Murder – Page 3 – 1947 Project

4:34? No Loophole

run December 15, 1927

Miss Grace Shannon, national secretary of our own YWCA, has just returned from Turkey, and good news: there’s no Dumb Doras there! Sure, it’s all right for a man to have four wives (“to which every good Mussulman says ‘Amen,’” chuckles Ms. Shannon), but the crafty gals there under Atatürk (we say atagirl!) have found some loophole that goes on to contradict such (referring to the famous Koranic Koran 4:3/Koran 4:129 Paradox). Yes, it seems the new republic’s progressive divorce laws and campaigns for women’s sufferage have made it a veritable heaven on earth for the gentler gender.

Just think, another eighty years of progressive thinking will do a world of wonder for women!

God Granted Him the Serenity

killsself

francis December 8, 1927
Pasadena

The next time you need to go to a 12-step meeting, or better yet a full detox, or just be hospitalized for that durn’d dementia praecox, do yourself a favor and head on over to Las Encinas. Take in the rolling lawns, the mature trees, and gorgeous hundred year-old shingle cottages. Watch as Dr. Drew administers kindly words to one or more Osbournes, and perhaps they’ll put you in the bungalow where W. C. Fields drank and breathed his last. Then tell us if you happened upon the ghosts of Francis Stevens and his sons Georgie and Francis Jr.

Francis E. Stevens was a Prominent Pasadenan—Vice-President of the First Trust and Savings Bank of Pasadena and the First National Bank of Pasadena, member of Pasadena’s War Finance Committee, a man with a newly built home and a…lovely family.

Lovely enough, but not entirely. His wife Elizabeth was prominent socially, certainly, and of his 16 year-old daughter Carol’s charms there can be no doubt. But his sons…little George, 14, has been almost an invalid since birth, and “backward”. And as such the entirety of Francis’ hopes and expectations for the future rode on his namesake, Francis E. Jr., 20. Unfortunately, the star pupil at Univeristy of Michigan, where Francis Sr. had attended school, Francis Jr. crashed his car into a telephone pole near Ann Arbor and suffered a basal fracture that affected his mind, landing him what looked to be a permanent place back in Pasadena…at Las Encinas Sanitarium.

And so Francis Sr. did what any concerned, dutiful father would do. He went to work at eight a.m., made light and cheery conversation the cashiers, and made certain all was in order; then went home to fetch George to take him off to James A. Garfield Grammar School (once at the NE corner of S. Pasadena and California Street). This he did, and the two sat outside the school, talking in the car, until about 9:15, according to witnesses. Then they drove off, to where, we’ll never know. All we know is that Francis Sr. shot George in the head. And then arrived at Las Encinas at 10:15.

Francis left George’s corpse in the back seat covered in a laprobe, and walked to administration to inquire after his other son. He chatted with the attendants, then made his way to the bungalows. He went to the bungalow where Francis Jr. lived with his male nurse, Frank B. Schaefer, and handed Schaefer a well-wrapped package, instructing him “Don’t let anybody have these and don’t open them until you hear from me.” And with that he and his son took a lovely walk around the grounds.

thetenniscourt They walked and talked along the shady paths and across sun-dappled lawns until they came to the tennis court in the rear. It was 12:15 when father pulled out and brought a pistol to his son’s temple and fired. He was then seen sliding the barrel into his mouth and pulling the trigger, his body crumpling directly next to his son’s.

Some time after the excitement of having the wife and daughter brought to the sanitarium, and the bodies had been removed, that someone thought of having the Stevens sedan hauled away. It was only then an attendant noticed the slow moving stream of blood oozing over the fender.

The package Stevens gave to Schaefer contained securities, bonds, his will, multitudinous letters to banking concerns indicating that their finances were in order (which checked out just fine), and the ashes of Sylvia Stevens, a daughter he’d lost and cremated some time ago.

The funeral for the Stevens men was held shortly thereafter, though in spirit, the trio were still, of course, at Las Encinas.

The Weird Tale of the Wig Lady

November 30, 1927
Alhambra

Meet Nona Lesher, the cool 20-something check kiter whose arsenal of multi-hued hairpieces helped disguise her during a spree of bad paper pushing, busted in a market at 305 East Valley Boulevard.

But the wigs are only the tip of a hairy iceberg. For among the suspicious items discovered in the room shared by Nona, hubby Harvey (or Harry), half-brother Phil Rohan and pal Mike Garvey at 2048 West Twentieth Street were an unheard of 61 pairs of shoes and twenty hats, plus Harry, Phil and the aforementioned wigs.

The men soon became suspects in the November 1 drug store beating death of proprietor A.R. Miles (or A.M. Miller) at 2329 West Jefferson after Lesher allegedly confessed to friend H.S. Walton, "I pulled that West Jefferson job—I hit Miles over the head and when he came to and called me ‘Heinie’ I finished him with my feet." However, Walton later said he had been so drunk that night, he might have imagined the whole thing, had only spoken out because he’d been told charges against him would be dropped if he did, and anyway, he believed the trio was innocent.

Still, 10-year-old witness Eddie Yates ID’d Phil Rohan as the youth in a snazzy blue and white sweater who he’d seen dashing from the crime scene. Lesher and Garvey also looked familiar to the boy. Roberta Scriver, sitting in a car outside the drug store, also identified the trio. Simple robbery-murder case with eyewitnesses, eh?

But then a cop’s badge was found in Mike Garvey’s possession, leading to the arrest of 77th Street Division policeman George H. Foster, the Wig Gang’s next door neighbor, on charges that he’d used the badge to shake down bootlegger John Sykes for $57 in exchange for not noticing a quantity of liquor stored in a vacant house; Rohan and Garvey supposedly served as muscle on the robbery, and somehow Garvey ended up with the badge.

By January, the male members of the Wig Gang had been convicted of murder and sent to San Quentin for life, while back in LA, Officer Foster was thrown off the force and tried on a series of bootleg shakedown charges.

But come December 1928, witness Roberta Scriver testified that she’d seen someone else leave the murder scene, one Harry Rosenfeld. The Grand Jury reopened the case, it was noted that the 10-year-old witness was actually watching a movie during the crime, and after begging San Quentin ex-con Rosenfeld to tell all he knew (he snarled he wouldn’t do it, lest he get a knife in the back from breaking the criminal code), the hapless Wig Gang was released after two years and eight months.

Once freed, the trio sought $5000 each in payment from the state for their ordeal, while Lesher and Rohan’s mother Carrie testified she’d spent $6000 on their defense and appeals. During this hearing, which was ultimately unsuccessful, an Alhambra Detective offered the hitherto unknown information that their arrest had resulted from a tip from the Wig Lady herself, Nona Lesher. It was unclear if she had remained true to Harvey during his incarceration, but one assumes the marriage didn’t survive this revelation. At least their mother still loved ’em!

Mother Avenger

November 27, 1927
Los Angeles

Did you hear the one about the traveling salesman and the farmer’s daughter? Well, this time she wasn’t a farmer’s daughter—and the salesman ended up dead. Eleven days ago, 17-year-old Marie Hull went for a ride with Gordon J. Waters, 29, the salesman in question. When she returned home to 840 West 43rd Place, Marie tearfully told her mother that Waters had attacked her.

When Hazel Hull discovered Waters at her boarding house tonight, presumably to call on Marie, she was ready. When the salesman left the house, Hull rushed after him and pressed a .38 caliber revolver to his left side. She fired a single shot, then fled to her mother’s. Waters staggered to the intersection of Hoover Street and Vernon Avenue, where he collapsed. He died on the way to Georgia Street Receiving Hospital without making a statement.

Days of juicy reading followed. Booked into County Jail prior to the coroner’s inquest, Hazel Hull told reporters, "I am glad I killed him even though I hang for it. My little girl was sweet and good. I did the only thing I could to avenge her." Her ex-husband proclaimed his willingness to stand by his former wife’s side, and Marie asserted that if her mother "had not shot him I would have done so myself."

Meanwhile, Waters’s widowed wife of six months ("heavily veiled in a great pink chiffon drape that completely covered her head and shoulders," according to the Times) took issue with the Hulls’ insistence that her husband had been "a sheik" and "a rounder." She preferred to blame the other victim: "Marie Hull led my husband on. She knew he was married." This was a minority view, however; when the coroner’s jury announced their finding that Hazel Hull was justified in shooting her daughter’s attacker, applause broke out in the court room, and spectators rushed to shake Hull’s hand. The following day, Hull escaped a murder charge when the grand jury refused to indict her.

Despite the column inches it devoted to the case, the Times editorialized that "If Waters’s conduct was indefensible, there seems even less defense for that of Mrs. Hull" and likened the juries’ refusal to indict as an "indorsement [sic] of lynch law."

GAR Blimey

confession November 24, 1927
Long Beach

Frank E. Foster once stared down the blazing Enfields and Richmonds of Johnny Reb, Bragg’s cannons and Forrest’s cavalry, but it took some punk kid from Long Beach to put him down for good.

That punk kid is Richard Robert Haver, 16, whose penchant for driving other people’s cars landed him in Chino, where police interviewed him today about a spate of Long Beach robberies last September. Sure, during one robbery he pushed an old man. Haver hasn’t been told that the old man died.

“I saw him coming, although it was dark,” Haver told Detective Sergeants Smith and Alyes. “At first I tried to avoid him by slinking back against the wall, hoping the man wouldn’t see me. But he grabbed me by the coat with both hands.” (Apparently the 85 y.o. Foster figured the whippersnapper wouldn’t be reconstructed.) “I kept pushing him into the screen porch where he slept. The door was open as I rushed for it and I pushed the man out of the way. He tripped on the steps and fell outdoors onto the sidewalk. Then I ran toward the front of the house and headed for the ocean. I’m sorry I pushed him so hard, now that I know he is an old man.” Haver’ll be sorrier once the authorities inform him that, on top of being popped for the eight homes he ransacked while the occupants slept (earning him the sobriquet "The Pants Burglar", in that he stole away with trousers in the night and emptied their pockets), he’s a murderer.

(Haver was sent to the State Reform School to remain until he turned 21, at which point the courts would again pass upon his case; the papers make no mention of that event or its outcome.)

quails! In further news of the Boys in Blue, another Damn’d Yankee, this one in Spokane, has problems of another variety. “I’m living on borrowed time,” said Enoch A. Sears, 84, “far past my allotted three score and ten, and I only want peace and quiet.” He has filed for divorce from his wife of one year, and has departed his home, leaving it to his wife, 59, and her mother, 79. Enoch simply stated he was “too old to become accustomed to living with a mother-in-law.”

Another Sad Chapter in the Annals of Not-So-Bright Criminals

November 20, 1927
Los Angeles

There are criminal masterminds, and then there are men like William E. McLane. Around 2 o’clock this afternoon, McLane walked in the back door of his home at 901 Palm View Drive. "I came back to the house today to see how she was getting along," he told the police swarming his house. "She" was his wife, Ada May, and she wasn’t getting along very well at all—in fact, she was dead. While they were less than impressed with his display of husbandly solicitude, detectives were happy to take McLane into custody after he confessed to Ada May’s murder. Ever the helpful suspect, McLane then explained that, contrary to police speculation, the bloody pair of scissors found next to his wife’s body was not in fact the murder weapon: he had used a Barlow knife, which he tossed into the night as he ran from the scene of the crime. The couple had been separated for about five months, and McLane recently received divorce papers from his wife. This, he told detectives, inspired him to attempt a reconciliation—an attempt which led not to the revival of their marriage but to a quarrel that resulted in the death of Mrs. McLane.

Ada May apparently held no such illusions of renewed connubial bliss; her body was found by a friend who came to check on her after she told him her husband had threatened her life on several recent occasions.

Mission Accomplished

zazala November 10, 1927
San Bernardino

Kim’s post a few days ago about the ineffectual hammer attack led me to this tale, which ends in what those of the gaming community refer to as a “finishing move.”

Ralph J. Zazala, 37, was sweet on Grace Hardesty, 35. He’d been seeing her for a spell. They took a little ride three miles north of Berdoo. Perhaps he hummed a little tune. He parked. Maybe he’d sneak a little smooch! Oh, and he brought along some things.

The blood-and-gore stained hammer disclosed that Grace had fought, in the car, long and hard for her life, and eventually escaped. She was on her knees at the roadside, apparently pleading for mercy, when he put his other tool, the shotgun, in her mouth and pulled the trigger. He then turned the weapon on himself.

Sheriff Shay found letters in Grace’s pocket indicating that while she and Ralph had been acquainted for some time, she was in fact a Mrs. Grace Hardesty, a fact to which Ralph evidently objected.

And so ended more love-stained, blood-stained Southern California romantic bliss.

Stormy Marriage for a Stormy Night

October 12, 1927
Los Angeles

Officer J.R. Reybuck had issues. Last summer, when he fought with his young wife, he thought he could resolve their troubles by choking her, snatching their baby son William, and running off to Yuma, Arizona, from which calmer perch he suggested she might join him and they could work everything out.

Lillian Reybuck had other ideas, and obtained a restraining order. She and her baby were living with her brother, Herbert, and mother, Mrs. Fred Hendricks at 914-and-three-fourths West Seventeenth Street, and that was where J.R. came today on one of his twice weekly visits. He was holding the child when he brought out his service revolver and shot his wife dead as she sat sewing in the front room. When her mother ran out of the kitchen, he took a couple of potshots at her. Mrs. Hendricks escaped out the door.

Reybuck unloaded a single shot through the left temple of baby William, killing him instantly. He then reloaded, leaned against the wall in front of his slain wife, and blew a hole through his brain.

He had blamed his mother-in-law for poisoning his wife against him.

The Adventures of Tiger Girl

Tiger Girl Headline

September 10, 1927 Clara Phillips
San Quentin

Infamous murderess Clara Phillips, aka “Tiger Girl”, has attempted suicide. She was found on the floor of her San Quentin prison cell bleeding profusely from self-inflicted wounds to her wrists. Clara is currently five years into a term of from ten years to life for the hammer slaying of a twenty year old widow, Mrs. Alberta Meadows. She considered the woman her “love rival” and lured her to an open field, where in a jealous rage she battered the woman to death in front of a witness.

Before committing murder at age 23, Clara had already led an extraordinary life. Married to Armour L. Phillips at age 14, she had been a chorus girl, Santa Monica bathing beauty, and briefly in the employ of the Eclipse Film Company.

Clara was known to be very jealous of her husband and they quarreled often – usually because she was accusing him of infidelity. When neighborhood gossip hinted at a love affair between Armour and the attractive young widow, Clara had a mission – remove her rival by any means necessary.

Fabricating a story of needing transportation to her sister’s house, Clara and her friend Peggy Caffee caught a ride with the unsuspecting Alberta. At some point during the drive Clara asked Alberta to pull over for a private conversation…moments later Peggy witnessed Clara viciously beating Alberta with a hammer, and then smashing her with a rock.

After bludgeoning and mutilating Mrs. Meadows, Clara went home and announced to her husband that she had killed the woman who was stealing his love. She then told him that she was going to cook him the best dinner he’d ever had because she was so happy.

Armour helped her to escape on the morning following the brutal crime. He then went to police and told them everything. Clara was arrested in Tucson, Arizona on a train bound for El Paso, Texas.

Clara’s defense team engaged five alienists (psychiatrists) who testified that the hammer wielding twenty-three year old woman had the mental capacity of an eight year old child, and that she was also susceptible to epileptic fits, which could account for her violent rages. Apparently epilepsy was a viable murder defense in 1922.

Peggy Caffee Clara gave her version of events from the witness stand. She said that it was her friend Peggy who had struck the fatal blow. The homicidal charmer had been at a loss to explain the bruising to her hands and the fingernail scratches covering her arms and legs – even so, public opinion began to sway in her favor.

Evidently some of the jurors were convinced by her story because during their deliberations they became deadlocked. Most of the eight men voted for acquittal, three of the four women voted for hanging. The jurors reached a compromise decision, finding Clara guilty of second degree murder. Clara called her conviction an “unfair deal”.

On December 5, 1922 she escaped from the county jail by cutting the bars of her cell, hoisting herself to the roof of the building and then shimmying down a drainpipe. At least that was the story for publication. She was aided by a Mr. Jesse Carson whose motives for assisting her remain uncertain. Self-described adventurer and South American revolutionary, Carson was more likely to have been a cattle thief and small time grifter. In any case Clara and Jesse made their way to Mexico where she was reunited with her younger sister Etta Mae Jackson, and the threesome then headed off to Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

There were dozens of Tiger Girl sightings from Mexico to Wyoming. None of them panned out. After being on the loose for over four months, a tip that Clara was in Honduras led police to her hideout and she was finally arrested and returned to the U.S. She was taken directly to San Quentin and incarcerated.

Following her capture, she claimed that she had been the victim and that her so-called escape was actually a kidnapping. According to Clara, Carson had forced her to flee her cell at gun point. Carson was never held to answer for his part in Clara’s escape.

Ultimately she would serve twelve years in prison, losing some of her good time when it was revealed that she and a male convict were exchanging graphic love notes.

She filed for a divorce from Armour in 1938. She said she intended to remarry, but would not divulge the name of her husband-to-be. She moved to the east coast and vanished from public view.

Vultures Circle Over Los Angeles

Los Angeles
August 28, 1927

Five days ago, twenty Mexican â€œrebelsâ€ descended on a train carrying among its passengers a group of American schoolteachers headed back to Los Angeles after a summer session at the University of Mexico. Eyewitnesses said about 40 shots were fired into the cars, one of which hit 27-year-old Florence M. Anderson of 3414 Third Avenue, Los Angeles, in the left hip. Anderson, a popular member of the travel party, was taken to a hospital in Maztalan. Doctors operated on the stricken high-school Spanish teacher, but peritonitis set in and she died later the same day, the only passenger injured in the melee.

Now comes word that Florence Andersonâ€™s father and a cousin, Mrs. Jean Garrison, are fighting over the disposition of her body, which arrived in Los Angeles early today.

Spokane newspaperman Charles H. Anderson, says that Florence sent him letters from Mexico in which she declared her affection for him. He says he is â€œpuzzledâ€ by the relationship between Garrison and his daughter, and pointed to news reports which first described them as aunt and niece, then as cousins. At any rate, he intends to have Florence buried â€œwith her ancestorsâ€ in California-and asked Southern Pacific to release his daughterâ€™s body to him.

Jean Garrison, on the other hand, claims to have her cousinâ€™s will, handwritten less than two months ago on the eve of her departure for Mexico. It states that Florence Anderson wished to be buried next to her mother in a Denver cemetery.

The tiebreaker was an affidavit filled out this morning by Francis Flynn, manager of the ill-fated tour group. â€œWhen Miss Anderson was shot and afraid she would die,â€ Flynn told reporters, â€œshe called me over and told me to send her things to Mrs. Garrison and to notify her about everything, but that her father was not to be communicated with.â€ There were â€œstrained relationsâ€ between them and â€œshe had had only two communications from him in recent years.â€

The will and affidavit were good enough for Southern Pacific, which released Florence Andersonâ€™s body to Mrs. Jean Garrison. Both are en route to Colorado. It is also being reported that Garrison has â€œdemanded through the State Department $100,000 [approximately $1.2 million today] reparations of the Mexican government for her cousinâ€™s death.â€

Postscript. Charles Anderson gave it one more shot. On September 1, 1927, the Times reported that he had retained counsel and asked for a photographic copy of his daughterâ€™s will, which left the bulk of her $10,000 estate (about $118,000 in 2007) for the education of two young cousins, Claire and Arthur Strong (ages 13 and 11, respectively). Perhaps he thought better of it; the Times makes no further mention of this sordid mess.