I am excited to announce that OF MOBSTERS AND MOVIE STARS: THE GOLDEN AGE OF HOLLYWOOD is available as an audio book It is narrated by award nominated Lee Ann Howlett.
WildBlue Press says this about the book:
No Hollywood script can compare to the terror of the 37 true tales in OF MOBSTERS AND MOVIE STARS: The Bloody “Golden Age” of Hollywood!
In this gripping historical account, expert crime historian Joan Renner explores the shadowy world of fame and crime during Hollywood’s most glamorous era. As Los Angeles transformed into the epicenter of film, it also became a haven for notorious criminals and mobsters, weaving a complex tapestry of allure and danger that is sure to intrigue.
Renner brings to life stories that are more thrilling than fiction, including harrowing LAPD showdowns, dark dealings behind the studio gates, and tragic fates of luminaries whose off-screen lives were as dramatic as their on-screen personas. She delves into infamous episodes, such as the shocking case of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, accused of “accidentally” crushing to death a young actress beneath his enormous weight as he raped her, and other lesser-known, but equally hair-raising stories of actors brought down by scandal and corruption.
OF MOBSTERS AND MOVIE STARS offers a profound and enlightening look at Hollywood’s dual nature, illustrating how its seductive glitter was deeply entangled with its sinister impulses. This book is essential for anyone fascinated by how America’s “City of Dreams” became a stage for some of the most gripping dramas of the twentieth century.
Step into the Prohibition Era with Joan Renner as she reveals the hidden crimes and undying ambition behind Hollywood’s shimmering façade.
Whether you read it or listen to it, I hope you enjoy the book. I loved writing it so much that I am working on a second volume. I am covering Los Angeles crime and corruption from 1940 to 1949. It is still in the the research phase, so it will be a while until publication, but I’ll keep you posted.
Today, July 29, 2024, marks the centenary of Elizabeth Short’s birth. Born in Boston, Beth, as she often preferred to be called, was the middle child of Cleo and Phoebe Short. She had four sisters: Virginia, Dorothea, Elnora, and Muriel.
Cleo held various sales jobs over the years. The miniture golf craze of the 1920s captured his imagination. He opened a course, but in 1930, the business tanked. Rather than face the loss, and his responsibilities to his family, he positioned his car close to a bridge to create the appearance of suicide. A houseful of women has its comforts, but Cleo’s abandonment appears to have profoundly affected Beth.
Miniature golf was all the rage in the 1920s and 1930s.
A few years later, Cleo wrote to Phoebe and asked for forgiveness. She refused. At least Beth knew Cleo was alive. She hoped for a relationship. She found him in California. Rather than a loving father, he was a mean drunk, looking for a housekeeper, not a daughter. Their reunion failed.
Cleo Short
In 1943, she worked at Camp Cooke, now Vandenberg Air Force Base, where they voted her “Camp Cutie. On September 23, 1943, she got arrested for underage drinking at the El Paseo restaurant in Santa Barbara. The jail matron gave her money for a bus ticket back to Medford, Massachusetts.
Because of her asthma, Beth would regularly escape the harsh Massachusetts winters to work as a waitress in Florida.
Major Matt Gordon, a decorated fighter pilot, met Beth in Miami, Florida while on leave in 1944. He may have been on leave after sustaining injuries in a plane crash in February. A photo of them together shows him smiling, and Beth with stars in her eyes, and a proprietary hand on his arm. The handsome pilot was everything the twenty-year-old wanted.
Matt Gordon
Matt’s death in a plane crash near Kalaikunda in West Bengal, India, on August 10, 1945, was a cruel twist of fate. It happened just one day after the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, and only weeks before the war ended. Matt’s loss devastated Beth.
After August 1945, she never worked again. She drifted from Medford, to Chicago, Florida, and to Los Angeles—chasing a ghost.
She lived in Long Beach, California, during the summer of 1946. While there, friends nicknamed her the Black Dahlia. By the end of the year, she was couch surfing at the home of Dorothy and Elvera French in San Diego. While in San Diego, she met a traveling salesman, Robert “Red” Manley, when he offered her a ride.
Beth and the married salesman, a fact he no doubt concealed from her, corresponded for a month or two before she asked him if he would drive her back to Los Angeles in early January 1947. He agreed.
Matt Gordon and Beth Short
Red picked her up at the French’s on January 8th. They drove up the coast and stayed the night in a motel before arriving in Los Angeles on January 9th. Beth checked her luggage at the bus depot. Red refused to leave her in such a sketchy neighborhood. He took her to the Biltmore Hotel, where she told him she was meeting her sister, Virginia. It was a lie. Virginia lived hundreds of miles north in Oakland.
Red stayed with her in the hotel lobby for a long time before he left. Beth, now on her own, left the hotel lobby, turned right on Olive, and vanished.
On the morning of January 15, a Leimert Park housewife, Betty Bersinger, discovered Beth’s body while out running errands. Where was Beth for those missing days? No one who knew her saw her during that time. The thought of her being held captive by her killer is horrifying.
Once police established her identity, reporters saw it as an opportunity to pry into every detail of Beth’s life. The dead lose their right to privacy. Speculation filled column after column in the newspapers. The prevailing attitude was that nice girls do not get murdered. Yet Beth had done nothing, good or bad, worthy of note. At 22-years-old, she never got the chance.
As time passed with no solution, the case grew cold. Other murders captured headlines. It was not until decades later, following a couple of books, and a mid-1970s made-for-TV movie, that Beth’s story became news again.
It is understandable that the case is known in Los Angeles, but what I find most interesting is that the 77-year-old Los Angeles murder mystery has drawn global interest. What is it about Beth’s murder that resonates with people even today?
It may be the supposed Hollywood connection.
Most contemporary articles erroneously describe Beth as an aspiring actress, or starlet. Such characterizations make her murder the ultimate Hollywood heartbreak story with a violent twist.
Still, two distinct narratives about Beth co-exist. One is the myth of the Black Dahlia, a fictional character based on Beth’s life.
The second story, and the one I believe is true, is that of a depressed, confused, and needy young woman seeking marriage and stability in the chaos and uncertainty of the post-war world.
Each of her sisters married and had children. By the time of Phoebe’s death in 1992, three daughters, thirteen grandchildren, twenty-one great-grandchildren, and one great-great-grandson survived her. If Beth had lived, she would undoubtedly contributed heirs.
Beth’s funeral in Oakland, California
We have lost sight of the troubled young woman who came to California to connect with her father—not to break into the movies.
The tragedy of Beth’s life is not that she failed to achieve Hollywood stardom, she never sought it.
Beth was looking for what most people her age wanted—marriage and a home. She pursued a romantic vision of a husband in uniform with shiny bright brass buttons, and a bungalow with a white picket fence.
Judging by an undated letter she received from Lieutenant Stephen Wolak, she did not hesitate to press a man for marriage. Wolak’s letter reads in part, “When you mention marriage in your letter, Beth, I get to wondering. Infatuation is sometimes mistaken for true love. I know whereof I speak, because my ardent love soon cools off.”
Wolak’s response to Beth’s letter is a frank assessment of their relationship—which, in his estimation, was not serious. You can gauge her desperation from his response.
How many other men in uniform received letters from Beth suggesting marriage?
A depressed and lonely young woman with daddy issues looking for love is not necessarily the stuff of bestselling books or blockbuster movies.
The pathos of Beth’s real life can make us uncomfortable, so we perpetuate the myth of the Black Dahlia. It is the epic tale of a beautiful young woman seeking stardom who meets a brutal end at the hands of a depraved killer that mesmerizes us.
I imagine in the years to come—no matter what may be revealed; we will continue to hold fast to the myth.
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 FEAR IN THE NIGHT, Paul Kelly, DeForest Kelley, and Ann Doran.
One of the film’s stars, Paul Kelly, was involved in a real-life murder case. In 1927. Kelly beat to death actor Ray Raymond, husband of his lover, Dorothy Mackaye. Kelly did time in San Quentin for the crime, and so did Mackaye. Read all about their story in my new book, OF MOBSTERS AND MOVIE STARS: THE BLOODY GOLDEN AGE OF HOLLYWOOD.
This film is based the story NIGHTMARE, by William Irish, one of the pen names of writer Cornell Woolrich. Woolrich wrote many stories that made it to film: Rear Window, The Bride Wore Black, Black Angel, and Phantom Lady, to name just a few. If you are not familiar with Woolrich, he is worth reading. His biographer, Francis Nevins Jr., rated Woolrich the fourth best crime writer of his day, behind Dashiell Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner and Raymond Chandler
Enjoy the movie!
TCM says:
Bank teller Vince Grayson dreams he is in a mysterious mirror-panelled octagonal room, where a man accompanied by a blonde woman is robbing a safe. Vince and the man fight, and when the man begins to strangle Vince, the woman hands him an awl, with which he pierces the stranger’s heart. The woman flees, and Vince places the man’s body behind one of the mirrored doors and locks it, taking the key. When Vince awakens, he discovers the key in his coat and thinks that he may be a murderer. Distraught, he calls in sick at work and visits his brother-in-law, homicide detective Cliff Harlan.
Bernice and Carlyn drove around the city with no destination in mind. Bernice ordered her sister to stop at a drugstore on Sawtelle Blvd. Bernice bought a bottle of veronal cubes and before Carlyn could make a move to stop her, she swallowed all of them. Bernice realized the dose could be fatal, so she started to scream and cry. Carlyn thought fast. She saw a bus stopped at the side of the road, so she pulled over to ask the driver for directions to the nearest hospital. Carlyn and the bus driver drove Bernice to Hollywood Hospital; where she lapsed into a coma. The doctors gave Bernice a fighting chance. Darby fared a little better than his wife. The twenty-five cents’ worth of acid damaged one half of his face, but his doctors felt they could save his eyesight. Sadly, they were mistaken. About three weeks after Bernice’s attack, Darby lost sight in one eye.
Darby Day in the hospital following the acid attack.
While Bernice was in the hospital, and Darby recuperated at home. Detectives tried to piece together the complete story. In particular, the motive for the crime. Carlyn provided a piece of the puzzle. She produced a note, written by Bernice, which blamed Mrs. Day, Sr. for the marital discord between the newlyweds.
“Darby: I’m as sane as can be, but after your mother acted the way she did and would have anything to do with you after I saw you this afternoon, I guess it’s quits. I love you from the bottom of my heart and they say love will go to extremes. We are both in the same fix and you will never find a love as true or pure as mine. Mother-in-laws (sic) should not live with young married people. Love, Bernie,”
Bernice woke up, and since she was unwelcome at the Beverly Hills house, she stayed with her mom and sisters in their apartment at 529 South Manhattan. The police found Bernice and Carlyn there and took them into custody.
Bernice stuck to her ridiculous story, claiming that she doused Darby with acid when the cork flew out of the bottle. Alienists examined her and determined she had the mind of a ten-year-old girl.
Once the jury saw the damage Darby had suffered, they didn’t care if Bernice was a clumsy ten-year-old girl in the body of a 20-year-old woman; they found her guilty. The jury cut Carlyn a break. They found her not guilty of being an accomplice.
Bernice got one to fourteen years in prison.
She could not stay out of trouble. Police rearrested her for speeding while she was out on bond, pending an appeal.
Bernice Day. Photo courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library
For months Bernice remained a free woman, but California’s high court denied her appeal and by mid-August 1926, the Acid Bride was San Quentin bound.
The press caught up with her as she was about to board the train that would take her to San Quentin. She told them, “I have no bitter feelings against anyone. I have nothing to say about the case, as there has been too much said already.”
Darby Day Jr. and his family returned to Chicago, where he divorced Bernice. Even with the divorce, rumors suggested Darby and Bernice would reconcile on her release from prison. The rumors may not have been as loony as they sounded.
In a move that shocked everyone, Darby made a plea to the Governor of California to set Bernice free. He said, “Bernice has been punished sufficiently for her hasty act, just as I have suffered, but this is the time to forgive, make amends, and then forget. I am not attempting to shield her, nor to belittle the offenses, but I will do what I can to bring about her release.”
The governor was not as forgiving as Darby, and Bernice’s bid to win a pardon failed. The parole board paroled Bernice at the end of 1927, after she had served only fourteen months. Too short a sentence for the agony she caused Darby.
The beautiful young parolee said she wanted to put her time in prison behind her. She summed up her fourteen months in San Quentin for reporters saying, “Association with approximately 100 women, white and black, brown and yellow, some good the others mostly bad, all milling back and forth like animals in damp and stuffy quarters where the air is none too good, daily disputes, wrangles, bickering, real fist fights at times and a good deal of hair pullin’—such a life is enough to take the heart out of anyone, especially when one has not been accustomed to such associations.”
Her snobbery and lack of self-awareness speak volumes about her immaturity and selfishness. Pretty on the outside, ugly on the inside.
Bernice denied the rumors that she and Darby would reconcile. She told reporters, “I’m glad he got a divorce, for I never want to see or hear of him again. As for the public, all I ask is that they let me alone.”
Bernice and her family returned to Chicago. Evidence suggests they all moved to Florida, and Bernice remarried.
In a tragic PostScript to the case, Darby Day Jr. died under anesthesia in a Santa Monica hospital on February 4, 1928.
Bernice Lundstrom of Chicago had done a lot of living in her 20 short years. On Valentine’s Day 1923, she eloped with Howard Fish, a member of a wealthy Chicago family. The couple had been hasty, and the marriage disintegrated. By September 1924, Bernice got a divorce and restoration of her maiden name. She was ready to find a new marriage-minded Windy City millionaire.
Photo is courtesy Los Angeles Public Library.
She turned her attention to Darby Day, Jr., son of a moneyed Chicago family. Following her divorce from Fish, Bernice and Darby wed. Darby Sr. gave the newlyweds a trip to New Orleans and Havana, and then installed them in an apartment.
Given the frigid temperatures in Chicago during winter, the newlyweds opted to move to California and buy a home in Beverly Hills. Soon afterward Bernice’s mother, Mrs. James E. Lundstrom, and her two other daughters, Carlyn and Dorothy, moved to Beverly Hills as well.
In early February 1924, the new Mrs. Day asked for a separate home. A strange request from a newlywed. Confused, Darby did not want to acquiesce to Bernice’s demand. She may have tried pouting and stomping her feet, but in the end, she told Darby if he didn’t buy her the home she wanted within two weeks, she would kill him. She didn’t follow through on the threat.
On February 23, Bernice upped the ante when she told Darby she took poison. If she would not kill him, maybe she’d teach him a lesson and kill herself. She made a show of taking tablets and, scared to death they were fatal, Darby ran into his mother’s room. Yes, Mrs. Day Sr. lived with the newlyweds. Mrs. Day Sr. asked Bernice what she’d taken and said she’d phone for a doctor.
Bernice told her mother-in-law not to worry, she’d taken a few aspirin because she wanted to frighten Darby. Then she got up and ran out of the house. Darby’s employer ran her to ground. He said he prevented Bernice from hurling herself off a cliff.
After a busy day of attempted suicides, Bernice appeared to have recovered her senses because Darby bumped into her later that night at a dinner party where they made up. At least for a few hours. By the next day, Bernice had gone again. She had errands to run, and one of them was a felony.
Darby Day. Photo courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library.
Bernice and her sister Carlyn stopped in at the Baldridge Drug Store at Sixth and Western and asked a clerk, W.J. Bowman, for a chemical that would remove warts. Bowman suggested nitric acid and told the young women that 15 cents worth ought to do the trick. The women bought 25 cents’ worth instead. Bernice gave her name as Mrs. K. Lane, 514 Manhattan Place, which Bowman entered in the poison register.
While Carlyn waited in the car, Bernice knocked on the front door of the Beverly Hills home. Mrs. Day Sr. answered the door.
Bernice said, “I want to see Darby.”
“You can’t come in. Not after the way you’ve acted.” Her mother-in-law responded.
Darby overheard the exchanged.
“Oh, let her come in, Mother.” Darby shouted as he rushed to the door.
Bernice took Darby by his arm and lead him down the driveway. She said, “I want to speak to you, honey.”
Bernice had driven to the home with her sister, Carlyn Lundstrom. As Bernice and Darby walked toward the car, Carlyn drove away.
Darby asked where Carlyn was going. Bernice said, “I don’t know. Let’s chase her.”
Darby jumped into his own car, and as he leaned over to shift the gears, Bernice flung the contents of a two-ounce bottle of nitric acid in his face.
Darby screamed.
Bernice burst into tears. She got out of Darby’s car. Her sister’s car slowed down, and she got in and took the wheel.
Henry Gale of the Beverly Hills police force, heard Darby’s cries for help, and saw Carlyn’s car speed away toward Los Angeles. On the way back to the city, Bernice drank poison.
As the sisters made their escape, Bernice’s mother-in-law called the police.
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 finding a cocktail was easy 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 jealous, and they argued. Rather than make a public scene, they left the roadhouse and continued their argument in the car until they reached Western and Eighth Street, where they made up. Instead of calling it a night, they went to the Biltmore Hotel, for the 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 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 intended 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 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 felt torn between two opposing forces, which left him in a state of inner turmoil. He loved his mother’s family, but Thomas was 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 in Figueroa. By C.C. Pierce & Co.
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 Thomas had been creeping around in the cabin in total darkness, people might have found it odd, but it didn’t make him guilty.
Adjacent to the Young cabin was a well which supplied water to several surrounding cabins. Using a gasoline pump, the residents drew the water and piped it 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 found it strange that the water, which had always been pure, emitted a foul stench after Dr. Young installed the concrete floor. One resident 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.”
The number of questions surrounding the Beverly Glen cabin prompted the police to initiate a search. 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 broke up the concrete in the cistern and made a gruesome discovery.
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. Ample evidence contradicted him.
Thomas showed friends portions of letters he insisted Grace wrote while she was missing. He was adamant that the letters proved she was alive and well, and had deserted him. The letters were 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, 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 she had signed a blank document, not knowing what it was. The document was a power of attorney granting Thomas control over Grace’s money and property.
Attempting to make her a suspect, the defense sought to cast a sinister light on Dorothy’s relationship with Thomas. Under oath, they asked her if she had ever spent the night in Thomas’ home, and she replied, “Yes, I did. Three times. My mother was with me on each occasion.”
Being chaperoned by one’s mother is not 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 removed any conceivable motive she might have had to murder Grace.
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 would Thomas 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, the guards returned Thomas to his cell in Tank 9. Thomas informed his cellmates that he had experienced “tough breaks” during his day in court.
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 severe 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 occupant 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’, 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 wrapped tight around his head; and only one hand was visible.
Mahler shook Thomas. There was no response. He shook him again. The body moved. Mahler jerked the blanket from Thomas’ head.
Thomas was dead.
His blue, swollen face caused his eyes to become distended. A garrote of radio wire, tightened with a small stick, was wrapped around his neck.
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. Thomas was sly, manipulative and had an unhealthy interest in the fortune Grace and Patrick had shared.
At least Thomas was a decent stepfather. He worked hard to ingratiate himself with Patrick, and he was successful. Patrick formed a strong attachment 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 she didn’t want to have a private conversation anywhere but in her car. She thought 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 devised a plan that would get her to safety, but in the end, their fear of Thomas’ retaliation immobilized them.
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 Thomas’ request, Patrick had visited him in his office to have a tooth filled. Almost immediately following the procedure, Patrick became ill. His face swelled up to an abnormal size, and he was in excruciating pain. Frank believed Thomas had administered a slow-acting poison to Patrick to “get him out of the way,” and he didn’t think his grandson would survive for another thirty days.
After conferring with her father and in direct opposition to Thomas’ wishes, Grace brought in Dr. J. A. Le Deux, who 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 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?
When Grace Hunt Grogran’s ex-husband, Charles, the Olive King, died on July 5, 1921, he left her, and their son Patrick, very well off. His estate, valued at $1.5 million, meant Grace could continue with her women’s club activities, and it secured Patrick’s future.
Beautiful and rich, Grace caught the eye of a dentist, Thomas Young. He pursued Grace until he won her. Grace knew nothing of Thomas’ past. If she had, things may have been much different.
GRACE GROGAN
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 family’s children had a trouble-free childhood in their quiet Franklin, Pennsylvania neighborhood. Why, then, did two brothers become criminals?
Alexander was the first of the brothers to turn toward the dark side. He died in a bizarre murder suicide on his honeymoon in Washington, Pennsylvania, on July 8, 1903. He served as pastor of the Presbyterian church in Edgemont, South Dakota, when he met a local schoolteacher, 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 journeyed two thousand miles to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she and Alexander were married. The couple left 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. Alexander had shot her twice through the heart, then shot himself the same way. In one hand, Alexander 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.” Alexander had a prior marriage, but he abandoned his wife and infant son, never bothering to get a divorce.
Within a year following Alexander’s death, Thomas experienced visitations from his elder brother. Thomas later described 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 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.
His brother’s visits did not frighten Thomas, but they were unsettling. Alexander tried to speak, but he either failed, or he whispered, making it impossible for Thomas to hear him. Could he have been trying to warn Thomas about the murder complex, or was he encouraging it?
In 1910, Thomas moved from Pittsburgh to New Castle to practice dentistry. Later, he practiced in Ambridge and Washington, Pennsylvania before moving to 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 Patrick lived 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 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 bulbous nose. Despite his physical shortcomings, Thomas made a good impression. He wasn’t lacking charm, and he always dressed impeccably.
Even if he had only a slender chance, Thomas dedicated himself to winning Grace’s love. Despite not being well off, he maintained a believable facade. 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 put on a convincing show. The couple didn’t court for long before they were married.
When did Thomas’ façade of a successful dentist and loving husband crack? Did Grace realize the man she had married wasn’t who she thought he was?
Ohio native Grace Hunt was 17 when she married 41-year-old Charles Price Grogan in Los Angeles on April 5, 1902. It was an advantageous marriage for both. Charles basked in the glory of his triumphs, with the press dubbing him the “Olive King,” and a radiant Grace by his side, a queen befitting his grandeur. A few days prior to their fifth wedding anniversary, they welcomed a son, whom they named Charles Patrick Grogan.
Grace and Charles were married for over a decade before they separated. The difference in their ages may have sunk the marriage. Whatever their reasons, the couple had separated by the late 1910s and divorced by the 1920 census—at least that was how Charles declared his marital status. Grace, for the same census, gave her marital status as a widow. Why the discrepancy? Simple; divorce stigmatized women.
Grace was luckier than many women because California, at least in its laws, was more tolerant of divorce than other states. The State’s first divorce law in 1851 recognized impotence, adultery, extreme cruelty, desertion or neglect, habitual intemperance, fraud, and conviction of a felony as legitimate grounds for divorce.
Despite the law’s progressive attitude, divorce could ruin a woman, which is why many women found it easier to claim widowhood than risk suffering the loss of status if their divorce became public knowledge. It seems absurd to us now in these days of no-fault divorce and “conscious uncoupling” (a phrase coined in 2014 by celebrity Gwenyth Paltrow to describe her separation from her musician husband, Chris Martin), but divorce was not a simple matter when Grace and Charles called it quits.
The couple’s family and intimate friends would have known the truth, and the rest of local society may have acknowledged Grace’s widowhood with a nod and a wink and allowed her to continue her fiction unchallenged.
Grace’s claim to widowhood would edge closer to the truth when Charles died of apoplexy (internal bleeding—perhaps because of a stroke) on July 8, 1921.
The Olive King was a wealthy man who loved his only son. He bequeathed Patrick his entire fortune, estimated to be between $1 and $2 million dollars. Until he turned 25, Grace was to administer Patrick’s monthly allowance, which amounted to a princely sum of $800 per month. An agreement had been reached by Grace and Charles regarding their divorce. The couple agreed Charles would create a trust fund, not to exceed $50,000, for her maintenance. To put things into perspective, $50,000 in 1921 is equivalent to three quarters of a million dollars today. And Patrick’s monthly allowance is equivalent to about $12,000. A fortune like the one Charles left Patrick and Grace can attract the best people in society—it can also be a magnet for the worst of humanity.
In her 30s, Grace was beautiful, wealthy, and prominent. She would make a wonderful wife for the right man.
NEXT TIME: Grace meets a new man, as The Murder Complex continues.
