Ohio native Grace Hunt was 17 when she married 41-year-old Charles Price Grogan in Los Angeles on April 5, 1902. It was an advantageous marriage for both. Charles basked in the glory of his triumphs, with the press dubbing him the “Olive King,” and a radiant Grace by his side, a queen befitting his grandeur. A few days prior to their fifth wedding anniversary, they welcomed a son, whom they named Charles Patrick Grogan.
Grace and Charles were married for over a decade before they separated. The difference in their ages may have sunk the marriage. Whatever their reasons, the couple had separated by the late 1910s and divorced by the 1920 census—at least that was how Charles declared his marital status. Grace, for the same census, gave her marital status as a widow. Why the discrepancy? Simple; divorce stigmatized women.
Grace was luckier than many women because California, at least in its laws, was more tolerant of divorce than other states. The State’s first divorce law in 1851 recognized impotence, adultery, extreme cruelty, desertion or neglect, habitual intemperance, fraud, and conviction of a felony as legitimate grounds for divorce.
Despite the law’s progressive attitude, divorce could ruin a woman, which is why many women found it easier to claim widowhood than risk suffering the loss of status if their divorce became public knowledge. It seems absurd to us now in these days of no-fault divorce and “conscious uncoupling” (a phrase coined in 2014 by celebrity Gwenyth Paltrow to describe her separation from her musician husband, Chris Martin), but divorce was not a simple matter when Grace and Charles called it quits.
The couple’s family and intimate friends would have known the truth, and the rest of local society may have acknowledged Grace’s widowhood with a nod and a wink and allowed her to continue her fiction unchallenged.
Grace’s claim to widowhood would edge closer to the truth when Charles died of apoplexy (internal bleeding—perhaps because of a stroke) on July 8, 1921.
The Olive King was a wealthy man who loved his only son. He bequeathed Patrick his entire fortune, estimated to be between $1 and $2 million dollars. Until he turned 25, Grace was to administer Patrick’s monthly allowance, which amounted to a princely sum of $800 per month. An agreement had been reached by Grace and Charles regarding their divorce. The couple agreed Charles would create a trust fund, not to exceed $50,000, for her maintenance. To put things into perspective, $50,000 in 1921 is equivalent to three quarters of a million dollars today. And Patrick’s monthly allowance is equivalent to about $12,000. A fortune like the one Charles left Patrick and Grace can attract the best people in society—it can also be a magnet for the worst of humanity.
In her 30s, Grace was beautiful, wealthy, and prominent. She would make a wonderful wife for the right man.
NEXT TIME: Grace meets a new man, as The Murder Complex continues.
This gorgeous cover is the winner of the WildBlue Press cover contest. It evokes the glamour of old Hollywood, yet suggests the dark side of the city and the era.
Of Mobsters and Movie Stars is available for pre-order on Amazon for release on Tuesday, May 14, 2024. You will also be able to purchase the book in hardcover, paperback, eBook, and, coming soon, audiobook, on the Amazon and WildBlue’s websites.
My connection with many of you inspired me to tackle a book project. I can’t thank you enough for your support over the past 12 years. I’m looking forward to many more years here (and a few more books!) I’ll let you know about any book signings and interviews, so stay tuned. I’ve created some content for my author page on WildBlue, so please visit me there and sign-up to receive updates.
There are 37 stories in Of Mobsters and Movie Stars, including an early killer couple who went on a spree while Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were still in grammar school. One of the most shocking tales is about a man who plotted to kill his wife using two Diamondback rattlesnakes named Lighting and Lethal.
Many people have asked if Los Angeles had a mob. The answer is they had two. The earliest was headed by Joe “Iron Man” Ardizzone, an old-school gangster straight out of Central Casting. The other mob, orders of magnitude more powerful and insidious than Ardizzone’s, was the Hollywood studios. Using hired thugs called “fixers,” the studios wielded power over actors and politicians. When choreographer Busby Berkeley killed three people while driving drunk, the studio came to his aid. When director, and husband of Jean Harlow, Paul Bern, died under suspicious circumstances, the studio intervened.
One of the ugliest incidents of studio power was the attempted cover-up of the brutal rape of a young actress at a studio hosted event. The victim refused to be silent and, as far as I’m concerned, is the Godmother of the #metoo movement.
I posted excepts from Mobsters and Movie Stars on WildBlue. Below is one of them.
Excerpted from The Torso Murder
“William Pettibone, Ray Seegar, Floyd Waterstreet, and Glen Druer explored the muddy river bank for hidden treasures on May 18, 1929. The boys noticed something that looked like a turtle shell or strange prehistoric fish 150 feet from the bridge in the city of Bell. One boy took a stick and poked it into an end of the bony structure and held it aloft for the others to gape at. The boys spent a few minutes before realizing their treasure was a human skull.
With the head impaled on a stick, the boy ran up to the roadway. He waved it around until a female motorist stopped. The horrified woman kept it together long enough to drive to a public telephone where she called Bell’s Chief of Police. Chief Smith and Motor Officer Steele met the woman and the group of boys near the river. The woman declined to give her name. Smith’s officers told Captain Bright about the grisly find. Bright accompanied Deputies Allen, Brewster, and Gompert to the scene. While deputies searched the area, an enormous crowd of curious on-lookers gathered.
The initial autopsy yielded nothing which could identify the deceased. At least the skull still had several extant teeth, which made an identification possible. Local newspapers printed the photos and drawings of the teeth and distributed them to dentists.
With limited remains, the experts needed to perform a miracle. Amazingly, they did just that.”
Night had fallen by the time Donald Mead and Kenneth Selby started home following a school baseball game. The twelve-year-old boys walked in companionable silence. After dark, only; a coyote’s howl could be heard. Then, the boys heard the rumble of a car engine. That was unusual. Beverly Glen was a quiet, semi-rural enclave about twenty miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles; the place where many well-to-do Angelenos owned get-away cabins. On an impulse, the boys dove into a stand of bushes near a small bridge moments before the car’s headlights would have illuminated them. They intended to spy on whomever had the audacity to intrude on their domain.
View showing a car on unpaved Sunset Boulevard between Carolwood and Delfern Drives in Beverly Hills, with three palm trees in the background. This is in the general location of Beverly Glen. c. 1925
Keeping still, the boys watched a lone driver back a sedan up to the front steps of a cabin and turn off his headlights. The boys knew the cabin belonged to Dr. Thomas Young, a Los Angeles dentist, but they could not positively identify the driver due to the darkness. He seemed to be male. Maybe it was the doctor. No matter, the boys enjoyed their spy game. From their vantage point, they watched the man drag a large, heavy box draped in a dark-colored cloth from the car. Donald and Kenneth whispered to each other that the box must be awfully heavy, as they saw the man hunched over and struggling to lift it. Did it contain a king’s ransom of gold and silver? Or did the box contain the corpse of a desperado?
The man wrestled the box onto the landing and dragged it inside the cabin. The boys thought it odd that he never turned on the cabin lights. When he reappeared on the veranda, he scanned the area. Satisfied that he was alone, he returned to his car and retrieved a gunny sack. It was large, its contents a mystery to the boys. The sack must not have been as heavy as the box because the man slung it over his shoulder. He disappeared into the cabin again. A few minutes later, he returned empty-handed. Then he got into his car and drove away.
The boys could barely contain their curiosity. Who was the man? Why was he being so secretive? They waited a few minutes before leaving their hiding place, and then they walked over to the cabin. In the dirt near the cellar door was a sack marked “Lime.” They also found some “funny smelling stuff” that made them “sick at smelling it.”
After poking around the cabin for a few more minutes and finding nothing, Donald and Kenneth headed home. They didn’t give the strange man another thought until the police questioned them six months later.
I am excited to announce that you will be able to pre-order my book soon. It is scheduled for a May 14th release. For further details, visit WILDBLUE PRESS. I’ll keep you posted about any new developments–like the cover art.
WILDBLUE PRESS says:
No Hollywood script can compare to the terror of the 37 true tales in OF MOBSTERS AND MOVIE STARS: The Bloody “Golden Age” of Hollywood!
In this gripping historical account, expert crime historian Joan Renner explores the shadowy world of fame and crime during Hollywood’s most glamorous era. As Los Angeles transformed into the epicenter of film, it also became a haven for notorious criminals and mobsters, weaving a complex tapestry of allure and danger that is sure to intrigue.
Renner brings to life stories that are more thrilling than fiction, including harrowing LAPD showdowns, dark dealings behind the studio gates, and tragic fates of luminaries whose off-screen lives were as dramatic as their on-screen personas. She delves into infamous episodes, such as the shocking case of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, accused of “accidentally” crushing to death a young actress beneath his enormous weight as he raped her, and other lesser-known, but equally hair-raising stories of actors brought down by scandal and corruption.
OF MOBSTERS AND MOVIE STARS offers a profound and enlightening look at Hollywood’s dual nature, illustrating how its seductive glitter was deeply entangled with its sinister impulses. This book is essential for anyone fascinated by how America’s “City of Dreams” became a stage for some of the most gripping dramas of the twentieth century.
Step into the Prohibition Era with Joan Renner as she reveals the hidden crimes and undying ambition behind Hollywood’s shimmering façade.
The early 20th century witnessed a clash of old and new technologies, as well as a period of rampant civil unrest. The role of women in the new millennium had yet to be defined. In 1919, when this story takes place, women in the U.S. were one year away from celebrating the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave them the right to vote. The hard-won right was a victory, but it was still a man’s world.
On March 2, 1919, the Los Angeles Times reported that Mrs. Grace Munro, the wife of wealthy zinc manufacturer Charles W. S. Munro, filed suit for alienation of affection. She sought $50,000 in damages, which is equivalent to $826,000 today, from Miss Clara Eunice Barker. Clara was Charles’ mistress for five years. Grace’s suit alleged her twenty-three-year marriage to Charles was a happy one until Clara entered their lives.
According to Grace, Clara enticed Charles to leave home with “an offer of money and otherwise.” We can guess what the otherwise referred to. Charles abandoned Grace without means of support; but he purchased a home for Clara and gave her cash. About $30,000 worth.
In the early morning hours of March 5, 1919, with a warrant sworn out by Grace, Deputy Constables Bright and Hayes arrived on the doorstep of 1201 Mountain View Street in Glendale, the home that Charles and Clara shared. They took Charles into custody for a felony statutory offense against Clara. Grace instigated the charge, and she clearly meant to put the screws to Charles. Having him arrested was enough—she dropped the charge.
William’s arrest came as a shock to Glendale society. They thought Clara and Charles were cousins, which was how they introduced themselves at first. They also did not know Charles had a wife and three daughters in Trenton, NJ.
Police wanted to speak with Clara but they could not find her, and Charles refused to talk. They discovered Clara fled to Salt Lake City, Utah, as soon as she got word of Grace’s lawsuit. Anger and outrage fueled Grace, who tracked Clara down and confronted her in a Salt Lake City hotel lobby. Grace walked up to Clara and exclaimed, “So you are the vampire”.
Theda Bara — the original vampire
Grace was not accusing Clara of being a blood sucking bride of Dracula. She used the term to imply that Clara was a seductress, a femme fatale, a vamp (ire) of the type made famous by actress Theda Bara in the 1915 film A FOOL THERE WAS.
The Glendale home in which Clara and Charles lived was in Clara’s name. She wanted to keep it, along with the furnishings, an automobile, and any other trinkets that Charles gave her. She filed a countersuit
Clara told reporters, “I am fighting for my honor as well as my legal rights. I have been cruelly mistreated and imposed upon by the man in whom I had implicit faith, and I intend to test the justice of the courts.”
Clara alleged there was a conspiracy against her. She accused the recently reconciled Munros, and a few of their friends, of seeking to deprive her of her property.
She demanded damages of $51,500. Some of which were for the Glendale property, the furniture, the car, and $25,000 for damages suffered by the conspiracy and threats she claimed were made against her.
According to Clara, while in Salt Lake City, she was called a vampire and was plagued by mysterious telephone calls, loud knocks on her bedroom door after midnight, and attempts by strangers to “force their acquaintance on her.” These incidents, Clara said, were part of a plan to harass and frighten her.
Grace intended to fight the conspiracy charge and to pursue her alienation suit. She would not back down. “I said she (Clara) is a vampire, and she is.”
Bela Lugosi as Dracula
Grace claimed she and Charles were happily married for years before Clara entered their lives, but Grace lied. Prior to his affair with Clara, Charles had been involved with his stenographer, Miss Mary Pierson, with whom he had taken an auto trip. Grace was obviously aware of the liaison because she knew where Mary lived. She even appeared on the doorstep with questions for Mary’s landlady. Charles had long possessed a wandering eye.
If Angelenos expected a lurid trial, they would not be disappointed. Wife vs. Mistress was going to be a battle royal.
NEXT TIME: A vampire’s love letters, and the wages of sin in Part 2 of Clara Eunice Barker, Vampire.
NEWSFLASH! I am very excited to announce that my book, Of Mobsters and Movie Stars: The Bloody Prohibition Era in the Golden Age of Hollywood, is being published by WildBlue Press. The expected release date is the end of May, so it is coming up fast.
The book covers true crime tales from 1919 to 1939, twenty of the most corrupt years in the city’s history. For the next several weeks, I will focus on stories from that era. Some of the posts will be encores, and others will be brand new to the blog.
All I have right now is an edited manuscript and a title. As soon as I get a cover, I’ll post it here to get you in the mood. I will also let you know when I have a firm release date.
Thanks again for following Deranged L.A. Crimes. I appreciate your readership.
Joan
The 1920s were a time of rapid growth in Los Angeles. During Mayor George E. Cryer’s tenure, the population of Los Angeles surpassed 1,000,000, and the city undertook several important civic development projects, such as constructing Central Library.
Estimated at $350,000 to construct, (equivalent to $4.8 million in today’s currency), the Olympic Auditorium ended up exceeding $500,000 because of cost overruns. With seating for 15,300 people, the architects designed the building to be a combination convention hall, exposition building, and boxing arena, making it the largest venue of its kind upon completion.
Olympic Auditorium [Photo courtesy LAPL]
The Olympic wasn’t just for mugs and pugs. In May 1925, the Los Angeles Times reported that a “…colossal presentation of ‘Aida’ with elephants and camels, a chorus of over ninety voices and a ballet of twenty-four dancers…” would be on stage at the auditorium. I love opera and it would have been a treat to see live elephants and camels at the Olympic.
Of course, now you’re asking “what has civic pride and operatic spectacle got to do with cops behaving badly? Alas, not much except to point out that where there is big money, there is an opportunity for misbehavior.
The auditorium opened to fanfare and sold-out crowds; but there was a problem—at least sixty contractors had not been compensated for their work. Liens totaling $400,000 had to be paid. Newspaper accounts never made it clear why the contractors were stiffed; but the city formulated a plan for restitution.
The process of repayment was a breeze. Sheriff’s deputies collected the box office receipts and secured them in the office vault. Once the deputies deducted taxes and overhead from the gross, they took the balance and applied it to the outstanding claims.
For several months, everything went like clockwork. But on April 16, 1926, Mrs. M. Q. Adams, a bookkeeper in the Sheriff’s civil department, observed that the vault door was partially open. She called to Chief Civil Deputy Arthur Jewell, who discovered the previous night’s deposit of $1182 was missing. Sheriff Traeger decided not to publicize the burglary—making it a need-to-know basis only. Theft of money from his office vault was damned embarrassing.
They assigned Undersheriff Biscailuz and Chief Criminal Deputy Wright to the case. Whoever took the money must have known the combination to the outer door and possessed duplicate keys to the inner door. It was an inside job.
Deputy Karl Wallich (38), one of the few people who had access to the vault, was a suspect. During questioning, Wallich said that after he left the Hall of Justice in the early morning, he had turned back at the Plaza to buy a pack of cigarettes. He couldn’t find a store that was open, so he ended up driving to a small market at Fifth and Spring. Wallich’s story didn’t hold up. Deputy Wright found seven stores between the Plaza and Fifth and Spring Street that were open early in the morning.
Deputy Sheriffs Heller and Johnson dropped in on Karl Wallich at his home to take his statement. They confronted him with his lie about the stores and he caved in on the spot. He was unsuited for a life of crime. He produced half of the missing funds and ratted out his friend and accomplice, Harry Adler (19), a civilian clerk who relinquished the other half.
Adler confessed he had hidden himself in the vault about 10 o’clock Wednesday night, waiting for the auditorium’s receipts to be deposited. Deputy Sheriffs Wallich and Barton came to the vault door about 11:30 p.m., locked up, and left the building. Once he figured everyone had gone, Adler took a screw driver and removed the plate from the combination lock and exited the vault. Nobody saw him leave. He then met Karl in front of the Hall of Records, where they divvied up the cash.
The most surprising thing about their confessions was that both men insisted they hadn’t stolen the money to enrich themselves—the theft was a joke.
According to the merry pranksters, their intention was only to seek revenge on Deputy George Barton, a co-worker who had teased and played jokes on them. The theft was their way of getting even. They figured since Barton was the only person who had keys to the inner vault, it would be his ass in a sling when the money disappeared. The plan was to let Barton twist in the wind for a bit, then return the cash to the vault, but then “things got so hot” they couldn’t see their way out of the mess.
Wallich and Adler’s little stunt didn’t amuse Sheriff Traeger. He covered the full $1182 loss out of his own pocket until the thieves returned the money.
Wallich and Adler lost their Sheriff’s Department jobs. Adler pleaded guilty at his arraignment. He spent ninety days in a sheriff’s detention center and upon his release and the court granted him three years of probation. Wallich first entered a not guilty plea, but then he changed his mind and entered a guilty plea and requested probation. There was no follow-up story in the newspaper, but Wallich expected probation.
I wonder if the men stayed friends or if their criminal misadventure ended it. I like to think that with their penchant for pranks, the guys opened a brick-and-mortar joke shop—the kind that sold whoopee cushions, rubber vomit, joy buzzers, and fake dog poop.
NOTE: Many thanks to my fellow crime historian, and curator of the Sheriff’s Department Museum, Mike Fratantoni, for introducing me to this tale.
During Prohibition, people drank whatever they could get their hands on—often poor-quality juice. Shady characters distilled booze in basements and warehouses. They cared about nothing but money. Manufacturing overnight whiskey made from “…refuse, burned grain or hay or any old thing that will sour” posed a danger to people’s physical and mental health. After several cocktails containing a noxious blend of chemicals, a person might be capable of anything.
A native New Yorker, Edward P. Nolan came to Los Angeles to make his fortune in the budding film industry. He was luckier than most Hollywood hopefuls. During 1914 and 1915, he appeared in short subjects with Charles Chaplin, Mabel Normand, and Marie Dressler. His most noteworthy appearances were in The Face on the Barroom Floor and Between Showers (1914). He may not have worked in film between 1915, appearing in Hogan’s Wild Oats and 1920, when he appeared opposite Leatrice Joy and James O. Barrows in Down Home.
What Nolan did for a living during the five years between acting gigs is anyone’s guess, but by 1922 he was in the LAPD and had risen to the rank of Detective Lieutenant. Law enforcement was not a reach for him. After all, he played a policeman in several movies.
On June 16, 1931, Nolan made a dramatic arrest of an extortionist, George Freese. Freese sent anonymous death threats to A. H. Wittenberg, president of the Mission Hosiery Mills. Pay $700, or die.
Freese instructed Wittenberg to hand the pay-off over to a taxi-cab driver-messenger who would then deliver the cash to him.
When the extortionist phoned with details, Nolan took notes and planned. He prepared a dummy package, and when the cab driver appeared outside the Wittenberg home, Nolan concealed himself in the auto and told the driver to proceed to the rendezvous point. Detective Lieutenants Leslie and McMullen followed in a police car.
Freese waited at the corner of First Street and La Brea Avenue to collect the money. As he accepted the dummy package, Nolan grabbed him.
Freese confessed without hesitation. He held a grudge against Wittenberg because six months earlier, Wittenberg turned him down for a salesman’s job. Freese said he needed the money because his family had fallen on hard times. A common predicament for people during the Great Depression.
The next day, Nolan and his 36-year-old divorced girlfriend, Grace Murphy Duncan, celebrated Nolan’s success in the Wittenberg case at the Hotel Lankershim. The couple spent a lot of time at the hotel while Nolan sought a divorce from his wife, Avasinia. Once the divorce was final, Duncan, and Nolan planned to marry.
HOTEL LANKERSHIM c. 1925
At 6:30 pm on the evening of June 17, 1931, Mrs. Helen Burleson, visiting from San Francisco, left her upper floor room, and headed to Nolan’s room on the second floor. She wanted to consult with him on a private matter. When she stepped into the room, she saw Nolan and Grace. Drunk. The lovers quarreled. The shouting reached a crescendo, and Nolan shoved Duncan out of the room. Then threw her coat into the hallway after her.
Grace and Helen went to Helen’s room, where they discussed Nolan’s violent behavior. Grace wanted to inform on him to the LAPD brass, but Helen talked her out of it.
While Grace and Helen talked, a trio of traveling salesmen, Robert V. Williams, Dan Smith, and Jimmy Balfe, went up to Robert’s room to catch a ball game on the radio. Robert said, “After a while, the lights went on in a room across the light well and we saw two women enter the room. Smith said he recognized Mrs. Burleson, and he telephoned to her room and asked her if she wanted to come over and listen to the radio. Mrs. Duncan was with her, and I don’t believe the two were in the room five minutes before Nolan burst in.”
“The ball game had ended, and I had dialed some music. It was about 10:30 o’clock. Mrs. Duncan and I were dancing. Nolan walked right up to her and said, ‘What do you mean by making up to this fellow?’ He pushed her over on the bed. Then he turned to me and said, ‘I saw you kissing her.’ Then he hit me. I staggered back into the bathroom.”
In a drunken rage, Nolan shoved Williams onto the bathroom floor.
Nolan shouted obscenities and waved his service weapon around. Williams stayed in the bathroom and locked the door. The other occupants of the room fled into the hallway, where they watched through the doorway as Nolan beat and kicked Grace. The woman’s screams were loud enough to bring Floyd Riley, a bellboy, up to the 8th floor. He didn’t want to confront Nolan, either. He said, “He looked like a wild man to me. His eyes gleamed, and he cursed incoherently. I could smell liquor on his breath.”
Grace rolled over onto her stomach, but the beating continued. At one point, Smith yelled at Nolan to stop, but was told to, “mind your own business.” Addressing no one in particular, he declared, “I’ve done everything for this woman. I’ve paid for her room, bought her food, and paid installments on her car.”
In his mind, his financial contributions entitled him to beat her. The terrified witnesses watched as he drew his revolver and beat her over the head until she stopped moving. Then he fired two shots into the floor. Grace did not flinch. She was dead.
Once Nolan’s rage subsided, Wilson, Balfe, Smith, and Riley cautiously approached him. He allowed himself to be escorted to his second-floor room. He muttered the entire way that he loved Grace, but her battered body told a different story—one of uncontrollable jealousy, rage, and bad booze. After arriving at his room, he downed several more glasses of gin, then he passed out on the floor.
Nolan was charged with murder.
Grace’s two daughters, Edna (17) and Mary Jane (14) visited “Daddy” Nolan in jail. Sobbing in grief or self-pity, Nolan wrapped his arms around the girls. The girls told officers he was always good to them. A judge denied Nolan permission to enter an insanity plea, and jury selection began on November 9th. With several eye-witnesses to the fatal beating, it didn’t seem Nolan had much of a chance to beat the rap. Helen testified Nolan was in a frenzied rage when he cornered Grace.
Attorneys for Nolan tried twice more to get permission to enter an additional plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, but the judge denied the motions. When the insanity plea went nowhere, Nolan took the stand and said that he had no memory of anything after he threw Grace out of his room.
Following four hours of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced Nolan to life. He was lucky; the prosecution wanted him to hang.
Nolan entered San Quentin on January 9, 1932. He gave his profession as prop man. Disgraced cops are not welcome If he was smart, Nolan never mentioned his decade on the Los Angeles Police Department to his cellmates.
On February 1, 1932, the State Board of Prison Terms and Paroles denied Nolan’s request for release. The Board informed him he would have to serve 10 calendar years before they would review his application again.
They released Nolan in early March 1942. He did not enjoy his freedom for long. He died on July 20, 1943 in a VA facility in San Francisco.
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. At 17 she married David Wrather, and they had a son, David, Jr.
Jeanne Axford (L) with her cousin Clara. Photo from Ancestry
JEANNE’S EARLY YEARS
In 1922, after training in New Mexico, Jeanne worked as a nurse in Amarillo, Texas. According to Jeanne, David abused her. She and David divorced in 1924; she won custody of their son.
In 1925, Jeanne married again. That marriage, too, failed. Rumors have circulated that Jeanne appeared in a film, yet she remains absent from the Internet Movie Database, even under an alias. She may have appeared in uncredited roles. Whether she appeared in movies, Jeanne had an interesting Hollywood connection. She worked as a private nurse for Marion Wilson, Rudolph Valentino’s last date, maybe his last love. Known as the “Woman in Black” for many years, Marion put flowers on Valentino’s grave each year on the anniversary of his death.
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. The dissolution of 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 new law in Mexico provided for a final decree by proxy. Neither Jeanne nor Curtis needed to appear in court.
WHERE IS JEANNE?
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 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.”
By the mid-1940s, Jeanne had unspecified medical issues, possibly a hysterectomy. In pain, she turned to alchohol and drugs.
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.
ANOTHER LOS ANGELES WOMAN IS MURDERED
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 battered, 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 hours, police identified the victim as forty-five-year-old Jeanne French of 3535 Military Avenue. Near her body they found a black plastic purse, like the one Elizabeth Short carried. Inside was a lone penny, some hairpins, and handwritten notes.
The area where they discovered her was a type of Lover’s Lane, situated seven miles from the location on Norton Street where they found Elizabeth Short.
Police speculated her attacker stripped Jeanne naked in a parked car and then beat her. He struck her multiple times after she staggered from the vehicle. Then he dragged her body into the field, some feet from the highway, where he then wrote his obscene message on her torso. Afterwards, he stomped on her chest so hard he left a clear shoe print behind.
He threw her clothing on top of her. A powder blue coat trimmed with fox fur and a burgundy dress. Except for her bra, they did not find any underwear. She wore no stockings.
Her slayer arranged her shoes, one on either side of her head, about 10 feet from her body.
Detectives gather at the scene of Jeanne’s murder
Someone savagely beat Jeanne. She suffered blows to her head administered by a metal blunt instrument—a socket wrench or tire iron. 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. Heel prints marked her chest. One of her ribs pierced a lung. It took a long time for Jeanne to die. The coroner said she gradually bled to death.
Jeanne was probably unconscious after the first blows to her head, so she may not have witnessed her killer take the deep red lipstick from her purse, or 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.
On the night before she died, Jeanne visited Frank at his apartment and they’d quarreled. She and Frank recently separated. Frank said they planned a 6-month trial separation to see if they could work out their problems. Jeanne arrived drunk at Frank’s apartment and he said she started the fight, then hit him with her purse and left.
Jeanne’s twenty-five-year-old son, David Wrather, 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.”
Both Frank and David had a history of abusing Jeanne. Neighbors heard violent arguments between Jeanne and David, as well as with Frank. Neither of them treated her with kindness or respect.
Jeanne’s neighbors knew her as a hard partying, mouthy drunk. The local bars she frequented confirmed Jeanne’s belligerence. Loud, profane, and promiscuous, Jeanne hung out with a rough crowd. The men she knew took advantage of her. She courted danger, and according to Frank, she feared nothing and no one. Her alcoholism and drug use suggest she was committing suicide, one drink and one needle at a time.
Despite his declaration of innocence, police booked Frank for murder. Then, as now, a woman is most likely to be killed by her husband or a lover. The forty-seven-year-old former Marine gunnery sergeant was arrested days earlier for viciously beating Jeanne, resulting in blackened eyes and a broken arm. Police cleared him when his landlady confirmed he was in his apartment at the time of the murder; and his shoe prints failed to match those found on Jeanne’s chest.
Police traced Jeanne’s whereabouts for part of the night. Ray Fecher, the operator of a drive-in café at 11925 Santa Monica Blvd., told detectives Jeanne came in between 9:30 and 10:00 p.m. Sunday. She drank coffee and chatted with Fecher. “She said her husband was sadistic. She said he liked ‘dark things,’ and had beaten her several times. Then she raised a pair of dark glasses she was wearing to show me a couple of black eyes she said he had given her.”
After she left the drive-in, Jeanne entered a bar at 10421 Venice Blvd. According to Earl Holmes, the bartender, in a loud voice, she announced her plan to commit Frank to the neuropsychiatric ward at the Sawtelle Veterans Hospital the next day. She had threatened Frank with hospitalization before, and he beat her. As abusive as their relationship was, Frank was not her killer.
Jeanne was last seen seated at the first stool nearest the entrance of the Pan American Bar on West Washington Place. The bartender told police Jeanne took a stool next to a smallish man with a dark complexion. The bartender assumed they were a couple because he saw them leave together at closing time.
Fuck You. B.D.
Jeanne did not drive herself to the place of her death; someone took her there. Police found her cut-down 1929 Ford roadster in the parking lot of a drive-in restaurant, the Piccadilly at Washington Place and Sepulveda Blvd. Witnesses said 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.
Even though Jeanne was not sexually assaulted, police rousted scores of sex degenerates. The brutality of the crime and the fact that she was found naked led the police to infer a sexual motive. None of the men rose to the level of a serious suspect. Officers also checked out local Chinese restaurants after the autopsy revealed that Jeanne ate a Chinese meal before her death.
THE RED LIPSTICK MURDER GOES COLD
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 re-investigate the case.
Frank Jemison and Walter Morgan worked on Jeanne’s murder for eight months, but they never closed it. They found a few suspects. One of the most promising suspects was a man who was seen with Jeanne on the night of her death. The man submitted to a lie detector test, but the examiner told detectives the subject was one of a small percentage of people who could beat the test. They never cleared the man, but neither did they arrest him.
Like the murder of Elizabeth Short, there have been no leads in Jeanne French’s case in decades. Their killers took their bloody secrets to their graves.
The investigation into Beth Short’s murder grew colder every day. Police investigated all the crackpots who claimed responsibility for the heinous crime. They went through stacks of letters and postcards that named potential suspects and offered various theories about the culprit. They rousted local sex offenders and searched in vain for the crime scene. If only the killer would confess.
On February 8, 1947, Joseph Dumais, an Army Corporal, came forward and admitted he dated Beth Short. Not only had they dated, he was sure he had killed her. The Herald announced “Corporal Dumais Is Black Dahlia Killer.” The story began, “Army Corporal Joseph Dumais, 29, of Fort Dix, N.J., is definitely the murderer of ‘The Black Dahlia,’ army authorities at Fort Dix announced today.”
Dumais returned to Fort Dix wearing blood-stained trousers with his pockets crammed full of clippings about the murder. In a hand-written 50-page confession, he claimed he dated Beth five days before the discovery of her body—then he suffered a mental blackout.
Joseph Dumais
The good-looking corporal seemed like the real deal. Army Capt. William R. Florence, head of the Fort Dix Criminal Investigation Department, said, “I am definitely convinced that this man is the murderer.” In his zeal to be the one to solve the gruesome murder, Capt. Florence overlooked the superficial nature of Dumais’ answers to his questions. Dumais had only to read the news coverage of the case, and then unleash his imagination to be credible in the short run. When Florence asked, “Does it seem to you at this time that you committed this crime? Dumais answered yes. But as Dumais stated earlier, he blacked out and recalled nothing until he arrived at Penn Station.
Getting to the nitty-gritty details, the Capt. asked, “Do you know how her body was mutilated?” Dumais said he did, but did not wish to describe the injuries. Again, Capt. Florence asked Dumais if he could have committed the murder. Dumais replied, “Yes, it is possible because of my actions in the past.”
In his confession, Dumais told Army authorities he stabbed Beth in the back and around the mouth, then severed her body with a meat cleaver. He washed the body of blood and dumped it in a vacant lot in Leimert Park.
Dumais’s story was riddled with holes. He said he had a date with Beth in San Francisco on January 9 or 10, but could not explain how he got to Los Angeles and then back to Fort Dix. Further questions revealed Dumais to be a blackout drunk. He said he was “rough on the girls” when he had been drinking. Dumais’s credibility eroded with each new statement.
On February 10th, as Dumais’s story unraveled, Los Angeles awakened to the news of another brutal murder of a woman. The Herald put out an extra edition with the headline, “Werewolf Strikes Again! Kills L.A. Woman, Writes B.D. on Body”.
The victim of the “Werewolf Killer” was forty-five-year-old Jeanne French. Her nude body was discovered at 8 a.m. on February 10, 1947, near Grand View Avenue and Indianapolis Street in West L.A. Police were frustrated and overworked. The women of Los Angeles were terrified. What the hell was going on?
Detectives at the scene of Jeanne French’s murder.
On January 17, 1947, newspapers stopped using the werewolf murder headlines and started calling Elizabeth Short the Black Dahlia. Aggie Underwood chased down leads until, out-of-the-blue, her editor benched her. Sitting on the sidelines while the biggest murder case in decades unfolded drove Aggie crazy. She needed to be in the field, not sitting in the newsroom working on an embroidery project.
Then, without warning, Aggie was once back on the case. They gave her no explanation, but she didn’t care. She had just a minute to get back up to speed when they called her into the manager’s office. They benched her again, but this time, they gave her a reason. They promoted her to city editor of the Evening Herald and Express.
Aggie Underwood–City Editor
Some people believe Aggie’s promotion was a conspiracy to remove her from the case. Why? Because she knew too much. That is nonsense. Whatever she knew, she reported; and while she was no longer in the field, she oversaw the city room and all its reporters.
Police interviewed anyone acquainted with Beth. Harold Frank Costa 31, Donald Leyes 22, Marvin Margolis 27, and William Robinson, 25, admitted to knowing her in Hollywood–living, but they had nothing of substance to offer, and none of them was a suspect.
On January 18, Edward Glen Thorpe became a suspect when George Bennett claimed to have overheard him say, “I forgot to cut the scar off her leg,” while they traveled on a northbound bus in Merced. Police cleared Thorpe.
Also on the 18th, Beth’s mother, Phoebe Short, and her daughters, Eleanore, Dorthea, and Muriel, arrived in Los Angeles. They stayed for a few days, then took a United Air Lines flight to Berkeley to join Virginia West; the sister Beth told Red Manley she was going to meet at the Biltmore. She had not seen Virginia in several years.
Reporters and police interviewed the Frenches in San Diego, where Beth spent the last month of her life. According to them, Beth spent most of her time writing letters. She claimed to look for work, but there is no evidence she did.
When detectives searched Beth’s suitcases, they found a telegram from Mrs. Matt Gordon, Sr. of Pueblo, Colorado. Dated August 22, 1945, it read, “Just received word from War Department that Matt killed in crash. Our deepest sympathy is with you.”
Matt, a major, served with the 1st Fighter Squadron 2nd Air Command. During his time in the service, Matt received the Silver Star Medal, Air Medal, Distinguished Flying Cross, and Bronze Star. He died a few weeks before the official end of WWII.
Beth told many lies, but her feelings about Matt were real. He clearly felt something for her, too, or his mother would never have sent her such a personal telegram. Unfortunately, Beth wore out her welcome with Matt’s family by asking for money.
Major Matt Gordon
Police identified a photo of Joseph Gordon Fickling they found in Beth’s belongings. They located him in Charlotte, NC. In a phone call, Fickling told investigators an airline employed him since Nov 9, 1946 and knew nothing about Beth during her last few weeks. Like several other people in her life, Fickling sought to distance himself from the high-profile murder.
When police called on Beth’s father, Cleo Short, he said he hadn’t seen her in four years. “I want nothing to do with this. I broke off with the mother and the family several years ago. My wife wanted it that way. I provided a trust fund for their support when I left. Five years ago, Elizabeth wrote to me. I sent her some money, and she came out here. We set up housekeeping in Vallejo. But she wouldn’t stay home. In 1943, I told her to go her way, I’d go mine.” Cleo never provided for his family. He fled when his miniature golf business went belly-up, and he never looked back. He was a miserable man, bitter and uncaring. His family deserved better.
Heartbroken and exhausted, Phoebe appeared fragile as she testified at the inquest. When asked when she was first notified that her daughter died, Phoebe blurted, “She was murdered.”
On January 25, the Los Angeles Times reported on Beth’s funeral in Oakland, CA. “Fog swirled about her hillside grave as Elizabeth Short was buried today with only her relatives to mourn the 22-year-old victim of a mutiliation slaying.”
On the day of the funeral, a local newspaper summed up the status of the investigation. “Nine days of intensive investigation still left police detectives today without any tangible clues in the mutilation killing of 22-year-old Elizabeth Short.”
NEXT TIME: Beth’s purse is found, and the Black Dahlia Avenger sends a postcard.
