Delora Mae Campbell didn\u2019t cry, tremble, or ask for her parents when accused of strangling six-year-old Donna Isbell. She just stood there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pending her hearing, authorities held her in isolation in the County Jail rather than Juvenile Hall. Sgt. Frances Cardiff, a jail matron, reported that Delora slept eight hours straight and woke at 5 a.m. on December 31st, quiet and indifferent to both her surroundings and the killing.<\/p>\n\n\n
\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
When reporters pressed her, Delora couldn\u2019t\u2014or wouldn\u2019t\u2014explain the impulse she claimed had driven her. Maybe it was a vision. Maybe she acted knowingly. \u201cI could have been awake and actually aware of what I was doing,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m not sure.\u201d Asked if she would strangle Donna again, she answered the same way: \u201cI\u2019m not sure.\u201d She said she liked Donna and her older brother, Roy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What, then, made her do it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Donna\u2019s parents struggled with their loss, and with a smaller heartbreak of their own. They couldn\u2019t afford the doll Donna wanted so badly for Christmas, but they\u2019d told her Santa would bring it for her February birthday. After the murder, a Marine, Sgt. William Thornton, and his wife, Paula, read about the unfulfilled promise and bought the doll themselves. The Isbells buried it with Donna.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Delora\u2019s father, Clem Campbell, a truck driver from Fort Lupton, Colorado, visited her in County Jail. \u201cWe could hardly believe it,\u201d he said. \u201cI guess it was one of those things that just had to happen.\u201d A strange remark from a father whose child had killed another. Not just a strange remark, but a potential window into a family culture of emotional dislocation, which may echo in Delora\u2019s flat affect and her own comment: \u201cI\u2019m not sure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr. Marcus Crahan submitted a psychiatric report declaring Delora legally sane. Had he found her insane, she might have avoided adult prosecution; instead, she was nudged toward it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the coroner\u2019s inquest, Delora took the stand only long enough to say that, on advice of counsel, she would not testify. She didn\u2019t need to. During her isolation, she took a bobby pin and scratched a confession into the enamel of her face-powder compact. No one heard the faint scrape of metal on metal as she wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDELORA MAE CAMPBELL KILLED DONNA JOYCE ISBELL SATURDAY NIGHT, DEC. 29, 1951.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sheriff\u2019s Capt. William Barron asked what prompted her to carve the inscription. \u201cThings got to bothering me a lot,\u201d she said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t talk to anyone, and I felt satisfied about writing\u2014the same as if I talked about it to someone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n
\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
A coroner\u2019s jury found Donna\u2019s death homicidal and Delora probably criminally responsible. The court ordered her to Camarillo State Hospital for a 90-day observation. Afterward, Clem petitioned to have her declared insane and in need of continued care. Two court psychiatrists agreed she was mentally depressed and showed signs of a \u201cdisturbed family relationship\u201d and \u201cemotional illness,\u201d but believed she might improve with treatment.<\/p>\n\n\n
\nDelora’s father, Clem, visits her after her arrest.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
In the early 1950s, psychiatric care for juvenile girls leaned heavily on Freudian interpretation and moral rehabilitation, supported by sedatives and occupational therapy. Whatever treatment Delora received, she followed the rules, and was rewarded with small perks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nobody heard anything more about her until April 1954, when she walked away from the hospital. She\u2019d been trusted with grounds privileges for months. With about $70 earned from hospital work, she traveled by bus to Bakersfield, wandered for a few days, then grew tired of \u201cbeing a fugitive.\u201d She contacted her aunt and uncle in Long Beach\u2014the same relatives she lived with at the time of the murder. They offered to pick her up. When she stepped off the bus at the designated spot, Los Angeles County Sheriff\u2019s deputies were waiting. They returned her to Camarillo.<\/p>\n\n\n
\nDelora returned to Camarillo after running away. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Sometime in 1956, Delora was quietly released. She returned to Colorado, married twice, had two children, and\u2014so far as anyone can tell\u2014never reoffended. She led a normal life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her case leaves behind more questions than answers. No one ever determined what tipped her into violence that December night. In photos, she often appears older than her years\u2014haunted, guarded, carrying something she never named. It\u2019s only an impression, but sometimes an impression is all a case like this leaves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the 1940s and 1950s, adolescent girls who committed serious violence often came from chaotic or emotionally barren homes, or from environments marked by humiliation, neglect, or unspoken harm. Whether Delora carried any of that with her is impossible to say. The official record confirms no abuse. It doesn\u2019t rule it out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whatever drove her\u2014trauma, dissociation, rage with no safe outlet\u2014remains locked in the silence she maintained after her confession on the compact.<\/p>\n\n\n
\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Donna was buried with the doll she longed for. Delora carried only her compact. Between them lies a single moment she called an impulse\u2014irresistible or otherwise\u2014and the truth of it went with her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
NOTE:<\/strong> This narrative draws on newspaper archives, court transcripts, and mid-century psychiatric evaluations. The official record of Delora Campbell is thin, fractured, and filtered through the lens of 1950s ideas about girls, crime, and mental disturbance. I\u2019ve followed the trail where it leads and respected the silences where it stops. In a case built on impulse and uncertainty, the gaps are part of the truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Photographs are from the USC Digital Library. Los Angeles Examiner Photographs Collection<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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