaying of Her-
schell L. Sorrell, 31, were found guilty of
second degree murder (Ghouls Come in
Pairs, March FRONT PAGE, 1954). A Mid-
dletown, O., court sentenced them each to
life imprisonment. Although they were
originally indicted for first degree mur-
der, Assistant Prosecutor, Herbert Walsh
recommended a reduction in the charges.
Sorrell, also from Middletown, was found
in a dying condition on the shoulder of a
highway—he had been beaten, robbed and
disrobed.
THEY DARED—A jury composed
of nine men and three women convicted
George Lee Capps, of Levittown, Pa., of
murdering 15-year-old Marta Gibbons
(You Wouldn’t Dare, May FRONT PAGE,
1954). Capps, married and father of a
child: born since the murder, admitted
shooting the girl after he had made love
to her in his automobile at a nearby lake
George Lee. Capps lost a dare.. ~
resort, where the girl’s nearly nude body
‘was discovered. When the ‘court pro-
nounced the death sentence, his wife
broke into sobs and buried her head in
_her father’s shoulder. Defense attorneys
’ maintained that Capps was “under the
influence of beer and whisky” at the time
and thus did not know right from wrong.
SECRET OUT—Jonah Roberts,
charged with the slaying of his. wife,
Mary, was found guilty of murder in the
first degree (The Secret That Wouldn't
Keep, November FRONT PAGE, 1952).
Judge J. Harold Flannery, of the Luzerne
County, Pa., Court, acting on the
recommendation of the jury handed
down a life sentence to be served at East-
ern. State Penitentiary at Philadelphia.
Roberts, 47, was charged with shooting his
wife to death in an automobile, wounding
himself, and then trying to put blame on
two hitchhikers. Judge Flannery denied a
defense motion for a new trial.
who had been hired by Jenkins’ mother-in-
law, Suckey’s mother. He said that Indian Bill
had never inherited anything in his life, and
that when he’d gone to the United States
Supreme Court with the case, he, Hurst, had
filed a paupert’s oath so that Jenkins wouldn’t
have to. pay usual appeal fees.
His lawyers charged that Jury Foreman
Bill Seiz had made .up his mind before ‘the
trial, saying, “If I’m picked on the jury, he'll
die ih the chair.” They claimed the state of-
fered to recognize a plea of guilty to second-
degree murder before the trial.
But higher courts turned down the appeals.
Federal circuit court and the United States
Supreme Court turned Indian Bill down. Law-
yers had exhausted every legal move.
The only hope was a last minute commuta-
tion by the governor, but Governor Cherry
. refused to reduce the sentence to life im-
_ prisonment.
Bill was scheduled to die on Friday, May 7.
He talked’‘and prayed with John Simmons,
Missionary ‘Baptist Chaplain, at the Tucker
Prison Farm. :
“J am sorry Cleo is dead. I repent her death.
I am resigned to my fate,” he said. “I believe
I am guilty of something, but I don’t know
what. I do not remember killing anyone.”
On Thursday, his children and _ his wife,
Suckey, came to see him.
The children told Bill:-that they loved him.
Suckey said’ she loved him, too. When they
left Bill sat down and remembered the old
happy days. Then he prayed and said he was
ready to die.. :
His lawyers clung to hope until midnight
. Thursday. Governor Cherry had issued four
stays of execution. Now he remained silent.
Attorney Hurst shook his head just after mid-
night. “We've done everything we know to
do,” he said. “I still can’t see how Bill was
found guilty of first-degree murder, but he
was.” Ks
They shaved the curly black hair from Bill’s
head and stripped his cotton robe. They pre-
pared his last meal—beef stew, fried fish, fried
chicken, french fried potatoes, pickled beets,
whole wheat bread, cornbread, egg custard.
But Bill left -the meal untouched.
Dawn -wa$s coming Friday. Outside, prison
_- guards\with shotguns herded prisoners to the
fields.. But ‘the electric lights still burned in
the white-washed brick death house at Tucker
Prison Farm. :
’ In his cell, Bill’s eyes swam in silent tears
when reporters asked him questions, shook his
‘naked head and buried it in his hands. He
talked briefly to his friend Curt Copeland,
Hot Springs weekly newsman, and gaye him a
signed copy of a little Bible. He arranged
‘cards and letters from his family neatly in a
cigar box’ in his cell. He left his Bible open,
and ‘walked unassisted the 27 steps from his
cell to the death chamber. ~
They placed him in the electrode-studded
chair at 6:53 A.M.,‘one year, two months and
19 days after Cleo died. His face held’ the
impassive dignity of the Choctaws as they
placed the rubber mask over it. Quickly they
strapped. him, applying electrodes to his leg,
arm and head. oh :
At 6:57 a.., the: executioner administered
three. 2,200-volt shocks, arching Bill’s big
body against the restraining straps. Three min-
utes later; the prison physician examined him.
_ The second jolt was ordered. Two more shocks
at 7:01 aa. At 7:03 a.M., May 7, 1954, he
was: pronounced dead. Indian Bill was no more,
-
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cers say
so their
the night
r's door-
1, or did
readily
the man
<ins. Mrs.
event the
rifle stood
iny people
r vanished,
horter re-
usual.
iad learned
vith police
murder in
story. The
quick mur-
| been kid-
no effort to
he victim’s
to the
Dp.
of the killer
ira Graham,
ilert police-
raham to a
doned store,
ince the day
three were
still list the
ne final, dis-
tly before the
posing as an
his way into
ce in county
che wanted to
ini, pretended
sme forth later
nd upset such
| vehemently,
ard on a con-
mMnes
rd that Shorter
il. He has been
‘en done away
nection, police
een the Baxter
e disappearance
he Los Angeles
sul and Frank
“ime had worked
<ey Cohen, the
imland’s favorite
\ |
» ame and fortune
Cadillac caravan
Strip at all hours
inge, hard-faced
1m behind bullet-
\ of make believe
+s with the T-men
a tax rap, The
bin Hood rep:
cing Gerald L.
ty and high taxes.
Once he let a welsher go without even a
pistol-whipping when Baxter told him the
Dincara Farms crap table operation in
Burbank, of which Baxter was a sort of
‘vice president, was out fifty grand in the
deal.
Another time, The Mick heard that a
little old woman was losing her home to
a sharp radio store owner over a repair
bill that didn’t amount to $10. The Cohen
mob practiced a bit of mayhem on the
store owner and left him bruised and
bleeding in the streets,
Unfortunately, an amateur photogra-
pher ran to the Los Angeles Times with
candid pictures of the “accident” and by
luck, a police reporter happened to see
the pictures. “Where'd you get the swell
art on the Cohen mob?” he asked. The
‘city editor, who had almost told the
amateur shutterbug to go away, turned
livid and said, “Who did you say these
characters are?”
The Cohen mob figured high up in local
Los Angeles politics and the beating pic-
tures were a decided scoop. So they mad
Page One. 8
Grand jury indictments ed,
charging the hoodlums with a ult. No
matter the motive, here was
criminal activity in black afid white. Bail
was set high on the Cglfen mob and The
Mick had to guarantee $175,000 worth of
bonds so they corfd breathe the fresh air
outside jail while awaiting trial.
That was understandable because the
Cohen mob was notoriously fluid; its
members had a way of becoming extinct.
One, Harry A. (Hooky) Rothman, was
blasted to death in a gun ambush at
Cohen’s own high-class haberdashery on
the Sunset Strip in October, 1948. Neddie
Herbert was cut down by shotgun slugs
fired that also wounded Mickey, in front
of Sherry’s, a Sunset Strip joint, the
following year.
“Be careful,” The Mick sadly pleaded
with his boys. “You're all I got left.”
Dave Ogul, dapper little 31-year-old
chauffeur and part-time bodyguard for
Cohen, was a squat, bull-necked indi-
vidual who carried a gun so neatly you
hardly noticed it under his coat, But on
the night of October 8, 1949, a Saturday,
he kept a date with his mom. Mrs.
Gertrude Ogul, an egg separator, lived in
a small Hollywood apartment.
“Saturday night Davie came .to my
house and we had a steak dinner,” she
later told police. “Sunday night he took
me to a drive-in theater. Since then—no
word.”
Al Schuman, a UCLA freshman, told
police he had seen a man who looked like
police pictures of Ogul race his car to a
stop in front of Levering House, a fra-
ternity rooming house in Westwood.
“He was in a hurry,” Schuman said.
“T could see that by the way he slammed
on the brakes. The rear end of his car
was out a couple of feet but he didn’t pay
any attention to that. He shoved the door
closed and beat it.to another car, I think
it was a Caddie too. There was a man and
a young woman in it. They didn’t waste
any time. They started off down the street
with this guy in it.”
At any rate, Dave Ogul had crossed the
line into limboland, never to return, His
file is still marked “Open” in the Missing
Persons Bureau. And near it is Frank
Niccoli’s. Ogul had been bonded at
$25,000, but Niccoli was worth $50,000,
police figured.
Cohen was visibly upset when Niccoli
broke a dinner date with him one fall
evening, saying he had another engage-
ment out in San Fernando Valley. Mickey
remembered what happened to Ogul, and
he remembered the $50,000 tab on the
suave, swarthy-complexioned and curly
haired Niccoli. He had one of the other
boys. drive him over to Niccoli’s_apart-
ment. The lights were on, and Frank’s
things were intact.
Then he called up the Valleyites, who
told Cohen they had no date with Niccoli
that night., Mickey also got hold of
1 cba girl, who also hadn’t heard from
him.
Sadly, Céhen reflected when police
asked him About Frank: “My personal
opinion is that he’s dead. Those fellows
have trappéd him.” He never said who
“those felldws” were.
Mickey’stattorney, Sammy Rummel, a
man who also had strange connections
in poker-playing Gardena, a nearby
municipality) that condoned opeh gam-
bling, hustiéd into court and asked that
$100,000: worth of Cohen’s bail money be
indéd and that the remaining four of
ohen menage be remanded to jail.
Unfortuhately, Rummel was among the
next to go, but his was an obvious de-
parture. Somebody blasted his face off
with a shotgun charge as he parked his
car and stepped from the garage of his
Laurel Canyon hideway atop the Holly-
wood Hills.
Whether Ogul and Niccoli figured there
was too much heat on the Cohen crowd
and decided to retire to Acapulco on the
Mexico west coast, or were really taken
for a ride, police never learned. And they
probably never will. Many missing per-
sons never do show up.
Like socialite Mimi Boomhower who
got lost in limboland. Plump, vivacious
Mrs. Boomhower was the 48-year-old Bel
Air widow of a big game hunter. She left
her $75,000 home at 701 Nimes Road the
night of August 18, 1949, with all lights
burning, and never even came back to
turn them off.
Worried friends didn’t call police for
five days because they knew Mimi as a
gay widow with a flair for excitement and
making new acquaintenances,
Fred McCulloch, a realtor and close
friend of Mimi’s, had a date with her the
following evening, but was unable to
reach her by telephone. He shrugged that
off, but the next day, when she still didn’t
answer his calls, McCulloch called Mimi’s
best friend, Mrs. Stella Hunter, and to-
gether they went to the Nimes Road
mansion and had a look. The doors were
locked and the lights were on,
On Sunday, the following day, de-
tectives were summoned and a search of
the house showed everything in order and
the car still in the garage. Her late hus-
band’s $300,000 animal trophy collection
looked balefully at the detectives from the
walls of the quiet rooms, but beyond that
nothing of unusual interest was noted.
Mrs. Hunter told police that Mimi
Boomhower often had accompanied cher
husband on African safaris and was °*,
absolutely fearless woman. QOnee, she
said, Mimi shot an elephant “ead as it
charged her.
The Boomhower c25e blew hot and cold
as various clues turned up, such as Mimi’s
white handbag, found in a phone booth
in a Beverly Hills market, containing a
crudely printed note: “We found this at
the beach.” The bag contained half of
a one-dollar bill, Mimi’s driving license
and a police courtesy card. Nothing more.
A search of Beverly Hills pawnshops
uncovered Mimi’s diamond-studded
watch, but the proprietor, Julius Zimmer-
man, assured the officers that ° Mrs.
Boomhower had personally hocked it for
a C-note. “She told me she was’in a little
financial difficulty,” said Zimmerman.
He added that he had tried to make a
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DETECTIVE, September, 1953
Captured nearly two mont
Mabel Couldn't
Lock Out Murder
Watchdog and bolted doors couldn’t
keep out enemies she didn’t know she had
a + is Pr al “
% " 4
he Sys Aa ede st isi tei
s after murder, Emmett Perkins, Jack Santo, Barbara Graham warm bench in police station.
BY BERT MURRAY
BURBANK, CAL., JUNE 12, 1953
™@ Mabel Monohan was a_ well-to-do
widow, a greying, attractive woman of 62,
who owned a $25,000, six-room house in
the Mountain View section of Burbank
in the shadow of the Hollywood hills.
Jt was a beautiful house—and she lived
in it scared to death.
Mabel Monohan, crippled. in an acci-
dent a few years ago, didn’t get around
much and she could usually be found in
her home, the Venetian blinds drawn,
front and rear doors bolted, every last one
of the many windows securely latched.
There was a gate leading to the back
yard and this too was kept locked. The
wall at the rear of the house was made
of solid cement blocks and loomed seven
feet high. And guarding the rear of the
continued on next page
A complete eye-witness report of the execution of California's
“Miss Murder”—Barbara Graham.
By Tom Reynolds
WJ
SA
BARBARA DIE”
RY HOLDING your breath for
half a minute—just 30 seconds.
That’s how long Barbara
Graham held hers as she des-
perately clung to life after a capsule
of cyanide was dropped into a con-
tainer of sulphuric acid in San
Quentin’s gas chamber on June 3rd,
1955.
That’s how precious life: was to
the beautiful murderess who helped
four ruthless men beat and torture
Mrs. Mabel Monahan to death in
Burbank, California on March 9th,
1953 for the crippled widow’s non-
existent fortune.
In the first triple execution in
California in 10 years, Barbara and
two of the men, Emmet Perkins and
Jack Santo, died in the green paint-
ed gas chamber within a three hour
period.
A third man in the infamous
killer gang, Baxter Shorter, the
stool pigeon, is missing and is be-
lieved to have been murdered.
The fourth man, John True, who
won his freedom by turning state’s
evidence is living in Mexico.
Perkins and Santo chatted and
chuckled as they sat strapped side
by side in the chamber of death.
They reminded we newspapermen
who witnessed the executions of
scared kids whistling their way past
a graveyard.
But Barbara died hard.
For more than two hours on that
fateful morning the State of Califor-
nia played a grim game of cat and
mouse with her. Twice she mustered
her courage for the 15 foot walk to
the gas chamber only to be told that
there was still a slim chance that she
would live.
One delay was granted after she
had walked more than half the
distance from her cell to the somber
tomb where death patiently waited.
She fought down the rising hys-
teria within her and clung momen-
tarily to each straw of hope that was
held out to her only to have it
snatched away leaving -her more
desolate than before.
Finally when she could stand the
strain no longer she cried out in
agony, ‘Why do they torture me
so? I was ready to die at 10 o’clock!”
It was then 11:10 a.m., just 32
minutes before she was finally pro-
nounced dead.
Now Barbara Graham was far
from being a saint. Sent to reform |
school when she was 13, she ‘went
the route from waterfront prosti-
tute, to shill girl, to perjurer, and
finally ended up as a murderous gun
moll who used a pistol butt and the
spiked heel of her shoe to club a
crippled woman into insensibility.
But Father Dan McAlister, a for-
mer chaplain at San Quentin who
consoled Babs in her last hours, de-
clared that she had undergone a
“complete transformation” during
her two years in prison and after
her death he declared with convic-
tion, “She was a deeply religious
woman.”
Perhaps it was from her newly
found faith that the attractive 32-
year-old mother of three children
drew the courage and strength that
kept her from cracking up under
the most appalling circumstances.
She arrived at San Quentin at
4 P.M., on the afternoon before she
was to die. She.hadn’t taken solid
nourishment since she left the wom-
en’s prison at Corona early that
morning. For her last meal she re-
quested only a dish of ice cream.
She was suffering from a severe
toothache and when she was taken
to her special cell she had to walk
past the chamber in which she was
to die some 19 hours later.
She was given a sedative for her
throbbing jaw, changed into a pair
of scarlet lounging pajamas, and
began preparing herself for her fast-
approaching death.
She was the third woman to be
executed in the history of California
and since there are no accomoda-
tions for female prisoners in the
sprawling gray prison on San Fran-
cisco Bay she was placed in a spe-
cial apartment just a few feet from
the ghastly chamber.
There she told Warden Harley O.
Teets that she would talk to no one
but her attorney and Father Mc-
Alister. She emphatically refused to
see Lt. Jack McCreadie of the Los
Angeles Police Department’s homi-
cide bureau who had been waiting
to question her about the fate of
Baxter Shorter.
Barbara refused to eat a chicken
dinner that had been brought to her
cell and commented wryly to War-
Three killers at their trial. (Left to right) John A.
Santo, Emmett R. Perkins and Mrs. Barbara Graham.
°646 1 SE eune (*09 SeTesuy soy) UTQUENy URS exfydse ‘seqtum *OLNVS 9% SNIWUGd ‘WVHVUD
den Teets, “Why waste good food
on me? Give it to someone who can
enjoy it.”
Through the long night the light
burned in her cell as she prayed
with Father McAlister, reciting the
rosary and repeating after him the
Catholic prayers for the dying.
Telephone lines were kept open
all night to the executive mansion
in Sacramento where Governor
Goodwin Knight remained ready to
consider any legal maneuver that
might warrant a delay of execution.
The governor declared that the
cloak of legality and caution and
full protection must be furnished
to everyone no matter how foul his
crime or how black his heart, right
up to the last moment.
The final battle for Barbara Gra-
ham’s life really began at 2 A.M.,
when the governor received a call
from Attorney William Strong of
Beverly Hills, one of the condemned
woman’s attorneys, who raised a
legal point that Knight deemed
worthy of consideration.
He promised Strong the oppor-
tunity to present it to the State
Supreme Court in Los Angeles later
in the morning. He told the attor-
ney that he would also alert Chief
Justice Phil Gibson immediately
and notify Warden Teets of an im-
pending stay of execution.
At 9:05 a.M., two petitions for
writs of habeas corpus and manda-
mus on behalf of Barbara Graham
were hurriedly filed with the su-
preme court.
By that time Barbara was making
her final preparations in her apart-
ment-cell, not knowing of the legal
tussle going on 500 miles away in
Los Angeles.
She laid out the stylish beige suit
which she had worn at her trial,
took a shower, got dressed, applied
her makeup and meticulously
groomed her shining black hair like
a girl going to a party.
_ The only jewelry she wore was a
gold wedding band and a pair or
shimmering rhinestone earrings.
At 9:20 she was told that Gover-
nor Knight had granted her a delay
to give the supreme court time to
consider the petitions that had been
placed before it. For an hour Bar-
bara wavered between hope and
despair.
At 10:27 the governor called the
warden, told him the petitions had
been denied and added, “There is
nothing further in my office or be- -
fore me to prevent carrying out the
sentence.”
The warden went to Barbara’s
cell and told her she would enter
the gas chamber at 10:45. Perkins
and Santo would follow together in
three hours when the execution
room had been completely aired out.
At 10:40 a new writ was filed in
the state supreme court.
At 10:44 Barbara left her cell
with Father McAlister and had just
come into the view of the news-
papermen and police officers in the
witness room when she was notified
delay had been
that another
At exactly 11:34
PM, the deadly
cyanide fumes
began filling
the gas chamber
(left). Barbara
tried desperately
to hold her breath
in a frantic
effort to keep
from dying. But
when it seemed
that she was
about to burst,
she gulped in
the lethal fumes
that quickly
snuffed out her
life. The prison
doctor’s report
read, “She died
easily at 11:42.”
granted. a
Her eyes were brimming with —
tears as she turned to Father Mc- —
Alister and clutched the black sleeve —
of his cassock, sobbing hysterically,
“Maybe they’ve found out that I’m
innocent.” :
She. was led back to her cell
where she remained until 11:10
when Warden Teets informed her ~
that her petition had been denied
and that now there was no further —
barrier to her execution. She would
enter the gas chamber to meet her ~
death at 11:30.
It was then that the beautiful ©
nurderess broke down and wept
disconsolately, ‘“‘Why do they tor-
ture me so? I was ready to die at
10 o’clock.”’
But she had regained her com-
posure by the time she walked past
the newsmen in the witness room,
stepped daintily into the chamber
and requested that a blindfold be.
placed over her eyes. ae
“I don’t want to look into people’s —
eyes,” she murmered to the guard, ~
referring to the shocked faces of the
newsmen not five feet from the gas —
chamber window.
Taped to her chest and looking 4
incongruous against her neatly
. pressed suit was a black stethoscope
that was to be connected to the
FOS
Php n teed Ale? i)
Se eae
‘SASS
ialkeue
gauge outside the chamber. Her &
lips moved in prayer as she’ was e
strapped in the chair and was in- 4
structed to count to 10 and then
take a deep breath. Finally she was @
locked in the death cell.
At 11:34 the cyanide fumes be- |
gan filling the chamber and Bab’s |
dark hair dropped to her chest. I:
was certain she was dead and was §
relieved that she had died quickly ;
and easily after the long, nerve- 7
shattering delay.. _
But I was wrong.
And then in a moment of horror ~
that sent goose bumps spreading —
over my body, Barbara slowly lifted =
her head. From the strained, piteous |
look on her face I could tell she was
holding her breath in a frantic at- —
tempt to cling to life just as long ~
as she could.
I watched with growing terror —
until she could hold her breath no ©
longer. Then with what seemed to
be a sigh of despair the breath burst
from her lungs and a second later ~
‘she gulped in the lethal fumes that
snuffed out her life. $6
The prison physician reported,
“She died easily at 11:42." * «>
And Lt. Bob Coveney of the Bur
bank Police department who helped :
track down the murder gang, re- ~
marked kindly: me ‘
“She had a better death than
Mabel Monahan.” oo
Barbara’s body was claimed by 4
her fourth husband, Henry Graham, ©
sight of San Quentin. THE END
ey
18
Wm. Upshaw, left, with attorney, claimed he knew nothing
of Mrs. Monohan's murder, refused a lie detector test.
MABEL COULDN'T LOCK OUT MURDER ‘continued .
premises was Ziggy, a black Labrador retriever. The only trouble
with Ziggy was that he was the kind of dog you knew would
rum for cover in case of any emergency. . © oe
The front door of the house was equipped’ with a small,
grilled opening and Mrs. Monohan carefully scrutinized every-
one who called on her. If she failed to recognize a visitor as
someone she knew well and trusted, she flatly refused to unlatch
the door. ;
At night, Mrs. Monohan would eat a light supper, usually
alone, and would then go upstairs to her bedroom, relax on her
chaise lounge and, for a few hours before retiring, read murder
mysteries. They were her favorite diversion from - the very.
real terror she lived with.. ; t
‘For someone of Mrs. Monohan’s background, it had not been
easy for her to take the crippling accident, an: accident which
had made even walking an ordeal. But she ‘had learned ’to live
with it, finding some satisfaction in her memories.. It ‘still
seemed only yesterday that she was a star theatrical performer,
an expert and beautiful roller skater touring the Orpheum
vaudeville circuit and theaters throughout Europe in a top-
flight act with her husband, George. George had died: six years
ago and that left only Mrs. Monohan now and her daughter,
Iris, who lived in New York at the swank Ritz Tower and: who
flew out to the Coast to visit her mother as often as she could.
So Mabel Monohan continued to live in her big house, the
luxury surrounding her only adding to her loneliness and fright.
Rearrested, John True, center, awaits booking, with Police
Chief Rex Andrews, left, Lieutenant Robert Coveney, right.
She was always listening for Strange noises at the windows, for
stealthy footsteps that had no business being there. Fear had
even driven her to arrange with Beatrice Horne, her next-door
neighbor, to park the woman’s car in Mrs. Monohan’s, driveway
in order to. make it appear that someone was always at home
at the Monohans’, : ;
Yes, Mrs. Monohan was scared to death—and she had good
‘reason to be, as it turned out. For despite all the elaborate safe-
guards, someone gained admittance through the grilled front
door to commit one of the most ruthless crimes in California’s
history. an mee
ig WAS about 11 o’clock Wednesday morning, March 11, 1953,
* when ‘the Monohan gardener, blond Mitchell Truesdale, 25,
arrived in his pickup and prepared to work at the rear of the
house. It was his’ semi-weekly visit. As usual ‘the gate was
locked and he trudged up the curving walk, flanked by two giant
awn urns, to the front door to ask for the gate key.
He noticed two things at the same time: the door was open
about half an ‘inch and above it a big light bulb in a large globe
was blazing. 2
Truesdale entered the house. It was a shambles. Blood was
everywhere—on the walls, furniture, rugs. There was hardly a
piece of furniture that hadn’t been overturned or moved. Pic-
tures had been torn from. the walls and rugs pulled. up. Drawers,
their contents scattered wildly, had been flung about the floors
and even shee
in the living ..
from an airplar
. Truesdale sto
out, “Mrs. Mon
No one answ
on the hall floo
of a linen close
down was the |
The woman,
sweater, lay on
been bound bet
strip of cloth—
loosely about bh
with dried bloc
(TRUESDAL!
Detective
at the body ar
at least a coup
saw that the
kitchen and re
ceivable conta
bare.
In the back
beside his dog
Floodlights
The detecti
According to
ing the cripf
onohan had herself -
ndows were locked.
Mrs. Monohan had
came to the front
vas there that the
showed that the
1 whipping as she
use.
learned from Mrs.
{ chatted with the
sometime in the
s dog had whined,
ime.
d of the late evan-
dor, came informa-
ik, had reeled past
eral cars bearing
the house in recent
@. a while ago
onohan’s daughter,
w York oil broker,
scherer, millionaire
uses.
ith his mother-in-
‘isited Mrs. Mono-
come to Southern
ly last Thursday
vith her mother.
is a possible lead
et
f to the reasons behind the savage murder of Mabel Monohan.
'. Had the killer believed that Mrs. Monohan owned an interest. -
in the gambling clubs and that vast sums of money, perhaps. —
Scherer’s as well, were being cached in the Monohan. home?
Or that the house was being. used as the hiding place of certain
vital documents connected with the clubs? ee
The frantic tearing up of the rugs and the removal of pictures
“for a wall or floor safe. :
Police Chief Andrews phoned Iris. in New. York. The.woman,
few hours.
news: the killer, from a study of the smudges on objects he had
touched, appeared to have worn gloves. : :
Late that night the coroner’s office released. an autopsy report.
Mrs. Monohan had died of asphyxiation due to strangulation
and cranial hemorrhage. Strangulation, in the autopsy surgeon’s ©
opinion, had been achieved with a length of strong, soft cloth—
unquestionably the torn bedsheeting. So severe had been the
* strangulation that it had caused hemorrhages of the eyeballs;
At 8:50 am., Thursday, Iris Sowder, accompanied by her
husband, arrived by plane from New York and immediately con-
ferred with Chief Andrews and Lieutenant Coveney. But the -
woman -could shed no light on her mother’s slaying, nor could
she explain the Nevada cars seen on Parkside Avenue. -
She was certain her mother had no interest in gambling
houses—Scherer’s or anyone else’s and she knew of no large
sum of money or valuable documents in her mother’s possession -
which might attract anyone. “As for the $500 that was found
in my mother’s purse,” she said, “. . . I gave that to her before
I left for New York.” *
Tutor Scherer, located at Palm Springs on Saturday, also
could provide no worthwhile information. The gambler declared
that Iris had received $100,000 and the Burbank home as part
of their divorce settlement, but no (Continued on page 49)
from the walls seemed to indicate the marauder was searching
stunned, said she would be on a. plane: for California within 4
From the fingerprint men, meanwhile, came discouraging
intruders looted house. Detective examines cloth-
“ing which was pulled from dresser, thrown on floor.
Murder mystery rests on arm of chair where Mrs.
Monohan placed it when she answered knock at door.
The widow lived alone here. Fearing prowlers, she
arranged for neighbor to park car in her driveway.
<—District Attorney Roll, Lieutenant Coveney, and
Chief of Police Andrews plan murder trial strategy.
21
cing, with Police
' Coveney, right.
the windows, for
there. Fear had
ne, her next-door
nohan’s. driveway
always at home
nd she had good
1e elaborate safe-
the grilled front
es in California’s
March 11, 1953,
‘ll Truesdale, 25,
the rear of the
il the gate was
ked by two giant
e key.
= door was open
in a large globe
bles. Blood was
re was hardly a
or moved. Pic-
p. Drawers,
t the floors
4
and-even sheet music, always neatly stacked on the grand piano’
in the living room, was strewn around like handbills dropped
from an airplane:
_ Truesdale stood silent for a moment. Then, softly, he called
out, “Mrs. Monohan?”
No one answered. Truesdale followed the trail of dried blood
on the hall floor and then he stopped. He was standing in front
of a linen closet. The door was ajar. In the closet lying face
down was the body of Mrs. Mabel Monohan. ,
The woman, wearing a blue polka-dot. dress and a green wool
sweater, lay on her face beside a Vacuum cleaner. Her hands had
been bound behind her with a length of sheeting, and a knotted.
strip of cloth—perhaps a gag. which had worked loose—hung
loosely about her throat. The upper part of her skull was caked
with dried blood where it had been struck with fierce blows.
UESDALE ran to the telephone and asked for the police.
Detective Carl Lane arrived within five minutes. He looked
at the body and estimated that Mrs. Monohan had. been dead
at least a couple of days. Then he went through the house. He
saw that the killer had extended his ransacking even to the
kitchen and rear service porch where pots, pans and every con-
ceivable container had been removed, the cupboards stripped
bare. ;
In the back yard, Lane found Ziggy, the retriever, cringing
beside his doghouse, whining with hunger. -
Floodlights in the rear still burned. ©
The detective re-entered the house and backtracked along the .
According to John True, Emmett Perkins, left, joined in beat-
ing the crippled. woman, then Santo, right, strangled her.
Three hours after word got out that Baxter Shorter had
talked, his wife phoned cops that he had been kidnaped.
trail of blood to the den. A floor lamp also burned here, beside
a large leather chair in which Mrs. Monohari evidently had been
) reading. On an arm of the chair was an open book, turned down.
The title was: “The Purple Pony Murders.”
Lieutenant Robert Coveney, head of the Burbank detec-
tive bureau, hurried into the house now, accompanied by
Detective Sergeants Bob Loranger and Emest Vandergrift.
They were followed almost immediately by Detectives Harry
Strickland and Ed Cassidy, and Chief of Police Rex Andrews.
continued on next page
Witness said that Barbara Graham, in prison hospital dur-
ing hearing, had snarled, “Hit her again! Hit her again!"
cea
MABEL COULDN’T LOCK OUT MURDER continued
Then came the print men, photographers and the man from the
coroner’s office.
The coroner’s man estimated Mrs. Monohan had died some
time late Monday night. :
The detectives made a minute examination of each room. In
a dusty spot on the floor of the den they found two footprints,
both made by the same shoe. The prints were those of a waffle-
weave type sole, probably. that of a tennis or ‘linen-topped
sports shoe. Clearly discernible in the forepart of the imprint
was the trade name: Treds.
In still another room, on the- wall, was a smudged, bloody;
handprint.
On a shelf in a bedroom lay 13 pocketbooks. In one of them
was found $500 in bills, and jewelry valued later at $10,000.
The investigators asked themselves the obvious question:
Why had the killer, having so thoroughly-ransacked the prem-
ises, overlooked such a neat haul? Or was he, perhaps, after
something other than money and jewels?
One thing, at least, was clear—that Mrs. Monohan had herself
admitted the killer. The back door and the windows were locked.
As the detectives reconstructed the crime, Mrs. Monohan had
been reading Monday night when someone came to the front
door.
The pair had gone into the den and it was there that the
woman was first struck a blow on the head.
The condition of Mrs. Monohan’s skull showed that the
crippled woman had taken a merciless pistol whipping as she
was dragged or forced to walk about the house.
Meanwhile, detectives canvassing the area learned from Mrs.
Horne, the next-door neighbor, that she had chatted with the
woman through a window on Monday, sometime in the
‘ afternoon.
Some time late that night Mrs. Monohan’s dog had whined,
but Mrs. Horne paid little attention at the time.
_ From Dr, David Hutton, a former husband of the late evan-
gelist Aimee Semple McPherson and a neighbor, came informa-
tion that a man, thin, seedy and plainly drunk, had reeled past
the Monohan home late Monday night.
Still other neighbors reported that several cars bearing
Nevada license plates had been parked near the house in recent
weeks.
"THE detectives’ ears perked up at this news. Only a while ago
they’d learned from neighbors that Mrs. Monohan’s daughter,
Iris, now the wife of J. Robert Sowder, a New York oil broker,
had been married once to Luther (Tutor) Scherer, millionaire
owner of a number of Las Vegas gambling houses.
Scherer, remaining on friendly terms with his mother-in-
law after the divorce from Iris in 1951, had visited Mrs. Mono-
han frequently whenever he had occasion to come to Southern
California. :
Iris herself, the neighbors revealed, had only last Thursday
returned to New York after a lengthy visit with her mother.
Here, Lieutenani Coveney speculated, was a possible lead
to the reasons
Had the kille”
in the gamblin;
Scherer’s as we
Or that the hou
vital document:
The frantic t:
from the walls
for a wall or fic
Police Chief
stunned, said s
few hours.
From the fi
news: the kille:
touched, appea
Late that nig
Mrs. Monohan
and cranial her
opinion, had b«
unquestionably
’ strangulation t
At 8:50 A.3
husband, arriv:
ferred with C
woman ‘could
she explain th:
She was ce
houses—Scher
sum of money
which might :
in my mother
I left for New
Tutor Sche
could provide
that Iris had
of the
Olivia Shorter talks with Sergeant McCreadie, right,.
after pointing out Perkins as her husband's abductor.
~-In earlier years Mabel Monohan toured vaudeville as a
roller skater. Auto accident made her a semi-invalid.
the day of
ad been the
Taking part
ous Jeanne,
»me-looking
arked face;
ean David,
Marti and
o be found.
ive missing. °
o speculate
n, the fired
fake props
on and his
000. The
was not to
‘ishing near
erved trunk
head, arms
ine-toothed
1s a tattoo
ot publicly
y. If there
she could
rata of soe-
miner’s re-
out for an
medium-
been alive
ast seemed
nut did she
es was the
ar pattern.
big secret.
be trusted,
ody in the
or Fonfon
ockmarked
David.
body was
uhfast, big
ters in the
1 and then
how dumb
of Jeanne’s
es.
ner.
to the po-
id Antonin
ts it pass,
s just will
how they
effect but
1. Said she
night she
days later,
r. She had
| had been
ingerprints
ory of the
:, had been
the torso
nameless.
two weeks
wild-eyed,
office and
is. “I am
friend of
onfon ap-
bloody—”
“Somebody throw this man out—” Spotti
roared, i on?
One more week passed and Spotti regretted
his rush. He sent for Seer Charles Deniaud.
“Now show us where the body is.”
Official recognition inspired the seer to show
how Fonfon had: cradled his bloody head ©
when: he appeared to him in the dream. “He
communicated with me via mental telepathy
just before he died.” ©
“And when did he die?”
“After ‘they tossed him into the quarry
shaft,” Deniaud said.
He led the investigators to a wilderness spot
ten miles from Avignon and pointed out the
shaft which allegedly had appeared in his
dreams. A crew had to climb down 225 feet
before they hit the bottom. When they came
up they had with them Fonfon’s body.
“Now tell us how you knew,” Spottt or-_
dered Deniaud. “You watched the killers throw”
him in here.”
Deniaud_ sneered. “It’s all mental telepathy.
I have an alibi.” Strangely enough, he did
have. On the other hand, Spotti told him this
mental telepathy business and Fonfon reveal-
ing himself to him before he died in the quarry
were bunk. Fonfon had been cold when he was
dumped there. The last two bullets fired into
his back had both gone through his heart.
As the days went -on, Spotti became more ~
certain that he was on the track of the killers.
Marti and Jehan, who. both had worn rain-
coats during the murder huddle at the Rolling
Bones Café, fitted in size and appearance the
parts of two short, squattish gunmen who had
tackled Fonfon first. The huge man who had
fired the fatal shots and acted like the boss
was Jean David.
Three months later, Angelo Poli was gone
from his bar for a day. Nothing was ever
proved, but it happened to be the very same
day on which the elusive Marti was picked up
in Marseilles, wandering glassy-eyed with a~
knife sticking in his back. He died without
ever breathing a word. His wristwatch, a fine
Swiss timepiece, was identified as having for-
merly belonged to Fonfon. It was a gift from
his wife and she still had the guarantee giving
the serial number. There couldn’t be any doubt-
that this was Fonfon’s watch, taken from him
at the time of the murder.
With Marti -gone, only pockmarked Jehan
and David were at large. Only David’s trail
was to show up again. This happened the
following year, in March 1938, when he man-
aged to slip across the border into Spain. In
July. several of his 6ld cronies in Avignon re-
ceived postcards from him postmarked from
Venezuela. Soon the war came, and the police
were occupied with other pursuits and Fonfon
was the forgotten dead man.
The dust the years had heaped on the file
marked “Alphonse Saunier” might never have
been brushed off except for a chain of fluky
circumstances and the promotion ,of former
detective Maurice Hours to inspector with the’
Marseilles Stireté.
Att studying the features of Jean Laget,
alias Silver Fox, Hours was able to put a
long-forgotten name on the mugshot from New
York. Silver Fox, the heroin king with the
million dollar deals, was none other than Jean
David, ex-con from Avignon, the big man who
had twice shot Fonfon in the back.
On May 19, 1953, Jean Laget alias Silver
Fox, appeared in Federal Court in New York
City on the dope-peddling charge. U. S. At-
torney Martimer C. O’Brien broke into the
session with the announcement that Laget was
wanted for the 16-year-old murder of Alphonse
Saunier in Avignon, France.
Silver Fox paled, swayed as if he was about
to faint, then pulling himself together, had a
whispered conference with his attorney.
The attorney rose and announced that Laget
wasn’t David and therefore his client couldn’t
be guilty of the obscure murder. The federal
attorney retorted that the fingerprint evidence
was clear-cut, the prints of the Avignon mob-
ster matched those of New York’s Silver Fox.
French authorities have requested Laget-
David’s extradition on a charge of murder. For -
his homecoming, the Avignon detectives have
a few clinchers in reserve. Now that-the culprit
is under arrest, several witnesses have devel-
oped clear recollections of circumstances they
‘had not reported earlier for fear of reprisals.
There is also the small matter of the gun
found in the quarry next to Fonfon’s body. It
was the gun from which the shots in the back
had been fired. Avignon police now have state-
‘ments linking the weapon to Silver Fox.
Eprror’s Note: The name Raoul Sabatier is
not the actual name of the person who was in
fact a participant jn this article. The name is
used to avoid embarrassment to a person not
directly involved with the murder case.
Mabel Couldn’t Lock Out Murder
continued from page 21 \
interest whatever in any gambling enterprises.
That angle as a possible motive, then, was out.
Scherer, now remarried, said too that Iris
had given her mother $40,000 of the hundred
grand divorce money and that hopes of getting
his hands on this money might well have
lured the murderer to Burbank.
OVENEY and his men continued their in-
vestigation. An inquest jury convened,
ruling Mrs. Monohan’s death to be “homicide
by party or parties unknown.” Mrs. Sowder’
offered’ a $5000 reward for information lead-
ing to arrest and conviction of her mother’s
slayer.
Coveney plugged away, convinced now, as
was Chief Andrews, that robbery was the
motive behind the crime—but that the killer -
had expected: to make a far larger haul than
even the $500 he’d managed to overlook while
ransacking the house.
The investigation was two weeks old when,
an alert police officer in adjoining Los Angeles
made an important discovery. He had un-
covered a routine log in the files showing that
someone—an unidentified man—had placed a
call froma Los Angeles booth on the night’
of Monday, March 9, the night of the murder.
He had said to the operator, “Send an ambu-
lance right away to 1718 West Parkside Ave-
nue.”
The operator relayed the message to the
Georgia Street Hospital but no ambulance
was dispatched when it was found that there,
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Superior Judge James Snell sentenced
all three to life terms, which was of
course superfluous in the case of Big
Jack and The Weasel. A local mechanic
drew three years for smuggling the hack-
saw blades to them.
Investigation of the Chester massacre
meantime had been completed, and the
Plumas County grand jury at Quincy,
after hearing secret testimony, indicted
Santo, Perkins and Harriet for the mas-
sacre of Guard Young and the three
children. This time the murder mon-
ster’s common-law wife wasn’t able to
get out of it by singing. The district
attorney produced two surprise witness-
es, a laundry truck driver and a rancher,
who testified that, driving past the
mouth of the logging road, they saw
Harriet Henson in Young’s’ car with the
three children, while Santo and Perkins
were standing beside their own car talk-
ing to Guard Young.
Thus the sullen brunette fell into a
trap of her own making. The true story
appeared to be that the lethal pair had
taken Harriet along to lull their victim’s
suspicions when they flagged him down
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Harriet’s defense attorney bitterly as-
sailed the new version, claiming that if
the witnesses had actually seen a woman
at the scene of the massacre it must
have been Barbara Graham and not Har-
riet Henson.
Other evidence was damning. Beverly
Winter testified that three days before
the Chester murders Santo had been
broke and had borrowed $15 from her.
On the night of the 40th in Reno, he
was flush. He told her he goc the money
in a holdup in Redding, «"e said: Bever-
ly had been afraid to divulge this origi-
nally. Gene Faris and his wife told their
stories, and Harriet’s statement to the
sheriff was offered in evidence.
The district attorney introduced a
transcript of a secretly recorded conver-
sation between Harriet and Santo in his
cell at Nevada City, in which Big Jack
rasped at the woman, “If you hadn’t
opened your mouth, they’d never have
found anything in the Chester deal!”
Babs Graham was brought from her
San Quentin death cell to take the stand
in Santo’s defense. She testified that CII
Agent McCarthy had promised to “get
me out of the Monahan deal if I’d put
Santo and Perkins in the Chester thing.”
This, she said, she was unable to do
since she hadn’t been there, knew noth-
ing about it.
On May 7, 1954, the jury found San-
to, Perkins and Harriet Henson guilty of
California’s most atrocious crime, the
Guard Young massacre, and Superior
Judge Ben V. Curler sentenced the two
men to die a second time—a grim legal
technicality—and Harriet to life in
Corona.
Now that the mountain-city murder
mob was smashed and the several trials
wound up, Sheriff Schooler recom-
mended that Mrs. Watters, the Downie-
ville deputy’s wife, receive the rewards
totaling more than $6,000, for her tip
that put him on the trail of Jack Santo.
The ex-gambler, the original tipster in
the Monahan case, sued the slain wid-
ow’s daughter for a $5,000 reward she
allegedly had offered.
Bloody Babs Graham, whose once
red-gold hair was now a short-cropped
brown, was taken back to Corona. She
continued to assert her innocence, and
several attorneys and othets took up her
cause. She demanded a lie detector test,
which she had previously been offered
and had refused. Quizzed about the fate
of Baxter Shorter, with the implication
that she might still win clemency if she
head and denied she had ever even met
told all she knew, Babs only shook her '
Shorter, True or Upshaw till she saw the
latter duo in court. She insisted the
vanished Canary, the singing diver tand
the frightened ex-gambler had lied and
framed her to save their own skins. She
couldn’t explain why the three men
would have ganged up on her to do so,
if they didn’t even know her.
“If I die in the gas chamber, those
two are guilty of my murder,” Barbara
declared, referring to True and Upshaw.
“They’ll pay for it someday, one way or
another. All the rats, all the liars, all the
ones who want me dead, will pay.”
Santo and Perkins, for their part, had
nothing at all to say.
As the unholy trio’s appeals were de-
nied and the execution date drew near,
there was a great sentimental clamor to
spare Barbara’s life. Only two women
had been executed previously in Califor-
nia history. But the law moved ahead
inexorably, and on Friday morning,
June 3, 1955, the sands finally ran out
for Big Jack, Bloody Babs and The
Weasel.
In her final interview after she was
brought up to San Quentin again from
Corona, Barbara, looking haggard and
haunted, once more declared her inno-
cence. She talked to a clergyman and
received the last consolation of her
church.
The executions, with Babs going
first, were set to start at 10 a.m. Barbara
was ready early, dressed in a beige wool
suit, wearing gold tear-drop earrings and
her engagement ring and wedding band.
05 a.m., Governor Goodwin J.
Knight telephoned Warden Harley O.
Teets, ordering the execution held up
pending ‘decision on last-minute appeals
to state and federal courts. The peti-
tions were tured down, and the execu-
tion was reset for 10:45. Barbara was
walking into the gas chamber when the
governor called with still another stay.
‘Why do they torture me?” she cried
agonizingly, her composure breaking for
the first and only time.
At 11:17 the last appeal was denied,
and at 11:30 Bloody Babs entered the
death chamber.
At her request a mask was placed
over her eyes. Her lips moved in prayer
as the cyanide fumes swirled up. Then
her head fell back and she seemed to
gasp for breath. At 11:42 the prison
doctor pronounced her dead.
“Tt was a lot easier than Mabel Mona-
han had it,” a detective witness com-
mented.
The little green lethal chamber was
aired out, and at 2:30 p.m. Jack Santo
and Emmett Perkins were strapped side
by side in the twin chairs. Sneering and
defiant, they kept their grim secrets in-
tact to the end. “Don’t do anything I
wouldn’t do,” Big Jack quipped to the
warden. Little Perk succumbed quickly;
Big Jack died fighting for breath.
Barbara Graham’s body was claimed
by a woman friend, and interred at San
Rafael. No one claimed the bodies of
the two men, and they were sent toa
state hospital for cremation.
The bloody curtain had rung down
on at least seven savage murders. Justice
was Satisfied, and one of the blackest
chapters in California crime was official-
ly closed. But
to-Graham st
time.
Bloody Ba
phesied early
ed her dead. ‘
her execution
No one thou;
bara’s origina
attorney, Jac
quit the case
alibi attempt
heart attack |
executed. A
1956, Barbar:
ney Roll, d
August, 1957
down aged ‘|
bystander
cache sparke:
mother-in-la\
Next to
strictly litera
sible for Bai
he often sai:
grim task hi:
was San Qu
died sudden!:
tember 2, 19.
The passi:
in the final t:
‘life and dea
order of thi:
the pace of «
it struck at
had specifica
retribution.
On Janua:
Bonita, ste:
channel in a
rammed a ¢
cut it in tw
smaller craft
four aboard
dead were rf
way to a Sal
One of the:
aged 42, the
of a murder
accomplices.
Just a fe
28th, Judge
Angeles judg
death senten
cumbed to c
ney had cal
By this ti
the Monaha
with a shud
its principal
shaw, then
witness of t!
to talk abou
John True’
and looked
On the
1958, less
“honest div
Bill Upsha.
with equal ;
lac converti
in the deser
out to avoic
to note tha
a bridge 0\
swing back.
bus. Upshz
killed insta:
and 20 bus
That wound up the death roster and
chillingly closed the books on the in-
famous murder mob, of which not one
member was left alive. Bloody Babs at
last could rest easy in her hillside grave
overlooking the prison.
But she wasn’t destined to rest for
long. Within a few months, her grim
story was resurrected and blazoned all
over the world, with release of the
Figaro Inc., screen sensation, “I Want
To Live.” Beautiful Susan Hayward won
an Oscar for her performance in the role
of the convicted and executed mur-
deress. The trouble was, the screenplay,
while claiming to be “based on the ac-
tual facts,” took artistic liberties with
them. It left the strong implication that
the State of California had-railroaded an
innocent woman to the gas chamber,
apparently because she had a dubious
past, and because she had refused to
cooperate with the police.
e film, which was seen by thou-
sands of people who had never heard of
the Mabel Monahan case before, stirred
worldwide controversy over capital
punishment. Foes of the death penalty
hailed it as a classic documentary, ex-
posing the tragic futility of “legalized
murder.” California and Los Angeles
lawmen, on the other hand, condemned
the picture bitterly, branding it as whol-
ly distorted and unfactual.
Deputy District Attorney J. Miller
Leavy, who had prosecuted the Mona-
han case, called the movie “a black
mark on the administration of justice in
California.” Leavy blasted the film’s
contention that Babs Graham was left-
handed, while Mrs. Monahan was pistol-
whipped by a right-handed person. He
produced jail records to prove that Bar-
bara was definitely right-handed.
It was also pointed out that the pic-
ture was confined entirely to the ques-
tion of Barbara’s involvement in the
Monahan case, and lightly skipped over
the Santo mob’s gory background of
mass murder.
e furore over the Barbara Graham
film had barely died down, when her
case was revived on the emotional im-
petus of the snowballing worldwide
clamor over the pending execution of
another condemned California criminal,
the late Caryl Chessman.
The haggard ghost of Bloody Babs
walked once again in March, 1960,
when Deputy District Attorney Miller
Leavy was called to testify before the
judiciary committee of the State Senate,
which was weighing Governor Edmund
G. Brown’s bill to abolish capital pun-
ishment, after the governor had given a
final stay of execution to Chessman,
who was later executed.
The Los Angeles prosecutor came up
with the startling revelation that Bar-
bara had reportedly confessed her guilt
to the late San Quentin Warden Teets,
when she was in the prison hospital af-
ter her original transfer from Corona.
Leavy said he had received this informa-
tion in June, 1959, from San Rafael
District Attorney William Weissich, to
whom Teets had confided it only two
days before his sudden death in 1957.
Warden Teets had reportedly told
Weissich he had seen no reason to make
74
the confession public, since Bloody’
Babs had already been convicted and
sentenced to die. Weissich had consid-
ered the information confidential.
Besieged by avid reporters, Weissich
confirmed that Teets had told him of
Barbara’s confession. Associate Warden
Louis Nelson then revealed that Teets
had told him the same thing in 1956.
When Nelson had told Teets he was
haunted by a gruesome Death Row con-
fession made to him by another prison-
er, he explained, Teets said, “I know '
how you feel about it. It’s part of the
job. I had to listen to Barbara Graham
tell me how she pistol-whipped Mrs.
Monahan and split her head open. It’s a
load I’ve been carrying a long time.”
Nelson and Weissich, sometime after the
warden’s death, had discussed the mat-
ter and decided to keep it confidential,
since revelation would serve no purpose.
Weissich had later passed the informa-
tion to Leavy, when he met him at a
lawmen’s convention.
Asked why he had not revealed the
confession before, Miller Leavy said he
had been waiting for an opportune occa-
sion. He said that by the time he re-
ceived the information, the motion pic-
ture had already “done its damage” to
the cause of law enforcement.
The bill to outlaw capital . punish-
ment was defeated in Sacramento. The
State Assembly Committee on Criminal
Procedure later called a hearing to inves-
tigate the reported confession and to
review the “Graham Case’? in general.
Miller Leavy took occasion to introduce
the late John True’s statement, quoting
Santo about Barbara’s part in the slay-
ing of Baxter Shorter. Nothing definite
came of the session.
A final footnote to the bloody
chronicle was written in June, when
Mrs. Olivia Shorter, after the necessary
seven years, filed a Superior Court peti-
tion to have her long-missing husband,
Baxter, declared legally dead, so that
she could get clear title to money re- .
ceived from the sale of their apartment
house. On June 21, 1960, Superior
Judge Frank S. Balthis granted her peti-
tion. Thus the grim total of the Santo
mob’s killings stands officially at seven.
; oe
‘EDITOR’S NOTE:
Beverly Winter and Gene Faris are
not the real names of the persons so
named in the foregoing story. Ficti-
tious names have been used because
there is no reason for public interest
in the identities of these persons.
Dying Cop Nailed
His Killer...
(Continued from page 27)
the tall timbers of Walden Ridge, the
heavily armed posse of federal, state and
county lawmen had completely sur-
rounded the serene setting, making es-
cape virtually impossible for anyone
who might be inside the mobile home.
Hoping to avoid gunplay, however, the
contingent of policemen waited until
the scene was completely flooded with
daylight before a federal agent took up
a battery-powered bullhorn and ordered
“Doc” Roberts to come out with “your
hands on your head.”
From behind thick pine trees and
huge boulders, nearly.a score of riot
shotguns and service pistols were trained
on the trailer’s doors and windows as
the policemen waited for a response. It
was not long in coming. First the posse-
men heard shouts of ‘Don’t shoot!”
then the door opened and a stringy-
haired man with a ghostly-white drawn
face made his appearance. He looked
like anything but the ete tiny who
reportedly had vowed to fight to the
death anyone who tried to take him.
According to Sheriff Nipper, Roberts
was trembling for a heroin fix and stag-
gering from loss of blood.
“He was so weak he could hardly
hold his hands on his head,” the Tennes-
see sheriff said. “I think he was actually
glad to see us because he knew we’d
_ take him to a hospital where he might
et a shot of something to ease his pain.
ie was sweating like a preacher at a
July tent revival and he collapsed when
he got outside.”
The Bledsoe County sheriff said the
suspect was unarmed, and a thorough
search of the trailer turned up no guns.
“He didn’t have the strength to pull a
trigger, anyway,” the sheriff was quoted.
The suspect was taken straight to a
U.S. commissioner in the Federal Court
Building at Chattanooga, where bond on
the prisoner was set at $75,000. He was
then taken to Erlanger Hospital in that
city, where it was learned that Patrol-
man Miller’s marksmanship had been
unbelievably accurate, considering the
fact that he had a slug in his chest and
was dying as he fired five times at the
moving target.
According to Sheriff Nipper, Roberts
was hit once in each thigh and another
slug had grazed his left arm. “Doc”
Roberts underwent surgery for the thigh
wounds and later gave detectives a state-
ment about what happened the previous
Thursday afternoon, police said.
Only the fourth suspect, 24-year-old
Daniel J. DeNiro, was now at large, but
he was not to be free for long. During
the afternoon of Roberts’ capture, De-
tective Sergeant Peter F. Comodeca and
Detective James M. Fuerst of the Great-
er Cleveland homicide bureau got word
to known associates of the lone fugitive
and advised them that Roberts was in
custody and that all three of the sus-
pects had implicated the hiding man.
About 6 p.m., after DeNiro’s picture
appeared on the front page of the Cleve-
land Plain Dealer along with Roberts’,
the fugitive telephoned police and said
he was ready to turn himself in. He was
arrested at an undisclosed location by
Detectives Comodeca andFuerst, who
turned the prisoner over to East Cleve-
land police.
In the meantime, “Doc”? Roberts ad-
vised authorities in Tennessee that he
would not fight extradition, reportedly
saying that he wanted to “go back to
SS ee
Cleveland
returned
January
and Dete
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d Upshaw.
me way or
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r part, had
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drew near,
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ved ahead
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ly ran out
and The
sy she was
igain from
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beige wool
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oodwin J.
Harley O.
a held up
te appeals
The peti-
the execu-
irbara was
when the
ither stay.
* she cried
eaking for
as denied,
itered the
vas placed
in prayer
up. Then
seemed to
he prison
bel Mona-
aess com-
mber was
ack Santo
pped side
ering and
secrets in-
nything I
ed to the
d quickly;
th.
‘s Claimed
ced at San
bodies of
sent toa
ing down
rs. Justice
» blackest
is official-
ly closed. But the aftermath to the San-
to-Graham story continued for a long
time.
Bloody Barbara had cursed and pro-
phesied early death for those'who want-
ed her dead. Weirdly enough, soon after
her execution, a parade of deaths began.
No one thought much of it when Bar-
bara’s original court-appointed defense
attorney, Jack W. Hardy, 51, who had
quit the case in disgust when her lying
alibi attempt was exposed, died of a
heart attack just a month after Babs was
executed. A year later, in October,
1956, Barbara’s nemesis, District Attor-
ney Roll, died of cancer at 52. In
August, 1957, death by apoplexy struck
down aged Tutor Scherer, the innocent
bystander whose mythical $100,000
cache sparked the murder of his former
mother-in-law.
Next to go was the man who in a
strictly literal sense was directly respon-
sible for Barbara’s death, even though
he often said he had no relish for the
grim task his duty imposed on him. He
was San Quentin Warden Teets, who
died suddenly of a heart attack on Sep-
tember 2, 1957, aged 50.
The passing of these four principals
in the final tragedy of Barbara Graham’s
life and death was still in the natural
order of things. But in January, 1958,
the pace of death stepped up, and now
it struck at those whom Bloody Babs
had specifically singled out for ultimate
retribution.
On January 22nd the Dutch freighter
Bonita, steaming up the Mississippi
channel in a fog south of New Orleans,
rammed a converted shrimp boat and
cut it in two. One man was saved as the
smaller craft swiftly sank, but the other
four aboard were drowned. All of the
dead were professional divers on their
way to a salvage operation in the Gulf.
One of them was John L. True, then
aged 42, the man who had wriggled out
of a murder rap by testifying against his
accomplices.
Just a few days later, on January
28th, Judge Fricke, the venerable Los
Angeles judge who had pronounced the
death sentence on the unholy three, suc-
cumbed to cancer at 75. Barbara’s attor-
ney had called Judge Fricke “the 13th
juror.”
By this time those who had followed
the Monahan case couldn’t fail to note
with a shudder the grim procession of
its principals to the grave. William Up-
shaw, then 38, the sole surviving star
witness of the original three, didn’t like
to talk about the case. When he heard of
John True’s death, he shook his head
and looked thoughtful.
On the rainy night of February 19,
1958, less than a month after the
“honest diver” took his last dive, pudgy
Bill Upshaw’s borrowed time ran out
with equal abruptness. Driving his Cadil-
lac convertible at high speed up U.S. 99
in the desert near Indio, Upshaw pulled
out to avoid an oncoming bus. He failed
to note that the road had narrowed for
a bridge over a wash. Before he could
swing back, he plowed head-on into the
bus. Upshaw and a companion were
killed instantly in the splintering crash,
and 20 bus passengers were hurt.
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abnormalities, Hu-" 4
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Crime by Julian Sy-
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eS ee ea ee aN a ee a
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»wrison?
GRAHAM, ¥K PERKINS and SANTOS
4
DEATH CELL’LETT
We
STU LL
On the night of March 9th, 1953, Mrs. Mabel
Monohan was beaten and strangled to death in
her Burbank, California, home. Five men and a
woman were involved in a plot to rob the elderly
woman who lived alone. Willie Upshaw, who had
withdrawn from the plot, named the others as
John True, Jack Santo, Emmett Perkins, Baxter
Shorter and a girl he knew only as Barbara. Shorter
was kidnaped, presumably slain. True won im-
munity by giving evidence for the state. Barbara
Graham protested her innocence. But on Sep-
tember 22nd she and Santo and Perkins, two ex-
cons, were found guilty of the murder. They were
sentenced to die in the gas chamber.
During her confinement at San Quentin and
later in the women’s prison at Corona, Barbara
was permitted to correspond with Stuart Palmer,
the one newspaper man whom she trusted. Palmer
covered the trial as guest feature writer for a Los
Angeles paper and worked closely with Al Mat-
thews, Barbara’s counsel.
Here we present Barbara’s death cell letters to
Stuart Palmer. They reveal the personality of the
young woman who has lost her last appeal to the
courts and, unless the governor intervenes, will be
the third of her sex to be legally executed in
California.
AUAUUSUERAYAQEQUEQUERQOSEONADEROALUANS ENGL EUAN OEEGPD AREER AOEED BO BUEHEA UDO UDPSE OSA PED SO
SUHOALSASAHIUASSEONDERESHSEUANUOSUESUOOASEOSUAQENQULEETOESEQT DESEO EDD EESTAU TRAD EDGULS UPPED AEST TEED EE
=
STULL LULA LLL
te,
Barbara Graham
CIW-1972
January 19th, 1954
Dear Stuart Palmer:
Thank you for coming all the way from Los Angeles up
to San Francisco, just to see me. I guess I was really a
sight, because I didn’t know you were coming that day and
the matron had just finished cutting my hair off short.
Maybe it will look like something when I get a curl back
init. I’m not a real blonde, you know—any more than I’m
a real you-know-what!
Thank you for the cigarette holder and the books on
Cezanne and Goya. About all I do here-is smoke and
read and sleep. And think about how I managed to get
myself into this mess. I could exercise, but as you know
there really isn’t any room for that in what the newspapers
call “my suite” and especially not when I have two armed
guards and a matron looking on.
Al Matthews, my attorney, says he is going to send me
up a little TV set. That will be a real help. Maybe I’ll see
one of your old screenplays!
I’m so sorry that I can’t send you any pictures of my girl-
hood for your paper. Oh, I just thought. I might be able
to get you a couple of snaps of me when I was about 16,
but I’ll have to send for them myself as I don’t want the
name of the people who have them to be in anyone’s:
hands but mine. I’ll write them tomorrow, but don’t count
on it.
From the beginning of this horrible mess I’ve tried to
keep what family I have out of it. I don’t want to drag
them down with me. The only one I’ve wanted to hear
from was my mother, and as I told you she washed her
hands of me years ago.
No dice on the poetry. I’m sorry I told you I’d tried to
write any. It isn’t for publication. It’s just that when you
get alone in a place like this, you have to pour your
heart out onto paper sometimes, and the stuff ought to be
TRUE DETECTIVE, May, 1955
