The holidays aren’t joyful for everyone. Family gatherings, liquor, and year-long grudges can combust over anything—from the TV remote to the last slice of pie. Holiday homicides often boil down to too much booze and too much togetherness.
For the Thorpes, the trigger wasn’t a turkey leg or a slice of pie—it was the uninvited arrival of an ex-husband.
On Thanksgiving evening, November 27, 1952, Seal Beach officers rolled to 131 6th Street after a call from Frances Conant Thorpe. She told police that her ex-husband, Al McNutt, had stopped by to offer holiday greetings to her and her current husband of eight months, Herman. Frances and Herman had been drinking and arguing all day. McNutt’s appearance pushed things over the edge. A struggle followed, and Herman wound up dead.
Frances offered three incompatible versions of the shooting. First, she told Officer William Dowdy that Herman had committed suicide. Then, she told Deputy Coroner Walter Fox that she shot him twice during a scuffle. Finally, she told District Attorney Investigator M.D. Williams that Herman had tried to shoot her; she fell, hit her head on a case of root beer, blacked out for hours, and awoke to find him dead on the bedroom floor.
The facts shredded all three stories.
Herman’s autopsy revealed nothing consistent with suicide. The position of the weapon beneath his body and the trajectory of the fatal chest wound made self-infliction impossible. There was no gunshot residue on his hands and no powder burns on his skin. But there were traces of gunpowder on Frances’ bathrobe and on her left hand.
Investigator Williams noted that Frances’ attitude was evasive, and her stories “didn’t hold together.”
Dr. Raymond Brandt’s autopsy established Herman’s time of death as 1:30 p.m.—a full hour earlier than Frances claimed. Doctors dismissed her blackout story outright. One said it would be “medically impossible to be blacked out so long, even if she was intoxicated.”
The jury rejected her stories, too. After six hours and twenty-eight minutes of deliberation, they found Frances guilty of manslaughter. She was sentenced to up to ten years in prison.
Thanksgiving in Seal Beach didn’t end with dessert—it ended with a revolver, a bad lie, and a dead husband.
In the grip of an irresistible impulse, Delora saw a girl laid out like a doll, arms crossed, a green necktie cinched tight. The girl in the vision, six-year-old Donna Isbell, slept in the next room. Her eight-year-old brother Roy Jr., was asleep nearby. Their parents, Roy Sr., a petty officer at Los Alamitos Naval Station, and Garnett, who worked nights at Douglas Aircraft, weren’t home.
Unable to find a green necktie, Delora took one of Mr. Isbell’s black socks. That would have to do. She tore the sheet from Donna’s bed, stuffed a corner into the girl’s mouth, then wound the sock around her neck and pulled.
Donna didn’t cry out. She lifted her arms once, then went still.
Delora waited, then pulled again.
Roy, asleep just feet away, didn’t stir.
Delora obeyed the impulse that had tormented her for a long time. Maybe now it would end.
She sat on the living room sofa and lit a cigarette. The smoke steadied her for a moment, then the fear crept in—cold and absolute. She couldn’t explain what she had done—not even to herself.
She walked barefoot to the house next door and knocked. No answer. A few doors down, she found Dr. Sidney G. Willner. “Something’s wrong… at the house. Come with me,” she said. Then, almost to herself: “I must have done it. There was no one else there.”
They walked in silence. Dr. Willner wondered what she meant. Even if she had told him, nothing could have prepared him for what he found.
Dr. Willner called the Sheriff’s Department.
Deputies took Delora to the nearest substation for questioning. Because Delora was a teenage girl, the department brought in Detective Sergeant Lena Barner to assist Captain J.M. Burns with the questioning.
As investigators questioned the high school sophomore, they noticed her emotional distance. Sergeant Barner said when she asked Delora why she did it, “She just sat there and stared.”
The only times she showed emotion were when she saw Donna’s body at the scene and when Roy and Garnett Isbell entered the substation. Roy and Garnett were devastated.
Delora babysat Donna and Roy, Jr. several times before the murder, and she and the children got along well. The family had no reason to fear her.
As Donna’s parents tried to process their grief, Delora answered investigators’ questions.
She said quietly, “I often felt like strangling my brothers and sisters.”
She harbored violent impulses toward her siblings for a long time. Her feelings, coupled with her constant fights with her mother, were the reasons she was allowed to move from Colorado to Southern California two years earlier.
Women and girls rarely commit murder—especially in 1951. The story made headlines across the country. It was horrifying. And strange.
Was it a movie? A psychotic break? Something older and darker inside her? Could someone commit such a brutal act… and not be evil?
NEXT TIME: Wrapping up Delora’s story.
Photographs courtesy USC Digital Library. Los Angeles Examiner Photographs Collection
In Fort Lupton, Colorado, a fight with your mother could end in grounding. For Delora Campbell, it ended in something far darker. Life in post-war Fort Lupton revolved around church socials, 4-H clubs, and county fairs. Residents followed high school football with a passion, and the Fort Lupton Blue Devils were a source of pride. When the Blue Devils partied under the watchful eyes of adults, they danced to Patti Page’s soulful rendition of The Tennessee Waltz, or did a lively country swing to Hank Williams’ Lovesick Blues.
In the 1950s, no matter where she lived, girls had to adhere to a strict code of behavior. Delora didn’t just test boundaries — she unsettled people. According to her parents, Clem and Francis, they sometimes feared she might harm her siblings. Their fear went beyond the usual sibling squabbles — it sounded like a warning.
Was the pressure to conform to community standards too much for Delora? Or maybe it was one fight too many with her mother, or another battle with her younger brother, Dickie. Maybe she feared she would act on an impulse to harm a family member. Whatever her reasons, at fourteen she ran away from home for the first time.
The court intervened, and a juvenile judge placed her on probation.
Delora’s behavior alarmed everyone — from her parents to school authorities and local pastors. Even her peers may have found her behavior unsettling. One of the biggest fears for a girl Delora’s age was getting a reputation. No worse fate could befall her.
In postwar America, the specter of juvenile delinquency haunted dinner tables from coast to coast. It wasn’t the commie down the street that frightened people; it was their own kid — sulking in the next room, listening to Hank Williams, and thinking dark thoughts.
Historically, when teenage boys acted out, their activities were met with a nod and a wink — the old “boys will be boys” trope. If they committed a serious crime, they might be labeled thugs or delinquents, and could end up in juvenile hall.
Girls faced a different kind of judgment. If they failed to measure up, they weren’t rebellious; they were hysterical, or morally compromised. Moral panic, a genuine fear in the 1950s, punished girls differently. Did Delora worry she might face serious punishment as had other girls who stepped outside expected norms? A girl who rebelled might not go to jail, but to a mental institution — until her hormones, doctors hoped, burned out the madness. Such a girl could count herself lucky if she was released without lasting damage from electroconvulsive therapy, heavy sedation, or ice baths. The belief that emotional instability was baked into the female brain dated back millennia. As one modern paper put it: “Hysteria is undoubtedly the first mental disorder attributable to women…”
Whatever was going on in Delora’s life, something caused her to run again. Was she concerned that she would harm herself or someone else? This time, she vanished for three weeks. Not knowing what else to do, her family sent her to live with her aunt and uncle in Long Beach, California. They may have wanted to spare her local infamy and give her a fresh start — or simply chose to quiet wagging small-town tongues.
The whispers in a small town can kill you.
On the surface, Delora appeared to thrive in her new environment. But was she genuinely happy, or just adapting to survive? On September 1, 1950, the Long Beach Press-Telegram listed her among a group of young people who attended a barbecue dinner where they played games and square danced.
Delora wrote home to tell her parents how much she enjoyed living in Long Beach and going to Woodrow Wilson High School. Francis was surprised — her daughter had never liked school in Fort Lupton.
Delora may have received an allowance, but sometimes when a girl needed extra cash, she took a job babysitting. For several weeks at the end of 1951, she babysat for six-year-old Donna Isbell and her eight-year-old brother, Roy.
On December 29, 1951, Delora walked a few blocks from her aunt and uncle’s home to the Isbell’s to sit with the kids. After the children went to bed, she stretched out on the sofa to watch television. The flickering light filled the room as she watched the 1947 film Repeat Performance.
The movie told the story of a Broadway actress who murders her husband on New Year’s Eve, 1946. As she’s leaving the crime scene, she wishes she could turn back the clock and do the year over — and suddenly finds herself transported to New Year’s Day, 1946.
Delora watched the film to its end, a little after 11 p.m. The house was still.; Donna and Roy were asleep. For a moment, Delora sat and reflected on the film she had watched.
Then the strangest thing happened. She had a vision in which she saw herself committing murder. The vision wasn’t terrifying — it was familiar. She had often felt like choking the life out of her siblings when she lived with her family in Fort Lupton, but she had resisted.
On this night, something inside her felt different—out of her control. She felt the tug of an irresistible impulse guide her as she calmly walked toward six-year-old Donna, sleeping snug in her bed. But first, she needed a necktie.
Martha Brinson’s screams tore through the Pullman car, jolting passengers awake in the middle of the night. Moments later, she was dead — murdered in berth 13.
The killer was on the train from Oregon to Los Angeles. But I don’t believe it was Robert E. Lee Folkes.
Wartime paranoia and racism made Folkes the perfect suspect. Black. Working class. Union agitator. Southern Pacific’s second cook. From the moment Martha’s body was discovered, Folkes was railroaded — literally and figuratively.
He worked long shifts in the dining car, sweating over a hot stove, under constant supervision. The train’s conductor later testified there was no opportunity for him to sneak away, let alone murder a woman in her sleep. A physical exam found only flour and grease beneath his fingernails — not blood.
But Folkes was Black. In 1943, that wasn’t a description. It was an indictment.
And he wasn’t just Black. He was political. His father died in the 1920s during the violent white backlash against Black sharecroppers organizing in the Arkansas Delta. His mother, Clara, fled with her children to South Central Los Angeles, chasing safety that never fully arrived.
Folkes grew up in the shadow of that violence. He got his education, then joined Southern Pacific — one of the few decent-paying jobs open to Black men. He started as a fourth cook. He worked hard, and rose to second cook.
By 1942, he was a problem. The company assigned thugs to follow him. They didn’t forget. But Folkes kept pushing, and by January 1943, he’d earned the position of second cook — a step up, despite the pressure from above and below.
So, when Martha Brinson was found dead, the company didn’t have to look far. Despite the pressure, the surveillance, the threats — he remained unbroken. And that made him dangerous.
The detectives dragged him off the train. Stripped him. Locked him in a lavatory. Grilled him through the night. No lawyer. No charges. No real evidence.
Meanwhile, one passenger should have raised every red flag. Harold Wilson, a Marine, had the berth directly above Martha. He was the first to discover the body. He was found with her blood on his clothes. But Wilson wore khaki — and in 1943 America, that was a get-out-of-jail-free card woven into the uniform.
He wasn’t questioned, nor was he detained even though witnesses saw him crawl in and out of his berth. He acted suspiciously. Yet the investigation stayed focused on Folkes.
The trial was a farce. It was never intended to get justice for Martha, the twenty-one-year-old newlywed so callously murdered. The prosecution showed no regard for her as a person. Her death became leverage.
Wilson testified for the prosecution; but he faltered when asked if he could positively identify Folkes. The newspapers labeled Folkes a “zoot-suit wearing negro” — dog-whistle journalism dressed up as coverage. He was never just a suspect. He was a symbol. And symbols don’t get acquitted.
Despite inconsistencies, the unsubstantiated confessions, and a case built more on fear than fact, the jury — nine women, three men — delivered a verdict. Guilty. In Oregon, that meant death.
In 1945, Folkes was hanged. Wilson walked into obscurity.
The case against Robert E. Folkes unfolded against a tense backdrop of wartime fear, racial prejudice, and rising public paranoia. The press inflamed the tensions, describing Folkes as a “zoot-suit wearing negro,” a phrase loaded with menace, meant to reduce him to a caricature and paint him as capable of slashing the throat of 21-year-old newlywed Martha James.
District Attorney L. Orth Sisemore questioned the Black trainmen on board when the train stopped in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Southern Pacific Railroad detectives zeroed in on Folkes. Somewhere between Klamath Falls and Dunsmuir, California, on the night of January 22-23, they pulled him into a men’s lavatory, stripped him, and interrogated him through the night. They released him only for his shifts in the dining car. They treated the sleep-deprived and humiliated man as the prime suspect, even though they did not arrest him.
Not everyone on the train believed in Folkes’ guilt. The conductor stated Folkes couldn’t have committed the murder. According to him, the configuration of the diner and Folkes’ workload made it impossible. He pointed instead to another passenger—Harold Wilson, a white Marine who had occupied the berth above Martha’s. Given his proximity to the victim, Wilson should have been a suspect. Instead, they treated him as a material witness and quietly removed him from suspicion.
When the train arrived in Los Angeles on January 23rd, LAPD detectives took Folkes into custody. He was sleep-deprived, unrepresented, and vulnerable. They bounced him between Central Jail and Police Headquarters, questioned him without legal counsel. LAPD officers phoned Linn County District Attorney Harlow Weinrick in Oregon to report that Folkes had cracked.
But in every official statement before the supposed confession, Folkes had denied guilt. He did not sign or review the alleged confession. The investigators did not record it; the lawyer did not witness it; it seemed coerced.
LAPD’s interrogation practices at the time weren’t just aggressive — they were dangerous. Coercion took many forms: physical abuse (beatings), psychological pressure (threats against family, exploiting a suspect’s fear of mob violence or racial prejudice), or improper inducements (offering alcohol, sexual access, or other rewards). Days earlier, the department faced scrutiny after Stanley Bebee, a 44-year-old accountant, died following a brutal beating in custody for public intoxication. The jury acquitted the officers. However, the case highlighted the LAPD’s violent methods.
Although the Folkes investigation showed no proven evidence of bribery or case-fixing, the environment surrounding his interrogation was badly compromised. Some interrogators used coercive tactics, custody chains were blurred, and courtroom conduct varied from irregular to unethical. It is easy to conclude that the LAPD mistreated Folkes while he was in custody.
There was no physical evidence linking Folkes to the crime. No eyewitness identified him. But the so-called confession was enough for an arrest. Initially, Folkes refused to waive extradition to Oregon. But during arraignment before Judge Byron Walters, he relented and agreed to return north for trial.
On the night of January 29, 1943, accompanied by Sheriff Clay Kirk of Linn County and two Southern Pacific special agents, Folkes boarded a train for Albany.
His trial began in April. The jury of eight women and four men was unusual. In Oregon, women could serve only if they filed a written declaration, making their presence more striking. Their makeup may have influenced how testimony was weighed.
The state’s only link between Folkes and the murder was the testimony of Harold Wilson—the Marine who had been in the berth above Martha. His description of the suspect was vague: “a swarthy man in a brown pinstriped suit.” He never identified Folkes. And witnesses saw Folkes in the kitchen, dressed in his work clothes, minutes after the murder occurred. The police never found a brown pin-striped suit.
Though the defense objected, the court admitted two alleged confessions into evidence. Many red flags riddled both confessions. On April 16, LAPD Lieutenant E. A. Tetrick testified Folkes gave an oral confession after officers brought him a pint of whiskey and let him visit his common-law wife, Jesse. Circuit Judge J.G. Lewelling called the practice “reprehensible,” though he insisted Folkes was sober and in “full possession of his faculties.”
Dr. Paul De River—LAPD’s controversial police psychiatrist—later infamous in the Black Dahlia case, testified that he spoke with Folkes after the confession. According to De River, Folkes “may have had a drink or two,” but was not intoxicated. No one asked how he had reached that conclusion. De River also reported no physical injuries on Folkes’ body and described him as “in good physical condition.”
Robert E. Lee Folkes consults with his defense attorney, Leroy Lomax, left, as his friend and adviser William Pollard, right, looks on. (Image: Oregon Journal)
On cross-examination, Folkes’ attorney, Leroy Lomax, asked if De River had referred to Folkes as an exhibitionist. De River replied, “I might have said that.”
The defense rested its case on April 20, 1943.
The jury began deliberations but returned to the judge saying they couldn’t reach a verdict. He ordered them to continue and provided army cots for them to sleep on inside the courthouse. After thirty hours of deadlock and courtroom drama, the jury filed in at 3:13 p.m. on April 22. Their verdict: guilty of first-degree murder. Death was mandatory.
“I know it was a fair and impartial trial,” Folkes said afterward. “I’m sorry the jury thought I did it, as I didn’t, and I’m sorry my mother and Jesse had to go through this.”
In a letter to his mother, Clara, he was more candid:
“I was not convicted on evidence. I was convicted through prejudice.”
Folkes added: “I truly believe that I could take any one of those jurymen that convicted me, or even the judge who heard the case, and on the same grounds, either one of those people could be placed in front of a Negro jury and convicted. Of course, this incident will never happen, but I assure you it is amazing what prejudice can do.”
On November 5, 1944, a group of Los Angeles clubwomen formed the Robert Folkes Defense Club and pledged to raise $2,000 to bring his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court declined to hear the appeal on November 23.
Lomax worked tirelessly, appealing to the Governor of Oregon to commute the sentence to life. The governor refused.
On January 5, 1945, at 9:13 a.m., Robert E. Folkes died in Oregon’s gas chamber for a crime he insisted he did not commit.
NEXT TIME: In the conclusion of “The Lower 13th Murder Case”, we’ll examine the case more closely—and ask whether wartime prejudice condemned an innocent man.
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?
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.
Forty uniformed police officers began a house-to-house search around Norton Avenue, Coliseum Drive and 39th Street, where Elizabeth Short’s body was found. The killer left no evidence at the body dump site, so the police wanted to find the “torture chamber” where Beth was murdered and cut in half.
Detective Lieutenant P. P. Freestone said, “We hope to find someone who saw her during the blank period preceding her death, or who might have heard screams when she was being tortured. The police are in uniform so that housewives won’t refuse to answer their rings.”
The officers found many people willing to talk.
Paul Simone, a painting contractor, told officers he overheard a bitter quarrel between someone he thought was Beth and another woman. The women argued in apartment 501 at 1842 N. Cherokee Avenue in Hollywood, where Beth had lived with several roommates.
Simone said, “It was pretty hard language.” He said the last thing he heard was “Oh, nuts to you,” from the other woman. “Nuts to you” must have been harsh language for women in 1947.
The problem with Simone’s story is he claimed to have heard the altercation on January 11th. Later, they proved there were no credible sightings of Beth from January 9th until the 15th, when Betty Bersinger found her body.
In desperation, police rousted anyone who looked suspicious to them. They arrested one man, only to find out he was distraught because his dog was sick.
Police sought women, too. They launched a “woman hunt” for a pair of brunettes seen with Beth in Hollywood. Newspapers hinted the two women might be lesbians. They described the places the women visited as “Hollywood women’s hangouts.” Nothing came of the brunettes.
Minie Sepulveda, one of the women who falsely confessed to Beth’s murder. Photo courtesy LAPL.
Walter A. Johnson, of 3815 Welland Steen, told officers on Tuesday, January 14, he was burning trash across the street from the vacant lot where they found Beth’s body the next morning. He noticed a light tan or cream four-door sedan, possibly a 1935, and a man standing near it. The man’s behavior piqued Johnson’s curiosity. “He walked a little way up the street, then came back, crossed over and looked into my car, and finally got into his own and drove off.”
Johnson got in his car and followed the mystery man, but lost him.
Police asked why he had not come forward earlier. Johnson said he reported the incident, “but nothing came of it.”
Another witness surfaced. A cab driver, I. A. Jorgenson, told detectives he believed he picked Beth and a man friend at Sixth and Main Street on the night of January 11. He said he was “almost positive” the woman was Beth. Jorgenson said the couple hailed his cab, and they instructed him to take them to a Hollywood motel. The police withheld the motel’s name but told reporters they would question the employees.
None of the tips gleaned from the neighborhood sweep resulted in a solid lead. The police questioned hundreds of people, asking questions like the following:
“Do you know anybody in the neighborhood who is mentally unbalanced?”
“Anybody of whom you were suspicious after reading about the Elizabeth Short murder?”
“Do you know of any medical students?”
“Did you find any strange items in your yard or incinerator?”
Police chemist Ray Pinker worked long hours to bring a solution to the murder. He sought to establish Beth’s blood type after a gray, bloodstained blanket turned up late on January 22.
A bloodstained tarp, 3 by 6 feet, found near Indio, was also being examined in the lab.
Desperate to solve the case, the Los Angeles City Council offered a $10,000 (equivalent to $141,368.00 in current USD) reward; but the city attorney felt it to be inappropriate. City council member Ed Davenport, perhaps naively, said an informer “should be prepared to talk without being paid by the city. Maybe now he will come forward without waiting for any reward to be offered.”
If such an informer existed, he or she has never come forward.
On January 22, 1947, one week after Beth Short’s murder, the coroner held an inquest to determine the manner of her death.
It was an excruciating ordeal for her family. They called her mother, Phoebe, to the stand. Asked when she was first notified that her daughter died, she half rose from her chair and blurted; “She was murdered.” She regained her composure, sat down, and told the jury she last saw Beth in April 1946, in Massachusetts.
Beth wrote to Phoebe every week. She told her she was a waitress. She also said she worked as a film extra, and was going to San Diego to work in a veteran’s hospital. None of that was true.
Phoebe said she planned to bury Beth in Oakland, California. Beth’s sister Virginia lived there.
Robert “Red” Manley testified he knew Beth for about a month. He last saw her on January 9, 1947, when he drove her from San Diego to Los Angeles, and left her at the Biltmore Hotel.
Beth Short’s brother-in-law, Adrian West, and her sister, Virginia, sit behind Robert “Red” Manley at the coroner’s inquest. [Photo courtesy LAPL]
Among the others to testify was Detective Jess W. Haskels. He told the nine-man jury that the “body was clean and appeared to be washed” when found on January 15. He described how the killer cut the body in half at the waist.
Dr. Frederick Newbarr, chief autopsy surgeon, stated that Beth’s murder occurred less than 24 hours before her discovery. He said his autopsy showed her death was due to hemorrhage, shock, concussion of the brain, and lacerations of the face.
Beth’s brother-in-law, Adrian West (married to her sister Virginia), expressed the family’s gratitude for everyone working on the case. Virginia, Phoebe, and Adrian planned to leave for Oakland by train on the 23rd to accompany Beth’s body north.
Adrian West, Phoebe Short, Virginia West [Photo courtesy LAPL]
After hearing all the testimony, the jury retired for 45 minutes before returning with the expected verdict: Homicide. Death by person or persons unknown.
Vying for headlines with the inquest was Lynn Martin—known around Hollywood as a 22-year-old model.
Lynn Martin [Photo courtesy LAPL]
Police searched for Lynn after finding out she roomed with Beth for a time in Hollywood. They found the frightened girl in a motel in the San Fernando Valley. At first, the detectives who questioned her believed her to be in her early 20s; but after spending hours with her, they saw her for the frightened teenager she was; only three days from her 16th birthday. They contacted juvenile officers to come for her.
Officer Helen Mellon with Lynn Martin [Photo courtesy LAPL]
She admitted her true name was Norma Lee Meyer, and her parents lived in Long Beach. Juvie officers said Lynn had a record dating back to when she was 11. She spent thirteen months in the El Retiro School for Girls.
El Retiro School for Girls {Photo courtesy LAPL]
Police hoped Lynn might help them with their investigation. They found her in a motel court in the San Fernando Valley. A cab driver, Ballard Smith, who knew Lynn, said he picked her up as a “fare” at Sunset Blvd. and Western Ave. on the afternoon of January 21st. He drove her to the Hollywood Post Office, and then to the Ventura Blvd motel.
Hollywood Post Office at Wilcox and Selma
As he drove Lynn to the motel, Ballard said he persuaded her to surrender to police. He learned from the newspapers that police sought her as a witness, not a suspect.
Lynn said she would call police as soon as she got to the motel. She explained she had not called them earlier because she was frightened, and didn’t want any notoriety.
As soon as she had checked in, managers of the motel recognized her and called police.
LAPD Captain Donohoe said they questioned Lynn about Edward P. (the Duke) Wellington because someone named him as one of her boyfriends. She admitted spending a few days in a motel with Wellington, and people saw her wearing a white-tipped silver fox fur wrap he allegedly bought her.
If Wellington bought Lynn a fur, he likely paid for it with a bad check. Police caught up with him in late January. Police cleared him of suspicion in Beth’s murder after proving he had never met her.
On February 3 1947, the Long Beach Independent featured an article about Lynn which, if true, may explain how, at 15, she was sleeping with a man in his 40s.
The paper interviewed Joe Kennick, head of the city’s juvenile bureau. He said Los Angeles police had arrested Lynn seven times. Even as she was being held by juvenile authorities, officials prepared to start court action against 10 male adults with whom she had been intimate.
Kennick said, “This poor, unfortunate girl is just another sad example of a child who never had a chance.” She bounced from relatives to foster homes, and she never got the care every child deserves.
On November 6, 1943, at only 12, police arrested her as wayward and for violation of the curfew ordinance.
The woman who was supposed to care for her forced her to sleep an unfinished garaged; no matter what the weather. One night when she got cold in the garage, she went to visit a 13-year-old friend. Lynn said she “wasn’t a nice girl—she gets herself picked up by sailors.”
The two girls went to the Pike, where drunken sailors picked them up. One sailor, about 20, seemed nicer than the others. Police arrested her when they found her with him under the pier.
It is not surprising that by age 15 she was living on her own in Hollywood—pretending to be a model in her 20s. She told police, “Hollywood is full of men around 40 that want to buy you drinks and a meal. They expect you to pay for the drinks and meals with yourself.”
Lynn’s story illuminates the post-war world, especially for young women. Beth was several years older than Lynn, but I doubt she was any more worldly.
I don’t know what happened to Lynn. Unlike Beth, she got a second chance. I hope she used it wisely.
