Category Archives: Homicide

The Persistence of Memory

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In February 1972, when the California Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment violated the state constitution’s ban on “cruel or unusual punishments,” it gave the 102 men and 5 women on death row a reason to hope. And something else they never dreamed they would have. A future. Their sentences became life with the possibility of parole.

Paul S. Perveler was one of the lucky ones. Over the next several years, he was a model prisoner. In 1982, impressed with his institutional record, the Board of Prison Terms gave him a parole date of August 6, 1985. He’d spent a few years on death row, and over a decade in the general population. He longed to begin a life beyond the walls.

Outside the prison was someone who knew Paul’s history in a way the Board of Prison Terms never could. His former wife, Lela Halverson. Unlike the others whose lives Paul disrupted, Lela survived—and remembered.

Lela turned to Assemblyman Patrick Nolan for help. Nolan initiated a statewide petition drive to keep Paul incarcerated. He called Paul “a cold, calculating killer.”

Lela told reporters that after Paul’s conviction he told his minister that “someday, some way, he would get out of prison and kill me.” She believed him. Paul had remarried in prison, and his wife had made inquiries about Lela’s whereabouts—and that frightened her. But her fear wasn’t enough to silence her.

Public opinion is a powerful tool. Lela and Nolan announced the petition drive from the corner of McCarthy Drive and Caledonia Way in Glendale. Lela spoke about the significance of the location. She recalled that in June 1966, “I was coming home from a meeting and he got in front of my car. He started beating me inside the car, then he dragged me out and started pounding my head against the pavement.” Later that year, hit-and-run autos struck her twice. She didn’t believe in coincidence. She divorced Paul that same year.

In 1982, after news of Paul’s parole date broke, Lela spoke out, “I try not to dwell on it, but it’s always in the back of my mind. I have this great fear. It’s almost like going through that trial again, but this time it’s worse because I know of the brutality he is capable of. During the trial, I didn’t know everything.”

The reason for Lela’s fear lay in two murders Paul had committed years earlier.

In early December 1966, the Los Angeles County Fire Department responded to a routine call at a home on the 2700 block of Ballard Street in El Sereno.

After they extinguished the blaze, they discovered the charred body of Marlin Cromwell sprawled on the couch in the living room. At first, it appeared he had died in the fire. A closer look revealed multiple gunshot wounds inflicted by a small-caliber gun. Kristina, accompanied by the couple’s four-year-old son, was visiting with friends in Twenty-Nine Palms when the murder occurred.

About midnight on April 20, 1968, Cheryl Perveler pulled her convertible Jaguar into the carport of the Burbank apartment where she lived with Paul. A few minutes later, neighbors reported hearing three gunshots. Apartment manager John E. Miller went out to the carport and found Cheryl in the driver’s seat unconscious and bleeding. An ambulance was called and rushed her to Burbank Hospital. They later transferred her to County General where she died without regaining consciousness. She had been married to Paul for about six weeks.

The sixteen-month gap between the murders obscured the relationship between the two crimes. Had the deaths occurred close together, investigators would likely have examined Paul and Kristina’s affair much sooner.

Paul might never have been caught if he had not confided in a co-worker at the Auto Club details of Marlin’s murder. It was a serious miscalculation. The co-worker went to the police.

It took about two weeks for detectives to unravel the murder plot. On May 1, 1968, the police jailed Paul and Kristina. Detectives booked both Paul and Kristina on suspicion of murder in the deaths of their spouses.

At the time of Paul and Kristina’s arrest, detectives told reporters that Paul’s ex-wife, Lela, was deliberately run down by a car in 1965 and was the target of a car which jumped a curb in 1966. Paul would have received $32,000 in double indemnity insurance if she had died.

Juries prefer a case with an understandable motive. Sometimes they don’t get one. But here the D.A. offered them a common one, and one they could comprehend—greed. According to the prosecution, Paul committed the murders so he and Kristina could cash in on two hefty double-indemnity life insurance policies.

In fact, Marlin’s policy paid Kristinia $75,000. She and Paul used most of the money to purchase another Burbank cocktail bar—Paul already owned one.

A jury convicted Kristina Cromwell for her role in the murders, and she served 7 years of a life sentence before being released in 1976.

Paul received the death penalty for the murders and for the attempted murder of Lela.

Paul’s death sentence gave Lela breathing room. The change in his sentence shattered her peace. Once free, he could make good on his pledge to kill her. Would she have to look over her shoulder for the rest of her life?

Lela continued to pressure the parole board. She requested a hearing, and in June 1983, she presented the board with 20,000 signatures from residents of Patrick Nolan’s district, where the murders occurred. As the only survivor of Paul’s murder for money plots, Lela revealed more about him than was in his prison file.

The parole board only saw his exemplary record, college education, self-awareness groups for prisoners, favorable psychiatric reports, praise from prison staffers, and a 1978 marriage that offered him new stability.

Paul opted out of the hearing, which gave Lela the perfect opportunity to speak. “I’m thrilled and delighted we’ve finally been heard and that we have a chance for justice.” She spoke of the severe beating at Paul’s hands. “He tried six times to kill me. I will never forget the feeling of the bones of my face crunching, the smashing of my head against the pavement and the taste of my own blood in my throat while he was choking me. I knew I was going to die.”

She said he had lain in wait for her before the attack and had doused himself with alcohol afterward so he could claim he attacked her in a drunken, jealous rage and that he wasn’t trying to kill her.

Kristina Cromwell confirmed Lela’s testimony and offered her own perspective into Paul’s plans. She described how he intended to commit the murders over a three-year period.

She said in 1965, Paul shot his father from a passing car on Baja Highway south of Tijuana. “We were going to overtake them on a road where there were cliffs, and he was going to shoot out of the back window.” A bullet struck Joseph Perveler on the right side of his nose. His father recovered and died later of other causes. The shooting was never reported to U.S. authorities.

Kristina told of Paul’s plot to murder Lela while on a Memorial Day outing in the San Gabriel Mountains and make it look like an accident.

She told the parole board that three other times Paul had struck Lela with his car.

Paul planned to kill Marlin while he and Kristina vacationed in Mexico in 1966, but she refused to cooperate and fled to Los Angeles. “He told me if he had caught me on the way back to the border, he would have killed me.” He said if she refused to cooperate in her husband’s murder again, he would kill her son.

Kristina revealed that she and Paul were going to kill Lela and described the plan. She was to wait in her car and honk the horn as Lela’s VW neared the house. Paul would emerge from his hiding place, attack Lela until she was unconscious, and stuff her body in the back seat. But after the attack, Paul ran to Kristinia in a panic. Kristina convinced him to pour alcohol on his clothes and tell police he’d been drinking.

Asked why she never reported Paul to the police. She said she loved him and did whatever he wanted.

The board was convinced by the women to rescind Paul’s parole. Lela said: “Our system worked as it should have worked. It’s just unfortunate that I had to go through all that I have.”

Paul showed little emotion as he heard the ruling. Asked how he felt, he said, “Tired, wiped out and gutted.”

At least for a time Lela could rest easy; but the fight would begin again in six months when his parole status would be reviewed.

Paul’s persistence in pursuit of a goal was evident from his continued attempts to kill anyone who stood between him and a large insurance payout.

Lela was persistent, too. But hers wasn’t destructive—it was restorative. She wanted the truth to become part of the permanent record.

Over the next decade, she had to summon her strength repeatedly to keep Paul behind bars.

Lela prevailed.

In 1992, in the landmark case Perveler v. Estelle (1992), the Ninth Circuit affirmed that California’s parole board acted within its legal rights when it rescinded Paul’s parole date based on newly uncovered evidence of his dangerous past. Paul would remain in prison.

For years, Paul Perveler tried to persuade parole authorities that they misunderstood him. In the end, it was Lela Halverson and Kristina Cromwell who persuaded them that indeed they had.


NOTE: My thanks to Blake Leung for introducing me to this case. He pointed me to an extraordinary story hidden in the archives.


Sources

This story was researched using contemporary newspapers, court records, parole proceedings, archival collections, and other primary and secondary sources.


Research Note

The historical record is never complete. This narrative reflects the best available evidence at the time of publication. Any errors or omissions are my own.



The Hillside Strangler: MGM+ Docuseries

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I was interviewed over the summer for this four-part docuseries. The Hillside Strangler case was one of the worst in Los Angeles’ history.

One of the killers, Angelo Buono, died in prison in 2002. His cousin, and accomplice, Kenneth Bianchi, remains in prison. May he rot.

The most important names to remember are those of their victims:

Yolanda Washington
Judity Miller
Lissa Kastin
Delores Cepeda and Sonja Johnson
Kristina Weckler
Evelyn Jame King
Lauren Wagner
Kimberly Martin
Cindy Hudspeth

Here is the trailer.

Elizabeth Short: The French Connection–Conclusion

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When Dorothy French brought Elizabeth Short home in early December, she never expected her to stake a claim to the family’s sofa. Dorothy had simply meant to offer a safer alternative to a seat in the Aztec all-night movie theater—a place to rest for a night or two. No more than that.

But Betty stayed.

She took advantage of the Frenches’ hospitality. They were too kind to put her out, but the tension in the home was growing. Betty (she used Beth and Betty interchangeably) must have felt it.

Elizabeth Short

There’s no record of how they spent Christmas. It would have been the perfect time for Betty to leave San Diego, return to Hollywood—where she had connections, where people at least knew her. But she remained, a guest among strangers. The question is why.

Was she waiting for money? A ride? A man?

Some accounts reduce her stay in San Diego to cliché: drifting, partying, mysterious. It was none of those things. It was stasis. A kind of limbo.

She spent her days writing letters—many of which she never mailed.

One of the most poignant was addressed to Gordon Fickling, dated December 13. She had lived with Fickling—a Navy lieutenant and flier—months earlier in Long Beach. Gordon Fickling.

She wrote:

“I do hope you find a nice girl to kiss at midnight on New Year’s Eve. It would have been wonderful if we belonged to each other now. I’ll never regret coming west to see you. You didn’t take me in your arms and keep me there. However, it was nice as long as it lasted.”

The unsent letter offers a glimpse into her state of mind. It is wistful—a quiet longing for something stable. A safe harbor. And the realization that safety, when it appears at all, is always temporary.

The Frenches’ home had become a kind of refuge. Temporary, but real.

Then, something strange happened.

Red Manley

On January 7, two men and a girl came to the door. They knocked, waited a few minutes, and then ran to a car parked outside.

Betty peeked through the window but refused to answer. She was visibly terrified. When Dorothy asked her about it, Betty was evasive—so much so that Dorothy eventually gave up trying to get answers.

Shortly after, Betty wired Red and asked him to come get her. She was ready to leave San Diego.

He responded the next day:

“Wait and I’ll be down for you.”

NEXT TIME: Elizabeth Short’s life is measured in days.

Archival Note: Little contemporaneous documentation exists regarding Elizabeth Short’s daily life during her stay with the French family in Pacific Beach. Beyond later statements attributed to Dorothy French, and the surviving unsent correspondence, no police reports, diaries, or third-party accounts place Short at any specific location in San Diego between December 8, 1946, and her departure in early January 1947.

Elizabeth Short–The French Connection

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Elizabeth Short stepped off the bus in San Diego in early December 1946—alone, broke, and fading into the shadows of the chilly evening.

She walked a few blocks to the Aztec, a 24-hour movie theater. The price of a ticket gave her a quiet and warm place to rest. She dozed off, only to be awakened by the cashier, a woman about her age, Dorothy French.

Elvera & Dorothy French

Dorothy could tell the woman, who introduced herself as Betty Short, was at loose ends. She felt sorry for her, and she knew that a woman sleeping alone in the theater was easy prey. Dorothy invited Betty to come with her to Pacific Beach, where she lived with her mother, Elvera, and her teenage brother, Cory. Betty was welcome to spend the night and get a fresh start the next day.

Nearly two weeks had passed since her arrival on December 8. As the days crawled toward Christmas, the Frenches began to regret their kindness. Like many post-war families, they struggled to make ends meet. Betty hadn’t contributed a cent to the household, and the family was tired of tip-toeing around the sofa as she slept.

She showed no interest in finding a job and spent much of her time writing letters. She had one visitor, a man she introduced only as Red. She told the Frenches he was an airline employee in San Diego who lived in Huntington Park, but stayed at a nearby motel.

The sofa in the Frenches’ modest home was a far cry from the glamorous Hollywood backdrop Betty spoke of, but it provided a measure of stability. According to Elvera, Betty was polite but withdrawn. She offered few details about her past and rarely ventured out during the day. She claimed to have worked at a naval hospital but made no effort to find another job. Over time, Elvera grew uneasy. She had a “premonition” that something was wrong. She described Betty’s presence as moody and unsettled.

She was more shadow than guest.

Dorothy said, “Betty seemed constantly in fear of something. Whenever someone came to the door, she would act frightened.”

Despite the undercurrent of discomfort, the family allowed her to stay through the holidays.

NEXT TIME: Elizabeth Short leaves San Diego.

Archival Note:
Details of Elizabeth Short’s (Black Dahlia) stay with the French family in Pacific Beach are based primarily on contemporaneous police interviews and subsequent press reports. Key accounts include statements attributed to Dorothy and Elvera French following Short’s disappearance and murder.

Thanksgiving and a Revolver

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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.

Irresistible Impulse, Part 2

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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

Irresistible Impulse, Part I

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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.

NEXT TIME: Can Delora resist her impulse?

The Lower 13th Murder Case: Epilogue

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“Oh my God, he’s killing me!”

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 courts called it justice.

History calls it something else.

What do you call it?

Part 2: The Lower 13th Murder Case

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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.

Hero or Villain? The Strange Life of Olney Le Blanc–Conclusion

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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?

I accept I will never know.