Dead Woman Walking: The Duchess

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Deranged

Ninety years following the undeserved hanging of a young Mexican woman named Juanita for the stabbing death of the Americano who was trying to rape her, another woman named Juanita was sentenced to die. They may have shared a name, but the two Juanitas were polar opposites.

Spinelli, known as The Duchess, was the 50-something mother of three, and the leader of a robber gang in Northern California. Her nickname was bestowed upon her by her gang who thought she had a regal air; but to anyone else who had ever met her the nickname had to have seemed ironic because there was nothing royal about Spinelli — neither in her appearance, nor in her actions.

By 1940, Juanita had three children: Lorraine (21), Joseph (17) and Vincent (9). Sure, she had kids, but Spinelli wasn’t anyone’s idea of a warm or loving mother. She had been described as a “scheming, cold, cruel woman” who was the head of an underworld gang, an ex-wrestler and a knife-thrower who could pin a poker chip at 15 paces!

Over the years, Juanita had dragged her kids from the oil fields of Texas, where she’d worked as a waitress and washerwoman, to Salt Lake City where they joined a carnival. Juanita ran a gambling wheel and Lorraine was a snake girl in the sideshow.

After they quit the sideshow, Juanita and the kids hitchhiked north and landed in Kilgore, Idaho. Her son Joseph vaguely recollected that while they were in Kilgore his mother met and married a man named Robinson.The family spent a couple of years in Idaho as sheepherders, then the Duchess moved them all (sans Robinson) to Texas. The kids were an inconvenience, so Juanita placed them in a Catholic children’s home and took off for Mexico. When she finally returned Joseph and Lorraine discovered that they had a new half-brother, Vincent.

The Spinelli’s drifted from Texas to Detroit, Michigan. Lorraine had finally had enough and she ran away to California, but the whole family hitchhiked after her! It wasn’t a mother’s love that compelled Juanita to chase after her daughter, the girl was an earner. When Lorraine wasn’t working in a sideshow Juanita was using her to lure new members into the gang. She may, or may not, have stopped short of actually pimping out Lorraine, but in any event it’s no wonder that the girl had taken off.

At some point during her wanderings the Duchess had picked up a common-law Duke, Michael Simeone, who was about 20 years her junior.

In early April 1940, the unholy clan had committed the robbery of a barbecue stand in San Francisco during which the proprietor was shot and killed. What do you do after you’ve committed a robbery and murder? Well, if you’re the Spinelli gang you go on a picnic to discuss plans for more crimes.

On April 14, 1940, while the gang was picnicking on the banks of the Sacramento River, the Duchess decided that one member of the mob, nineteen year old Robert Sherrad, had a big mouth and that he’d been “talking too much” about the fatal robbery to his barroom companions. Fearing that Sherrad would bring heat down on the gang, Juanita ordered her minions to bump off the potential squealer.

Spinelli slipped chloral hydrate into Sherrad’s whiskey and once he was unconscious the kid was driven to the Freeport Bridge in Sacramento and dumped into the river to drown.

The killers had left Sherrad’s clothes neatly folded on the bank of the river so that it would appear that the young man had committed suicide. The cops weren’t fooled and it didn’t take them long to bust the Duchess and her wretched brood.

Juanita Spinella enters San Quentin [Corbis photo]

Juanita Spinelli, Michael Siomeone and Gordon Hawkins were tried and sentenced to death for Sherrad’s murder. Another gang member, Albert Ives, was found “innocent by reason of insanity” and sentenced to an asylum.

Spinelli was reprieved a couple of times but, try as he might, Governor Olson couldn’t find a reason to commute her sentence. Eithel Leta Juanita Spinelli was simply too evil to be allowed to live.

Only Spinelli and Simeone would be put to death; and Juanita has the dubious distinction of being the first woman to be executed in California’s lethal gas chamber.

Even San Quentin Warden Clinton Duffy (who was not a death penalty supporter) said of Spinelli: “She was the coldest, hardest character, male or female, that I had ever known, and was utterly lacking in feminine appeal. The Duchess was a hag, as evil as a witch. Horrible to look at, impossible to like, but she was still a woman, and I dreaded the thought of ordering her execution.”

NEXT TIME: Dead Woman Walking continues.

Dead Woman Walking

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Deranged

There have been five executions of women in California since 1851 and, in my opinion, only in this next case was the punishment undeserved.

The first woman to suffer the ultimate penalty was named Juanita — her surname is lost to history.

Gold miners could be a rough and tumble lot, but most of them were decent men chasing a dream. Sadly, Juanita encountered one who meant to do her harm. Juanita was living on her own in a cabin in the small town of Downieville in the Mother Lode country. On the night of July 4,1851, Juanita was awakened by the sound of someone breaking into her home. She only had a few moments in which to decide what to do — so she grabbed a knife and held her breath. The intruder was a man, an Americano, and he intended to rape Juanita. As soon the man had come close enough for Juanita to feel his breath on her, and his hands reach for her, she plunged the knife as far as it would go into his chest. He died on the spot.

Justice was as swift as it was unfair. Juanita was a Mexican and it was illegal for her to raise her hand against an Americano, no matter what the circumstances.

A hastily assembled group of citizens made up the jury and they found Juanita guilty as charged. She was escorted by the jurors, a group of miners and a crowd of curious loafers to a bridge on the outskirts of town. It was determined that the murderess should be hanged from one of the top girders.

One of the crowd assumed the duties of hangman and placed a noose around the doomed woman’s neck. The girl stood on a cross beam at least six feet above the floor of the bridge. She had preserved her honor at the cost of her life. She stared defiantly at her judge and jury. A man stood next to her ready to shove her off the beam.

With unimaginable dignity Juanita turned to her executioner — then she faced the audience. She was smiling.

“Adios, senores” she said, and hurled herself into eternity.

NEXT TIME: Another dead woman walking.

Love, Death — Prison: Conclusion

Posted on February 10, 2013 by Deranged

When Aggie Underwood arrived at Tehachapi Women’s Prison in the spring of 1935 she interviewed all kinds of prisoners: murderers, thieves, prostitutes — some of them had been doing time for many years, like Emma Le Doux. Le Doux had started serving her sentence for murdering one of her husbands (Anna was a bigamist) when women were still being sent to San Quentin. Other women, such as Anna De Ritas, had not been in Tehachapi for very long; in fact, Anna hadn’t even been in for a year when she approached Aggie to ask her if there was “something new” happening on the outside.

De Ritas was doing time in Tehachapi for the shooting death of her lover, Michelangelo Lotito.

De Ritas had been living with her husband and their four daughters, until she began an affair with wine salesman Michelangelo Lotito. Mr. De Ritas had left Anna in September 1934. Anna’s four young daughters were placed in a Burbank orphanage because Mr. De Ritas couldn’t care for them on his own, and Anna was too wrapped up in her affair with Lotito to give the girls a second thought.

About a month after the De Ritas’ marriage had disintegrated Lotito decided that he’d finished with Anna. One morning while she was out grocery shopping he wrote her a note in which he told her that their affair was ended, with the note he’d left her a check to cover the rent for their apartment at 1650 Echo Park Avenue for the remainder of the month.

Lotito had phoned his brother Frank to come over and help him move his belongings, and he had undoubtedly planned to be gone before Anna returned. Unfortunately he had miscalculated the length of time that Anna would be out — she wasn’t walking home as she usually did, she’d managed to catch a ride with a friend of hers, Lola Martin. Anna appeared just as he and his brother were about to drive away.

Anna would not accept that her affair with the wine salesman was over. She was devastated, and the couple began a protracted shouting match on the sidewalk in front of their apartment building. The distraught woman begged, pleaded, and then her rage began to build. How could he leave her, she wailed, when she’d sacrificed everything to be with him? Could Anna really have been that naive? When her lover refused to reconsider his decision to call it quits she raised the paper bag she was holding. The bag contained a revolver with which Emma shot Lotito through the stomach. Frank saw the muzzle flash through the bag and watched in horror as his brother collapsed to the sidewalk. Frank disarmed her and called the police.

Michelangelo was taken to the Georgia Street Hospital where he was informed he was the 500,000th patient to receive emergency treatment there. Being number 500,000 wasn’t an honor that he would live to enjoy, Lotito died of the gunshot wound several days later.

Anna testified at her trial that Lotito had persuaded her to leave her husband and daughters, then spurned her. She said that when she confronted him outside of the apartment building they argued, but she denied that she had shot him in cold blood as Frank Lotito had testified. She said that she and Michelangelo had struggled for the gun and it accidently discharged.

The jury found Anna guilty of manslaughter and she was sentenced to from one to ten years in prison.

The L.A Times summed up Anna’s situation in this way: love, death — prison.

Love, Death — Prison

Posted on February 9, 2013 by Deranged

Two of the women mentioned by Herald-Express reporter Aggie Underwood in her series on the lives of women doing time in Tehachapi were Mrs. Emma Le Doux and Miss Anna De Ritas.

Who were Le Doux and De Ritas, and what had they done to end up in the City of Forgotten Women?

Let’s look first at Mrs. Emma Le Doux. She had been in prison off and on for nearly three decades by the time Aggie saw her at Tehachapi in the spring of 1935. Emma had been convicted of murdering her husband, A.N. McVicar, by poison in Stockton, California in March 1906.

The case against Emma was very simple, the prosecution contended that she had poisoned McVicar to keep from being exposed as a bigamist. Apparently Emma had married McVicar a few years earlier in Arizona, then she moved to California where she fell in love with and married Le Doux.

According to the prosecution Emma had persuaded McVicar to come to Stockton from Tuolumne county where he had been working in a mine. It doesn’t seem to have taken much effort for Emma to convince McVicar to stay with her for two days at a lodging house. McVicar and Emma were still husband and wife, maybe she told the doomed man that it was time to reconcile. It is more difficult to imagine what she told him she planned to do with the trunk that was delivered to her at the lodging house. Of course she may have simply told him she was packing it so she could travel with him and resume their marriage.

As it turned out McVicar didn’t have much time to ponder the reason for the trunk — he was dead within hours of its delivery.

Emma had the trunk taken to the Southern Pacific Railroad station and then attempted to have it sent to her home village in Amador county; however, the attempt failed and the trunk was put off the east bound train and returned to the baggage room in Stockton. The contents had ripened and soon caught the attention of a baggage man who became suspicious of its contents. Death has a distinctive aroma.

When the trunk was opened the doubled-up body of McVicar was discovered and Mrs. Le Doux became the sole suspect in his murder.

Emma had been married a few times, she seemed never to have obtained a divorce from any of her previous spouses, and at least one of her husbands had died under peculiar circumstances.

Multiple husbands, no divorces, and a reputation as a red-light girl would weigh heavily against Emma. She tried to shift the blame for McVicar’s death onto a man named Joe Miller. Emma claimed that Miller had dosed McVicar with carbolic acid, but Miller was likely an invention of Emma’s to escape the noose. Emma also tried to convince the authorities that McVicar had committed suicide, but they didn’t believe her.

Emma was tried for murder in Stockton in June 1906. The L.A. Times reported that “a remarkable feature of the case was the morbid curiosity of many women who thronged the courtroom…” The reporter clearly didn’t understand women. I would say that we women enjoy a lurid murder trial as much, maybe even more, than any man. And speaking of women, a female newspaper reporter tried to score an exclusive interview with Emma by masquerading as her sister. It was a nice try, but the cops caught on to the ruse and she was sent packing.

The trial lasted for fifteen days, during which time the defense tried to show that Emma was so much smaller than McVicar that she would have found it impossible to stuff the corpse into a trunk. The prosecution countered with their theory that McVicar had died on the bed and it would have been easy for Le Doux to roll him into the trunk.

Emma did not take the stand on her own behalf, but later she stated that McVicar had died as the result of a debauch and not poison as the prosecution had insisted.

On October 19, 1906, Emma Le Doux was sentenced to be hanged for the murder of Albert McVicar. She showed no emotion when her sentence was pronounced, which confounded trial observers who must have been used to hysterical women. Emma was described as a puzzle, a woman who had never broken down, not even under the strain of a murder trial.

Emma’s death sentence was commuted to life in 1908. If others were surprised by it, Emma was not. She had always maintained that she would never be executed. She was paroled a couple of times, but she couldn’t stay out of trouble. Emma was returned to prison for various parole violations, which is how she happened to be at Tehachapi in 1935 when Aggie arrived to write her articles.

It appears that Emma tried a couple of more times to win her freedom. In January 1937 it was reported that Emma was seeking parole once again, but I couldn’t find out whether or not she was successful.

—-

NEXT TIME: Love, Death — Prison concludes with the story of Anna De Ritas.

Hollywood Love Triangle: Part 2

Posted on February 3, 2013 by Deranged

The circumstances of Ray Raymond’s death may have been successfully covered up if not for local newshounds who got wind of the fight and his subsequent death. They called on the Coroner and began asking for details, but he couldn’t tell them a thing – Raymond’s death had not been reported to him! Dorothy’s $500 payment to Dr. Sullivan had clearly been worth every cent.

Coroner Frank Nance at his desk. [LAPL photo]

Coroner Nance called the hospital where Raymond had died, and was informed that not only was Ray deceased his body had been removed by an undertaker!

Nance followed up and located Raymond’s body at a Hollywood mortuary. He immediately claimed the body to perform an autopsy.

Not surprisingly, Coroner Nance’s findings didn’t agree with those of Dr. Sullivan — and Dr. Nance had harsh words for both Paul Kelly and Dorothy Mackaye.

He said: “Fortifying himself with four or five drinks — probably to brace up his bully courage — Kelly deliberately went into Raymond’s home for the purpose of beating him. I am also informed that Mrs. Raymond was in Kelly’s apartment when he left his home for the purpose of going to her home to beat up Raymond and it is my belief that it was due to her influence that Kelly went to Raymond’s for the sole purpose of attacking him.”

I agree with Coroner Nance.

Dorothy Mackaye collapsed three times at the grand jury inquiry into Ray’s death. At one point she fell to the marble floor with enough force to render her unconscious for ten minutes. She must have become light-headed after finally being compelled to tell the truth about the day of the beating. Her original story had been that she’d gone out to get Easter eggs for her daughter and to go to a dressmaker. The truth was that she and one of her so-called chaperones, Helen Wilkinson, had been at Kelly’s apartment drinking and had been present when he phoned Ray.

Mackaye summed up her day of testimony before the grand jury by saying: “It has been a terrible ordeal. Why, oh, why, do they have to do all this to me? I would be all right but my nerves are shot to pieces. I hope I won’t have to go through all this again very soon.”

Dorothy had no words of sadness or remorse for Ray’s miserable death. In true Hollywood diva fashion, it was all about her.

In Kelly’s statement to the cops he said he’d purposely called Ray to demand an apology. Seems pretty ballsy to demand that Ray retract statements about Kelly’s relationship with Dorothy — statements which were true. Kelly also told cops was that he went to Raymond’s home “to give him the threshing that was coming to him”. Kelly wouldn’t make any other statements except to profess his love for Dorothy.

Witnesses stated that Dorothy was still at Kelly’s apartment when he returned after viciously beating Ray, and apparently the couple retired to a rear room and conferred in secret for nearly thirty minutes — obviously to get their stories straight.

It wasn’t only Kelly and Mackaye who were in deep trouble following Ray’s death. Dr. Sullivan, the physician who had determined that Raymond had died of natural causes, was being taken to task as well. In the District Attorney’s office the day following the grand jury hearing, Dorothy Mackaye came to Dr. Sullivan’s defense. She said:

“I have absolute faith in Dr. Sullivan’s statement that Ray’s death was due to natural causes. He [Raymond] hadn’t been well for some time and we had been afraid of a nervous breakdown.” She continued: “Mr. Kelly I have known for years. I knew him as a youngster in New York when he was first starting out. My feeling for him has always been, and is, I suppose, a sort of sisterly love.”

Mackaye admitted that she and Ray hadn’t been happy for some time and had discussed divorce, but they hadn’t gone through with it due to financial concerns. Oh, and any talk of a future marriage with Kelly had been done “in a joking manner”.

Paul Kelly was indicted for the murder of Ray Raymond, and Dorothy Mackaye was indicted for concealing facts in the case.

NEXT TIME: Hollywood Love Triangle: Part 3

Hollywood Love Triangle

Posted on February 2, 2013 by Deranged

Dorothy Mackaye — the center of the triangle.

Musical comedy star Ray Raymond met actress Dorothy Mackaye in 1921 while performing in BLUE EYES on the Broadway stage. Raymond fell hard; he dumped his wife and married Dorothy. The pair had a daughter, Valerie, and together they moved to Los Angeles in the late 1920s to get into films.

Paul Kelly – Killer

Dorothy Mackaye met Paul Kelly in New York in 1917 when both were appearing on stage, and they became friends. It isn’t clear if the friendship became a love affair in NY, or if the sparks didn’t fly until Paul Kelly arrived in Los Angeles in 1925.

In any case, Ray Raymond was suspicious of his wife’s friendship with Kelly, and he demanded that Dorothy stop seeing him. She refused. She continued to insist that her relationship with Paul was platonic; but Ray wasn’t buying it. She said that whenever she met with Kelly she always had someone with her to act as a chaperone. Raymond didn’t doubt for a moment that Dorothy’s “chaperones” would lie for her.

On April 16, 1926 Dorothy Mackaye and her one of her “chaperones” were drinking prodigious amounts of gin at Kelly’s apartment. After several cocktails and some encouragement from Dorothy, Kelly decided to have it out with Raymond. He telephoned, and then minutes later showed up on the doorstep of the Raymond home.

Ethel Lee, the Raymond’s maid, opened the door for Kelly who stormed into the house and confronted the much smaller man. Paul shouted: “I understand that you have been saying things about me.” Ray denied the accusation and attempted to defuse the situation by offering Kelly a seat, but Kelly was drunk and spoiling for a fight.

According to Ethel, Ray told Kelly: “I can’t fight. I’m fifty pounds underweight, and I’ve been drinking.” “I’ll beat you” Paul said. Then he punched Ray three or four times. Ethel told cops that Mr. Raymond got up but that Kelly grabbed him and put one hand behind his neck and beat him with the other, then threw him to the couch.

Raymond was no match for Kelly who was at least 6 ft tall and weighed about 200 lbs. In fact the maid stated that Raymond was just a punching bag for Kelly and had put up minimal resistance.

At left is Valerie Raymond, 4 years of age, daughter of musical comedy star who witnessed fight in home and, at right, Mrs. Raymond (Dorothy Mackaye) answering questions aked by Detective Lieutenant Condaffer.

Four year old Valerie Raymond was a witness to the savage beating and continued to cry and beg for her dad to come to her.

Dorothy, who said she’d been out running errands, arrived home at about 9 pm. But she didn’t take her badly beaten husband to a hospital, even as he continued to suffer from his injuries. By 7 am the following day Raymond was in extremely serious condition.

Finally, late in the afternoon on the day following the beating Dorothy phoned a doctor who made a house call to assess Ray’s condition. What the doctor found was a man in excruciating pain with bruises covering his body. Ray was transported to a hospital where he died of his injuries.

In what was obviously an attempt to keep the ugly event under wraps Dr. Sullivan, who had attended Ray, consulted with other physicians who determined the cause of death was “nephritic coma” — the result of an inflammation of the kidneys. In other words, natural causes!

Dorothy Mackaye paid Dr. Sullivan $500 (approximately $6500 in current U.S. dollars) for his “services”!

Welcome to Hollywood.

NEXT TIME: The love triangle case continues.

L.A.’s Bonnie & Clyde – Burmah & Thomas White

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Deranged

During the summer of 1933, while Bonnie Parker & Clyde Barrow were on the lam in the midwest, Los Angeles newlyweds Burmah White, a nineteen year old hairdresser and her husband twenty-eight year old Thomas, an ex-con, were also on the run.

Most newlyweds don’t spend their honeymoon on a crime spree, but Burmah and Thomas were not most newlyweds.

The lovebirds perpetrated ten stick-ups – seven in a single evening (netting them about $220); but the worst of their crimes was the shooting of a popular elementary school teacher, Cora Withington, and a former publisher, Crombie Allen.

Crombie was teaching Cora how to drive his new car. They were stopped at a light when a car driven by a young blonde woman pulled up alongside them, and a man brandishing a gun jumped out of the vehicle. The bandit pointed his weapon at Cora’s head and said: “Shell out, sweetheart; and that goes for you, too, bo.” Just as Cora and Crombie were handing over their valuables there was an explosion – it was a gunshot – and it tore through Miss Withington’s left eye, came out near the right eye and ripped a hole in Allen’s neck. Despite his injury, Allen memorized the license plate number of the bandit’s car!

crombie_burmah_lula lane_cop_violet dillon2

Left: Crombie Allen, retired publisher (right) testifying before Deputy Coroner Montfort at the inquest. Allen identified White as the man who robbed him and Miss Cora Withington, shooting the latter. He could not identify Mrs. White. Right–Mrs. Burmah White, widow of the dead bandit; Policewoman Lula Lane, and Mrs. Violet Dillon, sister of the dead man, at the inquest.

Both victims would survive their gunshot wounds, but the schoolteacher would be permanently blinded.

Chief of Police James Davis immediately instituted a blockade in an attempt to snare the bandits.

LAPD Chief Ed “Two Gun” Davis

The blockade consisted of random stops and searches of pedestrians and vehicles, particularly during the wee hours of the morning when, according to Davis, “the more callous criminals are abroad.”

Chief “Two Gun” Davis wasn’t a big fan of the 4^th Amendment. He’d said that constitutional rights were of “no benefit to anybody but crooks and criminals.”

Davis would use a similar blockade strategy later, in 1936, in an attempt to stem the tide of Dust Bowl refugees from Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, and Arkansas.

Whatever his shortcomings, Davis wasn’t wrong about callous criminals working in the city – they appeared to be everywhere. Masked robbers broke into the home of a cop and robbed him at gunpoint; while across town a woman in her 50s held up a rooming house manager who was showing her an apartment.

While the LAPD continued to hunt the Whites, teachers and parents at the Third Street School established a fund to aid Cora Withington, who would not be able to return to teaching because of her injuries.

Things would end badly for the newlyweds.

The cops located their car in a parking lot adjacent to an apartment at 236 S. Coronado Street. An officer dressed in a mechanic’s uniform staked out the vehicle and watched as Burmah got into it and drove it into a garage while her husband held the door open for her. Two officers entered the hallway of the apartment and confronted Thomas White, who made the mistake of attempting to shoot it out rather than surrender. He died after taking two bullets through his heart.

While Thomas White was dropping to the floor dead, Burmah was on another floor attempting either to commit suicide or escape by hurling herself out of a window. Police grabbed her before she could jump and took her to jail.

Aggie Underwood interviews mourner at funeral of evangelist Aimee Semple Macpherson. [LAPL Photo]

Burmah’s lack of remorse and abrasive demeanor earned the nineteen year old widow a guilty conviction on eleven felony counts and she was sentenced to a term of from 30 years to life.

At her sentencing Judge Bowron said that Burmah had been “an accomplice in the heartless and wanton shooting of Miss Withington and Crombie Allen”, and that her deliberate intent demonstrated how “utterly abandoned and ruthless she is despite her years”.

Burmah began serving her time at San Quentin, but was ultimately transferred to the Women’s Prison at Tehachapi. Herald-Express reporter, Agness “Aggie” Underwood, interviewed Burmah in prison and described her as “slightly defiant, cynical, and egotistical”. A few years in Tehachapi would mellow Burmah considerably.

Burmah was denied parole a few times before she was discharged on December 1, 1941, just days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. She’d served less than eight years for her part in the 1933 crime spree. Upon her release, Burmah vanished from public view.

NEXT TIME: A Hollywood love triangle ends in death.

Bad Girls 101

Posted on January 30, 2013 by Deranged

I’m going to turn my attention away from female victims for the time being because I want to focus on the bad girls of L.A.; but before I dig in to individual cases, I want to provide a little background on women behaving badly.

For a wildly entertaining glimpse into female felons behind bars, I highly recommend the 1933 film “Ladies They Talk About”. In fact, let’s consider it as a tutorial for Bad Girls 101.

No Los Angeles jail records exist from the early 1850s until 1888. In February 1888 it was recorded that there were 213 men in jail and only 3 women. The women who were most likely to have been arrested were prostitutes, called “soiled doves”.

Working girls came to the attention of social reformers more often than jailers, and so it went for years. However, the number of female inmates in Los Angeles continued to rise through the 1910s into the 1920s.

In 1926 the new Hall of Justice opened, and prisoners were transferred to the jail that was located on the 9th through the 15th floors. By 1927 the 181 female inmates had outgrown their accommodations on the 13th floor, and the roof chapel had to be converted to a dormitory to handle the overflow.

Hall of Justice, showing Broadway and Temple St. elevations. Old Hall of Justice showing its south elevation is seen in lower right background, behind county jail. [LAPL Photo]

In its early days California didn’t have a women’s prison, so the ladies did their time in San Quentin.

The problems with incarcerating women in a primarily male facility are overwhelming. The 17th century English poet Richard Lovelace said:

“Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage.”

Stone walls and iron bars also make lousy prophylactics.

In the 1870s a female inmate, Nellie Maguire (who’d been convicted of grand larceny) became pregnant while incarcerated at San Quentin. The father of her child was likely a favored inmate who was given free run of the prison.

In 1901 prison reform in California was getting attention from women’s groups, temperance unions, and politicians. It took a couple of decades, and some bitter political battles, but finally in April 1927 the state legislature passed the reformatory bill which authorized $25,000 for site selection for a women’s facility. After months of work a 1,683 acre site in the Tehachapi Mountains was selected for the California Institution for Women.

In August 1933 the first contingent of twenty-eight prisoners left San Quentin for Tehachapi. Finally, in November 1933, all 134 San Quentin women were in their new quarters.

The Superintendent of Tehachapi in the mid/late 1930s was Florence Monahan. Monahan was a long time reformer, and her goal was to release women from Tehachapi who would become self-respecting citizens, instead of bitter, beaten women who would be determined to get back at society.

Some of the reforms instituted by Monahan included ditching the drab prison uniforms and replacing them with colorful frocks. Monahan said “We plan to revise all clothing. It must be suitable, economical and decent. But why should the women wear something they hate?”

Prisoners were fitted for their new dresses in a sewing room covered with photos torn from the pages of fashion magazines.

The prisoners were no longer required to wear sober footwear in black, white or dark blue. One woman ordered some red sandals from a catalog, and wore them proudly – with everything.

Other freedoms for female inmates included keeping pets, and living in what were referred to as cottages. There were no bars at Tehachapi. And Tehachapi wasn’t only influencing the lives of women doing time there; it was also becoming part of the public consciousness.

For instance in the 1944 film DOUBLE INDEMNITY, Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) tries to dissuade Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) from carrying out the murder for insurance money plot she’s hatching against her husband by telling her: “….then there was a case of a guy that was found shot. His wife said he was cleaning a gun and his stomach got in the way. All she collected was a 3 to 10 stretch in Tehachapi.”

My favorite film reference to Tehachapi is from the 1941 film, THE MALTESE FALCON. Even though he’s in love with her, Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) decides to hand Brigid O’Shaunessy (Mary Astor) over to the cops because she murdered his partner. However, he says that may wait for her: “Well, if you get a good break, you will be out of Tehachapi in 20 years and you can come back to me then. I hope they don’t hang you precious, by that sweet neck.”

There was a significant increase in incarceration rates among women in the mid-1930s, and less than one year following its opening Tehachapi was near capacity.

What kind of woman ended up in Tehachapi? You may be surprised. Ninety percent of the women were first time offenders, and fourteen percent of them had been convicted of murder! Their median age was 37, and eighty percent of them were Caucasian. Nearly half of the inmates came from Los Angeles!

Is there something about Los Angeles that brings out the evil in a woman? Crime writer Raymond Chandler speculated that a local weather phenomenon could cause a woman to contemplate murder. He wrote:

“There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.”

The stock market crashed in October of 1929 and flapper bandits gave way to gun molls and Tommy guns.

Bonnie Parker & Roy Thornton, her husband. They married as teenagers and never divorced.

The Depression of the 1930s resulted in the perpetration of darker crimes. Women became involved in bandit gangs – they didn’t stay at home and roll bandages for the wounded thugs in their lives, they were active participants in kidnappings, bank robberies, and murders.

Many of the most notorious gangs of the Depression operated out of the mid-west. Everyone has heard of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker.

Bonnie took an active role in the Barrow Gang’s misdeeds, and she had no illusions about how she and Clyde would end their days. The last few lines of her poem THE BALLAD OF BONNIE AND CLYDE read:

They don’t think they’re tough or desperate
They know the law always wins
They’ve been shot at before, but they do not ignore
That death is the wages of sin.
BONNIE & CLYDE
Some day they’ll go down together
And they’ll bury them side by side
To few it’ll be grief, to the law a relief
But it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.

How did Bonnie & Clyde pay the wages of sin?

During 1933, before they died in a hail of bullets, Bonnie & Clyde were on the run from the law in the Midwest. L.A. had a criminal duo too, Burmah and Thomas White.

NEXT TIME: L.A.’s own Bonnie & Clyde: Burmah & Thomas White.

Louise Springer Murder: Conclusion

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Deranged

The biggest manhunt since the murder of Elizabeth Short continued as cops tried to find the killer of hairstylist Louise Springer.

LAPD conjectured that either Louise Springer had been immediately stunned with a blunt instrument as she sat in her car at a Crenshaw Blvd. parking lot, or she had known the person who murdered her. The two possible theories were supported by the fact that Louise had apparently offered no resistance, nor had she cried out — and, tellingly, her brand new manicure was still pristine.

There were bruises on Louise’s right temple and the top of her head which, in the opinion of Dr. Frederick D. Newbarr, the autopsy surgeon, were hard enough to render her unconscious.

Mrs. Jewell Lorange, left, and Miss Germaine Le Gault presented possible clue to slaying of Mrs. Louise Springer in reporting “three men in black car.”

Of the scant leads uncovered by detectives, an interesting piece of information emerged. Miss Germaine Le Gault and Mrs. Jewell Lorange, who lived directly across from where the death car was found, said that they saw three men “in a big, black car” spend two evenings prior to the murder parked less than 50 feet away from where Springer’s strangled body was found. Unfortunately, the lead never panned out.

More than a week had passed when suddenly the Springer case began to heat up with the arrest of two suspects: Leon Russell, car washer at a service station near the parking lot, and Claud Cox, a jobless Navy vet who had been arrested on a morals complaint made by a young Hollywood woman named Marion Brown. Brown, 18, told cops that Claud Cox, whom she said she knew slightly, took her to his room at 1611 N. Orange Drive and tried to molest her. Cox told cops that he got “a little friendly” but he flatly denied trying to harm the girl.

Marion Brown, 18, said Roscoe Cox, released in Springer murder, tried to attack her.

As cops tracked down leads, Louise Springer’s husband and her 21 month old son mourned the wife and mother as she was laid to rest in a San Jose cemetery.

At least the crime lab was finally able to state conclusively that Louise Springer had not been slugged before she was garroted in her husband’s car. What had initially appeared to be bruises on Mrs. Springer’s head were actually post-mortem tissue changes — the result of the dead woman’s body resting face down for three days in the backseat of the car before being discovered. The evidence suggested that Springer had been murdered in the car, at the parking lot, as she listened to the radio.

Another suspect was arrested and cleared by LAPD homicide detectives. The man was thirty-eight year old Guy Smith who was busted by L.A. Sheriff’s department deputies on a tip from a relative. Nobody can do you dirt like family. In any case, Smith had an alibi for the time of Louise’s murder; however, the law was investigating him in connection with other unsolved crimes, notably morals offenses.

As the case grew colder the cops began to cast around for a new motive in Louise’s murder. Maybe kidnapping and sexual assault weren’t the real motives; maybe someone had a grudge against her, or they were jealous of the attractive brunette.

One of the early suspects in Springer’s murder, Claude Cox, was arrested in September 1949, but the arrest had nothing to do with Louise Springer’s death. According to Mrs. Geneva Cowen, 35, she was walking along Hollywood Blvd. when she heard someone come up behind her. She turned and the man, Claude Cox, rushed up and hit her, hard. Cox said: “I’m going to kill you.” Cowen took a chance and started to run. Cox grabbed for her, but only succeeded in pulling her coat off.

Eventually the leads dried up and the Louise Springer murder, aka, the Green Twig Murder case, went cold.

Laurence and Louise Springer had been in L.A. for only six months before she was murdered, so the widower returned to Northern California to try to put some of his pain behind him.

The single major success in the case came when Dr. Mildred Mathias, UCLA botanist, was finally able to identify the twig that had been so cruelly inserted into Louise Springer’s vagina as belonging to a bottle tree. Dr. Mathias said that the twig had apparently been stripped from a larger branch sometime in the year prior to the crime.

Louise Springer’s murder remains unsolved.

The Murder of Louise Springer: Part 1

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Deranged

June 16, 1949, the decomposing body of thirty-five year old Louise Springer, a beauty shop operator, was found huddled in the rear seat of her husband’s convertible automobile parked at 125 W. 38th Street. Springer had been garroted.

A length of clothesline was knotted around Springer’s neck, with two knots under her
left ear. Her face was swollen and nearly black. Her brown skirt and yellow suede
jacket had been twisted around her body, with her skirt tangled around her hips.

A stick 14 inches in length and 1/2 inch thick had been violently driven into her vagina .

Laurence Springer had reported his wife missing about sixty hours before her body was discovered. Louise, a hairstylist, had been working until shortly before 9:00 p.m. on the night she disappeared. Laurence had arrived to pick her up from work and take her to their beautiful home in the Hollywood Hills.

He’d parked in a lot on Crenshaw across the street from the shopping center in which Louise worked. The couple walked to their 1948 convertible and Louise, who had spent hours on her feet, pulled off her shoes and put on a pair of slippers that she kept in the car. They were just about to head for home when Louise exclaimed: “Oh, I’ve forgotten my glasses.” Laurence told her to relax and listen to her favorite radio show while he went to retrieve her specs.

Laurence got Louise’s glasses, then stopped to buy a magazine and chat with a friend. He wasn’t gone for more than 10 or 15 minutes, but when he returned both Louise and the car were gone.

Laurence knew that something was wrong, she wouldn’t have driven off and left him. He looked around for a few minutes but he couldn’t find his wife. He called the cops at about 10:00 pm and a few moments later a prowl car met him at the parking lot. The officers looked around but they didn’t find anything either. Laurence accompanied the police to the University Division Station where he filed a missing persons report. He then went home to be with his 21 month old son.

The Springer’s housekeeper and nanny, forty-nine year old divorcee Elizabeth Thompson, nearly collapsed when she received the news of her employer’s disappearance. Thompson told police that the Springers were happily married and that as far as she knew they had no enemies. She said that the couple had sold the beauty shops they owned in Northern California, then moved south to L.A. They hadn’t been in town for very long before Louise was slain.

Thompson injected a note of mystery into the investigation when she said that she had received an obscene phone call from an unknown woman about three months prior to Louise’s disappearance. The caller asked several times for Thompson to identify herself, which she refused to do — then the caller made a lewd proposal and Thompson hung up on her. Cops didn’t believe that the phone call had anything to do with Louise’s disappearance, but during the initial stages of the investigation they couldn’t rule anything out.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the case was that the parking lot from which Louise Springer had been abducted was only about a block away from the lot where the body of Elizabeth Short had been discovered in January 1947!

Women were terrified by the thought that the Black Dahlia’s killer was once again hunting the streets of L.A. for victims. An enormous manhunt, the largest since Short’s murder, was soon underway.

Witnesses in the neighborhood where Louise’s body had been found came forward to say that they had seen a man in the murder car and watched him as he seemed to adjust something on the backseat – which is where Louise’s body had been found covered with a tarp. A man was seen exiting the car, and some people thought that he may have been wearing a military uniform.

Police forensics investigators were having a difficult time trying to determine if Louise had been slugged before she was strangled, or if she’d been sexually assaulted. A relatively new test called the acid phosphatase test was used to try to determine if semen was present, but the test was inconclusive due to decomposition.

The main piece of physical evidence, the twig that was violently inserted into Louise’s vagina, was becoming a huge problem for investigators — it couldn’t be identified. Bonnie Templeton, curator of the botany department at the County Museum, had been called in to lend her expetise in identifying the twig. She said that it could have come from “four of five” species of trees or shrub.

It was beginning to look as if the LAPD was going to have another unsolved homicide of a woman on the books.

NEXT TIME: The investigation into the murder of Louis Springer continues.

Deranged LA Crimes ®

True 20th Century tales of murder, mayhem, political corruption, and celebrity scandal