The Murder Complex, Part 4

THE LADY VANISHES

Thomas told anyone who asked him that the last time he saw Grace was on February 21, 1925.  They had stopped at a roadhouse, the Plantation Grill, for drinks and dancing. National Prohibition may have been the law, but it was simple enough to find a cocktail if you wanted one.

Entrance to speakeasy.

Thomas saw a group of people enter the café and recognized a woman named Nina. He had known her for several years. He spent some time chatting with her. Thomas said that Grace became unreasonably jealous and they started to argue.  Rather than make a public scene, they left the roadhouse and continued their argument in the car until they reached Western and Eighth Streets where they made up. Instead of calling it a night, they went to the Biltmore Hotel where there was an orchestra and dancing.

When they arrived at the Biltmore, Grace excused herself to go to the ladies’ room. Thomas waited, but she never returned.

Thomas reported Grace missing, and he also hired a private investigator. He maintained that Grace had left for Paris or New York to seek a divorce. According to Thomas, she carried with her $126,000 in Liberty bonds.  Thomas said Grace would return when she was ready. Then he went on with his life as if nothing had happened.

Biltmore Hotel

A couple of days after Grace disappeared, Thomas asked Patrick to accompany him to the Beverly Glen cabin because he said he needed to pour a concrete floor in the cistern which he claimed was leaking. Patrick welcomed any activity that would distract him from worrying about his mother.  He mixed and poured the cement while Thomas smoothed it out.

Over the next few weeks Thomas arranged parties and other social events for Patrick to “keep his mind off things.”  Among the guests at the soirees was Thomas’ attractive young office assistant, Dorothy Leopold.

When Grace’s father Frank first got word that she was missing, he felt in his gut that something horrible had happened to her. He wanted to force a confrontation with Thomas, so he filed a legal request to become Patrick’s guardian. If the guardianship request was meant to fluster Thomas, it failed.  Thomas said that it was up to Patrick to choose a guardian.

Patrick didn’t want his grandfather to be his guardian, so he named an attorney he knew to take charge of his legal affairs until Grace returned. As a further slap in the face to his mother’s family, Patrick stated his preference was to live with his stepfather.

Weeks went by with no sign of Grace. Then suddenly, Patrick began receiving letters from her with New York postmarks. In the letters, she said that her family was keeping her from Thomas and that they knew where she was. Patrick was conflicted. He loved his mother’s family but Thomas had been very good to him.  He had even bought him a new Chrysler.

By June, Grace’s family, joined by her friends from the Ebell Club and trust company officers from the bank, appealed to District Attorney Asa Keyes to launch a sweeping investigation.

Original Ebell Club located on Figueroa. By C.C. Pierce & Co. – http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/p15799coll65/id/3021, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30848484

THE INVESTIGATION

On June 12th, an investigation into Grace’s mysterious disappearance, spearheaded by the D.A., kicked into high gear. Los Angeles Police Department officers interviewed residents of Beverly Glen.  Among those interviewed were Donald Mead and Kenneth Selby. The boys related to police what they had witnessed that February night. If it had been Thomas creeping around in the cabin in total darkness, it may have been construed as odd, but it didn’t mean he was guilty of anything.

Adjacent to the Young cabin was a well which supplied water to several surrounding cabins. The water was drawn using a gasoline pump and was piped to the surrounding cabins.  Residents told police it had been an open well until February, when Dr. Young had sealed it with a concrete floor.  They thought that it was strange that although the water had always been clean and pure, after the floor was installed the water began to emit a putrid stench.   One of the residents said:  “The water never began to smell until a few months ago.  No, we cannot use it, not even for shower baths or for dishwashing.  It is slightly discolored and when drawn, a yellowish, smelling sediment settles in it.  We have no idea what caused this sudden change in the water.”

There were so many questions about the Beverly Glen cabin that police felt it was time to conduct a search there. The cabin held several intriguing clues; a one-ounce bottle of Novocain secreted near the fireplace, and bloodstains in a bedroom.

Prior to the search, Thomas made a cryptic statement: “I hold the key to this situation and I have burned my bridges behind me.”

While many still had doubts about what had happened to Grace, District Attorney Asa Keyes was not among them: “I am as certain as I am sitting here that Mrs. Young is dead – that she has been murdered.  By whom she was slain we do not know. That we are trying to determine.”

Following their search of the cabin, authorities decided to break up the concrete in the cistern. They made a gruesome discovery.

NEXT TIME: Grace is found.

Film Noir Friday: Crime Inc. [1945]

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. Today’s feature is BRUTE FORCE starring Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, Charles Bickford, Yvonne De Carlo, Ella Raines, Ann Blyth, Anita Colby and introducing Howard Duff.

Enjoy the movie!

TCM says:

In the mid-1930s, after two of his henchmen are shot down in a café, New York racketeer Bugs Kelly confides to reporter Jim Riley that a newly formed crime syndicate committed the murders after he refused to join. Unknown to Bugs, the syndicate’s boss, who hides his illegal activities by posing as the president of National Brokers, Inc., a phony company, has also ordered Bugs’s execution. When the order to kill Bugs is issued, however, one of Bugs’s men overhears “finger man” Tony Marlow passing the word to Barry North, a racketeer posing as an exporter, and alerts Bugs. Bugs kidnaps Tony, a nightclub owner, and forces him to arrange a rendezvous with the hoodlum who was hired to kill him.

 

The Murder Complex, Part 3

Thomas Young

Thomas complained often that Grace had wanted to “be the boss” ever since they had said their I dos, and he resented her for it. The truth was that Thomas was sly and manipulative and had an unhealthy interest in the fortune Grace and Patrick shared.

At least Thomas was a decent stepfather.  He worked hard to ingratiate himself with Patrick, and he was successful. Patrick was very attached to Thomas. But while Patrick was becoming fonder of Thomas, Grace was growing fearful of him.

In late 1924 or early 1925, Grace asked her father, Frank Hunt, to meet with her. She went over to his apartment on Irolo Street and picked him up to go for a drive.  She told him that she didn’t want to have a private conversation anywhere but in her car. She was afraid that Thomas had placed a Dictaphone in the house.

If Frank thought his daughter was being paranoid without cause, he changed his mind after he heard her out.

As they drove around, Grace told Frank of the indignities Thomas had forced on her. She told him of intimate photographs which Thomas had taken. He bullied her into posing in ways that sickened her. But Grace couldn’t see a way out. Thomas had threatened to kill her if she ever told anyone how he treated her.  He had also threatened to take Patrick away or to have her committed to Patton State Insane Asylum. Grace knew Thomas well enough to be convinced that these were not idle threats.

Father and daughter tried to formulate a plan that would get her to safety, but in the end they were immobilized by their fear of Thomas’ retaliation.

Frank hadn’t known about the photos, but he was aware of an incident which had occurred several weeks earlier – in fact he and Grace had talked about it at the time.

At Thomas’ request, Patrick had visited him in his office to have a tooth filled.  Almost immediately following the procedure, Patrick became violently ill. His face swelled up to an abnormal size and he was in excruciating pain.  Frank didn’t think that his grandson would “make it for another thirty days” and he was convinced that Thomas had intentionally given Patrick a slow poison to “get him out of the way.”

After conferring with her father and in direct opposition to Thomas’ wishes, Grace brought in Dr. J.A. Le Deux, who actually saved Patrick’s life.

Was Patrick’s close call attempted murder?  Neither Frank nor Grace wanted to say anything to him without proof.

Patrick was unaware of his mother’s and grandfather’s fears about his safety. He liked and trusted Thomas. Perhaps that is why, when Grace suddenly disappeared in February 1925, he didn’t question Thomas’ assertion that Grace had left him. And if Thomas said Grace would return, then of course she would.  Wouldn’t she?

NEXT TIME: The lady vanishes.

The Murder Complex, Part 2

Patrick, Grace, Thomas

Thomas Young, named after his father, was born on December 21, 1877. Thomas was the second of four children — he had an older brother, Alexander, and two younger sisters.

The Young’s were well respected in their Franklin, Pennsylvania neighborhood and there did not appear to be any issues with the children while growing up. Why did two brothers, with a seemingly normal upbringing, become criminals?

Alexander was the first of the brothers to take a turn toward the dark side.  He died in a bizarre murder suicide on his honeymoon in Washington, Pennsylvania on July 8, 1903.  He had been serving as pastor of the Presbyterian church in Edgemont, South Dakota when he met a local school teacher, Grace Dunlap. They began a relationship and became engaged to be married.

Grace left her home on July 1, 1903 for the city of Lincoln where she was supposed to have her eyes treated for an unspecified condition.  Instead she traveled nearly two thousand miles to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania were she and Alexander were married. The couple left immediately after the ceremony for nearby Washington, Pennsylvania and checked into a hotel.  Visitors and members of the hotel staff heard a commotion in the Young’s room during the night but did not investigate.

The next morning, when Alexander and Grace failed to appear as expected, staff opened the door to their room and found them dead. Grace lay on the bed.  She had been shot twice through the heart.  Alexander was sprawled out on the floor.  He had been shot in the heart.  His hands were thrown over his head and in one of them he clutched a .32-caliber revolver.  According to a newspaper account, Alexander was “a rascal in the fullest sense of the term.”  He had “played crooked in a financial way in places where he was employed before going to Edgemont, South Dakota.” It seemed that Alexander had been married previously but he didn’t end it honorably. He had abandoned his wife and infant son, never bothering to obtain a divorce.

Within a year following Alexander’s death, Thomas began to experience visitations from his elder brother.  Thomas would later describe the visits:

“I would see my brother’s vision just as I dropped off to sleep.  It always appeared in a large hall.  And I was always in the back of the hall and he was always up in the right corner.  I could tell it was my brother by his form.”

Alexander’s visits coincided with what Thomas thought of as his “murder complex,” a self-diagnosed condition he’d had since he was a child. The so-called murder complex was Thomas’ overwhelming desire to kill anyone who wronged him.

Throughout his life he felt that he was a loser, always picked on and beaten. The murder complex provided him with a vision of revenge and victory over his perceived tormentors.

Thomas wasn’t frightened by his brother’s visits, but they were unsettling. Alexander seemed to be trying to speak, but he either failed, or he spoke so softly that Thomas couldn’t hear him. Could he have been trying to warn Thomas about the murder complex, or was he encouraging it?

In 1910, Thomas, driven by Alexander’s unrelenting visitations, left Pittsburgh to practice dentistry in New Castle, and subsequently in Ambridge and then in Washington, Pennsylvania before leaving for New Mexico and then Texas. He moved from city to city, Alexander always in his dreams, in restless pursuit of something he could neither articulate, nor outrun.

Thomas married twice before finally settling in Los Angeles — where he met Grace.

Grace and her son Patrick were living in an apartment in the Alvarado. The building was one of many built by her late husband.

People who knew of Thomas’ interest in Grace were a little surprised by Thomas’ audacity in courting a woman who was clearly out of his league. She was beautiful. Thomas was average. He wasn’t a large man His hair was receding and he peered out from behind round glasses frames that perched his rather bulbous nose. Despite his physical shortcomings, Thomas made a good impression.  He wasn’t devoid of charm and he always dressed extremely well.

Even if he had only a slender chance, Thomas dedicated himself to winning Grace’s love.  He wasn’t well off, but he put up a good front. He rented a suite of offices in a plush downtown building, hoping to impress Grace, who had a fortune at her command, with his successful dental practice.  He obviously put on a convincing show.  The couple didn’t court for long before they were married.

When did Thomas’ façade of successful dentist and loving husband develop deep fissures?  At what point did Grace realize that the man she had married wasn’t who or what she thought he was?

The Murder Complex, Part 1

GRACE HUNT

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 was so successful in the olive business that the press had christened him the “Olive King,” and with beautiful Grace at his side, he had a queen worthy of his stature. 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, or it may have been due to any number of other private problems. Whatever their reasons, the couple was 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 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 socially, 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 strange to us now in these days of no-fault divorce and “conscious uncoupling” (a phrase coined 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 ended their marriage.

The couple’s family and intimate friends would likely 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.

As it happened, Grace’s claim to widowhood would edge closer to the truth when Charles died of apoplexy (internal bleeding – perhaps due to 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. Grace was responsible for administering Patrick’s monthly allowance, the princely sum of $800 per month, until he turned 25.  Grace and Charles had come to an agreement upon their divorce. Grace surrendered her rights of inheritance if Charles would pay her approximately $3000 per year.  Additionally, the couple agreed that 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 nearly three quarter of a million dollars today. And Patrick’s monthly allowance is currently 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 socially prominent. She would make a wonderful wife for the right man. Tragically, the wrong man courted and won her.

NEXT TIME: The Murder Complex continues.

Film Noir Friday — Saturday Matinee: Brute Force [1947]

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. Today’s feature is BRUTE FORCE starring Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, Charles Bickford, Yvonne De Carlo, Ella Raines, Ann Blyth, Anita Colby and introducing Howard Duff.

Enjoy the movie!

TCM says:

Captain Munsey, the prison captain of the Westgate Penitentiary, is despised by inmates and prison officials alike for his brutal treatment of the inmates. While Munsey’s enemies include prison doctor Walters and Warden Barnes, he is supported by some inmate stool pigeons. One of the stool pigeons, Wilson, is killed when a group of prisoners force him into the workshop steel press. As living conditions at the prison continue to deteriorate, some of the inmates, including leader Joe Collins, who landed in prison for stealing money to support his wheelchair-bound wife, Spencer, Tom Lister and Soldier, plan a breakout.

 

The Murder Complex, Prologue

Thursday, February 19, 1925

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, the silence in Beverly Glen was broken only by the sounds of nature; a coyote’s howl, or the powerful beating of an owl’s wings.  But this night the boys heard the rumble of a car engine. That was unusual, as there wasn’t much traffic in the Glen.  It was a quiet, semi-rural enclave about twenty miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles; the place where many well-to-do local residents 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.

(ca. 1925) – View showing a car on an 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.

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 that the cabin belonged to Dr. Thomas Young, a Los Angeles dentist, but it was too dark to positively identify the driver who appeared to be male. Maybe it was the doctor — maybe not. No matter, the boys were enjoying 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, because the man was hunched over and appeared to be having difficulty lifting it. Perhaps the boys were speculating about the box’s contents as they watched. 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 furtively scanned the area. Evidently satisfied that he was alone, he returned to his car and retrieved a gunny sack.  It was large and filled with something the boys couldn’t identify. The sack must not have been as heavy as the box because the man was able to sling 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 were barely able to contain their curiosity. Who was the man …and 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 wouldn’t give the strange man another thought until they were questioned by police six months later.

NEXT TIME: The Murder Complex continues.

Film Noir Friday — Sunday Matinee: Manhandled [1949]

Welcome to Film Noir Friday — Sunday Matinee! 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 MANHANDLED starring Dorothy Lamour, Dan Duryea and Sterling Hayden.  Enjoy the movie!

TCM says:

Unemployed writer Alton Bennet tells psychiatrist Dr. Redman about his nightmares, in which he dreams that he murders his wealthy wife Ruth with a heavy perfume bottle. Redman’s secretary, Merl Kramer, takes notes as Bennet denies coveting his wife’s jewels, which are worth $100,000. After Bennet is refused an advance from his publishers, he becomes jealous of Ruth’s close relationship with handsome young architect Guy Bayard, who is designing their new beach house.

 

Too Many Cooks, Conclusion

Their failure to solve the June 22, 1947 murder of Bugsy Siegel still rankled members of the Beverly Hills Police Department.  None of them wanted to suffer the frustration of another high profile cold case.  They were committed to solving Katie Hayden’s murder and they weren’t above asking for help. Many of the smaller Los Angeles county police departments, like Beverly Hills, were unaccustomed to conducting murder investigations so they enlisted the aid of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department homicide bureau.

Rutherford Leon Bennett (R) and Nathaniel Smith (L). Photo courtesy of LAPL.

Despite his protestations of innocence, Rutherford Leon Bennett was a promising suspect. The Hayden’s had recently dismissed Rutherford as their cook when he failed to perform to their expectations. He said he phoned Samuel Hayden for a reference, but his call could have been interpreted as an attempt to extort money from his former boss for his firing.  Rutherford was arrested and booked on suspicion of murder. His roommate, Nathaniel Smith, was taken into custody but released after an intense interrogation proved that he had no part in the crime.

Rutherford submitted to a lie detector test. He passed, but that wasn’t enough to satisfy the police. There are people who can defeat a polygraph – maybe Rutherford was one of them. Police weren’t about to kick him loose unless or until they had a better suspect.

Margaret and Rutherford. Photo courtesy LAPL.

Peggy King, Rutherford’s replacement as the Hayden’s cook, was an obvious suspect because she was the only person in the house when Katie was murdered. But where was her motive?  She had only been in the Hayden’s employ for three days.

Police learned that Peggy was also known as (Mrs.) Margaret Moore.  Margaret was a relative newcomer to Los Angeles. She left her home in Houston, Texas in 1954 following a separation from her husband.  Her father, Samuel Johnson, was a prominent figure in Houston’s Baptist church community. Nothing in Margaret’s background marked her as someone capable of hacking her employer to death with a hatchet.   Still, police were obliged to subject her to the same scrutiny they gave Rutherford.

Detective Sergeant Ray Hopkinson of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s homicide bureau assisted in the investigation. He said that one of Margaret’s male friends, with whom she had recently quarreled, had been located and was able to account for his whereabouts. One more suspect eliminated.

The police weren’t entirely satisfied with Margaret’s description of events.  Since there was no one who could confirm or deny her story the police had to find another way to get at the truth. In her closet they found the dress that Margaret was wearing the day of the murder. It was spattered with what appeared to be blood. Even if the blood was Katie’s, it didn’t necessarily mean that Margaret was a killer.

Margaret’s alibi, that she had been vacuuming in another part of the house while Katie was being butchered, didn’t hold together when police realized that the killer would have had to pass Margaret to get to Katie.

Margaret had a date with the polygraph machine on February 11, 1955.  Investigators hoped that the polygraph, the ultimate truth or dare device in a murder investigation, would reveal Margaret’s lies — if she was telling any.  The former cook was questioned for over 90 minutes. The examiner concluded that Margaret was being deceptive in her answers.

Detectives used Margaret’s lies against her.  It didn’t take long for her to break down and confess. But why had she done it?

Margaret. Photo courtesy LAPL.

According to Margaret the murder was the result of a heated argument she had with Katie about how to bone a roast. Katie was supervising Margaret in the kitchen and lost patience with her. In a fit of pique Katie snatched the small ax Margaret was using out of her hands and attempted to give her a demonstration.

“I had gotten the ax to cut the bone in the roast.  During the argument Mrs. Hayden took the ax from me and tried to show me how to do it.”  Margaret said.

“She (Katie) continued arguing with me and then I took the ax from her and struck her on the head.  She didn’t fall after I struck her once and then I struck her again and again.  I don’t know how many times I struck her after that. . .”

Margaret may have lost count of the blows it took to shatter Katie’s skull, but Dr. Newbarr, who conducted Katie’s autopsy, said that the sharp end of the ax had been used to inflict 20 to 30 cuts to her head and face.  Then the butt end of the ax was used to fracture her lower left jaw and her upper left collarbone.

The vicious attack sent Katie to the kitchen floor in a bloody heap.  “I stood over her for more than 10 minutes,” Margaret said.  “I was dazed.”

She wasn’t too dazed to formulate a plan to escape detection. As Katie lay dying in a widening pool of blood, Margaret went upstairs and ransacked her employer’s room.  “I opened all the drawers in the dressers and scattered clothing about the floor to make it appear that someone had broken in the house,” she told detectives.

While Margaret was yanking out dresser drawers and throwing clothing around Katie’s room, the telephone rang.  The caller was one of Katie’s daughters, Rose Furstman.  Margaret answered the phone and told her that someone had come in and killed her mother.  Then she hung up.  Rose lived at 1041 Hilts Avenue in West Los Angeles, barely two miles away from her parents’ home.  It must have been an agonizing drive over to her parent’s home.

Margaret used the few minutes before Rose arrived to wipe her bloody hands clean with a dust rag.  She tossed the rag and the ax into the kitchen sink, then she began to scream.

Margaret’s unholy wailing drew the attention of the half a dozen landscapers that were in the Hayden’s backyard installing a sprinkler system. When they got to the kitchen they found Margaret standing near Katie’s body. There was blood everywhere.

Margaret’s explanation for the murder was that her nerves were on edge because her common-law husband of two years had left her. Margaret’s two-year relationship was nothing compared to the 49 years that Samuel and Katie had spent together. The couple would have celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in August.

Margaret comforted by her brother, Milton Johnson. Photo courtesy LAPL.

Roy King, the man Margaret called husband, showed up at the Beverly Hills Jail to comfort her. Her brother, Milton Johnson, also came to the jail to show support.

With Margaret’s confession in hand the cops breathed a sigh of relief. Their part was done. Now it was up to the courts to decide her fate.

There was talk of an insanity plea, so Dr. Marcus Crahan, County Jail psychiatrist, examined Margaret. After questioning her for 45 minutes Crahan said: “She is normal mentally.”

Margaret in tears. Photo courtesy LAPL.

With the confession and Dr. Crahan’s report against her, Margaret appeared before Judge Stanley Mosk and withdrew her earlier plea of innocent by reason of insanity and waived her right to a jury trial.  It was a smart move, she likely would have fared much worse with a jury than she did with Judge Mosk.  He heard the case without a jury and found Margaret guilty of second degree murder and sentenced to a term of from five years to life in state prison.

Film Noir Friday: Slightly Honorable [1939]

 

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 SLIGHTLY HONORABLE starring Pat O’Brien, Edward Arnold, Broderick Crawford and Ruth Terry. This film was directed by Tay Garnet who, seven years later, would direct THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE.  Enjoy the movie!

TCM says:

Attorney John Webb is fighting the corruption of a political ring led by Vincent Cushing, a newspaper publisher who has become very wealthy through graft. Webb’s only ally is his law partner, Russ Sampson. While at the state capitol to enlist the aid of Senator Scott, the two meet Alma Brehmer, Cushing’s mistress and a law client of Webb’s. Alma invites them to a party that Cushing is giving at Pete Godeana’s nightclub that night, and Webb accepts. At the club, Webb is impressed by dancer Ann Seymour’s performance in the floor show until he learns that she is only eighteen. Minutes later, he hears Ann scream and sees Godeana slapping the girl. Webb punches Godeana and takes Ann from the club.