August 12, 1927
Los Angeles
Alice Miller, 24, was hanging out with her buddies Helen Myers, Norman Myers and Robert Wilkenson—the four of them all out on bail on various charges of grand larceny, pickpocketing, and vagrancy—in her little room at the Hillman Apartments, 1010 Ingraham Street.
There’s a knock on the door. Seems that Robert Seaner, the bondsman who’d bailed Alice out when she got pinched for pickpocketing in downtown department stores, has just received some disturbing news from Chief of Police Laubenhemer out in Milwaukee. Was it true, Alice, that back in Milwaukee, where you were known as Mrs. Mary Becker, you escaped from the Industrial Home for Women at Taycheedah? Would you be so kind as to come with me down to the station so we can sort this thing out? Sure thing, says Alice, let me go in the other room for a moment and change into my street clothes.
But the moments come and go and the collected find the room empty. She’s chosen death over jail: through the open window, they see her broken body lying four stories below.
Despite the basal skull fracture, broken nose and arm, and assorted internal injuries, Alice survives to stand trial. On November 26, Alice is freed on the charge of shoplifting, due to insufficient evidence; she is promptly rearrested by Milwaukee officers, who set off with their prisoner.
