The Murder Complex, Conclusion

Thomas’ trial opened at 10 a.m. on August 17, 1925, in Judge Hahn’s court.  His attorneys, Cooper, Collins & Shreve, had a fight on their hands.  The District Attorney stated that he would settle for nothing less than the death penalty.

The gist of Thomas’ defense was that he had been insane at the time he murdered Grace. There was considerable evidence to the contrary.

Thomas had shown friends portions of letters which he declared had been written by Grace while she was missing. Thomas was adamant that the letters proved she was alive and well and that she had deserted him. The letters were exposed as frauds. Thomas had compelled Grace to write them, perhaps under the influence of alcohol or physical coercion. He had also obtained blank forms he might need and had her sign them.

The prosecution produced a surprise witness, George T. Guggenheim, a dealer in dental supplies.  George had known Thomas for years. A few weeks following Grace’s disappearance, the doctor visited the dental supply office with a request.

“He had an envelope in his hand and asked me to mail it to New York to somebody that would mail it back to him.” George testified.

Thomas told George: “Somebody has been tampering with my mails and I’d like to have this letter sent to me from New York to play a joke on that feller.”

George didn’t mind helping a friend and a good client, so he mailed the letter Thomas had given him to his brother in New York.

The letters weren’t the only spurious documents in the case. Dorothy Leopold Mahan (she had married about a week before the trial started) said that she had signed a blank document, not knowing what it was. The document was shown to be a power of attorney, giving Thomas control over Grace’s money and property.

Attempting to make her a possible suspect, the defense sought to cast a sinister light on Dorothy’s relationship with Thomas.  Under oath, she was asked if she had ever spent the night in Thomas’ home, to which she replied: “Yes – I did.  Three times.  My mother was with me on each occasion.”

Being chaperoned by one’s mother is hardly conducive to an affair, and further questioning revealed that Dorothy had never had an intimate relationship with Thomas, nor did she want one.  Her attitude toward her employer effectively removed any possible motive she might have had to murder Grace.

It seemed that each day more damning evidence against Thomas was exposed.

 The prosecution planned to move the trial to the Beverly Glen cabin for a day to give the jury an opportunity to view the cistern that “served as Mrs. Young’s burial crypt.”

How was Thomas going to handle being confronted, in front of the jury, with the actual site of the murder and his wife’s tomb?

Following a grueling day in court on August 26th, Thomas was returned to his cell in Tank 9. He told his cellmates that his day in court had been filled with “tough breaks.”

The inmates in Tank 9, including Thomas, played their nightly game of Pinochle. Before returning to his cot, Thomas said: “I’m going to take a long ride tomorrow, boys.”  They laughed because they believed he referred to the coming trip to the scene of the crime in Beverly Glen.  Thomas told them not to be alarmed if they heard strange noises in his cell.  “I’ve been having a bad attack of indigestion.  I woke up last night and found myself choking and making bubbling noises.  If you hear anything like that don’t be alarmed.” 

The other prisoners had heard strange noises from Thomas’ cell before. He often shuffled around late at night muttering, and it seemed as if he was talking to someone.

At 6 a.m. on the morning of August 27th, Assistant Jailer Palmer called to Thomas to get up.

“All right,” Thomas replied.

O.F. Mahler, one of the occupants of Tank 9, awoke at 7 a.m. when a trustee delivered three breakfast trays. Mahler distributed them; one for himself, one to H. Foster, and one was for Thomas.

Thomas Young

Mahler entered Thomas’ cell but the doctor failed to stir. He wasn’t in his usual sleeping position.  His feet were on the pillow and his head was at the foot of the cot.  The single blanket was pulled tightly around his head and only one hand was visible.

Mahler gently shook Thomas. There was no response.  He shook him again. The body moved in an unnatural way.  Mahler jerked the blanket from Thomas’ head.

Thomas was dead.

His eyes were distended from his blue, swollen face.  A garrote of radio wire, tightened with a small stick, was wrapped around his neck.

The murder complex had claimed its final victim.

 

 

 

The Murder Complex, Part 4

THE LADY VANISHES

Thomas told anyone who asked him that the last time he saw Grace was on February 21, 1925.  They had stopped at a roadhouse, the Plantation Grill, for drinks and dancing. National Prohibition may have been the law, but it was simple enough to find a cocktail if you wanted one.

Entrance to speakeasy.

Thomas saw a group of people enter the café and recognized a woman named Nina. He had known her for several years. He spent some time chatting with her. Thomas said that Grace became unreasonably jealous and they started to argue.  Rather than make a public scene, they left the roadhouse and continued their argument in the car until they reached Western and Eighth Streets where they made up. Instead of calling it a night, they went to the Biltmore Hotel where there was an orchestra and dancing.

When they arrived at the Biltmore, Grace excused herself to go to the ladies’ room. Thomas waited, but she never returned.

Thomas reported Grace missing, and he also hired a private investigator. He maintained that Grace had left for Paris or New York to seek a divorce. According to Thomas, she carried with her $126,000 in Liberty bonds.  Thomas said Grace would return when she was ready. Then he went on with his life as if nothing had happened.

Biltmore Hotel

A couple of days after Grace disappeared, Thomas asked Patrick to accompany him to the Beverly Glen cabin because he said he needed to pour a concrete floor in the cistern which he claimed was leaking. Patrick welcomed any activity that would distract him from worrying about his mother.  He mixed and poured the cement while Thomas smoothed it out.

Over the next few weeks Thomas arranged parties and other social events for Patrick to “keep his mind off things.”  Among the guests at the soirees was Thomas’ attractive young office assistant, Dorothy Leopold.

When Grace’s father Frank first got word that she was missing, he felt in his gut that something horrible had happened to her. He wanted to force a confrontation with Thomas, so he filed a legal request to become Patrick’s guardian. If the guardianship request was meant to fluster Thomas, it failed.  Thomas said that it was up to Patrick to choose a guardian.

Patrick didn’t want his grandfather to be his guardian, so he named an attorney he knew to take charge of his legal affairs until Grace returned. As a further slap in the face to his mother’s family, Patrick stated his preference was to live with his stepfather.

Weeks went by with no sign of Grace. Then suddenly, Patrick began receiving letters from her with New York postmarks. In the letters, she said that her family was keeping her from Thomas and that they knew where she was. Patrick was conflicted. He loved his mother’s family but Thomas had been very good to him.  He had even bought him a new Chrysler.

By June, Grace’s family, joined by her friends from the Ebell Club and trust company officers from the bank, appealed to District Attorney Asa Keyes to launch a sweeping investigation.

Original Ebell Club located on Figueroa. By C.C. Pierce & Co. – http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/p15799coll65/id/3021, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30848484

THE INVESTIGATION

On June 12th, an investigation into Grace’s mysterious disappearance, spearheaded by the D.A., kicked into high gear. Los Angeles Police Department officers interviewed residents of Beverly Glen.  Among those interviewed were Donald Mead and Kenneth Selby. The boys related to police what they had witnessed that February night. If it had been Thomas creeping around in the cabin in total darkness, it may have been construed as odd, but it didn’t mean he was guilty of anything.

Adjacent to the Young cabin was a well which supplied water to several surrounding cabins. The water was drawn using a gasoline pump and was piped to the surrounding cabins.  Residents told police it had been an open well until February, when Dr. Young had sealed it with a concrete floor.  They thought that it was strange that although the water had always been clean and pure, after the floor was installed the water began to emit a putrid stench.   One of the residents said:  “The water never began to smell until a few months ago.  No, we cannot use it, not even for shower baths or for dishwashing.  It is slightly discolored and when drawn, a yellowish, smelling sediment settles in it.  We have no idea what caused this sudden change in the water.”

There were so many questions about the Beverly Glen cabin that police felt it was time to conduct a search there. The cabin held several intriguing clues; a one-ounce bottle of Novocain secreted near the fireplace, and bloodstains in a bedroom.

Prior to the search, Thomas made a cryptic statement: “I hold the key to this situation and I have burned my bridges behind me.”

While many still had doubts about what had happened to Grace, District Attorney Asa Keyes was not among them: “I am as certain as I am sitting here that Mrs. Young is dead – that she has been murdered.  By whom she was slain we do not know. That we are trying to determine.”

Following their search of the cabin, authorities decided to break up the concrete in the cistern. They made a gruesome discovery.

NEXT TIME: Grace is found.

The Murder Complex, Part 3

Thomas Young

Thomas complained often that Grace had wanted to “be the boss” ever since they had said their I dos, and he resented her for it. The truth was that Thomas was sly and manipulative and had an unhealthy interest in the fortune Grace and Patrick shared.

At least Thomas was a decent stepfather.  He worked hard to ingratiate himself with Patrick, and he was successful. Patrick was very attached to Thomas. But while Patrick was becoming fonder of Thomas, Grace was growing fearful of him.

In late 1924 or early 1925, Grace asked her father, Frank Hunt, to meet with her. She went over to his apartment on Irolo Street and picked him up to go for a drive.  She told him that she didn’t want to have a private conversation anywhere but in her car. She was afraid that Thomas had placed a Dictaphone in the house.

If Frank thought his daughter was being paranoid without cause, he changed his mind after he heard her out.

As they drove around, Grace told Frank of the indignities Thomas had forced on her. She told him of intimate photographs which Thomas had taken. He bullied her into posing in ways that sickened her. But Grace couldn’t see a way out. Thomas had threatened to kill her if she ever told anyone how he treated her.  He had also threatened to take Patrick away or to have her committed to Patton State Insane Asylum. Grace knew Thomas well enough to be convinced that these were not idle threats.

Father and daughter tried to formulate a plan that would get her to safety, but in the end they were immobilized by their fear of Thomas’ retaliation.

Frank hadn’t known about the photos, but he was aware of an incident which had occurred several weeks earlier – in fact he and Grace had talked about it at the time.

At Thomas’ request, Patrick had visited him in his office to have a tooth filled.  Almost immediately following the procedure, Patrick became violently ill. His face swelled up to an abnormal size and he was in excruciating pain.  Frank didn’t think that his grandson would “make it for another thirty days” and he was convinced that Thomas had intentionally given Patrick a slow poison to “get him out of the way.”

After conferring with her father and in direct opposition to Thomas’ wishes, Grace brought in Dr. J.A. Le Deux, who actually saved Patrick’s life.

Was Patrick’s close call attempted murder?  Neither Frank nor Grace wanted to say anything to him without proof.

Patrick was unaware of his mother’s and grandfather’s fears about his safety. He liked and trusted Thomas. Perhaps that is why, when Grace suddenly disappeared in February 1925, he didn’t question Thomas’ assertion that Grace had left him. And if Thomas said Grace would return, then of course she would.  Wouldn’t she?

NEXT TIME: The lady vanishes.

The Murder Complex, Part 2

Patrick, Grace, Thomas

Thomas Young, named after his father, was born on December 21, 1877. Thomas was the second of four children — he had an older brother, Alexander, and two younger sisters.

The Young’s were well respected in their Franklin, Pennsylvania neighborhood and there did not appear to be any issues with the children while growing up. Why did two brothers, with a seemingly normal upbringing, become criminals?

Alexander was the first of the brothers to take a turn toward the dark side.  He died in a bizarre murder suicide on his honeymoon in Washington, Pennsylvania on July 8, 1903.  He had been serving as pastor of the Presbyterian church in Edgemont, South Dakota when he met a local school teacher, Grace Dunlap. They began a relationship and became engaged to be married.

Grace left her home on July 1, 1903 for the city of Lincoln where she was supposed to have her eyes treated for an unspecified condition.  Instead she traveled nearly two thousand miles to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania were she and Alexander were married. The couple left immediately after the ceremony for nearby Washington, Pennsylvania and checked into a hotel.  Visitors and members of the hotel staff heard a commotion in the Young’s room during the night but did not investigate.

The next morning, when Alexander and Grace failed to appear as expected, staff opened the door to their room and found them dead. Grace lay on the bed.  She had been shot twice through the heart.  Alexander was sprawled out on the floor.  He had been shot in the heart.  His hands were thrown over his head and in one of them he clutched a .32-caliber revolver.  According to a newspaper account, Alexander was “a rascal in the fullest sense of the term.”  He had “played crooked in a financial way in places where he was employed before going to Edgemont, South Dakota.” It seemed that Alexander had been married previously but he didn’t end it honorably. He had abandoned his wife and infant son, never bothering to obtain a divorce.

Within a year following Alexander’s death, Thomas began to experience visitations from his elder brother.  Thomas would later describe the visits:

“I would see my brother’s vision just as I dropped off to sleep.  It always appeared in a large hall.  And I was always in the back of the hall and he was always up in the right corner.  I could tell it was my brother by his form.”

Alexander’s visits coincided with what Thomas thought of as his “murder complex,” a self-diagnosed condition he’d had since he was a child. The so-called murder complex was Thomas’ overwhelming desire to kill anyone who wronged him.

Throughout his life he felt that he was a loser, always picked on and beaten. The murder complex provided him with a vision of revenge and victory over his perceived tormentors.

Thomas wasn’t frightened by his brother’s visits, but they were unsettling. Alexander seemed to be trying to speak, but he either failed, or he spoke so softly that Thomas couldn’t hear him. Could he have been trying to warn Thomas about the murder complex, or was he encouraging it?

In 1910, Thomas, driven by Alexander’s unrelenting visitations, left Pittsburgh to practice dentistry in New Castle, and subsequently in Ambridge and then in Washington, Pennsylvania before leaving for New Mexico and then Texas. He moved from city to city, Alexander always in his dreams, in restless pursuit of something he could neither articulate, nor outrun.

Thomas married twice before finally settling in Los Angeles — where he met Grace.

Grace and her son Patrick were living in an apartment in the Alvarado. The building was one of many built by her late husband.

People who knew of Thomas’ interest in Grace were a little surprised by Thomas’ audacity in courting a woman who was clearly out of his league. She was beautiful. Thomas was average. He wasn’t a large man His hair was receding and he peered out from behind round glasses frames that perched his rather bulbous nose. Despite his physical shortcomings, Thomas made a good impression.  He wasn’t devoid of charm and he always dressed extremely well.

Even if he had only a slender chance, Thomas dedicated himself to winning Grace’s love.  He wasn’t well off, but he put up a good front. He rented a suite of offices in a plush downtown building, hoping to impress Grace, who had a fortune at her command, with his successful dental practice.  He obviously put on a convincing show.  The couple didn’t court for long before they were married.

When did Thomas’ façade of successful dentist and loving husband develop deep fissures?  At what point did Grace realize that the man she had married wasn’t who or what she thought he was?

The Murder Complex, Prologue

Thursday, February 19, 1925

Night had fallen by the time Donald Mead and Kenneth Selby started home following a school baseball game. The twelve-year-old boys walked in companionable silence. After dark, the silence in Beverly Glen was broken only by the sounds of nature; a coyote’s howl, or the powerful beating of an owl’s wings.  But this night the boys heard the rumble of a car engine. That was unusual, as there wasn’t much traffic in the Glen.  It was a quiet, semi-rural enclave about twenty miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles; the place where many well-to-do local residents owned get-away cabins. On an impulse, the boys dove into a stand of bushes near a small bridge moments before the car’s headlights would have illuminated them. They intended to spy on whomever had the audacity to intrude on their domain.

(ca. 1925) – View showing a car on an unpaved Sunset Boulevard between Carolwood and Delfern Drives in Beverly Hills, with three palm trees in the background. This is in the general location of Beverly Glen.

Keeping still, the boys watched a lone driver back a sedan up to the front steps of a cabin and turn off his headlights. The boys knew that the cabin belonged to Dr. Thomas Young, a Los Angeles dentist, but it was too dark to positively identify the driver who appeared to be male. Maybe it was the doctor — maybe not. No matter, the boys were enjoying their spy game.  From their vantage point they watched the man drag a large, heavy box draped in a dark colored cloth, from the car. Donald and Kenneth whispered to each other that the box must be awfully heavy, because the man was hunched over and appeared to be having difficulty lifting it. Perhaps the boys were speculating about the box’s contents as they watched. Did it contain a king’s ransom of gold and silver?  Or did the box contain the corpse of a desperado?

The man wrestled the box onto the landing and dragged it inside the cabin. The boys thought it odd that he never turned on the cabin lights. When he reappeared on the veranda, he furtively scanned the area. Evidently satisfied that he was alone, he returned to his car and retrieved a gunny sack.  It was large and filled with something the boys couldn’t identify. The sack must not have been as heavy as the box because the man was able to sling it over his shoulder.  He disappeared into the cabin again.  A few minutes later he returned empty-handed.  Then he got into his car and drove away.

 The boys were barely able to contain their curiosity. Who was the man …and why was he being so secretive? They waited a few minutes before leaving their hiding place and then they walked over to the cabin. In the dirt near the cellar door was a sack marked “Lime.” They also found some “funny smelling stuff” that made them “sick at smelling it.”

After poking around the cabin for a few more minutes and finding nothing, Donald and Kenneth headed home.  They wouldn’t give the strange man another thought until they were questioned by police six months later.

NEXT TIME: The Murder Complex continues.