Tom Neal: Killer Actor

 

A publicity photo of Tom Neal early in his career (photo source)

"Fate or some mysterious force can put the finger on you or me for no reason at all." - Tom Neal as Al Roberts in Detour (1945).

From the moment of his birth in January of 1914, Tom Neal seemed destined for the fame he craved most of his life; his great uncle was the noted actor and theater manager John Drew.  Neal was brought up in a spacious Chicago home and eventually attended Northwestern University, where he majored in mathematics.  Blessed with an athletic physique and good looks, he traded on them to compete in amateur boxing matches and participate in the school's drama club.  He moved to New York City in 1933, following some summer stock performances and debuted on Broadway in 1935.  In 1938, he not only made his first film appearance (Out West With the Hardys, part of Mickey Rooney's successful Hardy Family film series) but earned a law degree at Harvard.  Over the next handful of years, he appeared in many B-movies, including Republic Pictures' serial Jungle Girl and the classic film noir Detour, with Ann Savage, with whom he would make six films in total.  

While Neal was clearly intelligent and talented, his downfall appeared to be his temperament, his ego, and women, none of which were helped by his friendships with notorious Hollywood hellraisers Errol Flynn and Mickey Rooney.  While he was in New York City, he took up with Inez Norton, an ex-Follies dancer twice his age and who had been the girlfriend of Arnold Rothstein, the mobster who rigged the 1919 World Series.  Following his murder in 1928, Inez was left $150,000 by Rothstein (over $2.6 million in 2023 dollars) and Tom Neal was more than happy to help her spend it.  Neal and Norton were briefly engaged before she was followed by relationships with such Hollywood notables as Lana Turner, Joan Crawford, Ava Gardner, and Lorraine Cugat, the wife of Spanish bandleader Xavier Cugat.  He married actress Vicky Lane in 1944 and the marriage lasted five years before Lane filed for divorce, citing mental and physical cruelty.  And then Neal met Barbara Payton.

Barbara Payton and Tom Neal (photo source)

Barbara

Unlike Tom Neal,  Barbara Payton was not born into a wealthy, connected family but to two alcoholics who had no issue with their daughter trading her good looks for male attention and leaving school at sixteen to marry.  Starting as a print and catalog model, Barbara transitioned into the acting business solely based on her reputation as a party girl in the Hollywood club scene.  She received  good notices in 1949's film noir Trapped and seemed firmly on her way with the noir thriller Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950) alongside James Cagney.  Then along came Tom Neal.   

By the time she met Neal in 1950, Barbara had just divorced her second husband, who also took custody of their young son.  Like Neal, she was fiercely ambitious and in him, she saw the virility and good looks she craved.  She later claimed in an interview that within four minutes of meeting, she and Neal decided to marry.  Unfortunately, Tom Neal did not have the reputation and recognition Barbara also wanted.  But Franchot Tone did. 

Barbara Payton and Franchot Tone, 1951 (photo source)

 

In the 1930s and 1940s, Franchot Tone was suave and sophisticated, a debonair leading man of the screen and stage, twice nominated for an Academy Award.  His first wife had been Joan Crawford, married from 1935 until 1939, while both were under contract to MGM (although Crawford's star greatly eclipsed his).  Despite their divorce, the two remained friendly over the years.  

The connections Tone had, as well as his wealth, were attractive to Barbara when she met him in 1950.  Although reportedly engaged to Neal at the time, she neglected to inform Tone of this fact.  Nor did she tell Neal that she was simultaneously dating Tone, although Neal later claimed that she had told him she was engaged to Tone but stepping out on him because he was "boring" compared to the more exciting Neal. 

The triangle came to a head on the front lawn of Barbara's home on September 15, 1951, when the 45-year-old Tone ended up semi-conscious on the ground, courtesy of a beating by the 37-year-old Neal.  Neal claimed that Barbara had kissed Tone in front of him and "the sight of a girl I love kissing another man made me see red."  Perhaps notably, Neal and Payton were reportedly going to marry in San Francisco that same day.

The public's sympathy was with Tone, who had been taken to the hospital with a concussion, broken nose, and smashed cheekbone.  Wherever Barbara's sympathies may or may not have been, she married Tone on September 28.  The marriage lasted less than 60 days before Tone filed for divorce, claiming that Barbara was being unfaithful with none other than Tom Neal.  For her part, Barbara admitted that she had been living with Neal but only because she was afraid of Tone.

(photo source)

The resulting publicity from the attack, as well as Barbara's alleged infidelity, put the careers of both Barbara Payton and Ton Neal on the skids (although both of them would milk their notoriety as long as possible).  Unlike the Elizabeth Taylor-Eddie Fisher-Richard Burton scandal that would break a decade later, Hollywood was much more sensitive to the public's opinion and deferred to those who basically wanted the couple blacklisted.  Neal and Barbara became re-engaged and said they would marry in Paris but eventually broke up once again, this time for good.

Neal met a woman named Patricia Fenton and married her in 1956.  They had one child together before Fenton died of cancer in 1958.  With his Hollywood career effectively over (his last on-screen appearance was a part in the television series Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer), Neal sold everything he owned and left Los Angeles for Palm Springs, where he found work as a gardener.  He eventually built a solid and respectable business, saying that he had learned the trade from watching the Japanese gardeners who had tended to his two-acre Bel Air estate. 

In 1961, he married his third wife, a 25-year-old receptionist at the Palm Springs Tennis Club named Gail Kloke Bennett. 

Gail and Tom Neal (photo source)

 

April 1, 1965

Neal often frequented the Tyrol restaurant in Idyllwild, a mountain community about an hour from Palm Springs, so his appearance there on the evening of April 1, 1965 wasn't unusual.  What was, though, was the fact that he was alone and according to Robert Balzer, one of the owners and a friend of both Neal's and Gail's, that he seemed troubled.  Sitting down with Balzer and James Willet, the restaurant's other owner, Neal began talking about Gail, saying that she had become his entire life since his second wife had died, and that he couldn't live without her.  He then confessed that he had killed her.  Balzer and Willett thought Neal was kidding, as it was April Fool's Day, but Neal refuted that, saying he had shot Gail to death earlier that day while she was taking a nap.  

Following his confession at Tyrol, Neal contacted his Beverly Hills attorney, who called the Palm Springs police to inform them that Gail was at their home on Cardillo Road and had "expired or was seriously injured."  Upon finding that Gail was indeed "expired," her husband was arrested and booked into the Riverside County Jail.

The murder house in Palm Springs (photo source)

Gail had been found on the couch of the couple's living room, partially covered with a lightweight blanket.  She was wearing a green sweater and green capris.  The capris were ripped below the zipper, which was unzipped, and pulled low on her hips, along with her underpants.  She had a gaping wound roughly one inch above her right temple, where she had been struck by a .45 caliber bullet.  The bullet then exited through her neck and tore through three pillows underneath her head before coming to a rest in the couch's upholstery.  

An autopsy indicated that Gail had died somewhere between 2:30 p.m. on April 1 and 2:30 a.m. on April 2.  

The Lodi News Sentinel, April 2, 1965 (photo source)

On April 16, the Riverside County Grand Jury indicted Tom Neal for murder.  Public defender James Kellam was assigned to defend Neal.  He later said that he felt that Neal "needed a better defense than a public defender could provide" and so chose not to visit with his client at all from April through August, believing that his inaction would cause Neal's friends to rally around him financially and thus provide for a criminal practice attorney.  On August 20, Neal petitioned the court for a continuance on the basis of needing a change of counsel. 

Surprisingly, Kellam's action worked and Neal's friends rallied around him.  A Cathedral City auto dealer took out an ad in the local paper, requesting donations for Neal's defense.  Friends in Palm Springs sent in check, soon followed by friends in Hollywood that included Mickey Rooney, Dorothy Manners, Blake Edwards, Harrison Carroll and even Franchot Tone, the man he had beaten back in 1951.  The money allowed Neal to hire Palm Springs attorney Leon Rosenberg.  Neal thanked the Cathedral City auto dealer with a handwritten two-page note in which he claimed that "friends" were responsible for shooting Gail.  

The Trial

The trial began on October 19, 1965 with Deputy D.A. Roland Wilson asking for a first-degree murder conviction.  Local real estate broker Frank Seyferlich testified that he had been at the Neals' home the night before the murder.  Between 5:30 and 6:00 p.m. he had delivered letters of recommendation to Gail, who he said had been intending to divorce Neal and relocate to Los Angeles; she would have needed the letters as employment references.  According to Seyferlich, he was surprised to find Tom Neal at home as his understanding was the couple had been separated, with Neal living in Chicago since January of that year.  Gail had invited Seyferlich to stay for a drink but feeling uncomfortable, he left. 

Rosenberg managed to score points during his cross-examination of lab technician H. Carmon Bishop, when he got Bishop to admit that a man's wallet was found in the top drawer of the bureau in the master bedroom and a man's suitcoat was found in the master bedroom closet.  Wilson objected on the grounds of relevance, but the insinuation was that neither belonged to Tom Neal and that perhaps Gail had been seeing someone else.

The prosecution called only eight witnesses before resting their case on October 28.  Rosenberg began the defense's case on October 29.  Chief of Detectives Richard Harries testified that the wallet and suitcoat belonged to Steve Peck, a Palm Springs insurance man.  Peck rented a spare bedroom from Tom and Gail.  He had an alibi and witnesses who placed him in Phoenix at the time of Gail's murder.

Harries also admitted under oath that the murder weapon had never been located but a live .45 caliber bullet was found in Tom Neal's jacket pocket at the time he was arrested and that a similar box of ammunition was found in the Neal home.

Steve Peck took the stand the following day and recalled a domestic dispute between Tom and Gail that had occurred in November of 1964, only months before her murder.  According to Peck, Gail had pulled a .45 automatic on Neal screaming that she would kill him.  During cross-examination, however, Peck admitted that in his original statement to the police, it was Tom Neal that brandished the gun after slapping Gail several times. 

Tom Neal's Story

If the jury and the public had found Steve Peck interesting, they were absolutely riveted when Tom Neal took the stand.  According to Neal, Gail was lying on the couch and he was on one knee, caressing her.  She had questioned whether they "should be doing this," and Neal had accused her of "fooling around with all these guys" since he had left.  After he had accused her of having sexual relations with his friends, she had said she would kill him and had the .45 automatic in her hand.  Neal said he had pushed the gun away with both hands and it went off, striking Gail in the head.  He then prayed and claimed to recite aloud a tenant of Chrisian Science: "There is no life, truth, intelligence or substance in mind, all in infinity and its manifestation, for God is all in all.  Spirit is immortal truth, matter is mortal error.  Spirit is the real and eternal, matter is the unreal and temporal."  

Under cross-examination, Neal admitted that he and Gail had been estranged for some time, and that he had returned home from Chicago to attempt a reconciliation.  He said he did speak to his restaurant friends and told them that he "felt responsible for her death," but insisted that he never at any time said that he had fired the shot.  His friends had been the prosecution's first witnesses and had testified that he did say he had shot Gail.  Neal's cross ended with Wilson producing a copy of Gail's petition for divorce, lodged just before her death, in which she accused her husband of threatening her with a .45 revolver the previous November. 

On November 9, under rebuttal, Wilson called Dr. Armand Dollinger, who had performed the autopsy on Gail.  According to Dollinger, Neal's recounting of events was "unlikely;" the direction of the wound did not correspond with Neal's assertion that he had pushed the gun away. 

Rosenberg did his best to discredit Dollinger, asking whether the doctor had measured Gail's arm or had any idea of her muscle structure, to which Dollinger replied in the negative. 

Wilson then called three of Gail's coworkers from the Palm Springs Tennis Club.  All three testified that Gail had planned to leave town when she heard that Neal was returning from Chicago because she was afraid he would kill her once he learned she had filed for divorce. 

The Verdict

The jury of ten women and two men was out for ten hours.  Although the prosecution was seeking the death penalty, to the utter amazement of all present, on November 18, 1965, the jury found Tom Neal guilty of involuntary manslaughter, believing his story of the firearm accidentally discharging.  Wilson was stunned and Rosenberg elated, telling the press that with time served, Neal could be out by Christmas.  

At the sentencing hearing on December 10, Judge Hilton McCabe listened to Rosenberg plead for probation for his client, citing Tom Neal's "clean record" and saying the shooting was an accident that culminated from a marital discord.  Wilson said the prosecution would not consider probation and that the jury's verdict was the only break Tom Neal deserved.  Judge McCabe agreed, sentencing Neal to up to 15 years in prison.

Neal showed no emotion during the sentencing other than biting his lip but told the press outside that his sentence was "a railroad job."  

Tom Neal in a scene from his most famous film, Detour (1945) (photo source)

Afterwards

Tom Neal served six years of his one-to-15-year sentence.  He was paroled on December 6, 1971.  He returned to Hollywood, the scene of both success and downfall.  Instead of appearing on the big or small screen, however, he went back to his landscaping and gardening business.  His son found Neal dead in his bed on August 7, 1972, felled by heart failure.  He was 58 years old.   His body was cremated, with the eventual disposition of his cremains unknown.  

Barbara Payton at the beginning of her career (photo source)

Barbara Payton had no easier of a road than Tom Neal following their aborted engagement.  Suffering with alcoholism and drug addiction, between 1955 and 1963, she had multiple run-ins with the law, including arrests for passing bad checks and prostitution.  Offered the option of being admitted to rehab, Barbara said she would rather drink and die.  She ended up living with her parents in San Diego, where the trio spent their days binging on alcohol.  By the time she was 34 years old, the former slim and sexy blonde weighted 200 pounds, was unkempt, and suffering with broken blood vessels in her face from her constant drinking.

In 1963, she was paid $1,000 (just over $9,600 in 2023 dollars) for her autobiography, called I Am Not Ashamed, in which she recounted sleeping on bus benches and being regularly beaten while she was prostituting herself.  The book led to her last acting role, 4 for Texas, a Western comedy film. 

Her final marriage, her fifth, was in 1962, to a man named Jess Rawley.  She as still married to Rawley but living with her parents in San Diego when she died on May 8, 1967 of liver and heart failure.  She was 39 years old. 

During Tom Neal's trial in Indio, Barbara attended daily.  It was reportedly the last time the two saw each other.  

Franchot Tone in the 1930s (photo source)

Franchot Tone, who had been beaten at Neal's hands in 1951, married once more following his brief marriage to Barbara - to actress Dolores Dorn.  The marriage lasted only three years and the couple divorced in 1959. 

During the 1950s, Tone relocated from Hollywood to New York, where he appeared on stage and television.  His career continued into the 1960s, both on television and in film, until lung cancer, caused by his chain smoking, forced him to retire.  His first wife, Joan Crawford, who had also relocated to New York, cared for him until his death on September 18, 1968 at the age of 63.    

Sources:

Crockett, Art.  Celebrity Murders.  Pinnacle Books, 1990.

Historian Alan Royle (March 24, 2016).  Tom Neal - Getting Away With Murder.

Murderpedia (2022).  Thomas Neal.

Palm Springs Life (2022).  Killer Career - Actor Tom Neal.

Wikipedia (2022).  Tom Neal.

Wikipedia (2022).  Barbara Payton.

Wikipedia (2022).  Franchot Tone.

Gail's final resting place at Inglewood Park Cemetery (photo source)

 

  

Girl 27: The Brutal Assault of Patricia Douglas

 An MGM Extra Makes Rape a Federal Case

Patricia Douglas (photo source)

I wasn't trying to get anything.  I just wanted someone to believe me. - Patricia Douglas

Hollywood and MGM

Located at 8439 Sunset Boulevard, on the Sunset Strip in trendy West Hollywood, the Hacienda Park Apartments was home to many Hollywood notables of the late 1920s and early 1930s.  Built in 1927 as luxury apartments, the 54,000 square foot space was relatively close to the studios, as well as next door to the famed nightclub Ciro's, making it a prime location for, at times, Marie Dressler, Loretta Young, Grant Withers, Jeanette MacDonald, and others.  In 1935, dress designer Paul Ivar Wharton not only lived and worked at the Hacienda Park but was also murdered there. 

During the 1930s, a woman by the name of Lee Francis also moved in. 

April 22, 1927 rendering of The Hacienda Park Apartments (photo source)

 

Francis had worked out of brothels in San Francisco and Reno before arriving in Los Angeles in 1920 at the age of 25.  Soon after she arrived in town, she caught crime kingpin Charlie Crawford's eye.  Crawford not only gifted her with a small house on Norton Avenue in West Hollywood but set her up to run the high-class brothels she became infamous for.  By 1936, she was running brothels from a house on Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills, a location on Kings Road in West Hollywood, and an apartment building on the Westside.  Her clientele included leaders in the downtown establishment, studio executives, and movie stars.  Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, John Gilbert, and Spencer Tracy were reported to regulars, enjoying the swimming, billiards, drinks, fine food, and a variety of women at Francis' establishments.  MGM was said to keep a standing business charge account with Francis, albeit under an assumed name.  

Although flush with business, Francis did not -- could not -- own the properties she ran her businesses out of.  Once neighbors realized that a brothel was operating out of their neighborhood and notified law enforcement, she would often have to move overnight.  

That said, the LAPD were well aware of what went on and around town with Lee Francis and her businesses -- and who frequented them.  She allegedly paid 40 percent of her profits to first, Charlie Crawford and his network of corrupt cops and politicians, who graciously looked the other way.  After Crawford was murdered in 1931, the payouts would have continued - possibly to Bugsy Siegel, once he arrived from the east.

The "girls" who worked for Francis made around $1000 per week -- much more than the contract starlets of the studios, the goal of many Francis girls when they first arrived in Hollywood.  Believing their beauty alone would score them film work and stardom, when it did not, they chose prostitution over accepting jobs as salesclerks, secretaries or waitresses -- or worse, returning home with their dreams of Hollywood defeated.  

Some of Francis' girls came to her by way of the studios themselves, where they had managed to score short-term contracts (usually six months) that had not been picked up or optioned.  If they had been "favorites" of studio executives, meaning they did not spark enough interest as an actress but were appropriate to entertain in other ways, working for Lee Francis was suggested.  

In May of 1937, MGM had planned for its annual sales convention to be held for the first time in its history in Culver City.  Although the studio had been in mourning since producer Irving Thalberg (considered MGM's "Boy Wonder") had died suddenly in September of 1936, it had also been a banner year for MGM financially.  The coffers were full and shareholders and employees alike were flush -- this at a time when other studios were struggling to stay afloat (some of the less fortunate studios had gone into receivership and/or bankruptcy).  A proper celebration had to be planned.  

At the end of April, nearly 300 men from the Midwest and the East Coast boarded a private MGM railway car to spend three days aboard "pregaming" for the five-day conference in Culver City.  Louis B. Mayer himself was at the station in Pasadena on Sunday, May 2 to greet them, a bevy of "starlets" in tow.  By that point, the men were good and soused.  Mayer, ever the accommodating host, promised them a good time, complete with anything they wanted.  

Over the next few days, they were treated to dinner at the Ambassador Hotel and luncheons with stars like Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Charles Boyer, and Rosalind Russell.  The big finale, planned for Wednesday, May 5, was a Wild West Party at producer Hal Roach's ranch which was touted to be "a stag affair out in the wild and wooly West where men are men."  

David Ross (circled) at MGM's May 3, 1937 luncheon (photo source)

Girls brought in from Lee Francis would have been very aware of what was up, and what would go down, at such a party.  Girls like Patricia Douglas would not.

Patricia Douglas, a Missouri native, was a dancer and movie extra.  Only 20 years old that spring of 1937, she had chestnut hair, beautiful porcelain skin, and movie-screen perfect teeth.  She had migrated west with her mother, Mildred, who wanted to design gowns for motion picture stars.  Instead, Mildred ended up designing wears for high-end call girls.  Patricia dropped out of school at fourteen, but she didn't run wild.  Unlike other teenagers in the Los Angeles area, she did not drink, smoke, or date.  Despite her proximity to Hollywood, she was not impressed by fame, nor have any desire for it.  Dancing was her main passion in life.  She drifted into the movies, as she later recalled, "for something to do."  She counted as friends George Raft, Jimmy Durante, Dick Powell, Bing Crosby, and Bill Frawley (before his I Love Lucy days), who treated her as kid sister and would buy her a Coke while they vented on their career issues and personal lives.  By the time she was fifteen, she was dancing behind Ginger Rogers in Gold Diggers of 1933.  

    
Patricia was told about the casting call on Sunday, May 2, 1937 -- the same day the drunken entourage was disembarking the train in Pasadena.  Initially, she turned it down as she had no need for work.  Later, she agreed to show up, believing she was being hired as an extra in a western film.  Later, she said that had she known it was for a party, she never would have gone.  

May 5, 1937

At 4 p.m. on Wednesday, May 5, Patricia, along with nearly 120 other young women, reported to the Hal Roach Studio on Washington Boulevard in Culver City, just blocks from MGM.  The young women, most of whom were either dancers or considered themselves to be dancers, were outfitted in short suede skirts, bolero jackets, cowboy hats and boots.  As payment, they were promised a hot meal and $7.50 ($150 in 2022 dollars) -- standard for extras.  

After thick camera make-up was applied, the group of young women was bussed several miles away to "Rancho Roachero," where Hal Roach filmed his Our Gang comedy shorts.  The changing of location would not have given off any red flags to Patricia or the other girls as many movies, particularly Westerns, were shot on location.  What would, however -- at least for some of the girls -- were the 300 drunken men en route to the festivities.  

Upon arrival, the girls were herded into a large banquet room and instructed to sit down and wait.  Two hours passed, during which time an orchestra and bar were assembled, but not a single light, camera, or movie crew.  

It was seven o'clock before the MGM businessman, along with Mayer, Roach, and studio "fixer" Eddie Mannix, showed up.  The very intoxicated and revved up salesmen immediately took the real dancers of the group as nothing more than party favors and treated them as such.  With no telephones or transportation at their disposal, the young women were literally trapped with the men, the majority of whom were not only inebriated but sexually aroused, and left to fend for themselves.  

Although there was a proliferation of alcohol -- 500 cases of scotch and champagne -- there were other, more innocent diversions in connecting tents.  Barbecue was served while Laurel and Hardy spoke about the upcoming Kentucky Derby.  The Dandridge Sisters, including a 13-year-old pre-fame Dorothy, performed a live revue, while exhibition boxing matches took place in an arena set up for the event.  

Patricia Douglas, tricked into the job as doubtless, others had, did her best to endure it by dancing with some of the attendees.  It was while she was on the dance floor that David Ross spotted her.  Ross was 36 years old, a somewhat dumpy bachelor from the Chicago sales office.  He approached Patricia and demanded a dance lesson, to which she obliged.  He attempted to cop a feel and, as soon as she could politely get away, she hightailed it to the ladies' room, where she told the attendant that the handsy Ross was all over her and "sticking" to her.

By 10 p.m., the party had lost any attempt it may have had at a decent presentation.  Henry Schulte and Oscar Boudin, both waiters, later swore in affidavits that "there was filth in conversation," that men were "attempting to molest girls at the tables," "trying to force liquor on the girls," and "running their hands over the girls' bodies," and that "the party was the worst, the wildest, the rottenest I have ever seen."  

One 18-year-old, a former Miss Wichita, begged actor Wallace Beery, in attendance, for help, stating she was tired of being mauled.  Beery, gruff and one of MGM's biggest stars of the time, escorted the young lady from the premises but true to his reputation of being a brawler with a fiery temper, socked a few men on the way out.

Patricia was not so lucky.  David Ross, having been spurned by "a nobody," decided to retaliate.  He recruited another man to help him hold Patricia down and pinched her nose, forcing her to open her mouth to the scotch and champagne they plied her with.  They laughed as she gagged on the liquor and rushed to the bathroom to vomit.  Wanting, and needing, fresh air, she stepped outside the banquet hall and a hand clamped down over her mouth.

Ross told her that if she made a sound, she would never breathe again.  He dragged her to one of the many sedans parked in the lot, shoved her inside, and boasted that he was going to "destroy" her.  During the assault, when Patricia began to pass out, he smacked her in the face with an order to cooperate.  "I want you awake!" she later recalled him saying.

It was 11:30 p.m. when parking attendant Clement Soth heard screams and then saw Patricia staggering toward him, both of her eyes swollen shut from the hits she'd taken.  As Soth approached her to help, he saw David Ross running away. 

The Cover Up Begins

Patricia, in a state of hysterics, was taken to Culver City Community Hospital, across the street from MGM, accompanied by a Culver City motorcycle cop.  Upon admission to the facility, more like an urgent care center than a hospital, Patricia vomited once again.  The shy, immensely private young woman was then given a cold-water douche, followed by a pelvic examination that she found embarrassing and shameful. The doctor who performed the examination, Edward Lindquist, could find no evidence of a sexual assault, not surprising given that a douche was administered prior to the exam.  He also apparently had no concerns over any bruising Patricia had or the clear violence that had been done to her face.  He said that while he could not prove it, he did not believe intercourse had occurred, consensual or otherwise.  

Lindquist was co-owner of the hospital and very well aware the hospital depended on MGM's business. 

Patricia was then driven home in a studio car, with no apologies or sympathy.  Nor was she given empathy from Mildred, who had never spoken to her daughter about sex or given her any type of warning about what could, and did, happen in the industry.  Mildred's preferred method of dealing with Patricia's rape was to pretend as though nothing had happened. 

Despite being accompanied to the hospital by a police officer, as well as the presence of 11 officers from three different police precincts and MGM's own "police" department at the party, no criminal report was ever written or filed.

Patricia stayed home for two days, nursing her swollen face and body that was sore from David Ross' attack, before she picked herself up and returned to the Roach Studios.  She told the studio cashier, "You ought to know what happened to me so it doesn't happen to anyone else."  Instead of compassion, she was merely handed her $7.50 pay.  MGM never contacted her and David Ross returned untethered to Chicago.

If all parties concerned had thought Patricia Douglas would merely go away, or accept a payout for her silence, they were soon to be sorely mistaken.

Taking Action

Accompanied by her mother, Patricia swore out a complaint against David Ross at the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office.  Since she was still a minor (the age of majority being twenty-one), Mildred was forced to sign the complaint.  

Patricia's actions were unique and groundbreaking for the day.  Assaulted women were considered "damaged" and to blame for their assault and resulting injuries.  Not only was Patricia standing up for herself, insisting that her rapist be held accountable, she was taking a stand against the studio system whose first rodeo this surely was not.  She cared little about the stigma that would be attached to her or what the lawsuit might do to any future career she might have.

Unfortunately for Patricia, the D.A. was Buron Fitts, not the most upstanding of politicians.  Fitts was reportedly on the take not only for businesses like Lee Francis' but was also rumored to be taking a payout to keep any action brought in the murder of director William Desmond Taylor, which had happened in February of 1922.  He  considered Louis B. Mayer a close personal friend and was completely in the pocket of the studios.  MGM had been the major contributor of Fitts' most recent campaign six months earlier.  In fact, Fitts himself had been indicted for perjury in a rape case involving a 16-year-old girl and had ultimately been acquitted, something that caused outrage in the Los Angeles community.  Despite this, he had still been reelected as D.A. 

(photo source) 

Fitts wasn't likely to take action against MGM or David Ross. 

Patricia waited for several weeks and, with no response from Fitts, was put in touch with attorney William J.F. Brown.  Brown was considered a "dandy" in his day, with his custom suits, splashy Packard automobiles, and love of courtroom theatrics.  He saved his own ex-wife from the gallows with a passionate appeal after she shot her new husband four times.  If any attorney was a perfect fit to take on the studio system and a D.A. like Fitts, it was Brown. 

Brown represented Patricia pro bono -- the publicity would be worth it -- and immediately fired off correspondence to Fitts in which he threatened to have Patricia go public with her accusations if no thorough investigation was performed.  True to his nature, Fitts considered that Brown was bluffing and did nothing.

The L.A. Examiner, owned and run by the fearless (and feared) William Randolph Hearst, broke the story on June 4, 1937, taking leads away from Jean Harlow's fatal illness (she would succumb three days later) and the Duke of Windsor's wedding to the American divorcee Wallis Simpson.  The word "rape" was never mentioned, as it was considered too salacious, but the story referenced Patricia being "attacked" and "outraged."  Readers knew what the euphemisms meant.  MGM itself went unnamed in the story, called only a "local studio."  Hearst had no desire to sink the industry in which his mistress, actress Marion Davies, made her living and into which he himself had invested (he formed Cosmopolitan Pictures after United Artists rebuffed him).  Patricia was not only named but her photograph was featured and her home address was published as well.

The article did get Buron Fitts on the case, at least somewhat.  He showed Patricia a photo lineup of two dozen men and without hesitation, she picked out David Ross.

(photo source)

MGM, still publicly unidentified, released a statement as "the local film company" in which it said, among other things, it had read "with astonishment" the claims made by Patricia and that it was difficult for them to make a statement about a situation to which not only appeared "impossible" but about which they "know nothing." 

Damage Control

Behind the scenes, MGM was in full-on damage control.  Perhaps not since producer Paul Bern's death in 1932 had an event occurred that could so harm the studio, its shareholders, and its employees.  Even if Patricia's allegations of a stag party costing $35,000 (nearly $700,000 in 2022 dollars) with a boatload of alcohol and teen girls could be refuted, it would leave a very, very bad taste in the mouth of MGM"s stockholders and worse, the moviegoing public who assumed that MGM did indeed have the squeaky-clean image Louis B. Mayer so desired.  It was therefore decided the best course of action was to smear the victim.

MGM's "fixer," Eddie Mannix in 1935 (photo source)

MGM put its fixer, Eddie Mannix (a thoroughly reprehensible human being who broke his wife's back during an argument and beat his mistress, actress Mary Nolan, so badly she required 15 surgeries) to work by hiring the Pinkerton Detective Agency.  Pinkerton was instructed to track down every single girl that showed up for the "casting call" that night and persuade each one by whatever means necessary (i.e., financial incentives or coercion) that there had been no groping, molesting, or anything untoward going on at Rancho Roachero.  

Sugar Geise, a 27-year-old chorus girl whose family was tight with Buron Fitts, suddenly recalled seeing Patricia passed out at the Knickerbocker Hotel bar.  Two other party attendees remembered that on the night of May 5, Patricia was chugging liquor from a quart bottle all night; the alleged orgy, they said, was just a jolly old party, full of good, clean fun.

Patricia was indignant, claiming that anyone who knew her was well aware that she did not drink.  She also wanted to know exactly when rape began being considered good, clean fun.  She wasn't about to throw in the towel.  Not yet.

The detectives at Pinkerton shadowed Patricia in an attempt to dig up dirt on her.  An internal memo indicated they were instructed to find attempts where she had propositioned men, while taking personal digs at her by suggesting that "many men," who surely turned her down, would recall being solicited by her.  Even Patricia's urologist, Dr. Wirt Dakin, had gotten a request from Hal Roach himself to state that treatment for a cyst on Patricia's bladder was actually a "genital urinary infection," a euphemism for gonorrhea.  Dr. Dakin, one of the few decent characters involved in this tragedy, stood firm and refused. 

The agency had the truth soon enough.  Patricia Douglas had been a teetotaling virgin on the night of May 5.  She had no dirt to dig up, nothing to use against her.  The lack of any dirt was horrifying to MGM, whose own stars had plenty of skeletons in their closets.       

Hal Roach's note on Dr. Dakin and the "G.U." (photo source)

With the resulting scandal, Patricia was all but abandoned by her celebrity pals.  Terrified that any association with her would result in career suicide, they turned their backs on her.  She was going to stand alone.

The Legal Fight

Her identification of David Ross led to a grand jury hearing, with Ross being summoned from Chicago.  He labeled such accusations "absurd" and "ridiculous" but upon his arrival in Los Angeles, he was taken immediately into a meeting with Louis B. Mayer's personal attorney.  

The hearing, held on June 16, 1937, was nothing more than Patricia being traumatized all over again.  Only two of the 120 girls in attendance at the party testified on her behalf, one of them being the 18-year-old who fled to Wallace Beery for help.  Beery, in a studio-approved statement, denied the incident entirely.  Parking attendant Clement Soth, who had responded to Patricia's screams and assisted her immediately following the attack, and who had said he saw David Ross fleeing, testified that the man he saw that night was much thinner than the plump Ross and denied that he had seen Ross running from the scene. 

Patricia was forced to recount her rape and then watch as Ross' attorney, an associate of Louis B. Mayer's attorney, pointed at her and scathingly asked the grand jury, "Who would want her?  Look at her!" 

To add further insult to injury, when leaving the courtroom, Patricia encountered Ross, who calmly smoked, while photographers pushed her close to him in order to capture a shot for their evening editions.

Patricia forced to confront Ross, June 16, 1937 (photo source)

The grand jury did not indict David Ross.  

"I just wanted to be vindicated, to hear someone say, 'You can't do that to a woman.'" - Patricia Douglas

MGM, Eddie Mannix, and David Ross likely considered the case closed at that point.  But Patricia was a scrapper.  She was not going quietly.

A month later, in July, she filed a civil suit against Ross, Mannix, Hal Roach, casting assistant Vincent Conniff, and John Doe 1 to 50 for their "unlawful conspiracy to defile, debauch, and seduce" her and other dancers "for the immoral and sensual gratification of male guests."  She sought $500,000 (nearly $10 million in 2022) in damages.  

MGM's lawyers stalled the case until the new year of 1938, while the studio itself continued to bestow jobs, favors, and other rewards upon perjurers and those who were suffering from sudden memory problems.  

On February 9, 1938, a superior court judge dismissed the case.  David Ross, the principal defendant, was never even served.

Twenty-four hours after the dismissal, Patricia, again with her mother acting on her behalf, filed an identical suit in the U.S. District Court, the first of its kind.  In a trailblazing move, Patricia became the first woman to make rape a federal case, based on a violation of her civil rights.  

Patricia and her mother, Mildred (photo source)

They had been lucky up to this point but Mayer and Mannix were terrified as to what this newest case might mean to MGM and by extension, themselves.  Both were guaranteed a percentage of MGM's profits and both worried that bad publicity would affect the bottom line.  Since defaming Patricia had not worked, they were ready to go after her attorney with enticements. 

William J.F. Brown was not entertained by slander or outlandish accusations.  He did, however, have political aspirations and Fitts' mishandling of Patricia's case incited him to challenge Fitts as D.A. in the next election.  It was made clear to Brown that no one in opposition with MGM would ever win such an election and so Brown sacrificed his client.  He neglected to appear in court on three consecutive occasions, forcing a federal judge to dismiss the case for "want of prosecution."  The defense counsel also neglected to appear, which almost certainly guaranteed that MGM and Brown were in tandem over the non-appearances.  Patricia's mother Mildred neglected or refused to expose Brown's blatant malpractice and misconduct, which would have gotten Patricia not only another attorney but another attempt at legal justice.

Out of legal options and drained, both emotionally and physically, Patricia finally gave up the fight.  For its part, MGM whitewashed most of its records to avoid any mention of Patricia Douglas or the Wild West Party in May of 1937.  

The newspapers and general public quickly forgot about Patricia and her story.  There was other news to be had.

Afterward

Following his grand jury testimony, parking attendant Clement Soth was bestowed with a promised lifetime job as a driver for MGM.  He held the position until his death.  His daughters later publicly admitted that Soth had committed perjury in exchange for the cushy position during those Depression-era years.

In the 1940 primary election, William J.F. Brown was thoroughly trounced by Buron Fitts (who would lose in the general election).  

Patricia's mother Mildred purchased a liquor store and some horses after the case dismissals, most probably thanks to hush money she received in exchange for her willingness to look the other way at Brown's malpractice.  She married an alcoholic gambler who went through all of her money before leaving her.  Mildred lived into her nineties, residing with her daughter in both a hostile and caregiver-type environment.  Only during the last ten years of her mother's life was Patricia able to say she felt any love at all for Mildred.

Eddie Mannix told people years after the rape that "we had her [Patricia] killed," but they did not.  They may have damaged her spirit and buried her name and story, leaving it to languish for decades, but Patricia Douglas survived.

A young Patricia before May of 1937 (photo source)

Mannix died in 1963, six years after Louis B. Mayer, and still on the studio payroll.

Around the same time, David Ross died of rectal cancer.  He never married nor had children.  He left no family to remember him, much less mourn his passing.

In March of 1937, two months before Patricia was raped, Buron Fitts was wounded after shots were fired through his windshield by an unknown person or persons.  Three years later, he was defeated in his attempt at a fourth term as D.A.  A veteran of World War I, he joined the Army Air Corps at the rank of major in 1942.  He dropped out of public sight for the next 30 years until he put a bullet in his head in 1973, a week after his 78th birthday.

Lee Francis, the madam at the Hacienda, attempted to go legit in 1937/1938 by opening a nightclub at 8588 Sunset, a block or so west of the Hacienda.  After spending the equivalent of $800,000 in 2022 dollars, she encountered difficulties when a "crimp was put in the deal" by "an owner of a nearby night rendezvous with powerful newspaper and political affiliations," as Francis recounted later.  This was almost certainly Billy Wilkerson, owner of the nearby Cafe Trocadero and publisher of The Hollywood Reporter.  Ultimately, Francis was bought out by a "well-known personality from the East" (thought by many to be Bugsy Siegel) who reneged on the deal to pay her.

Having lost her legitimate business, Francis returned to her tried and true business and was pinched in January of 1940 after a raid.  Francis was arrested for suspicion of moral offenses, along with two other women in her employ.  In March, she was found guilty, sentenced to 30 days in jail, and fined $250 (nearly $5,100 in 2022).  As an interesting sidenote, one of the women arrested with her, Simone King, would marry mobster Mickey Cohen ten months later, becoming the prim and proper LaVonne Cohen.)

Lee Francis and Judge Cecil Holland, 1940 (photo source)

Following her jail stint, Francis returned to business, keeping a very low profile, but not at the Hacienda.  In 1959, she attended the closing night party for the Garden of Allah hotel accompanied by an entourage of her call girls.  Six years later, she published an account of her life as a madam before disappearing from public view.

The former Hacienda Park Apartments went through several name changes through the years, including Hacienda Arms and Coronet.  It is currently known as the Piazza del Sol, where the Italian Renaissance architecture is host to a variety of business offices, including small production companies, and a Japanese restaurant.       

Redux

Following her failed legal attempts, Patricia and her mother left Los Angeles.  They stayed in Bakersfield, north of L.A., for a while before heading to Las Vegas.  Patricia married three times in five years, with two of her husbands exposed as bigamists.  At 37, she decided she was done with men and sex, declaring that she had never been in love with anyone.  Other than her mother, no one else in her family knew of her brutal rape in 1937 -- not her husbands or her children.  Thanks to a decision to keep herself from getting close to anyone, including her children or grandchildren, she had no friends to talk to or lean on.  Her story remained lost and forgotten for six decades.

David Stenn had started his writing career on television, with Hill Street Blues, 21 Jump Street, and Beverly Hills, 90210.  He wrote a well-received biography of 1920s actress Clara Bow in 1988 and chose to follow it up by focusing on another Hollywood icon, Jean Harlow.  It was while he was on deadline for the Harlow book in 1993 that he stumbled across a relatively obscure notation on Patricia and the infamous stag party.  Initially skeptical about Patricia's allegations, he was nonetheless intrigued that such a scandalous story had not been reported by any Hollywood historians and eventually spent the better part of a decade tirelessly digging into the story.  Five or six years after he began, he was astounded to discover that Patricia was still alive and living in Las Vegas.  She eventually agreed to meet with him and look through photographs of Hollywood and MGM.  When shown a photograph of David Ross, her reaction at seeing an image of him after 60 years was an immediate physical and visceral one; she shook and cried.  She confessed to Stenn that the very smell of scotch made her nauseous, taking her back to May of 1937, and that she still lived in fear.

Stenn gave an interview to Vanity Fair in 2003 about Patricia's rape and the massive attempt at cover up done by MGM, taking her story public for the first time since 1937.  That led to a documentary in 2007, called Girl 27.  Revealed too was the tale of Eloise Spann, a contact singer and actress during the same years that Patricia was dancing and working as an extra.  Eloise too was assaulted and raped as Patricia was, in a house in L.A. by a person or persons connected to the studio system.  Eloise, only 19 years old, at the time, was, like Patricia, a virgin.  Her rape resulted in a pregnancy that was terminated.  She too lodged a suit against her attacker(s) and, much like Patricia, her suit was dismissed without any kind of justice.  Her account received even less attention than Patricia's did. 

Stenn tracked down Eloise Spann's son, who knew nothing of his mother's tragic history and what she had endured, until Stenn informed him.  He recalled that his mother was "unwell" for most of his childhood and upbringing.

Eloise Spann was never able to move past her assault, rape, resulting abortion and cover-up by the studio, despite marrying and having a family.  She hanged herself.

While Patricia was denied justice in 1937, receiving $7.50 in payment for her pain and suffering, and David Ross was free to continue his life without recourse, and MGM, as well as other studios, were welcome to carry on fostering environments in which women (and girls) were exploited and abused, she did lay the groundwork for future changes.  Her assault, with the resulting scandal, was the first time MGM could not pay off everybody and bury the incident entirely.  They did manage to hush it up for decades following the indictments and cases but could not keep Patricia and her account quiet forever.  While she was betrayed by MGM, its employees who were bought off and/or threatened into silence, Buron Fitts, William J.F. Brown, her entertainment friends who valued their careers more than doing right by Patricia, and even, if all likelihood, her own mother, Patricia did succeed in one aspect.  Never again would MGM throw a party under the guise of a casting call, which is what she wanted to put an end to all along.

Patricia died in Las Vegas on November 11, 2003, suffering from emphysema and glaucoma and still fearful.  She didn't live to see the documentary featuring her or her story.      

Patricia, toward the end of her life (photo source)

Sources:

Dawson, Nick.  "David Stenn, Girl 27." Filmmaker, July 27, 2007.

Ponder, Jon.  "Hacienda Park and the Origins of the Sunset Strip." WeHoVille, April 8, 2019.

Stenn, David.  "It Happened One Night . . . at MGM." Vanity Fair, April 2003.  

Stenn, David.  "The Systematic Crushing of a #MeToo Pioneer."  The New York Times, January 5, 2018.

Girl 27.  Dir. David Stenn.  Perf. Patricia Douglas.  TLR Productions, 2007.  Documentary.     

Two Officers Down in El Segundo: The Cold Case Murders of Richard Phillips and Milton Curtis

 

Fingerprints and a Signature Crack a 45 Year Old Case 

It was Sunday night, July 21, 1957 in Hawthorne, California.  Bob Dewar was 17 years old and had attended a summer party with three friends earlier in the evening.  It was before midnight when the quartet, consisting of two boys and two girls, decided to make a stop at the local Lover's Lane on Van Ness Avenue.  After parking, Bob rolled the window of the 1949 Ford down - and that's when the barrel of a gun poked through.  A voice told him "This is a robbery."  Bob initially thought someone was pulling a prank on them but it was all too real.   All four handed over watches, jewelry and cash.

Armed with a flashlight, the robber had also brought surgical tape which he used to cover the teenagers' eyes, before forcing them to undress and then binding them.  One of the girls, only 15 years old, was raped by the man after he moved from the driver's side of the car to the passenger side.

Bob later remembered that the man asked them to get out of the car and then said, "I think I'm going to kill you.  I want you to march out into the field."  The girls were crying and Bob figured it was the end of the line for all of them - when they heard the car door close and the Ford take off.  The four were left, bound and taped, naked and helpless but alive.  Officers Richard Phillips and Milton Curtis would not be so lucky.

The Crimes

El Segundo in the 1950s was a quiet, safe and well-to-do suburb of Los Angeles.  The night shift usually consisted of traffic stops of impatient or intoxicated people.  Officers Richard Phillips and Milton Curtis were working the graveyard shift, sitting in their patrol car at the intersection of Sepulveda and Rosecrans.  Phillips was 28 years old, a veteran who served in the Air Force during the Korean War and was known to be an excellent marksman.  He had been with the department for nearly three years.  He was married and had three children.  Curtis was 25 years old, a rookie who had just graduated from the academy in Riverside and had been in uniform only two months.  He was married and had two children.

It was somewhere between 1:15 a.m. and 1:20 a.m. on Monday, July 22, 1957 when the two officers, with Curtis at the wheel, noticed the 1949 Ford pull up to the intersection and stop at the red light before then proceeding through it.  Neither Phillips nor Curtis knew about the robbery, assault and rape that had taken place in the hour before when they decided to pull the car over.

Phillips had gotten out of the patrol car and pulled his citation book out, as another patrol car with Officers James Gilbert (Milton Curtis' partner until two weeks previous) and Charlie Porter drove by.  Seeing Phillips writing in his citation book and Curtis behind the wheel and phoning it in, it appeared to be a routine traffic stop with no need for any kind of backup and so Gilbert and Porter drove on.  They had no idea that other than their killer, they would be the last people to see Richard Phillips and Milton Curtis alive.

The call that Curtis made, requesting that the plates on the Ford be run came through around 1:28 or 1:29 a.m.  Only seconds later came a call over the radio from Officer Phillips requesting an ambulance and saying that he and his partner had been shot.  Porter and Gilbert raced back to the scene, where they found Phillips, mortally wounded on the ground beside the patrol car, with three gunshots in his back.  His service revolver lay next to him, emptied of bullets.  His citation book was on the hood of the police car, with only the date filled in.  Phillips died before he could get to the hospital.  Curtis, still in the driver's seat of the patrol car, was dead from three gunshot wounds: one to the upper right chest, one to the right side, and one to his right forearm.  Both men had been shot with .22 caliber short rounds.  The killer was gone.

A woman by the name of Margaret Osburn had been heading home from work on westbound Rosecrans Avenue and had stopped for the signal.  She noted the patrol car that Phillips and Curtis were sitting in and also noted a Ford pull up in the left lane next to her, briefly stop for the light and then run it.  She saw the officers take off in pursuit of the Ford and once the light had changed, she proceeded through the intersection, continuing on Rosecrans.  She saw the police car, with the Ford, pulled off the road at Rosecrans and Palm.  She recalled seeing the driver standing outside the car and one of the officers shining a flashlight into his face.  Osburn said the driver was taller than the officer, with "husky" shoulders.  She estimated him to be around 25 years old, with either curly blonde or light brown hair and wearing a red plaid shirt with the tailed pulled out of, rather than tucked into, his pants.  

Nineteen-year-old Alan King had also been traveling on Rosecrans that night and had seen the patrol car, with its lights and siren on, coming up behind him.  He had pulled off to the side and watched the car speed by him.  Having just finished his shift at a local gas station, he continued on to his home on Poinsettia, around the corner from where Phillips and Curtis pulled the Ford over at Rosecrans and Palm.  King later claimed to have seen from the back porch of his house Phillips and Curtis forcibly remove the driver from the vehicle, where there was a brief "struggle," before the driver quieted down and Curtis returned to the patrol vehicle and talked into the radio mic.  King then went inside, running back outside when he heard gunshots.  He saw the driver get into the Ford and "speed down Rosecrans." 

The police car of the fallen officers, with Officer Phillips' citation book on the hood
(photo source) 

The Investigation

An immediate BOLO went out for the Ford, starting what would be the greatest manhunt in California's history at the time.  The four teenagers from Hawthorne were discovered on the street and they, along with Alan King, Margaret Osburn, and Officers Gilbert and Porter, helped to develop a composite sketch of the killer.  

With hundreds of officers from El Segundo and the neighboring communities scouring the area, the Ford was found fairly quickly, roughly four blocks west of the crime scene.  It had been struck with three gunshots, thanks to Richard Phillips.  A bullet hole was noticeable in the trunk.,  Two bullet holes were easily visible in the back window.  Two rounds were recovered inside the vehicle, leading investigators to hope that the killer had been struck by one of the bullets.  Two latent lifts (fingerprints) were taken from the steering wheel; they were later determined to be left thumb prints.  The skirts belonging to the teenaged girls that had been assaulted several hours earlier were found on the back seat and floorboard.

Once again, the killer was gone.

Milton Curtis with his wife and children (photo source)

The fallen officers were buried on July 26, side by side, at Inglewood Park Cemetery (in April of 1958, Richard Phillips' remains would be moved to Spokane, Washington).  The hunt for their killer went on.   Several promising leads surfaced, as well as a multitude of tips, but led nowhere.  In 1958, the case was featured in True Detective magazine with a plea for public help to solve the murders.  Two years later, in 1960, a man pulling up weeds at his home on 33rd Street in Manhattan Beach discovered a watch and a chrome-plated revolver; the location was a mile from the crime scene.  A second watch was found after a search.  Both watches had been taken from the Hawthorne teens in July of 1957 by the killer that had since obtained the nickname of "The Lover's Lane Bandit."  It was theorized that after he dumped the bullet-riddled car, he had run through the yards off Rosecrans, dropping not only the items he had stolen, but the murder weapon as well. 

Richard Phillips' widow and children (photo source)

Having been on and in the ground for three years, no prints were able to be lifted off the nine-shot Harrington & Richardson .22 revolver.  Ballistics tests could only say that the weapon was "consistent" with the bullets that had killed Officers Phillips and Curtis; the poor condition of the gun made it impossible to be more conclusive than that.  The gun was able to be traced to a Sears store in Shreveport, Louisiana and had been purchased for $29.95 on June 18, 1957 by a man using the name of G.D. Wilson and a Miami address (the address turned out to be fictional).  Assuming the man was not from Shreveport, investigators began searching nearby motels and hit pay dirt at a YMCA, where a George D. Wilson of Miami had checked in on June 16, 1957.  Detectives would not know it then but the accompanying signature would eventually help to break the case four decades later.

The Shreveport connection also confirmed the investigators' suspicions that their killer was not from California.  The Hawthorne teens had mentioned that he had an accent, possibly southern, and that he had been almost polite in the midst of the assault.   

The police worked hard to track down every George D. Wilson in the United States but ultimately realized the name was a fake.  The case went cold once again.  Although the case moved on to the back burner as the years ticked by, Richard Phillips and Milton Curtis were not forgotten.

A Break in the Case

In September of 2002, the El Segundo Police Department received a phone call from a female claiming to have information on the case.   She said that her uncle had bragged that he was responsible for killing the two cops in El Segundo.  With a new suspect, the fingerprints lifted back in 1957 were sent to the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department crime lab, along with information on the suspect.  Specialists Dale Falcon and Don Keir found that the new suspect was not a match to the 1957 fingerprints - but they decided to use modern science in an attempt to solve the case.  Following the terror attacks of 9/11, the FBI had created a nationwide database of fingerprints containing convicted criminals from every state in the country.  Falcon and Keir cleaned up the original fingerprints, digitized them and loaded them into the system.  And just like that, they got a match.

A young Gerald Mason (photo source) 

Gerald Fiton Mason had been born in Columbia, South Carolina in 1934 into a family with four other sons.  He served time in the Army in the early 1950s before being honorably discharged.  In 1954, he had spent a semester at the University of South Carolina, where he studied business.  He had his first brush with the law in April of 1956 when he was arrested for burglary and larceny.  Sentenced to three years incarceration, it was suspended to one and Mason served eight months.  

In 1960, Mason married his wife Betty and the couple went on to have two daughters and grandchildren.  He had owned and operated several service stations in the Columbia area before retiring in the 1990s.  

Investigators were stunned that the match was not to a career criminal.  In fact, his record did not have a violent offense on it.  Further searches revealed that Mason had not gotten so much as a parking ticket after April of 1956.  

The old YMCA records were pulled out and the handwriting for George F. Wilson was examined by forensic expert Paul Edholme who found the Wilson sample "identical" to samples of Gerald Mason's handwriting.  Armed with the fingerprint match and Edholme's assertion that he was "99.9% certain" that Mason and Wilson were one in the same, California detectives felt assured they had their man.  

Arrest and Conviction

Mason had been put under surveillance in December of 2002 as detectives waited to make their move.  On his last day of freedom (although he wouldn't have known that), Tuesday, January 28, 2003, he played golf.  On Wednesday, January 29, around 7 a.m., he was arrested at his home.  The large number of officers present for his arrest reportedly shocked Mason and he inquired where they were from.  Told they were from the El Segundo Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office, Mason replied, "You're homicide detectives?  I think I need a lawyer."   He was then informed he was being arrested for the murder of two police officers in 1957, to which Mason said, "My god, you're here for that?  That happened so long ago.  I can't believe you're bothering me with that."    

Booking Mason into the local jail while awaiting a request for extradition, a decades-long question was at long last answered.  Officer Richard Phillips, after being shot three times in the back, lying on the ground and dying, had managed to pull his service revolver out and fire six shots at the Ford as it sped away.  Three of those shots hit its target.  Finding only two rounds in the car, investigators hoped against hope that Phillips had managed to wound his killer.  Detectives in 2003 noted a bullet-shaped scar on Mason's back, one he eventually admitted came from a bullet fired by Phillips.  Richard Phillips had marked him for life and nearly 46 years later, the scar remained there to prove it.   

Mason in court (photo source) 

Following a judicial hearing in South Carolina, Mason agreed to return to Los Angeles to answer for his crimes.  Officer Howard Speaks, who had lifted the fingerprint from the Ford that eventually was linked to Mason, attended the hearing, remarking, "I've been waiting for this date a long time, but the wait was worth it."   Officer Charlie Porter, who along with his partner James Gilbert, had seen not only Mason but Phillips and Curtis in their last moments alive, said "You can run, but you cannot hide.  Kill an officer and we'll get you, no matter how long it takes." 

Under a plea deal, rape, robbery and kidnapping charges were dropped against the 69-year-old Mason, who pleaded guilty to murdering Richard Phillips and Milton Curtis.  According to his attorney, he did so to spare "the victims" the pain of testifying.  He had told detectives that he had been intoxicated on the night of July 21-22, 1957 and had stumbled across the teenagers in Hawthorne by chance and didn't remember why exactly he had assaulted them and raped one of the girls.  When the police officers had pulled him over in El Segundo, just east of Hawthorne, for running the red light, he figured they would soon find out he was in a stolen car and what he had done.  So "If I don't get them, they're gonna get me."  According to Mason, when "the officer turned away from me, I shot both officers, got back in the car and drove away."  (That officer was likely Phillips, who had put his citation book on the hood of his vehicle to write the ticket.)  

Also in the courtroom were children of Richard Phillips and Milton Curtis.  Mason asked them for forgiveness for the killings, saying "Please believe I am still looking for ways to express my remorse for the horror I have caused."    Carolyn Phillips, Richard Phillips' daughter, told him "Your cowardly act shattered our lives forever . . . there is no way to describe the emptiness and anguish we have felt all our lives without Dad . . . we cannot and will not forgive you."  

Keith Curtis, Milton Curtis' son, said, "Gerald Mason, your family may be shocked but my family has been devastated."    

On March 24, 2003, a tearful Gerald Mason was sentenced to life in prison, a sentence he was allowed to serve in South Carolina so that he could be close to his family.  "At no other time in my life have I intentionally harmed anyone," he said.  "I don't know why I did this."   One of his daughters stated that even though she couldn't possibly describe the range of emotions their family had gone through as a result of his crimes, she couldn't have asked for a better father.  

Mason was turned down for parole in 2009, with a recommendation of the maximum 15-year wait before the next parole hearing.  He died on January 22, 2017, nine days before his 84th birthday.  He had served 14 years for his crimes.  

The final resting places of Officers Curtis and Phillips

Sources:

CBS (March 25, 2003). 1957 Cop Killer Asks Forgiveness.

CBS News (March 15, 2005).  The Ghosts of El Segundo.  

Criminally Intrigued (July 29, 2017).  El Segundo Cop Killing Cold Case.

GoUpstate.com (February 10, 2003).  Neighbors Wonder How Friend Could Be in Jail.

The Los Angeles Times (March 25, 2003).  Man Sentenced to Life in Two 1957 Police Murders.

The Los Angeles Times (July 22, 2007).  Death in El Segundo.  

Murderpedia (2021).  Gerald Mason.

The New York Times (January 30, 2003).  After 45 Years, an Arrest in the Killing of 2 Officers.

Wikipedia. (2021).  Gerald Mason.