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.
Welcome! The lobby of the Deranged L.A. Crimes theater is open. Grab a bucket of popcorn, some Milk Duds and a Coke and find a seat. Tonight’s feature is, THE LIGHTS OF NEW YORK (1928), starring Helene Costello, Wheeler Oakman, and Eugene Pallette.
This is the first feature film with all synchronous dialogue.
TCM says:
When bootleggers Jackson and Dickson, who have been hiding out in a small upstate New York town, learn that they finally can return to New York, they try to convince Eddie Morgan and his friend, a local barber named Gene, to come with them. With a promise from Jackson and Dickson that they will help the young men establish a barbershop in the city, Eddie asks his mother, who owns the town’s Morgan Hotel, to loan them $5,000 of her savings. Eddie and Gene set up the barbershop in New York but soon learn that it is merely a front for a speakeasy.
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.
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.
Bundled up against the chill of a cold wave that had held Los Angeles residents in its grip for several days, Mrs. Betty Bersinger and her three-year-old daughter Anne walked south on the west side of Norton in Leimert Park, a Los Angeles suburb. Midway down the block, Bersinger noticed something pale in the weeds about fifty feet north of a fire hydrant and about a foot in from the sidewalk.
Initially, Bersinger believed she was seeing a discarded mannequin or a passed-out nude woman.
Betty Bersinger recreates her phone call to police.
It took a moment before Bersinger realized she was in a waking nightmare. The bright white shape in the weeds was neither a mannequin nor a drunk.
Bersinger later recalled, “I was terribly shocked and scared to death. I grabbed Anne, and we walked as fast as we could to the first house that had a telephone.”
Over the years, several reporters have claimed to have been first on the scene of the murder. One person who made that claim was Will Fowler.
Fowler said he and photographer Felix Paegel of the Los Angeles Examiner approached Crenshaw Boulevard when they heard an intriguing call on their shortwave radio. It was a police call and Fowler couldn’t believe his ears. A naked woman, possibly drunk, was found in a vacant lot one block east of Crenshaw between 39th and Coliseum streets. Fowler turned to Pagel and said, “A naked drunk dame passed out in a vacant lot. Right here in the neighborhood too… Let’s see what it’s all about.”
Paegel drove as Fowler watched for the woman. “There she is. It’s a body all right…” Fowler hopped out of the car and approached the woman as Paegel pulled his Speed Graphic from the trunk. Fowler called out, “Jesus, Felix, this woman’s cut in half!”
Will Fowler crouches down near the body of Jane Doe.
That was Fowler’s story, and he stuck to it through the decades. He said he closed the dead girl’s eyes. But was his story true?
There is information to suggest that a reporter from the Los Angeles Times was the first on the scene; and in her autobiography, Newspaperwoman, Aggie Underwood, said that she was the first.
Aggie on Norton, January 15, 1947.
After 78-years does it really matter? All those who saw the murdered girl that day saw the same horrifying scene, and it left an indelible impression. Aggie described what she observed:
“It [the body] had been cut in half through the abdomen, under the ribs. The two sections were ten or twelve inches apart. The arms, bent at right angles at the elbows, were raised about the shoulders. The legs were spread apart. There were bruises and cuts on the forehead and the face, which had been beaten severely. The hair was blood-matted. Front teeth were missing. Both cheeks were slashed from the corners of the lips almost to the ears. The liver hung out of the torso, and the entire lower section of the body had been hacked, gouged, and unprintably desecrated. It showed sadism at its most frenzied.”
Air brushed newspaper photo of Jane Doe. The coroner recorded the victim as Jane Doe #1 for 1947.
Two seasoned LAPD detectives, Harry Hansen and Finis Brown, took charge of the investigation. During the first twenty-four hours, officers pulled in over 150 men for questioning.
The most promising of the early suspects was a twenty-three-year-old transient, Cecil French. He was busted for molesting women in a downtown bus depot.
Police were further alarmed when they discovered French had pulled the back seat out of his car. Had he concealed a body there? Police Chemist Ray Pinker found no blood or any other physical evidence of a bloody murder in French’s car. He was dropped from the list of hot suspects.
Ray Pinker, Police Chemist c. 1935 Photo courtesy LAPL
In her initial coverage, Aggie referred to the case as the “Werewolf” slaying because of the savagery of the mutilations inflicted on the unknown woman. Aggie’s werewolf tag would identify the case until a much better one was discovered—the Black Dahlia.
REFERENCES:
Fowler, Will (1991). “Reporters” Memoirs of a Young Newspaperman.
Gilmore, John (2001). Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia Murder.
Harnisch, Larry. “A Slaying Cloaked in Mystery and Myths.” Los Angeles Times. January 6, 1997.
Underwood, Agness (1949). Newspaperwoman.
Wagner, Rob Leicester (2000). The Rise and Fall of Los Angeles Newspapers 1920-1962.
This month is an important one for the Deranged L.A. Crimes blog. It is the twelfth anniversary of the blog.
December 17, 2012 (the 110th anniversary of the birth of the woman whose career and life inspires me, Agness “Aggie” Underwood) I created the blog. I also authored her Wikipedia page, which was long overdue. I felt it was important to honor her on the anniversary of her birth. I’ve been trying to keep her legacy alive ever since.
Aggie hoists a brew. Perry Fowler photo.
By the time I began, Aggie had been gone for twenty-eight years. I regret not knowing about her in time to meet her in person. But, through her work, and speaking with her relatives over the years, I feel like I know her. I have enormous respect for Aggie. She had nothing handed to her, yet she established herself in a male-dominated profession where she earned the respect of her peers without compromising her values. She also earned the respect of law enforcement. Cops who worked with her trusted her judgement and sought her opinion. It isn’t surprising. She shared with them the same qualities that make a successful detective.
Aggie never intended to become a reporter. All she wanted was a pair of silk stockings. She’d been wearing her younger sister’s hand-me-downs, but she longed for a new pair of her own. When her husband, Harry, told her they couldn’t afford them, she threatened to get a job and buy them herself. It was an empty threat. She did not know how to find employment. She hadn’t worked outside her home for several years. A serendipitous call from her close friend Evelyn, the day after the stockings kerfuffle, changed the course of her life. Evelyn told her about a temporary opening for a switchboard operator where she worked, at the Los Angeles Record. Aggie accepted the temporary job, meant to last only through the 1926-27 holiday season.
Aggie & Harry [Photo courtesy CSUN Special Collections]
Aggie arrived at the Record unfamiliar with the newspaper business, but she swiftly adapted and everyone realized, even without training, she was sharp and eager to learn. The temporary switchboard job turned into a permanent position.
Marion Parker
In December 1927, the kidnapping and cruel mutilation murder of twelve-year-old schoolgirl Marion Parker horrified the city. Aggie was at the Record when they received word the perpetrator, William Edward Hickman, who had nicknamed himself “The Fox,” was in custody in Oregon. The breaking story created a firestorm of activity in the newsroom. Aggie had seen nothing like it. She knew then she didn’t want to be a bystander. She wanted to be a reporter.
When the Record was sold in January 1935, Aggie accepted an offer from William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper, the Evening Herald and Express, propelling her into the big leagues. Hearst expected his reporters to work at breakneck speed. After all, they had to live up to the paper’s motto, “The First with the latest.”
From January 1935, until January 1947, Aggie covered everything from fires and floods to murder and mayhem, frequently with photographer Perry Fowler by her side. She considered herself to be a general assignment reporter, but developed a reputation and a knack for covering crimes.
Sometimes she helped to solve them.
In December 1939, Aggie was called to the scene of what appeared to be a tragic accident on the Angeles Crest Highway. Laurel Crawford said he had taken his family on a scenic drive, but lost control of the family sedan on a sharp curve. The car plunged over 1000 feet down an embankment, killing his wife, three children, and a boarder in their home. He said he had survived by jumping from the car at the last moment.
When asked by Sheriff’s investigators for her opinion, Aggie said she had observed Laurel’s clothing and his demeanor, and neither lent credibility to his account. She concluded Laurel was “guilty as hell.” Her hunch was right. Upon investigation, police discovered Laurel had engineered the accident to collect over $30,000 in life insurance.
Hollywood was Aggie’s beat, too. When stars misbehaved or perished under mysterious or tragic circumstances, Aggie was there to record everything for Herald readers. On December 16, 1935, popular actress and café owner Thelma Todd died of carbon monoxide poisoning in the garage of her Pacific Palisades ho9me. Thelma’s autopsy was Aggie’s first, and her fellow reporters put her to the test. It backfired on them. Before the coroner could finish his grim work, her colleagues had turned green and fled the room. Aggie remained upright.
Though Aggie never considered herself a feminist, she paved the way for female journalists. In January 1947, they yanked her off the notorious Black Dahlia murder case and made her city editor—one of the first woman to hold the post for a major metropolitan newspaper. Known to keep a bat and starter pistol handy at her desk, she was beloved by her staff and served as city editor for the Herald (later Herald Examiner) until retiring in 1968.
Aggie at a crime scene (not the Dahlia) c. 1940s.
When she passed away in 1984, the Herald-Examiner eulogized her. “She was undeterred by the grisliest of crime scenes and had a knack for getting details that eluded other reporters. As editor, she knew the names and telephone numbers of numerous celebrities, in addition to all the bars her reporters frequented. She cultivated the day’s best sources, ranging from gangsters and prostitutes to movie stars and government officials.”
I have pondered how appalled Aggie would be at what passes for journalism today. During her lifetime, she disdained anyone unwilling to get out and scrap for a story. Today she would find herself surrounded by people who call their personal opinions news, and their writings (multiple misspellings and grammatical atrocities included), reporting.
In a world where oligarchs bend once respected publications to their perverted will, Aggie would be unwelcome.
Don’t misunderstand me—even in Aggie’s day, newspapers were not owned by paupers, and they all had an editorial agenda. But when it came to reporting hard news, it was all about the facts. There was no such thing as fake news or “alternative” facts (what does that even mean?!)
Today we must look hard to find facts. Legacy media has failed us in all of its forms. Losing reliable media puts our country at significant risk.
I suppose my anger, disenchantment, and disgust with the current state of media is why I honor Aggie’s legacy. She represents the best of what reporters once were, and what they could be again if not constrained by fear. The newspaper & TV owners seem to be motivated by a mixture of fear and greed. It is not the way to maintain a free press. We can all do better.
