Welcome! The lobby of the Deranged L.A. Crimes theater is open! Grab a bucket of popcorn, some Milk Duds and a Coke and find a seat. Tonight’s feature is MY FAVORITE BRUNETTE, because every now and then we need a laugh. It is a film noir parody starring Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Peter Lorre, and Lon Chaney–with Alan Ladd in a cameo role. There’s also a surprise cameo at the end.
TCM says:
In San Quentin prison, baby photographer and amateur detective Ronnie Jackson, awaiting execution for murder, tells the press the story of his demise: Ever aspiring to be a detective, Ronnie invents a keyhole camera lens and buys a gun, hoping to work for private detective Sam McCloud, whose office is across from Ronnie’s studio in San Francisco’s Chinatown. When Sam goes to Chicago, he leaves Ronnie behind to man the telephones, and Ronnie takes the case of Carlotta Montay, a beautiful brunette whose uncle, Baron Montay, is in trouble.
Founded in 1921, Christie-Nestor Motion Picture Company, at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street, was Hollywood’s first movie studio. David Horsley, the studio’s producer, cranked out three complete motion pictures each week. The hectic schedule scarcely kept up with the public’s demand for the new medium.
Christie Nestor Studio c. 1916. Photo courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library.
Over the next several years, filmmakers from the East Coast recognized the advantages of setting up shop in Hollywood. The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce praised the region’s natural beauty, enhanced by year-round sunshine. Sunshine made a difference before indoor studios and artificial lighting. Locals provided cheap labor and extras for crowd scenes. A decade later, the sleepy burg of 5,000 residents became a thriving city of 35,000—most of them in the movie business.
With the studios and the busloads of dreamers came the first fan magazines. Magazines such as Moving Picture World and Photoplay played a part in creating the culture of celebrity by showcasing the lives of famous people. People bought movie magazines for the gossip, fashion, and lifestyle—harmless fun. The magazines fueled the dreams of those who longed to be famous. Few made the cut. Filled with photographs showing stars decked-out in diamond jewelry, standing on the grounds of their Beverly Hills mansion, or seated behind the wheel of an exotic car, the magazines gave would-be extortionists, blackmailers, kidnappers, and robbers ideas of their own.
On January 20, 1929, while making the rounds of local studios, Fern Setril met world-renowned director D. W. Griffith. She was thrilled when he told her she was a “girl of an an unusual type of beauty, unspoiled,” and that she had “remarkable features that would film well in motion pictures.” Despite Griffith’s apparent interest, Fern’s movie career did not take off. Not until 1931 did her name become associated with his.
On February 24, 1931, newspapers broke the story that Fern sued Griffith for $601,000 ($12.3M in current USD). The suit specified $500,000 for actual damages, $100,000 for punitive damages and $1,000 for medical treatment. Fern claimed that on June 25, 1930, she met with Griffith in his apartment to discuss her role as Ann Rutledge in his upcoming film, Abraham Lincoln. According to Fern, they did not run lines. Griffith plied her with champagne and raped her.
From his room at the Astor Hotel in New York, Griffith responded to the charges. He called them absurd and without foundation. He said, “I am astounded at the charges made against me. The whole story is untrue. The name Fern Setril means nothing to me. I don’t know anyone by that name.” Griffith vowed to “fight these charges to the limit.”
D. W. Griffith
Fern’s attorneys, Josef Widoff and J. B. Mandel, denied requests from reporters for an interview with their client. Even without her cooperation, reporters dug up enough information from the lawsuit filing to keep the story above the fold on the front page. They learned that before she moved to Hollywood to pursue an acting career, Fern lived in Wasco, California. Most of the time, she worked as an extra, acting in only a few minor bit parts under the surnames Barry or Darry.
Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. Photo courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library.
Although Fern filed a civil lawsuit, District Attorney Buron Fitts had no choice but to begin a criminal investigation into the alleged rape. He assigned his chief investigator, Blayney Matthews, to the case. Matthews found out for two weeks following the alleged attack, Mrs. C. E. Taylor and her son, Earl W. Taylor, nursed Fern back to health in their Pasadena home.
Mrs. Taylor told reporters, “It was another Arbuckle case. The girl nearly died here in my apartment.”
Mrs. Taylor said she first met Fern when Earl brought her home. “The girl was penniless,” she commented. “If my son hadn’t brought her in, she would have been left on the street.” Mrs. Taylor refused to name the Pasadena physicians who attended Fern. According to Mrs. Taylor, she and Earl took Fern to a hospital where doctors operated on her for an unspecified condition.
As often happens in breaking news, the rapid twists and turns had reporters struggling to stay on top of the story. This led to conflicting reports. Newspapers hit the street once a day unless they printed a special edition, which meant the news cycle was not in real time. Within a few days of the first report, Griffith suggested to reporters he might be the victim of an extortion plot cooked up by Fern and Earl.
D. A. Buron Fitts declared, “If the facts develop sufficiently to justify a prosecution on the charge of a conspiracy to commit the crime of extortion or attempted extortion, this office will prosecute.”
While Griffith remained in New York, Matthews delved further into Fern’s background. So did reporters. As they did, their coverage shifted in tone. They did not find enough to pillory Fern, but they could build the framework.
Fern Setril
Marguerite and Verona Shearer, Fern’s former Hollywood roommates, told Matthews that Fern filed for a divorce from someone named Frank in August 1930. Fern was married during the time she visited Griffith’s apartment. Fern made it sound like she had visited Griffith only twice before he pounced, but that conflicted with what the Shearer sisters told Matthews. Verona heard Fern talk about a friend named Lou, which was Fern’s name for Griffith.
Marguerite and Verona were a wealth of information. They told Matthews that several times over the summer of 1930, they heard Earl say he “was going to see to it that Fern sued D. W. Griffith to the limit.” Fern’s story unraveled with each new report. One of the most egregious holes in her account was her contention that Griffith offered her the role of Ann Rutledge in Abraham Lincoln. Griffith finished shooting the film in May, with Una Merkel in the role, a month before the alleged attack. The film debuted in New York on August 24.
The discrepancy in her account shocked Fern’s attorneys. They rushed to file an amended complaint, deleting all references to the movie. Another problem for Fern was Earl’s involvement. He contacted local newspapers to “buy this little girl’s story.” Over the telephone, he told reporters, “… this little girl is just out of the convent.”
Earl struggled to convince jaded reporters of Fern’s story. It would have been tougher still if anyone had thought to check newspapers from a few years back. If they had, they would have found out that a love triangle, in which Fern played a pivotal role, was front-page news for a nanosecond in 1926.
In early May 1926, Setril’s photo appeared in the Los Angeles Times and the Illustrated Daily News. Lillian Schmid said her husband, Frank, betrayed her with her best friend, Fern. Lillian told the judge in her divorce case that Fern had lived with her and Frank for five months. After Fern left, Lilian found a letter from her in Frank’s pocket. She confronted him about it. At first, he played dumb. Later, he admitted he loved Fern and was going away with her. Lillian said, “He left me that day.”
Lillian’s attorney, Frank C. Dunham, read aloud an excerpt from Fern’s letter to the court. “By the time this reaches you, I shall be gone. As I know in my heart, it is the only fair thing to do. I just can’t go on living the way I am. There is no use hiding the fact any longer—I love you dearly. I fought hard to hide my love because it is not fair to Lillian. She has been a good wife to you, Frank, and she loves you. I am not the kind of woman who would come between you and Lil, so I am going to leave.”
Lillian got her divorce, and Fern and Frank married in Pasadena on May 15, 1927. Fern got lucky. Reporters never picked up on her earlier peccadillo, but she was not out of the woods. Reporters located the divorce records in the county clerk’s office.
Fern left Frank in August 1929 and returned to her mother’s home in Wasco. Frank followed her there and, at gunpoint, forced her to return to Los Angeles with him. In the divorce, she charged Frank with cruelty and won an interlocutory decree on October 16, 1930. That was not the end of her marital woes. Frank appeared in court to have the decree set aside. He accused Fern of misconduct with one “John Doe.” Frank said Doe gave Fern money and expensive gifts. He also said she bragged to her friends about being in love with Doe. Frank failed to appear on January 7, 1931. Fern won her decree by default.
Fern replaced her troublesome husband with a problematic boyfriend, Earl Taylor. In August 1928, Judge Fletcher Bowron (future mayor of Los Angeles) sentenced Taylor to San Quentin for embezzlement. Taylor embezzled two $5,000 promissory notes belonging to Lynn. C. Booze. Besides swindling Booze, he stole from several Compton and Long Beach businessmen. Taylor applied for probation, but the judge denied it. After a year in San Quentin, they paroled him on October 29, 1929—Black Tuesday, the day the stock market crashed and plunged the U.S. into a decade-long depression.
Fern and Taylor likely met when he worked at one of the local movie studios following his parole. Did Fern meet Griffith in 1929? Maybe, but there is a chance she and Taylor fabricated the story. Blayney Matthews began his investigation, and the couple’s scheme unraveled. At the end of February, he questioned Fern and Taylor. On the advice of her attorney, Jerry Giesler, Fern declined to make a statement. Taylor should have followed Fern’s lead. Instead, he spoke at length and dug himself a deep hole. Matthews determined Taylor was the “mastermind” behind the extortion plot.
A movie technical assistant, Frank Leyva, told Matthews that Fern and Taylor had tried to extort him, too. In October 1930, Fern threatened to charge him with rape if he didn’t pay. He went to the police instead.
While Matthews questioned Taylor, James Lewis, assistant State parole officer, identified Taylor as the man sentenced to San Quentin in August 1928. Lewis said, “Taylor has been on the borderline of trouble several times since he was paroled. I warned him once before not to be too friendly with Mrs. Setril. That was before she was divorced from her husband, who complained to me of Taylor’s attentions to his wife.”
Lewis had news for Taylor. His parole would not expire until August 18, 1931. A violation would return him to prison. Fitts held Taylor in technical custody until they could settle the Griffith case. Fern sued Griffith, but never had him served. The case fizzled. So, too, did the criminal investigation into the alleged sexual assault.
In custody, the strain got to Taylor, who threatened to commit suicide. “If they don’t do something to break this strain pretty soon, I’ll jump out of a window.” Fern pleaded with him to hang on, “for my sake.” Taylor fought in vain. They returned him to prison. Fern broke her vow to wait. In the summer of 1932, she announced her imminent marriage to a man she did not name. No record of the marriage appeared in local newspapers. Fern disappeared.
Following his parole, Earl Taylor re-invented himself as a Hollywood writer’s agent. In 1935, two women accused him of fraud. A jury acquitted him.
In June 1939, under the sensational headline, L.A. Gunman Runs Amok in Hotel, the Daily News reported that a retired furrier, Frank Setril, took potshots at lights and windows at the Vanderbilt Hotel. Frank locked himself in his third-floor room. Police flushed him out with tear gas. No one could explain his behavior.
D. W. Griffith’s first full talking film, Abraham Lincoln, fizzled at the box-office. He followed it up in 1931 with The Struggle, which also failed.
He never made another movie.
NOTE: I wrote about Fern Setril in my book, Of Mobsters and Movie Stars: The Bloody Golden Age of Hollywood, Wild Blue Press, 2024.
I’ve been working hard on various projects, so I’ve fallen behind on posting. I’m researching some great cases, so stay tuned.
Meanwhile…
Welcome! The lobby of the Deranged L.A. Crimes theater is open! Grab a bucket of popcorn, some Milk Duds and a Coke and find a seat. Tonight’s feature is RACE STREET. It stars George Raft, William Bendix, and Marilyn Maxwell. Enjoy the movie!
TCM says:
When San Francisco bookmaker Hal Towers confides in his boss, racketeer Dan Gannin, that a syndicate is trying to force him to pay protection money, Dan reminds him about their recent pledge to get out of the gambling racket. Although Dan offers his best friend a chance to invest in his new, legitimate nightclub, Hal insists on fighting the syndicate. Dan cautions Hal, who is lame, to be careful, but before the night is over, Dan and another childhood friend, police detective Barney Runson, find the bookie lying dead at the bottom of his apartment stairs. Concerned for his friend’s safety, Barney warns Dan not to seek vengeance on Hal’s killers, but allow the law to pursue justice. Dan’s associates, however, expect him to retaliate for Hal’s murder, and Dan obeys the rules of gangster protocol by not revealing anything about the case to Barney. When Dan goes home that night, he is greeted by two well-dressed men who present themselves as “insurance salesmen.”
At 20-years-old, Robert Schoengarth could have kicked heroin and started over. But heroin is a hard habit to break. Heroin attaches to opioid receptors in the brain and nervous system, like natural endorphins, so the brain adapts with regular use. Getting clean isn’t a matter of willpower. You are fighting your altered chemistry. Withdrawal from heroin, while not often life-threatening, can be so painful you pray for death.
In September 1957, Robert married June Leach in Las Vegas. They had a daughter, but the marriage didn’t last. We can only speculate about what drove them apart.
From the time he was a teenager, Robert moved between California and Colorado. He had trouble with the law in both places.
In January 1963, an anonymous tip alerted the LAPD’s Hollywood division that Colorado wanted Robert for felony robbery and theft. They busted him near Klump Avenue and La Maida Street in North Hollywood. 6
Robert confessed to stealing from a Ventura Boulevard business after his arrest for suspected burglary. He had drugs on him—a vial with 45 pink pills in it. He told officers he came to North Hollywood to score dope.
Robert’s brother, William, had his own problems. In 1956, Burbank police arrested William and two other men for burglarizing an Apple Valley men’s clothing store on New Year’s Eve, 1955. Zeke Eblen, chief of detectives for the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Office, said the men stole expensive suits, sports jackets, and other clothing, which they took out a side door and loaded into a car.
Like Robert, William’s heroin addiction caused his troubles. In court on the burglary charges, he pleaded guilty and admitted to being an addict. Assistant County Probation Officer Merle Kay, said William was, “resigned to a life of institutional care without hope of rehabilitation or permanent treatment for his addiction.” All his previous attempts to get clean failed. He told Kay he would try to quit the habit if given probation, but confessed he had said the same thing a “thousand times” before.
In July 1967, police arrested William and his wife, Gloria, in Fort Worth, Texas, for forgery after a state computer detected a fake check they had tried to cash.
Working together, Robert, William, Robert’s wife Connie Sue, and an accomplice, George Pauldino, landed in U. S. District Court in Denver for passing stolen savings bonds in banks in Colorado Springs and Boulder.
According to U.S. Assistant Attorney Theodore Halaby, the group cashed some of the $200,000 worth of bonds they stole on December 12, 1971, from the safe of the Denver Public Administrator.
The brothers spent most of the 1970s either in court or prison.
The Schoengarth brothers paid a terrible price for making a dumb mistake as teenagers. Their addictions were a prison without walls. Reading between the lines, I realize they struggled to lead normal lives.
I’ve had many friends grapple with addiction. Several of them died of an O.D. Smart, funny, talented, each one had so much to give. I will never stop missing them.
Robert died in 1988, and William passed in 2005. The brothers may never have realized their potential, but I bet family and friends who saw the best in them mourn them still.
Welcome! The lobby of the Deranged L.A. Crimes theater is open. Grab a bucket of popcorn, some Milk Duds and a Coke and find a seat. Tonight’s feature is, THE LIGHTS OF NEW YORK (1928), starring Helene Costello, Wheeler Oakman, and Eugene Pallette.
This is the first feature film with all synchronous dialogue.
TCM says:
When bootleggers Jackson and Dickson, who have been hiding out in a small upstate New York town, learn that they finally can return to New York, they try to convince Eddie Morgan and his friend, a local barber named Gene, to come with them. With a promise from Jackson and Dickson that they will help the young men establish a barbershop in the city, Eddie asks his mother, who owns the town’s Morgan Hotel, to loan them $5,000 of her savings. Eddie and Gene set up the barbershop in New York but soon learn that it is merely a front for a speakeasy.
In March 1951, Ruth Gmeiner, a United Press Staff writer, published a story about the growing problem of teenage drug addiction. Officials described heroin use as a “contagious disease.” A federal grand jury in Detroit reported they had uncovered shocking conditions . . . “Young people ranging in age between 14 and 21 have become confirmed and inveterate users of heroin.” Every big city noticed an uptick in the number of juveniles arrested on drug charges.
In Los Angeles, Robert Schoengarth started using heroin in 1948 as a student at North Hollywood Junior High School. He and a group of his friends grew marijuana in the Hollywood Hills. They weren’t entrepreneurs, they were pot philanthropists. What they didn’t consume themselves, they gave away to friends.
Raise your hand if you made stupid choices at 14. Yeah. Me too. Fortunately, my choices didn’t have lifelong consequences.
Late Wednesday evening, January 14, 1953, Morris Friedman worked behind the counter at his liquor store at 4100 Magnolia in Burbank. A dark-haired young man entered the store, bought a pack of cigarettes, and left. Moments later, he returned. He had a .22 in his pocket. He gestured at Friedman, “I want your money, sir.”
Friedman didn’t argue. He opened the cash register, grabbed a handful of bills, and handed them over. But the crook saw a few other bills in the drawer. He reached for them. Friedman grabbed the man’s arm, but the bandit pulled away and ran. The bandit was Robert.
Robert ran five blocks to his home. He replaced the gun, which belonged to his twin, William, in a dresser drawer. Passing through the living room where his father, Frank, spoke with a neighbor, he went into the front yard.
He called Frank from the house into the yard. “I told him I robbed the store.” It wasn’t Robert’s first brush with the law. Police arrested him twice before. Once for marijuana, and later for heroin. He spent time in the Los Angeles County Jail, and a California Youth Authority facility. He told his dad he’d been clean since his release. Frank didn’t believe him.
Robert said he couldn’t understand why he committed the robbery. He had a good job, making more than $62 a week as a mechanic’s apprentice. When Frank asked him for the stolen money, he gave it to him.
While Robert waited at home with his mother, Louise, for the police to arrive, Frank went to the liquor store and returned $33 to Friedman.
Patrolmen Ray Webb and Joe Mooney took Robert into custody. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Robert said. “I suppose I have always been hanging around with the wrong crowd. That’s how I started using dope. Maybe they can put me in a hospital. Maybe it’d help me.”
Robert’s pain is palpable. So is Frank’s. Frank explained his actions by saying he wanted to help Robert, and that he feared that Robert’s twin brother, William, an aircraft worker, might be wrongly accused.
In desperation, Frank reached out to the well-known newspaperwoman, Florabel Muir. He spoke to her about Robert. “He really isn’t a bad boy. He started getting into bad company when he was in junior high school. It was then he started smoking marijuana. I didn’t know about it until he was arrested.”
Robert’s incarcerations did him no good. Frank said, “He’s only got worse with each sentence. I asked him the other night what in the world had happened to him and where he got the idea of taking a gun and sticking up somebody for money. He looked at me, sneered, and answered, ‘In jail. What do you think?’”
Back home for only a month, Robert seemed to do well. Then he asked to borrow $10. Frank couldn’t figure out why Robert would be broke right after payday—unless he was using drugs again. Robert denied it.
Frank hoped they wouldn’t return Robert to jail. He wanted him to go to a hospital for treatment. That would be up to the court. District Attorney Ernest Roll ordered a full investigation of Robert’s story. Robert told him he would “like to kick the habit if I got the chance.” He told Roll about his “graduation” from marijuana to heroin. The D.A. learned how easy it was for Robert to get high in a California Youth Camp. A friend supplied heroin through the mail.
In judge Charles Fricke’s court, Robert pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree robbery. The judge said he would place Robert in one of the California Youth Authority institutions for another chance at sobriety.
In less than two years, Robert was out of CYA and back in the news.
Police arrested him and his brother William on dope charges in February 1955. With them was a 17-year-old girl. The twins had their own place at 11920 Riverside Drive in North Hollywood. Police found a hypodermic needle kit and two caps of heroin. The girl told officers she went with Robert downtown to Temple Street, where they scored a gram of heroin from a dealer for $15.
Maybe the evidence was insufficient for prosecution, because by October Robert was again under arrest for drugs.
Police booked Robert and 18-year-old Rosalyn Berman after stopping their car on Emelita Street and Lankershim Boulevard. Robert drove erratically, and police noticed Rosalyn drop a packet from the car. Both had fresh needle marks on their arms and appeared to be under the influence.
Only 20-years-old, and Robert’s life was circling the drain.
Even after six years of addiction and legal woes, Robert was young enough to change the course of his life. Could he do it?
One thing I love about researching true crime is how a story can change direction. Just when I think I have someone figured out, they do something that seems out of character, and it wipes the smug expression off my face. That happened with Olney Le Blanc.
Olney’s courage impressed me when I discovered his story in newspaper coverage from 1935. He saved his three-year-old son, Bernard, from a man who killed the boy’s puppy and likely had something awful planned for the child.
Curious about where Olney’s life would take him, I continued to search. He appeared in minor news stories about his career as a dancer, and as a teacher. By 1940, he was the recreation leader at McKinley Home for Boys in Van Nuys; a job for which he was well-suited. He lived at the home without his wife or son. Because I could not find documentation, I believe they may have separated or divorced.
I expected Olney to continue his career as a dance teacher. Maybe I’d find he and Annette had divorced. The truth caught me off-guard.
Olney was a killer.
On August 29, 1942, a call summoned Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies to the Carmelitos housing project, where someone had stabbed a woman. They arrived at the Carmelitos Housing Project, at the residence of June Dyer, 22-year-old mother of three.
Mildred Davis, left, and Muriel Robbins, right, of the tenant selection staff of the County Housing Authority, look over the Carmelitos low-rent housing project, located in North Long Beach. The project was the first of its kind opened in Southern California. Photo dated: October 23, 1940, courtesy of LAPL.
Ten blocks away from the scene of the murder, police found a man unconscious in a car outside a school. Someone also stabbed him. One officer made a tourniquet from the leather thong of his nightstick and stopped blood spurting from a gashed arm. They identified him as Olney Le Blanc, and booked him into the police hospital ward on suspicion of murder.
In one of his pockets they found a letter, written by June.
Dear Donald: This is a written confession of an unforgivable error I made—not in the doing, but because I kept the truth from you. Dan is not your son. You know his father. Hold it not against Danny and love him as you always have if you can.
Donald, I have deceived you many times since the beginning, even telling you I loved you. I lied.
I could never find real happiness with a lie in my heart. Mr. Leblanc has been cheated of a glorified happiness because of me. I’m doing to try to make him happy, as I know he can make me happy and be as grand a father to the boys as anyone in the world. We will work together, something you and I could never get started.
Your wife, June
Why did Olney have June’s letter in his possession?
Working for hours, Sheriff’s deputies Ed Carroll, Emmett Love and H. K. MacVine pieced together the events leading up to the murder.
A witness, 16-year-old Walter Jensen, said he saw June standing beside a car outside of her home, talking to four friends. Another car drove up, its driver called to her, and she left to talk to him.
Walter said, “They seemed to be arguing. Then he grabbed her and threw her to the ground. Walter ran to June’s aid, but the man knocked him down. Her friends carried June into her house. Her husband, Don, arrived home in time to see June die.
The U.S. was at war, and hundreds of thousands of people moved to Los Angeles for war work at shipyards and factories. June, her husband Donald, and Olney worked at Vultee, a defense plant. June and Olney worked a swing shift, and they got to know each other. When she found out he was a woodworker, she asked if he would give her instruction. Olney agreed.
After her death, newspapers suggested June and Olney were having an affair, and called the case California’s first swing-shift murder. Staggered working hours sometimes made it difficult for spouses not to stray.
Donald took umbrage with newspapers that suggested June had broken her marriage vows. He said Olney became obsessed with June. In fact, six weeks before the murder, Olney kidnapped June, drove her to the Mojave Desert, stabbed her in the side and forced her to write a letter to Don, confessing infidelity.
Sheriff’s records proved the truth of Don’s statement. Deputies took Olney into custody and booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon following the kidnapping. June and Don refused to press charges.
At the time of the kidnapping, Olney told officers, “I was so madly in love with her I didn’t know what I was doing.”
The letter found on Olney following his attempted suicide was the letter he had forced June to write.
Olney appeared for his preliminary hearing on September 15th. The judge remanded him to the County Jail without bail, pending trial, on a charge of murder.
As deputies led a shackled Olney from the courtroom, Don lunged at him, screaming, “I hope you die in a thousand hells—you didn’t have the guts to kill yourself, but you could kill June.” A bailiff shoved Don aside before he could get his hands on Olney.
In October, Olney entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. The court appointed three alienists to examine Olney, and set trial for November 6 before Superior Judge Charles W. Fricke.
I’ve written about Fricke before. He was a no-nonsense jurist; some even called him a “hanging judge.” Olney was in for a rough ride.
In a surprise move, under an agreement with the D.A.’s office, Olney’s not guilty plea would stand. No witnesses would be called before Judge Fricke, who would use a transcript of the preliminary hearing and to have the court consider it as the evidence in determining Olney’s guilt or innocence, and the punishment if any.
On November 23rd, Judge Fricke found Olney guilty of first-degree murder, and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
Why did Olney’s life unravel? When I first found his story, it seemed he would lead a happy and productive life. How did he go from saving his son from a kidnapper to murdering June with a German sword?
Welcome! The lobby of the Deranged L.A. Crimes theater is open. Grab a bucket of popcorn, some Milk Duds and a Coke and find a seat.
Today’s film is an outstanding film noir from 1945, directed by Otto Preminger, FALLEN ANGEL. It stars Alice Faye, Dana Andrews and Linda Darnell.
IMDB says:
One night, drifter Eric Stanton is forced to disembark a San Francisco-bound bus because he has not paid the full fare. Eric is let off in the small town of Walton, and when he goes to Pop’s, a local diner, he finds Pop distraught over the disappearance of his beautiful waitress Stella. Retired police detective Mark Judd assures Pop that Stella will return, and soon she does appear, much to Pop’s relief. Eric then leaves and, after seeing a poster for a show by “psychic” Professor Madley, convinces Madley’s assistant, Joe Ellis, that he is friends with the professor. Ellis confides that ticket sales have been slow due to the influence of Clara Mills, the former mayor’s daughter, who has been telling her friends not to attend. Seeing an opportunity to make money, Eric goes to the Mills house the next morning, and asks the cynical Clara to give the professor a chance. Clara dismisses Eric, saying that the professor is a charlatan, but her lovely younger sister June is intrigued by Eric, and tells Clara that Madley is merely trying to make a living. June convinces her sister to buy tickets to the show, and soon many of the townspeople follow suit.
While combing old newspapers in search of a tale for a Deranged L.A. Crimes post, I found the curious story of Olney Le Blanc.
On January 28, 1935, a picture of him with his son, Bernard, ran in the Los Angeles Times alongside a headline about a suspected kidnapping and arrest.
The day before the article appeared, 3-year-old Bernard Le Blanc was playing with his two-month-old puppy in his backyard. Moments later, a neighbor, John Corbett, saw Bernard walking down the alley hand in hand with a stranger who had a burlap sack thrown over his shoulder.
Alarmed, Corbett dashed over to Olney’s home and told him what he had witnessed. Olney, Corbett, and a group of neighbors rallied. They chased the man, and Olney caught him. A professional dancer, Olney was in prime physical condition and apprehended the stranger with ease. A fistfight broke out after the vendor resisted. The man was no match for a father in defense of his son. The neighbors held him for police. In the sack they found Bernard’s puppy, dead.
The stranger identified himself as 40-year-old Jack Light, a fruit vendor who lived at 401 1/2 North Main Street. He told police he was drinking before he saw Bernard and his puppy. Light insisted he only wanted to take Bernard to a local café for a bottle of milk, and to a store to buy food for the puppy. He claimed Bernard put the dog, still alive, in the burlap sack and denied kicking it to death. He said when Olney knocked him down, he must have fallen on the sack and crushed the dog’s head. Witnesses contradicted Light’s version.
Detectives Brown and Filkas arrested Light for attempted kidnapping.
In February, Jack Light, acting as his own attorney, took the stand on his own behalf. Charged with child stealing, he told Municipal Judge Morgan Gaibreth the same story he had told police. The judge set Light’s bail at $5000.
On March 20, 1935, Judge Fletcher Bowron found Light guilty of child stealing. Light requested probation. Judge Bowron sentenced him to ninety days in the County Jail, ten years’ probation, and fined him $25.
There is no way to know for sure what Light planned to do with Bernard. That he kicked the puppy to death leads me to believe he was going to harm Bernard, too. Olney’s swift action saved his son from an uncertain fate
Olney’s courage impressed me. I wanted to know if he did anything else worthy of newspaper coverage. I found a few stories about Olney and his dance career. He must have been talented to stay employed during the Depression.
By October 1936, Olney taught dance at the Torrance Recreation Department. The Get-Together Club was part of a WPA (Works Progress Administration) effort. He taught classes from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m., each weekday.
Olney’s dance partner, Coral King, threw a birthday party for him in August 1939 at the Redwood Ranch, home of Lita Houghton in Van Nuys. The party was formal dress, with a live band. Among those in attendance was Coral’s dance class, the Friday Nighters.
The 1940 Federal Census shows Olney as the recreation leader at the McKinley Home for Boys at 13840 Riverside Drive in Van Nuys (now Sherman Oaks). He stated he was married, but his living alone at the home suggests a separation from his wife.
The McKinley Home (named after President McKinley), housed 150-250 boys. In the early 1960s, the home moved to San Dimas and still operates today. They leveled the Van Nuys location and built a mall in its place.
Other than a possible crack in his marriage, Olney appeared to be doing well.
Curious, I searched for further information.
I was unprepared for what I found.
NEXT TIME: Olney’s life takes a turn to the dark side.
Murder victims lose their identities. They are a toe tag in the morgue; they are a file number for police. Sometimes it is easy to forget that they were much more than a newspaper headline.
Born in a small New Mexico town in 1902, Jeanne Axford came of age during the Roaring ‘20s. Perfect timing for the free-spirited girl. She married at 17 to David Wrather and they had a son, David, Jr.
Jeanne Axford (L) with her cousin Clara (Photo: Ancestry)
In 1922, after training in New Mexico, Jeanne worked as a nurse in Amarillo, Texas. Marriage didn’t suit her. She and David divorced in 1924; she won custody of their son.
In 1925, Jeanne married again. That marriage, too, failed. Rumor has it Jeanne acted in films, but I couldn’t find her listed in the Internet Movie Database, even under an alias, so she may have had uncredited roles.
Regardless of whether she appeared in movies, Jeanne had an interesting Hollywood connection. She worked as a private nurse for Marion Benda Wilson, Rudolph Valentino’s last date, and maybe his last love. Known as the “Woman in Black” for many years, Marion put flowers on Valentino’s grave.
Marion Benda Wilson aka the Woman in Black
Sometime between 1925 and 1931, Jeanne learned to fly and earned the moniker, “Flying Nurse.” She worked for a large oil company in South America, flying from one oil field to another, caring for workers. She became a member of the Women’s Air Reserve, and the 99 Club, an organization of women aviators.
Either an optimist, or a glutton for punishment, Jeanne married for a third time in Dallas, Texas on October 8, 1931, two days after her 29th birthday, to Curtis Bower. It took the couple five weeks to realize their mistake. Dissolving her marriage earned Jeanne another nickname, “air-mail divorcee.” The divorce papers, prepared by her attorney, Allan Lund, went via air to Juarez, Mexico for filing. A law firm in Mexico provided for a final decree by proxy. Neither Jeanne nor Curtis needed to appear in court.
On July 5, 1932, Jeanne’s mother, Oma Randolph, went to police to file a missing person report. Jeanne left home the morning of June 27 to drive to the Mexican border, where she planned to board a private plane for Mexico City.
The Flying Nurse
The week following the missing person report, Jeanne cabled her mother from Mexico City. “I can’t understand the worry I have caused in the United States by flying to Mexico. I am flying back for the Olympics. I assure everyone that I am okeh.”
Jeanne kept a low profile for the next several years. She married in 1944 for the fourth and final time to a former Marine, Frank French.
It isn’t clear when Jeanne started her slide into alcoholism, but by the mid-1940s, she fought demons she could not control.
Alcohol fueled a life of risky behavior and made Jeanne easy prey for a monster.
On February 10, 1947, less than a month after housewife Betty Bersinger found Elizabeth Short’s bisected body in a Leimert Park vacant lot, Hugh C. Shelby, a bulldozer operator, found the brutally beaten, nude body of a woman in a field near the Santa Monica Airport. The Herald put out an extra edition with the headline: “Werewolf Strikes Again! Kills L.A. Woman, Writes B.D. on Body.”
Within a couple of hours, police identified the victim as forty-five-year-old Jeanne French.
Detectives at the scene of Jeanne’s murder
Jeanne suffered blows to her head, administered by a metal blunt instrument—a socket wrench. As bad as they were, the blows to her head were not fatal. Jeanne died from hemorrhage and shock due to fractured ribs and multiple injuries caused by her killer stomping on her. Her chest bore heel prints. It took a long time for Jeanne to die. The coroner said that she bled to death.
Mercifully, Jeanne was unconscious after the first blows to her head so she never saw her killer take the deep red lipstick from her purse, and she didn’t feel the pressure of his improvised pen as he wrote on her torso: “Fuck You, B.D.” and “Tex.” Police looked for a connection between Jeanne’s murder and Elizabeth Short’s death; but they found nothing.
Jeanne was last seen seated at the first stool nearest entering the Pan American Bar on West Washington Place. The bartender told police Jeanne sat next to a smallish man with a dark complexion sat on the stool next to her. The bartender assumed they were a couple because he saw them leave together at closing time.
On the night before she died, Jeanne visited Frank at his apartment and they’d quarreled. Frank said Jeanne, who was drunk, started the fight, then hit him with her purse and left.
Jeanne’s twenty-five-year-old son, David, came in for questioning. As he left the police station, he saw his step-father for the first time since he’d learned of his mother’s death. David confronted Frank and said: “Well, I’ve told them the truth. If you’re guilty, there’s a God in heaven who will take care of you.” Frank didn’t hesitate. He looked at David and said: “I swear to God; I didn’t kill her.”
Police booked Frank for murder, then they cleared him. His landlady told police she could verify Frank was in his apartment at the time of the murder. His shoe prints failed to match those found at the scene of the crime.
Cops had few leads. They found French’s cut-down 1929 Ford roadster in the parking lot of a drive-in restaurant, The Piccadilly at Washington Place and Sepulveda Blvd. Witnesses said that the car was there at 3:15 on the morning of the murder, and a night watchman saw a man leave it there. The police never accounted for Jeanne’s whereabouts between 3:15 a.m. and the time of her death, which the coroner estimated to be around 6 a.m.
Police rousted scores of sex degenerates, but they eliminated each as a suspect. Officers also checked out local Chinese restaurants after the autopsy revealed that Jeanne ate a Chinese meal before her death.
Jeanne’s slaying became known as the “Red Lipstick Murder” case. Like the Black Dahlia case, it went cold.
Three years later, following a Grand Jury investigation into the many unsolved murders of women in L.A., the District Attorney assigned investigators from his office to look into the case.
Frank Jemison and Walter Morgan worked on Jeanne’s murder for eight months, but they never closed it. They came up with one hot suspect, a painter who worked for the French’s four months prior to the murder. He said he dated Jeanne several times. The cops discovered the painter burned several pairs of his shoes—he wore the same size as the ones that left marks on Jeanne’s body. He seemed a likely suspect until he didn’t. Police cleared him despite his odd behavior.
The 1940s’ high number of unsolved female homicides prompted a 1949 Grand Jury investigation into police inaction.
Like the murder of Elizabeth Short, there have been no leads in Jeanne French’s case in decades. Two more names added to the list of unsolved homicides of women during the 1940s.
