January 13, 1927
Los Angeles
George and Mabel Drummond had nothing if not a tempestuous wedded life. Married ten years, hitched when George was fifteen and Mabel twenty-one, their stormy union included many a sterling instance, including the time a jealous Mabel held George in a chair at gunpoint for three hours while she threatened to shoot him with every passing moment.
Today, after the usual morning argument in their Alhambra home, George announced he’d had his fill, and moved his stuff out to go shack up with…a widow. Tonight Mabel followed George to 335+1/2 West 42nd Street, where George was involved with one Mrs. Helen Salyer.
Along for the ride Mabel had taken her old friend the pistol.
In fairness, Mabel did, on the sidewalk in front of Helen Salyer’s house, give George one last chance, asking him to come back to her. George approached and said, firmly, no. With that, Mabel shot him in the stomach; the force of the blast turned him around and Mabel shot him again in the back. Mabel walked back to her car, got in, and sat calmly there until authorities arrived.
Mabel was arrested by Detective Lieutenants Brown and Adams of University Station, who found her composed, and that she could only comment that if she couldn’t live with him, no-one could. When asked if she felt any regret, she replied:
“Is a woman ever really sorry?”
(With no defense offered other than the “unwritten law,” on May 19 she was ordered held to Superior Court for trial by Municipal Judge Rosencranz on charges of assault with intent to commit murder. She told the court “I shot him because I loved him” and reiterated “sure I shot him—if I couldn’t live with him I wasn’t going let anyone else live with him.” The jury, out an hour, gave her a full acquittal on May 24.)
